"Alese," Imogen said, most definitely trying to distract Lee from shooting me dead right then and there. "Alese, luv, why? You're not a killer."
Lee moved the gun over toward Imogen's head.
"Shut up," he said.
"You love him?" Imogen said, looking at Alese.
"Shut—" Lee said.
"I do," Alese said, interrupting Lee. "I really do. We've been together for a very long time."
"That's wonderful," Imogen said.
Lee impatiently sat there listening to Alese talk about love as she gushed over her murderous boyfriend.
I couldn't believe it or understand it. Why would someone like Alese be mixed up with someone like Lee? I was baffled. I was allowing Imogen to ride out this line of conversation before I spoke. She was having more luck than I had been having. Lee had been a fraction of a second away from blowing my brains out.
"But I'm confused. You two are lovers? So, you were going to sell the painting and then run off together?" Imogen asked.
"Oh, Mrs. Slade. This is the part that you and your husband over there didn't figure out. We needed you both to pull off our plan. We needed to get you two involved, vested in the painting. In Alese's case so that we could have the auction at Delmar."
"But why? You could sell that painting anywhere you wanted," Imogen said.
Now Lee had officially taken over answering Imogen's questions. He laughed. He was delighted with himself and what was going to come out of his mouth next.
"Actually, Mrs. Slade, we couldn't. No one would take it. And would you like to know why?"
We both wanted to know why. I was almost jumping out of my skin waiting to hear the answer. But I was also searching for a way out. A way to rush at Lee, grab the gun, beat him into the ground, and get out of this mess.
"Yes," said Imogen.
"I knew you would. The painting is a fake. But it's a very, very good fake. We fooled the experts. They believed it was the missing Klimt. The problem was how to establish the provenance. That they couldn't do. So they wouldn't touch the auction with a three-hundred-million-foot pole. That's where you two came in. We needed a reason to meet, so we created a bunch of death threats and fabricated a need for some very well-connected private investigators to come in and help. Once we had you two, we knew that we could convince you and Delmar to host the auction."
The painting was a fake! That brought everything together. They were going to pull off one more scam. One last con. Take the money and run. Disappear, never to be seen again. Leaving one last rich person holding the bag.
"Why don't you use the money from the sale to pay off the investors of Endicott Financial and go legit?" I asked.
That question really elicited a full-on belly laugh from Lee.
"You're a sharp one, Slade. Actually, that was the original plan. Sell the painting, pay off the investors. But then I realized something. If I did that, then I wouldn't have anything left for me. It would leave me with nothing. And, well, I'm afraid I can't have that. So, Alese and I have implemented plan B. We're going to take the money and use it for ourselves. Far away from here."
"What about Eric?" I asked. "You're going to screw his widow too? After he helped you hide your affair with Alese."
I had played the Eric card. I had to see how or if he fit into any of this.
"Oh Eric. He's just a casualty of the game, Max. He got greedy. Wanted his money. He and Carl got to talking one day at Delmar, and well, one thing led to another, and he wanted his money back. With interest. But the problem was that I didn't have it." He paused. Then laughed. "Well, that's not technically true. I did have his money, but it had made its way into my private account. I mean, a man can't be expected to take money out of his personal account to pay for a business debt."
Lee was crazy. This seemingly successful, albeit terribly showy and cheesy, businessman was a master con artist and apparently a murderer.
He continued, "Well, he wouldn't stop. He kept hounding me. Told me he knew everything and then threatened me. Your buddy was trying to blackmail me. Here's a tip, Max. You can't con a con artist."
"So you killed him?" I asked.
The logic of killing someone was beyond my grasp. The guy wanted his money, so you put a bullet between his eyes. How did that make sense? It also sent a shiver down my spine. If he had killed those two, nothing would stop him from killing Ginny and me.
"I wasn't going to kill him, Max. I'm not a psychopath. I told him if he could recruit someone to invest then I'd give the money to him, and we'd call it even. He thought that made perfect sense. So he approached you. But you wouldn't play along. And, well, you see where that led."
"But, I mean, how did you kill him? I saw you in his house the night he was shot."
Lee looked confused.
"You saw me at his house?" Lee asked.
Another one. I was surprising him left and right. More time to drag this out. Try to formulate a plan. I hadn't come up with anything yet. Just keep the man with the veneers talking.
"Yeah, I was up on the roof. Peeked in and well, caught you and I guess Alese over there in a compromising position."
"How dare you," Lee said.
Alese gave me a disgusted look. Not as disgusted as my face must have appeared when I saw Lee on top of her.
I had been trying to lull Lee into some sort of complacency with the situation, waiting for the right moment to spring from my chair. To deflect the gunshot that would have surely followed, before bringing him to the ground. Time was running out.
"So, how did you shoot Eric if you were upstairs getting busy?" I asked, purposely trying to anger Lee.
"You little bastard. You think you're so smart. So slick. With your wife over there. Trying to solve crimes. Well, here's what you didn't realize. I had Bill come over to Eric's house to kill him. It was a set up. Then he spotted you. Thought he could save himself a little time. So he took a shot at you but didn't hit you. Too bad. That's why we had to try again."
"But why Bill? Why would he do that?" I asked, a couple more questions to keep Lee talking.
"Bill has been well taken care of," Lee said. "When he agreed to work with me and to pretend as if he had never seen me before, well, he received a healthy investment in Endicott Financial. Made Bill a very rich man. Rich enough that he would never risk it all by talking."
"But he's never going to see the money," I said.
"Well, right you are, Max. But Bill doesn't know that. He just thinks he's rich. Well, that is, until the rest of the suckers find out the truth. But, unfortunately for you, the story ends here."
Lee stood up from his chair and stepped toward me holding the pistol pointed at my head. He walked over to me, took the handle of the gun, and crashed it into my temple with such force that it sent me flying to the floor. I saw stars as my head hit the ground. My head throbbed, pounded as I tried to not lose consciousness. I heard Lee say something, but I couldn't make it out. My mind couldn't process the sound over the pain.
I saw him turn toward Imogen, and was able to piece together Lee's words, "Now you're next." I tried to get up, make a move. My muscles didn't work. But I could see. My eyes looked up as I watched Lee about to strike Imogen. Then I heard screams, loud shouts in very deep voices coming from behind me. As I managed to turn my head, in came John Carrington and the Manors police through the open sliding glass doors.