The Beautiful and the Wicked (9 page)

Though she was desperate to stash the drugs and the money in a safe hiding spot, she knew that moving either now would be premature. Once the crew and the guests were settled in and Lila had a better sense of what went where, she'd be able to find a location where the contraband wouldn't be discovered. Until then, she'd just hope and pray no one looked under her mattress. But really, she figured, no one cleans the room of the cleaning ladies, right?

Lila threw on a robe, grabbed her toiletry bag, and sleepily padded down the narrow hallway to the crew bathroom. Just as she was about to turn the door's handle, the door flew open and out popped a very bright and chipper Sam.

“Morning, sunshine!” Sam said, a little too ebulliently for Lila this early in the morning. Sam stood before her, with her flaxen hair, the pale vibrancy of corn silk, twisted up in large Velcro rollers, her makeup perfectly applied, and her lips, painted a deep coral, stretched into a smile.

“Morning,” Lila grumbled as she slipped past Sam into the tiny doll-­size bathroom.

Once Lila was dressed and presentable, she made her way to the crew mess, where Sam was happily chattering away with an exhausted-­looking Mudge, who was bent over a cup of coffee and failing to acknowledge her sunshiny existence.

The mess was a cozy spot, with a few portholes that allowed Lila a glimpse of the outside world, not that there was any sun at that ungodly hour. She nodded to Pedro the deckhand, who was slumped down in one of the two banquettes. She poured herself a cup of coffee and slid a piece of bread into the toaster. Just as the caffeine was beginning to help her feel like a normal human being, Mrs. Slaughter marched in and ruined the whole thing.

“Ready to work?” she said to Lila and Sam. Sam jumped to her feet so quickly that Lila thought she was seconds away from saluting.

“Can I finish making this toast?” Lila said.

Mrs. Slaughter glared at her. “You most certainly can
not
! Eating happens on your own time. It's six
A.M.
now. Mr. Warren and his guests will be arriving in mere hours, and there are countless things to do before then. We simply must get started.”

Lila did as she was told. No cheek. No sulk. No moods. No breakfast.

W
HE
N
J
ACK
W
ARREN
glided onto the boat at a quarter to 4:00
P.M.
, along with his wife, Elise, and their twenty-­year-­old daughter, Josie, a perfectly appointed yacht awaited them. Only minutes before the owners boarded, there was total frenzy throughout the boat as the fifteen crew members dashed around putting the final touches on everything. But now, in place of the chaos, all was pristine order and calm. Nothing was out of place. Everything was just as it should be. That was the thing about having a $500 million boat that cost $250,000 a week to maintain—­the price tag gave you the right to expect absolute perfection.

Lila didn't see the family board, because she was busy hiding her contraband while the rest of the crew ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Earlier that afternoon, when she was bringing lunch to some of the engineers in the gigantic all-­white engine room, she'd spotted the perfect place to stash her stuff—­a lifeboat. She figured that no one would use a lifeboat unless circumstances were so terrible that they wouldn't care the least if they found bricks of cocaine underneath their life vests. So, careful to stay unnoticed, Lila went to her cabin, stuffed the drugs and money in the duffel bag, crept to the lifeboat, and quickly hid all of it in a small compartment at the bow.

Feeling an incredible sense of relief, she resumed her current duty of placing flower arrangements throughout the three-­thousand-­square-­foot sprawling master suite, which had its own private deck stretching out above the sea and a retractable moonroof. She placed five vases full of cherry blossoms, fanning high above a gorgeous cluster of pale yellow garden roses and pink peonies, around the room in the exact locations that the chief stewardess had specified.

Just as she was about to leave, a chauffeur burdened with several pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage entered. She gave him a cordial nod, and was about to return to the main deck when she heard Jack Warren's booming voice coming down the hall. After a decade spent learning as much about him as was possible, it felt like a voice she knew intimately.

“I won't hear it. This is a goddamn disgrace,” Jack barked, his growl getting louder and louder as he drew closer to Lila with every step.

“Just shut up, Jack,” a woman hissed. Elise Warren.

Lila froze. She was feet away from the man who would supposedly die by her sister's hands and the woman who used all her wealth and privilege to destroy Ava's life, and her first instinct was to hide. Then another horrified thought dawned on her. What if he recognizes me? What if my sister showed him pictures of our family?

But as they came closer, she knew she had no choice but to face him. Jack and Elise entered the master suite with an icy tension hovering between them. He was taller in real life than Lila thought he'd be, with rich caramel-­colored hair that was graying around the temples, a long, aquiline nose, and a neatly manicured beard. He wasn't what Lila would consider handsome, but he had a strong presence, and exuded the power of a man accustomed to getting his way. His wife, on the other hand, was gorgeous, no question about it. A former model whose failed acting career had peaked with her role as “Dead Call Girl” in a
Law &
Order
episode, Elise was five ten, with willowy limbs and shoulder-­length dark brown hair. Her side-­swept bangs expertly framed her perfectly symmetrical face.

Lila stood by the doorway, holding her breath. It suddenly dawned on her as she watched Jack and Elise go about their business in the suite—­she on the balcony, he on the computer, each ignoring the other—­that she was in the same room with Jack
and
Elise Warren and they hadn't once looked at her. In fact, neither of them had so much as acknowledged her existence. That was one thing Lila had learned about rich ­people: they were experts in not seeing the help. To them, she was as good as invisible.

And she was determined to take full advantage of it.

Just as Lila was about to leave the room, Josie Warren, Jack and Elise's twenty-­year-­old daughter, barged in. She was wearing jean shorts, a string of Tibetan prayer beads around her neck, and nothing else.

“Jesus Christ.” Jack gasped when he saw her. “Cover yourself!”

“Way to reinforce the patriarchy, Dad,” Josie snarled.

“The patriarchy? I can see your goddamn tits!” Jack said, covering his eyes with his hands as he rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

“Really, darling,” Elise said to her daughter. “I know how you enjoy torturing your father, but remember what I told you. If you don't behave, no semester in Bali. Got it?”

“Whatever,” Josie said, with a practiced pout, as she sprawled out, half-­naked, on her parents' bed.

Josie had inherited the long leanness of her mother's catwalk-­ready body but, unfortunately for her, she didn't get her mom's show-­stopping face. That prominent proboscis and weak chin sulking underneath a curtain of long, highlighted hair was one hundred percent from Jack Warren's gene pool.

Lila stood there, momentarily absorbed in the particular brand of gilded misery that was the Warren family life. Quite remarkably, none of the subjects of her careful study took any notice of her. They continued to ignore each other and her. So, as the unseen specter she was, she slipped out of the hornet's nest relieved to find herself unscathed.

 

CHAPTER 8

T
HAT AFTERNOON THE
crew of
The Rising Tide
was in full, frenetic swing putting the finishing touches in place for Jack Warren's lavish birthday bash, which was set to begin at dusk. This one spectacular evening had required months of planning and preparation and millions of dollars to pull off. Every minute detail had to meet the exacting standards of Jack and Elise Warren. Each member of the crew was given intricate instructions outlining such specifics as how the polished ebony floors needed to be “shiny” but not “glossy” and how the pale pink peonies had to be the color of a ballet slipper, not darker nor lighter.

Jack and Elise knew they had a reputation to uphold. After all, Jack's parties were the stuff of legend. It was, unsurprisingly, the most eagerly anticipated event of the social season. With its A-­list celebrity invitees, a performance from the pop star du jour, and only the best food and wine known to man served in abundance, receiving an invite to one of his parties was akin to joining the world's most exclusive club: a universe solely inhabited by wealth, beauty, and celebrity. Music moguls mixed with stars of the art world while models and actresses flirted with the titans of Hollywood and Wall Street.

For the previous ten years, Jack had held his birthday party on his famed Antiguan estate, built on the grounds of an old sugar plantation. But for his fiftieth birthday, he wanted to do something special, something totally over-­the-­top. So he built himself a $500 million yacht—­which may seem like a very indulgent birthday present to give oneself, but with a net worth of over $30 billion, Jack buying
The Rising Tide
was roughly the equivalent of a millionaire buying himself a used Chevy Nova.

Such was the magnitude of Jack's fortune.

But tonight's party, rumored to cost about five million, was just the beginning of the birthday festivities—­an amuse-­bouche of sorts to kick off Jack's celebratory fortnight. In order to truly honor the half-­century he'd spent becoming the legend he was, Jack decided one party wasn't enough. Following tonight's blowout bash to celebrate himself and show off his latest and greatest yacht to all the big wigs, movie stars, and models that were lucky enough to be his friends, Jack would set sail on a luxurious island-­hopping cruise for a ­couple of weeks, culminating with an intimate celebration of his actual birthday on September tenth, while sailing on the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Such was the magnitude of Jack's megalomania.

The guests were set to arrive at 7:00
P.M.
, so Lila was startled when she felt the leviathan of a yacht pull away from the marina when it was a little after four in the afternoon.

“Are we moving?” she asked Sam, who was helping her make the bed in one of ship's grandest rooms.

“It feels like we are,” Sam replied nonchalantly.

They were preparing one of the staterooms for the surprise musical guest that evening: the notorious Allegra Opal, a pop star who'd recently been released from a psychiatric institute following a very public nervous breakdown. The crew had been instructed to never look her directly in the eyes.

Lila got a whiff of coconut tanning oil, so she knew Asher must be close. She caught a glimpse of him walking down the hallway and called after him.

“Hey, Asher. Why's the boat leaving the dock before the guests arrive?”

“Pleb control,” Asher said with his typical offhand smugness. He was, once again, wearing nothing but his Rolex and surf shorts. “It's the best way to stop the uninvited from getting on board. Plus, a yacht really isn't a
real
yacht unless you need a boat to get to it.”

“Always important to separate the haves from the have-­yachts,” Lila said to Sam with a roll of her eyes.

“Funny,” Asher said without a smile or a laugh. “Ladies,” he said, by way of goodbye. Then gave them both a suggestive wink and went off on his way.

“I call dibs on him,” Sam blurted out, which made Lila laugh, thinking she was joking. When Sam shot her a hurt look, she backtracked.

“Oh, sorry, Sam. I mean, he's all yours.”

“He's not now, but he will be,” Sam said. “Oh, yes. He will be mine.” Then she broke into a faux Bond villain cackle that made both women break into genuine laughter as they got back to work.

The boat stopped about three hundred feet from the marina and moored just off the southern tip of South Beach. Lila looked out the stateroom window to see that several small boats had encircled the vessel. Each was filled with paparazzi, their long-­range zoom lenses trained on
The Rising Tide
.

Sam stood up to look at the boats now swarming like mosquitoes. She rushed out on the deck. “Hello, there!” she shouted, waving her arms. “Wanna take my picture?” She arched her back and stuck out her breasts in a suggestive pose, but the paparazzi weren't biting. They wanted actual stars, not stewardesses with stars in their eyes.

Sam sullenly returned to the room. “They'll want pictures of me one day. I can tell you that much.”

An hour later, after Lila was done preparing for the party, the chief stewardess surveyed all of her work.

“An additional fifteen cater waiters will also be working the party to help serve food and drinks. But,” she warned, “it's
your
responsibility to make sure everything runs according to
my
standards. Do you understand?” Lila nodded obediently, knowing that no one could possibly match Edna Slaughter's standards.

“You've got to change,” Mrs. Slaughter ordered, keeping her eyes down, studying the list she had in her hand.

“I apologize, Chief Stewardess Mrs. Slaughter,” Lila said deferentially, sure to use the woman's full name as instructed. “I
will
change. I won't let you down.” She worried she was groveling.

Mrs. Slaughter, with her chin still tucked down, turned her icy blue gaze to Lila. “I didn't mean change like that, though don't think your incompetence hasn't been duly noted.” A little twisted smirk puckered her lips. “I mean you have to change your clothes for the party.”

Lila felt her face flush beet red in embarrassment. “Oh,” she mumbled.

“Your dress for tonight's event is in your cabin, along with a picture of how you need to style your hair and makeup. The yacht will be full of VIPs and nothing can be left to chance.”

By the time Lila returned to her tiny cabin, Sam was already there, dressed and applying the finishing touches to her perfectly applied makeup. Lila wondered how her bunkmate was always a few steps ahead of her.

“Jesus,” she said when she laid eyes on her. “Is that what we're supposed to wear?” Sam was in a long, flamingo-­pink satin halter-­top dress with a very high slit up the side. Her lips were painted a deep bloodred, her eyelids were lined with a delicately flicked cat eye, and a yellow orchid was pinned into her hair.

Sam's eyes widened. “What? Do I look bad?”

“No. On the contrary. You look magnificent, but you look like sex on a plate.”

“Then I look just right,” Sam said with a coy smile and a sultry wag of her shapely hips. “Maybe I'll meet my future husband tonight,” she said, studying herself in their cabin's tiny mirror. “And wouldn't
he
be a lucky bastard.”

“Well, he'll be a bastard, at least,” Lila teased.

As the sun began to set, throngs of ­people crowded the marina, hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrities, heiresses, fashion icons, and CEOs as they boarded the speedboat shuttles bound for Warren's decadent yacht, which sat glittering just beyond the spectators' grasp.

Upon boarding, the first thing partygoers discovered was that on Jack's boat, there were absolutely no shoes allowed. This was an extremely unpopular rule for many of the guests. Why bother spending $800 on shoes that you weren't allowed to wear? But those accustomed to the strictures of yacht etiquette, which held that street shoes must be taken off before boarding, just kicked off their heels or loafers and headed straight into the party. After all, everyone's hair was already ruined from the speedboat ride. Why not abandon decorum and give in to the reigning mood of opulent debauchery?

It was Lila's job to hand out flutes of champagne to arriving guests and then to collect their shoes, no matter how much they protested. After she tore the women away from their heels, she'd slip each pair into a purple velvet sack with a golden rope closure and give the women a ticket number to claim them at the end of the night, though Lila saw many of the guests absentmindedly drop their tickets as the party progressed. Mrs. Slaughter had said that lost shoes were a constant source of stress, so it was Lila's job to monitor the endless pairs of Louboutins, Blahniks, Jimmy Choos, Roger Viviers, Guccis, Tom Fords, and Pradas that were slipped off the perfectly pedicured feet of the privileged.

With bare feet and champagne in hand, the guests then climbed a flight of stairs and journeyed to the yacht's main deck, which had been transformed to resemble a magical Japanese garden. Paper lanterns gave off a warm, pinkish glow and the long branches of cherry blossoms were woven together into a romantic canopy. The fifty-­foot pool on the yacht's third level was filled with lotus flowers; there, two Cirque du Soleil acrobats, costumed in nothing but mermaid tails, shimmied and undulated like exquisite sea nymphs.

From the galley on the lower level, Chef Vatel sent up tray after tray of delicate and delicious canapés served with flutes of Ace of Spades and Cristal. But the real coup of the evening was the presence on board of the legendary octogenarian sushi master Kazuo Murai. It was well known that Jack Warren was a consummate, bordering-­on-­obsessive Japanophile. So Elise Warren's gift to the husband who had everything was hiring Kazuo Murai to cook for his birthday. Persuading this aged and taciturn genius to leave his Michelin-­three-­star, closet-­size Tokyo restaurant to spend a ­couple of days preparing his unrivaled food for Jack's party wasn't easy. It took months of delicate courting and plenty of bowing and scraping—­not something Elise was fond of doing. The cost of this extravagance was a measly $325,000, not including the round-­trip, first-­class airfare for Kazuo and his two sons.

As Lila greeted the partygoers, she was on the lookout for the guests she knew would be joining the Warrens for a two-­week, island-­hopping adventure in the Caribbean. Namely: Senator Baines and his wife, Charity; the Brazilian power ­couple Thiago and Esperanza Campos; the artist Daniel Poe; the financier Paul Mason; and Warren Software's CFO, Seth Liss.

The Florida senator and his wife were the first of the core group to arrive. Though most of the party guests were dressed in the flowing linens and silks that an “Island chic” dress code requires, the Baineses' look was pure, unadulterated Beltway. The senator had a magnificent mane of thick, pure-­white hair, which was combed back and away from his wide forehead. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. There was a flag pin on his lapel, and Lila noticed his gold cuff links boasted the seal of the U.S. Senate. His wife wore a Republican-­red sleeveless dress that accentuated her perfectly toned arms and fine-­boned form. In keeping with her husband's regal mane, Charity's hair was swept up into a bleached, teased, and shellacked chignon that not even hurricane winds could shake.

When Lila offered the senator a glass of champagne, he shot her a suspicious look. “Is that liquor there American made?” he asked. His voice was deep, slow, and southern, as if each syllable had to be pushed out of his mouth through a vat of thick molasses.

“I believe it's French, sir,” she replied deferentially. Though all she could think was, Is this freedom fries guy for real?

“Well, I don't drink my enemy's swill,” he said as his face hardened into a menacing glare.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

He then threw his head back, letting out a giant guffaw. “Lighten up, little lady. I'm just yanking your chain.” He grabbed the flute out of Lila's hand and drained it in a single gulp.

“My husband, the gentleman,” Charity said with mock exasperation. She whispered to Lila, “Do I
really
have to take off these shoes? I'm barely five foot without them. I'll wind up trampled and it'll be your fault.”

“Now, honey, hand them over,” Clarence Baines said to his wife. “You know Jack's rules are Jack's rules.”

“Well, I'll follow his rules only until the election,” she said with a smile as she gave up her red satin Valentino heels. “And after you're reelected, I'll won't take off my heels for anybody.”

“Hear, hear!” the senator exclaimed as he took his wife's hand and escorted her to the main deck.

For the next twenty minutes, Lila greeted an endless stream of mostly older men with giggling and doe-­eyed twenty-­year-­olds on their arms. She was beginning to lose focus as they all started to blend together. But she snapped out of her daze when Esperanza and Thiago Campos arrived. Though Lila believed that no one had more to gain from the death of Jack Warren than his wife, she was very interested in this mysterious ­couple from São Paulo, Brazil, who would both be aboard the yacht on the fateful night of Jack's murder, a mere two weeks from this very moment.

Thiago had met Jack Warren in 1976, when they were both freshmen at Harvard, and had been part of Warren's inner circle ever since. He came from a prominent Brazilian family that was chock-­full of politicians, army generals, and industrialists. His father, General Humberto Campos, played a leading role in the 1964 coup that put a brutal right-­wing military dictatorship in power. The connection benefited the family's coffers but damaged the family name.

A bon vivant who was a known fixture on the international social scene, Thiago made the best-­dressed list of countless magazines out of Paris, New York, and Milan. He always brushed off these accolades as “mere trivialities,” but anyone who knew him understood that he was a man of great vanity about his clothes and his looks—­both of which were always impeccable. He was also vain about his new wife, Esperanza—­a woman of such profound beauty and poise that she was considered a muse to many of the best and brightest in the art and fashion worlds.