by Julie Smith
Talba eased the bag off her shoulder, and opened it to show nothing but her purse—a much smaller bag—and the bound client report. “Look, you’re right. It’s your property. I could see you were upset—but I didn’t realize how upset. I was just trying to save your feelings. Go ahead and take the report.”
Kristin’s hand crept into the bag. As soon as her fingers had closed around it and begun to slide it out, Talba jerked the bag back, turned quickly, grabbed the doorknob, ripped open the door, and tore up the sidewalk.
When she was in the car, doors locked, she stared back at the house. The front door was now closed; there was no sign of pursuit, but maybe her client had gone to get a gun—at this point Talba wouldn’t have put anything past her. She needed to get her breath, but she also needed to get out of there. Hands shaking, heart pounding, fighting for breath, she turned on the ignition and eased the car around the corner, where she stopped, turned out the lights, and let herself recover, breathing deep into her belly, cursing herself for a coward.
It’s just a physical response, she told herself. It doesn’t make you a bad person.
And in fact, when she thought back on it, there really wasn’t anything she would have done differently, even if she hadn’t lost control of her faculties. Kicked the client in the teeth? Not an option. Wrestled her for the bag? What was the point? Of course, she could have done without the ignominious retreat—that one made her cringe—but mostly it was the way she felt that seemed so dishonorable.
The thing was—she could see it now—she’d made her mistake while she was still compes mentes. She should have just surrendered the damned report in the first place. She’d withheld it out of kindness, and then, after saying she didn’t have it, she didn’t want to admit she did. Pride: a deadly sin.
On the other hand, if the client hadn’t turned out to be a maniac, it would have been fine.
Her heart rate was slowing, her breath returning to normal while her mind raced, sifting through the disturbing elements, making sense of them. She was almost good to go when Kristin’s white Lexus sped past the intersection where Talba was parked. Unfortunately, she was turned the other way—she’d only seen it in the rearview mirror.
But, damn, it sure looked like Kristin’s car.
Without hesitation, she turned around to follow, but it was too late. The car was nowhere in sight. Still, if it really was Kristin’s car, this shed a new light on things. She drove by the camelback to make sure, and just as she was passing—sure enough, no Lexus—her cell phone set her nerve endings on end. The caller ID said it was the lady herself, which was even more scary.
Half expecting a death threat, she iced up her voice and answered. “Hello, Kristin.”
“Omigod, Talba, are you still speaking to me?” The old Kristin. Talba relaxed, but kept her voice below freezing.
“You want to tell me what happened back there?”
“Listen, all I want to do is apologize. I think I went crazy for a minute there.”
“Is that what it was? That ‘bitch’ part kind of got to me. Oh, and the ‘two-bit little lowlife’ thing—been watching a lot of cinema noir?”
“Have I been what? Oh, I see what you mean.” She giggled self-consciously. “Okay, yeah. That was a little on the Maltese Falcon side. You know I didn’t mean it, don’t you? I was just upset. I wanted to apologize before you completely wrote me off. By the way, of course I’m going to pay you. I just thought I’d die if I didn’t see that report.”
“Want to talk about it? I can come back.” Testing the water.
“Can’t. I’m in the car. I got so upset I had to take a ride.”
“Okay, forget about it. Like I said, the job’s on the house.”
“But you put in all that work.”
“Not important. Let’s just agree to disagree, as my mama likes to say.”
“Talba, don’t be that way! Look, I’ll send you a check tomorrow.”
“And I’ll send it back,” Talba said coolly. She pressed “end.”
The phone rang again, but she ignored it, started seething again, and mentally replayed both encounters in her head, indulging herself in l’esprit de l’escalier, or whatever the phrase was that meant thinking of a witty retort too late. Except in this version, she didn’t think up snappy answers—she beat the crap out of the bitch.
Chapter 24
Eddie was away the next day, on a job in Terrebonne Parish, so she didn’t even have the pleasure of a morning chat. And she was dying for one. She’d awakened with a new perspective. She had to tell Langdon about it, but she wanted to talk to Eddie first.
She’d done a lot of thinking about the night before, and she was halfway expecting a call, but she wanted to talk to Warren LaGarde first. To her surprise, he answered her call without any special ruses or pleas. “What can I do for you, Miss Wallis?”
“I was thinking about that talk we had. Mind if I ask you a question? Does Kristin’s job involve any work with video cameras?”
“Sure. She makes tapes of the properties she wants to buy, and shows them to the rest of us. She’s pretty good. Why did you need to know?”
“Can I let you know later?” She hung up before he could answer. Her suspicions were getting stronger—so much so that the back of her neck was sweating. If she were right, she should be hearing from Kristin very soon.
The call came on her cell phone right on schedule, about nine-thirty a.m. “Good morning, Miss LaGarde.”
“You still mad?”
“Not at all. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering about that tape you mentioned—can I ask where you got it?”
“Sure. It’s a free country.”
“Talba, don’t be that way!”
“Where I got it is confidential.” And so is where I have it.
School had been in session for an hour and a half, enough time to ransack Lucy’s room for it. She figured that was why the call had come when it did.
“This client report seems very incomplete without it. I really don’t see how you can expect to be paid until I have the result of your investigation.”
“It’s evidence, Kristin. I’m taking it to the cops.”
“I’ll be happy to do that for you,” Kristin chirped. “Why don’t I come by and get it?”
Talba really couldn’t believe this woman. In movies, the bad guys were always diabolically clever. This little idiot—who she now thought had probably killed two people—thought she could waltz off with a vital piece of evidence, just by asking for it.
“Surely,” she said, “you jest.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Kristin said, “Listen, I read the client report and you really did a great job for me. I was thinking maybe a bonus.”
This was starting to be fun. “How much were you thinking?” she asked.
“Oh, say, ten thousand. For the complete report, that is.”
“Thirty,” Talba replied.
Kristin got right into negotiating. “Twenty-five.”
“Done.”
“Done? You’ll turn over the tape.”
“Hey, for twenty-five large, I’d turn over Eddie.”
“Who’s Eddie?”
“The guy who’s got the combination to the safe. Where the complete report is.”
“Has this Eddie person seen it?”
And at that moment, it dawned on Talba that this little silver-spoon maniac, this insignificant, undersized, dressed-for-success premature black widow, might very well intend to kill her. Probably thought it was going to be as easy as framing her own father for murder. “No, of course not,” she said. “We all keep things in the safe from time to time. He doesn’t even know what it is. I just have to wait for him to come back and get it out for me.”
“And when are you expecting him?’
“Listen, about that twenty-five. It’ll have to be in cash.”
“Agreed.”
“Well, you’ve got to get it, right?”
“
No, I, uh, I have it with me.”
“You have access to twenty-five and you offered me ten? If you’ve got that, you’ve probably got fifty.”
“No!” Kristin seemed to be casting about for what to say next. She settled on, “Twenty-five max.”
“It just went up to thirty-five.” Talba figured it didn’t matter how much she asked for, because she’d long since realized no money was going to change hands. (Well, it might, briefly—but Kristin would take it back once she had the tape.)
“I don’t have it.” Kristin said.
“Well, then, get it. I need time to get the combination, anyhow.” She hung up. Kristin called back.
Let her stew, Talba thought, and called her favorite cop. “Langdon. 911. I need you immediately. With lots of Kevlar—and maybe the TAC squad.”
Langdon sighed. “Good morning to you too, Baroness. You want to start at the beginning?”
“You know that tape I brought you yesterday? Kristin LaGarde just offered to buy it for thirty-five thousand dollars, give or take.”
“What do you mean ‘give or take’?”
“We’re still bargaining. Hang on, my other phone’s ringing.” The office phone. She activated the speaker feature, hoping Langdon could hear and Kristin wouldn’t notice. “Hello, Kristin,” she said. “I just got Eddie on the phone. He’s coming back at noon. Are we on?”
“I’m on my way.”
“With the thirty-five K, I hope.”
“Certainly. Look, Baroness, can you just bring it downstairs? We don’t want Eddie knowing—I mean, then you’d have to split the money, right?”
Talba thought at the time it would have been hilarious if this had really been the game Kristin seemed to think it was. (Though later, it occurred to her that she should have paid better attention to that little gambit.) “Don’t worry about Eddie,” she said. “I told him he had to come back to sign a check. He was furious because he has a lunch date at twelve o’clock, and now he’ll be late. Believe me, he’ll be here five minutes, max. See you at—I don’t know—twelve-fifteen?”
“I’ll be there. Just be sure he’s gone.”
She got back to Langdon, who said, “I can’t believe I just heard what I think I heard.”
“Listen up, Skip.” Talba outlined her night’s adventures, and then said, “What do you make of it?”
“I knew that woman was poison.”
“What I thought was, we set up a surveillance camera—you can watch the whole transaction—”
“What? Watch her shoot you? How do you know that’s not what she’s planning?”
“Oh, I do think she’s planning it. But she won’t do it till after she makes sure it’s the right tape. So you wait in the little coffee room where we have the VCR, and when we come in, you arrest her.”
“Baroness, are you crazy? Arrest her for what? Overpaying her bill?”
“Okay, you don’t arrest her yet. You take her down to Headquarters and apply rubber hoses, or whatever you do. And then you arrest her.”
“Watch your mouth, okay? And no. I can’t do that. And you can’t do that. It’s too dangerous.”
Talba took a deep breath. She’d known the cop was going to say that. “You’re forbidding me to meet a client in my own office? You can’t do that. Look, I’m asking for police protection. Should I just hire a private security firm or do you want in on this?”
“Police protection.”
“Let’s try it another way. I’ve got a client coming into my office that I don’t trust. Maybe you could be here as a friend, make sure nothing happens.”
Langdon sighed, the sound rasping heavily over the wire. “I never used to do that.”
“What?”
“Sigh. I never used to sigh. I counted three gray hairs this morning, and I’ve got big bags under my eyes. I never had either one till I met you.”
“Yeah, Eddie complains, too.”
“Not half as much as he’s about to. He’ll probably fire you, you know that, don’t you?”
Talba hadn’t thought of that. The trauma center at Charity, yes. But not Eddie firing her. And then the reality of it hit her. “It’s too late. I’ve already made the date.”
“Well, unmake it.”
“I’m doing it.”
“Goddammit, Talba! You make sure that office is empty, okay? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Don’t forget the Kevlar. And maybe a riot helmet.”
While she waited for the cop, she asked Eileen Fisher if she could please take her lunch break at eleven-thirty, and then she put together a plan—not that Langdon wouldn’t arrive with one of her own, but they could always argue.
The cop did bring Kevlar—and another cop. Backup. Good. She was first aware of their presence when she heard a man’s voice saying, “Hi, the Baroness in?” It sounded like Adam Abasolo.
And Eileen Fisher saying, “Sure. I’ll get her. Just be a second.” Very friendly for Eileen.
“I’m coming, Eileen,” Talba said, and by the time she got there, Langdon was already ordering her to get out and stay out till further notice, which miffed her. It miffed Talba as well.
“Some people can be so rude,” she said. “Eileen, don’t you have a wedding to go to? Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and go buy a wedding present.”
“I already ordered one online.”
“Well, get some dancing shoes, then. This woman’s a cop and she has no manners. Skip, maybe you need to apologize.”
“Omigod!” Eileen cried. “You’re Skip Langdon! Talba, for shame—nobody talks to Skip Langdon like that.” What was up with Eileen?
Abasolo, probably. He was famous for his crowd-pleasing looks (so long as the crowd was female)—tall, wiry, with black hair and blue eyes. He looked a little like a movie star and a little like a thug, thus appealing to the bad-boy yen that apparently afflicted even Eileen Fisher. Not Talba’s type, but easy on the orbs.
Langdon laughed. “Well, Her Grace is the only one. But she’s right—I was out of line. We need you out of here for your own safety.”
“Does Uncle Eddie know about this?” Eileen was rattled. Hardly anyone knew Eddie was her uncle.
“Eileen, don’t worry about it.” Talba said. “We haven’t got much time. Look, call him, okay? Tell him something’s going down in here and not to come back without calling.”
Having a task seemed to please the girl. “Okay, then. I’m outta here.” And she was.
“This better be good, Baroness,” Langdon said. “You’re tying up important brass here.” Abasolo was a lieutenant. “Now here’s what we’re gonna do.” And she outlined a plan that was startlingly similar to Talba’s own.
By eleven-forty-five, Talba had tucked herself into a Kevlar vest, which did nothing for the way her blouse fit, and they had the camera set up, with Skip in the little closet-room to watch the monitor, and Abasolo in Eddie’s office as backup.
Kristin was early. She strolled in about five after twelve, kitten heels clacking. Talba came out to meet her, noticing that she was carrying a purse and a briefcase. “Hi.” Talba said. “The money in there?”
“You’re awfully eager, aren’t you?” Kristin was smirking, a new look for her.
“Come on in my office—in case anyone comes back.”
“You guaranteed me nobody’d be here.”
“And nobody will be. Let’s just be safe.” She let the little heels clack ahead of her—one of Skip’s admonitions had been never to turn her back on the woman.
Once there, she said, “Okay, it’s like that first time. Let me have the two bags.”
“Why?” Kristin seemed surprised. “Oh. To check for a gun, you mean.” She shrugged and handed over the bags. “Go ahead.” Talba breathed again. An ankle holster wasn’t possible—Kristin’s miniskirt couldn’t hide one. But she was wearing a suit jacket—a shoulder holster was. And the jacket had pockets. “Let me see your jacket.”
Kristin handed over the garment, which Talba pa
tted after first noting that not only wasn’t Kristin wearing a shoulder holster, her knit top fit too tight to conceal anything but a pair of nipples, and it wasn’t doing such a great job of that. Kristin caught Talba mentally frisking her. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”
“I know it might come as a shock to you, but a lot of people would do anything to hang onto thirty-five thousand dollars.” Talba opened the small purse, which contained nothing but a Gucci wallet, checkbook, cosmetics, and keys, and then opened the briefcase. It was full of cash, tied in neat bundles, like in the movies.
“Do you want to count it?”
“No. It looks all right.”
“Go ahead, why don’t you?”
Talba didn’t like that. Why should Kristin want her to count it? Anyway, counting it wasn’t in the plan. This was supposed to be quick and dirty. “No, thanks.” She opened her desk drawer and pulled out an unlabeled (and illegal) tape of Home Alone that she’d made for Raisa. “Here’s the tape of the Bacchus party,” she said, identifying it fully for the surveillance tape. “A pleasure doing business with you.”
“Hold it. How do I know this is really it?” Absolutely as predicted.
Talba shrugged. “Let’s go watch it.”
That was the signal. The way the cop plan differed from hers was this: Instead of Talba marching Kristin into the coffee room, it called for Abasolo to step across the hall and Langdon to step down the hall—right behind him—and start asking embarrassing questions. Meanwhile, the camera was still running—Talba didn’t know if it was something you could use in court, but at the very least, it ought to be lots of fun to see Kristin’s reaction to it.
But it didn’t work that way. What happened was, Talba did indeed hear footsteps in the hall, but they were coming from the wrong direction. Then she heard Abasolo step out of Eddie’s office and say, “Police. Freeze or I’ll blow your head off.”
There was a fourth person in the office.
Talba and Kristin both froze, but apparently the intruder didn’t. Someone fired two shots in rapid succession, and someone went down—more than one person from the sound of it. Skip? Talba thought. Abasolo and Skip?