Chapter 61

Charles is getting more desperate than ever. Dillon refuses to pick up the hit Charles wants put out on his mother, all because he hasn't paid his debts. Yet! He hasn't paid them yet, and, goddamn it, none of them are getting paid unless Charles can get this situation under control.

Infuriating how Dillon won't see that. Sometimes you have to take a little gamble, put the risk in beforehand to get the big reward at the end. Charles knows this. That's how Charles has gotten along his entire life, in fact. It's how he's gotten to the top.

But men like Dillon won't see reason. No, people like him have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. No drive, no heat, no gumption. It's maddening, frankly. If Dillon would just invest a little, they could all go home with a fat paycheck.

But no. No, he won't do it. Not unless Charles can come up with $75,000 beforehand – with no guarantee that the hit will even be successfully carried out, Charles might add. He would get a $25,000 refund if his mother survived, but the rest Dillon would keep for his troubles.

Utter madness, if you ask Charles. What kind of scam are the hitmen of today running on upstanding American citizens like himself? It's ridiculous. If Charles pays for a service, he expects that service to be completed, damn it.

Charles slams his fist on his thigh in irritation, then shakes his hand with a wince, fearfully darting his eyes around to see if anyone noticed the movement. He can't start drawing attention to himself now; that would be the worst thing.

He feels like he's falling apart. He is falling apart, if you think about it. He's on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he knows he is, and none of the idiots around him can be trusted to do anything to help him.

He doesn't have the money to hire a different man. Somebody else really would insist on money upfront, just like Dillon has done – "no more freebies, Charles", the absolute nerve of him – and there's no one else to ask.

So, Charles is going to have to do the damn job himself.

He's not really been sure where to start. The most obvious solution seems to be a car accident, of course. That worked out very nicely for him with Nicole, after all. People die in car accidents every day. One of the most unsafe ways to travel, in fact.

But how does one set up a car to fail? It's not like Charles can have "how to cut brake lines" or "how to kill someone with exhaust fumes and make it look like a suicide" just sitting there in his search history. Even if he deleted it, cops these days always know how to dig it back out.

And Charles is getting very wary of cops these days. That horrible man, that Detective Darlington – he had been sniffing around the mansion. Charis and her little gossip informant were right about that, after all.

Which means they don't think it was a heart attack, after all. Not that it surprises Charles; doctors aren't idiots, after all, and he has it on good authority that Dr. Prism suspected poisoning from the first. Charles isn't too worried about that – they can't pin it on him.

But they might get suspicious enough of his mother's death to start investigating him personally, and that is why he has to be careful. In Dateline, the criminals are always getting caught by doing idiotic things like searching murder methods on their home computers.

Charles needs to be smarter than that.

This is how he finds himself in disguise (clean-shaven, a baseball cap, sweatpants and a sweatshirt), sitting on a bus to the public library. Not the closest one, either; one that it wouldn't make sense for him to utilize.

He's going to figure this out on his own, which is the safest way to do it, anyway. Nobody to rat on him, lose their nerve, bungle it up. He's not in the habit of doing these things directly – he'd always thought it was too risky – but now he's seeing the appeal.

After all, it's like his mother herself always used to say: if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.

Three days later, Charis Robinson gets into her car, waving merrily to her two best friends as they shout final goodbyes to her.

Charis is in a good mood. She's had a very pleasant afternoon out to a long lunch with Helen and Ophelia, her two oldest friends from her women's college days. They get together at least once a month for a lunch like this, and often for other events and activities as well.

Really, she needed this today. She's been feeling…not suspicious, exactly, but uneasy. Charles is behaving more erratically than ever, she's noticed, and something is up with her husband as well.

Oh, he thinks she doesn't notice, but she does. She's not a fool, though he's treated her like one often enough over the years. Stupid man – he really thinks he can bully and boss his family around like he does his employees.

Frankly, sometimes Charis wonders if that's where Charles went wrong. Maybe Charis should have left when Charles was small, gotten them both out of there. Being put under so much pressure by his father since day one can't possibly have helped the boy.

Maybe that's what makes him so neurotic. And…well…disappointing. Charis has never cared all that much for status and money. Not beyond living the comfortable, upper middle class lifestyle that she'd been raised to expect from life, she means.

But she's more always wanted her son to become a good person, and she thinks she failed there. She sighs as she pulls out into traffic and gets on the busy freeway, speeding up to zip along with the window down, the wind blowing her hair from her face.

This business with framing Nicole, for example. Charis didn't raise Charles to be that sort of person. And yet, here they are.

Traffic slows in front of her, and Charis presses her foot to the brake.

The car doesn't respond.

"What the hell?" Charis says aloud, stomping harder. And then harder.

Absolute panic overtakes her. The car won't stop. The car won't stop.

Charles, what have you done? Charis thinks in the split second before her car crashes, 65 miles an hour, into the rear end of the semi in front of her.

"Absolutely not," I say, trying to make my face as stern as possible.

"Why not?" Marcus asks. "Give me one good reason why not."

"Because, Marcus, as much as I like Taylor Swift, I have absolutely no desire to spend several hours in a concert arena with her and 5,000 of her loudest fans."

"You said I could pick the next date night," Marcus says.

"Yes, and I thought you would pick, like, a movie! Another ballet! Not a Taylor Swift concert. Do you even have any idea how much those tickets cost?"

"I do, and I'm wildly, filthily rich, Evelyn. So it's not a concern to me."

"I'm not sure what's weirder: this conversation, or the fact that you're a big enough Swiftie that you actually are trying to drag me to a Taylor Swift concert."

"Evelyn, I will have you know that I have been a Taylor Swift fan since – oh, hold on, my phone is ringing. I do have to take this; it's Liam."

Marcus answers the phone, frowning slightly when Liam begins to babble on the other end of the line. I can't make out his words, but he sounds frantic.

"Are you sure? Are they sure? Oh, my god."

Marcus covers the mouthpiece of the phone and looks at me in horror.

"Evelyn, Charis Robinson died in a car accident this afternoon. And they suspect foul play."