Crash And Burn

by Fern Michaels

  “Yes, and it’s making me crazy. What do you think, Jack? I told you everything, so you have as clear a picture as I have. What did I miss?”

  “I hate the word coincidence as much as you do, but don’t you think the past two days do not pass the sniff test? Let’s take it in order. Your new associate arrives bright and early yesterday morning. Not only is she your new associate, but you are handling what is probably one of the nicest, friendliest divorces of the century. The soon-to-be ex-husband arrives. They hold hands, everyone is misty-eyed, soon-to-be ex is setting up a trust for her, which she doesn’t want, but if she wants the divorce, which she does, she has to agree, and in the end, she agrees. Soon-to-be ex is rich, made kazillions in a start-up company, and has a trust of his own set up by his parents. Mom is rich, that’s where the family money comes from. Dad is good old Buzz Lambert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in the line of succession to the presidency. A man of distinction, in his own right, and one who might want to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue down the road. No love lost between father and son, but we do not know why. Yet.

  “Moving right along here. New associate leaves to go wherever she’s going. Soon-to-be ex hightails it down to Margie Baylor to sign off on the trust, and who shows up, but good old Buzz? That’s all we know about that.

  “Moving further along, your second new client shows up, using an alias, no less. All hush-hush and secretive. And, lo and behold, it turns out that your second new client is the mother-in-law of your new associate, and mother to the Lamberts’ only offspring, Jeffrey Lambert. Wife of good old Buzz Lambert. She wants a divorce, too. Lots of hoops to jump through here, but she lays down a hefty retainer. Lots of stories. True or false, who knows? What we do know at this point is that it is definitely weird.

  “Oops, I forgot to mention the mystery tapes that involve Buzz and the Chessmen, Washington’s hatchet lawyers. Said mystery tapes that suddenly disappear. Tapes, if they actually exist, that could put your client in jeopardy and damage the Speaker’s reputation. How am I doing so far, Nik?”

  “If nothing else, you’re making me look like the idiot I feel like. Continue, Jack, since you are on a roll now.”

  “Okay, last night you and the sisters hit the Daisy Wheel for dinner to figure out what to do about Maggie. You all ordered a dinner of shrimp scampi, which none of you ate, but took home with you. When you were leaving, you noticed Buzz and the Chessmen at the front of the restaurant. Myra, Annie, and you were the last to leave. Annie, for whatever reason, stopped at their table and recommended the shrimp scampi. She knows Buzz, but not the Chessmen. Introductions were made. Then you leave, and Myra decides it’s late and you three should stay at the Georgetown Inn, instead of driving out to the farm.

  “Today, when you’re finishing up to get ready to go out to the farm, your new client calls to tell you her husband and the four Chessmen have a bad case of food poisoning. Two are in the hospital. A doctor from Walter Reed made a house call for Buzz. Unheard of in this town, but obviously it did happen because of his position. She’s worried that you won’t be able to serve divorce papers on him, plus she’s jittery and scared now. I would assume because of the missing tapes.

  “Half of Washington’s health officials—hell, maybe all of them—descend on the Daisy Wheel to check it out for infractions. Because, after all, it is a five-star restaurant and is run by that aging hippie, Starry Knight. Who just happens to be best buds with Myra and Annie. That’s where we are right now. Did I miss anything?”

  “Only the part about Starry’s leaving a message for Myra and Annie at the office. Myra blew that off and said ‘Done and done’ probably referred to a catering job Annie hired her for. Do I believe that? Look at me, Jack, do I look like I believe it?”

  Jack laughed. “I have to say no, you do not. What’s your next move, honey?”

  “That’s just it, Jack. I don’t know. I know what I want to do, but don’t know if I should or not. I’m thinking ahead here. It’s going to be little ole me against those big bad Chessmen. No, they don’t scare me. But they fight dirty. I go by the letter of the law. Yes, I have my whole firm behind me. I’m a damn good lawyer, Jack, you know that. Mrs. Lambert has the money. Buzz just has his salary. She’s kept it that way all these years, so she obviously has some very astute financial advisors. The minute Buzz is served, first crack out of the gate, she’ll get a notice that she is being audited by the IRS. That’s years and years and boo-koo bucks defending. Next comes the muck. They’ll have scores of people who will swear she has a penchant for little boys or something equally disgusting. I know this because they’ve done it countless times to other women. Some of the stories I’ve heard are really scary. Every lawyer in town knows this, and no one will go up against the Chessmen. They cave the moment their clients get served.”

  “Okay, coffee’s done, now how about some wine? You have a plan of some kind, don’t you?” Jack said, reaching for a bottle of wine from the wine rack.

  Nikki leaned back on her chair to eyeball her husband. “It came to me right after you came home and went upstairs to shower. Cyrus and I were having a long talk. He agreed with me. When I had Carol prepare the complaint, I had her leave the last page blank. Sometimes, Jack, you just have to stack the deck. Let’s see who buckles and runs for cover once that complaint is served to Mr. Wilson ‘Call me “Buzz”’ Lambert, also known as Mister Speaker of the House.”

  Jack grinned from ear to ear; then he let out a loud whoop of pure pleasure. “And the lawyer’s name on the complaint.”

  “Elizabeth Fox. My secret weapon!”

  “Did you call her? She’s okay with it? I’m excited now.”

  “More than okay. She said she’s been itching for years to take on those guys. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Way to go, Mrs. Emery,” Jack said, high-fiving his wife.

  “Those guys really have not been on my radar screen. I know what I know, but I also know I don’t have the full skinny on them. Let’s pool our knowledge and see exactly what we’re going to be dealing with. We have all night, and this is a big bottle of wine. You go first,” Nikki said as she poured wine into exquisite wine flutes, which she kept for special occasions. “Wait, wait. Before we get to all that, backtrack a bit. Do you think I’m being set up? Why? To what end? I’m not seeing it, even though I know something isn’t right. Two divorces in the same family. Right now, that’s pretty much all I see. Where are you seeing the problem, the young soon-to-be–ex Mrs. Lambert, or the older soon-to-be–ex Mrs. Lambert senior?”

  “I don’t have the answer right now. You know me, Nik, I need to think and stew and beat it to death before I come up with something. That’s for later, anyway. Let’s see what we know about the Chessmen. Maybe we’ll find the answer there.”

  Nikki wrinkled her nose, an indication the subject was smelly.

  Jack laughed. “Back when I worked as a prosecutor in the DA’s office, that’s all the young guys talked about. The way I recall it, most of them were just putting in their time till they got some experience under their belts; then they all, and I do mean all, were going into the private sector and make their fortune by billing six hundred bucks an hour, like the Chessmen. I was the lone exception, if you can believe that. I liked working in the DA’s office, even though it was shitty pay. I just never had those kinds of aspirations.

  “I read all the articles written about them because the young guys brought them in for everyone else to read. I skimmed through them, picked up a few things I still remember. I’ve seen them interviewed on TV.

  “I think the four of them graduated from Harvard, then Harvard Law. They admitted they were nerds and had no friends other than themselves. What drew them together was they all belonged to the same chess club. They’re all obsessed with the game. None of them are tournament players, but they do okay. Then they made a joke out of their names, saying they knew if they started up their own law firm, it would be a success. Think about it, Nik.
King, Queen, Bishop, and Rook. One of the guys in the DA’s office brought in a snippet he said his girlfriend gave him from some tabloid that said the four of them were better chess players than lawyers. Then I heard later on they sued the tabloid, forced a retraction, and the reporter was fired. I remember the reporter’s name, too. For some reason, I never forgot it. I suppose because she was so young, and they ruined her life. She tried to defend herself, but those guys, even back then, had too much clout. We’re going back a lot of years, Nik. After it happened, every time I heard a story about them, I would think of Lee Anders. She disappeared. The tabloid eventually folded, too. Rumor had it that the Chessmen saw to that.”

  “That’s terrible. How did they get so powerful? And so quickly?”

  “Good PR. And their own success. It was like overnight they became the go-to guys if you wanted to win a court case. Fear and intimidation. They actually worked at it back then. Now, today, they are the biggest firm in the District. They, as far as I know, do not try cases themselves anymore. They just sign off on them. Rumor is they always settle because no one wants to go to court. They have almost sixty associates, over a hundred drones, and I forget how many paralegals. They have forty thousand square feet of office space on K Street. Lots and lots of cubicles for the drones. They have the best benefits package going, and they pay top dollar to their people. The perks are unbelievable, or so I’m told. They have scouts they send out to recruit the cream of the crop from every graduating law class around the country.”

  “I heard they have a day-care center in the building, a real fish pond, a state-of-the-art gym, and a gourmet kitchen, with two five-star chefs, which caters to the entire staff and the four partners. I can see why they don’t have any trouble with recruitment. I heard another rumor a while back about how they give all their new associates a pep talk and tell them when they bring in fifty—yep, fifty—million dollars, they will be considered for partnership. The monkey in that woodpile is that there were a few of the associates, real go-getters, who almost got to the fifty million. They were let go for whatever reason the Chessmen could come up with. No one fought back. No one. Did you hear that, Jack?” Nikki asked.

  “No. But knowing what little I do know, I believe it. They rule by fear and intimidation, like I said. I’m also sure their severance packages were generous enough that none of those who were let go would fight it, knowing what they would be up against.”

  Jack looked across the table at his wife. He hated the worried look he was seeing on her face. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. Do not go there, Nik. You’re as fearless as Lizzie is. You can take these guys on and win, so wipe that look off your face. Once Lambert is served, and the Chessmen know who it is they’re going to go up against, the tide will turn. In your favor. I know you’re concerned about how they play dirty. Are you forgetting about your sisters? You girls have tricks in your bag that they can’t even imagine. You win that one, and you can take down that firm. Do you have any idea how much Mrs. Lambert is worth?”

  “She’s up there with the endless zeros. Her family made their fortune in cotton and tobacco, just like all those other Virginia farmers. She has top-notch financial people handling her affairs. Buzz has never been able to get his hands on it. Everything grinds to a halt the moment he’s served. Shut down. Shut off. He won’t know what hit him, but the Chessmen will. I have Mrs. Lambert’s power of attorney.”

  “You’re kidding! She signed that over to you?”

  “Yes, and it was her idea in the first place. I’m tired of talking about this, and we have finished the wine. We need to clean all this up and go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. And didn’t I hear you say something about being excited. What exactly does that mean?”

  Cyrus reared up. He knew what that meant. It meant he was going to have one of those I-am-not-going-up-the-stairs moments. It meant he was sleeping right where he was. He thumped his tail on the tile floor, rolled over, and went back to sleep. At least he wouldn’t have to make his bed in the morning.

  “I say we just leave everything, and clean it up in the morning,” Jack said, pulling his wife to her feet.

  Cyrus cracked one eye open. He knew exactly how this was going to end.

  Chapter 8

  It was still dark out when Nikki made her way down the stairs, careful not to make a sound. She wasn’t the least bit surprised when she saw Cyrus waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, his tail moving in a frenzy. She bent low, hugged the huge animal, and whispered in his ear before he trotted alongside her out to the kitchen. She turned on the outside light and opened the door. She shivered as the cold October air rushed through the doorway. “Don’t take all day, Cyrus.”

  After she turned the heat up, Nikki eyed the mess she and Jack had left the night before. Gritting her teeth, she went at it, and, within minutes, the dishwasher was humming along, the coffee was dripping, and Cyrus’s breakfast was under way: four scrambled eggs, four strips of bacon, and a hefty scoop of dry dog food. She eyed the perfectly scrambled eggs, knowing that she couldn’t eat any. Breakfast had never been one of her favorite meals, and it still wasn’t, unless she ate it at dinnertime. The best she could do in the morning was a slice of toast, a glass of juice, and two cups of coffee.

  This morning, though, she was going to forgo the toast and stick with just coffee. No juice because she had forgotten to buy any.

  While she waited at the door for Cyrus to return from his morning ablutions, her thoughts took her everywhere. What was she doing up so early? She’d tossed and turned all night, something that usually happened when she started a new case, so it really wasn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was that things were not lining up the way she wanted, which meant that she had to be missing something. Her gaze went to the clock on the Wolf range. Lizzie Fox’s flight would be landing soon. Lizzie had the uncanny knack of looking at something and knowing instinctively what to do and how to go about it. Lizzie, she was sure, would make sense of all of this and tell her what she was missing.

  Nikki opened the door for the shepherd, who waited patiently for her to test his breakfast to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then went at it with gusto.

  Nikki crouched with her back to the stove and waited until Cyrus was finished before she started to talk. Cyrus was always a good listener.

  “Somewhere in this mess is an agenda, Cyrus. I know it. You know how you just know something. That’s what this is. My gut is talking to me, but I’m not hearing the message it’s sending. Is it my new associate? Is it Mrs. Lambert? To what end? Divorces are pretty cut-and-dried. There’s always the nitpicking, the squabbles, the compromises. I just cannot, for the life of me, figure out the endgame here. I know in my gut that these two divorces are not your everyday kind of divorce. The only thing I can think of that is different is the law firm for the Speaker. That is my fly in the ointment right now. But . . . the Chessmen have nothing to do with Jeffrey and Amy, at least to my knowledge. I’m starting to think that Livinia might, I say might, have an agenda where they are concerned. She said she had tapes, which have now, presumably, gone missing, if they ever really existed in the first place.

  “The Speaker’s reputation is going to be severely damaged when the news gets out that his wife of all these years, his very rich wife of all these years, is divorcing him. Of course, the Chessmen will try to put a lid on it. What do you think, Cyrus? Am I even on the right track here, or am I just beating a dead horse?”

  Cyrus reared up and licked at her cheek. He whined low in his throat, a sign that he couldn’t help, even though he wanted to. Nikki stroked his massive head and hugged him. “I’m going to figure it out. I always do. I just wish it were going to be sooner rather than later.

  “Oh, wow! Listen to this, Cyrus! I just had a thought. Starry Knight! Knight is the name of one of the chess pieces. Could that be my smoking gun? There are six pieces, pawn, bishop, knight, queen, rook, and king. Now if the last piece somehow
comes to light and is named pawn, I am seriously going to be upset. All four of the Chessmen, plus Mr. Speaker of the House, got sick the other night after they ate dinner at Starry Knight’s restaurant! Too much of a coincidence? I think I need to pay attention to this and see if I can hook it all together.

  “Cyrus, go upstairs and wake up Jack. Don’t let him roll over and go back to sleep. Bite his toes, if you have to. Go!”

  The shepherd bounded out of the room the moment the words rolled off Nikki’s tongue. Permission to nip at Jack? Doggie heaven after Jack made Harry take him to the BOLO Building and leave him there. Revenge is definitely a dish best served cold, preferably when its recipient is snugly nestled in a nice, warm bed.

  Nikki was sliding a tray of sticky buns into the oven just as Jack stumbled into the kitchen. Nikki quickly poured him a cup of coffee and set it in front of him. “Good job, Cyrus!”

  The shepherd barked to show he could follow orders. “I’ve seen you look better in the morning, honey.” Nikki giggled. She continued to giggle at her husband’s wild hair, which was standing on end, as well as the one arm in his robe, the other dragging on the floor. He wore one slipper and looked meaner than a cat caught outside in a rainstorm.

  “I was having the best dream. I was at a pure white-sand beach swimming in crystal-blue waters. You and Cyrus were with me, and you were wearing a bikini that could fit in my ear. It was red-and-white polka dots. Cyrus was wearing a jeweled collar. A big wave was bearing down, then, bam! All I could see was your bikini washing away in the wave. Cyrus tried to get it, then he woke me up. That dog is relentless. What are you doing up so early? Oh, you cleaned the kitchen! Sticky buns. Is that a peace offering for waking me so early? Say something!” Jack demanded.

  Nikki sniffed. “Well, for starters, I do not own a red-and-white polka-dotted bikini. Cyrus never fails. He would have retrieved my bikini if it really were mine, which it could not have been. How do I even know that I was the one wearing it in your dream? I just have your word for it, and right now, you look pretty shifty-eyed to me. So . . . who was it?”