“Superhero?” I asked. I rolled my eyes at him, but only in jest. Greg Stevens was my superhero and had been almost from the day we’d met. He laughed and gave my bottom another friendly pat.
I could tell my mother wasn’t buying it. “I’m just saying that I’ve looked at a lot of the videos from today that have posted already, and none of them have close-ups of anyone.”
“Well,” I said, “she can have all the close-ups she wants. I have the real thing.” I bent down and kissed the top of Greg’s head.
While we sipped our beverages, Mom showed us several of the other videos on YouTube. It was shocking how fast these had been posted and even more shocking how many views they’d already received. Greg’s heroics had indeed gone viral. The videos had popped up online faster than weeds in a neglected lawn.
Once we’d seen several, I moved away from the iPad and stretched. “Mom, do you want to stick around for an early dinner? Greg is grilling salmon.” It was sometime between lunch and dinner, but we’d not had any lunch because of our large breakfast and all the hullabaloo. “We’ll probably start the grill in about an hour.”
“Nah, but thanks,” Mom said as she stuffed her iPad back into her bag. “I have to finish packing for my trip.” She looked up at me. “You didn’t forget I was leaving town tomorrow, did you? I need you to water my plants while I’m gone since Art will be on the trip too.”
Seaside, the 55+ community where Mom owned a condo, isn’t far from us. We live in Seal Beach, and Seaside is in Long Beach, almost spitting distance from where we’d had our encounter with Marla Kingston today. Several of the residents of Seaside, including Mom’s good friend Art Franklin and his lady friend, had signed up for a one-week trip to Branson, Missouri, an entertainment mecca, particularly for older adults. The trip wasn’t sponsored by Seaside but by a travel group specializing in trips for seniors.
“No, Mom, I didn’t forget,” I told her with attitude. Actually, I had forgotten she was leaving tomorrow. For some reason I thought her trip started next weekend, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “I’ll make sure your plants survive.”
“Do you need a lift to the airport, Grace?” Greg asked.
“Nah,” she told him with a wave of her hand. “Since so many of us from Seaside are going, they’re shuttling us to the airport together.”
After saying goodbye to us and our animals, Mom started for the door. “You two stay out of trouble while I’m gone,” she admonished, wagging a finger between Greg and me.
“It’s not like we plan this stuff, Mom,” I told her as I walked her to the front door and gave her a kiss on her cheek.
“Yeah, Grace,” Greg added. “Trouble hits Odelia like a tornado, striking with little to no warning.”
I watched as Mom climbed into her car and drove off, then I turned on my husband, hands on my hips. “Really, Greg? Trouble hits me like a tornado? I don’t recall the crowbar being in my hands today.” I wasn’t angry, just trying to make a point.
“You forgot about your mother’s trip, didn’t you?” he said, trying to deflect the issue.
“So did you,” I accused.
“Guilty.” He rolled over to me and flashed that bad boy smile of his. “Now—about that nookie. We have time to kill before I fire up the grill for dinner.”
five
When I got to work on Monday, there was a brand-new crowbar on my desk with a red ribbon tied around it and no note. I was pretty sure who’d left it there. It had Mike Steele’s sarcasm slathered all over it. By evening several of the amateur videos had made their way to the local news channels.
We’d received several calls at home for interviews Saturday night and Sunday, but Greg had declined them all, only giving the comment over the phone that he’d seen an animal in trouble and had done what any good citizen would do in order to save it. I pointed out that giving an interview on camera might actually be good for his business, but he wasn’t hearing of it. But even without Greg’s cooperation, one of the reporters had seen Greg’s cap, done their research, and given it a good plug on the 6 p.m. news. Friends and family also called on Sunday about Greg’s heroics. The one call that really annoyed me was from Detective Andrea Fehring of the Long Beach Police Department.
Andrea Fehring is a friend of sorts. I mean, she is a friend and has been a guest in our home, and my mother swears Clark has a crush on her. But she’s also a police detective that we’ve crossed paths with several times in a crime-related capacity—not that we committed the crime, but Greg and I always seem to be witnesses or be attached in some sick way to these crimes. Well, mostly it’s me, but sometimes Greg’s hands get dirty too.
“Can’t you two have a normal Saturday?” Fehring had asked as soon as I picked up the call. I’d seen her name on the display but knew if I didn’t answer, she’d keep calling. Mike Steele was like that too. He’d call and call and call until you either picked up or called him back.
“We were having a normal Saturday,” I told her. She’d called while Greg and I were relaxing on Sunday evening on the patio after it had cooled down a bit. I’d just returned from taking Wainwright on a walk down to the beach and back. When Greg raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction, I mouthed it’s Fehring at him.
He grinned and whispered back, “What took her so long?”
For some reason, Fehring keeps an eye out for any questionable activity involving Greg and me. Mom says it’s because of Clark. I think it’s because of her friendship with Dev Frye, a former Newport Beach detective who is also our friend. Greg and I both believe when Dev retired and moved to Portland, he made Fehring pinkie-swear to keep an eye on us.
“We were just running errands Saturday,” I told Fehring. “I suppose those two officers squealed to you about us.”
“They didn’t have to,” Fehring said. “I was out of town until today and caught it on the local news.”
“So are you calling to lecture us?” I asked.
There was a pause, then she said, “No, I’m calling to say good work—both of you. That poor animal could have easily died.”
The kudos caught me by surprise. Fehring didn’t hand them out often or easily. “Thanks, Andrea, and hey,” I said with spunky cheer, “at least there were no dead bodies.” Greg gave me a thumbs-up and went back to reading his book.
“It’s early yet,” Fehring quipped. It was the exact comment Clark had made when he’d called Saturday night after talking to Mom.
When Greg left for work this morning, I warned him that reporters might come by the shop, but he assured me that he and Wainwright could handle them. I’d looked down at our trusty elderly canine with his graying muzzle and smiled. The dog wagged his tail in response. Wainwright was as harmless as little Dumpster, but he was thoroughly trained to protect Greg and had even protected me at times. He had that magical doggie sense of who was a threat and who wasn’t.
I work three days a week as a paralegal at Templin and Tobin, better known as T&T. Usually my days in the office are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Sometimes, if we have a heavy workload or a big project, I’ll come in more often. The Orange County office isn’t nearly as busy as the LA office, which is why I can enjoy such great flexible hours, but it’s also a big concern. For quite a while there have been rumors of T&T closing the small Orange County satellite office. It’s only been open a few years and is a big expense. It was opened to better serve the clients in Orange County and northern San Diego County, and to entice new clients from those areas. Often attorneys from Los Angeles come down for meetings held here, and Steele heads a lot of projects for those more southern clients who don’t want to brave the traffic to Century City, the section of LA where the main office is located. Steele is the manager of the OC office and the only resident partner. When he came to T&T from his prior firm, where we had also worked together, he brought in a lot of new business for T&T, and I’ve always suspected that’s
one of the reasons why they kept the office open.
I’ve asked him about the rumors several times, encouraged by other employees and even the associates since I have a closer relationship to Steele than most in the office. As I expected, he didn’t give any indication that the rumors were true or false, but I didn’t expect him to say much. Steele can be a real ass, though he’s also very loyal to the worker bees under him. But he’s also a partner of the firm, and as such he has an obligation to the other partners not to be a gabby goose. When pressed, all he’ll say, or rather bark, is, “If you’re so damn worried, maybe you should all get back to work and earn your keep.”
Greg and I have discussed what I might do if T&T closes this office. We only have a few attorneys in Orange County and most are young. T&T would probably offer them spots in LA, as they would Steele. It was the staff that might suffer. I was pretty sure Steele would want to take his secretary, Jill Bernelli, with him. I’d hired her after he’d gone through a string of secretaries. She’d followed him to T&T when he changed firms, but would Jill want to make the ugly commute to Los Angeles? I doubted it. T&T has a couple of paralegals in LA. I’d met them all and had worked closely with one of them, as well as with some of the LA-based attorneys, but that didn’t mean they needed me there, not to mention I would not like that commute either. In the end, Greg and I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. My husband was sure I could find another job quickly, but I wasn’t so optimistic. I’d gotten used to working part-time and I was in my mid-fifties—not a good age to be looking for work in a snug economy.
Being mid-summer, the office was even slower than usual, which gave me a good chance to catch up on some clean-up work, such as boxing up old files for storage, reorganizing my computer files and desk, and even doing a little dusting that the regular cleaning crew missed. That was my plan today, and I’d come dressed a little more casually than usual. Not jeans casual but business casual, because you never knew when a client might pop in or someone from the LA office might decide to pay us a visit.
My first order of business was to consider the crowbar. It was slim and sleek and jet black, with not a scratch on it, unlike the well-used one in our van. The curved end was forked, like the tongue of a snake. The large ribbon was glossy red and full. The crowbar looked dressed to go to a party. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked and solid in my hands, and it could do a lot of damage to a window, desk, door, or even a skull. With none of that in mind, I left my office in search of Steele. When I approached his office, I saw the door was closed.
“Now what has he done?” asked a familiar voice behind me. I turned and focused on Jill. She was sitting in front of her computer, a mug of coffee in one hand. Jill was a no-nonsense type with a slender build and close-cropped brown hair. She never wore any makeup, and even though she was in her fifties, she was cute in a pixyish tomboy way. She was married to Sally Kipman, one of my high-school classmates.
I stopped short at her question, then looked down at the crowbar. I was gripping it with two hands, one over and one under, like I was about to head into a nasty fight. The bow had slipped, the bulk of it hanging beneath the crowbar like an ugly growth.
I laughed and relaxed my grip, letting the crowbar casually hang to one side. “Nothing, but I think Steele left this on my desk. I wanted to thank him for it.”
Jill cleared her throat. “Actually, that is from Sally and me. Didn’t you see the card?”
“There was no card,” I told her.
“Damn,” she said, slightly annoyed. “It must have fallen off. It was taped on but was small. It just said keep on swinging.”
I laughed as I walked closer to her desk. “Thanks—I think.” I looked down at the lethal weapon in my hand. “And here I was giving all the credit to Steele. Sorry about that.”
Jill laughed herself. “That’s why we had a note. I told Sally if we didn’t include one, you’d immediately think Steele left it.”
Jolene McHugh came around the corner. A senior associate with the firm, Jolene had also worked with us at our last firm. Jill did secretarial work for her, as well as for Steele and occasionally for me. She was holding a small white card in an outstretched hand. She seemed unsure which of us to hand it to. “One of you must have dropped this. I found it in the hallway near reception.”
“That’s the card,” exclaimed Jill happily. “It was meant for Greg and Odelia.”
Jolene handed it to me. “So I gathered from the note on it.” She indicated the crowbar. “Does this have anything to do with the local news last night?”
“No,” I lied. “Why do you ask?”
“Yeah, right,” Jolene said with a grin. She pushed a lank of her bright-red hair back with a hand. “My husband and I caught Greg’s heroism on the late news.” She paused, a look of concern on her face. “But did it have to be Marla Kingston’s car?”
“Trust me,” I answered, “we didn’t know that at the time, although I doubt it would have made any difference to Greg.” I looked up and down the hall, making sure no one was listening. “You don’t think that will come back to bite us on the butt, do you?”
Jolene shrugged. “Hard to say. Depends on whether or not Kelton Kingston realizes who you work for, or …,” she trailed off.
“Or what?” I asked.
Jill took a deep breath and answered before Jolene. “Or if his wife convinces him to file a lawsuit, he may go to T&T to get it rolling. We are his lawyers, after all.”
“But if the firm takes that on, wouldn’t it be a conflict of interest on their side?” I asked, worried about the consequences.
Jolene gave it some quick thought. “I seriously doubt the firm would take on a suit against one of its own employees. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“But if Kingston finds out you work for T&T,” Jill added, “he may simply insist they fire you.”
“Can they do that legally?” I asked, my head swinging back and forth between them like a pendulum. Immediately there was a clunk inside me as my gears shifted from worry to anger. Just as quickly, I had a mental argument with myself, telling my anger to cool its jets. Nothing had happened yet, so I shouldn’t get my undies in a bunch.
I turned to Jill and pointed at Steele’s office. “I should talk to Steele. Is he in?”
She nodded. “He was in early this morning. He’s been on and off the phone since.”
“Do you know who he’s talking to right now?” I asked.
She put her coffee down and stared at the phone, specifically at the light that indicated Steele’s line was in use. “About an hour ago he got a call from Joe Templin.” She looked up, her brows knitted into a pair of slim woolly socks across her brow. “They’ve been on the same call since.” She paused, then tacked on, “And just before you came by, Steele was yelling.”
My gut lurched. Joe Templin was the Templin of Templin & Tobin, one of the two founding partners. I’d gotten to know Simon Tobin a bit and liked and respected him very much, but Joseph Carlisle Templin was another kettle of fish. I’d only met him twice, and both times the hair on my neck stood on end. That was enough to convince me to stay out of his way. He had a reputation of being cold and calculating, rolling over opponents and sometimes staff with ferocity. Simon Tobin, on the other hand, was urbane and gracious, with a calm demeanor. Friends since high school, they’d started the firm a few years after law school and built it into a powerful, well-respected entity. How the two of them had managed to stay partners for nearly four decades was anyone’s guess.
I looked at my two coworkers. Jill’s brows had relaxed, but her jaw was set like chiseled stone. Jolene’s skin was fair with clumps of freckles. When she got mad or upset, her skin turned milk white. Right now she looked like she should be quarantined for a bad case of measles. “Should I wait until he’s off the phone and talk to him?” I asked, looking for guidance from either of them, “or go home and eat a pint of Ben & Je
rry’s?”
Before either of them could say anything, loud yelling came from Steele’s office. It was Steele’s voice. Then we heard another loud voice respond, but it wasn’t as loud. We all heard my name mentioned. The three of us stared at each other, eyes wide, mouths shut, as if burglarizing a house and the owner came home mid-burgle.
“Who’s in there with him?” Jolene asked, breaking the silence.
Jill shook her head. “No one. He must be on speaker.”
Turning, I started back down the hall, the crowbar feeling like a hundred-pound anchor in my hands.
“If Steele asks, are you going back to your office?” Jill asked. I turned to look at the two women. Jill was now on her feet, standing next to the younger and much taller Jolene.
I shook my head. “I’m going home. Tell Steele whatever you’d like.” I took a deep breath as I fought back tears. “No, tell him I went home sick. It won’t be a lie.” I got a few more steps, then turned. “No, I’ll be in my office,” I said, changing my mind. “My mother didn’t raise no cowards.”
“That phone call might not have anything to do with what happened with Kingston’s wife, Odelia,” Jolene said with encouragement. “Maybe your name was mentioned because Templin wants you to work on something. You know Steele isn’t good about sharing.” I wanted to grab the lifeline of hope she was holding out, but I didn’t believe it. One look in Jolene’s blue eyes and Jill’s brown pair, and I could tell neither of them did either.
I spent the next hour or so doing what I’d planned on doing today. After getting a cup of coffee, I got to work sorting through old files and boxing many for storage. I was ankle-deep in a sea of expanding files and closing binders when Steele showed up at my office door. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie loosened, his face gaunt like he’d been dragged a few miles behind a messenger bike. Usually Steele is impeccably dressed and groomed. It was clear he’d not had a good morning.
Too Big to Die Page 4