A Box Full of Trouble

by Carolyn Haines

  “I gather from all I’ve heard that Emmett’s plan was to have the homeless man kidnap Layla and leave that ransom note in the bathroom, no doubt while Emmett created an alibi. But something went wrong.” Delphine shook her head. “That poor man. Killed over such pettiness.”

  What about Layla, Victor thought, but didn’t ask Delphine. Instead, he watched Abby as the elevator doors closed on Rizzo, Lucas, and Emmett.

  Once the detectives and Emmett were gone, Abby turned to Delphine. “How’s Jennifer?”

  “Phillip is with her. She’s still in a coma, but her vital signs are good. I think the doctors are optimistic.” Delphine smiled at Abby. “Thank you for saving her in the house fire. No one will forget what a trouper you’ve been during all of this.”

  Abby ignored the comment as her frown deepened. “But why hurt Jennifer? And why try to burn their house down? I mean I get it that Emmett would have access at the office to Phillip’s things. His law school library access card and his prescriptions were in his desk. I get the frame-up. And,” Abby glanced back at Victor, “we can all see the trap he set for Victor, though it certainly wasn’t well done.” She paused, looking from Delphine to Victor. “But why hurt Jennifer?”

  “She must have known something or figured something out. Maybe she remembered Emmett borrowing Phillip’s library key card.” Victor spoke, keeping his worried gaze on Abby. She was tough, but how much more could she take? But he also wondered why Emmett would want to hurt Jennifer.

  “Well, it’s not over until they get Layla back. What if…I mean he killed that homeless man, didn’t he? Why wouldn’t he just kill Layla too?” Abby wobbled on her feet and spoke with a catch in her voice.

  Victor could tell Abby was trying hard not to cry. Trouble rubbed against her leg and hummed an encouraging purr.

  “Let me take you home, tuck you into bed. I’ll keep company with Trouble, maybe feed him some salmon while you sleep.” Victor figured Rizzo and Lucas would break Emmett quickly and they’d have Layla back before Abby’s nap was over.

  And after that, Victor had some definite and slightly wicked ideas of how to wake up Abby.

  The elevator doors opened and Miguel and another professor stepped off and into the crowd. A campus police officer approached the two, probably warning them off. Victor only glanced at them before his eyes focused back on Abby. But Miguel moved to Abby’s side.

  “I’m so glad that this is over,” Miguel said. You’ll have your friend back very soon now. I’m sure she’ll be just fine when the police locate her.” He sounded sincere as he rested his hand lightly on Abby’s arm, rather possessively Victor thought, as he glared at the professor. Abby dusted Miguel off with a quick swipe of her free hand, and barely whispered a “thank you.”

  Miguel continued to stand by Abby, his expression calmly neutral. “Given all the excitement, why don’t we postpone our date tonight? When Layla is back with us and has recovered, I’d like to take you and her both out to eat in my new car and we’ll celebrate her rescue.” He glanced over at Victor. “You’ll be most welcome to join us, of course.”

  Victor wanted to punch the man even though Miguel was being perfectly polite. Obviously, Miguel didn’t know they’d figured out he was a plagiarist.

  “We’re all very tired. Let’s just wait and see how it goes.” Abby stepped away from Miguel and hurried toward the elevator, motioning for Victor to follow her. Trouble, who’d been plastered against Abby’s legs, moved along beside her.

  Once they were in the elevator, Abby spoke. “Everybody’ll know soon enough about Miguel’s plagiarism. But let’s wait until we get Layla back. That way, she can have the pleasure of turning him in.” Abby ran her hand across her face as if to wipe it clean. “And to think I used to have a crush on him.”

  “You did?” Victor stared at Abby. But no sense of jealousy or mistrust rose in him. He realized with a rush of love and peace that he trusted Abby. His ex-wife’s behavior had left him distrustful, and maybe a tad paranoid. Now that he understood his earlier suspicions arose from his own past, and not from Abby’s behavior, he could heal from the fallout of his first marriage. His newfound trust flowed through his whole body as he put his arms around Abby, hugging her close to him.

  A moment later, Victor opened the outside door of the law school and they stepped into the clean, warm air of a Tallahassee September. The magnolia tree by the law school’s side entrance was glossy and green in the intense light. With Abby and Trouble beside him, Victor felt a new life opening for him. With a new faith in Rizzo and Lucas, he believed they’d have Layla safely home in short order.

  They walked in silence toward the parking lot. Even Trouble kept quiet. Once they were all sitting in Victor’s pickup, he reached over and took Abby’s hand and held it between his own two.

  “I’m sorry I insinuated that you were experienced in the ways of cheating.”

  “That’s all right.” Abby sighed. “I thought some pretty bad things about you too.”

  “I’ll get some counseling. Something I probably should have done after all my ex-wife did to me. I don’t ever want to mistrust you again.” Victor leaned forward and kissed Abby on the cheek. “I promise.”

  Abby squeezed his hand and gave him a tiny, tired smile. “Maybe I’ll go with you to counseling. I don’t ever want to doubt you again either.”

  “Let me get you home.” He started the pickup.

  “You know, there’re some loose ends and I don’t get the ring and earring—” Abby stated.

  “Maybe Emmett planted them—like he did the documents Layla supposedly stole, and the Valium. If Jennifer thought Layla had stolen her ring and earring, that would have done her in for good with Phillip and the law firm.” Victor’s hands tensed on the steering wheel. “Don’t forget how Emmett set me up. And tried to insinuate you were involved by sending him away that night.”

  “And I saw him driving away from Jennifer’s when he ran me off the road.” Abby hesitated. “That is, I saw a car like his.”

  Trouble meowed, but it was a pensive sound. Victor cut his eyes toward the cat and Trouble looked right back at Victor and held his gaze.

  Victor could swear the cat was telling him it wasn’t over.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Abby threw down her purse and eyed the inside of her house. It was still a mess. She needed to finish repotting the plants, but a quick look at her aquarium told her the fish were adjusting well to the unscheduled changes in the tank.

  Victor stood beside her, an arm loosely around her waist. “I’ll help you finish cleaning up and we can repot the plants. Together.”

  She liked the way he said “together.”

  Abby turned to him, catching the look in his eyes. With her own, she signaled yes. In case he missed her answer, Abby pulled him to her. She kissed him, tentatively at first, but with increasing fervor as his hands stroked her back, and then dropped lower.

  One of her hands inched to his chest, and her fingers found their way inside the exposed triangle at the top of his shirt. She traced a path across his skin before she pulled her hand free and started unbuttoning his shirt. As she began to undress him, his hands cupped her buttocks and his thumb rubbed up and down across the fabric of her pants.

  Abby wanted to rip her shirt and pants off. But she made herself slow down. Pulling her lips away from his, she pressed her mouth to his bare chest, making a slow, deliberate path downward and then up again. His chest was covered with sandy blond hair that felt silky under her lips and tongue.

  Though she was not usually so brazen, she also wasn’t usually so hungry for touch.

  His touch.

  Her fingers slipped down to the zipper on his jeans and lingered for a moment. His hand pressed down on top of hers and she felt him rise, hard and long, beneath her fingers.

  With his other hand, Victor began to unbutton her blouse. In a moment, they broke apart so that she could slip it off entirely. His shirt hung unbuttoned off his shoulders. As soon
as she threw her blouse toward the couch, she pulled his shirt off him. For a moment, she just stood there, appreciating the ripple of his muscles, the flatness of his stomach, and the brush of the sandy chest hair.

  She looked into his eyes and saw that he was giving her much the same appreciative gaze.

  “May I?” he asked as he reached for her bra.

  She nodded. He unsnapped it and flung it toward her blouse. “Perfect,” he said, and ran his hands over the soft mounds, with his thumbs flicking the nipples ever so lightly. Abby arched her back, pushing herself closer to him and increasing their skin-to-skin friction.

  His hands traced patterns up and down her bare back, sending ripples of sensation everywhere he touched, as his teeth nibbled gently on her bottom lip. She opened her mouth and his tongue slipped in.

  Abby once more reached for the front of his pants. But even as she struggled to undress him further, his fingers tugged down her zipper with exquisite slowness. Once he had her pants unfastened, she stepped back and kicked them off, glad as she did that something had told her earlier to wear a lovely peach-colored matching set of bra and panties.

  Before she could work his pants free, Victor had his fingers under the lace edge of her panties, trailing along their bikini lines. Her breath was coming fast as she yanked harder at his pants while he bent his head to her breasts and began to suck on first one nipple, then the other.

  * * *

  Later, Abby stood in front of her dresser with her back to Victor, who sat on the edge of her bed. Her whole body still tingled from their lovemaking and she wore only a loose cotton shirt. Her robe would have felt too heavy against her bare skin with her body’s newly heightened sense of touch. Earlier, they had barely made it to her bedroom, leaving a trail of her panties and his pants and boxers along the hallway. She could feel Victor’s eyes on her and it made her skin flush.

  As Abby swept her hair into a loose ponytail, Victor rose off the bed. He moved behind Abby, wrapping his arms around her and the thin shirt she wore. He wore nothing and the strength in his bare arms as he held her tempted her to toss her shirt on the floor.

  Victor nibbled at her ear as he put one of his hands over the front of her shirt and rubbed the soft fabric against the skin on her stomach.

  She pressed back against him, arching her body, as delightful shivers shot through her. Throwing that damn blouse to the floor was feeling like a better idea all the time. Their love making—and the nap afterwards—had refreshed her, but not nearly as much as her acceptance that this was the man she loved. Her body had never before responded to another’s in quite the way she had just a couple of hours before. A small smile flirted about her lips as she realized her body had known she was in love, even if her emotions had still held out some doubt.

  But that doubt was gone now.

  Her shirt began to slip a bit under Victor’s hands. Abby felt the warmth of his breath on her neck. His fingers continued to rub the fabric against her bare skin, creating a pleasurable sensation of heat and tension.

  Trouble, who had had the common decency to make himself scarce the last two hours, ran into the room. After a decisive jump to the top of the dresser, he looked at her with piercing eyes. Trouble meowed in a distinct pattern of sounds, like he was explaining a matter of some importance to them.

  Abby sighed. Trouble was right, she needed to check on Layla. The romantic moment was over. For now.

  “I’ll call Lucas and see if they’ve found Layla.” Abby expected Victor to protest, but he agreed.

  She hurried to the living room and dug her cell phone out of her purse. Victor followed. Expecting to hear only good news, she called Lucas—she had his number memorized by now. Without bothering to say hello or identify herself, she asked breathlessly, “Have you found Layla?”

  “No.” Lucas paused. “We’re tracking Emmett’s whereabouts and his haunts, and we have a team at his apartment and going over his car. But he keeps denying he took her.”

  Abby said goodbye and ended the call. As she gave Victor a worried look, Trouble knocked her purse over, spilling its contents about the couch and floor.

  “Somebody’s jealous,” Victor said.

  “No, he’s trying to tell me something.” Abby looked at the mess scattered about. “What, Trouble? What do I need to see?”

  With his nose, Trouble butted a black flash drive out of the pile of items on the couch.

  Abby picked it up. “I found this in the umbrella stand by the elevator. I really don’t think it’s Layla’s because she always used pink flash drives. I was going to check anyway. But,” she paused, looking embarrassed, “I just forgot about it, with…you know.” Her face burned with a blush.

  “Even if it is Layla’s, it’s probably just more drafts of her law review.”

  “Probably. But, you know, it doesn’t all make sense.” Abby held the flash drive up to the sunlight streaming through the sheer curtains on the front window as if some how she could see what it contained. As she did, Trouble reached up and touched the flash drive with his paw.

  “Even Trouble knows something is missing.” Abby dropped her hand with the flash drive. “I brought a law firm laptop home to use while those detectives have mine. Let’s see what’s on this.”

  Victor nodded.

  “Oh, and maybe you better get dressed.” She gave him an admiring look. “I like the view just fine, but I wouldn’t want to give my neighbors a shock.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Victor, fully dressed once more, plugged the flash drive into the USB port on Abby’s borrowed laptop. Trouble butted his leg, meowed, and looked up at Victor as if to say “get to work.”

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered at the cat.

  Abby was in the kitchen, brewing coffee and scrambling eggs. He could smell the coffee and his mouth watered. He studied the screen on the laptop as the flash drive opened with two folders, one labeled “microfilm” and the other labeled “the book.”

  More research, Victor thought. He was tempted to turn off the laptop and get some coffee. But once more Trouble butted his leg and meowed.

  “You’d have made a good drill sergeant.” Victor glared at Trouble, but opened the microfilm folder, and squinted at the scanned microfilm. Barely readable. He opened the other folder on the flash drive.

  Trouble jumped from the floor to Victor’s shoulder and peered at the screen before nudging Victor and issuing a series of distinctively patterned meows. Not for the first time, Victor wished he spoke Cat.

  He went back to reading the folder on the flash drive.

  A moment later, he shouted out to Abby in the kitchen, “Damn, it was more than the law review.”

  * * *

  Here I am, once more trying to communicate with bipeds and having them miss my point.

  New car. I meow this phrase as clearly as I can to Victor.

  He’s too busy shouting for Abby to listen to what he found on the flash drive.

  I try again, this time with my face in front of his and my paw on his leg. Miguel said he has a new car. If the red car is brand new, might his old car be a dark BWM? Might he still have had the BWM the night someone in such a vehicle nearly ran Abby off the road as that person fled the Drapers’ house after forcing pills down Jennifer’s throat and trying to set a fire?

  Victor brushes me aside as Abby rushes in from the kitchen to stand over Victor. They peer down at the computer screen.

  “That book, the one on the Marshall court that Miguel is famous for writing.” Victor pauses, watching Abby’s face. “This is what Layla has on this flash drive. There’re scans from some really old microfilm from the Library of Congress.”

  “The Library of Congress,” Abby repeats. “Miguel mentioned something about that the night Layla disappeared.”

  “Yeah, well, so he knew she knew then.”

  “Knew what?”

  “He didn’t write that book.” Victor taps the screen for emphasis, and once more I try to communicate with him.
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  “Quiet, Trouble,” he says to me before turning to Abby again. “Miguel stole it from a law professor in Miami. And that professor had taken most of it from a rare, ancient manuscript written by Marshall’s faithful law clerk, who had access to Marshall’s papers and very thoughts.”

  “He plagiarized a plagiarism?” Abby looks puzzled, her hands now resting on Victor’s shoulders.

  “Looks that way.” Victor’s eyes flick over the screen. “I’m still reading.”

  “If Layla knew, why didn’t she—?” Abby says. “I mean, once she knew this, why didn’t Layla report him? She had proof, didn’t she? Plus the law review article.”

  “Look, she explains it. She was protecting Jennifer.” Victor reads another line off the computer. “Here’s what she says. ‘If I turn Miguel in for plagiarizing my article and stealing his book, then he’ll ruin Jennifer and Phillip’s marriage by telling Phillip about their affair. That’s why Miguel stole her wedding ring and that earring, the one Phillip gave her as an anniversary present. He intends to use them to prove the affair.’”

  Abby shakes her head and mutters, “So that’s what Miguel was blackmailing Jennifer about—to make her help him keep Layla quiet.” But she frowns, her face a study in confusion. “Why would Layla want to protect Jennifer? I don’t think they were that close.”

  Abby is missing the point. I meow and rub against her. Once again, I press my head against her chest where her heart beats.

  Victor throws me a curious look before he answers. “She wasn’t protecting Jennifer. She was protecting Phillip.”

  “So, a stand-off.” Abby lowers her face until she is looking into Trouble’s eyes. “What changed? Why the fires and the murder and the kidnapping?”

  I lick at Abby’s ear and nibble at the small silver hoop she wears in her earlobe. Haven’t they figured it out yet?

  “The earring.” Abby and Victor shout it out at once. “And the wedding ring.”