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A clear and believable picture was beginning to form for Barrington. It looked more and more like Barbara Shady managed to go into hiding somehow while the police searched for her and her husband in all the wrong places. Clever woman. “She had your three million stashed somewhere, so didn’t have to worry about money. Who knows where she could be?”
That’s when they told him that she had much more than the three million. They mentioned the aliases, bank accounts under various names that were fat with inheritances plus insurance payouts from killing previous very wealthy husbands. Then Kate mentioned the possibility that a clever woman like her could be stashing a good portion of it in cryptocurrency, which would make it much harder to trace if at all.
“Anyway, it’s true she could be anywhere by now. We uncovered quite a bit of her trail but haven’t found her yet. We know she simply and calmly walked over to the Marriott on Admiralty and checked in under an alias right after she cleared out, but she left without checking out the next morning. However, and here’s where it gets good, we do know where she will be tomorrow. We are pretty certain of that.” Garrett continued, “That’s why we brought you in now. This is how you get your big bust. Be aware, however, that some other states may be fighting to prosecute her for those other murders. However, you will get the headlines.”
Now Barrington looked skeptical. He wanted to know how they knew everything so far and what was yet to be revealed.
Kate said, “Well, my firm FraudBusters uncovered the information about the aliases and dead husbands, but as far as how we know where she will be tomorrow and at approximately what time, sorry, we protect our sources.”
There was no need to involve Maggie as their source of the Beverly Hills gossip, which would have also led to him knowing how they found out about what would lead to Barbara’s capture.
Barrington was on board after asking several more questions. They told him about her booking the around the world cruise, how much it cost, and their belief that she intended to disembark in one of the ports and either settle there to start a new life, or take another form of transportation to whatever new home base she’d chosen.
He listened intently while Garrett gave him the final pieces of necessary information. “The cruise is booked under the name Briana Hanley. She will definitely have a passport and credit cards in that name. We used that name to see if she’s been staying anywhere in the greater LA area awaiting the departure date, but we came up dry. She probably used yet another name and credit card—an alias that we’re not aware of.”
The stunned expression on Barrington’s face said everything. It reflected his amazement that a very old Colonel, an action adventure actor, an advertising executive and a woman who operated a firm called FraudBusters and, okay, a former FBI agent who did happen to be his favorite author—had actually uncovered all of this while the cops ran around in circles. It was beyond anything he could have imagined when he got the call for help.
“So, that’s it?” he said. “We show up at the ship, and arrest her when she attempts to board as Briana Hanley?”
“Um, yeah. There’s no way she’ll suspect her cover is blown. If she sees uniforms, she might panic and try to run. I’d suggest you personally hang out around the registration desk waiting for her to make an appearance. I’d be willing to bet she will show up when the greatest number of passengers typically check in. Probably not early or last minute. She won’t want to stand out. She might try to change her appearance with something like a wig, glasses and the like, but as long as you have the name, you’ve got her. Why, this could even mean a promotion for you. After all, how many Briana Hanley’s have Fifty Thousand to spend on a cruise and a trail of dead bodies behind them?”
SUNSHINE STREAMED IN through the open drapes, bathing her room in a golden light. Barbara opened her eyes and checked her watch. Seven-thirty. She wouldn’t take the shuttle to the Cruise Center until around two. Just a little more time to kill until her new life would begin. That of a wealthy widow named Briana Hanley living in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. If she decided that name was too risky, she had three more complete with identification and passports that she had never used. She had time to decide. Time to transfer the majority of her money into whatever name she settled upon.
Barbara had always been fascinated with the 1944 movie Casablanca, even though she knew it was shot on Warner Brothers back lot in Burbank, California. When she researched countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States and came upon Morocco, she had poured over everything she could find about the city featured in the classic movie. She liked what she found. Casablanca it would be.
She congratulated herself for figuring out that when the ship docked in Tangier a week before arriving in London, she could disembark and simply not reboard, claiming illness. The new high-speed train would whisk her to Casablanca in just over two hours. She gave more thought as to whether she would choose to use yet another identity once she was there but put that decision on hold for the time being.
It had been clear to her for a few months that Al Shady’s time was coming. She had disciplined herself to wait until the time was right, the money was right, and decided the money from that stupid HOA would be like frosting on the cake. She could have done very well without it but couldn’t resist the temptation.
With her path clear in her mind, all that had remained was to choose the day to send him to his resting place in Hell by injecting him with enough of the OxyContin he sold to those who didn’t want to fill prescriptions at a pharmacy. No one would question whether he was an addict who had OD’d. It was all going according to plan until the old goat told her there was something very important they had to discuss after that fateful meeting. She’d lived with him long enough to read his expressions. He was gloating, and that couldn’t be good. She knew he’d discovered something very damning about her and couldn’t afford for him to carry out any threats. His cold statement could mean anything—there was so much that was possible.
It could be something about the real ways her former husbands died, or knowledge about what she was up to now. He was scheduled to die anyway. This just meant she had to speed up her timetable.
Fate has a funny way of intervening and upsetting carefully laid plans. She’d had to prepare the syringe in a hurry and when he fell to the floor, she assumed he was dead. She left him lying there, and figured when she came back from the meeting, she would simply call 911, feign hysterics and say her husband was addicted to opioids and she was afraid he’d overdosed.
Now she recalled the shock when she turned on the light in the living room, and Al was gone. Had she miscalculated? Did he recover consciousness and leave? Thoughts ran rampant in her head until she focused on the blood. Then she knew. The Cartel had made their move and she had to get out fast.