Page 45 of The Perfect Betrayal

“My apartment complex was being tented for termites at the time, so rather than get a hotel for those three nights, I had decided to just crash in my office to save some money. The couch in there pulls out into a bed. Around three in the morning, I heard some voices. I left my office and saw the members. They had returned and were shuffling by the front of the club toward their cars. They all looked very somber. I noticed that the young woman wasn’t with them.”

At that last comment, Jessie felt a shiver run through her body. She could see where this story was headed, and she didn’t like it. But she kept quiet, not wanting to say anything to stop Stanton from continuing.

“I didn’t think a ton about it,” he went on. “But a few nights later they were back in the bar, this time with a couple of different women. I ran into Mr. Chandler and Mr. Cisco in the restroom and casually asked if the young woman from the other evening would also be joining them tonight. Their reaction was severe.”

He stopped for a moment as if girding himself to say what he knew had to come next. After a few seconds, he resumed.

“Mr. Chandler slammed me up against the restroom wall without warning, pinning me there,” he said with a wince of recollection. “While I was trapped, Mr. Cisco leaned in close to me. He said there hadn’t been any woman there the other night and if I ever said anything different, they’d hire someone to, and this is a direct quote, ‘cut me open and choke me to death with my own intestines.’ Needless to say, I kept my mouth shut.”

“Why didn’t you leave the job after a threat like that?” Jessie asked.

He shook his head as if shocked that she didn’t understand.

“For one, I hadn’t heard anything about this girl on the news, and believe me, I’d been paying attention. So I assumed that whatever happened couldn’t have been that bad,” he said. “I tried to tell myself that these members just lost their heads for a minute and overreacted.”

She thought he might attempt to leave it there, but then he continued in a quieter voice.

“But that was just self-delusion,” he admitted. “The truth is that I worried that they would see me leaving as a sign that I couldn’t be trusted and that they might do something to me. And while I’m not proud of it, there was another reason.”

He stopped talking again. Jessie said nothing, allowing him the space to build up his courage.

“After that incident in the restroom,” he finally said, “all six of them regularly overtipped me. It was lavish. Every time one of them left the club, he’d slip me a hundred dollars, sometimes two. On the Christmas after it happened, my collective holiday tip from the six of them was $6000. They basically paid me off not to ask questions. And since I didn’t officially know about any wrongdoing, I took the money and kept quiet.”

“And it stayed like that for three years?” Jessie said.

"Yes, until this week," he said. "Then Mr. Peterson was killed, followed by Mr. Boyce. That's why I was on this yacht. Mr. Chandler was suspicious and demanded I come out here and tell him everything about your investigation. I did, of course. It's not like I had any special information. But the subtext was clear. I was sure that he wanted to know if their deaths had anything to do with that night. And I'm positive that he was about to ask me that directly just before he died."

“Which brings us to the ghost,” Jessie said.

“Yes,” he said, casting his eyes down at the table in front of him.

“Who was she, Oliver?” she asked, though she already had a strong suspicion.

He looked up.

“I only saw her face for a few seconds,” he whispered, “but I swear it was her—the girl from that night. The way those men reacted when I brought her up, I just assumed she was dead, that they had done something to her and tossed her body overboard. But she looked right at me, and I'm positive it was the same girl. On my honor, Ms. Hunt. The ghost of that young woman killed Robert Chandler."

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Jessie didn’t believe the ghost theory for a second.

But she didn’t tell Oliver Stanton that. She let him think she might be open to the idea for the rest of the interview and while she and Riddell drove him to the Sheriff’s station. They put him in the same interrogation room where they’d spoken to Mark Dawson and had him write out the statement he’d given her verbally earlier.

When he was done a half hour later, they asked him to stick around so they could keep him safe and told him they wanted to have him give a description of the woman he’d seen to a sketch artist. After they left the room, Jessie checked her phone and found that she had three texts from Ryan, all asking her to call him back as soon as she could. She motioned for Riddell to join her in a conference room and returned the call.

“You’re on speaker with me and Detective Riddell,” she said the second Ryan picked up. She didn’t want a repeat of the earlier call when her husband had talked smack about her current partner when he was listening. “What’s up?”

“First off, Captain Parker wanted me to update you on the status of getting these club members to come in,” he said, skipping any spouse pleasantries that he would have likely offered if Riddell wasn’t on the line.

“What’s the situation?” Riddell interjected.

“Parker got authorization from both Chief Decker and Sheriff Hauser to pursue your plan to bring these guys in,” Ryan answered. “She directly made the requests to all of their lawyers, asking them to come in for their own protection. While I wasn’t on the call, my understanding is that while these were technically requests, it was made clear that if their clients didn’tshow up quickly and voluntarily, they were at risk being taken into custody in connection with an ‘ongoing investigation.’”

“That’s actually pretty good,” Riddell said, impressed.

"I thought so, too," Ryan agreed.

Jessie noted that her husband, who had a rocky relationship with Captain Parker, sounded sincere.

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