Something About You (11 page)

WHEN CAMERON GOT to Silas’s office she knocked on the door. He gestured for her to come in.

“Cameron—have a seat.”

She stepped into the office—a large one, by government standards, and richly decorated, too—and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Silas’s desk. “Sorry that I’m going to have to keep this short. I have to be somewhere in less than an hour and I need to stop at home first.”

“I won’t keep you long,” Silas said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. You know, with everything you went through last weekend.” Although his words were polite, there was a hint of annoyance in his eyes. Perhaps anger, even.

Cameron answered cautiously, unsure how much he knew. “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”

“You can knock off the vague routine, Cameron—I know all about the Robards investigation. The FBI director called me from D.C. this afternoon to say how much he appreciated our office’s cooperation in the matter. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. I guess he just assumed that I would be in the loop when one of my AUSAs is an eyewitness to a crime that involves a U.S. senator and is placed under protective surveillance. I guess I would’ve assumed that, too.”

Since the cat was out of the bag, Cameron tried to smooth things over. She could imagine how much Silas had disliked being caught unaware with the head of the FBI. “I’m sorry if you were caught in an awkward position with Godfrey,” she said. “The FBI agents in charge of the investigation said I wasn’t supposed to discuss the specifics of what happened with anyone.”

“I understand it’s a confidential matter, but I need to be aware when threats have been made against one of my attorneys.”

“And if I receive any actual threats, I’ll let you know. But so far this is just a precautionary measure.” Cameron couldn’t tell if he was appeased or not. She thought it might be best to distract him, get him off topic. “I don’t know if the director mentioned this, but Jack Pallas is running the case.”

Silas’s eyes widened with surprise. “Pallas is back? When did that happen?”

Cameron shrugged. “I think just recently.”

The point, in her mind anyway, was that he was back and—at least temporarily—tangled up in her life once again.

“SO WHAT ARE you thinking?”

Jack rubbed his hand over his face and looked across his desk at Wilkins. “I’m thinking that if I never see another lawyer again for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”

As expected, the footage from the hotel’s video cameras hadn’t produced any leads, and they’d now turned their attention to questioning Senator Hodges and his staff. Of course, his team of attorneys had made things as difficult as possible. But at least they’d learned a few things: several members of Hodges’s team had admitted knowing about his various affairs with call girls, and a handful even acknowledged knowing about Mandy Robards specifically.

The first two people they had interviewed were Alex Driscoll, the senator’s chief of staff, and Grant Lombard, his personal security guard. When questioned, both Driscoll and Lombard claimed to have been at home sleeping at the time of Mandy Robards’s murder. For both men, there appeared to be no evidence to either contradict or confirm this. They both acknowledged that they were aware of Hodges’s affair with Mandy Robards; in fact both admitted knowing that Hodges planned to see her the night of her murder. Lombard had made the arrangements with the escort agency (which Hodges admitted was something he asked Lombard to do “from time to time”), and Driscoll had attended the charity dinner with the senator and claimed to have learned then of Hodges’s plans to see Robards later in the evening.

Neither Lombard nor Driscoll had been particularly forthcoming about Hodges’s affairs, but as the senator’s bodyguard and chief of staff, they weren’t expected to be. And though neither had an alibi, seeing how both men claimed to be home at the time of the murder, sleeping alone (Driscoll was divorced and Lombard had never married), this again was not unusual. However, both did fit the rough physical description Cameron had given of the man she had seen leaving room 1308.

It wasn’t a lot, Jack knew, but it was enough to look into both men further.

“Let’s get Driscoll and Lombard’s phone records and cross reference them with the numbers we have for Mandy Robards,” Jack told Wilkins. “And we should pull their credit card statements for the past two years—see if anything unusual turns up. In the meantime, we need to get started on that list Hodges gave us of people he believes might have a grudge against him.”

Wilkins nodded in agreement just as the phone rang. Jack saw the call was coming from the lobby security desk.

“Pallas,” he answered.

“Officers Kamin and Phelps from the Chicago Police Department are here to see you. They say they have something for you from a Detective Slonsky,” said the evening security guard.

“Thanks—send them up.”

Jack hung up the phone and looked at Wilkins. “Kamin and Phelps are on their way up.” He frowned. “Aren’t those the guys Slonsky put on Cameron’s surveillance?”

Wilkins glanced at his watch. “They’re the evening shift, I thought.”

“So what are they doing here?”

“You’ll have to ask them that.” Wilkins seemed to sense the dark cloud of displeasure that was quickly moving in. “Let’s try to play nice here, Jack—remember that we’re working with these guys.”

When Kamin and Phelps arrived at his office, Wilkins rose from his chair and greeted them with a cordial smile. “Hello, officers. What brings you by this evening?”

The older cop introduced himself and his younger partner. “I’m Bob Kamin, this is my partner, Danny Phelps.” He held out a large sealed envelope. “Detective Slonsky asked us to bring this to you. He says it’s the lab report you’ve been waiting for.”

Jack got up from his desk and took the envelope from Kamin. “Thanks.” He caught Wilkins’s sideways glance and shot him a look to let him know that everything was cool. “So . . . for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?”

“Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.”

“Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.”

Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?”

“A switcheroo . . . right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked.

“It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained.

Jack cocked his head. “A date?”

Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.”

“I must’ve missed that one.”

“Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.”

“Ah . . . the Meet Cute,” Wilkins said with a grin.

Jack threw him a sharp look. “What did you just say?”

“You know, the Meet Cute.” Wilkins explained. “In romantic comedies, that’s what they call the moment when the man and woman first meet.” He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. “I don’t know, Jack . . . if she’s had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you.”

Jack nearly did a double take as he tried to figure out what the hell that was supposed to mean.

Phelps shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t go that far. She’s still on the fence about this guy. He’s got problems keeping his job from intruding on his personal life. But she’s feeling a lot of pressure with Amy’s wedding—she’s only got about ten days left to get a date.”

“She’s the maid of honor, see?” Kamin said.

Jack stared at all three of them. Their lips were moving and sound was coming out, but it was like they were speaking a different language.

Kamin turned to Phelps. “Frankly, I think she should just go with Collin, since he and Richard broke up.”

“Yeah, but you heard what she said. She and Collin need to stop using each other as a crutch. It’s starting to interfere with their other relationships.”

Unbelievable. Jack ran a hand through his hair, tempted to tear it out. But then he’d have a bald spot to thank Cameron Lynde for, and that would piss him off even more. “Can we get back to the switcheroo part?”

“Right, sorry. It was Slonsky’s suggestion. Turns out her date tonight is at Spiaggia. You know it?” Phelps asked.

Jack nodded. He’d never been, but he knew of it. A five-star restaurant—one of the top in the city—it was located at the northernmost point of the Magnificent Mile and known for its romantic views of Lake Michigan.

“Well, Slonsky knows a cop who does security there in the evenings—says he figured he’d put that guy on Ms. Lynde’s detail while she’s at the restaurant, since he already knows the layout of the place and everything,” Kamin said.

Phelps nudged him. “Tell him about the other part.”

Kamin folded his arms across his chest in a huff. “Slonsky also said this guy will blend better than we would at the restaurant. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Jack’s eyes were drawn to the cuffs of Kamin’s faded-blue denim shirt, both of them stained with some sort of mystery red sauce. He’d put his marker on a chili dog as the likely culprit.

“So we dropped her off at the restaurant and made sure she got in okay, and we’ll go back when she’s ready to leave. She’s gonna call us,” Phelps said.

Jack did not like the sound of this plan—he wasn’t exactly thrilled about Slonsky sending in some new guy to watch over Cameron. Although after spending three minutes with Phelps and Kamin, he wasn’t sure he felt much better about them watching her, either. Still, he supposed he didn’t have anything specific he could complain about—Slonsky was in charge of this side of the investigation and they seemed to have thought things through—but the whole idea of this date just generally put him in a foul mood.

Instead of saying anything that would give this away, however, he thanked Phelps and Kamin for bringing by the lab report and sent them on their merry way. Before they started babbling on again about Cameron and Max-the-guy-he-couldn’t-give-a-crap-about and their Meet Cute or whatever. So he told her that he liked her shoes—so what? The whole thing sounded more like a Meet Lame to him.

“I’m proud of you, Jack,” Wilkins said after Kamin and Phelps left. “Not a single glowering look.”

“We’re still on the glowering thing?”

Before Wilkins could answer, Jack’s phone rang again. He picked it up. “Pallas.”

On the other end, the operator who answered the office’s main phone number informed him that she had Collin McCann on the line for him.

Jack frowned. “Put him through.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Collin started right in as soon as the connection went through, “but it’s about Cameron and I didn’t know who else to call. I know this thing she’s involved in is confidential.”

“Is something wrong?” Jack asked. Hearing this, Wilkins looked over.

“It’s probably nothing,” Collin said. “She’s on a date tonight. Maybe she’s just . . . preoccupied.”

Jack gritted his teeth. If one more person mentions this damn date . . . “But?”

“She’s not answering her cell phone. I’ve called her several times and I keep getting her voicemail.”

“She probably turned it off,” Jack said. Wouldn’t want anything to interrupt her night with Max-who-apparently-has-a-fetish-with-women’s-shoes, after all.

“That would certainly be a first,” Collin said. “She’s never once turned that thing off as far as I know. She keeps it on for work.”

Jack paused at this. “Okay—we’ll look into it.”

He hung up and turned to Wilkins. “That was McCann. He says Cameron’s not answering her cell phone. Probably just a dropped signal, but we should check it out.” He picked up his phone and called Slonsky. When the detective didn’t answer, Jack paged him and left a message to call back.

Jack frowned. “Did either Phelps or Kamin mention the name of the new guy they’ve got watching Cameron?”

Wilkins shook his head. “No.”

Jack quickly looked up the number for Spiaggia restaurant and dialed. Twenty seconds later, he hung up the phone, his frustration level having risen about ten notches. “I got a recording that says I should try again in a few minutes if I’m calling during normal business hours. Very helpful,” he said to Wilkins. “Do we have numbers for either Phelps or Kamin?”

“No.”

Great. Clearly, that would have to change ASAP. “Let’s call the station and have them paged, too. How nice it would be if we could find somebody who knows something.”

“The restaurant is only two miles away,” Wilkins said. “Why don’t I stay here and keep trying them, CPD, and Cameron, while you head over and check things out? With your ride, you’ll be there and back in fifteen minutes.”

Jack nodded—he’d been thinking along those same lines. There were plenty of perfectly innocuous reasons Cameron might not have been answering her phone. But the thought of that one not-so-innocuous reason got him moving. Fast. He grabbed his keys and shoved them in the back pocket of his jeans. “Phelps and Kamin said they saw her go into the restaurant, so at least we know that much. If you get through to the restaurant, confirm that everything’s okay with this cop Slonsky’s got watching her, whoever the hell he is, then call me. Most likely, this is all a lot of nothing.”

“And if it isn’t nothing?” Wilkins asked.

Jack yanked open the top right drawer of his desk and pulled out his backup gun, a subcompact Glock 27. He strapped it into a harness around his ankle. “Then I’ll make it nothing, as soon as I get there.”

Because no one messed with his witnesses.

Not even this one.