“Okay, kid, let’s go find Sophie Lee,” Don said as he straightened his cap a little more firmly on his head. He slipped on his shades. Definitely incognito.
Ginger giggled. “You have to be kidding me, Don. There’s no way we’re going to find that young woman. Even if she’s here, Kala Aulani has her so well stashed, even a drug-sniffing dog couldn’t find her. Assuming, of course, she had drugs on her person.”
“I don’t even know why the hell we’re here, Ginger. What does Spenser think this is going to get him? Sophie Lee is free. There’s nothing he can do about it. It’s all legal, and it’s all been squared away. What? He thinks he can send in some goons and take her out? That’s pretty damn stupid if you ask me. I don’t know what his game plan is. When A can’t get me to B, I start to worry.” His voice was fretful as he ranted on. “I’m just not getting it. Sophie’s free. Why did Aulani stash her somewhere? Why is Spenser looking for her? What could she possibly say or do now that would make a difference?”
“Yeah, me, too. Do you think maybe it might have something to do with Aulani filing a lawsuit against the state? Maybe he wants to chop her off at the knees. Hell, Don, I don’t have the faintest idea, and if you want the honest truth, I hope we don’t find her. Sure, we’ll do some looking in the obvious places, but not all that hard. We’re lawyers, not private detectives. I suppose he sent us because it would cost too much to send real investigators, who would not put up with the crap we’re putting up with.”
Chapter 15
THE AULANI LAW FIRM, NOW KNOWN OFFICIALLY AS AULANI, Brighton, Brighton, and Darrow, resembled a Chinese fire drill gone awry. The four fax machines spit out paper at the speed of light, the three copy machines were hot to the touch, with all the copies being run through the automatic feed, computers clicked and hummed as documents were hammered out almost as fast as the fingers typing them could hit the keys. Cell phones pinged and buzzed, some to snappy tunes that set everyone’s teeth on edge. The firm’s main number was backlogged, with some thirty-seven callers waiting to be heard. Associates, the partners, and the paralegals were shouting to one another as though they were on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade with its open outcry trading system.
Patty Molnar brought her fingers to her lips and whistled the way Jon had taught her years and years ago back at the orphanage. The sound was so shrill that people clapped their hands over their ears. All sound ceased except that of the machines, which continued to work at warp speed. They all stared at Patty to see what this break in work meant. She waved her index finger in a half circle to indicate she wanted the attention of the new investigators she’d hired. “All of you, follow me.”
Inside the conference room, which could comfortably seat twelve, Patty took her seat at the head of the table. She looked around at the people she’d just hired; the three blond bombshells looked just the way she wanted them to look. Blond wigs, false eyelashes, plenty of makeup, glossy lips, sparkling white teeth, curvy where they were supposed to be curvy. The curves were encased in eye-opening spandex. The stiletto heels glistened with rhinestones and shiny sequins. The bombshells stopped just short of looking like ladies of the evening. Patty didn’t think the man who could resist their charms had yet been born. She grinned, and said, “I do like your style, ladies.”
Patty turned her focus to the three male investigators. Studs—although she wouldn’t know a stud if she tripped over him. All were Adonis good-looking. Or as Linda said when her husband was not in earshot, “Those guys are ripped.” All three were tanned and buff, with killer smiles to match their killer bodies. There was nothing shabby about their killer ré-sumés either. All six investigators were on summer vacation from their last year at various law schools. A good crew.
“Okay, guys, here’s the deal, so listen up. I’m going to separate you into three teams, boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl. I want you to go back to the day Adam William Clements was born and get me everything until the day he died. When I say everything, I mean everything, no matter how insignificant you might think it is. The same thing goes for Audrey Star, Adam’s wife, who inherited the Star fortune. Last but not least, I want the same thing for Ryan Spenser. Work together on his father—the Speaker of the House—the uncle, who is governor of Georgia, and the governor’s wife. And don’t forget Spenser’s mother. Do a good job, and your last year’s tuition will be paid in full by this firm, and you’ll all get nice going-back-to-school bonuses as well. Any questions?”
Adonis number one looked at Patty and smiled. She felt herself melt for a second. “Yes?”
“What if we have to pay sources before they agree to talk?”
“You go with your gut. Don’t be overly generous, but don’t be stingy either. You know what they say, money talks and bullshit walks. They say that a lot around this office. We’ll pay whatever it takes if it’s legit. One last thing, and I’m glad you brought it up.” The last and only question, which told her she had made the right selection.
“Try and rip us off, and we’ll go after you. You won’t be able to hide, so let’s keep this on the up-and-up with meticulous records, names, dates, places, and most important, phone numbers that actually work if we need to make contact again. I want a report on my desk at the end of each business day. Signed by both members of each team. Two sets of eyes see things differently, two minds interpret things differently, so make sure you include everything in your reports. I’m going to leave you all now so you can divide up your work, decide who is qualified to work with which person.”
“Wait, one more question,” Adonis number one said. “Do we have a time frame here?”
“You do. It was up yesterday,” Patty said, closing the door behind her. Damn, those guys were good-looking. And on her very, very, very best day, she couldn’t even come close to looking like the bombshells. On the other hand, she seriously doubted any one of the six had two best friends like Nick and Sophie or a fiancé like Jed. Well, no one gets it all, she told herself happily as she made her way back to where the Chinese fire drill was still going on like ... a Chinese fire drill.
Patty looked down at the strap watch on her wrist. It was an old-fashioned Timex, the kind they advertised with “They take a lickin’ but keep on tickin’.” Sophie and Nick had watches just like hers. Nick was even wearing his when he played in the tournament. She frowned; whatever it was she’d been trying to remember was still niggling at her. Thinking about the watches brought the elusive thought front and center. What the heck was it? Whatever it was, it still wasn’t ready to pop into her conscious mind.
Patty made her way through the chaos and found a secluded cubicle at the very back of the suite that was next to Kala’s old office. She sat down, took a deep breath, and sent off a text to Nick.
Three hours later, Nick read the message as he waited to get off the plane. He smiled. Patty was so on top of things. Welcome home, indeed. He grinned. It was Patty’s not-so-subtle way of reminding him of the present he was supposed to bring her. It wasn’t the money at all. Patty would be satisfied with a bottle of sand from one of the famous black beaches, which was exactly what he was bringing her.
Nick wished now he had opted to fly home on the private jet that had been offered, but accepting gifts like that didn’t sit well with him. He’d opted for commercial and first-class. His hip ached unbearably from the long flight even though he’d gotten up numerous times to walk up and down the aisle. He didn’t want to take any more Advil—he’d gone through more than enough for one day. According to the pilot, it was raining, and damp weather always added to his discomfort. Then he looked out the window and saw that the jet was parked on the tarmac, not at a gate, which meant they would have to go down the portable stairs and walk across the tarmac in the rain. In an hour, he’d be home and in his hot tub. He held on to that thought as he picked up his gear from the overhead bin and got in line behind two other people. Damn, make that two hours, possibly three.
How could he have forgotten the welcoming committee t
hat would be waiting for him indoors? He made a mental note to call his orthopedic surgeon as soon as he got home to ask him if he could get another shot of that jelly they pumped into his hip joint. He wasn’t hopeful the doctor would agree. It was time for the surgery he’d put off long enough. The main reason he’d put off the surgery was because the doctors—and he had the best of the best—couldn’t guarantee he would be able to play golf the way he had been playing. The most they would say was, he would be able to play golf after a reasonable length of time with therapy, but they didn’t know about the grueling tournament schedule that had gotten him to where he was in the golf world.
A minute later, it was all moot. Nick’s hip locked into place, and he slipped on the slick third step of the portable stairway. He tumbled to the bottom. Never in his life had he felt such incredible pain. It was so bad, he blacked out. When he came to, he was on a gurney and being loaded into an ambulance.
Kala’s entire office saw the accident. Patty was out the door within seconds and got to the hospital just as they were wheeling Nick through the wide double doors of the emergency room. Tears were running down her face as she raced to catch up with the running EMTs. “Nick!”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t forget your present,” he shouted feebly. Then he was gone through another set of double doors.
“Jerk!” Nick was okay; he wasn’t going to die if he could yell at her like that. “Thank you, God, thank you, God!”
Patty sat down on a bench near the door. She’d catch the EMT guys on their way out. She started to cry again. She knew it was Nick’s hip. People didn’t die with broken hips or when they got hip replacements, something Nick had been trying to avoid. Nick was her rock. Actually, he was everyone’s rock. He’d confided in her two years ago when he’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. He’d sworn her to secrecy. Like she would ever breathe a word of Nick’s business to anyone. Not even to Jed.
The tears continued to flow. What would Nick do if he couldn’t play golf? She couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would do. Maybe write a book. Nick’s writing a book was the silliest idea she’d ever had. Maybe not a book per se but more like a golfing manual. He’d do better writing a book about what it meant to be a friend and benefactor to St. Gabriel’s. Who would buy something like that? Other golfers? Even that was doubtful. Teach kids to play golf the way someone had taught him? Good possibility. Sell his own brand of golf clubs?
How could life be so unfair? The four of them had started off their lives with no parents, been put in an orphanage, and never knew what it was like to have a real family. That part was even okay because the four of them had found each other. They were their own little family. Then Sophie was arrested for murder and sent to prison for life for a crime another person had just confessed to committing and lost ten years of her life. Then Jon, who only wanted to do good in the world, had died from some crazy-ass jungle virus. Now Nick with his bone-on-bone hip. She couldn’t help but wonder what was in store for her. She felt a shiver of apprehension ripple up her spine.
Patty swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt as she got up to talk to the EMTs. In the end, they really couldn’t tell her anything that she hadn’t seen on television other than to say that Nick’s doctors were on the way.
Outside, in the now-pouring rain, Patty could see the media vans rolling up. She saw her replacement from AJC, who groaned when she saw Patty. Patty flipped her the bird and hustled over to the Fox reporter and asked him up front if he wanted to interview her since she was first on the scene and had actually spoken to her friend Nick. The reporter snapped her up like she was the last donut on the plate. When no one except her replacement was looking, Patty offered up a single-digit salute for the second time.
Ten thousand miles away across the Pacific, Sophie Lee watched a recap of the day’s news before retiring for the night. Her eyes almost popped out of her head as her jaw dropped when she saw her best friend in the whole world tumble down the portable set of steps that had been wheeled up to the plane. She clutched at her chest at the pandemonium she was witnessing. She hardly dared to breathe as she watched an ambulance careening across the tarmac minutes later, and her best friend in the whole world was loaded onto a stretcher and into the wailing ambulance. She listened to the words, heard them, digested them, then started to really cry.
Sophie continued to listen as reporter after reporter vaguely implied that there were rumors about Nick’s hips and what it would mean to his golf game and to the sport in general. Then they went on to Nick’s endorsements and what it would mean to all the companies who sponsored him. It always came down to money with these guys, Sophie thought. She hugged Sula, who was busy trying to lick at Sophie’s tears.
“Money really is the root of all evil, you know that, Sula?” She gasped when she saw Patty and the Fox reporter. Good, good, really good. Patty was there for Nick. Good old Patty. God, how she missed her. Sophie listened to what she was saying as she hugged Sula close. How great she looked. She couldn’t believe it when she heard the reporter say Patty had been fired from the AJC and was now working as an investigator for the Aulani law firm.
An hour passed as Sophie flipped from one station to the next. She couldn’t get enough of the rehashing. She had the reporters’ verbiage memorized as the hour moved on. She needed to go back to Georgia. She really did. Another hour passed, then, gloriously, there was Patty standing outside the hospital talking to a Fox reporter. Again. Sophie’s tears welled once more at the sight of her friend. How good she looked. How pissed she looked. Sophie saw how upbeat she was trying to be, but she was hurting big-time. Hurting for Nick. Patty tried to make light of what he’d said to her as he was being rushed into the operating room, and she ended with, “And I still don’t know what he brought me back from Hawaii.” In spite of herself, Sophie laughed. That was Patty.
Then the reporter overstepped his bounds by asking Patty her personal opinion on what she thought Nick would do if the rumors were true about his physical condition. Patty backed away, her eyes narrowed into slits. She waved airily and headed for her car, the AJC reporter hot on her heels.
“Hey, Patty, don’t blame me for getting fired.”
“What?” Patty retaliated. “Do you have a guilty conscience or something?”
“No, I don’t. They handed me your job. You know how it works. Either I took it, or I was on the unemployment line. You would have done the same thing.”
She was right. It was an ugly business. “If I had a secret and wanted to share it with a newspaper, and your paper offered me ten times what another paper offered me, I’d turn it down and go with the other guy. You guys got bought off, you blinked. That’s not the kind of journalism I subscribe to. Good luck,” Patty said as she stomped away through the rain.
Patty got in, slammed the car door, and started up the engine. She was going home to cry some more in the little house Nick held the mortgage on. The day after Sophie had been taken off to prison, Nick came by the apartment she had shared with Sophie and helped her move, along with three of his friends. It wasn’t like she had a choice. Nick and his friends had just showed up, packed up hers and Sophie’s stuff, and moved her into an investment house he had only recently bought with the proceeds from his first tournament win. He said she had enough going on in her mind and didn’t need the memories of her life with Sophie in the ratty little apartment they lived in. And, of course, he was exactly right. Nick was always right. Well, almost all of the time.
And it was a nice little house, three bedrooms, three baths, a nice family room, wraparound deck, wonderful shrubbery, and flowers galore in the spring and summer. Nick even cut the lawn for her from time to time. Big brother Nick.
Patty started wailing so loud, she turned on the radio to drown out her misery.
Big brother Nick. God, how she loved him. Even if she had a flesh-and-blood brother, she couldn’t have loved him any more than she loved Nick. How blessed she was that Jed understood her feelings for
Nick and wasn’t the least bit jealous. Jed truly understood that Sophie and Nick would always come first in her life no matter how much she loved him.
Chapter 16
RETIRED JUDGE BEN JEFFERSON STOOD ON THE BALCONY OF THE hotel he and Kala were staying in. It offered a perfect view of Paris in all its romantic glory. Not that he was actually seeing or appreciating it; his mind was a thousand miles away. He never should have insisted on this trip, but he and Kala had been planning it for over a year. She’d been as gung ho as he was in the planning stages and had done most of the work on it herself. All was well until the day Adam Clements, a.k.a. Adam Star, walked into Kala’s office and turned her world upside down. And his world as well.
The trip simply wasn’t working, that was the bottom line. Kala was forcing herself to enjoy herself, but the effort it took was beyond painful to watch. She barely picked at the delectable food, she hurried from one sightseeing adventure to the next like she had a time frame where she couldn’t waste even a minute. He knew if he quizzed her at the end of the day, she would have struggled to remember what it was they had seen or where they had gone.
Ben looked down at his watch just as the phone in the elegant suite rang. He walked back inside and picked it up. He thanked the concierge as he jotted down what he was being told on a notepad alongside the phone. He looked around the room, then across the hall to the door, where their packed bags waited for a bellhop to take them to the lobby. On his own, he’d made the decision to leave, to go back to Georgia. He knew in his heart, in his gut, Kala would not protest. If she had to, she would run all the way to the airport and leave the bags behind if she knew that was the only way to return to Georgia.
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