Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken (12 page)

Instead, she saw Greg’s. Behind him, Nick Costopolous. She recognized Nick at once, despite his rumpled clothes, mussed hair, and aviator shades. Greg had obviously dragged him out of bed.

Whenever she’d seen Nick at Prescott & Talbott functions, his hair had been gelled and carefully arranged to appear casual. He wore tasteful, expensive clothes and hipster shoes. He had olive skin, jet-black hair and eyes to match, and a blindingly white smile. He was tall and fit. She had a vague memory that his job involved a lot of physical activity.

Sasha usually gave him wide berth. He was overtly flirtatious and borderline creepy, as far as she was concerned. She had never really understood what Clarissa had seen in him, beyond his looks, but one of the secretaries had once mentioned that the two had been high school sweethearts, and their families were partners in some sort of business. A restaurant, maybe.

Greg rapped his fist on the doorframe and gave her a weak smile. “Knock, knock.”

“Come on in,” she said, waving them inside.

Greg stepped through the doorway, followed by Nick, who pulled the door shut behind him and stood just inside, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Sasha walked around to the front of the desk to greet them. Front and center in her mind was the thought that she was alone in her office with two men whose estranged wives had been brutally murdered within the last week.

“I’m sorry about Clarissa,” she said to Nick, careful not to stand between him and Greg. She didn’t feel that she was in any immediate danger, but she saw no point in being careless.

Nick pushed the glasses up through his unruly hair and perched them atop his head.

“Thank you,” he said. He looked straight at her. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and a five o’clock shadow completed the picture.

She could smell liquor and stale cigars on his clothes. She glanced at Greg, who seemed to have pulled himself together and taken charge of the situation.

“We need to talk to you,” Greg said.

“Go ahead and sit down,” she said, gesturing to the pair of Queen Anne guest chairs in front of her desk.

Nick collapsed into the closer of the chairs and slumped forward. Greg clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past him to the farther chair.

“How about a cup of coffee?” Sasha suggested.

Greg shook his head. At the same time, Nick nodded.

“Please,” Nick said. “Cream and sugar.”

Greg shrugged. “Okay, sure. Just Sweet’N Low for me. Thanks.”

Sasha started toward the door.

“Wait. Where are you going?” Greg snapped to attention.

“I’m going to run downstairs and get us coffee. I’ll be back in three minutes, tops.  Hang tight.”

She pulled the door shut and hurried down the stairs to the coffee shop.

The shop was empty. Through the pass-through, she could see Kathryn in the back, flirting with Jake.

“I’m grabbing some coffees,” Sasha yelled.

“You’re going to drive me out of business!” Jake yelled back.

Sasha scooped up a handful of stirrers, creams, and sugar packets and tossed them into her cardigan pocket, making sure she grabbed the artificial sweetener for Greg.

She poured coffee into three of the glossy black mugs from the stack near the thermos on the counter. She threaded the thumb and fingers of her left hand through two of the handles and picked up the third with her right.

As she walked gingerly toward the door, maintaining posture that would have made her late Nana Alexandrov proud, Kathryn came around the corner, still giggling over something Jake had said.

“Whoa, do you need a hand?” she asked.

“Thanks, but I think I’ve got them.”

A hand would have been nice, but Sasha thought Nick might jump out of his skin if Kathryn walked through the door. He was keeping it together by a thread.

“Okay, then. See you later.”

“See you,” Sasha called over her shoulder as she started her careful trip up the stairs, focusing on keeping the mugs level.

When she neared her closed door, she could hear Greg and Nick talking in low, serious voices. She tapped on the door with the toe of her pump. She waited a few seconds and was about to tap again, when the door swung in.

“Thanks,” she said to Greg. “Here.” She nodded toward the mug in her right hand, and he closed the door behind her and took the coffee from her. He returned to his seat.

She transferred one mug from her left hand to her right. She stopped at Nick’s chair, and he took the mug from her right hand with shaking hands. She reached into her pocket, doled out the creamers, sweeteners, and stirrers, and then took the seat behind her desk.

She sipped her coffee and watched Nick struggle to tear open a sugar packet with trembling fingers. He dumped the sugar and creamer, then stirred the coffee in a hurry.

Beside him, Greg had neatly torn open the corner of his pink Sweet’N Low packet and was shaking just a bit into his mug. Then he carefully folded over the top of the open packet and placed it on the corner of Sasha’s desk while he stirred his coffee with a slow, precise motion.

Sasha let them both take a drink before she spoke again.

“So, before you guys tell me what’s going on, we need to get some things straight.”

Greg continued to sip his coffee, unperturbed, but Nick immediately put his down on the small table between the two guest chairs, sloshing coffee over the side of the mug with his unsteady hands. Nick leaned forward.

“I don’t know what this is about, but I represent Greg in his criminal matter. Anything he tells me related to that matter is a privileged attorney-client communication.”  Sasha looked directly at Greg and said, “But, there’s a question whether anything you say about the case in front of Nick would be deemed privileged, so we’re not going to discuss your case right now. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Greg said immediately.  “This isn’t about me.”

“That’s fine,” Sasha said, “as long as we’re clear.”

She turned to Nick. “And, Nick, I
don’t
represent you. So anything you tell me here, especially in front of Greg, is not going to be privileged.”

Nick nodded, his eyes confused, and then turned to Greg.

Greg paused, the mug halfway to his mouth, then placed it on the table beside Nick’s. He gave Nick a meaningful look and then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”

“Down the hall to your right. It’s the last door on the right,” Sasha directed him.

He held Nick’s gaze for a moment then walked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

“I need a lawyer. I need you to be my lawyer,” Nick said; the words tumbled out fast and desperate as soon as the door closed. He lifted the coffee mug again with shaky hands.

Sasha pursed her lips, considering her response.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said. “This is a prospective client meeting, okay? So, you go ahead and tell me your situation so I can evaluate whether I can or will represent you.”

Nick nodded, fast, and fixed his red-rimmed eyes on her.

“The police think I killed Clarissa. I didn’t, I swear.”

She knew it had been too much to hope he just wanted to know how to get back into his house.

“Why do you say that? Have you spoken to the police?”

“No. But, they’ve called my cell phone, asking me to come in and identify her body and talk about the divorce. How do they even know about the divorce? I only found out last night!”  His voice rose, panicked and angry.

“Nick, I need you to calm down,” she said in the tone she used when she babysat her nephews. “Start by telling me what happened last night.”

He swallowed hard and said, “Thursday nights I go to the Greek social club over on East Carson Street. Play some cards, watch whatever game is on. Drink some Ouzo, eat some mezethes. Just hang out.”

“Okay, did you see Clarissa before you left?”

“Yeah, she came home from work about an hour before I headed out. She was bitchin—er, complaining—about being tired. She went to bed, said she needed to rest. I figured she was, you know, still upset about Ellen.”

The coffee was back on the table, and Nick was drumming the rim of the mug with his fingers while he spoke. Nervous, but not obviously lying, as far as Sasha could tell.

He continued, “Before I left, I yelled up the stairs to let her know I was going. She didn’t answer, so I figured she was sleeping. I tried not to make too much noise on my way out.”

“Had you two been having problems?”

He shook his head. “No.” He sounded lost, like a small boy.

“Okay, when did you get the divorce papers?”

He thought for a moment. “The playoff game was on, but I wasn’t really paying attention. If the Pirates are out of the running, the season’s over as far as I’m concerned. I guess it must have been the bottom of the seventh, maybe. Around ten o’clock or a little after. Anyway, there was a commotion at the door. It’s a private club, but you know, there’s no security or anything. We all have keys. Usually, though, we leave the door unlocked, ‘cause guys come and go all night long.”

“What kind of commotion?”

“Some young guy pushed through the door and walked in like he owned the place. George and Demetri grabbed the guy, told him the club wasn’t open to the public, and tried to steer him back outside, down the street to a bar. But, he got real loud, yelling that he needed to see me, had something important to tell me about Clarissa.”

Nick stopped and looked down at his shoes.

“What?” Sasha prompted him.

“I thought maybe she’d been in an accident or something.”

He was lying. Whatever he’d thought, that wasn’t it.

“Okay, go on.”

“They brought him over to me and he shoved this envelope at me with a big shitty smirk on his face. He said I’d been served, and my marriage was over.”  Nick’s face darkened at the memory.

Greg rapped on the door.  He eased it open and poked his head into the room.

“Is it okay to come back?”

“Actually, would you mind waiting downstairs in the coffee shop?  If you take your mug down and tell them you’re a client, they’ll give you a warm up for free,” Sasha said.

She didn’t dare suggest he wait in Naya’s office. If Naya returned and found Greg Lang in her space, she would not be shy about making her displeasure known.

“Sure, I guess,” Greg said. He trotted over to the table and grabbed his mug. Before he hurried out of the room again, he gave Nick a concerned look. Nick nodded at him, as if to say he was doing okay.

The door swung shut and Nick resumed his story. “Things got kind of crazy after that. Some of the fellas tossed the guy out onto the street, and I tried to read the complaint. But, the words were swimming on the page and I—” His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears.

Despite her gut reaction to the man, Sasha felt a twinge of sympathy. Just as Will had asked her to do for Greg, she put herself in Nick’s shoes for a moment and thought about how his life had been upended. She held out the box of tissues she kept on her desk, but he wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve and went on. “I didn’t understand what was happening. It didn’t make sense. I tried to call Clarissa, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I guess, after that, I had too much to drink.”

 “Do you have the complaint?”

“Um, yeah. Here.”  He half-rose from the seat and pulled an envelope, folded length-wise, from his back jeans pocket and handed it to her.

“Thanks. I’ll look at it in a bit; let’s get through the rest of your night.”

“Okay. I drank ... a lot. I kept calling Clarissa’s cell phone and the house phone, but the cell rolled to voicemail and the answering machine kept picking up at home. Finally, I just left. I don’t know exactly what time it was.”

“That’s okay, Nick.”

Sasha wanted to pull out her notepad and jot down some notes, but she restrained herself: It would be counterproductive to break Nick’s rhythm; and, if she were being honest, she didn’t want to have a record of their conversation in case she decided not to represent him. If she did decide to take him on as a client, she’d memorialize their discussion, along with her impressions, as soon as he left.

“Um, so I shouldn’t have done this, but I drove home.”  He looked up at her, sheepish and contrite.

“I see.”

“Yeah, so, I got home. I was drunk and confused, maybe a little bit angry. I went to the front door and I couldn’t get my key to work.”

“So what did you do?”

“I pounded on the door. Hollered for her to let me in or at least come talk to me. Nothing. She didn’t yell back or turn on a light or anything. I was getting ready to go around and try the back and then I guess I noticed the lock. It was really shiny. I realized the key didn’t work because the lock was new. She’d changed the locks.”

Sasha didn’t react to the anger in his voice.

“Go on.”

“Well, at that point, I knew she wasn’t going to let me in. So, I called Greg. Asked if I could crash at his place.”

“Then you didn’t actually see Clarissa last night?”

“Uh, no. Not after I left for the club.”

“You don’t even know for a fact that she was home when you returned, do you?”

Nick stared at her, uncomprehending. “Where else would she have been?”

“I don’t know. But, neither do you, right?  You know she had the locks changed, but after that, she could have gone out, met up with someone and ... decided to spend the night elsewhere, couldn’t she?”

Nick curled both hands into tight fists. “You saying she had a boyfriend?”

“No, Nick. I’m saying maybe you have an alibi.”

“An alibi? Why the hell would I need an alibi?”

It was Sasha’s turn to stare. She searched his face for understanding, but it was empty. He really didn’t understand just how bad his situation was.

“Because it’s always the husband. When the police learn that Clarissa served divorce papers on you, and you later came home, by your own admission, blind drunk and yelling in the street within hours of her being found murdered, do you think they’re going to look any further?”

“But ... I didn’t kill her. Greg said her body was found at the office building this morning. I was at Greg’s all morning.” Nick was stammering.