Justice

by Karen Robards

  Did seeing Allison in her/their office mean that Allison was dead?

  Jess went cold all over at the thought.

  Face it: that’s what she feared.

  And if Allison was dead, and there was a connection with Tiffany, did that mean Tiffany was dead, too?

  Jess’s heart started to thump. But speculation did no good, and she was in a neighborhood where she needed to keep her wits about her, so she did her best to focus on the here and now.

  Run-down brick tenements lined one side of the block. The other side was home to an abandoned warehouse and an assortment of shops, about a third of which were boarded up. This neighborhood was in the process of being reclaimed, but so far not much reclamation had happened: it was just rough. In such an environment projecting confidence was the key, so Jess walked tall among the residents of the blighted area who happened to be about. The sky was still overcast, but it had stopped raining sometime earlier, and it looked, in fact, to be clearing. It was so muggy that Jess felt like she was breathing in fog. By the time she reached the gray cinderblock building that housed the Humane Society, she was damp with sweat. The air-conditioning as she pushed through the door felt wonderful.

  Paloma was inside.

  She had been sitting, but she stood up immediately when Jess entered. Dressed in a short-sleeved, black-and-white print dress with her hair swirled up into that high top-knot that gave her several inches, Paloma was looking worried, but her expression cleared as she saw Jess.

  “Thank goodness,” she said. “I was planning to leave straight from work, and I still have to go back there to get my suitcase. I was afraid I would run out of time.”

  “Vacation?” Jess inquired as they approached the counter together.

  “My niece’s wedding. It’s tomorrow, and I’m home again on Sunday.”

  “How exciting. Oh, I filed a motion to dismiss that lawsuit Jax Johnson filed against the center. I don’t think it’s anything you need to worry about anymore.”

  “I really appreciate …” Paloma began, then broke off as a uniformed clerk came to help them. Clearly, she’d been dealing with Paloma and was aware of Jess’s purpose.

  “You’re from—” she consulted the computer printout lying on the counter. “Ellis Hayes?”

  “Yes.” While Jess was showing ID and paying the charges, the clerk spoke into an intercom. A few moments later another clerk came out carrying a black cat in her arms. Its long coat was dull and dirty, and it was pitifully thin.

  “Oh, poor Clementine,” Paloma exclaimed, and the cat swished its tail and looked at her with big golden eyes.

  “Mee-eee-eee-eee.” It was the most pathetic-sounding meow Jess had ever heard.

  “She didn’t look like this when I last saw her.” Paloma reached for the cat.

  “Looks like she’s been running loose for at least a couple of weeks.” The clerk didn’t hand the cat over. “Do you have a carrier?”

  Paloma and Jess looked at each other. Paloma shook her head.

  “No,” Jess said.

  It was fortunate, since the clerk refused to allow the cat to leave except in a carrier, that they were able to buy one complete with a litter box, a packet of food and litter, and a water bottle affixed to the grate at the front of the carrier. It was a kitten starter kit, the clerk said.

  “I’ve left at least half a dozen voice mails and text messages for Allison,” Paloma said as they were walking out of the building. “In the last one, I told her that we were picking up Clementine from the Humane Society. I gave her your cell phone number to call, since I’m going to be out of town and I assume you’ll have her cat. I hope that’s all right.”

  Jess blinked in surprise. She hadn’t planned on taking charge of the cat. She had assumed she would help liberate it, and then it would be Paloma’s responsibility.

  But she was holding the carrier, and she could feel the cat’s weight through the handle. The cat—Clementine—was being very still. Jess felt a sudden sense of responsibility toward her.

  “That’s fine,” Jess said. They were on the building’s steps by that time, and Jess had a quick, unpleasant vision of herself trying to take the metro with a cat. She didn’t know the rules on that—she’d never traveled with a pet—but she had a sneaking suspicion that only service animals were allowed on the trains. Then she thought of something. “Oh, by the way, do you know if your missing girls—Lucy and Jaden—ever used Facebook?”

  “All our girls are required to delete their pages when they’re admitted. We don’t allow social media use. It’s too difficult to supervise.”

  Which explained why Jess hadn’t been able to find them. She was a little disappointed, probably because, she admitted to herself, she’d been hoping to find bliss and love and kisses on there somewhere.

  Ten minutes later, Jess, plus cat, was in a taxi heading for her office. She’d thought about conveying the cat home to her apartment, but it was clear across town, and, anyway, if there did happen to be a killer out there lying in wait for her, going to her apartment alone was probably the last thing she ought to have done. Mark would say so, in any case, she knew.

  Actually, Mark was probably going to have a whole lot to say when she saw him again.

  The sixth floor was jam-packed with people when Jess reached it. Everyone was rushing around like mad. Lenore waved to her but didn’t stop as Jess carted the carrier back toward her office and Lenore, carrying an armful of files, raced toward Pearse’s. Jess reached her office without having to explain anything to anybody, which was a relief.

  Closing her door for the first time in days, she set the carrier down on the floor and crouched in front of it.

  “Hello, Clementine,” she said.

  Clementine crouched on the floor of the carrier. Big golden eyes met Jess’s, and she felt a tug on her heartstrings. She didn’t know about giving the cat the run of her office—it didn’t seem like the professional thing to do, and, anyway, what if the cat got out into the hall?—but she could at least pour out some food and fix the litter box so the cat could be comfortable until they headed for home in a couple of hours.

  Jess opened the crate door cautiously. Clementine stood up, stretched, and stepped out, very calmly, as if she thought that was what she was supposed to do. For a moment the two of them simply looked at each other. Then Jess stroked her, grimacing a little as she felt the too-prominent backbone, the roughness of what once had probably been a luxurious coat. Clementine arched her back approvingly. Her tail gave a gentle swish.

  “You’re a nice cat,” Jess told her, gratified. “I’ll do my best to get your owner back for you.”

  Then she got busy setting up the litter box, and food dish, and making sure the water bottle worked. Finally all was ready, and she stood up and looked around for the cat. At first she didn’t see her.

  “Kitty, kitty,” Jess called, walking around her desk, because that was just about the only place that was hidden from her view where the cat could go.

  Sure enough, Clementine was back there. Sitting on the carpet just a few feet behind Jess’s big leather chair, she was staring fixedly at the plant. Or rather, Jess thought, looking at the unblinking golden eyes and following their gaze, at a spot directly in front of the plant.

  Something about the cat’s posture, her stillness and fixed regard, sent a chill down Jess’s spine. It was as if the cat saw something that Jess didn’t see, something that wasn’t there.

  Allison?

  At the thought, Jess’s pulse began to race.

  “Clementine?” Her voice was very soft.

  Clementine didn’t move. She didn’t look around or acknowledge Jess in any way. Instead, staring hard at that same spot, she started to purr.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A knock on the door made Jess jump. Before she could answer, Lenore pushed through it.

  “Jess, Pearse needs you to get together every case you can in which extradition from Brazil was denied for humanitarian reasons.”


  From Lenore’s manner, Jess knew the request was urgent. She looked a question.

  “Robert Flores was arrested in Brazil about an hour ago. Apparently he’s been hiding out in São Paulo. They’re trying to fly him out of there tonight, and we’re trying to stop them. He has advanced prostate cancer, and Pearse thinks we can use it to get a stay until we can come up with something else.”

  Jess’s eyes widened. Robert Flores was widely referred to in the press as the fugitive financier. He’d been in hiding for, if Jess’s memory served her correctly, five years. The amount of money he was suspected of misappropriating was in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. That, and his subsequent flight to avoid prosecution, had made him so famous that Jess had instantly recognized the name.

  “We represent Robert Flores?”

  “Is he rich? Is he famous? Is he in trouble?”

  They were rhetorical questions, but Jess nodded anyway.

  “Then we represent him.”

  Their conversation seemed to have broken Clementine’s trance. The cat turned and jumped gracefully onto Jess’s desk.

  “A cat.” Momentarily distracted, Lenore looked at Clementine in surprise.

  “It’s Allison’s. The Humane Society call, remember? I picked her up, and then I didn’t have time to take her home, so I brought her here. I’ll take her home with me tonight.” She frowned at Lenore. “Pearse is flying to Brazil?”

  Lenore shook her head. “We have a partner firm in Brazil. Pearse is working through them for now. He needs those cases by six at the latest. Hayley has already gone home to get ready for the party and Andrew is still taking depositions. I was so glad to see you come in, I can’t tell you.”

  “Tell Pearse I’ll have them ready.” Jess spotted the proverbial silver lining. “This gets me out of Mr. Dunn’s party, right?”

  “Death, disability, and dismissal get people out of that party. Nothing else. Why do you think Pearse wants that information no later than six? You know Mr. GQ: that leaves him plenty of time to get dressed.”

  “Leaves him enough time, maybe.” It was an alarmed mutter.

  “If you’d been here longer, you wouldn’t have been surprised.” Lenore gave Jess a wry smile. “This kind of thing always happens. I’ve learned. I brought my dress to work with me this morning, and the women’s locker room next door to the gym in the basement has great showers and a full-length mirror.”

  Jess thought fast. “All right, I can do this.”

  Lenore gave her a smile and a thumbs-up and withdrew. Jess looked at Clementine, who was washing herself, thought about putting her in the carrier, then thought, Screw it and let her stay out. The feeling of being watched was now strong enough to make the hairs on the back of Jess’s neck prickle: too busy to do anything else, she ignored it while she put in a quick call to Grace. A few minutes later, she was so engrossed in pulling up cases that she had forgotten everything else.

  When Mark walked in, he stopped dead just inside the door to glare at her.

  “Damn it, you scared the hell out of me.” He sounded equal parts angry and relieved to see her. She gave him an abstracted smile. It was, she saw at a glance, twenty till six and she was still knee-deep in cases that she was frantically reading through to see if they fit the bill. “You leave me a message saying you need me to drive you somewhere and then you turn your phone off? I figured, knowing you, you’d taken off without me and gotten into trouble. I broke land-speed records getting back here.”

  “Shut the door.” This time she barely looked up. “It was just the ringer, and I didn’t turn it off until like an hour and a half ago, way after I needed your services. Anyway, I forgot I turned it off. I needed to get some work done, as you can see.”

  “There’s a cat on your desk.” He sounded surprised. Clementine’s head was up and she was looking at him, Jess saw as her head came up again, too, but the cat showed no indication that she meant to get up from the ball she had curled herself into for a nap.

  “That’s why I said ‘shut the door.’”

  He complied. “So where did you need to go that was so important?”

  “Humane Society. And, actually, I did take off without you.” She knew as she said it that he wasn’t going to be happy about it, but then keeping him happy wasn’t really her concern, was it? Seeing him stiffen before her eyes dropped back to her computer screen, she airily waved a dismissive hand. “As you can see, I survived. Look, do you mind saving the lecture for later? I have to get this done.”

  “What, do you think I’m just hanging around Ellis Hayes because I like lawyers? What part of somebody out there might be serious about making you dead isn’t getting through to you?”

  “Well, if so, they missed their chance this afternoon.” Glancing up at him, she saw that he was still looking majorly annoyed. To avoid the rest of the homily, she changed the subject to something he needed to know anyway: “Guess what? I found out why Tiffany recanted on the stand. Somebody got to her, threatened her kid.”

  Mark frowned. “I didn’t even know she had a kid. How’d you find that out?”

  “Her mother called. Apparently the DA’s planning to charge Tiffany with perjury. When I agreed to act as Tiffany’s lawyer, the mother told me the whole thing. It’s bad, too.”

  “You agreed to act as Tiffany Higgs’s lawyer?”

  “Yep. Temporarily, anyway.”

  “I bet that’s going to go over real big around here.”

  “It was the only way to get the mother to talk to me. And I told you about the threat because I’m going to need your help finding Tiffany, but it can’t go any further. Anyway, Tiffany’s going to need me, always assuming she’s alive and well, which I’m beginning to seriously doubt. But I can’t talk about Tiffany now. I’ve got to get this done. Go away.”

  She made a shooing motion at him.

  “If you want to get to your apartment and back by seven, you’re out of time. We got to go. Or are you skipping the party?”

  He sounded so hopeful that Jess would have grinned if at least three-quarters of her mind hadn’t been focused on the case she was skimming through.

  “Apparently no party skipping’s allowed.” Jess glanced up from the computer again. “I’m going to have to get dressed here. Grace is bringing everything I need. If you’re going back to the apartment to change, I need you to do me a huge favor. Take Clementine—the cat—with you and make sure she gets settled in. Food, litter, everything you need is already in the carrier.”

  “You put yourself in danger to go to the Humane Society to get a cat?” Disbelief tinged his voice. “Why?”

  “It’s Allison Howard’s cat. The Humane Society was holding it.” Her gaze had already dropped back to the file she was reading. She could feel his eyes on her. “I’ll explain later. Just please do it and let me finish this. I have to get this to Pearse by six.”

  “You want me to deal with this cat.”

  She looked up again. “Please.”

  “You planning to stay in this building until I get back?”

  “Yes. I promise. Mark—”

  “Okay, fine. Come on, kitty.”

  Reading frantically, Jess nevertheless smiled to herself as, without protest, Clementine let him pick her up and put her in the carrier. Remembering that Mark lived with his daughter’s cat (Taylor’s mother was allergic, which left the honors to Mark), Jess was slightly less impressed than she might have been. Still, she felt that Clementine was in good hands when he left with her.

  By three minutes till six, Jess had forgotten all about Clementine and Mark and everything else in the rush to finish. She’d found half a dozen solid cases the Brazilian lawyer could cite to establish precedent for a humanitarian denial of extradition. Having compiled them into a file complete with index, she hit the Send button at 5:59. One minute later, at 6:00 precisely, she received an e-mail from Pearse acknowledging that he had received it.

  Victory.

  Feeling like the Rocky theme song
ought to had been playing in the background somewhere, Jess twirled giddily around in her chair.

  “What are you doing?” Grace asked.

  Feeling foolish, Jess planted her feet and stopped her spin so that she faced her sister. Grace wore a sleeveless yellow sheath that made her look like a sunbeam, or, alternatively, a blonder, younger, way more beautiful Jackie O. A white plastic garment bag was draped over her arm, and the black quilted bag Jess thought of as Grace’s tool kit hung, along with her elegant Chanel purse, from one shoulder.

  “Finishing up,” Jess answered and got to her feet. “Ready?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Grim as a soldier marching into battle, Grace followed Jess to the women’s locker room in the basement.

  By the time Grace was done working her magic, even Jess was impressed.

  “You clean up good,” Grace told her through the mirror, eyeing her handiwork with pride.

  “Woo-hoo,” Lenore agreed from the other side of the room. Lenore’s billowy white ballgown accentuated her curvy figure while at the same time making Lenore look a little like Glenda the Good from the Wizard of Oz, in the prettiest possible way. In contrast, Jess’s slim red (sorry, Grace, garnet) column made her look both elegant and sophisticated, she thought. Grace’s “soft eye, bold mouth” had translated into a smudge of taupe eye shadow and a suggestion of eyeliner, along with deep red lips that Grace by some alchemy had made look fuller and sexier than Jess had had any inkling was possible with her own rather ordinary mouth.