Red Carpet Christmas

by Patricia Rosemoor

  “Neither do you.”

  Cass shrugged. “We’re not talking about me. Whatever it is that Simone did to you, it didn’t change the way she felt about you.”

  “You can’t know that…can you?”

  “I don’t have to be psychic to know it. I just have to see her eyes when she looks at you. They’re filled with longing and a great sadness. Just as your eyes are when you look at her.”

  Blade set another drink before him but didn’t linger. Too busy filling orders.

  “Some things were just not meant to be,” Gideon said.

  “Maybe. But how do you know this was one of those things? Simone walked back into your life in a very dramatic way…like maybe you were supposed to pay attention. And you have, at least on the surface by agreeing to help clear her. That gives you both a chance to see what you missed. I believe in second chances, Gideon, and I know you do, as well, or Team Undercover wouldn’t exist. Since I’ve known you, giving others a second chance has been your reason for being. So why don’t you give one to yourself?”

  A second chance…

  Gideon thought about it as he finished his drink. Alone. Cass was right. He was always alone. Even in the midst of a crowd like tonight. Bodies and noise and hard work—none of those things could fill up the empty space inside.

  He hadn’t always felt empty.

  There’d been the time before the running, when all the world had been ahead of him and Simone…

  But what if she’d known that her father meant to kill his? he asked himself for the millionth time. If only he knew what she’d meant to tell him that night.

  What would it be like, he wondered, if he could forget the past, if he could have Simone in his life again, not as a client—a victim who needed his help—but as a woman who needed him as a man?

  Gideon set down his glass and considered finding out.

  Chapter Six

  By the time Simone arrived downtown, Gideon was waiting for her. As she walked from her car, she spotted him at the front doors of the building housing her late husband’s law offices. Gideon seemed so sure of himself, so in control, that her heart quickened a beat.

  But when the first words out of his mouth were “You’re late”—not exactly a friendly greeting—she stopped short and adjusted her attitude.

  “I had an unexpected delay.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “Michael stopped by.”

  “Out of the blue, huh? And right after one of his lawyers gets killed.”

  Simone started. “Al Cecchi wasn’t Michael’s lawyer.” He hadn’t been in years.

  “He was with LaFuria and Mazzoni, who represented your father. When did that change?”

  The reminder of the trial and his part in it made Simone’s stomach clench. “Not long after Papa went to prison, Al left the firm to open his own office.”

  “With your late husband.”

  She nodded. “Michael didn’t come with them.” At her insistence. Not wanting to be distracted by the reminder of their tangled past, she asked, “Can we go in now? It’s cold out here.”

  “Let me help you with that.”

  Before she could protest, he slipped an arm around her shoulders. Ignoring the sudden flush of warmth shooting through her, Simone headed for the outside doors and used her coded key card to unlock them. She had to stop this…this unreasonable response she had to the man. There’d been nothing personal in her agreeing to let him help her. He owed her family, she thought resentfully.

  “No security here at night?” Gideon suddenly asked.

  “There’s security 24/7,” Simone assured him. “Just not a doorman after hours.”

  She had no idea if the watchman was pacing the corridors the way he was supposed to be or if he was ensconced in some office talking on the phone with his girlfriend or surfing the TV.

  Besides, she had a right to enter her late husband’s offices. The business belonged to her and Teresa now. She wasn’t breaking in. Still, she couldn’t help but feel ill at ease at their clandestine search.

  The office building was old, a thirty-plus-story highrise of the early twenties. The lobby had been restored to its art deco glory—cubic forms, geometric ornamentation and sleek black and green surface materials. Marble floors shone, as did the brass doors of the elevators as they slid open when Simone pressed the Call button.

  She hurried inside, away from Gideon, but he managed to crowd her all the way up to the tenth floor. Was he doing it on purpose? she wondered. To make her nervous? Or was he oblivious to the effect he was having on her?

  Glancing at Gideon’s neutral expression before exiting the elevator car, Simone suspected the latter. He barely seemed to recognize her presence. She dug in her pocket for the key ring that had belonged to David and found the one to the outside office door, which opened easily.

  “I’m surprised that Cecchi didn’t change the locks when he became sole partner,” Gideon said.

  “Something he wasn’t legally entitled to do until our business was settled.”

  “Are you saying Al Cecchi worked on the up-and-up?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Then why was he murdered?”

  “Isn’t that why we’re here—to find out?”

  At least, that’s why she was there, Simone told herself. The only reason she was spending time in Gideon’s company.

  Though some people might have reason to hate Al, she hadn’t considered he might have involved the firm in something illegal. Having come from a connected family himself, David had known that had been a condition of their marriage. He’d told her all that he’d needed to walk the straight and narrow for the rest of his life was a good woman to love. Her. Even though he’d had to represent criminals in his work, he’d promised he wouldn’t get involved in anything illegal.

  But Al had made no such promise.

  Gazing around the outer office with its receptionist’s desk and seating area, she didn’t think anything of importance would be kept out here. But the firm’s space was bigger than it initially appeared to be—two windowed offices for the partners, three interior offices for the two associates, a paralegal, three secretaries and an office manager, a conference room, a file room and a supply/copy room.

  “Where do we start?” she murmured.

  “How about Cecchi’s inner sanctum,” Gideon suggested.

  “Of course.”

  But the door was locked.

  Simone tried various keys on the ring, but none of them turned.

  “Open sesame!” she muttered.

  “I think that only works in folktales,” Gideon said, stepping closer. She immediately backed off. He arched a dark eyebrow at her. “Let me.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She held out the key ring, which he ignored.

  Simone watched as Gideon slipped a hand beneath his coat and pulled out a small leather case from an inner pocket. She shifted uneasily as he unzipped the case and removed a tension wrench and a lock pick—a long, thin piece of metal that curved up at the end.

  “You know how to use those?” Simone whispered as he inserted the tension wrench into the keyhole.

  Rather than answer, Gideon inserted the pick into the keyhole and began manipulating it. The pins of the tumbler softly clicked against the quiet of the night as he lifted them one at a time.

  Simone remembered Michael showing her how to pick a lock. He’d told her she would have to learn exactly the right pressure to apply and what sounds to listen for. She’d never been able to perfect her sense of touch to feel the slight movements of pins and plugs or to visualize all the pieces inside as they were manipulated.

  She’d been a kid then and had thought it was a fun game. But not now. This was serious business.

  Another turn of the tension wrench and the lock gave.

  “Open sesame,” Gideon said, swinging open the door for her.

  Again that vague guilt whispered through her, but Simone ignored it and shut off the lights in the main recep
tion area. In case the security guard came by, she didn’t want anything to draw his attention to their presence.

  She’d been in Al’s office a few times, but tonight nothing seemed familiar. Not the contemporary designer furniture so at odds with the treasured antique desk that had belonged to his mother. Not the Oriental carpet or the paintings that must have cost a small fortune. Not the contrasting modern electronics set out on his desk and in a wall unit behind it.

  Had she really been in this room before? Simone wondered, her brow furrowed as she gazed around. Or had Al totally refurbished the place, using David’s share of the business to do so?

  “Somehow, I wouldn’t have guessed this was his style,” Gideon said.

  “Surprise,” she murmured, opening the door to an interior room that held nothing but file cabinets. So many drawers, so little time. “So how long do you think it will take us to go through his records?”

  She turned to find Gideon at Al’s desk, checking his calendar. He picked up a pen and started scribbling something on a pad of paper.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making a list of the clients he’s seen or represented in court in the last month. We can check their files and see if we can eliminate some of the names. Then I’ll give the remainder to Gabe. He’ll run a security check on them.”

  “It’s a place to start, I suppose.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic.”

  “We’re invading the privacy of a lot of people.”

  “You don’t think the police will do a thorough search? A man is dead, Simone. Murdered,” he reminded her, “and you’re still the chief suspect.”

  Simone couldn’t fight his logic.

  So she helped Gideon pull files of the people who’d recently met with Al. They eliminated any with charges that were misdemeanors or any of the cases that had been settled in the client’s favor.

  That left thirty-odd files.

  “You go through those, see what you can turn up,” Gideon said, sitting down before the computer. “I’ll see what I can find here.”

  Simone split the files, sorting them into the cases already settled, pending cases and new cases. She was busy with the last pile, trying to eliminate a few more files, when Gideon’s low curse caught her attention.

  “Find something?”

  “Can’t get in. He’s password protected.”

  “Al was pretty much a linear thinker. Try Albert.”

  “Nope.”

  “Cecchi.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Teresa.”

  “Nada.”

  Rising, Simone began feeding him the names of Al’s kids, but none of those worked, either.

  “His initials—AC.”

  “No.”

  “Sicilian Breeze. Make that one word.”

  Gideon frowned at her. “You’re playing with me now.”

  “You would know if I was playing. I’m dead serious. It’s what he named the yacht he bought last spring, right before David died.”

  “Yacht, huh?” he muttered, typing in the name. “Big-ticket item.”

  “No kidding.”

  “The house…the yacht…this office…” Gideon hesitated a few seconds, then said, “Bingo, I’m in!” For a moment, the office was silent but for the noise his fin gers made tapping over the keyboard. Then he said, “Have you considered Cecchi’s holdings seem to exceed his half of the partnership? Either that or the firm was worth a whole lot more than you guessed. Of course, his murder will put a whole new edge to your fighting for what’s yours.”

  Something she hadn’t thought of. “Another reason to figure out who did it.”

  Simone attacked the paper files with determination while Gideon hunched over the keyboard. Every so often, she heard him say hmm or huh. His muttered musings finally got the better of her curiosity.

  “What?”

  “I got into the accounting records.”

  “And?”

  “You’re broke.”

  “What? You mean Al did spend David’s share of the business on his lifestyle?”

  “He spent it on something. Big withdrawals every couple of weeks.”

  Simone left her stack of files to come stand behind Gideon and peer at the computer screen. Not that she could make sense of the numbers she was seeing.

  “In English,” she said.

  “I paged down through the accounts until I reached partner withdrawals,” Gideon explained. “In every partnership, when a partner takes out cash, it’s booked as a reduction in cash and an increase in partner distributions.”

  “But David has been dead for eight months.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Cecchi’s withdrawals still had to be posted like that until he bought you out and closed the books. Only he took so much out of the business, there wasn’t enough left to buy you out.”

  “That bastard!” Simone cried. “All this time he’s been putting me off, he’s been cashing in. How long has this been going on?”

  “For quite a while.”

  Gideon tapped some keys so that the screen blinked and changed, but it all went by so fast that Simone hardly had time to focus on a column before it changed.

  “I’m going backward in time,” Gideon explained, “and the withdrawals are getting less obvious.” A few more screen changes and he stopped. “It looks like it started last March.”

  “Two months before my husband died. Surely David would have noticed.”

  “Maybe. If he was paying attention.”

  “He never said anything.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to worry you. Or maybe Cecchi talked to him about it and got your husband’s approval. Like I said, the withdrawals were less obvious to start—smaller and farther apart. He could have picked up an expensive habit that snowballed. You might not be able to answer this, but was Cecchi into recreational drugs?”

  “Not that I know of. At least, I never saw him using, and David never said anything.”

  “Maybe another vice?”

  “Like a woman,” Simone said, deciding that Teresa probably wasn’t delusional, after all.

  “I’ll print out a report and see what else I can find on his computer.”

  Simone nodded and got back to checking the paper files. After going through them carefully, she kept several to the side. A few cases Al had lost—only one of the offenders was out on the street—a couple in progress that weren’t going well, and one new case, only because the name Anthony Viglio was familiar. No doubt David must have mentioned the name. Still, she decided to look at it in more depth.

  “I’m going to go in the back room to make some copies to take with us so no one gets suspicious of missing files,” she said, thinking of the murder investigation. She didn’t want to look any more suspicious in the eyes of the authorities than she already did.

  “Good. I’ll be done soon,” Gideon said. “I’m not finding anything else of interest. But I want to go through Cecchi’s desk before we leave.”

  Simone passed the office that used to be David’s. It was empty now of any trace of him, she knew. A few months before, she’d removed all his personal effects. One of the secretaries had already taken care of anything that had to do with the business. Now it was merely a shell of an office. Even so, she stopped for a moment and thought of David before going on.

  The small workroom in back was exactly as she’d remembered it. Two walls were lined with supply shelves. The only other objects in the room were a copier and a long table for stacking and sorting.

  Simone turned on the copier and got to work. It took only few minutes to get what she needed. Gathering the original folders and the handful of notes she’d copied from them, Simone switched off the light and returned to Al’s office where Gideon was rummaging through the top desk drawer.

  She put away the files and stuffed the copied documents into her shoulder bag, then noticed that Gideon had stopped his search to examine what looked like a used party napkin. “What do you have there?
”

  “A telephone number. No name, though.” Gideon pocketed the napkin.

  “You’re kidding. You’re keeping it?”

  “Cecchi kept it for some reason. It won’t take much to match a name to the number.”

  “Whatever—”

  Simone didn’t get a chance to say more, for Gideon had covered her mouth with his hand. Before she could gather her wits, he shoved her away from the desk and against the wall near the door. He put a finger to his lips and then reached across her to switch off the room light.

  Pushing at him—Gideon was far too close for her comfort—Simone heard the soft scrape of a lock coming from the other room and realized why he’d pinned her.

  She froze.

  The outer door…someone else was entering the office.

  Her heart beat so fast she swore she could feel it bump against her ribs. Whether it was from the possi bility of running into someone dangerous or being so close to Gideon—also, potentially dangerous—she wasn’t certain.

  Maybe it was just the guard, Simone told herself, trying to keep from trembling. If so, how the heck was she supposed to explain their furtive actions?

  Great. Then the security guard would report their presence to the authorities…

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on not making a sound. Gideon was still pressed against her, his breath ruffling her hair, reminding her of a night long, long ago. The night Drew was conceived.

  Swallowing hard, she filed the memory away and opened her eyes.

  Furtive footfalls in the next room and the lack of light told her this wasn’t the security guard. Whoever was in the reception area was working in the dark because he didn’t want to be seen. A clunk followed by a low curse made Gideon tense against her.

  Suddenly a beam of light swept along the wall opposite the open door, and Simone knew the intruder was coming their way. Apparently, so did Gideon. He felt coiled, like a giant spring ready to pop. Simone’s throat tightened and breathing became difficult as she waited for the moment when the intruder would zero in on them.

  The beam came closer…shone on the open door…swung inward…

  Before it swept over them, Gideon lashed out and Simone gasped, the light danced crazily as it plunged to the floor.