Tall, Dark...And Framed?

by Cathleen Galitz

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” he told her, wishing there was some way to make her believe him.

  “Be honest, Seb, isn’t that why you put your entire legal team at my disposal?”

  “No, it isn’t. I simply thought you could use the help. Face it, even Superwoman couldn’t be expected to handle a case of this magnitude all by herself.”

  Susan was in no mood to listen to logic. Her heart was telling her that something was mightily wrong, and she intended to get to the bottom of it without further ado. She put her hands on her hips as he continued speaking.

  “All I can tell you is that a man is only as good as his word. If I were to violate the principles I solemnly swore to uphold, I wouldn’t be fit for you to live with—or to live with myself, for that matter.”

  Susan was clearly nettled. “Whatever you’re talking about sounds an awful lot like the kind of top-secret club my brothers formed in our backyard when they were twelve. I ripped up that Boys Only sign they posted on my playhouse way back then, and I’ll have you know I won’t stand for it now.”

  Angry at being pushed into a corner, Seb went on the offensive. Again Susan was reminded of the caged panther he had resembled, pacing back and forth in front of her office desk, the very first time they met.

  “You’re right about one thing and one thing only,” he told her, his voice deepening to a growl. “This is about trust. If I say I’m innocent, that should be good enough for someone who claims to love me. As far as I’m concerned, true love shouldn’t have to be substantiated by legal briefs, depositions or written explanations in triplicate. My word should damn well be enough, Susan.”

  “If you truly love me, you could tell me where you were and what you were doing that night. Period.”

  Not one to ever issue rash ultimatums, Susan trembled at the magnitude of that statement. She was as keenly aware that this was a turning point in their relationship as she was of the sudden drop in temperature. Outside the big picture window where Sebastian stood with arms crossed over his chest, clouds shaped like rain buckets blew in, and a gust of wind scattered a profusion of apple blossoms across the sky. The sight brought to mind flower girls dropping pink petals along the aisle of the wedding Susan had secretly hoped for but now realized was never meant to be.

  “Obviously we’ve reached a stalemate,” Seb said.

  As much as Susan admired him for refusing to back down under pressure, she could not forgive him for letting them both down because of a fool’s code of honor. Was there no way to make him see the cost of such stubborn male pride?

  “You can call it checkmate if you want and declare yourself the winner, for all I care.”

  Susan’s voice cracked right down the middle—like her heart. Imagining its blood-red fragments fluttering among the pale petals surrealistically suspended in the space that was to separate them forever, she was determined to have the last word.

  “If you’re going to take that attitude, you’ll have to find yourself another lawyer. I quit.”

  Ten

  It was raining when Susan moved out of the Wescott mansion. The pattering of drops on the roof echoed the beat of her aching heart and mirrored the tears she saw welling up in Rosa’s kind brown eyes. Saying goodbye to that gentle woman was harder than she could have imagined. In the short time Susan had lived there, they had become close.

  “I’m going to miss your mothering,” she said, giving the Spanish woman a big hug.

  Rosa smelled of pungent spices and talcum powder. Strong, plump arms encircled Susan and held her tight. It was with regret that Rosa finally released her. She had made no secret of hoping to hold one of Susan and Sebastian’s babies in her arms before the year was out. She had often pointed out that the children of such a union would surely be good-looking and smart.

  “Pride makes a lonely bedfellow,” Rosa admonished, lifting a tissue to her watery eyes.

  “Try telling that to Seb,” Susan told her.

  She felt instantly repentant for the tone if not the intent of her words. This woman had been nothing but kind to her, and Susan had not meant to bark at her. She did not want to sever their friendship just because Sebastian Wescott was too big a fool to see what his obstinacy was costing him. Taking Rosa’s work-roughened hands into her own, Susan squeezed them warmly. If Seb had but one-tenth of the confidence that his housekeeper put in her ability to represent him, Susan would have gladly worked her fingers to the bone in his defense.

  “Take good care of him,” she said, trying hard to force the words through the tightening of her throat.

  Susan left as she had come, with little more than a suitcase and several boxes of papers associated with the case. She left behind only her heart and a note indicating that she would be more than happy to turn over all she had to the attorney of his choice. Despite the bitterness between them, she was far more concerned about Sebastian’s welfare than the fact that she was facing financial ruin. Businesses could be rebuilt, after all, especially if one was willing to relocate and start all over again.

  But bankrupt hearts were another matter altogether.

  The windshield wiper on the driver’s side of her car wasn’t working correctly. Susan was nonetheless grateful for the steady drizzle that continued throughout the night. It provided good cover for the tears that fell so freely down her face as her old blue Taurus found its way back home—that empty place where she had once taken respite from a world too restrictive. Opening the door to her apartment, Susan was struck by how barren and stark her living quarters were. And by how perfectly they reflected her life.

  Leaving Joe had been far easier than leaving Seb. The former move had evoked a sense of freedom that had made Susan feel light and buoyant for months afterward. Today’s departure had the exact opposite effect. Her bones felt encased in granite, and her aching heart seemed to have quadrupled in size.

  Though it was long after midnight when she finally crawled into bed, it was hours before sleep claimed her. Even then, Sebastian haunted her dreams. Three times she awoke from a fitful vision, clutching a tear-soaked pillow, her sheets twisted tightly around her. She did not know whether waking up with his name on her lips was the result of a prayer or a curse.

  Sunlight leaking through a far-off gap in the horizon was reason enough for Susan to forgo her lonely bed in the early hours of the morning. Tossing aside the covers, she turned off an alarm that had yet to ring and faced the day with grim resolve. Having fired herself from the only case that could possibly have salvaged her business—not to mention her faith in herself—Susan knew the only honorable thing to do was write her good friend and secretary, Ann, a glowing letter of recommendation and let her go.

  Letting go was becoming Susan’s specialty.

  Rosa’s words proved just as prophetic for Sebastian as they had for Susan. Unable to bear watching the woman he loved walk out of his life, Sebastian left home intending to spend the night in the private suite behind his office. His bed felt as big as all of Texas without Susan in it. All night long he rolled from one side to the other searching for an elusively restful position. It hadn’t taken him long at all to grow accustomed to the warmth and comfort of Susan’s body curled against him each and every night. A kitten couldn’t cuddle more adorably than she did. Or purr any more contentedly when she was pleased.

  He suspected it would take far longer to acclimate himself to an empty bed. In frustration, he turned on the big-screen television set in his suite, hoping to find anything that might induce sleep. Golf was usually a sure cure for insomnia. Not tonight. By the sixteenth hole, he pulled himself out of bed and headed for the fridge.

  He immediately discovered how different food tasted in Susan’s absence. With her, life was a banquet of strawberries dipped in warm, melted chocolate. Of fresh Alaskan king crab dripping with butter. Brownies marbled with rich cream cheese served hot from the oven. Sharp cheddar. The aroma of homemade bread baked to golden-brown perfection. Triple-deckered ice-cream cones melting on o
ne’s tongue. Exotic candies packaged in gold foil, each a surprise to be unwrapped and savored at length. With Susan every bite of life was delicious.

  Without her everything tasted like plain soda crackers. Dry and flavorless. With nothing to wash them down.

  Sebastian abandoned the imported caviar and champagne from his stock for a can of plain old domestic beer. The brand didn’t matter. He only hoped the alcohol would dull the pain pulsing in his every cell.

  The beer he downed while waiting for the sun to rise failed to do the trick, leaving him, instead, with a bear of a headache that no amount of aspirin could cure for what seemed like days on end. Slight noises drove him to distraction. The music of Susan’s laughter was replaced by the incessant barking of dogs. The sound of Rosa’s sorrowful “tsk, tsk, tsking” drove Sebastian away from home, as did the ghosts of happier times haunting his vast estate. Indeed, the sound of anyone’s voice but Susan’s so clearly irritated him that valued employees quickly learned it was far better to correspond with their boss via e-mail rather than face-to-face.

  The note Susan had left providing instructions for a new lawyer to contact her office for the files on his case lay wadded in the garbage. Sebastian had no desire to replace her either in the bedroom or the courtroom. He might have initially hired Susan to represent him out of a peculiar mixture of sympathy and desire, but he had come to genuinely respect her abilities. If she couldn’t find a way to get him off, he was convinced nobody could. He decided to put his faith in a justice system designed to protect the innocent, something to which he, too, had pledged his life.

  If only there was some way of explaining to Susan that he could not disclose where he was on the night of Eric’s murder without compromising the lives of two defenseless people—one a mere child. If protecting them, as well as upholding the honor of the Texas Cattleman’s Club itself, meant having to serve time in prison for a crime he did not commit, then so be it. Sebastian understood the magnitude of the oath he had sworn as a member of the club and would accept the consequences as a man of principle. What bothered Sebastian more than anything, even the thought of doing time, was that Susan was unable to accept him at his word. The thought that she might actually think him capable of cold-blooded murder left him completely bereft and indifferent to the possible incarceration that awaited him.

  Susan stared at the files littering her office floor and bit her lip in consternation. She could not bring herself to believe the rumor that Sebastian Wescott actually intended to represent himself in court. Without someone to intervene on his behalf, she knew the prosecution would jab mercilessly at him once they had him on the stand until he eventually lost patience and gave the jury a display of his intimidating temper.

  The thought made her physically ill. It only added to the speculation among some people around town that her sudden weight loss was due to diet pills. Others, noting the dark circles under her eyes, worried that she had contracted something fatal. Joe went so far as to send her a tongue-in-cheek get-well card, casually mentioning that the loss of her celebrated client was general knowledge all over town.

  Susan simply couldn’t let Sebastian represent himself. It was suicidal. Neither could she represent him under the conditions he set forth—adamantly refusing to provide her with his alibi for the night of the murder.

  Either he trusted her or he didn’t.

  Either she loved him or she didn’t.

  Torn between heart and conscience, she decided to contact Dorian and see if he could make his stubborn half brother listen to reason. When she called to set up an appointment, Dorian apologized for being so busy but said he could squeeze in a few minutes for her at his workplace. As much as Susan hated the thought of running into Sebastian at the Wescott office building, she swallowed her pride and gratefully accepted Dorian’s terms for their meeting.

  Susan needn’t have worried about any chance encounters with Sebastian. When she arrived, Marilyn Bachman, the secretary whose precocious little girl had taken off from school to spend the day with her earlier in the month, explained that Sebastian had taken a leave of absence. The thought of Sebastian’s mammoth company running without him at the helm left her feeling as hopelessly adrift as his employees, who were doing their best to pretend that nothing was amiss.

  As Susan expected, Dorian was completely sympathetic to her cause. He was looking exceptionally well. A single flake of dandruff stuck to the shoulder of his black turtleneck was the only thing amiss in his appearance. A matching pair of dark slacks and sunglasses gave him an upscale casual look that she suspected was copied from the latest men’s fashion magazines. He had certainly come a long way from his trailer-park days. Susan noticed he had moved from his cubicle in the technology division into an office of his own.

  “I’m afraid my hands are tied as far as influencing my brother goes. The best thing I could do for him was hire you as his attorney, and it seems he even managed to screw that up,” Dorian said with a sad shake of his head. “I have to tell you that things around here are looking pretty grim. The police have impounded all of Sebastian’s personal records.”

  A knock at the door put an abrupt halt to their conversation. The person on the other side of that door didn’t bother waiting for an invitation to come in. A man who looked to be in his early thirties stepped inside and filled the small room with his presence. He introduced himself as Robert Cole.

  Susan recognized the name immediately. “The private investigator Sebastian hired to look into the murder of Eric Chambers?” she asked.

  “One and the same.”

  He was a particularly nice-looking man with clear blue eyes that gave the impression he could see right through you. Though she had the feeling Robert Cole knew exactly who she was, Susan introduced herself, anyway. Since he had been the one to uncover the threatening e-mail and was present when the fiscal records tying Sebastian to corporate embezzlement were discovered, she wondered if she wasn’t, in fact, shaking hands with the enemy.

  Dorian hastened to explain that they had already met at the Texas Cattleman’s Club and asked him to sit down.

  “What brings you here?” he asked pointedly.

  “Just wrapping up a few loose ends on my investigation,” Robert told them. “There’s something unfinished about this case that’s costing me sleep at night, and my wife is taking exception to it. She says I need all the beauty sleep I can get.”

  Susan was caught off guard by his easy manner. She could see why Seb had hired him. Beneath that handsome exterior was an intensity to finish the job he’d been hired to do. Susan was reassured by the fact that whatever was bothering him about this case wasn’t going to be quelled with a paycheck alone.

  Although Dorian looked startled when Robert took out a pen and a notebook and proceeded to ask him about his whereabouts on the night Eric Chambers was murdered, he did not appear worried that he might be implicated. He reached into his top desk drawer, took out a time-planner and quickly flipped to the date in question. He referred the investigator to the notations he had made for that day.

  “I ate a late supper at the Royal Diner after a particularly trying day here at work,” he explained. “I believe a waitress there by the name of Laura Edwards can vouch for that.”

  Robert Cole wrote the name down.

  “Any possibility that you saw Sebastian Wescott that night?” he asked Dorian.

  “Afraid not. I was under the belief that my half brother was out of town on business, but it seems that’s a claim he’s unable to substantiate.”

  “Anything else either of you would like to add while I’ve got you both here?” Robert asked.

  Dorian thought for a moment before responding, “Just that I’m awfully worried about my brother. He’s fired his attorney.”

  He gestured sympathetically toward Susan, who didn’t bother to protest that she had quit the case voluntarily.

  “Apparently he intends to represent himself in court,” Dorian went on. “Not a particularly wise choice
for a man with the kind of resources he has on hand. He looks like he hasn’t slept for weeks, and I’ve smelled alcohol on his breath the past few times I’ve seen him. He’s taking this pretty hard.”

  Dorian stopped to offer the investigator a piece of hard candy from a dish on his desk. He popped one into his own mouth and continued with wrinkled brow.

  “If you have any influence on my brother at all, Robert, I’m begging you to encourage him not to jump bail. A lot of my friends have put up that money, and I’d hate to be the one to have to tell them that Sebastian let them down.”

  Susan was utterly shocked by the very idea. She opened her mouth to say so, but Robert got in the first word.

  “Considering that the evidence I uncovered has put him in such a precarious position, I hardly think Sebastian Wescott would listen to anything I have to say. I’m not exactly high on his list of confidants right now. But I wouldn’t be too worried about him skipping out on bail. He doesn’t strike me as a particularly stupid man.”

  With that, Robert Cole excused himself and left just as suddenly as he had arrived. The mood in the wake of his exit was somber, to say the least. Susan watched hope slipping away like a helium balloon escaping reach as it soared out of sight, a bright red heart growing smaller and smaller against a dark-blue sky.

  “Maybe he’ll turn something up,” Dorian offered in an encouraging voice.

  “Maybe,” she repeated dully.

  Though neither of them sounded very hopeful, their only other choice was to give up in despair. Having used up all her tears for an entire lifetime, Susan was surprised to feel one slip down her cheek. Uncomfortable with such a womanly show of emotion, Dorian handed her a tissue from a box on his desk.

  “Listen,” he said, raking a hand through his hair in a way that reminded Susan of his half brother. That they were tied by blood was evident not only in their physical characteristics but also in some of their mannerisms. “I promise you that I’ll have a word with Sebastian. I’ll tell him how worried you are about him and do my best to persuade him to hire another lawyer to represent him. I’ve got to be honest with you, though. I really don’t hold out much hope that I’ll be able to change his mind.”