“She mentioned your appointment. Please come with me. My name is Leyla.”
Cara felt strangely at peace as she followed. Now she would know. What would happen next, she couldn’t say.
Leyla led her to the same sunlit corner she’d seen on the store’s website. A laptop computer was open on the desk next to a white ceramic pail filled with fragrant, blush-colored roses. The delicate floral arrangement felt incongruous. Wouldn’t red or black roses, or even carnations dyed an unnatural color, be more fitting for a murderous mafiosa?
The door to the back room opened and Ajila Gioni appeared.
“This is Cora Conrad,” said Leyla.
Ajila Gioni slowly looked Cara up and down, then nodded. “Bring us some tea.”
To Cara, she added, “Sit.”
Cara sat down in an uncomfortable cane chair, unable to take her eyes off the other woman, unable to even blink. Like the roses, the CFO of Gioni Enterprises, LLC, wasn’t at all what she expected.
Ajila Gioni moved toward her desk with an arthritic shuffle. While her hair was shoulder-length, straight, and blond—and quite possibly a wig—she had to be in her seventies, with frail arms and a dowager’s hump.
“You can take off that floppy hat,” Ajila said, as she lowered herself into a high-backed wood and leather task chair. “I know who you are. Even with whatever it is you’ve done to your hair today.”
Images of Cara with long, red hair were all over the internet, so she’d cut off the new extensions using utility scissors she’d found at the Malibu house.
Still, she waited until Leyla had returned with the tea before she removed the sun hat she’d borrowed from the pool house. She rested it on the edge of the desk as Ajila raised her teacup with trembling hands.
“You’re very lucky I didn’t call the police.”
“I know you won’t do that,” said Cara, with more confidence than she felt. “I also know Karl owed you money.”
Ajila’s smile was chilling. “Everybodyowes us money, darling... until we own their buildings. And if someone needs killing, we certainly don’t do it ourselves.”
“I didn’t think that you?—”
“You haven’t touched your tea.”
Cara took an obligatory sip that barely dampened her lips as she tried to recalibrate. There was no way this woman could have hiked up to Johnson’s Point, much less swung a hammer with deadly force. But she was certainly capable of hiring someone to kill Karl. Had he failed to make the payments on his loan? Had they planned to push him out all along, so they could take over his business?
“I found a handwritten promissory note in his safe. It didn’t seem like much of a contract for such a big loan. It wasn’t even notarized.”
“Don’t overthink. We do business the way we do business and A More Beautiful You was part of a larger plan to franchise plastic surgery centers across the country.”
“A More Beautiful You?” Cara asked. “His surgical center was called Campbell Cosmetic.”
Ajila shrugged. “We scrapped that plan. We were going to go bigger, and in locations much more amenable than City of Industry.”
Cara hated to admit they agreed on that point. “Is that why the lot was empty?”
“One of the reasons,” she said. “We needed your husband to complete our plans. His death was almost as bad for us as it’s been for you.”
Ajila put down her teacup with a rattle and stood up. She handed Cara the floppy straw hat.
“Well, maybe not quite that bad.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
JORDAN
Thank you for the many inquiries about Sheriff Jordan Burke! He is currently assisting the @USMarshalsHQ interagency task force as they hunt for fugitive Cara Campbell.
—@MaderaCASheriff
