“Well, you’ve got a lot of company in that club, Marigold.” Nancy shook her head. “That bastard even fooled federal agents trained to handle cases like this.”
“I still don’t understand what happened in Newport,” I confessed. “If Jared’s alive, who was murdered in my condo?”
“Some poor drunk he picked up in Providence. He promised him a big pay-off. First he asked the victim to impersonate him for a complete physical. That’s so the new doctor would be able to verify that he treated Jared Spears. Then, after breaking the guy’s arm in two places, he shipped him off to the emergency room for treatment. He needed his corpse to have verifiable injuries. Who’s going to bother reconstructing a face destroyed by a shotgun blast if the victim has a broken arm that was x-rayed by the local hospital and medical records from a respected physician?”
“That’s why Jared wore a cast for the last month of his life? He faked that broken arm?”
“He did indeed,” Rocky sighed. “This guy is a consummate con man.”
“At least this time around, you won’t have to worry about being a major witness,” Jeff smiled at me.
“I won’t?” I looked at Jeff, surprised. “But if Jared’s alive and I was his fiancée....”
“You won’t because you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of what happened and hearsay isn’t acceptable in court.”
“We made sure you had no idea what was going on,” Tom grinned. “If the Justice Department wants you to testify, there really isn’t much you can say, is there? You didn’t actually witness Jared murdering the man in your condo, any more than you actually participated in his money-laundering scheme.”
“But he hired people to kill me,” I pointed out. “He threatened me, stalked me, and his girlfriend even used my identity.”
“Yes, and it was all recorded, Marigold. The evidence speaks for itself. More importantly, we have a slew of present and former law enforcement agents as witnesses.”
“If I’m not a major witness in the case, does that mean I will still have to testify?” I looked at Jeff and the others, hopeful my nightmare was really over. After so many years of living under the radar, the thought of being so publicly exposed was terrifying.
“We’re going to fight tooth and nail to make sure you won’t have to testify in open court. And we have a secret weapon for our negotiations. Her name is Deirdre. As a Cornwall wife, she’s a disaster; but as a defense attorney, she’s unbeatable.”
“So, when it’s over, I guess that means I’ll get a new identity.” The thought of going back into the witness protection program made my heart sink. I had so loved my time with the Cornwalls and their friends. How could I say goodbye now? And yet, what other choice was there, especially if Jared was such a fiend? Wouldn’t his friends try to track me down for revenge?
“You, my dearest, are not going back into witness protection, not after what you’ve been through.” Jeff was adamant.
“But....”
“No ifs, ands, or buts. No. We’re going to make sure there is no need. You see, Marigold, your father’s work in genetically modifying the opium poppy has now been duplicated by so many others, it’s no longer classified. We aren’t even convinced there’s still a bounty on his head.”
“Really? Does that mean I won’t have to hide anymore? I can live my life under my real name?”
“We’re going to take it slow, kid.” Terry leaned forward, his face earnest. “You’ve spent your entire adult life in hiding, and it’s going to take us some time to make sure that we can safely bring you back out into the world. You’ll have to be patient a while longer, but I know you can do it.”
“Will I get to see my dad again?”
The others all glanced at each other and then at me. It was obvious they were keeping another secret, but I didn’t think it was necessarily a bad one. After all, they had proven they had my back through thick and thin.
“You never know, Marigold,” Tom replied. “We can’t really promise you anything, but sometimes things work out eventually.”
Nancy gave me a big smile. “Your life is about to change for the better, Marigold, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer girl.”
Jeff’s face was unreadable as I studied him, his emotions cloaked behind a benign smile. I had come to recognize this as a strategy he employed whenever he was keeping a secret from me. For a writer, as a TV producer, he was a little too good at all of this intrigue, a little too skilled at making things happen behind the scenes. Was there something I should know about this man I adored, some hidden history in his past?
After dinner, Rocky drove Jeff back to Atlanta. They insisted it was imperative that we put some distance between Jeff, the best-selling author and producer, and me, the victim of a major crime, so as to not attract the attention of a zealous press.
“Rule number one, Marigold. Never trust the paparazzi to keep anything a secret.” Jeff told me. “And rule number two is to never turn your back on them. They’re looking to make money, and they’ll do whatever they have to do to make that happen. It’s not about the truth; it’s about entertainment.”
“The woman they really want is Leesa, your doppelganger,” Rocky announced. “We need the facts to trickle out in the right way, so that everyone looks for her and understands you’re not really all that important in the scheme of things. The only reason Jared Spears picked you was because you bore a striking resemblance to his girlfriend. Once they realize you’re not handy, they’ll concentrate on finding Leesa. That’s why we’re going to hide you for a while.”
As Jeff and Rocky departed for the ride back to Atlanta, the rest of us played “Switch”. Terry, Nancy, and I vacated our penthouse to make it look like we left Cinnamon Beach. We took over the one Tom had used to monitor Kornbloom’s activities and spent the next several days cooped up inside those walls, tucked out of sight. If the dog had to go, we just snuck Coop out the back door of the building and stuck to the cluster of shrubs. Once a day, we all ventured out for an afternoon road trip or excursion. Anything else we needed, Tom provided. He moved back into the penthouse condo down the hall. When the press came knocking on his door, asking questions of neighbors, he had his story down pat.
Thanks to Jeff and Lincoln’s reminder to Deirdre that her client was caught on surveillance cameras trying to snatch Kary at the Atlanta airport at her request, she had the good sense to volunteer to represent me in my dealings with the Department of Justice. A few days after Jared was captured, I was summoned to the federal building for an official meeting about the case. The U. S. attorney informed us that he expected me to be his star witness, providing the testimony that would put Jared behind bars for the rest of his life. Manny Lewis even had a carrot to dangle before me. In exchange for my testimony, the Department of Justice was poised to override the objections of the United States Marshals Service -- I would be allowed to go back into the witness protection program.
“That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid,” my lawyer informed the group gathered in the conference room.
“Say what?” Manny Lewis’s triumphant smile crumpled into a disbelieving frown. “Why not?”
“There is no good purpose in having Ms. Flowers testify at Jared’s trial, since she didn’t actually witness any of the more egregious crimes with which he is charged. Ms. Flowers did nothing to bring this upon herself or the United States Marshals Service. She cooperated fully with her handlers and informed them of her activities. Her previous status as a protected witness had nothing to do with what Jared Spears and I will not put my client’s life in greater jeopardy because you’re looking for a conviction.”
“But....” the U. S. attorney sputtered.
“But nothing!” Deirdre retorted. “This whole case has been an absolute debacle!”
By the time she was done laying out the foundation for the civil lawsuit she was preparing on my behalf, they were scared witless that she would wreak havoc with their case and make the marshals seem like the bad guys.
“Thanks to all of the professional efforts by Ms. Flowers’ unofficial security team to document her experience at the hands of Jared Spears, you have significant evidence to utilize for your prosecution. It’s a slam-dunk case for the federal government. Leesa Braun, not my client, was complicit in Jared Spears’ criminal activities. She was the woman who stole my client’s identity. That’s the person you should be focusing upon, not the woman known as Margot Floyd, not the woman known as Marigold Flowers,” Deirdre haughtily informed the group of assembled lawyers and federal agents. “Furthermore, the marshals deliberately risked my client’s life by violating witness security protocols and running an unofficial investigation. As a result, my client suffered irreparable harm and nearly lost her life on more than one occasion.”
“Excuse me?” one of the assistant U. S. attorneys piped in, amused. She snickered, gazing around at her colleagues before turning back to Deirdre. “At the risk of suggesting you’re playing to a lawyer’s sense of the dramatic, how exactly do you figure she suffered harm? She lived to tell the tale, didn’t she?”
Chapter Forty Four
Deirdre poured herself a paper cup of water from the carafe in the center on the table. She took a long sip, placed the cup in front of herself, and then pointed an icy glare at the speaker. “My client nearly drowned because she had been locked in the trunk of a dead hit woman’s car that was run off the road by a second hired killer and sent into the water. She went into shock from hypothermia.”
“Surely you can’t blame the marshals for that,” the woman responded. “They weren’t with your client when she was kidnapped.”
“They should have been. Their failure to follow regulations caused the situation.” Deirdre mustered all the disdain she could find the smug thirty-something lawyer with the tight ponytail. “They knew my client was in grave danger at the Gilded Nest and failed to warn her.”
That comment set off one of the WitSec representatives, just as Deirdre had probably hoped it would. I watched as a rather large vein at his temple pulsed madly.
“Are you kidding me?”He was positively apoplectic as he tried to rise up from his chair. Another marshal urged him to sit down.
“We had a marshal down! It was a confused mess!” Shaun’s replacement sputtered. “What did you expect us to do?”
“Your job. My client was innocent, and if your people had properly followed procedures, they would have found what her unofficial security team found, that she is a good and honorable woman who should have been treated far better than she was!”
“What a crock of....”
Deirdre held up a hand and silenced him. “The fact remains that Ms. Flowers should have been transferred to a new witness protection team in New York State when she was relocated. If she had been, it is likely that new team would have uncovered the plot to set her up and prevented the harm that was done to her and even to your own marshals. You people need to take responsibility for your actions.”
“Give me a break!” the marshal growled, exasperated. “How was she harmed? She looks fine to me!”
“She was shot and required extensive reconstructive surgery.”
“Shot? Hirsh, why am I just hearing about this now?” the United States Attorney impatiently demanded of the ponytailed woman. She cringed, turning to a male colleague for a whispered conversation before responding.
“We...we know nothing about any shooting, boss,” Hirsh confessed.
“Here are the hospital records,” said my attorney, slapping a thick folder down on the table with great emphasis. “She should not have to pay for injuries that occurred due to the negligence of her WitSec handlers.”
A prosecutor, sitting at Hirsh’s elbow, flipped open the file. I watched the color drain from his face as he saw the documents before him. “Oh, crap!”
“Let me see, Dorfman.” Hirsh waited as he slid the file across the table to her. She read a couple of paragraphs before her eyes grew wide, alarmed by what she saw. “Oh, damn!”
The marshals were still clinging to the story that I had voluntarily quit the program, offering as evidence an email sent from my hacked computer. For all intents and purposes, once I was terminated from the program, what happened to me was of no further interest to the United States Marshals Service. No one on the team had bothered to document the incident at the Gilded Nest, let alone my ear injury. There was no paperwork filed, no incident report written, no follow-up interview conducted; more breaches of federal protocols.
“Let me see the report on the incident, Bob,” Manny Lewis instructed the marshal closest to him.
“It’s not available,” was the tersely worded reply.
“Make it available.”
“I can’t, sir.” Bob tried to bluster his way out of the equation without much success.
“Can’t or won’t?” Manny Lewis turned to face the man sitting in the hot seat and it seemed pretty obvious he wasn’t going to drop the matter.
“Can’t. It was never...er, written,” Bob finally acknowledged.
“That’s ridiculous.” The U. S. attorney was appalled. “That’s not how the system works.”
“And yet,” Deirdre interrupted, taking back control of the conversation, “it’s what happened. Rather punitive, don’t you think? Hardly due process as guaranteed under the Constitution, is it? No trial by judge or jury. No oversight. No case review. No nothing. Just a kick out the door because your people decided my client was guilty of wrongdoing. And instead of sharing their concerns with the FBI that she was involved in criminal activity, so these alleged crimes could be properly investigated and prosecuted, they took matters into their own hands and screwed up royally. They even failed to tell the United States Marshals Service what they were doing, in order to avoid scrutiny. Was it merely a matter of the boss retiring and not wanting to end his career on a black note or a vendetta to teach my client a lesson about messing with the marshals? The reason why doesn’t much matter. It happened, and as a result, my client was harmed. She might have drowned in the trunk of that car. She might have suffered a heart attack or died of hypothermia. And if the bullet that struck her had been an inch closer, her brains would have been scrambled all over Windham, New York. Real harm, ladies and gentlemen.”
The mood in the conference room grew more somber the longer Deirdre stood there, listing the particulars of the case. As much as I felt compassion for Shaun, Eve, and Tovar, I had to admit they really did botch things up. They could have gotten me killed and no one would have ever known I was innocent.
“Surely it wasn’t deliberate or malicious on their part. They did what they thought was in the best interests of their agency,” Hirsh announced, trying to smooth things over. “We can certainly all agree that they were deliberately misled about her involvement in the criminal activities and acted on the bad information. It happens sometimes in law enforcement. And now that she has been cleared of all suspicion in the case, we can use her testimony to put Jared Spears behind bars.”
“No.” Deirdre swiped at imaginary lint on her tight pencil skirt before sitting back down in her chair. She took her time crossing her legs, giving Manny Lewis ample opportunity to admire at what she had to offer as a woman. I shook my head in disbelief. Small wonder Lincoln never had a chance at making his marriage work. Deirdre was a real player and she played to win. If that meant distracting men to gain the upper hand in a legal case, she was more than happy to do it.
“No?” Hirsh couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
“Once again, I think not,” said my attorney with a sniff of disdain for the whole idea. “Bad idea.”
Stunned, the assistant U. S. attorney turned quickly and spoke into Dorfman’s ear. With her back to me, all I saw was her ponytail swaying back and forth, until she finally turned back to us and said two words. “Why not?”
“You people will probably flip Jared Spears, and when you do, my client is likely to get the short end of the stick yet again. I won’t have that. Her
testimony is not critical to your case. And let’s be honest, Manny,” Deirdre purred, directing her attention to the handsome U. S. attorney, “you and I both know this case is an opportunity for you to advance your career, if you can get Jared Spears to come clean on his money-laundering operations. You’d be an idiot not to go for it.”
“Perhaps you and I should set aside some time to discuss this matter off the record,” Manny suggested to Deirdre, glancing at her stocking-covered legs and stiletto heels like a hungry wolf checking out a potential lamb chop for dinner. He obviously had no idea he was dealing with another wolf in sheep’s clothing. “I think we might be able to negotiate a reasonable solution to all this.”
“I will be happy to meet with you one-on-one to discuss a settlement,” she concurred, “provided you intend to see my client’s losses are compensated adequately.”
Hirsh rolled her eyes, rather perturbed at being elbowed out of the game, and let out an audible sigh of disgust. The men in the group just stared down at their files, avoiding eye contact. I noticed one or two of them briefly smiled. Dorfman just looked straight ahead, stone-faced, but his knee was pumping like a piston under pressure, trying to stay up to speed on the situation.
Tom, watching his boss’s former sister-in-law in action, shook his head in wonder. Leaning over to me, he whispered in my ear. “Isn’t she something else? By the time five o’clock rolls around, Deirdre’s going to have this jerk eating out of her hand and believing he’s the next governor-elect.”
For the rest of the meeting, the conversation between the two lawyers sizzled with so much sexual tension, I almost expected them to knock all the papers off the conference table and go at it even as we sat on the sidelines and watched.
“Excuse me, but I think it’s inappropriate for you to....” Dorfman put a warning hand on the assistant U. S. attorney when she started to admonish her boss.
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