Buying Time
Page 1
Also by Pamela Samuels Young
* * *
Every Reasonable Doubt (first in series)
In Firm Pursuit (second in series)
Murder on the Down Low (third in series)
Buying Time
Buying Time
Goldman House Publishing
ISBN 9780981562711
© 2009 by Pamela Samuels Young
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or used in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of Goldman House Publishing.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, dialogue, incidents and places, except for incidental references to public figures, products or services, are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. No character in this book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional. The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this book and assume no responsibility for any errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or inconsistencies contained herein.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact the author or Goldman House Publishing.
Goldman House Publishing
P.O. Box 6029-117
Artesia, CA 90702
www.goldmanhousepublishing.com
www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com
Cover design by Marion Designs
Printed in U.S.A.
For Ellen Farrell,
Thanks for being such a great colleague, supporter and friend.
CONTENTS
Prologue
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3:
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
Epilogue
Author's Note
Acknowledgements
Discussion Questions for Buying Time
About the Author
Prologue
Veronika Myers tried to convince them, but no one would listen. Her suspicions, they said, were simply a byproduct of her grief.
Each time she broached the subject with her brother, Jason, he walked out of the room. Darlene, her best friend, suggested a girls’ night out with some heavy drinking. Aunt Flo urged her to spend more time in prayer.
Veronika knew she was wasting her time with this woman, too, but couldn’t help herself.
“My mother was murdered,” Veronika told the funeral home attendant. “But nobody believes it.”
The plump redhead with too much eye shadow glanced down at the papers on her desk, then looked up. “It says here that your mother died in the hospital. From brain cancer.”
“That’s not true,” Veronika snapped, her response a little too sharp and a tad too loud.
Yes, her mother had brain cancer, but she wasn’t on her deathbed. Not yet. They had just spent a long afternoon together, laughing and talking and watching All My Children. Veronika could not, and would not accept that the most important person in her life had suddenly died. She knew what everyone else refused to believe. Her mother had been murdered.
“Did they conduct an autopsy?” the woman asked.
Veronika sighed and looked away. There had been no autopsy because everyone dismissed her as a grief-stricken lunatic. When she reported the murder to the police, a disinterested cop dutifully took her statement, but she could tell that nothing would come of it. Without any solid evidence, she was wasting everyone’s time, including her own.
“No,” Veronika said. “There wasn’t an autopsy.”
The funeral home attendant smiled sympathetically.
Veronika let out a long, exasperated breath, overwhelmed by the futility of what she was trying to prove. “Never mind,” she said. “What else do you need me to sign?”
Later that night, Veronika lay in bed, drained from another marathon crying session. She rummaged through the nightstand, retrieved a bottle of sleeping pills and popped two into her mouth. She tried to swallow them dry, but her throat was too sore from all the crying.
Tears pooled in her eyes as she headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Don’t worry, Mama,” Veronika sniffed. “I won’t let them get away with it.”
Just as she reached the end of the hallway, a heavy gloved hand clamped down hard across her mouth as her arms were pinned behind her back. Panic instantly hurled her into action. Veronika tried to scream, but the big hand reduced her shriek to a mere muffle. She frantically kicked and wrestled and twisted her body, but her attacker’s grip would not yield.
When she felt her body being lifted off the ground and carried back down the hallway, she realized there were two of them and her terror level intensified. But so did her survival instinct. She continued to wildly swing her legs backward and forward, up and down, right and left, eventually striking what felt like a leg, then a stomach.
As they crossed the threshold of her bedroom, she heard a loud, painful moan that told her she had likely connected with the groin of one of her assailants.
“Cut it out!” said a husky, male voice. “Grab her legs!” he ordered his partner. “Hurry up!”
The men dumped her face down onto the bed, her arms still restrained behind her back. The big hand slipp
ed from her mouth and Veronika’s first cry escaped, but was quickly muted when a much heavier hand gripped the back of her neck and pressed her face into the comforter.
Fearing her attackers were going to rape, then kill her, Veronika defiantly arched her back and tried to roll her body into a tight ball. At only 130 pounds, she was no physical match for her assailants. They easily overpowered her, forcing her back into a prone position. As one man sat on her upper legs, strapping her left arm to her side, the other man bent her right arm at the elbow and guided her hand up toward her forehead.
During the deepest period of her grief, Veronika had longed to join her mother. But now that she was face-to-face with the possibility of death, she fought valiantly for life.
That changed, however, the second Veronika felt something cold and hard connect with her right temple. She stiffened as one of the men grabbed her fingers and wrapped them around the butt of a gun. At that precise instant, Veronika knew with certainty that her suspicions were indeed fact. Her mother had been murdered and now the same killers had come to silence her before she could expose the truth. And just like her mother’s death, her own murder would go undetected, dismissed as the suicide of a grieving daughter. A conclusion no one would question.
As the man placed his hand on top of hers and prepared to pull the trigger, a miraculous, power-infused sensation snuffed out what was left of Veronika’s fear, causing her body to go limp. The heavy pounding of her heart slowed and she felt light enough to float away.
Completely relaxed now, Veronika closed her eyes, said a short prayer, and waited for a glorious reunion with her mother.
PART ONE
* * *
When All You Have Is Hope
CHAPTER 1
Lawyers get a bad rap. Strip away the arrogance, the greed and the half-truths, and you’ll find a decent human being underneath. That’s exactly how Waverly Sloan saw himself. A decent guy who’d screwed up.
Waverly pulled his battered BMW into the parking stall outside his Culver City townhouse and turned off the engine. He dreaded going inside. All the way home, he imagined his wife’s face contorting in horror in reaction to the news he was about to deliver.
He closed his eyes and rehearsed the spiel in his head. I’m about to be disbarred, he would tell her. So you’ll have to stop teaching Pilates three days a week and get a real job.
Waverly exited the car and climbed the short flight of stairs to their unit. He was a large, solidly built man with skin the color of honey. Borderline handsome, his lopsided smile was the primary source of his appeal. It compelled people to like him.
“You’re home early,” Deidra called out the second he opened the front door.
Waverly found her in the kitchen, poised over a cutting board chopping carrots and bell peppers. He dumped his keys on the counter, walked up behind her and swallowed her up in a bear hug. “I’m home early because I couldn’t stand being away from you for another second.”
Deidra reared back to peck him on the lips, then returned to her chopping.
Resting against the center island, Waverly folded his arms and stared at his wife. At thirty-seven—five years his junior—Deidra had the firm, voluptuous body of a highly compensated stripper. Her long, auburn hair fell past her shoulders, perfectly accentuating her barely brown skin. After two years of marriage, Waverly still had no idea what her real hair looked like underneath the five-hundred dollar weave.
“Is everything okay?” Deidra glanced back at him over her shoulder.
His wife had good instincts, at least about him. Waverly eyed the knife in her hand. He had a mental image of Deidra accidentally chopping off a finger when she heard what he had to say.
“I love you,” Waverly said, not in an effort to sidestep her question, but because it was how he truly felt.
“Ditto.” She smiled, then waited.
Waverly had wanted Deidra from the second he spotted her walking out of a store on pricey Rodeo Drive weighed down with shopping bags. Instinct told him there was little chance that a woman like her would give a guy like him a second glance. He had only been in Beverly Hills for a meeting with an opposing counsel. Risktaker that he was, Waverly turned on his charm and, to his surprise, it worked. Too bad that same skill couldn’t get him out of his current fix.
He took a bottle of Chardonnay from the refrigerator and poured a glass for each of them. “What if I decided not to practice law anymore?” he began.
The pace of Deidra’s chopping slowed. “I thought you liked being a lawyer.” She placed the knife on the counter and turned to face him. “What would you do instead?”
He shrugged and cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about insurance investments.”
Deidra put a hand on her left hip. “Insurance? That doesn’t sound very exciting. Can you make any real money from that?”
Waverly shrugged again. “I hope to find out.”
According to a guy he’d met at a legal conference, he could make a bundle in the viatical business. Waverly had no idea what a viatical was, only that it had something to do with insurance. He had an appointment to talk with the guy in a couple of days.
He could tell that his wife wasn’t happy about his possible change of professions. The men in Deidra’s life before him had given her whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. Waverly now worked hard to do the same, often placating her with promises of better things to come. Deidra enjoyed the prestige of being a lawyer’s wife and was banking on Waverly eventually landing a case that propelled them to the big leagues.
“This doesn’t mean we’ll have to put off moving, does it?” Deidra asked.
Waverly had agreed that she could start house shopping as soon as his next case settled. But even if he saved every dime he made for the next thirty years, he still wouldn’t be able to afford the gated communities where Deidra wanted to relocate.
“Maybe,” he said.
She was about to complain, but apparently noticed the angst on his face and retreated.
Waverly took a sip of wine and debated delaying his planned conversation with Deidra until he was absolutely certain about his situation. The written decision from the State Bar Court could arrive any day now. There was a slim chance that he might be hit with a suspension rather than disbarment. He’d hired Kitty Mancuso, a sixty-plus, powerhouse mouthpiece whose client base consisted exclusively of rich, white-collar criminals and lawyers who’d screwed up. If anybody could save the day, it was Kitty.
“I’m going to put on my sweats,” Waverly said, wimping out. “How long before dinner’s ready?”
“Not sweats,” Deidra replied. “Find some nice slacks. They’ll be here at six.”
“They who?”
Deidra smiled sheepishly. “Mom, Dad, and Rachel. Didn’t I tell you?”
No, because if she had, he would have faked a migraine. “Uh, I just remembered a motion I forgot to file.”
Deidra squinted and playfully pointed the knife inches from his nose. “Don’t even think about it.”
By the time their dinner guests arrived, Waverly was seated in the den, insufficiently buzzed and ready for the show. Watching his wife’s dysfunctional family was better than reality TV.
Leon Barrett, Deidra’s pint-size father, strutted in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He waited all of three beats, then started boasting about his new sixty-inch flat screen. Rachel, Deidra’s older sister, showed off a diamond bracelet a new boyfriend supposedly gave her.
Leon spotted Waverly sitting in the den and made a beeline in his direction.
“How’s the law business these days, counselor?” Leon’s thumbs hung from his belt loops like a cowboy and he rocked back and forth from heel to toe.
Waverly didn’t bother to stand. “I’m making it.”
Leon walked over to the sliding glass door and surveyed their small patio. Waverly wondered what he would criticize first.
“So when are you two going to give up this place for a real home?”
Leon joked.
Instead of answering, Waverly reached for his wineglass and took another sip. The thought of Leon Barrett finding out that he’d been disbarred made him want to puke.
“They’re building some new homes in The Estates,” Leon continued. He always referred to Palos Verdes Estatesas The Estates. Waverly figured he’d moved there just so people would think he lived on an estate.
“If you’d bought over there when I told you to, you’d have nothing but money in the bank.” Leon owned a small construction firm that had done well, in part, because he was a major tightwad.
The wine was doing nothing to reduce Waverly’s irritation level. Too bad his own father was dead and gone. Henry Sloan wouldn’t have just thought about telling Leon Barrett to kiss his ass, he would have done it.
The evening plodded painfully along as it always did. Deidra’s father and sister talked nonstop about themselves while Deidra’s mother Myrtle, smiled and nodded like a big bobble head.
“I have to go to Paris at the end of the week to interview a bunch of obnoxious designers,” Rachel said, feigning annoyance. She was a fashion editor for Vogue. Like her sister, Rachel was a good-looking woman, but she lacked Deidra’s talent for capitalizing on her beauty.
“I hate you,” Deidra exclaimed. “I’ve been dying to go back to Paris.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” Rachel prodded. “I’ll be there three weeks. It’ll be fun.”
Deidra gave Waverly a hopeful look.
Having Deidra out of town for a few weeks would give him time to get a backup plan in place. But the funds for a ticket to Paris didn’t exist. His face must’ve conveyed that.
“If you can’t afford it,” Leon said facetiously. “I’d be glad to pick up the tab.”
Waverly smiled across the table at his father-in-law. “That’s a very generous offer.” He paused to take a sip of wine. “And we’d love to take you up on it.”
A razor-sharp silence whipped around the table. No one was more dazed than his blowhard father-in-law. Leon Barrett frequently offered to share his money, but never actually parted with any. Waverly thought the man might actually choke on his toothpick. Deidra shot Waverly a look hot enough to scorch his eyeballs, but he pretended not to notice.