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

by Diane Patterson

  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 an
swer. “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.

  He glanced at me, and then returned for a longer, direct look. Then he put down the pen and gave me his full attention. Not the case. Me. “Let’s get a few things clear. I have only three rules for how I do my job.” He held up one finger. “Never decide whether or not the client’s guilty. That’s not my problem.” He held up another finger. “The job is always about the government’s case, not the client’s merits, so I pick my battles carefully.” He held up a third finger. “And lastly, never fuck a client. No matter what. So you can stop, now. We don’t have time and it’s not going to happen.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Did I offend your delicate sensibilities?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m sure you would have, if I had any.” Then I leaned toward him. “Did you say ‘fuck a client’ or ‘fuck over a client’?”

  He laughed. “Fucking someone over is just part of the job description. So I guess we’re in agreement.”

  “We are? About what?”

  “You let me do what I do best, which means you stop making my job that much harder for me.”

  He stood up. We were done.

  Nathaniel opened the door to the reception area. “You have any more ideas about who might have killed your husband, give them to me. Don’t be stupid and decide to find out for yourself. The cops are already looking for a good reason to arrest you. Don’t make it easier for them.”

  I passed him, and then stopped short in the middle of the doorway and turned around. He nearly walked into me and our sudden closeness disconcerted him, exactly the way I’d wanted it to. “Tell me, Counselor. Those three rules of yours? How many have you broken so far?”

  He backed up to put a little more space between us. He didn’t seem in the slightest bit surprised I’d asked that question. Maybe he’d been waiting for it. “All three.”

  “All at once or individually?”

  He shook his head and smiled, sadly. “It was a long time ago. Which is why I take them very seriously.”

  “Oh. Pity. I’d like to meet her.”

  “Why, so you can compare notes?”

  “So I can give her hell for ruining you for the rest of us.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds before he looked away. “Keep your cell phone on. The police are going to want to talk to you.”

  I started to walk away and then looked back over my shoulder. “Do keep me abreast of what’s going on, Counselor.”

  He went back into his office.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WAS THE middle of the afternoon by the time I was ready to return to Stevie. I felt as though I’d been working in the brickyard all day. I drove up to the house, drumming my thumbs on the steering wheel and running through what I was going to tell her about my visit with Roberto.

  Stevie was not stupid. She could guess my family wasn’t going to welcome her with open arms. I like to avoid hysterics whenever possible, and that goes double with my little sister. So I would go with my usual approach and say nothing. If she asked, then I’d tell her. But not until.

  Knowing my lawyer probably thought I was guilty wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened so far that day. Roberto’s decree was all I could think about. On the upside, I’d have no worries. I’d have the family’s protection. I could use my real name again. And Stevie could get all the medical care, physical and mental, she could use.

  The downside is I could never see if it was working for her.

  Damn it, my mother could hold a mean grudge. It wasn’t Stevie she didn’t like—she didn’t even know Stevie. My mother was still furious that her first husband, the one she’d married against her parents’ objections, had knocked up a ski instructor, which humiliated her and led to a horrible divorce. I think I first loved Stevie so much because she made my mother so crazy.

  Ah, Stevie. What in the hell was I going to do?

  Since I hadn’t called within the past four hours, she must have become somewhat concerned.

  When I walked in, my sister was nowhere in sight and the inside of the house was darker than the outside. “Stevie!” I called and I dropped my keys on the counter.

  No response. The TV wasn’t on. No noises from upstairs of her running down to greet me. Which was strange, because where else could she be? She wouldn’t have left. She had to be somewhere in this house. “Stevie?” I yelled in my loudest, angriest voice. “Sweetie, where are you?”

  Stevie does sleep like a stone from time to time, but she always responds to that tone. Always.

  No answer.

  The combination of Colin’s murder and my having to see Roberto had frightened her but come on, I’d been in worse predicaments. True, I couldn’t think of one at the moment, but that was only because I was worried, not because I didn’t have a raft of possibilities to choose from.

  She wasn’t in the living room or the downstairs bathroom or the laundry area. Or the coat closet. I ran upstairs, two steps at a time. She wasn’t in either neatly-made bed. She wasn’t in either bedroom closet, her usual place to find solace when she was alone: dark, cramped, easy to hide in. There weren’t even any clothes on the floor for her to hide under. She’d spent some of the day tidying up.

  Hide under. Of course. We hadn’t had beds that were set off the floor in donkey’s years.

  I picked up the bed skirt of the bed in the larger room. Nothing. I went to the other bedroom and picked up its yellow bed skirt.

  Empty. And dust-free. Good housekeeping.

  Could she have left the house by herself, agitated and afraid because I might be in trouble? Had she run into Gary or some other stranger? Had she feared that I might not return from seeing Roberto?

  Not a chance. Not even that level of fear could get her to leave this house voluntarily.

  I went into the bathroom to see if there were any clues there. Her bath towel was damp, so she’d showered. The shower stall was empty. The linen closet: shelves full of towels and bed sheets and not a bit of my sister.

  The only place left in the house I hadn’t checked was the attic, and I wasn’t even sure there was an attic, or how you’d get into it. If Stevie were panicked, the attic wouldn’t have been an option anyhow.

  Think, I told myself. Check every possible space she could wedge herself into.

  Across from me was the built-in sink and vanity. Two sinks, each with a cupboard underneath and three columns of drawers flanking them.

  I pulled open the doors under the sink: tile cleanser and toilet bowl bleach.

  But there was another sink, a bigger sink.

  I raced downstairs to the kitchen. There, under the kitchen sink, curled up in a tight ball, was Stevie, fast asleep.

  Looking at her, my first thought was that the wrong one of us had learned to squeeze ourselves into the narrow spaces of a magician’s coffin.

  Relief washed over me, together with an urge to slap her silly for scaring me so badly. There was my sister, curled up around the sink pipe, her head tucked into her shoulder, her other arm at an unnatural angle to make herself fit into the cramped space, and she was asleep.

  One doctor—in Vienna, naturally, because why not go to the source—tried to explain away Stevie’s behavior as post-traumatic stress disorder. I had argued with him, saying that she’d always been a little strange, even when she was a toddler, sucking her thumb and doodling in Latin. At least, I think it was Latin; I know I couldn’t make heads or tails of the writing and it wasn’t Greek, because t
hat uses a different alphabet. The doctor had asked, “Was her home life unusual?” and that shut me right up. He then asked if there was any particular event she might have found especially stressful. We left his office.

  I put my hand between her head and the wall of the cabinet, leaned in close, and then screamed, “Stevie!” right in her ear.

  Her head banged backwards, against my fingers, and her eyes flew open. Her feet kicked against the wall of the cabinet and one knee slammed into the drainpipe.

  She was awake now.

  She looked at me with eyes wide with terror, until she processed what she was seeing and realized it was me. She squirmed, trying to get herself out of the contortions she had gotten her body into. I grabbed her under the knees and behind the back and pulled her out. Not the easiest stunt in the world—my sister, though slight, still weighed eighty-five or ninety pounds—but one I’d had enough practice with. She served as my main weight set, as I’d found it tough to work out at a gym on a regular basis.

  I plopped her onto the limestone counter. “Mind telling me what that was all about?”

  She gave me a wide-mouth smile and then threw her arms around my neck. “You’re here! You’re all right!”

  I gave into the hug for a moment before pulling away as much as I could, given that her fingers were digging into my upper arms. “I’m more concerned about you at the moment. This is a new one, even for you.”

  “You’re here.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  She had been expecting me not to come home. She’d been afraid that once Roberto had me in his sights, I was going to disappear and she would be alone.

  Which was the general idea, yes. But one thing at a time.

  I moved her curling bangs out of her eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay.” So much for telling her the truth. I’m a terrible sister. “But you’ve got to tell me why you were under there.”

  She hopped off the counter and immediately sank to one knee. “Ow, my foot.”

  “Sit. Your circulation’s probably iffy.” I filled the kettle for her and put it on the stove. Stevie and her cup of tea. Even made properly—and it so rarely is, especially in America, where people tend to make tea with water not quite hot enough poured over stale leaves and left steeping for much too long—I thought tea was a waste of good water.