Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series)

by Avery Duff

  The first two reports, wherever they were, would help him a little, but he wondered again: was he going to need a criminal lawyer?

  “Oh, Worth. Your knife?” DeGrasso asked now. “The one with your prints on it and no one else’s?”

  Your knife? That item tightened Robert’s chest. Only his prints on Jack’s knife? Jack’s prints must’ve smudged during their struggle for it.

  Robert wanted to ask: “The knife I stabbed myself in the leg with? That knife?”

  But he cooled it instead.

  DeGrasso again, and he was asking, “What was it drove you to follow her all the way up here from LA? Then you trespass Seahorse, break in her room to pocket her car keys and their passports. Because of this other man, right, this Pierce? The gentleman your girl was shacked up with. The one you tried to kill, correct?”

  Robert knew better than to answer. Look what happened to Jack when he committed to his version of the truth too soon.

  “I got all day,” DeGrasso said, “and tomorrow after that. The dead girl, she was afraid of you if that’s any consolation. Checked in, paid cash, even used an alias. Must’ve had a feeling you were coming after her. A premonition, you think, or was she responding to an actual threat you made down in LA?”

  It was hard for Robert to stay quiet, but the truth was incredible. As in, not believable. He had to admit, his explanation would sound contrived, even to him.

  DeGrasso still hadn’t asked him about a firearm. The revolver. Lying somewhere on the Pacific Ocean’s bottom, Robert was hoping.

  DeGrasso said, “Still not hearing what went down after you broke in her cabin. Where did you and Pierce start fighting over the girl? Was it before or after you pocketed her car keys and passport?”

  When Robert didn’t answer, DeGrasso did it for him. “I hear you. Musta been after, huh? After you took her keys and made sure she couldn’t drive away.”

  Robert was fighting every accused’s urge to defend himself—innocent or guilty—but knew it was a bad idea. Especially with residual codeine and fierce antibiotics raging in his bloodstream.

  They were still staring at each other when DeGrasso’s phone rang. DeGrasso picked it up and said, “DeGrasso, yeah?” He kept his eye on Robert and kept listening to his caller, too. Then he looked away from Robert and said, “Oh,” to the caller.

  Right then, his fax machine started up. He turned his back on Robert and grabbed the incoming faxes, reading them as they rolled in.

  A couple minutes later, somebody dropped the Leslie DeRider preliminary autopsy in DeGrasso’s basket. After DeGrasso finished reading that and the faxes, the room temperature cooled way down. Five minutes after that, DeGrasso uncuffed Robert.

  DeGrasso even let Robert use his phone. So he called Erik’s cell and caught him on the fourth ring. It didn’t take Robert long to find out part of why the cuffs came off: Stanley started talking down in Venice. Turned out, he’d left paint prints on a two-by-four at the Peninsula construction site. Those prints, that’s what cooked Stanley. So much for his allergies. Given that Stanley repeatedly denied ever being on the Peninsula, he was done, so he rolled over on his high school pal.

  “Rolled over on Pierce late last night,” Erik said. “All about how Pierce hired him to break in to your place, steal a file, and how it went bad when you two showed up.”

  Turned out, Stanley said, the filing-cabinet key was supposed to be taped behind Robert’s cabinet. From the cameras he’d planted inside Unit 1, Stanley knew the hiding place and figured the key would still be there.

  Behind the cabinet—not on my key ring, Robert was thinking.

  Erik said, “Sorry about the mix-up on where I sent the faxes.” He explained that Sedgwick worked out of the Aptos substation, and Erik had faxed the police reports there, not to downtown Santa Cruz.

  “Every one of your police reports,” Erik added. “Faxed ’em at 4:07 a.m.”

  Good friend that he was, a half hour ago Erik also double-checked with Sedgwick, who was taking his sweet time sending the reports downtown. So Erik told him that Robert Worth was a one-man legal wrecking crew who’d never lost a case in court.

  “Never lost one, did you?” Erik asked Robert.

  “Perfect record,” Robert said.

  Looked to Robert like Sedgwick just phoned in Erik’s wrecking-crew fiction to DeGrasso, who just became Robert’s new best friend.

  “So you’ll know,” Erik said, “I faxed Sedgwick all four reports. Every single one that you signed.”

  All four signed reports? “Uh-huh,” Robert said.

  That meant Erik had forged Robert’s signature on the last two.

  “That cop I told you about?” Erik said. “The one I heard about who Pierce ruined downtown? Maybe I knew that cop better than I let on. Maybe we graduated same year from the Academy.”

  Robert could hear Erik’s kids crying in the background and Erik talking them off the ledge at SeaWorld. While Robert waited, he recalled Jack tossing around that cliché: what goes around comes around.

  He decided there was comes-around justice buried somewhere among Erik’s cop friend and the last two unsigned police reports, but he was too worn down to sort through it.

  Erik came back on the line.

  Robert said, “Know what all this means, don’t you? Free legal services for life.” Before Erik could turn down the offer, Robert hung up.

  “Coffee?”

  It was DeGrasso asking, making his face create a smile.

  “Yeah, and I want copies of all those faxes.”

  “Get ’em from Venice, all right. Cream?” DeGrasso asked.

  “And sugar.” He handed DeGrasso his property voucher. “And all my possessions from when you took me into custody.”

  DeGrasso handed the voucher to another cop, told him to get Robert’s property envelope.

  Robert asked, “Jack Pierce, what’s his status?”

  “I’m not free to discuss that,” DeGrasso said. Before Robert could suggest why he damn well better, DeGrasso tossed the autopsy report in front of Robert.

  “Better check on that coffee,” said DeGrasso, splitting as he said it.

  “And a bear claw,” Robert called out.

  Then he eyed the autopsy report. Short and sweet, it filled more gaps in what he already knew. Like Leslie’s scratch marks on Jack’s neck and Leslie’s bruised neck from Jack trying to strangle her in the ocean. She must’ve put up quite a fight because he wound up slicing open her throat instead. One of her fingernails even broke off in the struggle and turned up inside Jack’s wetsuit. Doctors found it when they cut him out of the wetsuit at the hospital.

  As far as Robert’s evolving story went? His prints were on the knife, sure. But wasn’t he actually holding a murderer for police—holding him at gunpoint, but who needed to know that?—when the murderer attacked him with the knife? Attacked Robert with the same knife Jack used on Leslie minutes earlier.

  And now, according to Robert’s just-faxed police reports, this murderer had hired a man who almost killed Robert down in LA. And Robert was pursuing that very murderer and his girlfriend to stop them from leaving the country—not because he was a jealous lover.

  Putting all that together with Leslie’s broken fingernail inside Pierce’s wetsuit? There went DeGrasso’s theory of the case, and Robert felt damn near bulletproof in Santa Cruz.

  Across the room, DeGrasso huddled by a large Palladian window with a few other cops. All of them were looking outside. A red Ferrari California had parked in front, top down, and Robert could just make out Gia Marquez in oversize shades kicked back behind its wheel.

  His pulse quickened. Stay focused, he told himself.

  He sorted through Jack’s game plan. Leslie, aka Ms. Jones, would be nothing more than a drowned Jane Doe if she’d ever been found. Jack would ditch her car in San Francisco, remove the plates, and leave the keys inside. In the Tenderloin, a car like that disappears fast. After that, it’s a short cab ride to San Francisco International,
and eighteen hours later, hello, Hong Kong. What Jack couldn’t imagine: that Robert would learn enough to put his head together with Gia’s and cut him off in Capitola.

  DeGrasso set down Robert’s coffee along with an envelope: keys, wallet, and his iPhone. Jack’s flash drive was not in the mix. Neither was the bear claw.

  He asked DeGrasso, “Pierce, is he dead?”

  “In a coma, I hear. Paralyzed from the neck down.”

  Robert stood, pocketed his belongings. He was stiff and sore, tired and angry, and he started to gear up for taking back the flash drive he’d lifted from Jack’s briefcase.

  “Pierce ever comes out of it, he stands trial for murder,” DeGrasso said. “Me? I’d rather be dead. Tell me, why’d he have it in for you? What was this financial harm you mentioned in that last police report?”

  “He ever comes out of it, ask him.”

  As they started for the door, DeGrasso said, “Sorry about those cuffs, they may leave a bruise.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Then Robert stopped. “Where’s the flash drive?” he asked.

  “Oh, right,” DeGrasso said back. Over at his desk, he fished an evidence bag from the drawer. The flash drive was inside it.

  “This one?” DeGrasso asked.

  “So, what you’ll want to do now, Detective, is return that to my possession, which is where it was when you brought me in.” Careful not to say he owned it. Not wanting to lie to police during an investigation.

  “Not till I have a chance to look at it,” DeGrasso countered.

  “You can’t. We both know it’s encrypted because you already tried to look. So I’m asking—are you gonna make me go to court again to take it back?”

  “To court again?”

  “Again. If you keep going like you’re going, I’ll already be in court suing you for false imprisonment.”

  “Good luck with—”

  “At 4:07 a.m., Venice PD sent the faxes to Sedgwick at Aptos. That means they were received by Santa Cruz County hours ago.”

  “You saw what happened. I didn’t get ’em till now.”

  “Not my problem. Santa Cruz County had constructive possession since 4:07. From the first time I entered my cell, I asked about Sedgwick. I continued to do so, but nobody knew anything about him until you picked up his report just now. I was held for hours after I first asked. Even though I had a painful, throbbing knife wound—it could be MRSA-infected—you cuffed me to a chair, grilled me like a murderer, and did it with all the answers available. I’ll camp out here, DeGrasso, me and my lovely assistant outside, and we’ll stay here and turn your life inside out.”

  “She’s your assistant?” That was all DeGrasso could muster, handing over the drive.

  “One of them.” It was a lie, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “That your Ferrari?”

  “Hers. We’re very good at what we do. One more thing, Detective. I was never arrested, right? If you want my help, and you will want it, keep my name out of the newspaper.”

  “Why would I—”

  “Couple of things you don’t know,” Robert said.

  He told DeGrasso how both passports were in Jack’s briefcase, but the airline-ticket folder, also in Jack’s possession, held only one ticket.

  “Check with Singapore Air,” Robert said. “You’re going to learn Pierce never bought her a ticket, that he always planned to kill her.”

  DeGrasso liked it: two passports but no ticket for the girl. That went to Pierce’s premeditation, and he said, “Once he ditched her passport and her ID, there’s no nexus between him and Ms. Jones. Know this Pierce pretty well, huh?’

  Robert thought about it. “Not really. Nobody knows him. But they say he used to be a decent lawyer.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Gia watched Robert hobble out of the station onto Water Street. Saw his bum leg and started to get out of the Ferrari to give him a hand.

  “Stay in the car,” he said. “They’re watching and you’re my assistant.”

  “What’s it pay?”

  “Must pay pretty good, look what you’re driving.”

  He opened his door, easing into the seat.

  “A rental,” she said. “Brought your laptop like you asked, and I made PB and Js.”

  “You were sure I’d get out?” he asked.

  “You’re a sure thing,” she told him. Then she asked, “When you called me from the pay phone, you told me I’m the only one you trust. That right?”

  As he was saying “Yes,” that unmistakable, wailing Ferrari engine drowned out his voice. She booked down Water and turned the first corner, pulling tight to the curb right after. She reached over and hugged him. He slipped his arms around her, too, best he could with his banged-up body.

  “Glad you’re in one piece,” she said.

  He drank in the sweet smell of her. “Thanks for showing up.”

  She squeezed him a little harder. He heard her sniffle against his shoulder and pulled away, then slipped off her shades and looked into her dark eyes. They glistened with tears.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just looking,” he told her.

  Something about her was missing, misplaced, or diminished. Now she seemed more like a girl to him, and he wondered for the first time: What was it like for her, being in love with Jack Pierce for all those years? Handsome, a powerful attorney, man about town, cruel and manipulative and all the rest. That cool attitude of hers must have helped keep the world at bay. Or maybe she used it to keep some distance from herself. Hard to know, but either way, a layer had peeled away from her, and he bet with time, more layers would dissolve. Not all of them, he hoped. If that happened, she wouldn’t be Gia Marquez anymore.

  “Who messed up worse?” she finally asked. “You or me?”

  Jack or Alison, she meant. “Me worse,” he said. “You longer.”

  A few minutes later, she parked in front of a drugstore to buy supplies. Before she went inside, she handed his laptop to him.

  “I wasn’t wrong about everything,” she said. “Our old friend was hanging on.”

  She left him with a computer screen headline:

  LIONEL BRIGHTWELL, DEAD AT 89

  “Damn,” he said, and clicked the link: Dorothy in the front passenger seat of the Maybach as it rolled out of the estate’s front gate. The driver wasn’t visible, but Robert’s best guess: Philip Fanelli was behind the wheel. Lionel had lasted less than twenty-four hours after Dorothy’s divorce, slipping away quietly in his sleep, they were saying in the report. Maybe Lionel knew she was with Philip now and decided his little girl was in good hands with the wolf gone from his door.

  When Gia got back in the car with her buys, he was still staring at the screen.

  “Amazing, huh?” she asked.

  “I liked Lionel. He never made big mistakes.” Then he held up the flash drive. “We need to get a room.”

  “Think I’m that easy?”

  With that, they had their first good laugh of the day.

  A blinking panel on Robert’s laptop screen: PASSWORD? Behind the request: the logo of Bank of Hong Kong. That flash drive was jacked into his external port.

  They’d been at Capitola’s West Cliff Inn more than an hour now. Robert sat at a desk in a white motel robe. Reluctantly, he’d opened an online account at his own bank and chosen his first-ever banking password: *-M-a-y-o-Z-a-c-k-*

  Outside, random gulls squawked and scavenged Monterey Bay, and Gia lazed in a deck chair, fully clothed. He’d asked her to think about the partial password he’d written down for her on hotel stationery.

  He called to her, “C’mon, do you know his password or not?”

  “Let me tell you about me,” she said, getting up and easing inside.

  “Not now, please?”

  “Here goes,” she said, sitting in his lap. Her weight hurt him, but he manned up as she told him: “Dad was Hispanic, Mom was Chinese, and they met at Mann’s Theater in LA. No, not Mann’s Chinese, Mann’s Westwood, and th
ey fell in love, got married, and had one child. A girl, and they named me Jia Temple. Jia became Gia so I’d fit in better, and no, Temple wasn’t because of Chinese Buddhism. I was named after Shirley Temple. Mom met her once working the counter at the Beverly Hills Hotel coffee shop. Dad, he was a gardener—they’d call him a landscaper today—but he was a gardener. Together, they saved and scraped up enough money to buy a house on a substandard lot in Brentwood, hoping their daughter would attend UCLA on scholarship. Whoops, their daughter did not. When I was sixteen, they died on the first vacation they ever took. Mexican police called what their car hit was a pothole, but back here, we’d call it a washed-out road.”

  She showed him a photograph on her iPhone: two gravestones in a Spanish-style church graveyard.

  He looked at her. “Miss them?”

  “Sure, but it’s been so long now. They were such good people. Solid, wonderful people, but me? Young, dumb, living in that house, pretty much on my own? I ran into Jack one night at the Viper Room when that was a big deal, kind of. Knew him from work but nothing more than that. So, anyway,” she said, “Jack and I hit it off for a long time, until we didn’t hit it off anymore. I tried getting back at him, but it didn’t work out, then I tried pretending it wasn’t over when it was. Oh, yeah. I like girls occasionally—but I love men. I think you could say I’m very loyal. Jia, it turns out, means “loyal” in Mandarin.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” She smiled. “But I’m loyal to a fault. Questions?”

  “Hundreds,” he said. “But look, do you know Pierce’s password or not?”

  She showed him what he’d already written down: L@L@918-----------L@L@.

  “How many blank spaces do you remember before you got knocked out?” she asked.

  Twelve or thirteen, like I told you. So . . .”

  “I don’t know it exactly. But I know what it is.”

  He closed his eyes and exhaled.

  “Look, Mr. Worth, I’ve known a few farm boys, guys from money, and way too many lawyers, but you? No Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, no direct deposit. I Googled your family, but the Worths are extremely private. We both know you’re no Boy Scout, but I don’t know who you are. So if I’m right about this password, we’re driving over the mountain to Gilroy, and you’re going to show me who you are. No kidding around, you feel me, homey?”