The Rich and the Dead (11 page)

When they reached the pool area, Effie let out a shriek at the sight of a man lying in what she loudly claimed was “her” spot.

“Goddamn Russian!” she cried. “How many times have I told you to keep the fuck out of my chair?” The man opened his eyes, slowly blinking. He had a fleshy face with disproportionately full lips and incredibly bushy eyebrows sarcastically hanging above his sunken eyes. He was one of the most unattractive men Lila had ever laid eyes on.

“Is this not a free country?” the man said in a thick accent.

“Does any of this look free to you? Now, get up,” Effie commanded.

The Russian slapped his big, muscular thighs, relishing his role as an obstacle between a drunken socialite and something she wanted. “Climb up here, stomach first. I'm strong just like any good chair. Part wood also.” He looked at Lila, then winked. “Same offer for you. I don't play favorites.”

“As sweet as that sounds, I'll pass,” Lila said, rolling her eyes.

“All you American girls don't know a good time when you see it,” the man said, standing up from the chair. It was now covered in small, curly black hairs from his back. “You can stop buzzing around me. I go now.” As he stood, a young blond woman appeared out of nowhere holding a black robe, which she placed around his shoulders.

“My name is Alexei Dortzovich,” he said to Lila, placing his hand on the small of her back. “You are new here?”

“Just in from New York,” Lila answered. “My name's Camilla.”

At this information, Alexei shrugged his shoulders. He didn't seem to care what her name was. “People around here will tell you I'm a bad man,” Alexei said as he leaned into Lila. His fingers trailed up the side of her body and curled around her upper arm, brushing against her breast as he whispered, “But what they don't know is that I'm much worse than they think.” Then he and his tiny blond shadow walked away.

“What a lovely man,” Lila said to Effie, shaking off the feeling of his hand on her body.

“It's awful, the Russians are taking over Miami. And I thought the Cubans were bad.”

Once the chaise longue was swept free of body hair and covered with fresh towels, Effie and Lila took off the dresses that were covering their bikinis and lay back in the hot sun. Alexei was now on the other side of the pool, having what looked like an intense conversation with Fernando Salazar, the so-called Cuban Kissinger and member of the Janus Society.

Just as Lila was about to make another excuse so that she could listen in on their conversation, the two men nodded at each other, then parted ways.

Effie saw Lila looking at Alexei. “Just a warning,” she said. “That guy is not someone you want to cross, at all.”

“Why?” Lila asked, excited to finally be getting some valuable information out of Effie.

“People say he's Russian mob for sure.”

“You believe them?”

“Seems likely. He's always got armed guards. He's as rich as a sultan. Supposedly he's some oil tycoon, but who knows?”

“And what about that guy he was just talking to?” Lila pointed at Salazar, hoping that now, unlike with Meredith, Effie might reveal something about the Janus Society.

“Ugh. He's, like, the king of the Cubans. My dad told me he fought in the day of the pigs, or whatever?”

“The Bay of Pigs?”

“That's it,” Effie said, putting her finger to the tip of her surgically perfected nose.

“Do you know him?” Lila pressed. She hoped that Effie was drunk enough to let something slip.

Effie shot her a devilish smile. “Of course,” she said. “Isn't it clear to you by now that I know absolutely everyone?” Effie flagged a passing waitress for another vodka drink and a bottle of Evian, and Lila knew the moment had passed.

As the afternoon went on, Effie worked away at her drink, inundating Lila with the gossip on every man, woman, and child that passed by. “Oh, that guy? He spent five years in prison for insider trading. See that woman over there? She travels to Brazil so some quack can inject her butt with this weird stuff that's totally illegal in this country. That girl got kicked out of school for cutting herself; rumor is that she and her brother, who's over there, are doing it. And that guy, the cute one, I fucked him. Smallest dick I've ever seen. Such a shame. He's so hot.”

The whole nonstop monologue detailing the scandals, incest, embezzlements, crimes, and punishments of Miami's high society had Lila's head swimming. She wished she could take out a notepad and write everything down—she marveled that Effie's brain managed to keep track of it all. The problem, Lila realized as Effie launched into yet another sordid story, wouldn't be finding the villain among the innocent victims. The real difficulty would be locating any innocence in this city at all.

“How do you know so much about everyone?” Lila asked, when Effie finally came up for air.

Effie smiled, looking incredibly pleased with herself. “Secrets are the key to everything. Other people chase after money and sex and power. But not me. I learned a long time ago that knowing everyone's dirty little secret is as good as gold.”

The club was packed with Janus Society members. Chase Haverford, the hotel magnate and host on the night of the massacre, was at the bar by the pool, shouting obscenities into his phone. Javier Martinez spent the afternoon drinking mojitos and ogling the cabana boys while playing game upon game of dominoes with his young Dominican lover. Javier's vast fortune was always a source of gossip within the Miami social scene. He was an antiques and art dealer, but he was far too wealthy for that to be his only source of income. Lila knew there were constant whispers that he was mixed up in the black market, but nothing had ever been proven, even after his death.

When Lila walked by the tennis courts on her way to get sunscreen from the ladies' locker room for Effie, she spotted Sam Logan, the tennis star, giving an impromptu lesson to a woman wearing a miniskirt that looked to be a child's size. And then Neville Crawley, “of the Newport Crawleys,” quickly passed by, heading from his yacht to the golf course. Despite the day's crushing humidity, he was wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons.

Lila used her cell phone to take pictures of each and every Janus Society member present. Most of the time, to hide the fact that she was acting like a paparazzo, she pretended to be taking a selfie, positioning herself in front of the camera and pouting while really training the lens on her chosen subject. No one even batted an eye at a beautiful girl taking endless pictures of herself. Extreme vanity, in this world, was a given.

When she got back to the chair with SPF 50 for Effie, Lila saw yet another Janus Society member, Vivienne Hunter, stepping inside a private cabana, her head wrapped in an Hermès scarf. She was pale as snow, the majority of her face obscured by large sunglasses. Her lips were thickly painted a deep red and penciled outside of her natural lip line, giving her an “I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” kind of vibe.

“Ugh, I know,” Effie said, following Lila's gaze. “That woman is about as happy in the sun as a vampire. Why does she even bother coming here? I mean, really, move to Transylvania with the rest of the living dead.”

“And I can assume you know her?” Lila asked. Effie knew Vivienne well enough to die with her.

“That old bat? What's there to know except that she's made a fortune selling cheap lipsticks. But now she looks like an animatronic wax figure. Something out of Madame Tussauds.”

The crime scene photos that Lila had studied for years came screaming into her mind. She saw Vivienne Hunter dead, a sapphire necklace hanging from her white neck, her slightly parted scarlet lips echoing the gaping crimson gunshot wound in the center of her forehead. Lila shivered.

The sun began to set, turning the light around them into a hallucinatory mix of purples and pinks. A cooling breeze came off the ocean. The club staff began putting amber-colored tea light vases on all the tables. Lila glanced over at Effie, who looked quite bedraggled now that she was sobering up.

“Want to head back?” Lila asked. Effie nodded, threw on her dress, and began walking to the docks. Lila followed close behind, wondering if she should try to drive the boat home.

As they were both about to climb aboard Effie's terror express, a wooden sailboat pulled up to the dock. Suddenly something heavy and wet clunked Lila on the head.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed, ducking forward in a protective crouch. Effie shrieked. A thick rope fell splat at Lila's feet.

“Just wrap it on the cleat,” a voice shouted to her.

“What?” Lila asked, rubbing the back of her head. Who on earth would hit her in the head with a wet rope, then instruct her to do something with it?

She looked up to see a young, tanned man flashing an amused smile at her and Effie. He looked so familiar, but Lila couldn't remember where she'd seen him before.

“Christ,” Effie shouted. “You got my dress wet!” Effie's clothes, like her moods, were not to be trifled with.

With a disgusted look on her face, Effie bent down, picked up the wet rope, and weakly tossed it. It fell limply a foot away from their feet. “Tie up your own boat, Dylan.”

Lila grabbed her cell phone and quickly took a picture of Dylan for her files, thinking he wouldn't notice. But he did. In an instant, he arranged himself in a heroic pose for the camera, putting his foot on the lip of the boat and his fists on his hips.
Who does this guy think he is?
Lila thought, irritated that she'd been caught.

With a startling agility, Dylan walked along the thin lip of his boat's deck, one bare foot placed directly in front of the other like a tightrope walker. Then he hopped onto the dock and scooped up the rope.

“Not much of a sailor, are you?” he asked Lila as he wound the rope around the metal cleat bolted into the dock. He was strikingly handsome, with warm brown eyes and a lightning-quick smile. But all Lila saw was another South Beach pretty boy.

“She's from New York,” Effie offered by way of explanation, climbing into her boat.

“Then what's your excuse, Effie?” Dylan asked. Keeping his gaze trained on Lila, he said, “And does your friend have a name?”

“Lila,” Lila answered. Then she paused, catching herself. “I mean Camilla. Camilla Dayton.”

“You sure about that now?” Dylan laughed.

She looked at him stone-faced, causing his smile to quickly disappear.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly.

Effie revved her soul-clatteringly loud twin engines. She was growing impatient. “Come on, Camilla!”

Dylan continued staring at Lila in a way that made her feel incredibly uncomfortable.

“I've got to go,” she said to him.

“What Effie wants, Effie gets. I learned that years ago. The hard way. Anyway, I'm Dylan Rhodes,” he said, extending his hand. Lila shook it, taking note of his tan, muscular forearms, the thick brown hair falling just so into his eyes. “Maybe we'll run into each other at another, less rushed time.”

“Camilla, now!” Effie barked.

“Sure. Nice meeting you,” Lila said, pulling her hand away and turning back toward Effie.

That night, as Lila was logging her observations for the day and downloading her pictures, she lingered over her final shot—the one of Dylan Rhodes, posed as the conquering hero. She couldn't help smiling at the sight of it.

“Idiot,” Lila said aloud in the solitude of her hotel room.

But she kept looking at the picture.

CHAPTER 12

O
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UNDAY MORNING
, from the veranda of her hotel room, Lila called the number listed on the business card Scott Sloan had given her. She didn't want to waste any time. Based on what she'd overheard yesterday, she believed that Scott knew about the existence of the Janus Society. And if he knew of its existence, then he might have had a reason to kill its members, including his wife.