Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration (18 page)

He sat up.
 
“What?”

She wasn’t listening.
 
She was reading. The scanned rent rolls from Mrs. B most definitely had the name
‘R. Mendine’
on them.
 
But the pdfs from the judge, supposedly the original, hard-copy rent rolls, all said
Mendina
.
 
One letter different.
 

A whole lot of difference.

 
“I missed it,” she muttered. “How could I have missed it?
 
Because they’re so much alike, that’s why.
 
I just missed it.”

“Can I get in on this conversation?” Johnny said.

“The names.”
 
She thrust a handful of papers at him.
 
“Look at the names.
 
And look, here, at the scanned pages Mrs. B emailed me.
 
Look at how they’re different.
 
The name on the scans Mrs. B sent me, versus the ones on the pdfs the judge sent you.
 
Mendine, Mendina.
 
Mendine, Mendina.”
 
She looked up, her face flushed with triumph.
 
“He changed the names!”

Johnny took the papers and leaned in to look at her laptop screen.

“Do you think it could be a mistake?” she said after a moment.

“I don’t see how you mistakenly go back and change all your E’s to A’s on a pdf,” he replied curtly.

“Only one of them,” she said, picking up more papers.
 
“The other E is just fine.”

“Did the judge know Mrs. B was sending you these?” Johnny asked.

Juliette shook her head. “He absolutely did not know she was sending them.
 
In fact, well,” she twisted her fingers together, gazing at him with an intensely innocent look. “Mrs. B might have got into the judge’s safe without him knowing, maybe.
 
Possibly.”

Johnny looked at her. “So that’s a possibility?”

“That is a definite possibility. A very strong one.”

“So he never thought we’d see these.”
 
Johnny held up the printed, scanned rent rolls.
 

Juliette shook her head.
 
“Never. And after tonight, those originals might not exist anymore. Because those…,” she tapped the corner of the hardcopy papers in his hand, “have been altered.”

They looked at each other.
 

“Who is your Mendine, Johnny?” she asked.
   

He lay back down, shoved a pillow under his head.
 
“Roger Mendine.”

She took some of the papers. “This lists an
‘R. Mendine.’
 
“It could be the same guy. But what are the chances?”

“Yeah. What are they?” he echoed. He sounded like he thought they might be pretty good.
 

A prickle went up her spine.
 
“Who is Roger Mendine, Johnny?”
 

“A businessman. CEO and founder of R&M Development Corp.”

She stared, then started scrambling through the papers again. “Johnny, that’s one of the names on here,” she said, flinging papers fast and furious.

Johnny’s looked up into the blizzard.
 

“That name, R&M, I think that was the name of one of the other renters. I’m pretty sure—
 
Yes, right here,” she said in triumph, holding up a page. “R&M Development Corp.”
 
She skimmed the pages.

He sat up.
 
“Are you saying R. Mendine and R&M Development Corporation both paid money to Mrs. B’s condo?”

“Yes.
 
The R&M name only showed up once, I think, just once, about…” She shuffled papers. “Three years ago.”

They stared at each other. She felt that sucking-inward energy thing start happening with Johnny.
 

“Okay,” she said slowly, thoughtfully, aloud, because her energy didn’t suck inward.
 
“Okay, so, between Mr. Mendine’s personal payments and his business account, they’ve paid over two million dollars in rental income. What kind of business does R&M Development do, Johnny?”

“Construction.
 
Big projects.”
 

She felt a little cold and didn’t know why. She couldn’t see any significance to that.
 
“How big?”

“Real big. It’s a billion dollar company.”

She nodded slowly. “What sorts of projects?

Johnny’s green eyes met hers, hard and absolutely unreadable. “Among other things, juvenile detention centers.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered. She pushed up to her knees.

Everything about Johnny was still. He was like a bank of storm clouds showing up on the horizon.

“Okay, let’s think this through,” she said, thinking out loud, because that’s how she did it, to the annoyance of any number of past cubicle-mates. “Why would the head of a billion dollar construction company that builds juvenile detention centers be paying the wife of a juvenile court judge over two million dollars to rent her condo?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Johnny said. He didn’t sound like he thought it interesting. He sounded like someone was going to die. Painfully.

“Holy shit,” she whispered again. Her hands were shaking.
 

Silence filled the air. They stared at each other, motionless.
 

Johnny broke first: he reached for his shirt.
   

Juliette grabbed hers right behind him. They began snatching up essential items—Johnny his electronics, her the sugar packets—as they raced through the house, shoving on clothes, grabbing bags, turning down the thermostat, shrugging on coats as they dove for things, always moving toward the front door.
 

Johnny swung it open and she flicked off the lights as she stepped through it.
 
He shut it behind them.

They stopped short as they hit the driveway. Fat, lazy snowflakes drifted down on their heads. The air was lowering grey, thick and absolutely still. Those clouds were going to dump a lot of snow, hard and soon.

They looked at their cars.
 
Hers sat there, red and slumpy.
 
His sat there, high and gleaming. With big tires.

“I’ll drive,” he said, and grabbed her hand.
 
She didn’t hesitate.
 
The only other option was staying behind, and no way was she doing that.

Johnny didn’t even suggest it.

“I’ll drive you back up,” he promised as he threw their bags into the huge cab. They tumbled into the cab and he revved it up.
 
Before she’d settled into her seat, he threw it in reverse.
 
She buckled as they took off, up the slippery driveway and out onto the road.

It took about fifteen minutes to hit the main highway.
 
By then, Juliette’s nose was buried in documents, answering Johnny’s questions as they came.
 
He didn’t ask many.
 
Then he called Dan.

The snow started coming down in earnest as they drove. There weren’t many other cars on the highway, just them and the snow and a computer full of incriminating documents. Johnny’s profile was hard in the lights from the dashboard as he tapped the console. It flickered to life like a flight deck, then the soft sounds of a ringing phone moved through the truck’s cab.

“Johnny, it’s two in the morning,” she pointed out when the ringing kept on.

“Who gives a shit?”

“Not you,” she murmured.
 

The phone picked up.
 
She heard the start of a message then Johnny hit a button and it went silent. She started shredding a receipt she found in her bag.
 
A moment later, Johnny said, “Dan, we need to talk.
 
It’s about your old friend the judge.
 
Don’t say anything to anyone.
 
I’m on my way home now.”
 

He clicked off and glanced over. He looked at the torn bits of paper in her hands.

“You okay?”

“Yes.
 
It’s just…anticlimactic, sitting here.” She scattered bits of shredded paper as she flipped her hands.
 
“We did all that, and now…this.
 
How long till we get there?”

“Same as it was coming up, Jauntie.
 
About four hours.”

“It took me twelve,” she said, staring ahead at the highway. The black road swirled with snow, the hillsides were snow-white, and in the air, snow.
 
She shredded some more receipts.
 
He glanced at the paper bits showering his truck carpets.

“I’m just restless,” she assured him jerkily. “I’ll clean it up.”

“Maybe it’s the forty ounces of coffee you had in the past twenty-four hours,” he suggested.

She snorted softly and shifted to look out the side window. “Don’t insult me. I had more than forty.”

She leaned her head against the window. His hand came out, closed around hers, stopped the nervous shredding.
 
“Put on some music.”

She looked around warily. Music seemed like a very complicated thing. “What do you like?”
 

He put his hand back on the wheel. “Tonight, I like anything.”

She smiled and leaned toward the console. “That is really good information to have.
 
I’m a fan of eighties music.”

He groaned as she pressed a section on the flat digital console. Nothing happened. She pressed another section.
 
“So, Mrs. B said something interesting to me last night.”

“She’s a very interesting person.”

“I think so too.
 
She said you mentioned my name to her.”

“Did she?”

Juliette pressed another button. More nothing happened. “Yes. In fact, even more interesting, she said you
referred
her to me.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Did you?” Juliette asked, carefully keeping her gaze on the console.

He glanced over as she tapped at various sections of his radio with her forefinger. “You can’t believe everything you hear, Jauntie.”

“True.” She looked over and he turned away, back to the road. “Should I believe this?”
 

“Depends.
 

“On what.”

“On lots of things.”

She narrowed her gaze. “You can be a very annoying person to have a conversation with.”

“It’s the lawyer in me.”

“Ha. But you do know Farrah the art lawyer.”
 

He nodded. “I do. She’s wonderful.”

She laughed at the total lack of warmth in his voice.
 
“She’s a tiger.”

“Roar. I don’t think she likes me much.”

Juliette eyed his profile, with its hard masculine lines.
 
“Oh, I don’t know….”
 

Farrah liked hard things. Difficult things. Such as clients. Juliette knew this, because they’d once shared one. Juliette had done the client’s accounting, and Farrah came on board when he got hammered by an IP case.
 
The client lost his case, and Juliette lost him as a client when he closed up shop and moved to Brazil.
 
But she did get a referral source out of the matter, one Farrah James, art lawyer.
 
And through her, Mrs. B.

Unless Mrs. B had come through Johnny.

It was hard to tell, with lawyers.

“So,” Juliette said, as casually as possible as she sat forward and tried again to figure out how to change channels.
 
“Is someone going to be surprised to see you show up in the middle of the night?”
 

“Yeah, Dan.”

“No, I mean, a w-woman.” Good Lord, she’d stumbled over the word.

He glanced sideways, faintly amused. “No.”

“Ah.” She ignored the wave of relief that spread through her and nodded, pushing at various glowing sections of the screen. Nothing was happening. “It shouldn’t be this hard to turn on a radio.”

His hand came up, brushed hers aside, and a second later, music came on.
 
It was playing really hard music, really soft.
 
“That’s synced to my phone,” he instructed, then pointed.
 
“Hit this for the radio.”

“Hit what?”

“The thing that says ‘radio’.”

“That’s too complicated,” she complained.

He smiled.

“How come?” she asked, touching her fingertip to the section of the glowing control panel he’d indicated. The faint, lively strum of Spanish guitars poured quietly into the cab.
 
She left it for a moment, listening.

“How come what?” Johnny asked.

“How come no girlfriend?”

He shrugged faintly. “No time. No interest. No one I want.”