“None of that is proof. It’s all speculation, not to mention pathetic. No wonder you don’t do trial law. You don’t even seem to know what evidence is.” Richard’s tone was beyond condescending and into exasperation. “This conversation needs to be over now.”
“You knew Edith was murdered.” I stated it like a fact. Richard had turned his back to me and I thought he was going to walk off out of the kitchen and down the hall, but he froze instead. He continued to stand facing the hallway and said nothing for a long moment. Silhouetted against the light from the hallway beyond, I couldn’t interpret his body language or see his face.
“She died of a heart attack.” His voice was tired.
“No, she was strangled—"
Richard turned and smacked the kitchen counter with his fist to cut me off. His face was flushed with anger.
“Charlie, shut up and listen to me. I’m only going to say this one more time. Your job, your only fucking job right now, is to find out what happened to the dead nurse. I’ll give you whatever resources I can to make that happen, but I cannot give you any other information that you don’t already have. We’ve already discussed this once. I’m unwilling to have this conversation a third time. Stop asking questions about Edith. Have I made myself clear?”
“You have, but I’m telling you right now that statistically speaking, the murderer is someone we both know. Statically speaking, your creepy-ass behavior suggests that the murderer is you.” The words left my mouth in anger, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret them.
I wasn’t about to tell Eva this, but everything I’d learned in criminal law suggested Richard had two out of three criteria in the trifecta of intent: means and opportunity. The fact that he’d assigned me to solve the murder was almost the only thing that made me think he wasn’t involved. The other was that he seemed to entirely lack a motive to kill Stephen.
I expected an outburst, but Richard surprised me and took my accusation in stride. He laughed.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Charlie, I’m not a murderer.”
“Maybe not. But you know some people who are.”
He didn’t deny it. He did, however, roll his eyes dismissively and groan.
“If I wanted Stephen to disappear,” he snapped, “he’d be fucking gone. Forever. You wouldn’t find him underneath a goddamn leaf pile!”
“I suppose that’s true,” I conceded quietly. Richard paused his angry rant to raise an eyebrow and then hide a smirk.
“I’m glad we agree I’d be a better murderer than whoever killed Stephen. You really dislike me don’t you, Charlie?” He asked the question like he was actually surprised to find that he was curious to hear the answer.
I was certainly surprised that my gut answer was not yes.
“I’ve never given it much thought,” I answered honestly. “Liking or disliking my clients isn’t productive. It doesn’t help me do my job. I make a concerted effort to limit my judgement and personal opinions in the professional world.”
“Commendable, except that you think there’s some chance I’m the murderer. So clearly you’ve got some opinions of your own.”
“Having opinions is what you pay me by the hour to do. Attorneys are essentially just glorified opinion machines. And my professional opinion is that I think there’s some chance that anyone could be the murderer. I’m trying to figure out who it is, but at this point it could be anyone.” The fact that he continued to withhold facts from me that would help me to narrow down the list was simply infuriating. This whole conversation had been pointless.
“You’re right. It could be anyone. But it can’t be everyone. And it wasn’t me. So go out and find whoever it was.”
It occurred to me that this was the first seriously honest conversation that Richard and I had ever had.
“You know what really bothers me about all this?” Richard said after a moment of silence where we stared at one another distrustfully.
“What’s that?”
“You haven’t just asked me whether or not I did all of it. Edith, Stephen, for all you know I kill people regularly. You haven’t asked.”
“Why would I? You’d just deny it either way.”
“Why? You’re my lawyer. You can’t turn me in.”
“A good lawyer never asks a question they don’t already know the answer to. For one, I would have to turn you in if I thought you were going to commit another murder,” I told him seriously. Then I added, “I just want to see the proof that you aren’t involved and understand what the hell is going on.”
“You and me both.” Richard was really starting to piss me off. He was so casual and flippant when he ought to be serious and concerned.
“I know you’re keeping things from me. Working with a handicap is going to make my job that much harder.”
“Boo hoo. Quit complaining. Just get out there and solve the damn murder.”
I stormed out of the kitchen past him in disgust. He didn’t object, but he ought to be thanking me for not quitting in that moment. Or punching him. My feet carried me through the maze that separated me from Eva’s room on autopilot. My murder solving would have to wait for a bit. There were more important things to do first.
24
Eva
“Do you want to talk about it?” Charlie asked. He looked stiff and uncomfortable standing in my little living room. It was now well past midnight and we were both exhausted. This awful day just seemed to stretch on and on.
“Which part? How you’re maybe covering up for murderers, or how maybe I’m working for them?”
I buried my face in my couch cushion when I finished talking. My entire body ached like I was coming down with the flu. In reality I knew it was just the stress catching up to me. When Charlie knocked on my door I’d expended the last of my energy to stumble across the room, let him in, and then flop back on the couch.
Charlie knelt in front of me and touched my hair. “Either one.” His voice was quiet and resigned. When I didn’t respond he continued. “Or both. Whatever you want. Whatever will make you feel better.”
I raised my face up out of the cushy feather pillow depths just enough to meet his eyes. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I told him. My voice was muffled by the pillow, but I’m sure my misery still came through. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“You don’t want to be together?” Charlie asked. His voice and face had gone totally neutral. It made me feel ill.
“That’s not what I meant. I want you, but I don’t want this feeling of guilt and suspicion,” I replied. His look of relief was obvious, but I just rambled on because I knew it was premature. “I hate wondering if you’re telling me the whole truth about what you do. I hate how weird everything has been about Edith’s death. I hated how the police acted like you were the enemy when they saw you. What do you really do Charlie? Do you help the Durant family to commit crimes?”
Charlie sat back on his heels and looked at me before slumping over on the ground and putting his back against the couch.
“Until this week I would have said no. Now I’m not so sure.”
I reached out a hand to his shoulder and he turned his head to look at me again.
“What do you mean?”
He looked down into his hands as if he might have the answers written on his palms. “Most of what I’ve done over the past few years has been regular, real legal work. Did it sometimes fall into grey areas? Sure. But it never… it didn’t smell as bad as this does.”
“I still don’t really understand. Could you give me a real example of something else you’ve done? Something non-hypothetical this time?”
His face folded into a deep frown that added years to him. “I’m not supposed to… but fuck it, you need to know everything. I’ve got a great example. Last year Deborah Breyer’s housekeeper’s nineteen-year-old son got arrested on a felony drug charge. Deborah had the kid bailed out and provided an attorney for him—a junior associate I supervised.”
“That doesn’t s
ound bad at all. It actually sounds very generous of Mrs. Breyer.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Don’t judge yet. So, the junior associate started looking into the case, and he realized that the kid was arrested while he was driving a car belonging to Deborah. The car was one she loaned to her housekeeper, and she was supposed to use it only for work. Are you with me so far?”
“I think so. The kid was driving Deborah’s car.”
“Right. That means that in addition to putting his mom in violation of her employment agreement by driving the car, Deborah also could potentially be embarrassed if the case went to trial because the entire contents of that car would be evidence, and Deborah or her housekeeper might be actually be pulled into the legal process to testify or be deposed.”
“Ok. Got it. This story hasn’t even gotten to you yet. What did you do to contain the crisis?”
“The associate attorney defending the kid just did his thing to defend him. He had an attorney-client relationship with him. But I didn’t. I work for the family. I approached the associate and offered the housekeeper and her son an undisclosed sum of money to take a plea deal immediately and worked with the DA to get it done extremely quickly. Within twenty-four hours the kid had accepted eighteen months in jail and four years’ probation. No muss no fuss.”
“I still don’t see how that’s really complicated.”
“It isn’t, until you realize that the prosecution’s case was really, really weak. The kid could have gotten off because the search was obvious racial profiling. Young black kid, very nice car, late at night, arresting officer was a known bigot. The case was a mess. But even if it had been the world’s most air tight arrest, if convicted, the standard sentencing guideline for a case like this? With a first-time offender? Five years of probation. That’s the reason Sheila Henkel dislikes me so much, by the way. The arresting officer was her old partner. He was a real piece of work. Thankfully he retired shortly after.”
“Did the kid know all about the weaknesses of the case and the normal sentencing guidelines before he accepted the deal?”
“I have no idea. I wasn’t his attorney.”
“And you didn’t make sure.”
“Of course not. It wasn’t my place.”
I knew just enough about the justice system to know that he was right. His obligation was to his client and his client alone. The kid had his own lawyer. It still didn’t sit well with me.
“What you’re telling me is that the kid was basically paid to go to jail on the vague off chance Deborah had something in her car that would be embarrassing, or might have to testify?”
“Sort-of. There’s more though.”
I steeled myself. “Tell me.”
“The drugs? They were Deborah’s. She has, well had, an opiate addiction. Your standard tennis injury slipped disk got her hooked-on pain pills. She was having her housekeeper’s son keep her supplied with the finest prescription strength horse-tranquilizers. He was arrested at a traffic stop after making a drug run for her.”
“No.” Frosty, dignified Deborah was a junkie? I knew it could happen to anyone, but damn. I never would have guessed.
“I’m afraid so. She went to in-patient treatment right after that. Her kids still think she went to a three-month pottery-making retreat in Marfa, Texas.”
I digested the story in silence. There was bad stuff there, on all sides. There was some semblance of good intentions, too. The issues that led to the circumstances were complicated, too: money, class, race, addiction, bad police work. I didn’t even know where to start.
“Did you know about Deborah’s drug problem at the beginning?”
“I learned about it about halfway through my investigation.”
“The investigation that lasted less than twenty-four hours?”
“I’m good at what I do, Eva. That’s why I’m paid to do it.”
“How much did it cost to make the whole thing disappear?”
“Eight thousand dollars.”
“That seems like a lot less than I would have expected.”
“Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
“Did you threaten the housekeeper that she’d be fired if she didn’t accept the deal?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“All I had to do was write it into the private agreement that if she and her son accepted, her employment would not be adversely affected.”
“That’s effectively the same thing as threatening her.”
“Is it?”
I exhaled loudly in frustration. “I don’t know. I’m not an ethics professor or a priest or somebody that knows how to unravel these sorts of problems. I don’t have the slightest idea how to feel about any of this. Everyone in the situation you just described made bad choices. The housekeeper shouldn’t have let her son drive the car. Deborah shouldn’t have gotten addicted to pain meds or involved innocent people to run drugs for her. The kid shouldn’t have agreed to supply her. And you… I don’t know what you should have done. You were representing your client. I’m sure you were more ethical than most people would have been.”
Charlie nodded. “That’s how I justified it to myself. I said that if I wasn’t managing these crises then someone else would. And they might not have a conscience. I know that Richard has access to people like that.”
“There’s still a difference between that situation you just described and whatever is going on now.” I told him. “This thing with Edith… it feels worse. Dirty. And now my predecessor is found dead? I’m going to be very surprised if the autopsy shows his death was natural. Nobody crawls conveniently under a huge pile of leaves when they’re having a heart attack.”
“I know. I’m scared for you,” he told me, grasping for my hand. “Someone that worked right here in this house, doing the same job you do, died. And no one found him for weeks? It’s completely horrifying!”
“Maybe I should just quit and get the hell out of here.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt like, well, a quitter. I’d never been a quitter before. It instantly didn’t sit well with me. I could almost see my dad shaking his head at me in disappointment.
Charlie didn’t look remotely disappointed. He just looked understanding and compassionate and concerned for me. “If that’s what you want, I’ll take you to my house right now. Or if you want, I’ll take you to Dylan’s condo. We can figure things out. You don’t have to spend another night here if you’re scared. You should never have to feel unsafe at work.”
Charlie was being so sweet and understanding that he was almost making it worse. I felt tears begin to burn the corners of my eyes and I blinked them away in frustration. No way was I going to cry in front of him. I’m not a crier usually, and I wasn’t about to become one today.
“What about you?” I asked instead.
Charlie looked surprised. “What about me?”
“You’re going to stay and work for them?”
“I have to. My mom is in remission and they say it won’t come back but if the cancer does come back…” He trailed off and spread his hands helplessly. I reached down from my position on the couch and grabbed them, trapping them in my own.
“Then I’m staying. If only because I really want to help you figure this out. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
We sat in silence for a moment and then I remembered something very important. Somehow it had totally slipped my mind at the time, but now the thought came roaring back. “Did you mean what you said to Henkel about me?”
“Huh?”
“You said I was your girlfriend.”
He looked up at me with vague embarrassment. The tips of his ears were pale pink. “I think it’s actually up to you whether it’s true or not. Especially after tonight.”
When I didn’t say anything and just smiled, he shifted uncomfortably. “Well?” he asked. “Is it true?”
I kissed him. “
It’s true.”
Charlie turned and kissed me, shifting so he could slant his mouth firmly over my own and stealing my breath. There was an intensity and edge of need within him that hadn’t been there a moment before. I felt an answering need in me rising to meet it.
He pulled me down from the couch and onto the ground with him, rolling us both until I was pinned beneath him. I was still wearing the outfit that I’d had on earlier, a grey cashmere sweater dress, and his hands were under it within moments. He lifted it up and explored the extra-sensitive skin of my thighs with teasing fingertips that made me shiver. I spread my legs eagerly for him, happy to be beneath him, and feeling comforted by his weight. I wanted to reaffirm this part of our relationship. I wanted to reaffirm being close to him.
Charlie had already lost his jacket, but I loosened his tie and pulled at the buttons as his fingers were busy working down my panties. Before I could finish undressing him he was sitting up and lifting me, turning me around to face away from him on all fours and pulling my dress up over my head.
Now on my knees I couldn’t touch him easily, but any frustration was quickly forgotten as he pulled me upright to lift my arms around his neck as he cupped my chest and pulled at my nipples while he kissed my neck until I was mindless. I buried my hands in his hair and lost myself in sensation. Each tug at the stiff peaks, each nip of his teeth at my neck pushed me deeper into arousal. I could feel his erection straining against the curve of my ass and I wanted it. I wriggled back into him until I felt his lips draw into a smile. He knew he was driving me wild.
Relenting, he released me and took himself in hand, nudging my thighs further apart. He entered me with us both on our knees, and I caved to the instinctive need to bend forward. I ached to move.
His first stroke in and out made me moan as he hit that ache head on. I rocked back onto him with total abandon. I wanted my brain to think nothing but this, feel nothing but this. Nothing but him. He guided us into a slow, steady rhythm, gripping my hips with both his heavy hands. It was much too slow for me, but I wasn’t in control.
Never Say Never Page 15
