Caroline Rothschild hadn’t even been cold yet when Jonathon and Spencer Rothschild began beating down the doors of the courthouse, seeking to get an old copy of her will probated.
It must have been a hideous surprise to them when Mitchell Pommard not only woke up instead of dying, but managed to produce a newer, equally valid copy of Caroline’s will, one in which he was the primary beneficiary.
Mitchell Pommard and his copy of the will had had to go.
To the newspapers and the jury alike, Pamela Pommard had insisted that her brother had been in fear of his life. Several attempts had been made to kill him and he had gone into hiding. Charmingly, she had described Dolf and Declan’s apartment complex as “absolutely disgusting. Honestly, it was a real pit.”
And that was when Helena had met Mitchell Pommard, while he had been hiding under the assumed name of Greg Lazarus.
J.P. Fields had testified that his employer, Mr. Jonathan Rothschild, had tried to get him to kill Mr. Lazarus for him. The stick had been blackmail, using an old mistake that had still been within the statute of limitations against him, and the carrot had been ten thousand dollars of Caroline Pommard’s money, to be surrendered in cash on the delivery of Mitchell Pommard’s corpse to Jonathon Rothschild.
J.P. had once told her that Spencer and his father were two peas in a pod. He had said that they had harbored the same darkness and cruelty. Helena absolutely refused to consider how a probable wendigo would have disposed of a freshly killed body.
J.P.’s testimony, as defiant and uncomfortable as it had been, had lent some credence to Spencer Rothschild’s story that it had been his father who had approached him with the idea of killing Mr. Lazarus, vanishing the will, and living happily ever after – or at least for awhile – on Caroline Pommard’s money.
Spencer had killed Mr. Lazarus, but he hadn’t been able to find the will. It hadn’t been in Mr. Lazarus’ apartment or on his person.
“Eventually, it occurred to me that she must’ve had it,” he said with a sneer and a nod towards Helena. Then, suggestively, he added “Mitch had just left her apartment when I caught up with him.”
Not that he had murdered poor, frail Mr. Lazarus. Oh, no, no, no.
Mr. Lazarus, Spencer Rothschild had insisted, had attacked him first.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” insisted Spencer Rothschild sadly. “But I had to. He made me do it. It was self-defense.”
Listening to him, Helena had never hated anyone more.
After that, Spencer had gone home to tell his father that the afternoon had been a wash. Mr. Lazarus had taken a sudden fall down a long flight of stairs, but the will had never turned up.
They had quarreled.
And Spencer Rothsfield had killed his father. It had been done in self-defense, naturally.
Eventually, he had decided that she must have what he was looking for and had accordingly tried to flatten her and Declan in a parking lot. Although in Spencer’s version of the event, Helena and Declan had fallen in front of his car. Multiple times even.
“They’re real clumsy, those two,” said Spencer, while looking at Helena and Delcan with his flat, empty eyes.
Under that soulless gaze, Helena had shuddered, and, under the cover of the little wall that separated the spectators from the actual court proceedings, she had made the sign against evil.
Stupid, old-fashioned superstitions seemed less stupid and old-fashioned when evil was sitting right there and looking at you.
She, Declan, and about half of the forensics department had been put on the stand to impeach that lie as well as several other ones.
According to Spencer, that night on the bridge had been more of the same. He and his cousin Patrick had been out drinking together, as friends and cousins often do, and perhaps he had had a little too much to drink. That was why he had rammed his car into those other ones.
“I’m admitting this, because I want to pay my debt to society,” said Spencer piously. “I drank, and I drove, but no one got hurt from that. I’m willing to pay my fine, take the class, and do however many hours of community service to atone for my mistake. But it’s absolutely not my fault that, while drunk, I accidentally drove my car into the middle of a gang battle.”
At that, Helena had nearly choked.
The cornerstone of Spencer Rothschild’s entire testimony had been denying nothing while simultaneously blaming everything on everyone else. Absolutely everything that had happened had been everyone else’s fault. He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, over and over again.
Patrick had stuck to the simpler tactic of denying everything through his lawyer. Unlike Spencer Rothschild, he had never taken the stand.
That was part of the reason why he had gotten so much less time in the end. Well, that and the fact that he had lacked Spencer Rothschild’s long list of murders, attempted murders, and general criminal recklessness.
Either way, it was a relief to know that she wouldn’t be bumping into either of them on the street for a long, long time.
Chapter 27 – Dolf
The absolute worst part about Dial A Defender’s general inability to keep a secretary was the fact that it meant that, sooner or later, everyone got an opportunity to fill the role, even Barrett.
Today, that terrible burden had fallen on Dolf.
It wasn’t even that Gil was a bad boss to his office staff. He wasn’t. Nor was the work impossible to complete. And on days when it was dead, Dolf got to continue researching deep sea fishing trips.
Dolf was just entirely unsuited for the position, and he knew it. He found the part where he was an outward face of the company to be particularly trying. And no matter how much he and Helena role played the parts, or how much fun they had doing it, Dolf found that he just couldn’t get comfortable in the position when it wasn’t just him and Helena messing around on a rainy afternoon.
And so it was with utter dread that Dolf watched through the front window as a woman battled her way through blustering wind and sideways rain.
He had a terrible feeling about where she was headed.
When the front door opened, Dolf tried to look welcoming.
The woman, who had actually been in the middle of crossing the threshold, actually took a step back into the storm. A moment later, her expression firmed and she reclaimed that step and then took another two more, coming fully into the office.
“Is this the Dial A Defender office?” she demanded.
“Yes.”
She brandished at a lump of something that was both yellow and dissolving. Dolf tried to look like he knew what it was, when in truth, he hadn’t the faintest idea what it could be, save for disgusting.
“Is it true that you help people?”
“Yes.” Taking a deep breath, Dolf tried to look solid, reassuring, dependable even, as he asked “Would you like us to help you?”
THE END
of
THE WYVERN’S DEFENDER DIRE WOLF
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The Wyvern's Defender Dire Wolf Page 27
