Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) (9 page)

“You think that’s possible? More important,
do you trust Bert to follow through with his promise?”

She laughed. “I think Bert is more upset
about the possibility of Wayne showing up at a rally with a male lover in tow
than he is about us getting divorced. I’m going to have a heart-to-heart with
Wayne at the house around five thirty and then go to this committee meeting.”

“All right. I’m concerned, though. I’ve
dealt with Bert Davies enough that I take anything he promises with a grain of
salt.” JD couldn’t help worrying for Lanie’s safety. “Bert won’t be around,
will he?”

“No. He said he’d make sure Wayne would be
at the house so we can have a private talk. Apparently he thinks Wayne is more
likely to listen to reason from somebody other than himself—and I’m one of the
very few people who knows anything about the secret Bert’s so determined that
he keep.”

That made a convoluted sort of sense, JD
admitted. “Be careful, sweetheart, and good luck in talking Wayne out of
ruining his political future. I’ll book a private room at the club so I can
have my wicked way with you.”

“You do that, Master. ’Bye.”

* * * * *

It was nearly six o’clock and JD was about
to leave the office when Gray Syzmanski called and asked him to come upstairs.

“I need to go over some details with you
before I question a prosecution witness in the morning about our client’s
involvement in defrauding Angus Sperry.”

“Okay. I’ll be right up. Let me download
the corporate file on my laptop first—it may help me to fill you in.” Since one
of his largest financial institution clients had run afoul of SEC regulations,
JD had often thought he should have gone into Gray’s field—criminal law. If he
had, he could have taken over as lead litigator whenever one of his corporate
clients’ executives allegedly stepped over the line from aggressive business
dealing to racketeering.

The criminal law division, headed by
hotshot trial lawyer Tony Landry, was three floors up from Winston-Roe’s staid
corporate law division, with estates and trusts, torts and family law occupying
the floors in between. Gray, a newly made partner with a century-old family
connection to the firm, utilized his DEA experience to bridge the gap between
society lawyer and criminal litigator. JD downloaded the corporate client’s
file onto his laptop and headed for the elevator.

“Hey, JD. Are you burning the midnight oil
with Gray?” Tony asked when JD ran into him outside the eighteenth-floor
elevators.

JD grinned. “I hope not. I’ve got plans
later.” It felt good to be able to tell colleagues truthfully that he was no
longer a hermit who holed up in his condo with his cat for company whenever he
left work. “You’re taking off early.”

“Being the boss has privileges, you know. I
promised Krissie I’d read a story to Anthony before he goes to bed.” Tony
stepped into the elevator but held the door open. “I’m glad Gray’s here to
handle the raft of white-collar crime cases we’ve been getting. Give me a good
old-fashioned homicide or armed robbery to defend any day. I may be the boss but
I’m not real comfortable rubbing shoulders with high society even if they have
allegedly run afoul of the law. Don’t miss your late date.”

With a grin, Tony closed the elevator door,
leaving JD alone in the reception area for criminal law. JD liked Landry, whose
division had managed last year to out-earn all the others, including corporate,
primarily on the man’s personal reputation as an unbeatable litigator. Few
outside the firm were aware that he pushed the partners’ limits for taking pro
bono appellate cases he thought had been originally misrepresented,
occasionally paying pro bono overages out of his own pocket.

Even fewer were aware that Tony Landry’s
background was more like Lanie’s than his own—or that he’d worked construction
to pay for law school after going through college on a baseball scholarship. JD
knew only because they’d both lived in the Gators’ athletic dorm his junior and
senior year, when Tony had been an underclassman.

By right of seniority, JD should have
insisted that Gray come to him, but JD wasn’t about to stand on the firm’s
stuffy tradition with a man who wasn’t nearly as mobile as he. He stepped
through the open door of Gray’s office and met his gaze, no longer taken aback
by the man’s eye patch and facial scars now that they’d gotten to know each
other while consulting on this case. “I saw Tony when he was leaving. He said
to remind you not to stay so late tonight.”

Gray chuckled. “I didn’t hear him offer to
help me plan this questioning. Did you? Never mind—I don’t have anything better
to do tonight anyhow. Brett’s working on a school project at his friend’s house
and Andi took our little one to a birthday party for Rocky and Sandra Delgado’s
two-year-old.”

“A party for a two-year-old?” JD recalled
his lapse in judgment last Saturday and wondered if he might soon be learning
about babies and birthdays. “I imagine his and Sandra’s time on that floating
BDSM playpen they call Neptune’s Dungeon has taken a hit since they’ve become
parents times two.”

“I don’t know about that,” Gray said with a
grin. “Andi and I have kids and we still find time to play.”

“You still go to the club?” JD recalled
that he’d seen Gray there twice, both times with Andi, not too long after
they’d married. Andi was a hot redhead, more cute than pretty—an assistant
state attorney, if he recalled correctly.

“Not all that often. Rocky and Sandra do,
though. They go more often now, since he quit the police force and took the job
as Winston-Roe’s chief investigator. He mentioned earlier today that you’d been
in last week renewing your membership. I hope that means you’re through
punishing yourself for being alive.”

JD wouldn’t take that comment from just
anybody, but he knew what Gray had gone through. He’d fought to stay alive
through torture that would have taken a lesser man down—physical and emotional
abuse that JD was sure he couldn’t survive even though he’d been a star
defensive end for the Gators during his college years. “You could say so. I
figured two years was long enough for me to lock my soul away even though you
spent a lot longer than that in a Colombian drug lord’s prison and survived
it.”

“Yeah, well, everything ended up being
worth it for me. I hope you’ll find coming back from the almost-dead as
pleasurable as I have.” He paused, brought up a screen on his computer. “Here’s
what I want your input on.”

JD slid one of the guest chairs beside Gray
and they went over the deposition given by the witness about to be questioned
by the US attorney, with JD making a couple of suggestions as to the direction
Gray might want to take in cross-examination. A few minutes after eight, they
closed up shop and JD invited his colleague to join him for dinner at the
Marriott.

* * * * *

“So tell me about the new woman in your
life. I gather she’s into BDSM play?”

JD pictured Lanie the way she’d been the
weekend before, wrapped up in his bed, bound and gagged and writhing with
arousal while he played with her nipples and clit. Memories of that fine gold
chain glinting against the pale skin of her torso, of the smell and taste of
her dripping cunt when he tongued her there, threatened to have him
embarrassing himself in the posh cocktail lounge overlooking one of the manmade
channels to Tampa Bay. “Yeah. She’s new to it but I’m pretty sure she’ll take
to club play like a duck to water. Only thing is, I’m not sure she’ll take to
exhibitionism. Miriam loved it but Lan—” He caught himself before giving Gray
her name. “She seems more reserved, more private.”

Gray took a sip of his Gentleman Jack and
water. “I can understand sentiments like that. I’m not too keen about everybody
at the club gawking at my scars…” He reached up and touched the one on his face
that disappeared behind the ever-present black eye patch. “There are ones way
worse than this. I look like a masochistic sub who let himself be practically
killed by a sadistic Dom. The only reason I ever go to the club anymore is
because Andi gets off on being watched. I’m not about to lend her to another
Dom, so…”

It must be particularly hard for Gray, whom
JD remembered as being a strong sexual Dominant in the few scenes he’d
witnessed before Miriam had become too sick to want sex—BDSM or not. He nodded,
not knowing what to say other than that he was damn sorry the drug lord’s goons
had gotten to his friend.

“I think that’s the waiter with our
dinner,” Gray said, breaking up the awkward moment. “I wish you luck.
Women—can’t live without ’em, but it’s sometimes hell to live with them.”

“You’re right about that.” JD attacked his
club sandwich, glad to have an excuse for not continuing a conversation that
was becoming too personal to have in such a public place.

“Do you know Bert Davies?” he asked once they’d
had dessert.

“Professionally? No. I understand he once
asked Tony to defend him but Tony refused. That may be just a rumor—I’ve never
confirmed it. I do know him slightly. He’s the party’s local hatchet man and he
runs the campaigns of some of the most corrupt elected officials in this area.”

“Your opinion?”

Gray looked around the room, then spoke
quietly as though he didn’t want anybody else to hear. “Bert Davies is as
crooked as anybody I’ve ever defended, state or federal. He’s careful, though.
Nobody’s ever been able to pin enough on him to get a conviction. Why? Don’t
tell me he’s connected with your girlfriend.”

JD didn’t reply but a cold chill ran down
his spine. Lanie needed protection, and he’d blindly accepted her going to the
senator’s isolated house out near Plant City, alone and without protection. To
a meeting she’d told him Davies was setting up.

Lanie pulled up in the driveway at a few
minutes before six o’clock, anxious to get this conversation over with. On the
way inside, she glanced into the garage and found Wayne’s car there.

Good, I won’t have to wait for him.

Stepping inside through the kitchen door,
she noted that Betty, the housekeeper, had left for the day. The house sounded
unusually silent—no gospel music on the radio, nor even the sound of Wayne
tapping away on his computer.

For some reason she got an eerie feeling,
but she told herself it was only nerves. She knocked on the door to Wayne’s
office and pushed it open when she got no response.

She didn’t see him, but his desk chair was
out of place and she noticed a rusty stain on the beige carpeting that he was
so fussy about. It began by the French door that opened onto the porch.

Worried, she opened the door and followed
the stain until it disappeared between two porch columns, blending in with the
frost-burned grass lawn and leading to…

The boathouse?

Wayne didn’t go there in the winter, not at
all. He was a summertime sailor, not willing to take the little sailboat out
unless it was at least eighty degrees.

She turned again and stared at that stain
on the carpet.

Damn. That’s blood.

Frantic now, Lanie took off running for the
boathouse. She hesitated. Should she get her pistol from the car? No, maybe
Wayne needed help. She took off again, only to run into one of several men,
some of whom wore the green uniforms of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s
Department.

“Oh good. Did Wayne call you? Is he all
right?”

The officer who wasn’t in uniform
approached her, holding up the badge that indicated he was a detective
lieutenant with the department.

“Detective Toby Grimes. You’re Mrs.
Winstead?”

“Yes. Please, is Wayne all right? I saw—”

“The senator is dead, as you should know.
Want to tell us why you shot him and how a little thing like you could drag his
body all the way out here?”

For the first time in her life, Lanie
understood the sort of terror her clients described when they talked about
being arrested. She opened her mouth to protest her innocence but only managed
to croak, “I didn’t…”

“Come on, ma’am. We know you’ve filed for
divorce. Did you decide it would be easier if you got rid of your husband
permanently?”

“No. I didn’t kill him. Yes, I wanted a
divorce, but I’d never…kill Wayne. I’d never kill anybody.” She clamped her
lips together.

Idiot. I’ve told enough clients never to
say a word without me present and here I am, starting a conversation as though
I didn’t know better.
“Are you arresting me?”

Lieutenant Grimes sighed. “You’re under
arrest for the murder of Wayne Winstead. You have the right to remain silent…”
He recited the Miranda warning by rote, as though this was just another day’s
work. For him it probably was, except she doubted that he would be here
personally if it had been some anonymous nobody who’d been killed.

“I want to call my attorney,” she said
dully, trying hard to remain halfway calm as she blinked back tears.

Two of the other deputies pulled her hands
behind her back and clapped her in handcuffs.

“Let’s go. You can make your free call once
we’ve got you transported to the jail.” Grimes took her elbow and practically
shoved her into an unmarked car that had just pulled in to the driveway from
the road.

* * * * *

Something was wrong. After searching
everywhere he could think of in the public areas of the Marriott, JD gave up
and went home a little after midnight. He kept calling Lanie’s cell phone, her
house, even the office she shared with other attorneys in Ybor City, until he
finally gave up around three in the morning and paced the floor.

He almost called the firm’s chief
investigator, Rocky Delgado, for help finding Lanie but felt his hands were
tied because of her insistence on keeping their relationship quiet. Damn it, he
loved the woman, knew all her years-old secrets, but not one thing about who
she might contact if she needed help. Other than him, of course.

All he could do was go to work and hope
she’d get in touch today, so he showered, got dressed and drove to his office.
He started to go upstairs but decided he needed coffee if he was to do any good
for anyone, so he went to a deli across the street.

“A bagel, please, and keep the coffee
coming,” he said to the waitress as he sat at a table for two next to the
window and opened up his Android tablet to check the news.

SENATOR WINSTEAD DEAD, WIFE CHARGED WITH
MURDER

If only this were a sick joke.

Unfortunately, JD was pretty sure it
wasn’t. He stared at the screen at what would have been a two-inch, bold banner
headline if the local Fox channel’s website had been an old-fashioned
newspaper.

“Fuck.” He gulped coffee from the steaming
mug in front of him, then let out a string of oaths when the boiling liquid
scalded his tongue. Trying to ignore his burning mouth, he scanned the article,
his appetite for the bagel and cream cheese he’d ordered replaced by an
overwhelming sense of nausea.

Quickly he read the full article, then
shoved the tablet into his briefcase. Getting up from his uneaten food, he
tossed a twenty onto the table and sprinted across the street to the high-rise
building that housed the offices of Winston-Roe and Associates, arriving just
in time to stop the elevator from closing by slamming his briefcase between the
doors. Instead of pressing the button for the fifteenth floor where he worked,
he hit eighteen.

He had a feeling Lanie would need a lawyer,
and though he considered himself a damn good one, criminal defense wasn’t his
ball game. He had the good sense to realize he couldn’t hold a candle to Tony
or Gray when it came to mounting a defense against what sounded from the online
report as if they might be nearly insurmountable odds.

JD hoped to God that one of them had
decided to come in early that morning. The elevator seemed to take forever but
when it finally stopped, he got off and fitted his key card into the slot next
to a heavy, walnut-paneled entry door identical to the one on each floor
occupied by the various divisions of Winston-Roe.

When he saw that the receptionist’s desk
was empty, he looked past it for signs of life. Apparently somebody was there.
He could tell from the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Following his nose, he
headed straight to the partners’ snack kitchen.

* * * * *

Tony had just brewed a pot of coffee,
settled in at his desk and flipped on the big-screen TV in his corner office
when he heard the elevator door open. Getting up and stepping outside, he saw
JD Ackerman looking scared shitless and pasty-pale, shifting from one foot to
the other in the doorway to the snack room as though he didn’t quite know what
to do.

“Looking for somebody, JD?” Tony wondered
why his fellow jock and Gator alumnus was here in the criminal division domain
when he limited his practice to keeping the noses of their corporate clients
clean.

Then Tony remembered he’d seen JD come up
here yesterday to talk with Gray about a federal racketeering case involving
the CFO of one of JD’s corporate clients. “If you need Gray, he isn’t here yet.
He’s probably at the federal courthouse, or he will be soon. I wouldn’t be here
either except that one of my newer associates is set to do his first solo
defense in a trial that’s starting tomorrow. I came in early to review the
draft of his opening argument.”

JD shook his head. “Actually I was looking
for either one of you. I just heard that Senator Winstead’s body was found last
night and that his wife is being questioned in connection with his murder. I
think Lanie is going to need somebody with powers of persuasion a lot greater
than mine.”

“What the fuck?” Tony hadn’t had a clue
that the long-term state senator had gone missing, though he should have
guessed that something might have been amiss when he’d heard on late-night TV
news that the man hadn’t shown up at a gala fundraiser the night before.

Tony had even joked to Krissie that
Winstead would have to be dead to miss the opportunity to extract money from
the party faithful. But dead by Lanie’s hand? No way.

JD looked as though he’d developed a
fixation with the carpeting at his feet, which gave Tony the impression he
didn’t much like the reason he was there. “Spit it out. Tell me what you need
and what has got you looking like you just lost your best friend.”

“It’s not a laughing matter. Lanie has been
taken to the Orient Road jail. The news is all over TV. Listen. They’re talking
about it now.” He gestured toward the sound of Fox anchor Deidre Darden’s
distinctive voice coming from Tony’s office, then headed in that direction. “I
spoke with Lanie yesterday afternoon. She told me she was going out to their
house to talk with the senator about their divorce. We were going to meet later
but she didn’t show up and I haven’t been able to reach her. I had no idea—”

“Calm down. Come on in here and we can both
listen to what Deidre has to say.” Tony led the way into his office and
motioned for JD to sit on one of the loveseats in a conversation area against
the wall, because it looked to him as though the man was about to keel over.
Then he took a seat on the chair set at a ninety-degree angle to the TV and
concentrated on what the reporter was saying.

“Why would Lanie call you if she thought
she was about to be arrested?” he asked when JD’s question registered in his
mind. “No offense, but you obviously wouldn’t be the first person she’d think
of calling to defend her in a criminal case. Does she know you socially?”

“You could say that. We’re in love.” JD
paused, then looked Tony in the eye. “That’s privileged information.”

Shit.
It
also sounded suspiciously like a motive for murder. Keeping one ear on what the
TV anchor was saying, Tony searched his memory for what he knew about JD’s
personal life, was pretty sure he was widowed a while back. Lanie certainly had
a husband, though—at least she’d had one until someone had shot him and,
according to Deidre, dumped his body in the water inside his own boathouse to
feed the alligators.

Whether or not Lanie had filed for divorce
was a moot point. Tony hoped to hell that the buxom blonde with an annoying
nasal twang to her voice didn’t have her facts straight—but he imagined she
did.

He turned away from the TV and met JD’s
solemn gaze. “When was the last time you saw Lanie?”

“Last weekend. Saturday.” JD’s brow
furrowed. “She met me at my fishing cabin on Cedar Key. She didn’t stay
overnight, though, because she’d promised to attend a rally for the senator.”

Tony tried to stay far away from the ins
and outs of local politics. He could play games with the best of them but he
preferred wielding his influence behind closed doors, with players who truly
mattered. He hated the posturing, the jockeying for position that took place at
mass gatherings of the party faithful.

It always seemed that folks who attended
them judged one another more by their bank balances, their tailors’ skill and
their wives’ designer gowns than by their ability to do anything other than
write checks to further their own individual agendas. Those so-called
contributions often amounted to little more than bribes, and Tony wasn’t into
paying for influence with anything but his skill—for which he was the one who
received checks for large, round sums. Checks from clients he’d saved from
lengthy prison sentences had made him a partner in Winston-Roe and a wealthy
man before he’d hit thirty-five.

He met JD’s gaze, registering the other
man’s obvious discomfort. “What do you want me to do? I’ll tell you straight
out that I’ve known Lanie since she was practically a baby. I’m a few years
older than she, so we were never classmates, but we both grew up poor out in
the eastern part of the county. Although we took different routes to break out
from the strawberry fields and make something of ourselves, we’ve got those
rotten roots in common. Since I came back to Tampa, we’ve renewed our
acquaintance.”

JD got up and stared out the window at the
river and the silvery minarets that topped the original buildings at the
University of Tampa. Since Tony was certain that view was exactly the same as
what the other lawyer saw from his office three floors down, he surmised that
JD was trying to regain some semblance of self-control. When he had, he came
and sat back down.

He looked over at Tony. “I want you to
defend her. If she’s charged, she’s going to need the best defense she can
get.”

“I agree. There’s nothing like a politician
getting snuffed to generate press coverage, particularly if there’s plenty of
gore to keep the media vultures feeding.” Tony saw no reason to deny he was the
best. His record of high-profile courtroom victories attested to his skill, and
he was pretty sure his healthy ego contributed to his success.

JD turned noticeably pale at the mention of
vultures but he nodded. “I imagine that’s so.”

Tony hesitated for a moment as he tried to
gauge JD’s motivation for wanting to help Lanie. “I’ve got to tell you this,
JD. Partner or not, I’m not interested in protecting you at her expense if you
think you might need representation for yourself in this matter.”

“I have no reason to believe I might be
implicated. All I want is for you to help her. I’m positive that she’s
incapable of killing anybody, even Wayne.” JD’s gaze shifted to the TV, where a
shot of Lanie trying to hide her face from the cameras had him clenching his
jaw as though he’d do anything—even kill if necessary—to protect her. “Please.”

There was no way Tony could refuse to
defend Lanie if she asked him, not only because JD had asked but also because
she was a kindred spirit, as much an escapee from a life of redneck poverty and
backbreaking struggles for survival as he was. While he’d used his athletic
prowess to escape from the continuing cycle of poverty, she had taken a more
direct route by marrying the much older politician who had not only supported
her but also financed her higher education.