by I. L. Wolf
“It was all through Bloaerd.”
“What was?”
“The arrangement.”
“You are going to have to use words that actually convey meaning.”
“Sissy’s case. Sway helped, erhmm, make sure Sissy’s case went the way we wanted.”
Venetia felt the air go still around her. If Dane was saying what she thought he was saying, this was huge. “You mean the Lan Mather estate case?”
Dane nodded, the movement of his head barely visible.
“Was that a yes?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning away from the table and focusing on the ceiling tiles for a minute. “Yes, the estate case.”
“What are you talking about?” Brooks said.
“My aunt married a wealthy man—”
“One of many,” said Dane.
“Whatever,” Venetia said. “He died. And when it came to the will, she wasn’t set to inherit anything, and yet, miraculously, another will was found. Even more miraculously, that’s the one the probate judge went with.”
“Can they do that?” said Brooks.
“It was done, that I can tell you. So let me make sure I totally understand what you’re telling me right now. While I was representing, in our own law practice, Brenna Chale Sway in her divorce from Alden Sway, you were having your case fixed by Alden Sway? Via Walter Bloaerd, the executor of the estate?”
“I don’t know if I’d put it exactly that way,” said Dane.
“Why? Because it would get you both disbarred and a nice, cozy jail sentence?”
“Primarily,” he said.
“Break this down for me,” Brooks said.
“In law, there’s this thing called conflict of interest,” Venetia said. “I’m not sure if you could get more conflicted than here. I was representing Brenna. Dane was my partner, representing Sissy. Bloaerd was the executor of Sissy’s husband’s estate. Not only that, judges don’t tend to accept improperly executed wills, so from here, it’s looking like bribery.”
“Technically it might have been extortion,” said Dane. “Sway had something on the judge.”
“Thanks for the clarification. That really makes it sound better. And to top it all off with a disgusting, corrupt cherry, you had me send Brenna to Bloaerd for her will. Unbelievable.”
He shrugged, his go-to grin slapped back on his face. “My goose is cooked one way or another now,” he said, and then a hint of gray crept back. “Or another,” he added ominously.
“So let me guess,” said Venetia.
“The documents,” Brooks interjected.
“I was getting there.”
“I got there first,” he said.
“You used the opposing party—my client’s estranged husband in my divorce case—to fix your estate case. And yet you want me to believe you didn’t give Sway Brenna’s location?”
“I don’t know why you keep saying that, Venetia. I wouldn’t do that.”
“So sleeping with clients? Not a problem. Sleeping with my aunt as a client? Not a problem. Sleeping with my extremely vulnerable client? Not a problem.” She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “Bribing—”
“Extorting”
“Extorting a sitting judge to accept what I can only assume at this point was a fraudulent will? No problem. But telling the man to whom you’re beholden where to find his estranged wife, that’s where you draw the line?”
“I can sense you’re still skeptical.”
“There are a lot of words for what I am, Dane, and skeptical doesn’t come close to touching the surface of them.”
“Brenna was great. I wouldn’t have tried to have her killed.”
“See? See what you did there? You said ‘try.’ No doubt you didn’t try, exactly,, but you have an amazing talent for ruining things, whether or not it’s what you meant to do. In this case, a woman is dead for it. You remembered something, and you need to tell me what it was, because I have had about all I can stomach of you.”
“I didn’t say anything to Sway, and before you tear into it, I didn’t say anything to Bloaerd either.”
“Say it, Dane,” Venetia said, taking her purse from her chair and throwing it over her shoulder. She half-rose from the seat.
“I may have said something to someone, though.”
Venetia sat down again. “Who? What did you say?”
“You don’t understand this, you’re not a guy,” he said. He looked at Brooks as though he could help him out, and then thought better of it. “But she was so hot. And she kept asking what I knew about the case, a little bit here and there. She told me the gossip turned her on.”
“A woman told you that gossip turned her on?” Venetia spoke slowly, but the incredulity bled through. “And you bought that?”
“Look, Venetia, you may not get it, but as good as she looks now, back then, she was that much better.”
“I don’t know how you manage, moment by moment, to disgust me more than you did mere seconds before,” she said. “I can’t believe you were that stupid. You knew how sensitive that information was, I didn’t even tell you about it.”
“I told you, Brenna did.”
“And wow, what a mistake she made trusting you with any facet of her life.”
“Aren’t you going to tell us who you told?” Brooks said. He turned to Venetia, his eyes wide and overly glossy. “We need to know who he told.”
“I know who he told,” said Venetia. “She’s as leaky as an old bucket. Tipsy Nightingale.”
Dane didn’t confirm, but his bowed-head studying the table said everything they needed to know. “You’re not going to give me the documents, are you?” he said without looking up.
“I don’t have them,” said Venetia, “but if I did, I wouldn’t use them to put you out if you were on fire.”
Chapter 24
“Actually,” said Brooks when they were back in the car, “you do have the documents.”
“Huh?” said Venetia. She was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring out of the windshield, not sure what to do or how to process the information. In a way, she did get Brenna killed, if only through her pathetic choice of a law partner. Tipsy Freaking Nightingale. She couldn’t turn around without that woman getting in the way, and in a few hours, she’d be running a hit piece on her.
Lovely.
Brooks’ words slowly penetrated her fog. “Wait, did you say what I thought I heard?”
“Yep. You do have the documents,” he said again.
“I don’t understand. Where? How do you know?”
“Because Brenna, that beautiful brain that she was, actually listened to her little brother for once. And not only listened, she paid attention.”
“I thought those two were kind of the same thing,” said Venetia distractedly.
“You need to come back to planet Earth,” said Brooks.
“I’m kind of swimming,” she said. “I can’t believe it. I was in partnership with that man.”
“I don’t think you understand,” said Brooks. “Those documents we’ve all been looking for. You have them.”
“How can I possibly have them?” she said. “And more to the point, how would you know I have them if I don’t? Damn it. Billie.”
“Wow, you are out of it. Brooks.”
“No, Billie was expecting me at the hospital, and, well, never mind.”
“Let’s get back to the point here.” He grasped the platter, which was resting on his lap, with both hands. “You have the documents.”
“You’re holding a platter,” said Venetia.
“No,” he said. “I’m holding a glass plate. A glass plate that can store nearly 20 terabytes of data.”
“But can’t you get a thumb drive that will hold more?” she said. “I don’t get it.”
“Gigabytes, yes. Terabytes? No,” he said, “This was her safety net.”
“It didn’t work,” she said. “It didn’t save her life. Besides, why not get a hard-drive or something?”
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“Given the number of people who want to get their hands on the documents, how long do you think you could have kept a hard drive to yourself? Besides, you saw the video I gave to the detective, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Drives can be hacked. You know what can’t be hacked?” He held up the plate. “This. It can’t be corrupted. It can’t be altered. Sway can’t claim that you made up the data. And you could hang it on your wall, and no one would ever know.”
“Delenda had it on her wall,” she said.
“You mean the one who was offed?”
“That’s a colorful way to put it. Yes. She borrowed it and wouldn’t give it back. Do you think she knew?”
“How would I know?”
“I wonder if that’s what got her killed,” said Venetia. “I mean, if someone knew that she was holding them—”
“They’d have to know about the glass storage,” said Brooks. “It’s not commercially available yet, and where it is being used, it’s only industrial. I can’t believe she was listening to me when I told her about it.”
“You know, she did talk about you to me,” said Venetia. “A couple of times.”
“What did she say?”
“She said you were smart, which, I guess, she was right about. And she said you told her not to marry Alden.”
“Those are both true,” he said. “I wish she’d listened then.”
“So how do we get the documents off of there?”
He grimaced and took in a slow squeeze of air. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the tricky bit.”
***
“This platter is what?” Detective James said, his eyes red and bleary.
“Have you slept?”
“Of all the information we’ve been going through, I think that’s the least important. Let me make sure I’m understanding this. Those mysterious documents that your client was supposed to have given you, those are on this platter?”
“Glass plate,” said Brooks.
“You do understand that I’m not trying to solve Brenna Chale’s murder? You get that the guy who killed her was tried and convicted, right?”
“Neither Brooks nor I believe it.”
“Now it’s ‘Brooks and I?’ Can you remember back to when he gave me a thumb drive that appeared to establish you had a motive to kill your cousin?”
“Maybe I’m quick to forgiveness,” said Venetia. “Maybe listening to Dane’s story was a little like being in a foxhole together, I don’t know. But he and I only want to see justice done.”
“What about justice for Delenda?’
“I’m a little more flexible on that topic,” Venetia said before she could think better of it. “I mean, I think we can’t do one without the other.”
“Did you get Dane admitting to the extortion on tape?” the detective asked. He caught Venetia sending a withering look at Brooks. “Should I take that as a no?”
“This guy decided to go all Wild West. And he was supposed to set up my phone to record.”
“I showed you how to use the app,” said Brooks.
“You didn’t use the voice recorder app on your phone?” Detective James said.
“Fine. Call me not technical, it’s true. I confess. But we both heard it, we can both testify to it.”
“Isn’t that hearsay?” said Brooks.
“A, you’re not helping. And B, an admission of guilt is not hearsay.”
“Thank you counselor,” said Cadby James.
“What? It’s true.”
“So he voluntarily told you that he’d extorted a judge to fix your Aunt Sissy’s estate case.”
“Yes. And he said that he told Tipsy Nightingale about Brenna’s move.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Trust me, you really don’t want to know. But I think she must be more involved than just a reporter, Cadby.” She leaned forward in the chair, close enough that her knees nearly touched his desk.
“We’re back to Cadby?”
“Whatever,” she said. “She’s got some kind of connection to Sway, I’m sure of it. And now she’s going to run that piece about me and ShamCorp.”
“It’s a news story, Venetia, you can’t take it as a personal vendetta.”
“She got inside Delenda’s house the night of the murder, she broadcasted from the living room. How’d she manage that?”
“She’s resourceful.” He tapped a pen against the stack of files.
“That’s one way to put it,” said Venetia. “Five people knew where Brenna was going. Shane, who was there to move her. Me. Brenna. Dane, because Brenna told him. And Tipsy.”
“Shane shot her.”
“No, that’s what they said the evidence found,” said Venetia. “But think about this. If Sway could—and would—fix a probate case he didn’t even have a stake in, for a reason we don’t know, couldn’t he fix ballistic reports? Gun residue reports? Besides, Shane admitted he’d gone to the firing range earlier that day, he was going to have residue on his hands.”
“I’ve been over the case, Venetia. There wasn’t a record of his being at the gun range that day.”
“He always said that a man in black with a black mask and bulletproof gear pulled up to them and shot her.”
“The blood evidence didn’t bear that story out,” said Cadby, a hand running across the top of his already-wild-haired head.
“You really look like you need some rest,” Venetia said.
“Thanks for the concern. There was evidence that Shane killed her. He was convicted. I’m not sure why you’re so insistent here.”
“Because Alden Sway had his wife killed, and Shane Palint took the fall. He didn’t do it. I did a lot of homework to find him, and the security firm he came from came with the highest possible recommendation.”
“To turn this on you,” said Cadby, “isn’t it possible that he was the one that Sway paid to kill Brenna?”
“So now you think Sway’s involved?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said, “I’m only going along with your hypothetical.”
“Can I say something?” said Brooks.
“What?” Detective James said. He picked up the phone on his desk, and asked someone to bring him a coffee. A moment later, the young officer who’d shown Venetia to the interrogation room appeared with a Styrofoam cup. He upended it and drank the whole thing at one go.
“That’s a lot of coffee,” said Venetia.
“Not a lot of sleep.”
“Brenna probably would have known if that security company was on the payroll,” said Brooks. “The documents covered basically all of Sway’s dealings. The off-the-books ones.”
Venetia tilted her head a Brooks, her eyebrows close together. “Did you hack those documents for Brenna?” she said.
“You do understand that we’re sitting in a police department, right?” said Brooks.
“I’d be pretty interested to hear that answer myself,” said Cadby.
“Let me put it this way. If I was the one who got the documents, would I need to get them from you? I mean, wouldn’t I have them in the first place?”
“I suppose,” said Venetia. “That makes sense. How did Brenna get them?”
“I don’t think we need to get into that.” He put a casual ankle over his knee, but his hands drummed a rhythm on his leg.
“Now I’m curious,” said Cadby.”
“We have the more important issue of having this plate read. It’s not all that easy.”
“And even if we do, there could be, I don’t know, tons of stuff on there,” said Venetia. “Yes, I get it, I’m not technical.”
“How did she get the information?”
“She switched out a hard drive,” he said. “She really was great at anything if she applied herself.”
“And Sway knew it was missing?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “she never got the chance to tell me that part. But insurance only works if the person knows you have insurance.”
&
nbsp; “It doesn’t work so well if that same person manages to kill you before you get to use it,” said Venetia.
“How do we find out what’s on that thing?” Cadby said. He picked up the empty cup, swirled it, and looked into it forlornly, as though it would magically regenerate the finished coffee.
“It has to be read by an optical microscope,” said Brooks.
“Aren’t all microscopes optical?” said Venetia. Brooks’ glance was cool. “What? Aren’t they?”
“Can you do it?” said Cadby.
“No,” said Brooks.
“So this plate actually doesn’t get us anywhere,” said Venetia.
“I don’t know about you two, but the case I need to get moving is Delenda O’Brien’s murder. This one was solved.”
“You still think that?” Venetia said. “Really? Try not to be so tired, and really think about it.”
“Try not to be so tired?”
“Well, you’re clearly really dragging.”
“I can’t read it,” said Brooks, his shoulders puffed in his determination to not be interrupted again, “but I know who can.”
“Well you two run off, then,” said Cadby, “and I’ll get back actually doing my job.”
“Really, I think you need a break,” Venetia said.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Any luck with the marriage certificate?
“I’ve been busy,” he said, “which you should probably take as a hint.”
“You are really moody,” she said. “Not even a thanks for the information on Dane?”
“If it was relevant to this case, maybe I’d be more grateful,” he said. “But now I really have to get on with it.”
“Fine,” said Venetia. “Come on Brooks, let’s go find out what secrets that thing has.” She pointed to a gold box on the desk. “Are those chocolates?”
He shoved the box toward her. “Help yourself.”
She lifted the lid of the box, a couple empty paper holders rustling against the lid. The gilded tag caught her eye. “Thanks for the interview, Tipsy?”
“I told you she got some background information.”
“From you?”
“It is my case,” he said.
“Does that make you the leaker?”