The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series

by Leigh James

I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said, as calmly as I could muster, “I know I’m asking a lot. I know this is a lot of pressure. But if we can do this, we can beat them, Alexa. And I’ll make sure that Walker buys you a whole bunch of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks, or whatever the hell it is you like, and makes sure he buys your father a senate seat.”

  “I can’t do this just for the luggage or the senate seat,” she huffed, “I have to do it for Mandy.”

  “That’s right,” I said, wincing at the thought of my poor friend. “I know how hard it is for you to be selfless — and I’m just being honest, I’m not saying that to be mean — but you’re right, you have to think about the big picture. Mandy is dead because of David Proctor and Norris Phaland. Get on that computer and get what you can. Today. Please,” I begged. “You are the best schemer and plotter I know. You can do this!”

  Alexa sighed and continued to click down the sidewalk. “I’ll figure it out,” she said, and sounded weary. “But this is for Mandy, not for you. I’d say it was for Walker if I thought he cared about me.”

  “He doesn’t,” I said, probably too quickly.

  “Duh,” said Alexa. “You don’t have to be so smug about it.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, Walker and I started printing out all of the Advent documents, color coding them, highlighting them, and assembling stacks of paper around the living room.

  “This is a lot of stuff,” Walker said.

  “Welcome to Discovery,” I said and shrugged. “You have to love paperwork to be a lawyer.” I added another color-coded tab to the stack of papers I was working on.

  Walker gave me an indulgent grin. “I think you just like the fancy tabs,” he said.

  I looked up at him and smiled. “They really are the best part,” I said. “They help you find exactly what you’re looking for. You’re always prepared.”

  Walker shook his head, laughing at me, and went back to the computer. “I thought I was a nerd,” he said.

  “You’re the opposite of a nerd,” I said, “no matter how much time you spent in your parent’s basement, inventing things. You went on to date Minky Lucca. She doesn’t date nerds.”

  “Minky Lucca’s a nerd,” Walker said and shrugged.

  “Minky Lucca is a pretty dumb name,” I said, agreeably.

  Just then there was a knock on the door: I yelped, jumped sky high, and knocked over the stack of papers I’d been carefully collating.

  “It’s just our errand boy. Teddy, from the hardware store downtown,” Walker said. “Relax.”

  He opened the door a crack to confirm and then ushered in Teddy. I recognized him as the guy who’d found the boat for Walker.

  “Teddy,” Walker said, clapping him on the shoulder, “thanks for coming by.”

  “No problem, Mr. White,” Teddy said. He was young, early twenties, but he was comfortable with himself, confident; he looked Walker in the eye when he spoke to him and turned and said a respectful hello to me. He was very tan, the kind of tan that you could tell was year-round, and had on flip-flops, shorts and a collared shirt, sunglasses perched on top of his head. He had the easy-going nature of someone who’d spent a lot of his life outdoors, surrounded by friends and family, probably fishing. People in Boston weren’t like that. We were pasty and usually had our arms crossed against our chests, to keep out the cold and ward off people from being too friendly.

  “What can I do for you?” Teddy asked.

  “I need you to run errands for us,” Walker said. “We can’t go out in public right now. I don’t want to go into details with you, because we’re in some trouble and I don’t want the trouble to come down on you. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir,” Teddy said.

  “All I want you to do is buy groceries for us, maybe run some other errands and take care of the boat. Clean it, check the systems, and make sure that it’s always ready to go in case we need it. If anybody around here asks, you tell them I pay you to take care of it. Nothing else. Okay?” Walker asked, and Teddy nodded. “I’m gonna pay you a lot, to make this worth your while — but you have to be careful. Mrs. White thought she saw somebody following her home from off-island earlier this morning. These people are dangerous. Keep your eyes open. If anybody asks you any questions, tell them we’re your grandparents and we’re not well. That’s why you’re in and out of here. And then run.

  “If you see anything, call us on that number I gave you, okay?” Walker asked, and Teddy nodded.

  “The car I thought was following me was a silver sedan,” I said. “Be careful. If you see anybody following you down here, just go out to the boat. Don’t come up here, okay?”

  Teddy nodded at me.

  “Teddy, are you twenty-one?” Walker asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Teddy said, again.

  “Great,” Walker said, and rubbed his face with his hands. His rugged handsomeness wasn’t marred by the exhaustion on his face, but I still felt sorry for him. “Can you stop at the Liquor Store, too? I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a drink by this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” Teddy said, and smiled at us.

  “Nice kid,” I said, watching him go out to his open-top jeep. “Couldn’t you have found somebody not that nice — you know, like Lester Max? I don’t want anything to happen to Teddy.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Walker said. “He’s slicker than he seems. He hard-balled me in the negotiation for that boat.”

  “Hmm…” I said, heading back to my stacks of papers. “Maybe you can hire him for something legitimate, when this is all done.”

  Walker watched Teddy drive away. “Not a bad idea, Nic. Not a bad idea at all.”

  * * *

  Things seemed to change that afternoon. The piles were getting bigger in the living room; Teddy had brought back our groceries and confirmed that he had not been followed; and our various contacts called in on a regular basis, giving us updates.

  I was starting to feel less like I was trapped, a fugitive, and more like I was at the helm of a command center, where the pieces we had set in motion were finally gaining traction.

  Mimi called me on my TracFone at seven, on her way home from work. “I spoke to both parties,” she said, and I could tell that she was being careful again, making this sound like a business call, not using my name or theirs, which I appreciated the hell out of. “They’re both good. They were happy to be updated. Both of them said — in their own way — that they knew everything was going to work out okay. And that they were willing to do whatever it takes to get things settled.”

  “It should be settled, soon,” I said. “You don’t have to contact them again. I just wanted to let them know something, because they’d been waiting for a while. But the details of the settlement are confidential, for now. I can only disclose them when everything’s been finalized.” I looked out the window at the water below; the tide was going out, being pulled towards the half-moon that had just appeared in the sky. “We’re not entirely sure what the final outcome is going to be — we just want to make it as fair as possible.”

  “Good,” Mimi said. “People have to know — you play, you pay. No matter who you are.”

  “Not everybody wants to hear it,” I said, and she laughed.

  “Oh, I bet,” she said, “I bet.”

  * * *

  Walker was now stooped over the computer, scrolling through documents that April and Tammy had uploaded to the server. “I’m gonna need reading glasses by the end of this,” he’d moaned earlier, which reminded me that I was going to need new contacts, soon. All I had left was the pair I’d worn when we’d run away. My glasses were long gone. I hoped they were resting in peace; they’d seen me through many a file, right up to the one that had brought me here.

  Levi called next. He was in the apartment with Tammy. Alexa wasn’t back yet.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him.

  “Awesome,” Levi said, unexpectedly. “Tammy is the nicest person ever.
She’s making me lasagna. Do you know the last time I had lasagna?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, simultaneously exasperated and amused.

  “A long time,” he said.

  “You better watch it, Levi — you might just get used to civilization again. You might want back on the grid,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure the rest of the grid isn’t this nice,” Levi said. “Here, I’ll put Tammy on.”

  “Hi, honey,” Tammy said when she got on the phone. She sounded positively giddy.

  “Levi and you seem to be getting along awfully well,” I said, chiding her.

  “Oh, honey — that’s not why I’m so happy. Although it is nice to have a man around, let me tell you.” She paused for a second and I pictured her fluffing her bangs and inspecting her impeccably lacquered nails. “Nope, I’m happy because we’re finally gonna get these guys. Alexa called me a little while ago. She said she finally got on Linda’s computer and was coming home with the files. I was gonna have Levi go out in a minute and make sure she got back okay.”

  “Awesome!” I said. “I knew she could do it!”

  “You can’t be a lying backstabber your whole life and not have some skills to show for it,” Tammy said, jovially. “So I’ll be uploading all of that when she gets home, and I’ll make the hard copies.”

  “Tammy, thank you so much,” I said, beaming. “I can’t believe we’re so close.”

  Chapter 23

  But other things were close, too. The silver sedan finally pulled down our road early the next morning, right at daybreak. I hadn’t gone to bed yet. Tammy had uploaded the files and I’d read through them all, seeing how the client funds had been deposited into our firm’s trust account. A few entries later, right around the time of the explosion, there was a deposit coded with the Advent file name.

  It was for five million dollars.

  I hadn’t spoken to Alexa yet; I was curious to know how she’d finally pulled it off.

  The sky was just getting lighter when I heard the car coming down the road. I woke Walker and we took turns watching through the binoculars as it pulled down the drive, into the parking lot, and circled it. It came to a stop near the dock and sat there for a while, idling.

  I wondered if Teddy was still okay, and how the person driving the car knew we were here. After they drove away I made Walker some coffee and he grabbed his phone.

  “Louise,” he said. She must have answered on the first ring. “Did you have any visitors recently?” His brow furrowed for a minute as he stalked around the living room; even though I was bleary from pulling an all-nighter and staring at a computer screen for ten hours straight, I still admired the way his muscly thighs looked in his boxer shorts. Who knew boxer shorts could be so sexy? I wondered, senselessly, and I felt the old, familiar urge to slap myself across the face.

  Walker nodded to me as he continued to talk to Louise. I caught snippets of what they were saying. How many were there? What sort of questions did he ask? What time did he leave?

  “Thanks Louise,” Walker said. “Call me if there’s any follow-up. And be careful.”

  He hung up and came over to me, dark circles like bruises forming underneath his eyes. He’d only gone to bed a few hours ago, when I’d assured him that I’d found everything we needed to implicate the Proctor firm in a conspiracy, at the least. It wasn’t what I ultimately wanted — which was to tie them directly to the murders, and to show that they had actual knowledge that the case against Walker was fraudulent — but I was relying on Lester Max for those pieces.

  “Louise sends her regards,” he said, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me.

  “What else did she say?” I asked.

  “She said there was one man who came in the night before last. Mid-to-late fifties, with glasses, but she didn’t have any other information. He didn’t even ask about us, he just asked her about room rates but didn’t rent anything. She thought he was suspicious, but didn’t want to risk the call because, as she said, South Beach gets lots of weirdoes and she’d be calling us every other day.”

  “And?” I asked. I raised my eyebrows and looked up at him, my heart thudding.

  “And that was it,” he said. “She said she went by the Blue Securities office later, and there was no sign of life — no sign that it had been broken into, or used, or anything. It was just empty. Like she’d left it.”

  “So who was it?” I asked.

  “Pick from one of the many boxes of enemies we have,” Walker said. “You’re bound to be right eventually.”

  We looked at each other for a beat, and then looked out at the water. It was another overcast day. The sky looked like it was ready to burst.

  “You better call Teddy,” I said. “Make sure he’s okay. Tell him we’ll just order takeout for the next few days.”

  * * *

  I was restless, pacing. I tried to call Alexa again, a little while later.

  “She’s in the shower. I’ll have her call you in a minute,” Tammy said, reassuring me.

  I called April and Lester Max next. “He’s still here,” April said. She didn’t sound as disgruntled as I’d expected. “Let me get him.”

  “Is he treating you okay?” I asked, curious, as I heard her move through the apartment.

  “He’s almost acting like a regular human being. With manners,” she said. “He must want something.”

  “I’m pretty sure you know what that something is,” I said.

  “Well, he might need to slip me some roofies in order for me to give it to him,” April sniffed. “Still, it makes him being here more bearable.”

  “If he gets unbearable, please let me know. I’d be happy to send over some help,” I said.

  She handed the phone to him. “Lester,” I said, “tell me everything.”

  “I’m fine, Nicole, thanks for asking,” he said, in a fake-nice voice.

  “No really — I don’t care,” I said, slapping my hand to my forehead in frustration. “I need news. We’ve got company down here. We’re officially out of time.”

  “Well, I have a meeting with David and Norris this afternoon at my office,” Lester said. It sounded like he had me on speaker-phone now; I pictured him knotting his tie and smoothing it, his copper-penny face looking appreciatively back at himself in the mirror.

  “I’m going to go back through the credit card charges with them. I’ll tell them that one of our government connections was nervous about it, and that we need to make sure the trail back to us is clear. I’ll also try to put those tracking devices on their computers. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull that off, though. Any ideas?”

  “Bring April with you,” I said. “Have her set the room up for you, get everyone coffee…maybe she can either distract them, or do it herself.” I sighed. “Tell her to wear something low-cut that shows off her assets.”

  “I heard that,” April called from across the room. “He’s got you on speakerphone.”

  “I know — I meant it as a compliment,” I said. “Lester, don’t forget to bring your recorder. But both of you: call me afterwards with details. I’m going to draft affidavits for you both about the meeting, and what you know. I’ll email them to you with instructions, about getting them notarized and where to send them.

  “We need to wrap this up,” I said, as I watched Walker stare out the window, his jaw clenched. “We’ve officially run out of road.”

  * * *

  “Haven’t I done enough?” Alexa wailed, ten minutes later. I was on speakerphone again; our voices echoed off of the bathrooms walls in the high-end, high-security apartment where Alexa was currently applying her makeup.

  “You have,” I said. “You did exactly what I needed. But now I need another favor.”

  “You’ve seriously worn out your welcome,” Alexa said.

  “I need you to organize a surprise party. For Norris Phaland. And I need you to invite some government officials.”

  Alexa didn’t say anything for a moment.
Then she laughed.

  “Hello, God?” she said. “It’s me, Alexa Blake. Can you tell me what you’ve done with Nicole Reynolds? You know that goody-goody lawyer I used to work with? Because I’m talking to someone who claims to be her. But she’s gone totally off the reservation.”

  Alexa chuckled to herself again and I sighed. “Can you just be serious?” I asked. “I mean it. I need to get them all in the same place at the same time. For the big reveal.”

  Now it was her turn to sigh. “When,” she said, flatly.

  “Later this week. Friday.”

  “You’re going to be ready to go by then?” she asked, and I could almost hear her skeptically raising a perfectly-waxed brow.

  “We’ll have to be,” I said, standing up and looking out the window. The rain was pelting down, making circles on top of the water. I walked to the other side of the apartment and looked out: no sign of the sedan. The boats sat, docked and rocking, as the storm let loose.

  I wondered what the trip would be like to the Bahamas on that boat, in the middle of hurricane season. Then I briefly wondered if we would even make it that far.

  “You and Lester Max have gotten us almost everything that we need,” I said. Almost. “And I’m pretty sure that somebody found us down here. So we’re trapped — we can’t move again. We have papers and computers all over the place. We’re past the point of being able to pack up and go.”

  “Who’s down there?” Alexa asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “It could be any number of people who would be better off if we were dead.”

  “Well, don’t get dead,” Alexa said. “I’m expecting a large reward when you and Walker are cleared of all charges. Along with that luggage collection.”

  “You got it,” I said. And then I remembered, right before I hung up: “How did you get Linda away from her desk, anyway?”

  “Well, I went and bought David Proctor his favorite turkey sandwich, on a baguette, from his favorite deli. And I bought him a Herald. He asked me why, and I told him it was because I was trying to suck up to him,” she said. “He was reading the sports section while I hacked her computer.”