by Diane Castle
“Where to next?” he whispered.
“Desk,” I said.
We went to the desk and started looking. Dorian squirmed as I pushed and pulled him in different directions to get the drawers out of the body of the desk.
“What are you looking for?” Dorian wanted to know.
“A jump drive,” I lied. “It had Schaeffer’s expert report on it, and I need it to retain another witness. Which, I might add, I’m having an awfully hard time doing in a week, especially under the circumstances. How about a Rule Eleven agreement for a continuance?”
“Why bother with that?” Dorian said. “Just take the settlement offer.”
“I can’t do that without a client, and you know it.”
Nash paused in sorting through the contents of his drawer and looked up. “Are you two seriously negotiating the case right now?”
“Way I like it,” I said. “If only I could always negotiate with opposing counsel tied up and blindfolded. It would make getting a settlement a lot easier.”
“I didn’t know you were kinky like that,” Dorian said. “How come you never told me?”
“Shut up,” I said. “You know what I meant. You want to agree to a continuance, or not?”
“If I do, will you uncuff me?” Dorian asked.
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
I had been through three drawers and found no more false bottoms, no tapes, no mysterious messages, no nothing. Nash looked like he was in about the same shape. We moved back to the bookshelf and started looking behind books. We also randomly opened some and paged through, hoping to find some pieces of paper lodged in there, or a secret hole cut in the paper, or something.
Who were we kidding? There must be hundreds, maybe thousands of books on these shelves, which spanned the whole length of the wall. And the rest of the house was large and equally full of stuff. We couldn’t possibly hope to do a thorough search in the time we had with Dorian in the way.
I could tell by the look on Nash’s face that he was probably thinking the same thing. Nevertheless, we plowed through.
“As a gesture of good faith, I agree to a continuance,” Dorian said. “Do you think a month will be long enough for you to find your client and make the settlement offer?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know where she went.”
“Well, I agree to a month.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I agree that if I find her, I’ll tell her you made a ridiculous offer and counsel her to refuse it.”
Dorian shifted positions by the desk. “Okay, Chloe. Time to get real. This little verbal sparring match has been fun and all, but let’s be frank. You don’t really have a leg to stand on in this case. You don’t even have an expert witness. In fact, right now, you don’t even have a client. If she never comes back, I can have the case dismissed for lack of prosecution.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked, still paging frantically through the books on the shelf.
“If you’re asking me if I’ll file the motion, absolutely. It’s just business.”
“And what if your client just offs her, instead. Wouldn’t that be much easier?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.” Dorian shifted positions again. I could tell he was getting uncomfortable—physically, if not mentally.
“Am I?” I asked. “I think you know better than that.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying,” he said, “but I don’t like the sound of it. It sounds like a defamation suit to me.”
“Another threat?” I asked. “You’re really working hard to get me to come back home with you now, aren’t you?”
“At this point, I think it seems safe to say that’s not going to happen,” Dorian said. “If you were just looking for a jump drive with an expert report on it, you wouldn’t have me cuffed to the desk and blindfolded, would you?”
Nash abruptly slammed the book he was paging through back into the shelf, and Dorian jumped when he heard the sound. Good. I was glad Dorian was jumpy.
Nash moved over to the sofa cushions. I headed to the fireplace and lifted an iron shovel from the rack. Instead of bashing Dorian’s head in, which felt like an attractive option for me at the moment, I opted to poke through some very old ashes from last winter.
“If you were really looking for me,” I said to Dorian, “you wouldn’t be here in the middle of the night, would you?”
Dorian sighed and shifted positions again. “What did Schaeffer have?”
So he really was wise to the situation after all. I was glad I hadn’t expected any less.
“What do you mean?” I stalled.
“Do me a favor. You cut the crap, and I will too. I know you’re here looking for it, just like everyone else has been. This place is like Grand Central Station. You’re lucky it was me here tonight instead of someone else. Unlike Delmont and the rest of them, I really do care about you.”
“I don’t for one second believe you give two cents about me, but how nice of you to stop pretending you have no idea what’s going on.”
I found nothing in the ashes and cast around for somewhere else to look instead. I settled on the piano and started with the bench. Nash had moved on to the chairs. I took comfort in the fact that Dorian had referred to the object of our search as ‘it,’ rather than ‘them.’ Maybe that meant he wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for.
“I know Delmont is in PetroPlex’s pocket,” Dorian said. “But I’m sure that was obvious even to you.”
“I am so flattered by your estimation of my intelligence,” I said sourly.
“And I know Schaeffer had something on PetroPlex. But I don’t know what it was.”
“Then what are you doing here?” I asked, moving on to search the piano’s plate and fallboard.
“Hoping to find out,” he said. “I don’t like the emotional tenor at the refinery. Something has clearly gotten my client upset, but they’re not talking about it. I can’t adequately represent them if I’m not fully aware of what I’m dealing with.”
“Oh, so you’re just doing your job,” I said. “Going above and beyond.”
“It’s the client of my career,” Dorian said. “They can make me rich.”
“You’re already rich.”
“Okay, richer,” he said. “There’s no such thing as too rich.”
“Yeah, there is actually,” I said. “When you’re so rich you can turn the government into your own personal marionette, that’s too rich.”
“That’s capitalism.”
“Yes, but democracy is better. What good is unchecked capitalism if it threatens democracy? There have to be checks and balances.”
“So you’re a socialist now?” Dorian asked.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m a moderate. In all things moderation. I know you’re not too familiar with the Good Book, but that’s actually Biblical, you know.”
The piano was clean. Nash had finished searching the chairs.
“Now what?” Nash said.
“I’ll take the bedrooms, you take the kitchen.”
Nash nodded and headed for the hallway.
“By the way,” I said to Dorian, “I know you’re dedicated to your career, but I still think you know more than you’re letting on.”
“Which implies that you do too.”
“Get comfortable,” I said. “You’re in for a long night. Maybe the crime scene techs will let you out in the morning.”
I slammed the door behind me. Dorian didn’t even bother to call after me. He knew better.
Our search of the rest of the house turned up nothing.
Not knowing what else to do, we left Dorian there and headed back to Gracie’s root cellar.
CHAPTER 29
I tried repeatedly to start up a conversation with Nash on the way back to the root cellar, but Nash refused to bite. He met my attempts at friendly chatter with stonewall silence.
“Okay, can we talk about this?” I finally asked.
; “What’s to talk about?”
“What’s not to talk about? Listen, about Dorian. . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nash said. “Like I said, I can see that Dorian is still fresh for you. I shouldn’t have. . . done what I did.”
“Arrrgh!” I said. “Dorian is not fresh. Dorian is two years ago.”
“You’re still angry, which means it’s fresh.”
“You know what makes me angry? Do you? You! You make me angry! Who are you to tell me how I feel? You have no idea what’s going on inside my head! How dare you think you know everything there is to know about me! How dare you say the things you just said and do the things you just did and back off immediately! You have no right to jerk me around like that!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe if you had made it clear that you were still emotionally involved with your ex—“
“I’m not! Why can’t you understand that?”
“He kissed you. He seemed to think he had the right to do it. Why would he act that way without a reason?”
“He had a reason,” I said. “He thought he could cover the fact that he was up to no good by pretending he still cared about me. That’s all you saw.”
“That’s not what it looked like.”
“I don’t care what it looked like! I’m telling you what it was!”
“Well, what about me?” Nash asked. “Maybe I’m not ready. Did you ever think of that?”
“You’re the one who kissed me. I didn’t kiss you. So don’t go making this all my fault when you’re the one who started it.”
Nash said nothing.
I felt bad for snapping at him, but seriously. This was not my fault. If he hadn’t been ready, he should never have rushed it. I wouldn’t have pushed him, as much as I might have wanted to.
I was starting to think that maybe he had trust issues, thanks to his past. Like, maybe having been driven from his home town by corruption only to find himself in the midst of even more corruption, he had a hard time believing that anyone’s motives could be pure and good—even mine. Maybe he felt that if he let his guard down for one second, he’d be burned again. That seemed possible.
“You can trust me,” I said.
Nash still said nothing.
“For real, it’s okay,” I said.
I looked over at him. He didn’t turn his head. He refused to respond.
“You have to talk to me some time, you know. It’s going to be a rotten day in the root cellar otherwise.”
I saw a muscle in his jaw clench, but other than that, I got no response.
Despite further attempts to get him to talk, he gave me the silent treatment all the way back to Gracie’s.
When we crawled down the stairway, I tried to bury my feelings of frustration and appear cheerful. I called out, “Lucy! I’m home!”
Miles’ voice came back to me with a Cuban accent. “You’ve got some ’splainin to do!”
Lucy launched herself at me, tail wagging, tongue hanging out. She bucked up and down, happy to see me. I scooped her up and gave her a kiss.
“How could you go off and leave me like that?” Miles said.
“You wanted to come?” I asked. “I thought you wanted to get your beauty rest.”
“Of course I didn’t want to go,” Miles said. “But you might have at least said goodbye. These days, who knows if you’re ever coming back?”
“Nice,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Did you find the tapes?” Cameron wanted to know.
“No,” I said. “We looked everywhere and couldn’t find a thing.”
Miles was looking Nash and his sour expression up and down. “Geez, whatsamatter with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Nash said.
“We ran into Dorian at Schaeffer’s house, and now Nash is all pissed off and giving me the silent treatment.” I put Lucy down and she ran back over to Miles.
“Ooooooohh,” said Miles knowingly.
Nash rolled his eyes.
I filled them both in on the situation at Schaeffer’s and turned to Cameron. “Did you have any luck back here?”
“Actually, I think I found something,” Cameron said.
“What have you got?” Nash asked.
“I found an email from Gerald Fitz to Mayor Fillion expressing concerns about the loyalty of his VP.”
“Lewis?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Cameron said, excitedly. “Think about it. If the insider were Frederick Lewis, he would have more access to Fitz than anyone else at the company. It would have been easy for him to make recordings of private conversations. It fits.”
“So what do we do about it?” I asked.
“We talk to him,” Nash said.
“Wow,” I said. “Are you sure you’re capable of doing that? I mean, it involves actual speech and all.” I knew I shouldn’t have been so acerbic, but I was really tired and the filters on my mouth weren’t operating at maximum capacity.
Nash ignored me. “I say we all get some sleep and see if we can catch him at his house before he leaves for work in the morning.”
Mister big man. Laying down the plan. Ordinarily, I might not have been irritated, but now, I was. “Who says you get to make all the rules?” I asked. “Who says me and Miles and Cameron don’t get a say?”
“Rawrrr,” Miles said, making a cat noise and holding up claws. “Somebody needs a nap.”
Cameron’s eyebrows raised at this exchange, but he didn’t say anything.
“Okay, Chloe,” Nash said patronizingly. “What would you like to do?”
I really didn’t have a better plan. “I say we go catch him at his house before he leaves for work in the morning and see if he’ll talk to us.”
Nash sighed. “Fine,” he said. “That’s just fine with me.”
With that, he stalked over to a cot and went to sleep.
***
In the morning, Miles refused to get up. He lifted one eyelid, muttered something about the dangers of sleep deficits, and said “goodbye.” That was it. So I figured he wasn’t going.
Cameron was still monitoring data, looking for anything else that might be helpful. Nobody thought that one person should go to Lewis’s house alone, so that left me and Nash, together alone again.
We pulled up to our destination at 6:30 A.M.
Frederick Lewis lived in one of the biggest houses in Kettle—an old Victorian-style mansion with white lace trim on country blue siding and a perfectly manicured lawn. It was set in the middle of a massive estate, surrounded by acres and acres of land. No neighbors. What a luxury that would be! A covered patio surrounded the entire house, and the patio itself was surrounded by magnificent rose bushes that were all in bloom.
I inhaled deeply. I loved the scent of roses. They were by far my favorite flower. So romantic. The very thought of romance brought back all the memories from the night before, and I glared at Nash.
“What?” he asked.
I just turned away. Two could play the silent treatment game.
I had borrowed some clothes from Gracie’s closet this morning. They were way too big and much frumpier than I would have preferred, but I had been wearing the black suit pants and purple cami for two days, and they were starting to reek.
Standing in front of the door, Nash spun me around and felt for the gun tucked into my pants at the small of my back.
“Safety’s off,” he said, shortly. “Heads up.”
I nodded.
He checked his own weapon and rang the doorbell.
We waited, but no one answered.
We knocked, and waited some more, then knocked louder and waited again.
Finally, Lewis answered the door. He was unshaven and in his bathrobe. His eyes widened when he saw me.
“Chloe! Wow! Come in.” I took this as a good sign and shot Nash a glance to communicate my feelings about it.
We walked in and let Lewis lead us to a plush, Victorian-styled living room with ornate chairs, velvet drapes
, and everything—obviously styled with a woman’s touch. And yet, I didn’t hear anyone else in the house.
“Who is your friend?” Lewis asked.
Nash extended his arm for a handshake. “Detective Jensen Nash.”
“Oh yes,” Lewis said. “I know you by reputation, of course. I’m afraid my wife is out of town visiting her mother, otherwise there would be coffee ready.”
“We’re fine,” I said.
“Good, good,” Lewis said. “Glad to hear it. That you’re okay, in general, I mean.”
Nash frowned. Lewis seemed a little nervous, but that didn’t strike me as unnatural under the circumstances. It was very early in the morning, and we had surprised him, after all.
“So what brings you here this morning?” Lewis asked.
Nash started to say something, but I put my hand on his knee, letting him know I’d handle it.
“I think you know,” I said.
“Yes, well, if it’s about the case, Dorian has full authority to—“
“It’s not about the case,” I said. “Well, kind of, it is, I guess.”
“Schaeffer’s info. . .” Lewis said uncertainly.
“Yes. We know about his inside guy and the tapes. It’s okay. We’re on your side and here to help.”
“Chloe—“ Nash said.
Lewis cut him off. “Right. The tapes. I have the tapes.”
I let out a big sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”
“Do you know what’s on them?” Lewis asked.
“Chloe,” Nash started again, but I waved him off.
“No,” I said. “Your guys killed Schaeffer before he could even tell me about them.”
“My guys?”
“Well, not your guys, obviously, but PetroPlex. The bad guys. Once we get the tapes to Cameron, he’ll be able to get them converted to digital and distributed to the press, and then we can all get the heck out of Dodge.”
“Cameron Gilbert?” Lewis asked. “You’re working with him?”
I nodded.
Lewis let out a low whistle. “That guy is a computer genius,” he said.
“I know.”
“Did he mean to unleash the virus? Do you know how many problems that caused?”