The Rich and the Dead Read online

  “You seem to know a lot about me. What do you think the answer to that question is?”

  “I’d say you don’t know much.”

  “You’d say right. So, in English, tell me how this thing works.”

  “I’m sure you know that everything is made up of tiny atoms, right?”

  Lila gave Teddy a slow, unsure nod.

  “So, even though this table is solid,” Teddy knocked on the desk in front of both of them, “it’s actually made up of tiny molecules that are filled with holes and wrinkles. Loads of empty space. Well, time is the exact same way. It’s not as solid as you think it is. Within the quantum foam of time, there are actually little crevices that are minuscule shortcuts through space and time. We call those wormholes.”

  Lila tried to give her full attention to Teddy, but her concentration was continually broken by Conrad, who was busy in the corner carefully loading stacks of hundred-dollar bills into a steel briefcase.

  Teddy continued. “What I’ve been able to do is capture and enlarge these wormholes so that objects and people can travel through them. To put it as simply as I can, I’ve created a path through the fourth dimension.”

  On top of the money, Conrad placed a passport, and other documents and various papers.

  “Are you still listening to me, Lila?” Teddy asked.

  “Yes, wormhole. Quantum whatever. Sure. Why haven’t you told the world yet? You could make billions.”

  Teddy shrugged. “I already have billions. Let’s just say I’m not ready to share this technology with the world.”

  “You’d rather use it to send me back in time to stop a murderer?”

  “No,” Teddy interrupted, his voice low and urgent. “Not to stop the murders. You can’t save those people, Lila.”

  “Excuse me?” she demanded, incredulous. “You expect me to travel back in time to witness a mass murder and do nothing to stop it?”

  “If you stopped the murders, you would be violating several major laws of the universe. And there’s no way to predict the outcome. It’s too risky. There are rules to traveling through time, inviolable rules.”

  “Such as?” Lila asked with a slight sneer.

  “Such as, you must do your utmost to avoid altering the course of time. That means you are forbidden from killing anyone or preventing anyone from being killed. You cannot and must not stop the Star Island massacre. If you did, you could be responsible for altering the present in unimaginable ways.”

  “Then what’s the point of any of it?”

  “Justice!” he exclaimed, his eyes glowing with determination. “What could be more powerful than bringing this murderer to justice?” Lila wondered again why Teddy was so invested in catching the Star Island killer.

  “Tell me,” she asked. “What’s in it for you? Why are you as obsessed with this case as I am?”

  “I have my reasons. That’s all you need to know,” he answered quietly.

  “Okay, well, why bring me into this thing? Why don’t you go instead?”

  “To find the killer, you’ll have to become part of that world. You’ll have to infiltrate the Janus Society as deeply as you can. I was already part of that world. There’s no way I could go back. That’s very important, Lila, that you never let your past and future selves meet. Besides, you said it yourself—no one else is as obsessed with this case as you are. Not to mention that you’re the best detective Miami’s ever seen.”

  She disliked it when people tried to appeal to her vanity. “So you want me to time-travel to the past and then go undercover?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And who am I going to be, exactly?”

  “Your new identity will have to be someone of extreme wealth. That’s important. None of the Janus Society members will trust you if you’re not as rich as, or richer than, they are. They’ll suspect you’re after their money. I’ll be giving you unlimited access to one of my accounts.”

  “I don’t think I can pull off the whole high-society thing. They’ll sniff me out in a minute,” Lila said.

  “Never underestimate the power of money. If you have enough of it, you’ll be shocked at how quickly doors open up for you. And besides,” he added, with a wicked grin, “this is Miami, after all, not Newport. Everyone is new money here.”

  Lila nodded, then thought of something else. “I can’t let the members of the Janus Society know that I know they’re in the club—they kept it a secret even from their own family members, their spouses, their children. How do you think I’ll be able to gain access to the world’s best-kept secret?”

  “With this,” Teddy said. He tossed a thumb drive into Lila’s lap. “I’ve spent the last three years putting together that database, with detailed profiles of all the victims and potential suspects. I employed countless researchers. That’s the most complete record in existence of the evidence you might need to solve the case.”

  For the second time that day, Lila was at a loss for words.

  “I understand it’s a lot to take in. But I want you to know that I am a man of endless resources and options. I speak with confidence when I say that you are the only person in the world who can do this.”

  Lila frowned, thinking suddenly of something. “You’ve sent a paper through time, but have you sent a person back before? What’s to say that I won’t break up into a bunch of scattered molecules?”

  “It’s perfectly safe. I’ve done it, and so has Conrad.”

  Looking at both of these men, Lila somehow didn’t find this news terribly reassuring. “Okay, let’s say I do agree to this, and I’m not saying I will. What are the details?”

  “You’ll find an extensive outline of the plan on the thumb drive you have in your hand, under the filename Camilla Dayton. That will be your alias. You’ll be arriving in late September 2014. You’ll have three months to work undercover. And you’ll return here, to the present, the day after the murders—January 1, 2015—at precisely 4:16 P.M.”

  “Why three months?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable sending you back for any more time than that. There are too many variables that are impossible to control.” He looked at her intently. “Let’s hope it’s long enough.”

  “Will I lose those months of my life here?”

  “Wormholes don’t work the same in both directions. It’ll be a few days here, not a few months. You’ll arrive back here on . . . what day is it, Conrad?”

  “July twenty-seventh, at 9:36 A.M., sir.”

  Lila thought about asking for clarification but decided against it. Whatever answer Teddy gave her would probably only leave her more confused.

  “You can review everything tonight,” Teddy was saying. “If you say no, that’s fine. You’ll never hear from me again. But I hope, out of courtesy, you would keep all of this to yourself. Conrad will take you home now. Please, think long and hard about my offer.”

  “I’ll think about it. I promise you that much.” Lila stood up, suddenly anxious to get home and review the thumb drive.

  “That’s all I ask,” Teddy said, nodding to Conrad. “Please take Ms. Day home.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR hours later, Lila found herself sitting alone in the belly of a time machine, wondering frantically if she’d made the right decision. What had earlier seemed like a risk worth taking now appeared to be possibly the dumbest, most dangerous idea of her life.

  Once again, she was wearing the white hazmat suit. Her hands were sweating, and her breath was quick and shallow in her chest. She tried to calm down by thinking of how she and Teddy had gone over everything: the plan, the cover story, what she would do once she was back in 2014.

  This was her chance, Lila reminded herself. Her chance to finally bring a killer to justice, to solve the case that had ruined her life and start over fresh. That was what she tried to remember as she sat there praying she would emerge from Teddy’s insane contraption alive.

  The cockpit of the jade dome was a glorious combination o
f steel, quartz, and leather—like the inside of a high-end Swiss watch. Suddenly, the lights went out, leaving Lila in total darkness.

  “Hello?” she cried. “Hello?” There was nothing. No light. No sound. Then a tremendous whirring noise erupted all around her. Lila immediately closed her eyes. It felt like an invisible pressure was pushing down upon her, pressing into her skull. Her ears popped painfully.

  In the steel briefcase strapped underneath her seat, Lila had $20,000 in cash, a fake passport and New York driver’s license, a checkbook and debit card linked to Teddy’s bank account with a balance of $100 million, and, most important, Teddy’s thumb drive.

  She’d spent all night reviewing his countless files, but she’d seen only the tip of the iceberg. They were exhaustive and seemingly endless. He had somehow gotten his hands on the police files from her own investigation as well as those from the FBI, CIA, and Florida state police. It would take a year just to read it all.

  So last night, Lila had paid the most attention to the file on Camilla Dayton, the new persona Teddy had created for her. He’d developed an extensive backstory for Camilla, along with suggestions of how Lila could insinuate herself into the world of the Janus Society members. His work was impressive and reassuring.

  “We are T minus five from inflationary vacuum state,” Conrad said, a mechanical precision to his voice. Lila opened her eyes to see that a screen had flickered to life before her. It showed Teddy in the control room, with Conrad at his side.

  “Wait!” Lila shouted. All the whirring and the darkness and danger of this adventure suddenly felt much too real.

  “Relax, Lila. I know you can do this,” Teddy yelled. “The next time I see you, you’ll have solved the Star Island murders. Remember that!”

  “Four.” Conrad continued the countdown. The sound of the whirring increased to a steady, high-pitched shriek.

  “Three.”

  Panic flooded Lila, making time feel faster, and her body feel smaller and distorted.

  “Two,” Conrad said. The screen flickered off and the dome began to shake furiously.

  “One.” Everything was suddenly still and black, as though Lila had been dropped off a cliff. She opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could, but there was no one to hear her. Her screams just evaporated into the surrounding darkness.

  WHEN HER HEARTBEAT finally settled and her breath came back to her, Lila opened her eyes to find that she was lying on a dirty cement floor in a small cinder-block room with a red corrugated metal door. A single fluorescent tube lit up the room with a harsh, buzzing luminosity. The steel briefcase sat next to her.

  She’d survived.

  She scrambled to her feet and stripped off the hazmat suit. Clicking open the briefcase, Lila was relieved to see all its contents were, like her, miraculously intact.

  It was just as Teddy had said it would be. He had described this room to a T. Why the wormhole emptied out into this bleak storage unit in North Miami was a mystery even to him. It was the one spatial link he’d managed to cut through the fabric of time.

  Was she really in the past?

  Lila rolled up the metal door, causing a racket that thundered around the empty storage facility, and peered down the long hallway. There wasn’t a person in sight. She noted the number on the door: 2867. She would have to come back here by 4:16 P.M. on New Year’s Day to return to the future. By then she would know who the Star Island killer was.

  She headed toward the exit sign, walking in a combat crouch, her back pressed close to the wall, the briefcase in her hand.

  When she stepped out of the storage building, the roar of the expressway and the crushing heat of the noon sun nearly flattened her. All of her senses felt heightened, sharper than normal. Luckily, Lila knew where she was—Miami’s shittiest corner, by I-95 and Gratigny Parkway. About a ten-minute drive from the glamour and opulence of Star Island, but, from where she stood, it might as well have been a continent away.

  Spotting a convenience store, she crossed the busy street and walked inside. As the automatic doors closed behind her, the air-conditioning hit her like an arctic blast. The effect was dizzying. A woman with pockmarked skin stood behind the counter.

  “Excuse me. Can you call me a cab?” Lila asked.

  “Use the pay phone,” the woman said, scowling. She pointed to the corner of the store. “It’s over there.” Her rainbow-shaped eyebrows were drawn too high on her forehead, making her face look permanently surprised.

  “I don’t have any change.”

  “Then you gotta buy something.”

  Exasperated, Lila turned her back to the woman and opened her briefcase, sliding a hundred-dollar bill out from the stack.

  She threw a paper on the counter and slapped the bill on top of it. “Will this work?” she snapped.

  “You don’t got anything smaller?” the woman whined.

  “Nope.”

  Lila’s annoyance with the woman instantly evaporated when she saw the date on the Miami Herald she was buying. Thursday, September 25, 2014. It’s real, Lila thought. It’s real.

  “Um, hello?” the convenience store clerk said, pulling Lila out of her daze. She looked up to find the woman impatiently waiting to hand over her change.

  “Thanks,” Lila said, still distracted. The woman, with a roll of her eyes, turned her attention to stacking chewing tobacco tins into a pyramid.

  Using the pay phone, Lila called a taxi. “I need a cab at the corner of Gratigny and Northwest Twenty-Second. Going to the Ritz-Carlton. Yes, thank you.”

  She hung up the phone, then stepped outside to wait for the cab. Once again she moved from the arctic air-conditioning to the blisteringly hot, exhaust-filled streets. To live in Miami was to be too hot or too cold at almost all times. The fever and the chill. It was not a land of moderation.

  The cab soon pulled up, and Lila found herself heading south toward Miami Beach with the windows down, letting the wind rake through her long black hair.

  In her mind, one sentence repeated over and over. “My name is Camilla Dayton. My name is Camilla Dayton. My name is . . .”

  CHAPTER 9

  CHECKING INTO THE Ritz’s five-thousand-dollar-a-night oceanfront suite with no luggage except a metal briefcase raised a few eyebrows behind the flower-laden check-in desk. But once Lila handed over the credit card in Camilla Dayton’s name, which could easily shoulder the $50,000 hold that was placed on it, she might as well have been the Queen of England.

  A young man with model good looks and heavy blond bangs appeared beside her as if by magic. “Just this way, Ms. Dayton.”

  Her room was breathtaking. Decorated like a Balinese paradise, it was all warm wood and white furniture, with a mesmerizing view. The sweet smell of tropical flowers gently scented the air.

  “Do you have a hair salon on the premises?” Lila asked, after the boy had given her a brief tour.

  “Of course. It’s located on the second floor next to the south pool. Would you like me to get you an appointment?”

  “Yes. Right away.” Though Lila highly doubted she’d run into anyone she knew at the Ritz, she needed to look as different from herself as she could, as fast as she could.

  “John Darling runs the salon. I’m sure you know of him.” Lila nodded her head, though she had absolutely no idea who he was. “He’s impossible to book, but I can always pull some strings.” The bellhop gave her a salacious wink. “For a friend.”

  Once he secured her a salon appointment, Lila tipped him a hundred dollars. After all, she knew it paid to have friends in low places.

  John Darling turned out to be a muscular, taciturn man with arms covered in tattoos and long hair the color and texture of cornsilk. In a little under six hours—and with the help of no fewer than four other hairdressers—he turned Lila’s long black mane into a sleek, shoulder-length blond bob.

  “From feral to fab,” John said, combing his fingers through her transformed hair. Lila regarded herself in the mirror and was shoc
ked to see someone else look back. It was a jarring experience, seeing herself as just another South Beach blonde, the women she’d spent her whole life detesting.

  Pleased to meet you, Camilla, she thought. The razored edge of the cut fell elegantly right above her prominent collarbones, and the side-swept bangs created a perfect frame for her face. She knew, objectively, that this was the kind of haircut most women dreamed of. But she couldn’t think of it as anything more than a disguise.

  When the salon receptionist told Lila how much she owed, Lila’s first reaction was to slap her across the face. Spending roughly the amount she’d made on the force in a month for a cut and color was tantamount to larceny. But Lila choked back her impulsive reaction and simply smiled, placing the credit card on the counter between them.

  It was time for the clothes.

  Lila spent the remainder of the day at the mercy of the shopgirls of Miami’s priciest boutiques. Tom Ford. Bulgari. Gucci. Dior. Alexander McQueen. Christian Louboutin. And what seemed like a lifetime at the makeup counters in Barneys. These names meant nothing to her. Luckily, Teddy had written detailed instructions for her—where to go, who to ask for, what to say. In every store, just as she was instructed, Lila did the exact same thing. She would walk in, identify the most intimidating salesgirl in the shop, and then tell her, “I’ve just moved here from New York. I need an entire new wardrobe, and money is no object.”

  For Lila, it was almost a game to watch how the faces of the shopgirls transformed from indifference to delight once she made it clear that she had limitless money to spend. In an instant, there was champagne in her hand, a large private dressing room, and a steady stream of outfits for her to try on. Most of the clothes struck her as idiotic. And the cost was obscene. Three hundred and fifty dollars for a T-shirt. Fourteen hundred dollars for a skirt. After the first few items, she stopped looking at the price tags.

  “Rich, gorgeous, and a perfect size two,” one shopgirl cooed into Lila’s ear as she zipped her into a particularly form-fitting strapless dress. “You must’ve made a deal with the devil.”