Sweet Little Lies (13 page)

“Goodbye, cherie.”

“Goodbye, Patric.”

Kelly turned off the phone and leaned her head back, lost in memories. She’d met Patric Pierre when she was twenty and her career was in overdrive. Patric was a huge movie star in Europe, and at the time they met, he had just been cast in his first American movie, an English version of one of his most popular French films. She was in Paris to do a shoot for French
Vogue
and to headline the Giancarlo spring show. Patric had been front and center at the show and afterwards had gone backstage to find her. Upon finding her, Patric had grabbed her hand and didn’t let go for the rest of the night.

It wasn’t long before they were involved in a passionate affair. Patric had been her first lover, and Kelly fell hard. For a long time, they were the picture of bliss. Patric became a major star in America, and Kelly was THE supermodel of the time. The tabloids ate it up. He attended all of her shows, and she went to all of his movie premieres, even doing cameos in some of his movies. For four years, they crisscrossed the globe living a jet-set life; Italy, London, New York, L.A., Miami, but Paris was their home base.

The paparazzi followed their every move, and there was endless, breathless speculation about when they would marry and have children. Patric had been married once before, and everything had been great until he discovered his new wife was a raging cokehead and sex addict. After a long and expensive divorce, he had vowed never again. Kelly had desperately wanted to marry Patric but eventually realized she would never change his mind. She made the painful decision to end the relationship and came back to the States permanently. It was about that time she’d decided to step back from the modeling game; the business was changing, and the supermodel was becoming an endangered species. Kelly had done numerous spokesmodel jobs, but the project that was perhaps closest to her heart was the time she spent as the face of Cherie, the perfume designed exclusively for her. When she’d been approached about getting her own perfume, she’d insisted that be its name. It had been a bestseller.

She propped her head up and got back to the business at hand. She called Hans and explained her situation, and with a few taps on his computer, he immediately transferred her funds into Swiss accounts, completely untraceable.

The last hurdle to tackle was Runway. She’d worked damn hard to build that company from scratch, and she sure as hell wasn’t letting Geneva get her grubby hands all over it. She thought about her executive leadership team and knew there was only one person with the chops to take over. She made a quick phone call to make the management change, satisfied she’d covered all her bases. Let Geneva try and come after her. She was ready. Kelly gathered up all her papers, thinking about her next move.

H
anson shook his head as he watched the news. Channel Seven had broken the story on its early news, and now the other stations were carrying it on their noon newscasts. Never in a million years would he have thought this. He’d seen some wild things, but this…this was crazy. He was already running a background check on this Geneva woman, and he and Didi were obtaining a search warrant for her house.

The search of Mark Monroe’s office hadn’t really yielded anything. They did see Kelly on the surveillance tapes in the garage, her arms filled with a bulging file folder. They had their safecracker open the safe and found various statements for accounts for Mark and his wife. They were loaded, and Hanson was trying to figure out why either one of them worked. If he had the kind of money they had, he’d be gone without so much as a goodbye. Of course, Mark Monroe would have been the one who stood to gain financially by killing Kelly. A second safe was empty, and Hanson knew its contents must have been what Kelly Ross had absconded with, things she didn’t want anyone to know. Was that when she found out about her husband’s other wife? He and Didi had gone through evidence from the Monroe’s house and couldn’t find a stitch about an extramarital affair. No extravagant trips or gifts that didn’t seem to include Kelly. Monroe was a lawyer, so he was no dummy—obviously he’d covered his tracks pretty well. He was waiting for Monroe’s financials, hoping that would drum up something about Geneva Monroe.

Hanson was more perplexed than ever. Nothing he’d seen pointed to an affair, much less another wife. Geneva had to be making that up. He was curious to see what the background check turned up on her. Hanson frowned as his thoughts turned to Geneva Monroe. How in the hell had Mark Monroe gotten mixed up with her? Kelly Ross—now she made sense…

But what about this other woman?

H
arvey Jackson leaned back in his leather desk chair in his South Loop office, cherishing the few moments he had before the phone started to ring off the hook again. He’d been fielding calls all day ever since his ambush press conference.

He’d been surprised yet intrigued when he’d gotten the call from Geneva Monroe Sunday afternoon. Apparently, she’d gone on the Internet and found him on some website called findalawyer.com or something like that. Harvey had made his reputation on being somewhat of an ambulance chaser, bringing—and often winning—lawsuits against companies and individuals for negligence, accidents, that kind of thing. It kept him living comfortably in Hyde Park which, for a brother who grew up in Cabrini Green with roaches and rats as his only friends and food stamps his only currency, was his definition of success.

This line of work suited him perfectly.

Harvey wasn’t a handsome man but what one would call mildly attractive and more than a little flashy—jolly even, given his rotund middle and squat legs. He kept his small Afro tidy, his black pushbroom mustache trimmed free of any scraggly hairs, and a gold pocket watch dangling from the vests of his colorful three-piece suits. The watch had ceased to tell time years ago, but Harvey hung onto it because he thought it was the kind of thing a lawyer should have.

Geneva Monroe had presented an interesting challenge. She said she’d liked the fact that his name was Harvey, because it sounded like a lawyer name. She’d asked if they could meet and, at a dimly lit diner on the South Side, told him her story, producing the necessary proof to back up what she was saying. Harvey was floored. He knew Mark Monroe. Hell, everybody knew him. And the truth was, everyone who knew him was damned jealous of him. Good looking, rich, rubbing shoulders with the elite. And the wife…Harvey wouldn’t have minded having a go at her.

When Geneva came toddling into the restaurant, Harvey about fell out of his chair. The woman was just plain ugly—no
fugly
was a better word. Personally, within the first five minutes of meeting Geneva Monroe, Harvey decided he didn’t like her.

Still, he was no dummy. When it was all said and done, he stood to gain a lot of notoriety from this case. As things progressed, he expected he would be giving many more press conferences before this was all over. Maybe when it was all done, some cable station would want to bring him on as a regular legal contributor. He could write a book…maybe get his own talk show. So, so many places he could go. Speaking of shows, he wondered if Kelly Ross had found out about his and Geneva’s little dog-and-pony one and what her reaction had been.

Well, it wouldn’t really matter. She was going to fry for what she did to her husband, and he was going to put himself on the map thanks to her. Harvey smiled a contented smile.

Boy, this was going to be fun.

A
few city blocks away, Sam Gordon was reclining in a similarly commanding leather desk chair. He, however, was outright laughing. Mark Monroe…married to another woman. He never would have guessed. He was still irritated Kelly Ross had stood him up. He defended a lot of high-profile people, but he had to admit, this one made him salivate more than a little. And now, with this new tidbit of information, he was downright foaming at the mouth. It had money, sex, fame, and power. In other words, tailor-made for him. Whenever he read about big-time cases in the news, he always liked to think strategy, how he would handle the case if he were the defense.

He thought Cochran handled the Simpson thing brilliantly. Like many, he thought the guy did it, but Cochran was nothing short of genius and pulled it off. How would he handle Kelly Monroe? Insanity defense was one way to do it. Crime of passion? Even better. And what
about
the race card? Police try to railroad a successful black businesswoman into jail? Hmm. Just then his phone beeped at him.

“Yes, Nina,” he said, somewhat perturbed at the interruption.

“Mr. Egan is here.”

He’d forgotten about that. “Alright, I’ll be right out.”

Sam took a sip of water from the glass on his desk before he rose to go out to his meeting.

N
ow that they were both retired, Candice and Harry Ross liked to sneak out of town for a few days on impromptu vacations. Newspapers and phones weren’t allowed, and the Rosses simply relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company.

If you could imagine what Ken and Barbie would have looked like as a black, middle-aged couple, that would just about describe Candice and Harry Ross. Candice could still wear the same size four dress she’d worn the night she was crowned Homecoming Queen at Urbana and had passed on her beauty and metabolism to both her daughters. Harry’s lifelong nickname was Belafonte, due to his somewhat passing resemblance to the legendary performer. He didn’t really see it, but to each his own.

The couple had spent the weekend at their home in Fontana, Wisconsin, and arrived back in Evanston on Monday afternoon, unaware of the events that had transpired over the past few days. While Harry checked the mail, Candice went to see if they had received any voicemails while they were gone. Before she had a chance to pick up the phone, it rang.

“Hello?”

“Mom?” It was her daughter, Stacy, and she sounded terrible.

“What’s wrong, baby, what happened?”

Stacy was sobbing, unable to put words together.

Harry came in, and Candice shot him a worried look. “Stacy,” she mouthed to her husband. She turned her attention back to the phone.

“Baby, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Mom, it’s Kelly.”

“What about Kelly? Is she okay?” Candice’s voice pitched slightly upward.

“Oh, Mom,” Stacy wailed, trying to get the words out. In a halting voice, she revealed the details of the past few days to her mother’s growing horror.

Candice dropped the phone as what her youngest daughter was saying sank in. Harry ran over and picked up the phone as Candice sank to the floor, crying.

“Stacy?” he yelled into the phone. “Stacy, it’s Daddy. What the hell is going on?”

Harry’s face contorted into a mask of rage as he listened to what his daughter had to say about her sister. He clenched the phone in his hand.

“That son of a bitch,” he growled. “I would have killed that bastard myself.” He let out a terse breath. “Has Kelly called you?”

“No, I haven’t talked to her since Friday. She sounded fine, said that she and Mark were thinking about spending a few weeks in Brazil this summer. How could he have this whole other life? How could he do this to her? To us?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know, baby. I just don’t know. Baby, come home. Your sister is going to need us.”

“I’ll book the next flight.”

“Okay. Call us when you know you’re coming, and we’ll come get you.”

“Okay, Daddy. I love you.”

“We love you too, baby. We’ll see you soon.”

Harry hung up the phone and knelt down to face his wife, who was still weeping on the floor. He sighed and placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders.

“How could this happen, Harry? Not to our Kelly, our baby—” Candice was unable to finish before the tears overcame her again. Harry held his wife, fighting back his own tears. The phone rang again. Thinking it was Stacy, he decided to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Ross, my name is Janice Morris with the
Sun-Times
, and we wanted to interview you and your wife about your daughter, Kelly. What is your reaction to accusations she murdered her husband?”

“No comment.” He slammed down the phone and went to lift Candice off the floor just as the doorbell rang.

“Oh, Jesus, what now?” Harry muttered to himself. He turned his attention back to his wife. “Come on, Candy, come sit on the couch. I’ll see who’s at the door.”

She nodded, and he helped her up and led her to the couch. The doorbell rang again, and he stalked over to answer the door.

“Mr. Ross?”

“What?!”

“I’m Detective Hanson, and this is my partner, Detective Martin. We need to ask you a few questions regarding your daughter, Kelly. May we come in?”

Harry hung his head and motioned for the detectives to come in. “Listen, my wife and I were away for the weekend, and we just found out about all of this. We’re both extremely upset.”

Hanson nodded. “Yes, your neighbors told us you frequently take weekend getaways. This won’t take long, we promise.”

By now, Candice had dropped her face into her hands. She looked up when she heard the detectives come into the room.

Hanson flipped open his notebook. “Has your daughter tried to make any contact with you? Leave you a voicemail, send you an email…?”

“No, nothing.”

“What did you think of your son-in-law?”

“We adored Mark,” Candice answered before her husband could say anything. “He was everything you could want for your daughter.”

Hanson looked at Harry. “What about you, Mr. Ross? Is that how you feel?”

Harry pursed his lips into an imperceptible line. “I felt my daughter made a fine choice with Mark. Or so I thought. What is this about him having another wife? What does that mean? Was he married before he married my daughter?”

“Well, Mr. Ross, it appears he was married to a woman who goes by the name of Geneva Monroe, and they had a son together. As far as we’ve been able to tell, your daughter found out about it and killed Mr. Monroe. Her prints are all over the murder weapon,” Didi answered.