Maximum Security (4 page)

Louisa folds her arms, smiling at me. “My, you
are
scrappy,” she says.

I bite my tongue. If Harry told his old flame that I’m
scrappy
, he’s a dead man.

“Between now and Monday,” I tell her as I get to my feet, “we have a fair amount of work to do. Are you free to meet both weekend days?”

Another small laugh escapes her. “I don’t have a date, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I like to work in my office in the mornings.” I hand her a business card. “But I think we should meet here again, walk through it all a few times and go into a little more detail. I’ll plan to be here at noon both days if that’s all right with you.”

“It’s fine,” she says.

“And I’d like to bring my associate along. If this thing heats up at all, or drags on longer than we expect, I might need an extra pair of hands.”

“Whatever you think.” Louisa stands and walks to the window. “I should tell you,” she says, her back to me, “that I was planning to leave Herb.”

My stomach tightens and I lower into the chair again. “Did he know?”

She turns and walks back across the room toward me. “I hadn’t told him yet,” she says, her eyes lowered, “but I think he knew.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Yes,” she says, and she sits too. “My lawyer, Fred Watkins.”

No problem there; it’s privileged. And I know Fred Watkins. He’ll take every one of his clients’ secrets to his grave.

“And my financial advisor.”

Problem. I make a check next to Steven Collier’s name on my legal pad.

“I’m glad you told me, Louisa. It may turn out to be important. Let me give it some thought. One more question before I go, though.”

She nods.

“Was Herb having any difficulties other than what you’ve already told me?”

She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “No, just his…”

“Function,” I finish for her. I grab my briefcase and stand yet again.

Louisa stands too. “So how
is
Harry Madigan?”

If there was a segue in her mind, I don’t want to know about it. “He’s well,” I tell her.

“We went to law school together, you know.”

“He mentioned that.”

“I was quite fond of him.”

Not as fond as he’d hoped, though. I bite my tongue.

She laughs. “He used to call me
Mona
Louisa.”

Too much information. I head for the double doors. It’s time to get out of here.

“You’re his law partner?” Louisa follows me.

“That’s right.”

“Such a dear boy,” she says to my back.

Of course. Harry’s still twenty-five in her mind’s eye. A boy.

“I’ll never understand it,” she says. “He’s brilliant, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

She falls into step beside me and shakes her head. “Graduated near the top of our class. Could have had any job he wanted. Chose that awful criminal work.”

Louisa doesn’t seem to remember that just yesterday she asked him to do some of that awful criminal work on her behalf.

“I was so pleased,” she continues, “when I saw he’d opened a private office, gotten away from that public defender business. But I understand he’s handling the same dreadful cases, just doing it under his own roof.”

Perhaps I should mention that one of the dreadful cases under his roof is hers.

“And what about you, darlin’? Where did you go to law school?”

I pause at the front door, but not for long. I’ve had enough
darlin’
s for one day. “Same as you and Harry,” I tell her. “I was two classes behind you.”

“Really? You and I were on the same campus for a year and I didn’t notice you? I can’t imagine that.”

I can. “Are you from Georgia, Louisa?” I’m surprised to hear myself ask the question.

“Good heavens, no,” she says. “I’m a North Carolina girl, a Tarheel through and through.”

Of course.
Carolina Girl.

Louisa’s expression suggests North Carolina and Georgia are in different galaxies. “Why do you ask, darlin’?”

I shrug. I don’t know why the hell I asked. So she could call me
darlin’
one more time, maybe. I wanted this conversation over five minutes ago. “Our associate is from Atlanta,” I tell her. “I thought your accent sounded a bit like his.”

Louisa arches her perfect eyebrows at me. “I can see we’re gonna have to teach you a thing or two about the South, honey chil’.”

Maybe
darlin’
wasn’t so bad.

I turn back toward the front door and notice what looks like the face of a touch-tone telephone on one side of it. “A security system?” I ask.

She nods.

“Was it activated on Sunday?”

She shakes her head. “We had it installed when we renovated,” she says, “but neither one of us was very good about making use of it. We were never even good about locking the doors, for that matter. I’m not sure I’d be able to find a key.”

I stop on the front step and face her. “I don’t lock mine either,” I confess. “Most people in this town don’t.”

She laughs. “It’s not as if we live in a high-crime neighborhood.”

Her smile fades at once. It’s pretty clear she regretted her last sentence before she finished it. “Herb kept saying we should,” she adds. “Especially at night, he said, we should lock the doors and activate the alarm. He kept telling me that he, at least, was going to start.”

“But he never got around to it,” I finish for her.

“That’s right,” she says. “He never did.”

“You didn’t tell me she was Southern.”

A dangerousness hearing and a motion to suppress kept me tied up in the courthouse all afternoon. It’s after six by the time I get back to the office, but Harry and the Kydd are still seated on opposite sides of our conference room table, their noses buried in casebooks, both of them deep in thought. They bolt upright—startled—when I appear in the doorway, drop my briefcase, and make my announcement. It’s directed, of course, at Harry. “She’s Southern,” I repeat. “You didn’t mention that.”

He blinks at me. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. It matters.”

Harry stares across the table at the Kydd, as if in need of a translation.

The Kydd shrugs. “Don’t look at me, Kimosabe,” he says, then buries his nose in his casebook again.

Tonto has good instincts.

Harry sets his own book down, takes his glasses off, and looks back up at me, shaking his head. “Why?”

“Because Southern women are so damned…
Southern
.”

I wish I hadn’t put it quite that way.

“Can’t argue with that,” he says.

“They are, aren’t they?” the Kydd drawls. He looks up from his book and it’s his turn to take off his glasses. Everyone in this business has bad eyes. His grow wistful. “They really are.”

“Don’t get weepy on me, Kydd. I’m going to need some help with this case. And you’re it.”

He grins. “I love being it,” he says. “That’s why I work here.”

Harry and I both laugh out loud. It’s true. Between the two of us, we heap enough work on the Kydd to keep four associates busy. He’s always it.

I turn back to Harry and point at the Kydd. “He’s mine for the next three days. You got me into this mess; your work can wait.”

Harry gives in at once, raising his hands above his head, as if I might shoot him otherwise. He started these melodramatic surrenders back when I was a prosecutor, as soon as he learned that I have a permit to carry and I make use of it. “He’s yours,” he tells me. “Take him, for God’s sake. He’s all yours.”

The Kydd stretches in his chair and yawns, looking up at me warily. “The next three days,” he says. “Would that be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?”

“No,” I tell him. “I’m sorry, Kydd, but it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday.”

“You’ll never dance at my wedding.” He sighs, then turns in the chair and opens the cabinet behind him, grabs a pen and a legal pad.

“Sure we will,” Harry counters, returning to his reading. “Say the word when you’re ready, Kydd. We’ll find you a good-looking inmate.”

The Kydd feigns a
ha-ha
at Harry, then turns to me, pen in hand, awaiting his marching orders.

“Life insurance,” I tell him. “You need to become an expert on it by noon tomorrow.”

Harry laughs into his book. “Another cushy assignment for the Kydd.”

The Kydd isn’t laughing, though. He glares at Harry before turning back to me, his expression suggesting I’ve asked him to master Sanskrit by dawn. “Life insurance? I don’t know anything about life insurance. I don’t know anything about
any
insurance.”

I cross the conference room, select the
I
volume of the
Massachusetts Digest
from the bookcase, and hand it to him. “No one in this room knows anything about insurance,” I tell him. “One of us has to learn.”

The Kydd takes the powder-blue book reluctantly, as if I might be handing him something contraband, setting him up for a bust. He examines its spine, then looks at me and frowns. “I know,” he says. “I’m it. But couldn’t you narrow it down a little?”

“I can narrow it down a lot,” I tell him. I dig Herb Rawlings’s life insurance policy out of my briefcase and hand it to him, then settle into one of two worn, comfortable wing chairs in an alcove by the windows.

He sets the policy down, plants his elbows on the table and waits, pen poised, his expression only slightly relieved.

“Best-case scenario, Kydd, is this: Mitch Walker questions Louisa Rawlings about her husband’s demise and he’s satisfied with her answers. The official cause of death remains an unfortunate boating accident and the widow collects a cool million from New England Patriot.”

Harry laughs into his casebook again. “Finally,” he says. “Some money in the poor girl’s pocket.”

The Kydd looks over at Harry; I ignore him. “Worst-case scenario, of course, is this: Walker’s less than satisfied with what Louisa Rawlings has to say. He digs deeper, finds evidence of foul play, and thinks the widow is behind it. She forfeits the insurance proceeds, but that’s the least of her problems. She’s looking at a murder charge, probably first-degree.”

The Kydd nods.

“What I want you to think about, Kydd, is a scenario that falls in between those two: Walker doesn’t like Louisa’s answers. He has suspicions, but no evidence. And what we have in our arsenal, thanks to your brilliant legal research, is a weapon that will ease his suspicions, maybe even dissuade him from digging any deeper.”

The Kydd looks surprised by the enormity of his research prowess. “We do?”

“We do. What you’re going to dig up for us is every restriction on recovery of life insurance proceeds that applies to Louisa Rawlings. And I’ll give you the first one: suicide negates coverage.”

Harry looks up from his casebook. “How the hell do you know that?”

I laugh. “Everybody knows that, Harry. And I went to law school, remember? I was one of those students who showed up for classes, even the classes that didn’t involve murder and mayhem.”

Harry frowns across the table at the Kydd. “Did you know that suicide negates coverage?” he asks.

The Kydd nods. “Everybody knows that,” he echoes.

Harry looks down at his casebook. “I’m in the midst of nerds,” he mutters.

The Kydd looks from Harry to me, shaking his head. “I don’t follow, Marty.”

“Louisa Rawlings doesn’t believe her husband’s death was accidental. She thinks he killed himself. And she has what may or may not be a note to prove it. But Mitch Walker doesn’t know that yet. Neither does the insurance company. If this thing takes a turn in the wrong direction, we produce the note, play the suicide card. We also play up any other fact that precludes coverage.”

The Kydd still looks confused. “And?”

“And we eliminate motive,” I tell him. “Louisa Rawlings went to law school too. A damned good one. She knows suicide negates coverage. And we’ll make sure she knows every other impediment to recovery you dig up, too. She doesn’t collect the million, but she doesn’t spend the rest of her days in a cinder-block cell, either.”

Harry laughs again. “Marty,” he says, “Louisa went to fewer classes than I did. She doesn’t know a damned thing about insurance coverage.”

I wait until he looks up at me. “And Mitch Walker doesn’t know a damned thing about Louisa.”

He nods, conceding the point, and then goes back to his reading.

“Why would the guy kill himself?” the Kydd asks.

I shrug. “Who knows? His wife was planning to leave him and she’s pretty sure he knew it. And if that’s not bad enough, it sounds like the poor man was impotent.”

“Ouch,” Harry says to his casebook. “Louisa wouldn’t be happy about that.”

The Kydd freezes even before I do, his wide eyes sounding silent alarm bells at Harry.

Harry doesn’t notice. “No, sir,” he laughs, shaking his head at the book as if whatever vivid scene is unfolding in his mind’s eye is illustrated there. “She wouldn’t like that at all.”

The Kydd looks over at me, his eyes panicked now, then back at Harry.

“Not one bit,” Harry chuckles.

The Kydd steals another glance at me, then kicks Harry in the shins under the table. Hard.

Now it’s Harry’s turn to freeze. He gapes at his assailant, indignant for a split second, and then he turns slowly toward me. “I’m sorry,” he says, burying his face in both hands and lowering his head to the book. “Dammit, Marty, I’m sorry.”

I force myself not to laugh. I don’t answer, either. Let him stew in his own juices for a minute.

He lifts his head just a couple of inches, keeps his hands over his face, then parts the fingers at his eyes and looks up at me. “I’m sorry. Dammit. I’m sorry.”

I have to laugh now; I can’t help it. “Since we’re on the topic, Harry, what do you think? Would a man kill himself over impotence?”

He lowers his hands, plainly relieved at the prospect of our discussion moving on. “I would,” he says, pointing to the windows behind my chair. “I’d jump.”

I shake my head at him and close my eyes. We’re on the first floor. “What do you think, Kydd? Suicide over impotence?”

The Kydd waits until I open my eyes again, then puts his pen down and grins at me. “I know almost as much about employment law as I do about life insurance,” he says, “but I’m pretty sure you can’t ask me that.”

We’re all laughing now. And I’m starting to feel punchy. It’s time to go home. “See you bright and early,” I tell the Kydd.

“You’ll see me early,” he says. “I don’t know about bright.”