You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

Sometimes your day is working out such that you need to give yourself a little ego boost here and there.

The doors opened to a futuristic control center staffed by one woman, who looked like an efficient dominatrix with perfect makeup and hair tied up in a smooth bun. The red headset matched her red outfit, which led me to suspect she had several headsets to choose from. On either side of the desk was a pair of giant, and locked, doors. The rest of the office was closed off. If an angry client came through here, she was the only one they’d see, and she looked like she’d be comfortable with the pump-action shotgun she probably kept under that desk.

She told me to have a seat before pushing a button and saying something softly into the microphone.

I flipped through the magazine at hand. It was all ads, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some of them were selling. In one, the woman in the picture was completely naked, so it couldn’t be clothes or shoes or diamonds. Then one pair of the doors to the inner sanctum opened and a young brown woman walked through them. “Drusilla?” she said, unsmiling. Hers was the voice from the phone. Probably Nathaniel’s secretary or assistant or whatever they’re calling them these days. “Follow me, please.” She ushered me through the gates.

Once through, she said, “I’m Carmela Tanner. I’ll be handling any scheduling with Mr. Ross.” She led me through a web of corridors marked by the polish of the wooden inlays and lack of decoration of any kind. I was ninety percent certain I could find my way back to the start unaided, if I needed to, and no one with weapons was chasing me. Most of the doors were closed, and any glass walls had thick white curtains in front of them. Carmela and I could have been strolling through an abandoned building, for all the signs of life I saw there.

I rubbed my fingers across my palms, which were faintly warm and moist. My husband had been murdered and I had to see a criminal defense attorney and that situation was making me nervous.

We stopped at one door and Carmela opened it for us, quietly and efficiently. The office was large but felt small due to the number of bookshelves, packed full of those matching sets of books every law student must receive upon passing the bar exam. Stacks of file folders sat on every available surface. The man behind the desk was busy scribbling away on (what else?) a yellow legal pad and did not look up as we walked in. His hair was a darker blonde than it had appeared last night under the harsh street lamps, and he was also younger than I’d supposed last night. Those wrinkles came from hard-grinding work, not years. He had well-maintained hands, though, which would be important if he ever made his way in front of a jury. I hoped I did not need a lawyer for a jury.

My main introduction to criminal lawyers came via the portly, sweaty guy in Baton Rouge who wore a shiny suit. He asked my boyfriend of the moment, “Who arrested you?” followed by, “How much you got?” My boyfriend borrowed money from me to pay off the cop, and never paid it back. And then he had the gall to ask me for rent money. I had the gall to ask, “Who are you again?” It wasn’t an amicable parting, but it so rarely is.

“Mr. Ross,” Carmela said, her voice wavering with a touch of uncertainty.

He finished what he was writing with a stab at the paper and then he looked up. I smiled. He didn’t return the favor. Instead, he dropped his pen and indicated the leather chairs facing his desk. “Carmela, a couple of waters.”

I had to decide which chair to sit in. Physical position is so damned important in so many endeavors—for one thing, it determines who has the power. I chose the chair farther away from the desk. When he looked at me, he’d see me sitting there, relaxed and comfortable, instead of right up against his desk. Also, I had the sun behind me, which would put him at a disadvantage.

Before I sat, I reached out my hand over the desk. “I don’t think we’ve had a proper introduction.” He had a firm but not crushing shake, which I appreciated, but he also didn’t lengthen it by as much as a fraction of a second, which I didn’t appreciate as much. Had I lost whatever charm I’d worked on the guys in the elevator, or was he immune to it? I usually get some reaction from males, even the gay ones. He wasn’t pinging my gaydar, either. Nathaniel was going to bear watching.

As I sank onto one of the giant leather armchairs, I crossed my legs.
That
he noticed. My inner sense of comfort rose quite a bit. He wasn’t oblivious of me. I relaxed a little and flexed my foot a tiny bit, which enhances the curve of the calf muscle. But almost as quickly as he’d glanced at my legs, he picked up another legal pad and skimmed it, as though he hadn’t observed anything. “Let me tell you what I already have here, and you can fill me in on anything I’m missing. Your husband, Colin Abbott, was murdered late last night at an apartment in Hollywood.” He glanced at me. He had brown eyes, with lots of gold highlights. “A case like that doesn’t warrant as much attention as this one is starting to get.”

“What’s different this time?”

“He had some kind of relationship with Penelope Gurevich. You know who she is?”

I nodded. “A television star?”

He grinned. He had a nice mouth. “Yeah. Cops get nervous when celebrities get involved in murder. You don’t seem upset or surprised that your husband was, uh, seeing someone.”

“I didn’t care. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

“How could you not care? You’d only been married six months.”

“It was a green-card marriage. Which might be a problem in and of itself.”

“Trust me. Marriage of convenience sounds a lot better than wanting revenge for getting dumped by the love of your life for a TV star. You have any friends back in Las Vegas who will swear about the state of your marital bliss?”

Oooo. Mr. Sarcastic. I liked him more and more. I gave him a couple of names and phone numbers. A few girls Colin had dated, and one or two of the guys I went out with. Nathaniel shook his head, while he wrote them down. “Weird setup just to get a green card,” he said.

“Colin’s work permit was running out and he couldn’t get it renewed. Seemed like the easiest way.”

Nathaniel glanced up from his legal pad. “I thought the green card was for you.”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?”

I smiled. “I’m American. Raised in England.” That was true, but that was also the story I’d dreamed up for Drusilla, since her passport was American. “Colin was Australian. His family emigrated to Canada when he was about ten, but he was Australian.”

He wrote something down. “Did he pay you?”

“Yes. Ten thousand dollars.”

“For a green card.”

“Is that too little or too much? I know it’s illegal.”

“Least of your problems. Still have it? No, probably not.” When I didn’t respond, he looked at the paper again. “When you got to LA, where did you see him?”

“I didn’t. I found his apartment. He wasn’t there.”

“So you knew where he was staying?”

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t staying there with him.”

“No. I didn’t have much to say to him. We needed to work a few things out and then we were done.”

“Were you going to give him back the money?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “The money he paid you to marry him?” Before I could respond, Nathaniel wrote something else down. “Did Colin gamble? Maybe owe someone money?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not the kind of risks he liked to take. He thought gambling was for idiots.”

“Do you gamble?”

“Never had the money to lose.”

He tossed his legal pad aside and clasped his hands together. And he looked at me. He was not making up for lost time checking out my figure. This was the assessing stare of, well, a lawyer.

And if this was the guy on my side, I was in deep trouble.

The door behind me opened and Carmela walked in, carrying a tray holding two bottles of water. The lawyer stared at me the entire time Carmela was in the room. As she left, he picked up a bottle and took a drink. Then he put it down and looked back at me again.

“I need you to help yourself on this. You’re not helping yourself much. Or at all. Colin left Vegas—” He glanced at the legal pad. “Six weeks ago? And, when did you get to Los Angeles?”

“Monday.”

“Monday. That’s yesterday. Did you happen to notice he had left you before that?”

Neat. My lawyer was baiting me. Unfortunately for him, I’m very good at keeping my emotions in check. “Why yes, I did. I had no idea where he was. Until I found him, I had a few things to take care of.”

“Why didn’t you know where he was?”

“No one knew where he was! He’d disappeared right in front of me.”

“Even the casino knew your husband was in Los Angeles.”

I speak six languages and can make myself understand or be understood in a handful of others. I completely lost the ability to fathom what Nathaniel had just told me. “Sorry, what?”

He rifled through a couple of papers on his desk. “This morning, before you got here, I talked to the general manager of the Marrakesh Properties, Barry Coffey. Do you know him?”

“We’re acquainted.”

“The magic show was scheduled to go on hiatus six weeks ago. Colin had some outside—”

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

Nathaniel glanced at me.

“I don’t know why Coffey would say that, but it’s a simple lie.”

“He was clear. He’s having the casino’s lawyers send me the contracts today. But he mentioned he knew Colin lived in Hollywood.”

This was insane. Coffey had spent much of the past six weeks yelling at me about Colin’s disappearance, even though I clearly hadn’t gone with him.

He had to be covering for Behar. Somehow. I couldn’t see the con in that one, but it had to be Behar.

“You need to look into Vincent Behar. He’s the main security guy for the Marrakesh—”

“I’ve run across him already.”

“And he wasn’t in Las Vegas last night; I don’t care what he tells anybody. He was sitting outside Colin’s apartment, as if he were waiting for me to arrive. He either killed Colin or he knows who did.”

Nathaniel made a couple of notes on his legal pad, and then he stood up and walked around the desk toward me. He was looking at me the whole time he moved, so I steeled myself to look at his face, using only my peripheral vision to get a reading on the rest of him. He wasn’t especially tall, about my height, but he moved like he owned the room. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“So, Colin ditches you in Vegas, leaving you broke and alone. You track him here in Los Angeles and find him banging Penelope Gurevich. Who gives him a lot of money.”

“As far as I can tell, his girlfriend is named Anne da Silva.”

“Oh, even better. You find him with multiple girlfriends. Suddenly, Colin’s dead and a shitload of money has disappeared.” He sat on the edge of his desk and looked down at me. “In case you’re wondering? Looks bad.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

Nathaniel snorted. “We’ve been talking for what, fifteen minutes, and already I am absolutely sure you’re not that stupid. Neither am I. You’re in trouble. Tell me everything you know, because the more reasons the police have to look elsewhere, the better.”

“I take it you’ve had clients who killed over money.”

He reached over and picked up the legal pad. “The first person I ever defended was a twenty-year-old who murdered his brother over twenty-five bucks.”

“What happened with that case?”

“Plea agreement.”

“Then?”

Nathaniel flipped through the pad, put his finger on a series of numbers. “He got ten years.”

“And?” When he didn’t respond to my prompting, I added, “What happened to him then?”

He looked up at me with those dark brown-and-gold eyes. “Knifed to death after three.”

He was very good at pretending that outcome didn’t bother him. He was probably dynamite in court. “If it comes to that, I’m not going to plead.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He walked back around his desk. When he was turned away, I went ahead and did a much more complete body scan than I had before. “We’ve come to the trickiest part of this little scenario. The part we’re not supposed to talk about but we are anyhow. You know who’s footing the bill for your defense.”

“Yes. So?”

Nathaniel leaned back in his chair as he stared at me. “Hm. Let’s see. You’re married to a man who, according to you, disappeared on you, left you in debt, left you holding the bag for the act. Suddenly you have an incredibly wealthy man who’s footing the bill for you on certain things. A husband might be kind of a liability in a situation like that.”

I smiled. It may have come out more like a baring of teeth. “Between you and me, I’m the sort of girl who takes the money and runs with nary a thought to her own marital status.” I leaned back in my chair and tilted my head to one side. “Here’s one of my rules for this relationship. We’re not going to mention you-know-who’s name. Ever. He has nothing to do with this case.”

“Don’t be surprised if the prosecutor brings him up.”

“So your job is to keep me very far away from the prosecutor.”

My lawyer tapped the end of his pen against the legal pad before turning the pad to a new page. “Where are you staying?”

“With Sir Gareth Macfadyen.” Why bother mentioning the guesthouse? Nathaniel wasn’t going to believe me about Roberto, he wasn’t going to believe me about anyone else, so I might as well let him think the worst.

Which he did. He looked down at the paper, but not soon enough.

“Not making this easy for you, am I?” I said.

“You’re going out of your way to make this hard. How long have you known him?”

Didn’t take long to come up with the answer. “Since yesterday.”

He wrote that down. “Yesterday? The same day you came to Los Angeles?”

“Yes.”

“You met him and went to live with him the same day?”

I shrugged. “Don’t tell me. That’s also a reason for me to knock off my husband?”

“In this town? Women will dump their husbands for one date with a Golden Globe nominee.”

“You’ve been hanging around the wrong type of women, Counselor.” I flicked an invisible piece of lint off the end of my skirt.