Read No Accident Online

Authors: Dan Webb

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Private Investigators, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Murder, #Thrillers, #Legal

No Accident (9 page)

BOOK: No Accident
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“Why don’t you sit down and tell me?” Brad’s chair was tilted as far back as it would go. His voice didn’t reveal the alarm he felt, but his face couldn’t hide it.

“Why don’t
you
find a way to fix this?” Sheila said.

“Fix this?”

“Yes, you idiot. Fix this. Find a way to make Luke give up.”

“Give up?”

“Are you lawyer or a parrot?”

Yeah, litigants love to “give up,”
Brad thought.
Wake up every morning wondering how quickly they can “give up.”
Two weeks earlier, it was “show up and take instructions.” Now it was “make him give up.” He shouldn’t be surprised. He was going to have to earn his fee, after all. Fine, then—it was time for some tough love.

“Sheila. Number one: control yourself.” She came out of her snit and looked at him in surprise. “Good. Number two: Luke is not going to give up. Surprised? No. You’re not. Number three: Luke has the money and the power, so he has the leverage
and . . . he . . . is trying . . . to make
you
give up. Yes.” She started to look defiant again. “Number four: I won’t let him, but—Number five: I need you with me.”

Sheila nodded with religious fervor.

“Do I need to count higher?” Brad said.

Sheila shook her head and collapsed into the chair. Then she started crying.

Oh, great
, Brad thought,
why didn’t I just let her keep screaming?
Her sobs were soft and tentative.
Because I’m her lawyer
, he thought. Brad came around to the front of his desk and put an arm around her shoulder. That comforted her.

Brad knew he wasn’t a handsome man, and he was fine with that. Here for once he had his arm around a beautiful woman, and to his surprise he wasn’t thinking about a beautiful woman, or the smell of her hair or how she filled out her skirt. He was thinking about his adversary and about how to stop him.

He was thinking like a lawyer.

The paper for this case had started coming in, a lot more of it than he had expected. Eighty hours this week
—eighty
billable
hours—just to get through the first set of motions and other worthless bundles couriered to his office door once or twice a day by Luke’s lawyers. He’d already billed beyond the amount of the retainer, and he’d meant to speak with Sheila today about arranging payment of his first month’s bill, but now obviously wasn’t the right time for that. Sheila’s getting fired opened a whole new legal front on which Brad could attack Luke. But Brad’s priority had to be getting Sheila some interim alimony, and fast—for both of their sakes.

The bright side was that the divorce saga appeared in the local tabloids almost every day. Even ugly guys were photographed for the paper now and then; with any luck, that would start happening soon for him. Some free publicity about his winning a great settlement for Sheila would certainly help revive his legal practice. In fact, this case was so high profile that it could do what Brad had hoped his hardware-store class action would do
—bring him to a point where new clients looked for him rather than the other way around. This case could be his salvation yet, if he could find a way to save Sheila.

 

11

The night after he was fired, Alex drank to fall asleep. But he didn’t drink enough to stop from dreaming. He had the Pamela dream, the one he’d had off and on for a year, even since before she left him. Each time the dream moved a little further along. In the dream, Pamela had warned him not to buy any more houses and then left when he did so anyway. This time Alex dreamed that he negotiated a miraculous deal with the banks in which they forgave all the mortgage debt and gave Alex an option to purchase a mansion in Bel Air. Alex raced around town to find Pamela, to show her that he had repaired his finances and to beg her forgiveness. He finally found her on Rodeo Drive, where he spotted her through the picture window of an expensive boutique. He approached the window and tapped on it with a fingernail to draw her attention from her shopping. She didn’t look up. Then he rapped the window with his knuckles. Then he called her name and pounded his fists on the window, over and over until the glass undulated like a sheet being unfurled onto a newly made bed. But she didn’t hear him. No one heard him.

Alex woke up sweating. These dreams weren’t fair—he was always the bad guy. Alex remembered the indelicate way Del had broken the news that Pamela was cheating on him: “Dude, your fiancée’s sleeping with this dude I know.”

She didn’t deny it when he confronted her. In fact, she was almost eager to confirm her infidelity. What a contrast to the modest, almost shy girl he fell in love with.

He first fell for her light brown hair and nerdy glasses. She didn’t realize how pretty she was, which was refreshing, and though she could talk all day to a class of second-graders, she sometimes got tongue-tied around people her own age. She was tongue-tied around Alex at first. It was endearing, and Alex felt like a hero for making her comfortable around others and giving her confidence.

After two months, he introduced her to his family, and she got along with them as if she’d known them her whole life. Mom loved her and was delighted they had so much in common. They were both schoolteachers, they both liked sappy movies.
Less in common than you think, Mom
, Alex thought, looking back.

After a year, they weren’t yet talking about marriage, but it was clear they were moving in that direction. Everything got more serious. Pamela wanted Alex to be more financially secure. Alex wanted that, too. By then he had quit
The Chronicle
, in part because he hoped he could eventually make more money in the insurance industry, maybe move into management. Alex was aware that part of his motivation for making money was recovering some of the status his family lost when his father was convicted of fraud.

But Pamela didn’t have Alex’s adventurous nature
—or foolhardiness—when it came to his real estate investments. She thought it was cool when Alex bought his first investment property—she was dating a sexy wheeler-dealer. The second investment was less popular—shouldn’t they pay down the mortgages on the first investment property and the house by the beach a little first? She was vocally nervous about the next investment property, but Alex explained his rationale over and over until she acquiesced.

Before they got engaged, Pamela made Alex promise not to buy any more houses. But three months later, the market was still red hot, and Alex got a call from a broker about an opportunity that looked great on paper and would be gone in a day if Alex didn’t take it. So Alex took it.

Pamela felt betrayed, of course, but Alex sat with her for four hours that night, talking about their future together, and Alex explained how all his investments were meant to jump-start their nest egg so that he could provide her with the financial stability that she needed. There was a lot of soft crying on her part—she was never a screamer—but by the end of the evening, she wasn’t upset anymore, and she said that she loved and trusted him. That was what Alex needed to hear. He believed it, and he’d learned his lesson—no more houses, he promised himself. Alex’s aggressive investing had been the source of a lingering quiet conflict between them, and Alex felt like bringing the issue out into the open had strengthened their relationship as they prepared for marriage. He was wrong about that.

A month later, Del saw Pamela leaving the house of one of his low-life gambling buddies. It turned out he had chatted her up when she and Alex and some friends had gone to one of Del’s parties early on in their relationship and Alex had left early. After Alex’s final house investment, this dude saw her out with her girlfriends one night and tried to re-make her acquaintance. And she was willing. And now Alex felt like his insides had been crushed.

Del told Alex at the time that it was for the best, that he’d never really liked Pamela anyway, and that in a year Alex would look back and laugh about the whole thing. Well, it had been a year, and Alex still didn’t get the joke.

His five houses were still a constant reminder of two big mistakes
—foolish investing and corrupting his relationship with Pamela. Some days he blamed Pamela, some days he blamed himself. But his thoughts went in a circle, not forward.

Outside the sky was still dark, but Alex got out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen to brew some coffee. He wanted to clear his boozy head. At some point last night, he’d figured out what to do. Once he found out the truth of the Cummings accident, he would present Chip Odom with a simple choice
—either Chip would hire Alex back and restore coverage for Roberta Cummings, or else Alex would take his evidence to a lawyer who would sue Rampart Insurance and embarrass them.

If Chip took the first alternative, Alex would also have his job back. If Chip refused to
hire Alex back, then Alex would . . . what? After a couple sips of coffee he remembered—he would go out on his own as a private insurance investigator. The more coffee he drank, the more the plan actually made sense. Alex had enough experience and contacts now to make it as an independent investigator, and once Alex figured out what Beto’s scam was, he could get some splashy publicity out of the story, which would help him in starting his business.

The sky was just starting to light
en outside, a bird was chirping . . . and something else was making a sound. Alex opened the kitchen window, and heard a persistent metallic scratch echoing in the quiet street outside. He poked his head outside the window and saw a large boxy shadow, which was his truck parked askew in his driveway—
Christ
, he wondered,
did I actually drive myself home last night?—
and he saw the shadow of a hunching man pressed against the driver’s side door.

Alex dropped his coffee mug. It rattled in the sink as Alex ran into the front hall. A machine gun-fire narrative of self-reproach ran through his brain:
This is what I get for getting drunk and parking in my own driveway instead of the side street, and I shouldn’t have driven home anyway; God, I’m an idiot
. Alex grabbed the keys to his truck from a side table and opened his front door. Then he turned back and threw open the door to the darkened coat closet, which he explored by touch like a blind speed reader. Inside, he found Pamela’s jacket. Inside a pocket of that jacket, he found her canister of mace.
Fucking repo man
, Alex thought.

Alex bounded out of his house on the balls of his bare feet, surprised the repo man with a hand to the shoulder, sprayed mace in his eyes from an inch away, then tugged the hunched, wailing man by the shoulders away from the truck and hurled him onto the small patch of grass that counted as Alex’s lawn.

Alex pulled the repo man’s slim jim out of the truck door, inserted his own key into the lock and opened the door. He hopped into the driver’s seat and turned on the engine. Before Alex could close the truck door, a hairy forearm reached in right in front of Alex’s face and grabbed hold of the steering wheel. Without considering the consequences, Alex dropped his jaw open and bit down on the arm. A man shouted in pain, the arm withdrew, and Alex put the truck in reverse and hit the gas. The truck lurched out of the driveway at the same awkward angle it had been driven in on the night before, the tires making a serrated track across the lawn and bouncing over the curb onto the street.

In his rearview mirror, Alex saw two men
—Mr. Forearm and Mr. Mace—get up from his lawn and run to their own car.
These guys are relentless
, Alex thought.

Given the light traffic at this hour, the pair caught up easily despite Alex’s head start. Alex saw a streetlight ahead and timed it so that he entered the intersection just as the light was turning red. The pursuing car barreled through the intersection a full second later. Alex started to worry.
How bloodthirsty are these guys?

A block ahead was another intersection, this time crossing a major artery. The light had just turned yellow, and Alex saw that, even at this early hour, cars were waiting to cross as soon as the opposing lights turned green. Alex gunned the engine and flew through the intersection, again just as the light was turning red. This time his pursuers had cross traffic to slow them down. He heard screeching tires and car horns
—no crashes, thank God—and in his mirror saw his pursuers weaving slowly through the intersection around cars whose drivers had dared to assume that at 5:00 a.m. they could proceed safely on a green light.

That little delay was all Alex needed. Many of the side streets down by the beach were narrow one-way alleys that gave access to garages and carports. Alex turned the truck the wrong way down one of them, and then turned into the first empty carport he saw. Standing next to him in the humble carport was a nearly new Mercedes, which he knew cost close to a hundred grand. It was people like the owner of the Mercedes who drove up property values.
God, I love gentrification
, he thought. A few seconds later, he saw his pursuers speed past the alley, not looking in his direction.

Alex would wait here a while and then move the truck somewhere else for the day. He obviously couldn’t leave the truck in his driveway anymore. The bill collectors were watching him like ghouls. The encounter had shaken Alex, but in a strange way he felt satisfied. The morning’s excitement proved that Alex’s obsessive rituals to avoid his bill collectors were actually justified. He would just have to be more careful to follow them consistently.

Alex remembered something his brother said the other day, that the two of them were alike. Now that Alex had been chased from his home before dawn by people who wanted money from him, that comparison no longer seemed so crazy. Alex knew the repo men would be back.
Maybe Del can give me some tips on making my way as a deadbeat
, Alex mused.

Alex heard a beep come from the car seat next to him. His cell phone, which he didn’t remember leaving there, was telling him he had a message. He didn’t remember leaving his phone here.
How drunk was I?
Alex took the phone and listened to the voicemail. The message was from the night before. His uncle Hugh was returning his call—
that’s right, I called Hugh from the bathroom at the bar
—and Hugh said that in fact he and Aunt Melinda were hosting Del for dinner tomorrow—which was now today—and they’d love for Alex to join them.

All Alex had really wanted was a quick, five-minute conversation with Uncle Hugh about the life insurance policies from Liberty Industries, but he couldn’t back out now.
He waited a few more minutes, then drove off to find someplace where he could get a cheap greasy breakfast to settle his roiling stomach.

 

BOOK: No Accident
9.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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