Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (29 page)

“Yeah. Can’t imagine her with a baby, you know.” He got a sour look on his face and he started to fidget, cleaning under his fingernails with such a vengeance I was afraid he’d draw blood.

“Did she tell you that you were the father?” I asked.

He shook his head of curly brown hair and looked almost sheepish. “No. I mean...you know.”

“No, Micah, I don’t know. Did she tell you that you were? Did you wish you were?”

He looked wistful for a moment, like he might say something, but then he smiled to cover it up and moved some papers around on his desk. “I kind of thought for half a second she was going to say I was. But she said Greg Hitchcock was.”

“Just like that.”

“Yeah, she said his name.”
 

“Was she going to say that on the show?” I asked.

“My thing was, she needed to not do that. I mean...” He dropped his hands. He’d given himself a magnificent hangnail on his thumb. “Can you imagine the lawsuits? And when it was just us talking she said it was Roger Sabo. That’s not even what’s on the certificate. So, no, no mention of anybody. Just going to have her and the baby.”

“Did she tell you where the baby is right now?” I demanded.
 

“Her mom is raising it. You know, she took the kid so Courtney could come back to Los Angeles and get back to TV.” It finally dawned on Micah that maybe, just maybe, wily little Courtney had sold him a bill of goods. “Oh my God, there was no baby, was there?”

“Where were you going to film her and the baby?” I asked.
 

Micah shrugged. “I don’t know. We hadn’t worked it out. But she said we needed to do it soon, because her and Sabo, they were going to leave soon, them and their kid.”

And as soon as Courtney could get Hailey back, she was going to use her for TV.
 

“Give me a copy of the birth certificate,” I said.

“I don’t—”

“I have fired a gun today, Micah. Would you like to smell the powder on my fingers? I am not in the mood.”
 

After a couple of seconds he said, “Whatever,” and rolled his chair over to one of the freestanding file cabinets. He used his huge keyring to unlock it and then dig through the middle drawer. He pulled a couple of papers out and stuck one on the glass of a small printer-fax-scanner combination machine. Stevie always told me those things were poorly made, which didn’t stop her from asking for one periodically.

The copy he made came out of the side of the machine. He whipped it toward me like he was fly-fishing. “Here. Go away.”

SATURDAY MORNING STEVIE looked at the birth certificate.

“The father’s listed as Jonathan Ricciardi.”

Which was what I thought the words had spelled out. I thought about Jonathan and Alison, and little baby Hailey. Jonathan and Courtney both had Scandinavian blue eyes. I was fairly certain neither of them wore contacts.

“Is it possible for two blue-eyed parents to make a brown-eyed baby?” I asked Stevie.

“Genetic traits aren’t passed on quite as cleanly as it’s presented in biology class. Yes, it’s possible.”

I described Jonathan’s and Courtney’s bright, light-colored eyes, and Hailey’s dark brown ones.

“Then that’s not as likely, no.”
 

“Why would he put his name on the birth certificate if he wasn’t the father?”

Stevie shrugged. “Because it’s easier than adoption?”
 

Couples traveled far and wide to adopt. Everyone in Poland had stories about Western couples looking for babies “who looked like them.” Courtney and her baby were much closer to home. And what an opportunity for Greg Hitchcock: he managed to cover up his little transgression with Courtney (if he was, in fact, the baby’s father) and to bind Jonathan to him ever more tightly.

No wonder Jonathan was afraid of losing Hailey once all his fiscal sleight-of-hand was revealed.

How worried had he been about what Courtney might do? For that matter, what about his wife, Alison?

Stevie asked, “Can we go shopping for clothes?”

I looked up. “Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

“I’ll need a dress for church tomorrow. Also, the weather’s warming a bit. My clothes are quite stifling out of doors.”

“Your clothes were fine for you in Las Vegas.”

“Yes. Because I was indoors with the air conditioning running.”

For six months straight she had stayed in that apartment, never once leaving until the day we split.
 

She wasn’t staying indoors all the time anymore. And if we had to move again, we might not find a place she’d want to hide in this time.

Stevie and I went to the Out of the Closet thrift store on Santa Monica. Everyone said they had the nicest vintage clothing, right down to calling it “vintage” instead of “used discards.”

I’m a fabulous older sister: nothing but the finest previously owned clothing for my girl.

We scooped up slacks and jeans and long skirts, along with several short-sleeved and long-sleeved blouses made of a lighter-weight fabric than most of the things she currently wore had. Of course, we’d had those since Montreal. We didn’t buy new clothes for either of us very often, and we got them for Stevie much less frequently than for me. But everything was, as usual, floppy and oversized. Easy to wear, easy to clean, easy to get lost in. Just the way Stevie always wore her clothes.

One of the employees, a middle-aged woman named Carla, checked Stevie into one of the changing rooms. “Does she need some new bras?” Carla asked.

“Previously worn bras? No, thank you.” I shook my head.

“Those we have new,” she said.
 

Stevie hadn’t had new undergarments in a while. “Oh. Brilliant. My sister wears a 32B.”

Carla blinked at me. “Your sister’s a 30D, honey.” I must have looked stunned, because she nodded. “Trust me, I’ve been doing this a while. 30D. I’ll get her some.”

Carla’s assessment of my sister’s figure wasn’t even the biggest surprise of the afternoon.
 

No, that award went to the piece of clothing I hadn’t even seen Stevie bring into the dressing room. The sweet ivory-colored dress with a princess neckline and large flower prints on the fabric was so unlike anything I’d seen her in for years that when Stevie came out of the changing area with it on, I honestly didn’t recognize her for a moment. It took me several breaths and what seemed like several years to figure out why.

Because despite having three-quarter sleeves and a hemline two inches below her knees, this dress wasn’t as shapeless as most of the clothing Stevie generally wore. And it was suddenly very obvious to everyone, even me, that my little sister was now in her early twenties and not a little girl anymore.

Her smile was so bright as she turned around in front of the mirror. She didn’t twirl or giggle or do any of the things most girls might do when modeling a beautiful dress, she just looked at herself and smiled.
 

My sister’s quite pretty when she smiles.

Beautiful, even.

She didn’t smile nearly often enough.
 

“What do you think?” she said.
 

Probably I should have told her what I’d just seen: how pretty she looked. Possibly I should have pointed out that the dress was even a little too old for her, something more fitting for a woman working on the twenty-seventh floor in an air-conditioned office building, paired with sensible shoes, than a twenty-two-year-old who ought to be out having fun.

Anne hated me. Gary might be talked into getting rid of me. I seemed to cause mayhem wherever I went. And now my little sister, the person I had been taking care of for eleven years, wasn’t a little girl anymore. She might not need me, either.

Instead, I shrugged and said, “Where are you ever going to wear that?”

Her smile wavered. “It’s not expensive.”

“Stevie, we need clothes we’re never going to use like a hole in the head. Put it back and find something else.”
 

“Okay,” Stevie said. She touched the seam of the skirt gently.

My phone rang. Nathaniel. “Come here immediately,” he said, and he hung up.
 

“Stevie, we have to go. Let’s get this rung up.”
 

I was so bothered by Nathaniel’s abrupt phone call I didn’t even pay attention to what Stevie put on the counter. She kept our money, she paid for the clothes.
 

Only after we were in the car did I see, folded at the top of one of the bags, the ivory dress with the large flower prints.

I let it go. After Courtney’s memorial service, she didn’t have anywhere to wear it, so there was no harm in it.

*
 
*
 
*

Century City was deserted on Saturdays. The streets by Nathaniel’s office building that were one large logjam during the week had moving traffic on them. The garage under the building was almost completely empty but I still had to stop at the lone valet, sitting at the desk near the elevators. He handed me a ticket, as though it was going to be hard to remember which car was mine. The only car visible was Nathaniel’s Mercedes, parked next to the valet’s desk. Mine he drove around the corner, so it wasn’t visible right away.

The doors on Nathaniel’s floor opened to silence. No receptionist at the oval-shaped desk with the high-tech headset. No one waiting in the lobby. I called Nathaniel’s number: he didn’t answer.
 

I didn’t know whether to sit down or not while I waited. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to come here? I’d always thought the reception area of the law office was quiet during the week, but in contrast to this silence, the regular day was a symphony of phones, low voices, and footfalls on the carpeting.
 

I compromised between standing and sitting by perching on the armrest of one of the chairs. The pain through my tailbone immediately let me know that maneuver was not appreciated, so I settled for leaning against the wall near the giant letters of the law office’s name.

After a few minutes the door into the inner sanctum opened and there was my lawyer, in a suit and tie. No Carmela with her clipboards or efficiency. Just Nathaniel.

“Come on,” he said.

The office was empty. I would have guessed that people would be there, finishing up paperwork, making phone calls, whatever, but every cubicle and glass-walled office we passed was dark. Even the computers were off.
 

He didn’t say a word as we walked, his shiny shoes slapping in regular rhythm down the hallway to his office. I got the feeling I had better not try to lighten the mood. Or talk to him. Maybe ever again.

The meeting room nearest Nathaniel’s office was the first light on in the place. Several notebooks and legal pads were strewn around the tabletop. There was a Starbucks cup, lid still on. I thought we were headed in there, but then Nathaniel opened the door to his office. Where the overhead lights were off. The giant windows looking out at Santa Monica Boulevard below provided plenty of indirect sunlight. I sat in my usual visitor’s chair as Nathaniel turned the computer monitor around toward me. He hit the spacebar key and then walked out.

The picture on the monitor showed me a blank wall.
 

“Hello?” I said.

The image on the screen whirled around, making me feel sick to my stomach. When the picture stopped moving, the computer’s camera finally focused on its subject, Roberto.
 

His face looked completely calm and placid, which told me I was in very big trouble indeed. Anger and rage I can deal with. Lack of emotion is terrifying.

“Are you all right?” he asked.
 

No need to ask what he was talking about. We were past that now.
 

“Yes,” I said.

“Is your friend all right?”
 

I nodded, not very enthusiastically. “I think so. Not sure.”

“And why aren’t you sure,
Drusilla
?”
 

Oh, good. Sarcastic Roberto. My favorite kind. “Because she wouldn’t talk to me afterward. After it was all over.”

“Can you blame her? What you did was both terrifying and very stupid.”
 

I opened my mouth to reply.
 

He snapped his fingers in front of the camera. “No. Not interested. Whatever rationale you have this time, save it. He could have killed you or your friend or both of you. You could have killed him. You could have fallen off that goddamned roof. And why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Exceptionally stupid. You are going to get yourself killed.”
 

And then I felt a calmness spread through me. Not my usual desire to snark, or to push back, or to start an argument. The best word for how I felt was “settled.”

“It wasn’t stupid. At all. I knew what I was doing. There are plenty of things I am terrible at. We can all name those. But the ones I do well? I do them very well. And when I’m good at something, I know exactly how good I am. So don’t sit there and lecture me like I’m some naughty schoolboy who nicked a Crunchie down at the shops. Talk to me like I’m an adult, Roberto. A very capable adult. If I were more like Chance, everyone’s life would be easier. My brother has always been fantastic at school and learning algorithms and getting degrees and probably negotiating over boardroom tables. My abilities lie elsewhere. You want to talk about how my skill set is a problem? Let’s do that. But don’t talk to me like I got lucky yesterday. Because we both know that isn’t what happened.”

“Would you have killed that man yesterday?”

Easy. “Yes.”
 

“Why?”

“Because I make decisions and I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them after I’ve made them. Didn’t you always say that was one of the most important traits in a leader? Decisiveness? Well, there you go. You want to get angry at someone about how I’ve turned out? Get angry at the bodyguard who was highly overqualified and bored shitless guarding a fifteen-year-old. Get angry at your wife, for not dealing with my issues when I was little because she was too busy getting married to assholes. Getting angry at me is like getting mad at the ocean: too little, too late.”