by Adams,Claire
“Yes, thanks for coming,” I said, trying to go into boss mode and forget for a few minutes how much I loved her and how badly I wanted her. “Please, sit.” I stood and motioned at a chair, and instead of sitting back down behind my desk I sat in the other wing-backed chair opposite her.
“I suppose you heard what happened last night?”
“Yes, I couldn’t miss it. It’s all over the news, and there are reporters all over outside. It’s still hard to believe.”
“There are also federal agents here, unfortunately,” I told her.
“FBI?” she asked.
“Yes. They are with Mac right now. They believe that Brigham had something to do with Vick’s murder. Mac is trying to get out of them exactly what we have, but I don’t think he’ll have much luck. Our only goal in being here is to make sure his attorneys are aware he is a person of interest, so our case doesn’t fall apart somewhere along the line for not following the letter of the law.”
“Adam, do you think Brigham had anything to do with it?”
I hesitated as I decided how to phrase my answer. I wasn’t trying to keep things from Alicia. I didn’t want to alarm her needlessly, either. Finally, I said, “He denies it, and we are his attorneys, so it really doesn’t matter anyways, does it?”
“What do you need from me?” Alicia asked, knowing that I was leading somewhere by telling her this. I felt an ache in my chest. I wanted to tell her what I needed from her, on all levels. Instead, I made myself focus on the task at hand and said,
“I need you to hand all of your open cases over to Kyla and Nico, and I need you to take on the criminal portion of this case. Mac and I will continue to represent the oil company, but I need you to represent Brigham, whether or not he ends up being arrested. There are going to be a lot of interviews with police and FBI, not to mention the press conferences. I need you on that; you can have as many of the junior associates and paralegals as you need to help.” Alicia looked dumbfounded. She knew how good I thought she was at her job, but she was also still new. I just hoped I wasn’t putting too much on her.
“Why me?”
“You have the most criminal experience of us all, Alicia. Our forte here was corporate and domestic before you, Nico, and Kyla came on board. You are all good, but I believe you are the best we have. Brigham is our number one client. We can’t afford to hand him over to someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing. Also,” I hesitated again before going on to say, “the authorities are bound to turn up some things in our investigation of Brigham that we would prefer the public and even some of our firm not know about. I believe I can trust you to do what needs to be done to keep certain things out of the press.”
She nodded. I could tell that she wasn’t absolutely convinced that she was experienced enough to handle a case of this magnitude, but my mind was made up that she was the one I wanted. She finally said, “Okay, where do I start?”
“You’re having breakfast with Miles Brigham IV in about two hours at his home. He can tell you what he knows, and you, as his attorney can tell him what, if anything he can tell the authorities.”
“Okay,” Alicia said as we both stood up. “I’ll get familiar with his file in the meantime.”
“No, there’s no time for that now. Brigham’s estate is upstate. You will be going straight to the airport from here. His private jet will pick you up in about forty-five minutes, and you will be driven from the landing strip to his estate.”
“My head is spinning a little bit here, Adam.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, and I’m sorry. We have to be proactive here and get ahead of the press and the FBI, if possible.”
She nodded. Her auburn hair shone underneath the fluorescent lights of my office, and I wanted to just bury my face in it and forget about everything. I knew there was no time for that – and there was also the chance that she might not want me to touch her right now.
“Alicia.” She turned to look at me and the desire to touch her practically overwhelmed me. She locked those gorgeous hazel eyes into mine and waited. At last I said, “Marjorie and I go to court on Monday. Hopefully, that part of my life will be over soon. Please, don’t give up on me just yet.”
She only nodded again. I was hoping for more than that, but the truth was, I knew it was more than I deserved after all I had put her through. She was much more patient than most women would have been and much more patient than myself. She closed the door behind her as she left, and I could only hope that she wouldn’t close the door on us just yet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALICIA
I once again tucked away my thoughts about Adam and me and set out to meet the man that was the subject of every news brief in America right then. Brigham’s plane was extravagant, to say the least. I was the only passenger, yet the jet was fully staffed. I was offered food, coffee, juice, tea, and even a champagne mimosa. I chose the coffee, and then asked for a few moments of privacy so I could familiarize myself with Miles Brigham IV.
His file was thick. Adam’s people had done their job well. Adam had investigators on staff whose only job was to gather as much background as possible on prospective clients. Adam believed that the more you knew about a person, the better you could represent them.
Brigham’s file went all the way back to his birth. He was born to mega-wealthy parents, who had also been born to wealthy parents, and so on and so forth. The Petroleum Company had been in the family for over a hundred years. Miles IV had inherited it earlier than most of his predecessors. On the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday, his parents were both killed in a single engine plane accident. They had been flying out to New York from Texas for his birthday party. Miles IV was young, but his entire life had been spent in preparation for the day he would take over the company. He was what the financial community referred to as a “whiz kid,” taking the profits up and over where any other oil company had ever gone. There was speculation amongst Federal Authorities and financial wizards that all of Miles IV’s business dealings were not exactly legal, but if there were any hard evidence of that, it was yet to be found.
Miles IV had been married four times. His most recent ex-wife had only been 22 years old when he married her. She was 23 when she divorced him. What brains the man had for business was lost when it came to love. At 54 years old, he had given hundreds of millions of dollars of his and his family’s fortune to ex-wives. His attorneys had always urged him to get a prenuptial agreement prior to marrying them, as did his children, both of whom were now grown and rightfully concerned that if their father continued his liaisons with these types of women, there would be no inheritance left for them.
Miles began to get into politics about five years ago. From what I had read thus far, it seemed to me that his choice was based on a cross between boredom with his everyday activities and needing more places to put his money in order to keep the IRS from taking huge chunks.
Vick Landon had approached him almost four years prior after meeting at a democratic rally and spoke to him about the benefits of investing in the American president. The President was just a hopeful at the time, but Vick had said that with the right financial backers, he could go all the way and do great things for this country. Alicia wasn’t certain if the country was Miles IV’s main concern or not, but it would seem he decided there was something great enough there for someone that he invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the president’s campaign. Thanks to that support, the presidential hopeful was able to put on a campaign that outdid all of his competition and convince the constituents that he was the right man to restore financial order to America once again.
Vick shot to the top of political circles quickly after that. If not for him, the President may have never received enough funding to get where he was. Miles Brigham IV was always welcome at the White House, and to the chagrin of some of the President’s close advisers, he was perhaps more involved in policy making than he should have been.
Adam’s good
friend Alex Fritz was a close friend of Vick’s. They ran in the same circles, and it was through Alex that Adam had made the contact with Brigham, and our business relationship was born.
As I read through the file, I made note that Mr. Brigham had also been implicated in many crimes over the years, none of which amounted to an arrest, much less a conviction. Being accused of things was one thing – proving it was something else entirely. Miles Brigham IV had the money and the connections to pay the best lawyers, and in some cases, evidence and even people just disappeared.
Brigham’s most controversial problem had taken place almost ten years prior, when his third wife, thirty-two-year-old Kelly Brigham, a former topless dancer and self-proclaimed cosmetic surgery addict “fell” off of a cliff while hiking in the hills with her husband. Police and press were suspicious, due to the facts that for one, Kelly Brigham was not an outdoorsy type of girl, secondly, many people had overheard her and Miles IV arguing loudly earlier in the day, and finally, a busboy in the restaurant at the lodge where the couple had been staying had reportedly overheard Miles IV telling Kelly that she should “watch herself” because people “disappeared off the sides of cliffs in this place all the time.”
The problem with their case was: Kelly’s family, who consisted only of her crack-addict mother and her drug dealer brother stood in Miles IV’s corner and told all who would listen what an amazing husband he had been to Kelly and how he had “turned her life around.” The police suspected a payoff there, You think?, but again, could prove nothing.
The people that had said they heard the argument in the lobby of the lodge that day either recanted their stories, saying they “must have been mistaken” or left no forwarding addresses in which the police and district attorney could track them down. The busboy from the restaurant was one of the people who had “left town.” No one at the lodge knew where he may have gone, and the police had been unable to track him down.
I sat the thick file down, yawned, and stretched out my legs. I poured myself a glass of water from the fresh pitcher the attendant had left me a bit ago and mulled over what I had just read. The biggest question on my mind was the one question I would never ask Mr. Brigham. “Is he a murderer?”
I pictured Miles Brigham IV. I had met him once and had seen him coming and going many times at the office. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man. His gray hair was stylishly cut to just above the collar of his shirts. He rarely wore a suit. Instead, he wore famous brand shirts and designer jeans. I had not ever really noticed his shoes, but he struck me as a cowboy boot kind of man. I had a hard time picturing this man tossing his wife off of a cliff or bludgeoning a man to death. I knew, though, that looks are very often deceiving and recalled what Adam had said earlier about it not mattering if he was guilty or not. I knew that. My job was to give Miles IV the best defense possible. Innocence or guilt was for a jury to decide, not me.
My plane landed on that thought, and I filed away my concerns about whether or not Mr. Brigham had killed his wife, tucking them away for later. When I stepped off the plane, I saw that the great man himself was waiting to meet me. He stood at the bottom of the steps of the ramp, his long, black limousine parked alongside him. He smiled a wide, welcoming smile as I descended.
"Ms. Winston, I presume?" he asked as he offered a hand to help me down the last few steps. I smiled back and took his outstretched hand with my free one.
"Yes, Mr. Brigham, thank you."
"We have met before, haven't we?" He motioned to his driver to retrieve the bag I carried. “I recall seeing you several times afterwards. I regret that we never had time to get to know one another."
"Well, I am looking forward to working with you," I told him as the driver held the door to the car open for us. "And, thank you for the amazing ride here. That had to be the smoothest flight I've ever been on."
Brigham laughed and said, "I reckon I'm a bit spoiled. I can't even remember the last time I flew commercial."
We both slid into the roomy backseat of the car. Brigham offered to pour me a drink as the driver began the journey. I wasn't much of a drinker and wanted a clear head for our work this evening so I declined and accepted a sparkling water, instead.
"So, Mr. Brigham, if you don't mind, tell me what has happened thus far."
Miles sighed loudly. "This is all so unnecessary. I have done many things, young lady, but I assure you, murder is not one of them."
I gave him a reassuring smile and nodded, but I couldn't help remembering what I had read about his third wife. I shook that off and said,
"Our goal here, Mr. Brigham, is to avoid your arrest completely. I need you to tell me anything and everything you know about Vick and whatever you may know about who or why someone would want to murder him. I also need to know why the police would think you would be involved in this."
"Well, for starters, I hated that little rat bastard. When I feel a certain way about someone, I tell them straight out. I told him more than once. I'm afraid I told him in front of more than one person. I think I even used the words once that the little SOB should be wiped right off the face of the earth."
I winced. We would have to work on the way he phrased things if this ever went to court.
"I didn't mean that, literally. I just say things when I get angry, and I don't think about how they sound or even who may be listening. It's given me cause for the services of many a good lawyer over the years."
He said the last with a small chuckle as he drained the contents of his glass. I was not shocked to see him chugging bourbon so early in the day. His penchant for loose, busty women was no match for his penchant for alcohol, and the press had played them both up in more ways than either of them could count. I continued on with my interview,
"Do you mind telling me why you loathed Vick so much?"
As he poured another snifter of scotch, he said, “I met Vick when he was nothing but a snot-faced kid with a lot of big dreams. He was smart, I'll give him that, and I was impressed with the boy's tenacity. He had gotten a job working on the President's campaign right out of college. He worked every angle there was to get donors for the campaign, including me. Did you know that I am the reason he got the job as the campaign manager? He finagled a promise from the President's right hand man that if he could get me on board, the job was his."
Miles laughed again, but there was little humor in it. "He started out trying to work me the way he did everyone else. He gathered as much background on me and my company as he could, and tried to work the 'I'll get him to back every law and proposition that you want passed’ angle. I told him straight out that I had enough money and enough friends in high places that I tended to get what I wanted, either way.
“Then, the steel-balled little bastard...excuse my language, I'm not used to speaking with ladies that often. Anyways, he did something that surprised me. He just came straight out and told me about the promise he had received to be the President's campaign manager. I was impressed with that, I have to say. Hell, I was gonna give my money to somebody, right? Gotta keep those tax write-offs piling up. So, I agreed, Vick got the job, and the rest as we say, is history."
I waited a moment for him to go on, and when he didn't, I said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Brigham, but that doesn't really explain why you hated him."
Brigham cracked the window slightly and then turned to me and said, "We are just about to my place. I have a few meetings this afternoon I just can't get out of, but I've set up the library for you with all the documents you need to go over pertaining to my business dealings with Vick. I would appreciate it, if you don't mind so much, if we continue that conversation over dinner later?"
"Of course," I agreed. I was disappointed. I had thought I would be able to spend the day gaining what I needed from Miles in order to stave off the police and FBI. I doubted that I would be able to get that from reviewing financial documents. He was the client though, and I was on the clock. That made him the boss for now, and I'd have to do it his way.
> When I stepped out of the car, I felt like I had stepped right into a fantasy. The mansion stood before us, framed by lush green lawns stretching out for what seemed like miles. Trees and flowers were everywhere, and the largest, most breathtaking fountain flowed and bubbled with clear, cool water. The front of the home was supported with huge, white pillars and an oak balcony framed the upper floor. My family was well-off and I grew up in a really nice estate, but our entire home would have fit in his enormous front yard.
"It's lovely," I told him as he helped me out of the car.
Brigham looked up at the house and said simply, "It's home."
The entryway was just as grand. The floors were white and soft gray marble. An elegant chandelier hung from a vaulted ceiling and cascaded prisms of light across the spiral staircase that laid to the right of it. A smartly-dressed lady with her hair held back tightly in a bun greeted us at the door. Brigham introduced her as "Hannah" he told me that she was in charge of the household and that I should let her know if I needed anything.
He took Hannah off to the side for a moment and gave her instructions that I couldn't quite hear. He then told me again that he "just couldn't get out of" these meetings he had to go to, and to please help myself to any of the documents he had lain out for me in the library.
With that, he said goodbye and left me alone in the mansion, with Hannah of course. She showed me to the library, and after showing me where everything was that I might need, she left to make me a pot of tea.
I sighed, took off my jacket, and got to work sorting through all of the documents. At some point, Hannah returned with the tea and some cookies. My cell phone rang a few times, but I chose to ignore it. I surprised myself by becoming engrossed in the task before me. I had been concerned about spending the day trying to stay awake over the boring documents I would have to read. Instead, I had been handed a yellow legal pad by Hannah when I first sat down. She had told me to read it carefully, and then go through the documents as the instructions stated. I was intrigued.