by Laura Kenner
“That’ll do for the moment” Trainor pulled out his notebook and pencil. “Shoot.”
Will flinched, then glanced at Sara who didn’t seem to appreciate the policeman’s brand of gallows humor. All said and done, neither did Will.
He cleared his throat. “Raymond Bergeron hired me to perform a ‘loyalty’ test on Ms. Hardaway, who, at that time, was his fiancée. I did the job myself rather than use one of my operatives because he requested that I do it Since he is…was a steady and valued customer, I saw no harm in doing as he asked. I performed a ‘mate and bait’ routine myself, but she didn’t fall for me. She wouldn’t even give me her telephone number. I reported my failure to Mr. Bergeron and he seemed quite pleased with the results. Unfortunately for him, Ms. Hardaway found out about the gambit and was understandably upset. She decided turnabout was fair play and she hired me to return the favor by testing his loyalty, as well. As was my usual custom, I used Celia Strauss as the bait.”
“You didn’t realize they…knew each other?”
Will felt his stomach threaten to turn. He closed his eyes and mentally ran over his conversation with Celia. Had she done anything, said anything that implied she knew Bergeron? “Celia said absolutely nothing to me about it. I even showed her his picture, but she didn’t say anything about recognizing him.”
“And in all the cases you’ve done for him, you’d never mentioned her name?”
Will shrugged. “I tend to shield my operatives.”
“Why?”
“To preserve their privacy, both personal and business. I don’t want to broadcast their identities to my clients because it pretty much defeats the purpose of keeping things confidential. It works both ways. I give my operatives enough information to perform well, but I don’t give them the details that might violate my clients’ right to privacy.”
Trainor turned to the secretary who had her face buried in a soggy tissue. “As Mr. Bergeron’s secretary, did you witness any of these meetings?”
She looked up at him and nodded. “Almost all of them. I always take notes.”
“Is Mr. Riggs correct? Did you ever hear him mention any of his operatives’ names?”
“Never. He just called them his ’ops,’ never referring to them by specific name. I asked him why one time and he gave me the same explanation.”
Satisfied, Trainor turned his inquisitive stare back toward Will. “So you set up their meeting for last night?”
Will nodded. “Ms. Hardaway made a date at a restaurant with her ex-fiancé. I discussed strategies with Celia, then we staked out the location. I was able to watch the whole proceeding without being seen. From my vantage point, everything went according to plan. It looked to me as if Celia dangled her bait and hooked him easily.” Will felt the muscles in his arms tighten. “Of course, now that I think about it, everything went off just a bit too smoothly.”
“You weren’t suspicious at the time?”
“Not really. They acted and reacted like they’d never met before, but it was evident they were highly attracted to each other.” Will forced himself to look anywhere but at Sara. Her shock and disappointment were too much for him to handle. Trainor expected him to play a certain role and it was going to take his complete attention to be successful. To help bolster his performance, Will added a nonchalant shrug. “They played ’My, Aren’t You Witty!’ for a half hour or so, segued into a basic game of footsie and tongue hockey, then they took off. That’s when things went wrong.”
Steve crossed his arms, his gaze narrowing. “’When things went wrong…’ Isn’t that a bit of an understatement?”
Will recognized the change in posture; the man was making one of his infamous transitions from good to bad cop. Steve Trainor was the only police officer Will knew who reveled in playing both parts.
“Jeez, Riggs, I thought you never let the mate-and-baits reach the ’Let’s go to a motel and screw’ stage.” He almost sneered as he spoke.
Will performed what he considered an almost-graceful shrug. “They’re not supposed to go that far. Celia had orders not to leave the restaurant with him. I was more than stunned when she jumped in the car with him. And I might add that she did go willingly. I tried to tail them, but Raymond drives like a Grand Prix champion. He headed straight for Key Bridge and from there, probably I-66. There was no way I could keep up with them.”
“What did you do next?”
“The only thing I could do—I staked out his house in McLean on the off chance he’d head home either with or without her. But he never showed. Finally I called Sara to report.” A split second after he spoke, Will realized he’d made a slip by calling her by her first name.
Trainor turned to Sara. “What was your reaction to the news, Ms. Hardaway?” He placed just enough emphasis on her name to signal he’d caught Will’s gaffe.
She sniffed into her tissue and straightened, evidently unaware of the undercurrents. “What do you think? I was hurt by what Mr. Riggs told me. Very upset.” She stopped for a moment as if weighing a decision. “Then Raymond called me about two o’clock in the morning. We argued. He was furious at me. He was drunk, too.” She shivered. “It was horrible. Accusations, names.”
Her face hardened perceptibly. “If I’d known anything about his continuing relationship with her…” She paused, breaking away to duck her head, hiding her expression. A second later, she lifted her chin, facing them with renewed strength. “Needless to say, I ended the call by breaking our engagement and hanging up on him.”
She looked at Will as if asking his advice. He nodded, knowing she had one more piece of information she had to tell the police.
“There’s one more thing,” she stated in a flat voice that reminded Will of a dispassionate witness on “Dragnet”
Trainor leaned forward, his face as expressive as Sgt. Joe Friday’s. “Yes?”
“I could hear a woman’s laughter in the background. Wherever he was when he called me, he wasn’t alone.”
“He called you exactly at two o’clock?”
“A couple of minutes either side of two.”
Trainor scribbled a few more lines in his notebook.
“Well?” Will prompted.
Trainor affected an accent deeper than his usual soft Virginia one. “I’d say the boy’s in a heap o’ trouble.” He snapped his notebook closed and had the audacity to smile. “You know, I really like it when the cases are practically in the courthouse’s backyard. I’ll have a search warrant here in a half hour.”
“A search warrant? Oh, dear.” Joanie clutched the appointment book to her chest. “I can still try to cancel the rest of his appointments for today, can’t I? I don’t want clients walking in and finding the police tearing up the office.”
Trainor gave the telephone a contemplative glare, then turned it on the secretary. “What are you telling people?”
She straightened. “I can assure you I haven’t been informing them that he’s involved in something criminal. All I knew was he was missing. I didn’t know about—” a look of dismay draped her tear-streaked features “—any of this. I’ve been saying he had to cancel due to a sudden illness.”
“That sounds reasonable enough. Go ahead and finish, then.”
Joanie nodded, then her face crumpled with a new cascade of tears. Trainor released an exaggerated sigh. Although Will felt compelled to do something, he had no idea how to handle the situation. It was Sara who rushed to the woman’s side and started comforting her with quiet, soothing words of reassurance.
Will echoed Trainor’s sigh.
The detective motioned for Will to follow him into Bergeron’s private office. When he reached out to close the door behind him, Trainor shook his head.
“No, keep it open. I need to keep an eye on what’s going on out there.” He shot Will a half smile. The good cop had returned. “So, exactly what were you two doing in here when I came?”
Will did some quick mental choreography; it was time to tap-dance a bit “Ms. Hardaw
ay was understandably upset, but she didn’t want to tell the secretary anything more than she had to.” Will leaned forward and added a conspiratorial note to his voice. “The woman worships the man, you know.”
“But Ms. Hardaway doesn’t?”
“Ms. Hardaway has had almost a week to come to grips with sudden disillusionment”
“‘Sudden disillusionment’?” Trainor repeated. His features hardened. “I thought she swore she didn’t know anything about her fiancé’s…dalliances.”
Will decided to continue to play to Trainor’s good-cop side in hopes it would return. He sneaked a quick look at the women, then kept his voice low. “She didn’t. Neither of us did. Her world sustained a pretty big crack in it when Bergeron decided he needed to test her loyalty. The idiot even admitted to me he had no reason to distrust her. I checked her paper trail and she came up clean. I tried to talk him out of continuing but—”
“But he tested her anyway,” Trainor supplied. “Strange man. Of course, most attorneys are. Especially the ones who handle divorce.” He paused. “So, did she pass the test?”
Will sighed. It was an admission he didn’t exactly want broadcast around to everybody. He tried to shrug off what he almost considered a personal failure. “Between you and me? She passed with flying colors. I gave her everything I’ve got, but there was nothing I could do to get past her outer defenses. It was like trying to break into Fort Knox with a spoon.”
“A looker like her?” Trainor nodded toward the open door. “Funny…she doesn’t strike me as the cold-fish
type.”
Will knew his part of the game and picked up his cue. “That’s the problem. She’s not a cold fish.” He added a theatrical sigh. “Take a good hard look at her, my friend. In this day and age, she’s practically a dying breed. She’s a good-looking, smart, loyal woman. I guess you could say she’s loyal to a fault.”
“Loyal to a fault…” Trainor repeated. “Maybe. I still wonder why she’s out there, still being loyal to him. Out of habit? Or maybe she knows more that she’s letting on. We’re talking about the death of a mistress, here. She’s the most likely suspect.”
“Her? No way. Sara’s not that type of woman. She—” Will stopped, realizing he’d been taken in by a master of questioning. “You bastard.”
“That’s why they pay me the big money, Riggs. To see through even the most sophisticated con jobs.” Trainor shot him a speculative glare that exposed every embellishment Will had made in the last half hour. “Let’s can the crap. Do you think she knows something she’s not telling us? That she’s still protecting him?”
Will contemplated the notion for a full three seconds before shaking his head. “No. I think there’s a gap between them that won’t ever be bridged again. If he walked in right now and you, yourself, totally exonerated him, I don’t think Sara would take him back. She may be loyal, but she’s not stupid. She knows when to give up.” And hopefully when to look somewhere else…at someone else.
“And you’re willing to swear in court that you were on the phone talking to her at two o’clock this morning?”
Will nodded. “Absolutely. I was in my car and I initiated the call. You can subpoena the phone records to support my statement.”
“We’ll do that.” Trainor glanced out the door and Will followed his gaze. Together, they observed Sara as she was talking on the phone. They could hear enough of her conversation to realize she was in mid-cancellation.
“Terribly sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Howard. Er, Ms. Howard. I understand…. Yes…But could we call you back Monday and reschedule it then…? Yes…Ma’am, there’s nothing I can do between now and then…. No…Thank you.”
She wiped a stray strand of hair from her face, consulted the appointment book and started punching in the next number.
“May I speak to Mr. Barnes?”
Trainor gave her a once-over that made the hairs on the back of Will’s neck bristle. “So you say you gave her everything you got? The total charm package? And she still didn’t tumble?”
Will nodded.
Trainor conducted one more slow survey of her attributes, then released a short bark of laughter. “Definitely your loss. If I’d been you, I think I would have tried harder.” He turned back to Will and thumbed toward the desk. “You know the drill.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on…I know what you were doing. You sent the lady out to stall me while you searched the office. Or maybe his computer.” He reached over and placed a hand on the printer. “It’s still warm. Show me what you found.”
“Nothing.”
“Come, now…you don’t expect me to believe that, do you? Spread ’em.”
“You’re kidding. You want to pat me down?”
“I’d just as soon not have to go through official channels. Chalk it up to professional courtesy.”
Will sighed, then bent over to assume the frisk position. Halfway through the search procedure, he looked over and saw Sara staring aghast at the spectacle. He shot her a reassuring wink.
“The printer is warm because it automatically comes on when you turn on the computer.”
“And why did you turn on the computer?”
“We didn’t. It was on when we came in. Ask the secretary. She probably switches everything on first thing in the morning.”
“But you thoughtfully turned it off while you were eavesdropping?”
Will shrugged. “It was loud and I wanted to hear everything you said.”
Trainor searched thoroughly but came up with no papers, no computer disks to show for his efforts. He motioned for Will to straighten. “Thanks. That saved both of us a lot of time.” He wagged a finger in Will’s face. “Listen, if Bergeron surfaces, I want to be the first to know about it, okay? No rent-a-cop heroics, no P.I. grandstanding. Got it?”
Will nodded. “Understood.”
“Now let’s go see if the ladies are through.”
As they walked into the reception area, Sara had just hung up the phone. “I canceled the last appointment for today.”
Joanie sniffed, then straightened in her seat. “I’m okay now.” She turned toward Trainor. “What should I do about the appointments for Monday?”
The policeman shrugged. “I’d hold off. This could all be resolved over the weekend.”
Joanie brightened. “Really?”
Will glanced up and his gaze locked with Sara’s hooded one. It was evident that neither of them thought that Raymond would arrive in the office on Monday morning, ready to conduct business as usual. But once that tacit agreement passed between them, she still held his gaze. In it, he read a full spectrum of emotions: fear, disappointment, confusion…
Will turned away first, knowing the intensity of their shared looks could become a red flag in Trainor’s book. If the man suspected collusion, their alibis would be useless. Will turned to the secretary. “I assume Raymond has a lawyer, so you’d better call him and get him here as soon as possible. There are a slew of confidentiality elements that need to be addressed before they can search the office.”
Joanie nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He faced Trainor. “You know how to get a hold of me.”
The policeman nodded. “And you, Ms. Hardaway?”
She tightened her lips in momentary indecision, then her gaze hardened. She nodded toward Will. “I’ll be with him. Looking for Raymond.”
Chapter Nine
“I’ll be with him’?” Will repeated after hitting the Lobby button with the heel of his hand. The elevator doors glided closed, isolating them from the curious who had begun to congregate in the hallway again.
Sara crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. “What was I supposed to say? ’I’ll be sitting at home and wringing my hands?’ You’re going to look for Raymond, aren’t you?”
Will nodded. “Damn straight, I am. He killed Celia. I’m going to get the bastard.”
“Then I’m going with you.” Will started to protest but Sara gest
ured for him to stop. “You think he’s guilty. I think he’s innocent The only way we’re going to learn the truth is to find him. And it makes a lot of sense to work together. I know Raymond. I know his habits, his tastes, where he goes when he’s mad, where he goes when he’s sad—”
“Where he goes when he has something to hide?”
The elevator lurched slightly and the doors slid open to the well-appointed foyer. Sara stepped out, shot Will an almost-venomous look, then marched toward the door without waiting for him.
He followed her across the marble floor, his footfalls reverberating like gunshots. Conscious of the echo, he lowered his voice even though there was nobody visible in the lobby. “You act as if he’s completely incapable of killing someone. The Blackwater Barracuda—lacking the killer instinct? I don’t think so.”
“That’s in the courtroom. Outside the courtroom—”
“Outside the courtroom, he’s no different. He doesn’t stop being a ruthless, lying son of a bitch just because he closes his briefcase and hangs up his jacket You can’t just turn it off like that.”
“He can’t?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or you couldn’t?”
Will jammed his hands into his pockets and turned away. She was too damn perceptive for her own good. Memories laced with old accusations floated to the front of his mind. He released a deep sigh in hopes of clearing away the cobwebs of past guilts. “It’s an occupational hazard I decided I didn’t want to put up with. I’ve watched a lot of attorneys suffer through the same problem—people pay you good money to be a bastard in court and it becomes hard to stop once the day is over. It eats into your life, destroys your relationships….”
His voice trailed off as he remembered one-too-many Friday nights that blended into Monday mornings. When you made your career your entire existence, losing a case felt like losing a piece of your life and that turned out to be a mighty stiff price to pay for people who were essentially strangers.
