Page 18 of The Wives of Murder Club
Fine. I hope she drinks herself sick.Marta turned on her heel, stalked off to the kitchen, and extracted the heaviest knife from the butcher’s block. Slicing carrots for dinner prep—the satisfyingthwunkof the blade against the cutting board—was the only safe release. Marta popped in her earbuds, turned on an old episode ofFilthy Funds, and let herself pretend she was enjoying a cottage weekend with Claudia and Leo.
19
FILTHY FUNDSS3E04: FAKE GOODS AND BAD FAKES
LEO:Hello Fundies! Welcome back to Season Three ofFilthy Funds. How are we feeling today, Claudia?
CLAUDIA:Like a cheap facsimile of my usual cheery self, my friend. I’ve been sick for days, but nothing’s going to stop me from weighing in on this week’s topic: when fakes kill.
LEO: In our earlier episodes this season, we skated the surface of the slick world of counterfeiting: knock-off perfumes, designer bags, and shoes, and TikTok dupe culture. Today we’re drilling down into the grittier side of fakes: medication, cosmetics, and the broader implications of the counter-feit industry as a whole. One story that blew my mind while researching this episode was the case involving a Florida-based pharmaceutical president who pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit drugs.
CLAUDIA:Aw Leo, it blew your mind that big bad pharma is big and bad?
LEO:Call me naive, but I didn’t expect conspiring-with-illegal-drug-traffickers levels of big and bad! Anyways, this dude was responsible for distributing thousands of litres of counterfeit cough syrup.
CLAUDIA:I will say that working on this episode while having a head cold led to some paralyzing moments of paranoia in the drugstore. Not fun.
LEO:It’s crazy, right?! But I think you can still feel pretty confident buying in person. However, online shopping for drugs is a totally different story, because counterfeit medication is a huge issue globally. I read a number of heartbreaking stories about teens who bought prescription drugs off social media—thinking they were buying Adderall or Xanax—and ended up dead because the pills were counterfeit and contained lethal doses of fentanyl. Interpol estimates that approximately onemillionpeople die each year as a result of fake pharmaceuticals.
CLAUDIA:Now, cosmetics was the surprising one for me. Like medication, yeah, I get it. If the formula isn’t right, then the drug isn’t drugging. But what could be so wrong with a lipstick? I was thinking that maybe the shade would be slightly off or it wouldn’t wear as well. Nope! That’s the least of your worries. I have two words for you: heavy metals.
LEO:Specifically, lead and mercury—and not the one in retrograde!
CLAUDIA:They are full-onneurotoxins, which is to say, these elements can cause permanent cognitive damage. A CBCMarketplaceinvestigation found dangerously high levels of both lead and mercury in various fake cosmetics they tested, including lipsticks, eyeshadows, and teeth-whitening strips.
LEO:Look, I want a pearly white smile as much as the next guy, but not at the expense of a brain injury!
CLAUDIA:Cut to me mixing all my own makeup products out of flowers and beeswax . . . No, no, forget it, I’m not about to slide down the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline. Anyways, not only can counterfeit medications and cosmetics harm your health—and even kill—but they also pose a risk to national security. The counterfeit industry is worth hundreds ofbillionsof dollars in North America, and it funds organized crime and terrorism.
LEO:So keep it clean, Fundies! The stakes couldn’t be higher.
20
IMOGEN
Celeste’s head was hot and heavy on her shoulder, making Imogen feel trapped.Where did Marta and Bernie disappear to? Why do I have to deal with this mess alone?Celeste had been a wreck since they came in from the lake, crying into her wine that she’d had no idea Harry was struggling. Imogen wanted to go change out of her swim cover-up, and to check whether—by some miracle—her phone had service again. She really needed to read those emails before she talked to Francesca. Most of all, she wanted to escape from the weight of Celeste’s sadness.
“. . . but I did tell you about the financial mess Harry left me in.”
Imogen nodded absently as shemm-hmmed, wondering how she was going to gracefully extricate herself from this situation.
“I thought it was just bad investments, you know? But he must have been spending our money ondrugs.” Celeste whispered the last word. “It’s been hard, Immy, really hard. And with the mortgage and everything . . . I think I need to . . . I’m going to have to withdraw some money earlier than we talked about.”
Absolutely not.Imogen felt the first burning stab of an ice-pick headache. She patted Celeste’s head softly and made a concerted effort to keep her voice calm. “How about we talk about this another time, Cee? Not right now. We’ve been drinking . . . let’s save this conversation for when we get back to the city.”
“No, I’ve decided.” Celeste reared her head up to look Imogen in the eyes. “It’s done, I’m done. I need the money. I know I can convince my mom to pay for Milly’s education, so I don’t need to lock away so much money for the future.” Celeste’s voice was rising, as if the louder she made her point, the more seriously Imogen would have to take her.
This wasexactlythe type of shit Imogen didn’t have the time for right now. First, she needed to get back to civilization so she could address the problem with Francesca (whose new husband suddenly had all kinds of questions about her finances and wanted to pull her entire investment out of the ITFF, andfuck, can’t people just trust me to do my job?). She could only take on so many things at once.
“This is a stressful time for you, Cee, I know that,” said Imogen. “But think about it this way. Not only is your money safe with me, it is actually earning you more money. So, I hear you, I see you, but I also need you to give it some time. Don’t you remember how you begged me to let you into the fund? That was with the agreement that we would be doing long-term investments. I think your commitment was a minimum term of five years, and we haven’t even reached that. You’re not going to see the kind of returns you want—the kind of returns I’veguaranteedyou—until you give it some time. I’ll talk to my accountant when we get back, okay?” Imogen scooched sideways away from Celeste and got up off the couch.
“What accountant?” asked Celeste.
Imogen froze. “You want their name or something? What does it matter?” Imogen didn’t like the look in Celeste’s eyes. There was the corner of something shrewd glinting through the glassiness.
“No, I mean, whenever something comes up at work, you always say that you have to call your accountant and that he’s messed something up, or, like, you’re going to call your tax people or whatever. But . . . I’ve been thinking about it. I do all your admin and I know you don’t have an accountant. You do it all yourself. I saw the expenses you claimed for that software.” Celeste crossed her arms likeso there.
Imogen was momentarily stunned into silence. This wasnota conversation she wanted to be having right now, or ever. She’d always thought of Celeste as a paint-by-numbers employee: send this email, fill out this spreadsheet, tabulate these expenses. No initiative, no motivation to go above and beyond, no indication that she would even know what above or beyond looked like. But she wasn’t as dim as Imogen had counted on.
