Chapter 98
VAL KENNEY WAS fifteen minutes late for her 6:00 p.m. appointment with Lester Olsen, and she was worried about that. Would Olsen wait for her or not? And by the way, she was still kind of lost.
She called Mo-bot, who told her to take a sharp left on West Spring Mountain Road, go one block, then take another left into the strip-mall parking lot. Val did that but couldn’t find an empty spot. She swore, apologized to Mo, then drove around the block and parked on the street.
“I’m good now, Mo.”
“Good. Take a breath. Never let ’em see you sweat.”
Val laughed, took a moment to touch up her lipstick. Then, gripping her handbag, she doubled back to the strip mall, walked along the row of shops until she saw the discreet, inset doorway between a pizzeria and a tanning salon, the inscription Love for Life etched in the glass.
Val pressed the buzzer, and a smiling Lester Olsen opened the door wide and welcomed her into his office. He looked boyish in a pink polo shirt, jeans, running shoes. She smelled peppermint on his breath.
“I’m sorry. I made a wrong turn,” Val said. “It took forever to turn around.”
“Forgive the mess,” Lester said, ushering her through a minimal reception area into a room at the back. “This is my work space and I don’t usually have people here, but we have work to do, don’t we? Sit there, Val.”
Lester showed her to a chair across from his desk, asked, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
Val said, “Thanks, no. I’m good.”
Lester went around to his desk chair, saying, “Are you ready, Val? This might be the turning point of your life. Pretty exciting, isn’t it?”
“I cannot wait,” she said.
“Me neither,” Olsen said, grinning, reaching out and touching her wrist. “I’ve picked out five superb candidates from my prospect files, all very wealthy men who have been waiting half their lives to meet a woman like you.”
He bent to his computer, clicked around, said, “They’re all older than men you might ordinarily date. They’re in their seventies, got a couple in their eighties. All five have more money than you could even believe.”
“So you haven’t told me how this works, Lester. If one of these candidates and I get married—he pays your fee?”
“Something like that,” said Olsen. “Now, let’s get in the right mood. Imagine that our very rich, very old dude cannot believe his luck and wants to marry you right away, because he really doesn’t have much time left. He has heart problems. And he’s lonely in his gigantic, double-wide, California king.”
“You are funny, Lester.”
He was not only funny but articulate and convincing. He had all the traits of a sociopathic con man.
Olsen grinned and said, “If we do this right, it’s going to be fun. So, before we leave my office, we select your future husband. Then you follow my instructions on how to land him, treat him, keep him. I’ll be your personal coach. Your silent partner. When he dies, you will become a very wealthy widow, and you and I will split your inheritance. How does that sound?”
“My God. I—don’t know.”
Olsen had laid out his plan, but where was the crime? Marrying a man for money and waiting for him to die wasn’t illegal, and it didn’t connect Olsen to Tule Archer’s threats to her husband.
She said, “I never thought of this…I mean, it sounds intriguing, but also so…cold-blooded.”
“Oh, I get you. Val, look at it this way. You’re giving someone a very happy ending, someone who isn’t going to need the money after he dies. But you can say no, and I hope you don’t feel that I wasted your time.”
Val lowered her eyes, pretended to think it over. She’d observed enough police interrogations to know when to take the lead and when to just listen.
Olsen turned his laptop around so that she could see it.
“Let’s meet the contenders,” he said.