Never Con a Corgi (15 page)

Leigh's head spun a little, but as the words gradually fell into place, she began to understand. Cara wanted her to help convince Gil that Diana Saxton's supposed vendetta against him was more than a figment of his wife's superb and well-documented imagination.

But was it?

Leigh hesitated.

"He'll listen to you, Leigh," Cara insisted. "I know he will."

Leigh lifted an eyebrow. On what planet she had any influence whatsoever over the all-knowing Gil March, she had no idea. But as she had spent her entire childhood and most of her adult life playing protector to her headstrong and impulsive "little sister," she could hardly refuse the impulse now.

"Just let me get dressed," she responded. "I'll wake the kids up and get their breakfast, they should—"

She broke off as she spotted her daughter, slim as a broomstick, leaning silently against the doorway to the hall. Leigh's heart skipped a beat. How much Allison had overheard this time was anyone's guess. The child had earned a black belt in reconnaissance by the age of three.

Leigh opened her mouth to protest, but changed her mind. Chastising Allison for eavesdropping was ineffective; the girl had inherited way too much talent for playing lawyerball from her father. If reproached, Allison would simply point out—quite calmly and rationally—that (1) she had been in plain view the whole time, and (2) no one had told her it was a private conversation.

Leigh sighed.

"I can get our breakfast, Mom," Allison said helpfully, stepping towards the kitchen. "Ethan's up, too. He's just lying in bed trying to get to level seven on Ninja Snowblast. Hi, Aunt Cara."

"Hi, sweetie," Cara returned with a motherly smile, all traces of anxiety well hidden. "Say, if I send Matt and Lenna over here, can you guys entertain yourselves for a while? Your mom and I need some time alone with your Uncle Gil."

"No problem," Allison said expressionlessly, opening a kitchen cabinet and removing a box of cereal. "I'll watch everybody."

Leigh and Cara exchanged veiled grins. Allison was a head shorter than any of the other children, but her moral authority had always gone unquestioned.

"Thank you," the women answered together.

Ten minutes later, Leigh rapped on the door of Cara's farmhouse and was let in by a strained-looking Gil, who glanced over her shoulder as if expecting someone else.

"Detective Peterson is on the way over," Cara announced grimly as Leigh stepped inside. "That's why Gil came home, instead of going into town. His lawyer is meeting us here, too."

"I see," Leigh responded, trying her best to sound upbeat. "Did he say why?"

"No," Gil answered, closing the door behind her. "Only that he had more questions for me."

An awkward silence followed. After a moment, Cara led them all back into the living room.

"So," Leigh began, breaking the uneasy silence and dropping down into a chair. "I hear there was some excitement at the gym this morning?"

Gil shrugged. "All I know is that it was closed. The lot was swarming with police cars."

More silence.

Leigh's arrival had clearly interrupted something. Cara and Gil were rarely present in the same room without displaying some honeymooner-like affection, yet now they stood well apart, with a distinct chill in the air. "Well, you could always use the workout center in your office building," Leigh babbled. "That's a nice one. I used to walk by it daily when I had copywriter job #2. Not that I ever made use of it myself, of course."

Gil nodded and sat down. "I thought about that this morning, actually, but I didn't have my gym bag. Besides, the detective called just as I was pulling out of—"

"What do you mean?!" Cara shrieked, whirling to face her husband.

Gil started as if he'd been struck. Leigh felt herself do the same.

"What do I..." he repeated in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Your gym bag!"

Gil looked helplessly at Leigh. She looked helplessly back.

Cara collapsed onto the couch beside him. "You said you didn't have your gym bag. Why not? Where is it?"

"It's in the gym," he answered calmly. "I guess. I don't know for sure. I thought I brought it out with me yesterday and put it in the car like always, but it wasn't there last night, so I must have left it in my locker."

Cara's face went pale as chalk. "You thought it was in the car, but then it wasn't?"

Gil raised a tentative hand and placed it on his wife's shoulder. "It doesn't matter, sweetheart. There was nothing important in it."

"Cara," Leigh pressed, "What are you getting at? We're baffled here."

Cara sat slumped for a moment, looking defeated. "It may be nothing," she said finally, her voice a choked whisper. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I didn't mean to. It's just that—" she raised her chin and looked at Leigh. "Well, tell him, Leigh."

Gil looked over at Leigh expectantly.

She shrank in her chair.

This is awkward.

"Um..." she began, trying to remember exactly what she had promised to do. "It's just that Cara thought you should hear a second opinion about... well, about how women think."

Cara nodded at her encouragingly. Gil's expression turned stormy.

Leigh swallowed. "Look, I don't want to get into this any more than you do, but the fact is, Gil—"

The man looked like his face would explode.

Leigh plowed on. "Women don't take rejection well. The more aggressive the woman, the harder she takes it. The more intelligent the woman, the more personally she takes it. The more attractive the woman, the worse she's insulted by it. All of which makes someone like Diana Saxton a triple threat."

She took a breath. Gil hadn't exploded yet, and Cara looked pleased. "I don't know the woman, and I don't know how much trouble she's willing to go to to make you suffer, but trust me," she leaned forward for emphasis. "You did
not
part on good terms, no matter what she told you. She's clearly a liar and an actress, because there's no doubt she still resents the hell out of you. Thinking anything less, giving her the benefit of the doubt in any way, is opening up yourself,
and
your family, to one whopping sucker punch."

Leigh dropped back against the couch cushions, her duty discharged. Cara looked hopefully at Gil. Gil continued to glower, but when he spoke, his voice was mellow. "I hear what you're saying, Leigh."

The front doorbell rang.

The pall of tension already blanketing the room grew heavier. Gil rose and walked to the door. A few moments later he returned with two men whom he introduced as Reginald Bloom, his lawyer, and Detective Andrew Peterson. Leigh shook both men's hands, thinking that if they hadn't been introduced, she would have reversed them. Gil's "Reg" was sixty if he was a day—a grizzled, pot bellied man with frizzy mad-scientist hair and a mischievous glint in his eye. Maura's detective friend was barely thirty, a slight, serious fellow with narrow spectacles and an intellectual air.

Neither man wasted time.

"As you know, we made an exhaustive search of Brandon Lyle's home and office yesterday," Peterson began as soon as they were seated. The detective was unexpectedly soft-voiced, and Leigh was embarrassed to catch herself leaning forward to hear. She was lucky no one had thought to kick her out yet.

"I don't recall your mentioning that Mr. Lyle had asked you for a loan?" the detective inquired of Gil.

"You didn't ask," the lawyer interjected quickly. "But my client is happy to answer now that you have." He gave Gil a nod.

Gil sat forward. "Brandon did ask for a personal loan, maybe three weeks ago. We had broken off our official business arrangement nearly a year ago, as I told you. I declined the loan because I considered the man a very poor risk, but I did offer him some informal, unpaid business advice at that time, as I explained already."

"Yes, you did," the detective agreed. A painfully long period of time elapsed. Leigh could hear Cara's grandfather clock ticking in the upstairs hallway. "In examining Mr. Lyle's papers, we've found indications that he considered you among his potential 'fallback' assets should his current real estate venture collapse. Specifically, he listed your name next to an anticipated sum in the neighborhood of seven figures."

Cara's face paled further. Gil's flushed red as a fire engine.

"Seven figures!" he exclaimed, rising from his chair. "That's insane! He only asked me for six figures, and I wouldn't give him that!"

"The victim's delusions regarding his own appeal as a credit risk are hardly my client's concern," the lawyer purred smoothly, stroking his mustache with a bejeweled finger. "Is there anything else?"

The detective remained unruffled. "Yes. The whole question of Mr. March's history with Mr. Lyle's firm, as well as their personal relationship, appeared to be of considerable interest to Mr. Lyle immediately before his murder."

"How do you figure?" the lawyer asked.

"We found a file—several files, actually—of printed materials, correspondence, even some university-related documents going back several decades, placed quite prominently among Mr. Lyle's things, as if he had reviewed them recently. This, in conjunction with the stated threat Mr. Lyle made in the hearing of multiple witnesses on the night of the murder—"

"We explained that already, I believe," the lawyer interrupted.

The detective paused. "You offered an explanation, yes. I was wondering if you could offer some additional explanation for why Mr. Lyle might have been under the impression that a large sum of money might be coming to him from Mr. March."

Gil sputtered and started to speak, but the lawyer stopped him with a hand. "My client can hardly be expected to account for whatever vagaries were going on in Mr. Lyle's mind in the midst of impending financial ruin," he said placidly. "Mr. Lyle asked for a loan and was refused. He made a threat which we have previously established to be empty, as my client has no culpability with which Mr. Lyle could hope to extort seven cents, much less seven figures. Is there anything else?"

The detective studied Gil for another long moment. Then he returned his notebook to his pocket. "No, that will be all for now. Thank you." He rose to leave, and Gil showed him back out without another word.

"Interesting," the lawyer said when Gil returned. "What could Lyle hope to accomplish by looking through files with your name on them?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Gil said with frustration. "Even if he was stupid enough to believe he could blackmail
me
over that wretched Philadelphia business, he wasn't going to find anything incriminating in a business file." His brow furrowed. "It doesn't even sound like Brandon. I can't see him keeping hard copies of our 'correspondence' in the first place—he kept terrible records. That was part of his problem. If such files exist, it would only be because—" his voice broke off abruptly.

Cara stood up. "Because Diana Saxton printed them out!" she finished fiercely. "Which she would, if she was trying to frame you! Who knows how much Brandon told her? About the loan request, about the blackmail? She could have known the whole story! And she could have easily pulled your files to the front and laid them out for the detectives to find. She could have created them all herself in the first place!"

Reg looked from Cara to Gil. "That possible?" he asked.

The couple exchanged a hard stare. Gil exhaled. "Yes," he conceded. "It's possible. She's certainly tech savvy enough. I wouldn't have thought Diana would exert that much effort in my honor, but if the woman wanted to screw me over..."

The lawyer made a clucking sound with his tongue. "Well then, old chap, we're damned fortunate we brought to light the spurned secretary issue yesterday. They can't very well ignore the possibility of sabotage, far-fetched as it may seem." He rose suddenly and gave Gil a hearty clap on the back. "Don't lose sleep over it. The motive they're chasing is sketchy, at best. The fact that you refused a loan request previously is helpful—it shows you weren't afraid of him. In any event, there's not a scrap of physical evidence to tie you to the murder scene."

The doorbell rang. Everyone looked at each other blankly for a second, then Gil walked toward the door. He returned a few seconds later with the detective in tow. "Terribly sorry to bother you again," the slight man said softly, making no move to sit. "But I just received a rather intriguing call. Perhaps you heard that the Ironworks Health Club on Perry Highway was closed early this morning due to an anonymous bomb threat?"

Leigh shot a glance at Cara. Her cousin stood ash-faced; her hands began to tremble.

"Yes," Gil answered. "That's where I go. I was pulling out of the parking lot when you called this morning. What of it?"

The detective cleared his throat. "It seems that in the course of searching the building, the bomb squad came across a bag with your ID tag on it, which was left underneath a bench in the weight room."

Cara's quick intake of breath was slight, but Leigh heard it. She only hoped the detective had not.

"The bag contained an item that drew their immediate attention," Peterson continued. "A handgun registered to Mr. Brandon Lyle."

Chapter 16

Maura grimaced as she picked up a stick from the ground and attempted to scrape several inches of mud off the bottom of her left shoe. The women were meeting once again at the picnic table behind the church, where the detective had summoned Leigh after finishing the unenviable duty of overseeing a pond-dragging on the heels of a rainstorm.

"So, I hear the bomb squad stole my prize," the detective said dryly. "And they weren't even looking."

Leigh sighed. She felt terribly guilty leaving the Pack with Cara. She could have watched them easily; the project Gil had scrounged up was five afternoons' worth, tops, and she could work with the kids at home if they were occupied. But under the circumstances, it was Cara who needed watching by the Pack.

"What's going to happen now, Maura?" she asked, restraining Chewie by his lead as he lunged toward a nearby squirrel. "Is there enough for an arrest?"