"My divorce has nothing to do with this case."
"The prosecution could come up with an angle. That's why I'm here doing a thorough background analysis. You refused a substantial settlement when your husband divorced you. Why?"
She gave him more lasagna, clearly considering whether or not to answer. "My husband left me for someone else. They'd been seeing each other—behind my back—for years. I was angry. I had no intention of taking money so he wouldn't feel guilty."
"You'd rather live like this than accept what was rightfully yours?"
"He can keep his damn money. I don't need it or him."
Wow, Paul thought as he took another bite of lasagna. She's carrying a mule load of emotional baggage. He changed the subject. "What do you do for Global Research?"
"Global is a fancy name for the Tomaine Tommy's burger chain. I'm a spy. I visit the various franchises to make sure there's TP in the restrooms, the fries aren't soggy, the help smiles—that sort of thing."
Paul was familiar with her job. All the major chains had people checking on their franchises. And if a problem was found the spy would return day after day to determine the extent of the trouble. That took someone who was extremely deceptive and skilled at disguises.
"I've been a PI for years. I've learned people have great instincts. I've saved a lot of time by pursuing those leads first. What's your gut feeling about who took the jewels?"
"Wade Farenholt. He'd selected Caroline for his son. Royce—though I love her like a sister—is hardly a demure, classy lady like Caroline. And Royce was a threat. She would have encouraged Brent to resist his father's demands."
"Great," Mitch said, as he stood in the cramped phone booth and listened to Paul finish telling him about his interview with Valerie Thompson. "No one can agree who put the jewels in the purse."
"A crime of opportunity," Paul responded. "Who could predict Royce would leave her purse at the table? But this drug deal took planning and cash. I doubt Royce's friends have the money."
"But don't rule it out. Get as many people on this as it takes, and keep me posted."
Mitch hung up, then called information for Gus Wolfe's number. It was well after midnight, so the phone rang several times before the policeman answered.
"It's Mitch Durant. You owe me one. Remember?"
"Yeah... I remember." Wolfe sounded pissed.
"A search warrant was issued for Royce Winston's home. The informant's name on the affidavit is confidential. I want that name."
"Well, hell... you know I don't work in Narcotics."
"You've been on the force for years. You must have a Narc buddy who'll tell you the informant's name."
Mitch hung up without giving Gus a chance to argue, then he walked through the swinging doors into the prison offices.
Jewel Brown looked up from the duty roster she was scheduling and saw Mitch Durant coming her way. She wasn't surprised. He often dropped by and left cigarettes or candy.
The other attorneys oiled the boys out front to be certain they were given the first available visiting room, or to get hustled through the jail's metal detectors, but Mitch was smarter than the rest. He made certain the gang in the back got their share.
Mitch sat on the edge of her desk next to her computer terminal. "Here are two tickets to the Giants game. I can't go, but maybe someone around here can use them."
"Thanks." Jewel pushed the tickets aside as if seats behind home plate weren't pure gold. She hated baseball, but her son and one of his no-account friends would be in pig-shit heaven. He might even help her with the laundry.
"I need some information," Mitch said. That's what Jewel liked about Mitchell Durant. Another attorney would jive you to sleep, then ask for help. "What can you tell me about a prisoner named Maisie? I don't know her last name but—"
"Shit, everyone knows Maisie Cross. That bull dyke's been in an' outta here two dozen times for clockin' 'caine. Cain't never raise bail, so we're always stuck with her until her trial."
Mitch frowned. If Maisie was a veteran of a cruel prison jungle, Royce was no match for her. "I need a favor."
"Shoot." Jewel was pleased to be able to help. Mitch had never asked her for anything. Not that she felt guilty for taking so much from him. Everyone knew lawyers were rollin' in dead presidents.
"I don't want Royce Winston assigned to Maisie's cell."
"Sure 'nuf. When she's booked, the computer will find her a bunk on B level. It has windows."
"Great." Mitch smiled, looking relieved. "One more thing—what can you tell me about Helen Sykes?"
Jewel punched a few keys. "She's outta here. Yesterday morning." She saw Mitch expected her to say more. "She's a hubba." The lowest of whores, hubbas screwed—anytime, anywhere—not for money but for coke.
He rubbed his forehead. "Then she's a snitch."
Jewel rocked back, all three hundred pounds balanced on the chair's back legs, and hooted. "Course. She'll say whatever the DA tells her. Two witnesses saw her whackin' a john under a streetlight. But the charges were dropped. Any fool knows she musta cut a deal. She ratted on some poor sucker."
"How could the cops know to plant a snitch so fast?" Mitch asked Paul the following morning. "Unless they were tipped."
Mitch stared out the plate-glass window of his seventeenth floor office at the expanse of the bay. Clouds draped the Golden Gate Bridge, leaving only the tips of the tall pillars visible above a bank of pewter-colored clouds swollen with rain.
"Sounds like someone called the DA's office from the St. Francis," Paul offered.
Mitch had kept in contact with a clerk in the DA's office since he'd left years ago. Insurance. Mitch reached her and explained what he wanted. She agreed to get the information and call him back.
Mitch hung up, dead certain the DA's referral service would have the answer. To insure their safety attorneys in the DA's office never listed their numbers or addresses. The office referral service handled after-hours messages. The clerk returned his call just minutes later, and Mitch switched on the speaker phone.
"Ward Farenholt called at eight minutes after eleven the night of the auction. Abigail Carnivali took the call."
"Carnivorous," Paul said after Mitch had thanked his source and made a note to send her a gift certificate from Saks. "But why the snitch if Carnivorous was going for a search warrant?"
"Abigail thought Royce could talk her way out of the charges. Why would she have deliberately opened her purse? She sent in a snitch to make her case. Then the informant surfaced and implicated Royce in a drug deal."
"Makes sense. Got a line on the informant?"
"I should hear soon."
The day passed slowly, but not as slowly as it must be passing for Royce, Mitch realized. Gus Wolfe didn't call with the informant's name. Late that night—Royce had been in jail for another twenty-four hours—Mitch waited for Royce in a prison visiting room.
She dropped into the chair opposite him, her face leached of color. Even her green eyes looked paler, almost sunken behind dark circles. "Any word on my uncle?"
He took a paper out of his briefcase. "No. Here's a missing persons report. Has to be signed by the next of kin." He gave her his pen. Her hand trembled as she signed her name. "I don't think anything's happened to your uncle. Paul got into his house. Wally had returned from the auction and changed his clothes. Shortly after midnight he withdrew three hundred dollars from the instant teller. His car's missing. Looks like he's taken a trip except that the paper expected him in on Monday, and he didn't show."
"That isn't like Uncle Wally. He's steadfast, someone you can count on. That job is his life. He wouldn't not show up without calling. I'm certain something's wrong."
"Paul's looking for him and now the police will be looking too." He put the paper back in his briefcase. "How are you doing?"
She lifted her eyes from the table to meet his; for once they weren't filled with hate. "It's better this time. I'm allowed visitors, and the matron comes to get me to u
se the telephone even when I haven't asked."
"Don't discuss the case with Talia or Val," Mitch cautioned.
"I haven't, but it's difficult. They're my friends."
He put his hand over hers, touching her lightly, looking directly into her eyes. "You've got to learn not to trust anyone—except me."
The next morning Mitch called the DA's office and asked to speak to Abigail Carnivali. It was a courtesy call. In most cases attorneys discussed bail. It cut down on the time spent in court, where everything was already backlogged.
"Mitch, how've you been?" Abigail crooned as if this were a social call, but he knew she hated him and had since the moment he'd declared he'd never marry her. Damn straight, she'd do her best to fry Royce just so she could make a fool out of him.
"I'm great. How are things with you?"
He let her rattle on about her trip to the Cayman Islands with her current lover—another notch on her bedpost. The eternal search for justice made everyone in the DA's office hornier than hell. Okay, anything made lawyers horny. He hadn't been any exception.
He'd resisted for several years, then let Abigail seduce him. He'd assumed it was her power trip, because she'd dropped one hotshot lawyer after another. But then she'd wanted to get married. Why me? For damn sure his luck sucked the big one.
She came up for air and he said, "I have no intention of running for DA."
Silence, then, "I wasn't worried. Anyway, after the Winston trial no one will be able to beat me."
"Actually, I was calling about Royce Winston's bail."
Another silence. She loved them. "Let 'em squirm," she used to tell Mitch. "Bail?" she said, as if it were some foreign word.
Mitch checked his watch. "Your forty-eight hours will be up soon. Between photo ops and TV interviews about the case, I suggest you think about bail."
"I'll get around to it... sometime."
A pit bull litigator, but on an intellectual plane all Abigail appreciated was trendy restaurants and designer clothes. When she wasn't in the office, she haunted Saks. Honest to God, what had he ever seen in her? Ambition. A career. But not a real life. A reflection of himself. And he hated it.
"While you're getting around to a bail request, shit can Helen Sykes's statement. If you make me waste my time tearing that hubba snitch apart in court, I promise you, I will run for DA." A bullshit bluff, but she didn't know it. Mitch had no intention of running for any office. Ever. How could he? His past would be front page news.
"Mitchell Durant, don't you dare threaten me. As it happens, I don't need her statement, but if I did—"
"Don't piss me off. Pull out a bail schedule and let's work on this now." Mitch was worried they wouldn't locate Royce's uncle. With the new charges she'd need Wally's help to post bail. Abigail confirmed his suspicions.
"What?" he yelled. "That's way too high for bail in this case and you damn well know it."
"She's a threat, Mitch," Abigail's voice was all sugar. "What can I do? It's my responsibility to protect society."
"You bitch." He slammed down the receiver.
When was the last time he'd lost his temper? But he could see it coming: Abigail would ask for the moon and Royce wouldn't be able to raise it. Nothing looked worse than a defendant who couldn't make bail. The media would love it. Abigail could get more free publicity for her political campaign.
And Royce would rot in jail. Or worse. Royce seemed to have the inner strength she'd need to get through this. But never forget her father committed suicide. She might, too, if things got bad enough.
CHAPTER 7
Royce lay in her bunk, awake but hardly conscious of where she was. Even the woman sitting beside the cell's toilet, flushing it for the hundredth time and staring into it as if it were a crystal ball, didn't quite register. It was as if she'd retreated to some distant part of her body. Or better yet, had moved out of it to another place. Sleep deprivation, she told herself, finding it hard to hold even that thought for more than a moment.
Her mind wandered through a labyrinth of disjointed thoughts. Cocaine. In her home? Mitch. Hell. Don't talk to anyone about the case. The nerve shattering sound of her front door splintering, destroying the stained-glass panel her father had so lovingly made.
Who? Who would frame her like this? Who hated her this much?
She curled on her side, facing the wall, praying for sleep that would revive her. And bring an answer.
"Winston," yelled the matron, "you've got a visitor."
Royce opened her eyes, at first not remembering where she was. She staggered to her feet. A glance at the wall clock confirmed she'd slept for over an hour. She hurried down the hall to a visitor's room, hoping for Wally but finding Talia.
"Omigod, Royce. Are you all right?"
Royce dropped into the chair. "Sure. I'm just tired. I've hardly had any sleep. I was napping."
"I didn't mean to wake you, but Mitch said to keep visiting you to keep your spirits up. I—I—"
"It's okay. What's happening? What are the papers saying?"
Talia swept her dark hair behind one ear. "That Tobias Ingeblatt is the worst. He's..."
"Go ahead tell me. I can take it."
"Ingeblatt has interviewed all the Farenholts' friends. The consensus is you're a fortune hunter that—"
"What did Brent say?" Some part of her still couldn't believe he'd deserted her. Why hadn't she foreseen this? But she hadn't. Nothing she'd known about him could have predicted this reaction. "Didn't he deny that I'm a fortune hunter?"
"Brent hasn't given a statement." Talia hesitated and Royce knew she was hiding something. Talia had a newborn sensitivity honed by months of introspection, thanks to an outrageously expensive psychotherapist, and bolstered by encounter groups. Now Talia was obsessed with finding the true meaning of life.
"Talia, don't keep anything from me."
"There have been pictures of Brent—and Caroline at posh restaurants like Postrois."
Not Postrois. Not "their" restaurant. She put her head in her hands. In some hidden corridor of her mind she'd expected Brent to love her enough to come to her rescue. Each passing minute confirmed what her brain already knew, but her heart refused to accept. Brent had never really loved her.
Then she felt it again, the odd sensation of her spirit leaving her body. The fight was going out of her; she couldn't muster her usual biting comment at Brent's betrayal. If she didn't get out of here soon, the Farenholts would get what they wanted. They'd destroy her. Completely.
"I think Caroline did it," Talia insisted. "She wanted to marry Brent and had to get rid of you."
Don't talk about the case.
"Val insists she put the key back after she picked up your passport. But didn't you say Caroline had been with the Farenholts once when they'd dropped you off and you'd mentioned the key?"
Had she told Talia that? Royce's mind was too foggy to remember, but she did recall the incident. All the Farenholts and Caroline knew she had a key hidden under a flowerpot. It wouldn't have taken Sherlock Holmes to find it.
"I've been cooperating with the authorities," Talia confessed, a little more shamefaced than necessary. "The truth will set you free, don't you think?"
Judge Clarence Sidle gazed over the rims of his half-moon glasses and cursed his bad luck. Night court—the judicial pits. But a newly appointed judge could expect no better: drug addicts, prostitutes, and a stream of homeless who committed petty crimes so they could spend the night in jail out of the cold.
Clarence thought of his father, who'd called in every favor to get him appointed to the bench before his legal practice failed entirely. "A judge is only a lawyer who knows someone," his father had reminded him a thousand times. "They're no smarter than you are."
Really? His father wasn't sitting in night court packed with reporters, facing two of the best legal minds in San Francisco, Abigail Carnivali and Mitchell Durant. Attorneys this important didn't appear in night court, and the media didn't turn out in force, unless
something big was up. Beneath his black robe and the white shirt his wife had so carelessly pressed, Clarence began to sweat. Shit, he didn't want to screw up. Not now, not during his first month on the bench.
Abigail Carnivali rose and Clarence suppressed a shudder. What a ball buster. It didn't take long for Abigail to enumerate the state's charges against the sexy blond.
"Royce Anne Winston," Clarence said, angling his head down so he could peer over the tops of his glasses and get a better look at her.
Royce Winston was standing, appearing stunned, not nearly as sexy as in those bikini photos in yesterday's paper. Still, Clarence shifted in his chair, his cock responding to the attractive blond and reminding him that his wife was holding out for a mink. He hadn't been laid in over a month.
"Royce Anne Winston," he began again, striving to sound stern, "you are charged by a complaint filed herein with a felony, to wit, a violation of section forty-three of the Penal Code in that you did, in the City and County of San Francisco, willfully and unlawfully commit grand theft. Further, you are charged with violating section one thirty-seven of the Penal Code, in that you had in your possession a controlled substance, eight ounces of cocaine, for the purpose of sale. How do you plead?"
The press corps leaned forward, straining to hear the soft voice. "Not guilty."
Immediately Durant stood, taking Clarence by surprise. The prosecution was supposed to suggest bail now.
"Your Honor," Durant said, and Clarence almost looked over his shoulder to see if there was someone else in the room. But no, it was just the power of the title. "I would like to request the court order participants in this case to refrain from discussing it with anyone from the media."
"Unfair," and a lot of other complaints, rose from the Fourth Estate.
Clarence rapped his gavel. Silence. He swallowed a smile. Power. He could get used to it. "Continue."
"The biased press coverage"—Durant looked at the DA's table—"and blatant attempts by the assistant district attorney to grab headlines to further her political career are jeopardizing my client's right to a fair trial."
Sawyer, Meryl Page 10
