The Good Twin(63)

I laughed. “All mine. I wanted Ben to be really sick about what he’d arranged.”

“I’m glad I didn’t ask him to just drop the cell phone off at the station. I mean, it was really spooky how lifelike the body parts were. If I just saw the pictures, I’d think you really were dead. Sergei brought me back into his studio and showed me the bodies he’d sculpted. If I walked past any one of them sitting on a park bench, I’d probably sit down and start a conversation. That’s how realistic they are.”

“He’s very talented.”

“So, here’s what’s next. I’m going to leave the phone with the pictures under your back doormat tomorrow night. My guess is that Ben will get Mallory down to the city right away. As soon as she and Ben change the prenuptial agreement, we’ll arrest him.”

“Don’t we need to wait for the estate to be settled?”

“Nope. The DA says revoking the prenup is enough to show motive.”

“Can I ask you to hold off a few days?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to come back to New York and confront him with Mallory, get him to confess.”

“Absolutely not! It’s much too dangerous.”

“We can do it in my house. I’ll be wired, and you can be right outside.”

“Look, we don’t need a confession. We have the recording from when Mallory and Ben met up with Clark. And we’ll have the changed prenup, which shows the reason he did this. He’s going away for a long time.”

“I want him to admit it was his idea, not Mallory’s. Please. I really need to do this. I need to see his face when he first realizes that it’s over for him. That instead of getting away with murder, he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

I heard a deep sigh over the phone. “All right. I shouldn’t say yes, but you’ve been through a lot. I’ll give you this.”

“Thank you, Detective.” As I hung up, I could feel my excitement rise. I could already picture Ben’s face when he saw the two of us together. First shock, then realization, then panic. I felt great.





CHAPTER 44

“It’s done,” Mallory told me three days after I’d fled to Florida. “I’m heading to your house in a few minutes.”

“Did Ben say anything about the pictures?”

“Just that he got them.”

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he’d flipped through the photos on the cell phone and seen my severed head. I knew Ben well. He had no stomach for gore. I hoped he had nightmares from seeing Sergei’s handiwork.

I still had to wait for Ben to take Mallory to Goldfarb’s office to revoke the prenuptial agreement. A cagier man might take months to do that in order to dispel questions, but I knew Ben. He was probably itchy to get that done. If he didn’t act fairly quickly on his own, though, Mallory was prepared to prompt him. Until then, it was comfortable being with Poppy, away from winter. After months of watching my father die, it felt like a needed vacation.

My grandfather lived on the twenty-first floor of a high-rise condo in a three bedroom, four-bath apartment overlooking the ocean in Bal Harbour, at the northern tip of Miami Beach. Everything about the building and the community was ultraluxurious. He’d spent the bulk of his career in Manhattan real estate, constructing high-end buildings, and built up a fortune in the process. He’d hoped Dad would take it over, but it didn’t turn out that way. Dad’s interest in money was purer—he wanted to deal with it directly. Even though Poppy was disappointed, he gave Dad the seed money he’d needed to start his own hedge fund.

After my grandmother died, Poppy moved his business down to southern Florida. He was now semiretired, letting his longtime chief operating officer handle the day-to-day matters. As a wealthy widower, he had more than enough women clamoring for his attention and was usually out every night with one or another. He was still attractive and only a bit overweight. He was always saying he needed to take off a few pounds, and I was always telling him to go to the gym. He’d just laugh at me. “That’s for you young folk,” he’d say.

This week he was staying in with me, even though I’d told him it wasn’t necessary. “Let’s go to Carpaccio for dinner tonight,” he said when I came back from the building’s lagoon-shaped pool. The ocean had beckoned just a few feet away, but I preferred the lounges by the pool, where I wasn’t constantly shaking off sand.

“Great.” It was my favorite restaurant in Bal Harbour, one that attracted visitors from all parts of Miami—celebrities and socialites, athletes and artists.

It was a beautiful evening, the temperature hovering around seventy, with just a light breeze, so we chose one of the outdoor tables. The waiter had just served our main dishes—mine was pescespada acapulco, fresh swordfish with artichokes, lemon butter, white wine, and diced shrimp—when Poppy asked, “When will this be over for you?”

I’d decided not to tell him of my plan to confront Ben. Better that he not have cause for worry. “As soon as Mallory revokes the prenup. Then Ben will be arrested, and I’ll return to New York.”

“Don’t take this wrong—I’m happy to have you here. It’s just . . . everything has been so stressful for you. I’m sure you want it to end, to have a normal life again.”