Page 39 of The Perfect Betrayal

“Not really,” he said. “They started harassing me. They’d do little things like bump into me when I was at urinal to make a mess. But they’d also tell other club members that I was a bad bartender, that I’d short them on alcohol in the drinks I mixed. My car got keyed in the staff parking area. Eventually my boss told me that he was going to have to let me go, that there was too much bad word of mouth about me.”

“Who was that?” Jessie asked.

“Oliver Stanton,” he said.

Jessie looked at Riddell. It seemed that Mr. Stanton had been holding out on them. He’d never mentioned a word about the kind of pressure campaign the yacht bros engaged in.

“Anyway,” Dawson continued, “after I got fired, I decided to grow a pair. I filed a harassment suit against them and a wrongful termination suit against the yacht club.”

“How did that go?” Riddell asked.

“They both came back to me within 24 hours,” he answered. “The club doubled my severance pay, and Stanton wrote a letter of reference saying that I was only let go because of budget cuts; that I was great employee. The yacht bros gave me a payout of a $100K, if I signed an NDA. It was more money than I’d ever had my hands on, so I signed it. Of course, it wasn’t everything I thought it would be. My lawyer took a big cut. I had to pay taxes. And the money comes in installments over three years. When all is said and done, I’ll see less than half of that total.”

“Can I ask you something?” Jessie said, turning around to look at him. “After all that, why do you still work less than a mile from that club and those guys? Why not move?”

He stared at her like the question was ridiculous.

“I grew up here. I went to the local high school. I know just about everyone in this town. This is my home. Why should I leave?”

“Maybe for a fresh start?” she offered.

He shook his head.

“It hasn’t been a problem until now. I’ve minded my business, and they’ve minded theirs. It’s like that thing that enemy governments do when they don’t want to go to war.”

“You mean détente?” she suggested.

“Yeah, that,” he said. “But the détente is over now.”

“Why now?” Riddell asked.

“Because I can’t sleep,” he said. “I keep having nightmares about what those women went through. And I’ve been drinking too much—I think to block it all out. I’ve been wanting to come clean for a while now but didn’t have the courage. I was scared of those guys and of what might happen to my career if I spoke up. So when you came into the restaurant earlier, I thought ‘this is the universe giving me a second chance to set things right no matter what the consequences.’ That’s why I’m here.”

“All right,” Jessie said. “We’re going to need you to make a formal statement. Now that we have claims of potential crimes committed by these guys, maybe we can finally force them to come in and talk.”

“That would be nice,” Riddell agreed. “It’s be great to bust these guys while getting some clue as to who they think might be killing them.”

Dawson grunted at that.

“What?” Jessie said.

“I’m happy to help bring these guys down,” he answered. “But to be honest, I kind of hope you don’t catch whoever’s picking them off. These guys should be in jail. And if that can’t happen, dead is just as good.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Oliver Stanton wasn’t happy to be here.

As he leaned against the deck railing of Robert Chandler’s yacht, about a half mile off the coast, he asked himself for the umpteenth time how he’d gotten here. It was well after 9 P.M. Usually by this time of night he’d had dinner and was settling in with a good book, some tea, and his cat, Montecore.

But Chandler hadn't really given him much of a choice. He'd insisted on having a private conversation and claimed that the only place that he felt truly safe was on his yacht. Oliver found that ironic, considering that two of his friends had died on their boats in the last two nights.

“Those guys were idiots,” he had countered before they set sail. “From that video you showed me, it’s obvious that Daran got distracted by some girl posing as a bimbo. And if I know Taye—or knew him—he probably got suckered by the same trick. I’m not letting any skank onto my vessel, no matter how hot she is, until this case is solved.”

Oliver didn’t comment on the fact that Chandler didn’t seem especially broken up over his buddies’ deaths. That wouldn’t have been well received. Nor did he mention the other reason he suspected that Chandler had brought him out here on the water. He knew Oliver couldn’t swim.

By bringing him out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he was intentionally trying to make Oliver feel vulnerable and maybe worry just a little bit that he might be tossed overboard if he wasn’t forthcoming. What Chandler didn’t seem to get was that Oliver had no interest in keeping things from him.

The police hadn't asked him to do so, and there was no reason that the friend of two murdered club members couldn'treasonably ask about the status of the case. Of course, there was more to it than that, and they both knew it.

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