A Tangled Truth (Stonewall Investigations Book 3) Read online

  I dropped my head against the cushioned leather headrest. The chair leaned back with me, giving me the sensation that I was falling backward. I lurched forward and grabbed on to the table.

  “You okay there?” Wade asked, a tiny smirk on that bodyguard face of his.

  “Wait,” Stephen said, cocking his head, “when you said he’s hiding something darker… what do you mean by that?” He was looking across the table, directly at me. He had a sharp gaze. I could tell he was putting something together behind those hazel eyes.

  “Well, it might sound a little crazy, and this can’t go out of this room, not until there’s solid proof at least. But… well, I think the guy somehow killed his last two wives.”

  All you could hear in the room was a tiny gasp come from Carey. “A… murderer? You think Johnny’s capable of that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, being totally honest, “but there are some things that just don’t add up for me.”

  “There was someone else it didn’t add up for.”

  We all turned to Stephen, whose sharp gaze was now turned over my shoulder, aimed out at the glass wall behind me. “Who?” I asked.

  “Gina Cromwell, one of my clients. She was dating Johnny for a few months. I told her it was a bad idea, but she doesn’t listen to anyone except herself and Mother Nature. Sometimes, barely even her. This was a few months before his second wife died. She was really deep in her feelings for the guy, even though he made it clear she was just a side thing for him.”

  That was when Wade asked a question I’m sure was on all of our minds. “Exactly how much did she like him…”

  “No,” Stephen said, waving his hand in shooting that suggestion down at first sight. “She’s crazy and strong-willed, but she’d never hurt a bug. No, she liked him, but she wasn’t sprung enough to kill for him.”

  Wade leaned back in his chair, his motion much more controlled than mine had been. Skepticism was on drawn on his face. “Okay, so what happened with their relationship?”

  “He ended it.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Three days before his wife was found dead in the garage.”

  This time, Wade didn’t have to say anything. Skepticism was drawn across all our faces.

  “Okay, so the timing is a little suspect,” Blair said, “but I don’t think a successful actress with a booming future would do something that freakin’ crazy. Plus, where was she when the first wife died?”

  “Exactly,” Stephen said, as though he himself was being vindicated. Blair did have good points, though, and the monster in this situation had always been Johnny. I couldn’t lose sight of that. “And that’s not even the most damning part of this story,” Stephen continued, “On the last day of their ‘relationship,’ she had been over his house and had opened up one of his laptops. Said she needed to check something, but the first page that pops up is an incognito web search on some browser she’d never seen before.”

  “I’m guessing he wasn’t searching for Martha Stewart’s newest bed set?” I asked.

  Stephen huffed. “No, she said the page opened up to a black-market site found on the dark web, and that an order for something had been placed. She never told me for what.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Blair cursed on very few occasions, but when she did, it always took everyone by surprise. Her blonde, voluminous hair bounced as she whipped her head to look at Wade. I was feeling the same shock she felt.

  “How… why didn’t she go to the police?” Carey asked.

  “She did,” Stephen said. “She spoke to the captain, and he said he’d look into it personally. A week later, the captain is taking photos on the red carpet for Johnny’s new movie, his arms around every goddamn A-lister in the city.”

  “Holy… fuck.” I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Why wouldn’t she tell you what she saw?”

  “Honestly, I think she’s just terrified. Whatever she saw, it makes me think he’s actually capable of taking these women’s lives, and Gina felt that, too. She wants nothing to do with him and won’t ever talk about the situation again. I make sure none of my clients ever take solo meetings with him anymore.”

  I was shaking. “This is insane. She needs to talk.” My mind was reeling, like I had just stepped into a blender. Gina could be the key to all this.

  “She won’t,” Stephen said. “She’s scared, Liam. This wasn’t that long ago.”

  I felt for her, I really did, but I also knew this was something that couldn’t be dropped. I had to let Mark know about Gina, because if there was one person on this crusty-ass planet who could get someone to talk, it was Mark and those disarming eyes of his.

  16 Mark Masters

  Liam’s voice was coming through the phone in pieces. “Gina Cromwell?” I asked, repeating what I thought I heard. I was on the subway, so it was a little hard to hear what Liam was saying over the phone even with the Wi-Fi connected, but I could tell he sounded excited.

  “Yes! Her, she’s th—you ne—o talk to.”

  “Okay, I’ll add her to the list.” I made a mental note. I’d have to meet with her after my next interview, which I was on my way to as we were speaking. It was with Marah Kim, an actress who worked with both Liam and Johnny. She said she was never in a relationship with Johnny, but she did say she had something she wanted to talk with me about.

  The connection was dropping. All I heard was Liam say “call,” which I assumed finished with “call me later” as the call ended. I shot him a quick text and continued preparing myself for the interview. I had a few set questions I wanted to ask, but I also had to do a little bit of psychological investigating as well. Marah had a pretty public life, her almost every move documented on one social media platform or another. I had already scanned through a couple. It was a way of getting a feel for the person I was meeting. Any kind of knowledge helped me when I needed to steer the conversation in a certain direction. It also helped establish a quicker rapport with the person, which was crucial when I needed them to give me information. I wanted Marah to be as comfortable as possible. So if I saw that she’d been to five Lady Gaga concerts in a row, I could casually bring up how much I liked her newest single at some point, creating that link and getting her to open up even more.

  Marah had quite a lot to go through. She was a C-list actress who also moonlighted as an International Red Cross volunteer. I opened up to her Instagram, which was row upon row of model shots mixed in with selfies and photos of her casually sitting on pretty sofas. She seemed warm-hearted and always had a Colgate smile on her forever-lasting girl-next-door face. She had wavy brown hair that was always done, and none of her photos showed her without makeup.

  It was midway down her five hundred posts that I found something that jumped out at me as if it were circled in bright red. It was a photo of Marah lying down in bed, and she was kissing a cheek, half the man’s face shown in the frame.

  It was a jaw I knew well. As a detective, I made sure to analyze even the smallest details. When I’d first started on the case, I had noticed Johnny seemed to have trouble growing a beard. He was mostly always clean-shaven, but there were a couple of photos I had seen on his IMDb page where he had tried going to a movie premiere with a beard. There were two noticeable patches by his chin in all the photos, a detail I had stored away in my memory bank.

  I opened another web page and pulled up the pictures just to be sure. And… yup, it was a match. That chin Marah was kissing matched exactly to the photos of Johnny.

  The caption of the photo read: Spending the night with someone v. special. Heart is full. Lots of light coming. #Influencer #Love #TrueLove #Kiss #Actress #Famous

  So she did have something with Johnny…

  Also, her hashtag use is a little liberal there.

  This was something I would have to dig further into. On the phone, she had told me they had a strictly business relationship and never strayed from that. The photo definitely proved there was plenty of stray
ing.

  The train stopped at my station, which was a popular one since it seemed like everyone got off with me. We all climbed up the stairs in a herd mixed with tourists and regular commuters. The stairs opened up onto a street right across from Central Park, on the corner where a group of horse and carriages waited for giddy riders. I’d wanted to meet with Marah somewhere a little more controlled, but she insisted on meeting inside Central Park. Not even somewhere on the border, but instead somewhere deep in the labyrinth of green trees, sweaty joggers, and rats the size of cats.

  It took me a good fifteen minutes after getting out of the subway station to finally find the bench she had marked as our designated meeting spot. I had to call her midway through because I had definitely gotten lost and was being followed by a suspicious-looking squirrel.

  “Hey there,” I said. Marah was sitting on the bench, wearing the white Ghostbusters T-shirt she said she’d be wearing, with a pair of jean shorts and gold Toms. She was a skinny thing, especially in person. The photos didn’t really translate, and it took me by surprise. She reached out a hand. I noticed a slight shake to it.

  “Detective Mark Masters?”

  “That’s me,” I said, smiling. She smiled back, and I could sense there was already an ease to this. She didn’t have the kind of walls up that I was expecting, although I was going to have to ask a few tough questions, so that could flip on a dime.

  “Come into my office,” she said, laughing as she sat down on the bench. It was a secluded part of the park, where the trail wound around a bend and got lost in a group of trees on one end and went through a stone tunnel down the other end, while behind us there was a small rocky hill. It was quiet, too, in comparison to the amount of sound I knew surrounded this park. We could hear the birds chirping above us. Something rustled through the leaves nearby.

  “You keep it all very clean,” I said, joking along.

  “Sorry for making you come out here. When I heard your voicemail, I knew I wanted to talk to you. I’ve spent a lot of time here, rehearsing lines and meditating, and well, I figured bringing you here would really give me the good energy I need to get through this.”

  I opened a hand and shook my head. “Don’t even worry about it. We could go do this in a shark tank if you told me that’s what makes you the most comfortable.”

  She laughed at that. Her eyes were darting around. Not necessarily in a nervous way, but it was beginning to make me wonder if Marah was on some kind of stimulant.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her leg was bouncing, the bench shaking underneath us.

  “Mind if I record this?” I asked, taking my phone out. “Easier than writing notes.”

  “Right, yeah, of course.” She took a deep breath, as if preparing herself. “I guess I should start, huh? Jeez, I don’t even know how to talk about this. I’ve never really talked about it with anyone.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’m only here to help. Whatever you’ve got to tell me, just know I’m on your side.” She was looking into my eyes now, her leg still bouncing. Both were in motion now.

  “I… okay, so I know Johnny. Knew him. Not that well. Just acquaintances, but like, I overheard him talk about things a few times. And one of those things had to do with Liam. So when you reached out to me, saying you were working to help clear Liam’s name, I knew I had to say something. Those allegations against him are such bullshit, but I can see the hate he’s getting on Twitter, and it’s just so crazy to me.”

  “What did Johnny say?”

  “He was talking on the phone. I wasn’t sure to who—sounded like a woman, but it was hard to make out. I was in his bathroom at the time; I had been over for an audition. He thought I was in some other bathroom. He was telling the person that he wanted to ruin Liam. He wanted to fuck up his entire career. And he… ugh, it makes me sick even thinking about it. He used words against him that I don’t ever want to hear again.”

  I cleared my throat. “Were these insults against his sexuality?”

  She nodded, back to looking around the park, her legs still shaking. “It was so upsetting. I was blown away. He was just so angry. That was about a year ago. Then this email comes out, and I just knew that Johnny had to be behind it.”

  This wasn’t exactly new information, I already knew Johnny was a homophobic piece of trash, but something did jump out to me as extremely important and something I hadn’t known before. He was talking to someone over the phone while he was spewing his hate, meaning there could very well be an accomplice in all this. I was focused on one perpetrator, but maybe Johnny worked better in a team?

  “Marah,” I said, the next part requiring me to be very delicate. “Were there any other times you were around Johnny? Did you meet him again after the audition?”

  I was giving her a chance to be truthful from the jump. Prying it from her would be risky, because she could easily clam up and cut the interview short. But maybe if she just came clean with their relationship, I could dig deeper without feeling like she was going to bolt.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and rubbing her hands together. “Nothing. We had nothing.”

  She stressed the word, but that didn’t cover the fact that she was lying to me. “I know Johnny is a piece of trash, so just know that I’d never judge you if you were to tell me you guys had something.”

  She looked at me and chewed her chapped lip. I noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup today, unlike any of her Instagram posts. “We… ugh, fuck. We had something.”

  There it was. “Thanks for being truthful,” I said, wanting her to know this was important and that I truly was grateful.

  “I don’t like talking about it. I… he really fucked me up. It was something that came out of nowhere. That conversation I overheard? It wasn’t because I was over his place for an audition. I had been over because his wife was out of town for the weekend. We had met a couple of weeks before then. That was when I went over his house for an audition. Jesus, that should have been a stop sign right there—having a goddamn casting call from his living room. But it was for a big film, and I had already done three auditions before Johnny’s for the film, getting through them all. I couldn’t say no. So I went, and he came on to me. I fooled myself into thinking I had feelings for him.” Her chin was quivering. She was speaking fast, making me even more grateful for the recording app.

  “But then when I heard him go off on Liam like that… I was done. That was it for me. Not only had sneaking around behind his wife messed me up, but my brother’s gay. I don’t ever want to be with someone who spoke the way Johnny had that night.”

  Another flag went up for me. Marah was with Johnny while he was with one of his wives. I assumed as much from the date stamp on the Instagram photo, but I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure without her confirmation. She could have posted the photo a year after it was taken if she wanted to.

  “Who was he married to at the time?”

  Marah shook her head. “I didn’t bother remembering her name. I didn’t want that kind of burden on my shoulders. He never talked about her, and I never asked.” Her chest heaved as though she was about to cry, but she held it down. “I thought I was fine with being the other woman. Back then, at least. He was feeding me all these lies. About how I’d get the big role, just needed the right film project. I believed it all.”

  “When were you with him?”

  Marah shook her head, searching her thoughts. “I don’t know. I don’t have an exact date. A few years ago. Twenty-fourteen I think?”

  So around the time he was married to his second wife, Pamela.

  “Did you ever meet his wife face-to-face?”

  She puffed out a breath. “No. Johnny’s too smart for that. He kept things locked down.”

  There was a seed of suspicion taking root, but I couldn’t let it show on my face. The last thing I needed was Marah holding back from me. She was talking, and the more she spoke, the bigger the target seemed to get for me. It was a target that w
as shifting, moving away from Johnny.

  “So, Marah, was this just a physical kind of thing, then? Or do you think feelings ever got involved?”

  She cracked her knuckles and looked around the park. A strand of her jet-black hair blew down onto her face. She brushed it back, pushing it behind her ear. “For him, yeah.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “So you don’t think it was mutual?”

  She was quiet again. I could feel her energy shifting. Tense. I needed to smooth things over before she started feeling the heat. Thankfully, she spoke before I started pulling back.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I did. I mean, our affair went on for a good amount of time, and like, I’m not dumb—I know he was married, plus I know he was having other affairs on top of that. He can’t keep it in his pants. I was so stupid.” She shook her head. Her eyes grew wet, a tear spilling over, and she quickly dried it off with her hand. “And I didn’t get shit in the end. I’m back with living in my parents’ house and working at a shitty diner.”

  The dam cracked. Her single tear multiplied into a river flow. I could almost physically feel her pain, the regret that she was flushing out of her system. I put a hand on her back and rubbed.

  A thought came from left field. Maybe her feelings for Johnny had pushed her to taking the life of his second wife, the one major obstacle in getting what she wanted. Maybe the first wife was a real suicide and the second was the staged one?

  No. It didn’t click for me. Especially with how angry she was at his homophobic outburst. She genuinely didn’t want to be with that man in the end. And seeing her break down, feeling the sorrow she felt for the mistake she’d made in believing Johnny, it made me think Marah was just as much a victim in this as his two dead wives. He was an abusive, manipulative scumbag, and he destroyed lives in the process of getting off.

  Marah wasn’t my answer. If anything she gave me more questions.

  When Marah was able to collect herself, I could tell she wanted to wrap things up. I couldn’t let her go, though. Not just yet. There were a few more things I needed to get answered.