Girl Talk 5: Sins of the Fathers

“Don’t you think Vicky is acting oddly?” Ashley asked, the blonde petite cheerleader following the dark haired, buxom cheer captain through the glass doors out to the wooden decking.

“Odd how?” Heather replied, taking a seat on the cushioned bench while Ashley closed the glass doors behind them.

“I don’t know specifically…just odd. Like she got super defensive when I even suggested she’d went back to the apartment to have sex with Dustin. I mean, I wasn’t judging or anything. It’d be a totally natural thing to do. But then to shower and get changed first…” Ashley sat down next to Heather, wrinkling creasing her forehead as she tried to conjure the words to explain exactly what was bothering her. “And those clothes. I’ve never known Victoria to dress like that.”

“It is different. Though, it suits her. She looks very sexy. But maybe those were the only clothes she could find to fit her,” Heather countered with a shrug. “And you know Victoria. She’s always been a little shy and repressed when it comes to sex. She probably feels guilty for wanting to sleep with a guy when he wasn’t her true love, or some shit. Who knows.”

“That’s what worries me. We don’t know. I guess my real fear is that something happened at the apartment and she’s too ashamed or traumatised to tell us.” Ashley admitted.

“I hope not. And if it did, all we can do is make her feel safe and comfortable and wait for her to come to us with it.” Heather comforted the blonde. “We can’t **** it out of her.”

“Right. And we have more important issues right now that we can deal with,” Ashley steeled herself for the difficult conversation ahead. “Or at least I hope you can help deal with it.”

“I’ll certainly try my best, whatever it is.”

“Well, just let me say first of all that I don’t want this to be true,” Ashley prefaced her revelation. “It’s just purely based on the information that we found.”

“Ash, out with it already.”

The blonde breathed in a short, deep breath, and then out, slowly, as she turned in the seat, bringing one leg up on to the bench, knee pointed inwards, facing her friend head on. “This morning we were discussing how to clear my name, since it seemed like some people actually thought I’d planted the **** on Lisa.”

“By some people, you mean Zack,” Heather inferred shrewdly. “He mentioned blaming you in the car, though he also regretted it and confessed he’d reacted harshly. I think Lisa’s arrest caught us all off-guard.”

“Right, so we were brainstorming other possible leads, and it was Victoria who suggested that maybe it wasn’t directly about Lisa. Someone might be targeting Carlos Rivera through his daughter.”

“Hm, that’s smart. But, it would still need to be someone with access to the cabin,” Heather noted.

Ashley nodded, “Yeah, and someone with a big enough grudge against her dad. That’s why we went to the Azure Rock’s Nugget headquarters. We decided to look through a lot of newspapers from the last year or so and cross reference arrests made by Carlos Rivera with **** offences and the means to pull off something like this. Unfortunately, we came up bust.”

“I can imagine it’s quite a big sample pool,” Heather consoled her. “But, I don’t see how I’m supposed to fit in with this.”

“Well, while we were looking for information regarding Carlos’ police work, I kept noticing little snippets of announcements regarding your dad buying up land around Silver Lakes. It wasn’t much, just the bare facts, like where it was and who he’d bought it from,” Ashley explained.

“So what?” Heather made a half frown. “He buys lands for projects all the time. What’s that got to do with Lisa or her dad?”

“I didn’t think much of it at all either, until Victoria mentioned the Lisa also had a cabin up here,” Ashley admitted. “Which got me thinking that if your dad was buying land around Silver Lakes, and Carlos owned land around Silver Lakes, that would put them in direct conflict with each other.”

Heather shook her head. “You can’t be serious?”

“I know you might not want to believe it, but I marked all the land on the map that Robert had bought and Carlos’ cabin is one of the last places that he hasn’t bought out,” Ashley sounded ****, almost begging Heather to believe her. “Victoria’s dad said they knew about it, but there was no indication of anything nefarious going on. Just rumours that Carlo Rivera was refusing to sell.”

The dark haired, curvaceous daughter of Robert Ravers stood and walked to the end of the decking. She paused there, then paced to the other side, one arm folded over her stomach, the other angled up to her face, pressing a knuckle to her lip, as she stared at the wooden flooring, thinking. She took her hand away from her mouth and said, “I hate to say it, but it makes sense. My dad would have the motive if he was trying to **** Carlos to accept the deal, and he had the means since he was here last night.”

Ashley sighed with relief. “I’m so glad you understand. I was afraid you were going to shout at me and tell me I was way out of line.”

“No, I appreciate you coming to me with this and keeping it yourself until you were able to talk to me.” Heather stopped and looked to her best friend with a chuckle. “I know that can’t have been easy, keeping it from Zack especially.”

“Of course,” Ashley smiled back. “I know how close you and your father are. But, what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to talk to him, but…” Heather looked at her watch. “It’s too late tonight. First thing tomorrow morning though, I’m going to go to his office and ask him about it. To be honest, I still don’t think it’s him. I don’t think it fits his personality.”

“You don’t?” Ashley asked, curious.

“My father is rather meticulous. Especially when it comes to business. If he were to do something like this, he’d have planned it in advance, rather than a spur of the moment. And he couldn’t have planned this, given that he had no idea that Lisa was even here,” Heather elaborated, pacing again. “Even if he was lying about forgetting I was up here, which I don’t think he was, Lisa was never invited on the trip, so he’d have no reason to suspect that she was here.”

“He wouldn’t have gotten far in business if he was capable of adapting quickly though,” Ashley replied cautiously. “Maybe he doesn’t like doing it, but he definitely strikes me as a man who can take advantage of situations as they occur.”

Heather nodded. “You’re right, but there is another reason. I just don’t think targeting Lisa is my dad’s style. I’m not saying he hasn’t done some shady shit in the past or skirted some lines or greased a few palms to move things along. My father is no saint. But framing the daughter of a rival to **** them to give him what he wants…that’s not a line I think he’d cross.” Heather put a hand to her chest as she turned to face her friend. “If anything happened to me, my father would be on the rampage. You can bet he’d never want to put another father through anything like this. This whole thing just seems too reckless…too thoughtless…to be my father’s work.”

Ashley sighed, this time with frustration and disappointment. “Well, it’s the best lead we have. Are you still willing to talk to him? If only to definitively cross him off the list?”

“Of course,” Heather assured her. “I need to know for myself too.”

“What if he lies?” Ashley chewed her bottom lip. “I know you say he’s always honest with you, but what if this is the one thing he won’t trust you with?”

“It’s funny actually,” Heather chuckled. “The thing about him being honest means I know what he looks like when he’s telling the truth. Which means I also know when he’s not. If he’s lying, I’ll know.”

“Alright…good…well, that’s all I’ve got,” Ashley concluded, rising to her feet. “Though, I would like to come with you tomorrow. Even if I don’t go with you to his office, I can’t just sit around here and wait.”

“Sure, you can come,” Heather said, moving towards the glass doors. “Now, I think I’m gonna go take a shower before bed.”

“Alright. I shouldn’t be too far behind,” Ashley replied, following her again back through the glass doors into the kitchen.

As Heather walked out of the kitchen into the living room, she passed Zack, giving him a pensive, soft smile as they crossed. Ashley paused in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter as Zack entered, looking between the space where Heather had been and back to his blonde, sort-of girlfriend.

“How’s Gavin?” Ashley inquired.

“Messed up. Smells like he hasn’t been out of that room all day. I told him to crack a window, clean up and sent him for a shower. How about you and Heather?” Zack asked eagerly. “Did you to have the talk?”

Ashley nodded. “Yeah, but I still can’t tell you anything yet.”

Zack shrugged, though he was frowning. “That’s fine. I guess so long as someone is doing something about freeing Lisa, I’m content. And actually, I wanted to talk to you about the Lisa situation…”