She crossed her arms in front of her. “You really weren’t ready for us, were you?”
How did I explain that to her? How could I explain to her that I was ready for her and Luna, and I had been ready for the two of them for the last six months. Ever since I found out that their mother Theresa had designated me as their guardian in her will, I had been getting ready for the two of them. Then my mother showed up on my doorstep, and all of my carefully laid plans that I had for the girls went out the window.
So, I was ready, but not really. I didn’t think that I was going to have to be scrambling like I was.
“I was ready. But, I have to admit that things changed pretty recently, and drastically. I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. But at the same time, I knew that I didn’t want her on the street.” And, there was the little matter of my believing that I could be a good influence on my mother, at least a little bit.
“And why would she have been on the street? She works, right?”
“Yes. She works. She spends all the money that she gets. She also had a lot of issues with her credit, so she wasn’t able to rent a decent place. She had been evicted several times, plus she had a recent bankruptcy, and she just wasn’t a good credit risk for an apartment. So yes, it was a matter of either her staying here, while she tries to get back on her feet, or living in some really crappy apartment in a very bad neighborhood. Those sketchy apartments are the only ones who would rent to her with several evictions and a bankruptcy on her recent record. So, because she was so irresponsible, I felt that I had to take her in.”
“My mom would say that you’re being an idiot. She would say that you’re simply rewarding your mom’s bad behavior,” Arabella said matter-of-factly.
“Sounds like your mom was smarter than my mom, or me, for that matter. Anyhow, yes, at the moment I am scrambling. I was prepared for you and Luna, but I didn’t think I would be getting custody of the two of you for several years. But I had a home study done, just in case. I guess that it turned out to come in handy.”
“Okay.” Then she looked at the computer screen again. “Now, tell me why it is you’re looking at spoofing. What does that have to do with the case?”
I sighed, realizing that she wasn’t going to let this go. “Well, here’s the thing. My client is a member of an online community. There were messages posted under his avatar, his screen name, and these messages were threatening Addison Wentworth.”
Arabella nodded her head. “So these messages were talking about him wanting to kill her, and things like that?”
I felt uncomfortable talking to a 14-year-old about this. “Yes. That’s what they were about.”
“And your client is saying that he didn’t write these messages but that somebody else took control of his account and wrote those messages in his name?”
“Right. That’s exactly what he’s saying.”
“Well, move over. Give me his username, and the site, and I’ll find out exactly who was spoofing him. It’ll be easy enough to find the spoofer’s IP address. He left a digital footprint, and I can find that out for you in a matter of minutes.”
“What you talking about? How can you figure that out?”
She nudged me over, and I stood up. She cracked her knuckles. “It’s easy. At least, it’s easy for me.” She smiled. “I hacked my first computer when I was five. Taught myself.”
I watched in wonder as she worked the mouse and keyboard. I had no idea what she was doing, but, in 10 minutes time, she had a name for me already. “I found out that the dude who spoofed your client’s name is Chris Warford. Do you want his address?”
“How did you -”
“Do you want his address or not?”
“I do.” I didn’t really believe that she was able to find that information. It took her just a few minutes, and she already had his name and address? Yet, I was going to have to give her the benefit of the doubt. She certainly was a very bright child. A scarily bright child. “What’s his address?”
I was going to have to go over and talk to this kid, whoever he was. I certainly wasn’t going to send the cops over to his house, however. Not until I got a better handle on who he was, and why he would want to spoof Carter to make it look like he was guilty. I had a feeling that there was some big conspiracy involved with all of this, but I had no idea where to begin to figure it out. I supposed that this Chris Warford guy would be as good a beginning as any.
She wrote down an address, and I recognized it as being in Studio City. “Here it is. You gonna go talk to him today? If you do, I’m coming with you. You’re gonna need me when you go talk to this dude. I’m gonna be able to explain how we found him in the first place.”
“No. You’re not coming with me. Listen, if I bring you along, I’m going to have to bring Luna as well. And being in the middle of a murder case is nowhere for two kids to be. Not only that, but I have to somehow, someway, figure out where my law practice is going to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was fired. My firm fired me a couple of days ago, because I told off a rich client. So, at the moment, I don’t even have a law office. This condo right now is my law office, and as you can see, it’s cramped enough here without having to bring in a bunch of client files. This is a big case, and I’m going to have to have an actual office to pursue it. I’m probably going to have to hire assistants, investigators, you name it. So, for a few days, I’m going to not only be working this case, but I’m also going to be doing all I can to get my new practice up and running. All while trying to figure out what to do with you two girls.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “Here’s a good solution. You take me and Luna with you, wherever you go. I can be a big help to you. Trust me, I can find information that nobody else can find. There’s not a computer system that I can’t hack. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer myself. Law and Order is like my favorite show. I binge watch it on Netflix all the time.”
“You guys are kids. And, at the moment, you’re here with me. I’m not yet your legal guardian. The judge is going to have to decide if I can be your legal guardian. At the moment, this is more of a foster care situation. No judge in his right mind is going to make me a guardian of you two girls, let alone allow me to adopt the two of you, if I’m schlepping you around with me on my murder cases. It’s bad enough that my mom is living under the same roof as the two of you, but if I get you guys involved in murder cases, it’ll be all she wrote.”
Arabella looked skeptical. “That’s not true. I think you know it. I think you know that since it was my mom’s wish that you become our guardian, a judge is going to let you be our guardian. I did my own research on this whole situation, and I found out that, pretty much unless you do something to really screw up, or you go into a coma or something like that, you’re going to be our guardian. Tell the judge that you’re teaching us the ropes of your job. It’s better than just planting us in front of a TV and telling us to rot our brains in front of it.”
At that, I saw that my mother was finally getting up. She looked like she was hung over.
“Coffee. I need my coffee.” She looked at Arabella, as if she’d never seen her before. “You’re Arabella?”
“Yeah. We met last night, remember?” Arabella said, an amused look on her face.
My mom shook her head, and then headed into the kitchen. “I can’t deal with this, not before I’ve had my coffee.”
I heard mom brewing the coffee in kitchen and I turned back to Arabella. “Well, that settles it. If ever I thought that it was going to be appropriate to leave you and Luna with my mom, which I don’t think it ever would be, it certainly wouldn’t be today. She looks like she’s pretty worse for the wear.”
“To say the least. Anyhow, you can’t put me and Luna into a camp. Camps are for babies. At most, camps are for kids Luna’s age. Not for 14-year-olds. Listen, you take me to a camp, I won’t be there when you come and pick me up. You think it’s easy for me
to hack into a computer? Just wait. You’ll see how easy it is for me to escape one of those camps, even with people watching all of us. And I’ll be taking Luna with me.”
“Seriously? You’re going to blackmail me like this?”
“Take us with you, and I’ll behave like an angel.”
I had to weigh my options. If I brought her and Luna with me, the guardianship judge was probably going to look unkindly at it. A murder case is no place for two young girls. Yet, it definitely would look even worse if I took Arabella and Luna into a camp and they both ran off. I wondered if I would even be able to have a nanny for the two girls. If Arabella was going to escape a day camp, she certainly was going to escape a nanny.
I had a feeling I was gonna have my hands full with this little girl.
My mom came back into the living room and came out to the terrace. She had a cup of coffee in her hand. “I feel human again. Good God, I felt like shit this morning. Who let me drink that much?”
“Mom, did you really not remember meeting Arabella last night? And Luna?”
“Dear, I wouldn’t remember meeting the Queen of England last night. If she were here. God forbid.” She took a sip of her coffee, and then she laughed. “The Queen of England coming here. Could you imagine?”
I shook my head. What was going to happen with my mother being under the same roof as two young girls?
Luna woke up next. She was wearing the same t-shirt as she was yesterday, along with a pair of jean shorts. “What’s for breakfast?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
Arabella looked at me. “Yeah, Emerson. What’s for breakfast?”
I looked at mom, and she got up. “I’ll whip up some eggs,” she said. Then she wondered into the kitchen, humming a tune.
Arabella made a face. “I hate eggs in the morning. Mom always made us Frosted Flakes or cinnamon rolls out of a can. The kind with the orange icing.”
I had to admit, I loved those cinnamon rolls myself. I tried them only once, when I was spending the night with a friend in grade school, and they were divine. Delectable. No words for how delicious I found them. I therefore didn’t blame Arabella for wanting them for breakfast, but there was no way that I was going to give in on this.
“I’m sorry, Arabella, but you’re just going to have to live with eggs. Don’t worry, mom makes them really good. I think that you’ll like them, just like you liked that chocolate mousse yesterday.”
Arabella shrugged. “Drive me through the drive-through later. I like Carl’s Junior’s biscuits.”
“You’re going to eat what we fix.”
“Drive me through the drive-thru, or I won’t do anymore hacking for you.”
“Fine. I’ll just drive you to day camp instead of dragging you and Luna along with me today.”
I had her there. It was a battle of wills, and I was just going to have to always have a trump card on her to win them. After I saw how impressive she was on the computer and how quickly she was able to find out just who hacked Carter, I knew that she was just going be invaluable to me. I knew how difficult it always was to find records. Having a young girl who would just be able to get them would make my life so much easier. She would be able to get any record I would need. Of course, to use them in court, I was going to have to go the long way around and get records properly, with either a formal request, a waiver or a subpoena. But it was always helpful to be able to get information quickly. It would put me at a definite advantage.
On the other hand, there was no way that I was going to let her run me. She was going to have to do as I said. Therefore, I was going to always have to have something up my sleeve to entice her to behave.
She looked pissed, but she knew that I had her. “Okay. I’ll eat those eggs, but I’m not going to like them.”
Five minutes later, my mom came back into the dining room with a large bowl full of eggs and another smaller bowl with hollandaise sauce. There was no toast, of course, but there were low-carb tortillas and crepes that I made myself and stored in the fridge.
“Dig in,” she said. “As for me, I’m going to go back to bed. My head is about ready to split right open.”
At that, mom retreated to the bedroom and Arabella, Luna and I sat down at the dining room table and dug into the food.
“Emerson’s going to take us along with her today as she hunts down that doofus who’s trying to frame her client,” Arabella told Luna.
Luna looked at me questioningly. “We are? You’re going to take us to work with you today?” Her little face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Goody!”
I shot Arabella a look, and she shot me one right back. “I am, but only for today. I’m going to get my mother on interviewing nannies for you girls and school starts on Monday. But for today, I’m scrambling, so, yes, you two are coming with me on my errands today. I need to find a new law office and I do need to track down this Chris Warford guy and find out why he did what he did to my client.”
I had a feeling that interviewing Chris Warford was only going to be the start of my investigation. I didn’t think that I was going to shake him down and get him to admit to actually killing Addison. I did think, however, that he probably had some valuable information for me.
“Boo,” Luna said, screwing up her little face. “I was hoping that we could just tag along with you instead of going to school after it starts. And Arabella doesn’t need a nanny. She’s 14. She can stay here and watch me.”
“She could stay home and watch you, but she won’t.” I didn’t want to tell Luna that I didn’t trust Arabella and my mother home together. I had a feeling that the two of them together could cook up some mischief that was going to be difficult for me to contain. “Now, we need to get going. The two of you need to get into the shower and meet me out here in 20 minutes. We have law offices to look at today, and we also have to meet that computer hacker and find out what he knows.”
With much moaning, groaning and eye-rolling, the two girls went into the separate bathrooms and showered. Twenty minutes later, they emerged from the bedroom, looking like they were well-groomed. Arabella actually didn’t put on such heavy eye-liner and black lipstick, and I thought that she looked like a pretty little fresh-faced young teenager. Which is what she was. She continued to wear black, though, as she had on a different black t-shirt from the one before, black jeans and her usual combat boots. Luna, for her part, had on a yellow sundress and she put her hair into a ponytail.
The contrast couldn’t be more striking. Little Miss Sunshine and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I hoped that the Goth thing was just a phase that Arabella was going through, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t.
“We’re ready,” Arabella said. “Let’s go.”
I went into mom’s bedroom and told her where we were going. She was laying on the bed, a cold rag tied around her forehead, which was what she did when she had a migraine headache.
“Don’t turn on the light,” she said. “I need it dark in here.”
I felt like turning on the light just because I was angry with her for getting so blasted, especially since she knew that the girls were coming home, but I decided to be nice. “Take care of yourself,” I said to her. “I’ll see you when we get back.”
“If I’m alive by then,” she said. “That remains to be seen.”
I shut the door and went out into the living room, where the girls were waiting for me. “Let’s go,” I said.
Chapter 16
I headed downtown to a high-rise that had advertised on-line that they had a law suite available for lease. It was an office in a suite of other attorneys who were all doing an office share. It was reasonably priced at just under $3,000 a month, which wasn’t bad for an office in a high-rise, and it seemed that some of the other attorneys in the suite were also practicing the kind of law that I was going to practice. There was a divorce attorney, a criminal defense attorney and a personal injury attorney. I was going to try to attract both criminal cases and personal injury cases, so it seemed that this
office was going to be a good fit for me.
I met up with the office manager, Olivia, who filled me in on the details. “The other attorneys aren’t here right now, except for Declan Sawyer,” she said. “He’s around here somewhere.”
As if on cue, an extremely handsome man with dark wavy hair, piercing blue eyes, a strong jawline and nose and full lips appeared in the lobby on the suite. “My ears were burning,” he said with a smile. “I heard you say my name, Olivia.” He smiled, showing his dimples, and I caught my breath a little.
Arabella took one look at Declan and she turned to Olivia. “She’ll take it,” she said, looking right at me.
I didn’t look back at her, though. I was too busy staring at Declan. For his part, he was looking at me, too, a slight smile on his gorgeous face.
“Declan is a personal injury attorney, mainly,” Olivia explained to me. “But he does some criminal work as well. And, Declan, Emerson here is interested in the empty office.”
“What about you?” Declan asked me. “What kind of law do you practice?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“She does criminal law,” Arabella said, helpfully. “She’s working that actress case.”
“Addison Wentworth?” Declan said with a huge grin. “That’s you?”
I nodded my head, clutching my purse nervously. I didn’t know why I was holding onto my purse, except that it was soft leather and I liked the feel of it. It relaxed me in stressful situations, which this was turning out to be.
I had never met a guy who took my breath away quite like this one, and I was going to be working around him.
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