Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken

by Melissa F. Miller

  Sasha gave her a quizzical look. She couldn’t stop and take a call in the middle of this.

  Naya held out the receiver toward Sasha and said, “It’s the crime beat reporter for the Post-Gazette. He got your name from Greg’s former counsel. He wants to know if you have any comment.”

  “On what?” Sasha asked.

  “On the fact that Clarissa Costopolous was found dead in her car in the P & T garage this morning,” Naya said, her face unreadable.

  Sasha blinked and processed the news. Then she said, “Okay, have him hold.” She felt light-headed.

  Sasha and Larry huddled together to craft a sound bite for the reporter. After she’d provided the quote and gotten the reporter’s contact information, Sasha turned to Greg, who had been silent since Naya had broken the news of Clarissa’s murder.

  “So, I guess this is helpful news for our defense,” she said, ignoring the self-loathing that came with those words.

  Greg, his head down, mumbled something at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” Sasha said, “I didn’t catch that.”

  He raised his head and repeated, “I said, I have to go.”

  “Why?”

  He cleared his throat and hesitated, then said, “Because Nick Costopolous is asleep in my guest room. I need to break the news to him that his wife is dead.”

  Sasha didn’t want to—knew she shouldn’t—but heard herself ask, “Why is Nick at your house?”

  Greg looked her straight in the eye and said, “Last night, Clarissa had divorce papers served on him while he was at his club. He tried to call her but she didn’t answer her phone. When he left the club to go home, his key didn’t fit in the lock. Apparently, that sneaky little bitch had gotten the locks changed.”

  “So, how’d he end up at your house?” Naya asked.

  “We’re friends. I mean, the girls were friends, so we sort of just ended up pals. Me, Nick, Tanner Landry.”

  “Nick called you?”

  Greg nodded. “Right. He was crying and slurring. He’d been drinking. I told him to call a cab and come over. He didn’t. That big idiot drove his truck, but he came over and passed out on my couch. Around two a.m., I woke him up and set him up in the guest room. When I left this morning, I could hear him snoring in there. Anyway, I have to go. He’s going to lose it when he hears about this.”

  Greg pushed back his chair and stood with his feet planted hip-distance apart, as if he expected someone to try to stop him. No one did.

  “Call Naya to reschedule, though, Greg. We need to get a cohesive story in place,” Sasha said as he started for the door. She added, “And please give Mr. Costopolous my condolences.”

  He nodded and walked out.

  As soon as the door banged shut behind him, Sasha turned to Larry and Naya.

  “Clarissa’s death could give credence to Prescott & Talbott’s idiotic theory that someone is killing female partners to make the firm look bad. But, if Greg and Nick are buddies, that also could lend itself to a theory that they had some kind of pact or something to kill their wives. Especially since Nick was just served with divorce papers, too,” Sasha said, working through this new development, trying to decide if it was a net positive or negative for her case.

  Naya jabbed a finger in Sasha’s direction. “What makes you so sure they didn’t have a pact?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Caroline scraped her teeth across her bottom lip even though she knew she was leaving tooth marks in her lipstick. She was trying to decide how to get Mr. Prescott to stop poking around in the filing cabinets and tell her what he needed. She realized many of the attorneys whispered about her boss’s personal quirks and lack of legal acumen, but she had always enjoyed working for him. He was a boss who understood his place.

  Unlike so many of the younger attorneys, he didn’t insist on doing his own word processing, entering his own time entries into the electronic system, or drafting his correspondence on his own. No, he dictated all of his documents—mainly, she thought to show off the fact that his assistant knew shorthand.

  Equally important, he didn’t burden her with endless personal errands. She selected his wife’s birthday, Christmas, and anniversary gifts and had the jeweler wrap them. That was the extent of it.

  Some of the other senior partners were, in her view, far out of bounds in the requests they made of their secretaries. Marco DeAngeles, for instance, not only had his secretary fire his children’s nanny, but required her to interview and select the replacement. And Lettie Conrad had recently told her that Kevin Marcus asked her to log into his personal bank account and take care of paying his mortgage and utility bills each month.

  By comparison, Mr. Prescott was an excellent boss. Usually.

  But, she had to put a stop to this business of him rifling through the floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets across from her desk. He’d been there ever since he’d returned from the grim scene in the parking garage.

  Whatever he was looking for, it was clear he wasn’t going to find it. First, of course, because she did all the filing. And, second, because he had insisted she not label the drawers, explaining that labels detract from the minimalist aesthetic he strove to achieve in his surroundings. So, he was doing nothing more than opening and closing unlabeled drawers at random.

  When he had first hurried into the office after seeing Clarissa’s body, she’d asked if she could help him find something. He’d said that the documents he was looking for were “sensitive” and he would handle it personally.

  That had stung. Caroline prided herself on her discretion. As the personal assistant to the chair of the firm, she’d seen more sensitive documents than most of Prescott & Talbott’s attorneys combined.

  She knew who earned how much, which partner had amassed—and submitted for reimbursement—an enormous hotel bill watching pornographic movies, and which staff members were on performance improvement plans. And she had never breathed so much as a word of it.

  In fact, her refusal to gossip had left her a social pariah. Once the other secretaries had realized she intended to maintain Mr. Prescott’s confidences, the lunch invitations and suggestions that she join a group of girls for happy hour had evaporated.

  Not that she’d minded. Caroline took her position seriously and had always believed that Mr. Prescott valued her loyalty. Yet, here he was, rooting around in her filing cabinets for some documents that were too “sensitive” for her eyes.

  She told herself to give him some leeway; after all, the poor man had lost two attorneys in the space of a week. Two murders. Two creepy hand-delivered envelopes. Caroline shuddered.

  He pulled open another drawer, flicked through the folders, and slammed it shut in apparent frustration.

  She saved and closed the memo she’d been typing and walked around to join him in front of the cabinet.

  “Mr. Prescott,” she said in an even tone to his back, “if you would just tell me, in general terms, what you are looking for, I could at least direct you to the correct set of drawers.”

  He straightened and stood still for a minute, trying to decide, then turned to her and said, “Okay. That would be a help. Where are the personnel files from 1996 through 2001?”

  Caroline arched a brow despite herself. Here he was digging around in the locked confidential files in search of personnel records that had been archived off-site years ago. The man had no earthly idea how she ran his office.

  “I’ll have to order those files up from off-site storage,” she told him with a gentle smile. “Are you interested in all of the files or just those of certain employees?”

  She watched as he calculated the mess and clutter all those boxes would create. A prudent lawyer would have said to order up all the files, but she was not surprised when his love for order won out, and he said, “Let’s begin with all associate attorneys who joined the firm in 1996 and 1997. Tell the vendor to expedite the order, please.”

  “Very good.” She graced him with another smile.

 
; He dropped the keys to the filing cabinet into her open palm and retreated to his inner office, back where he belonged.

  CHAPTER 22

  Larry had left to meet Bertie and some friends for a late lunch and their standing canasta game. Naya was on her way to The Rivers with Greg’s pictures to see if she could convince the security staff to locate tapes that showed either the photographer or the subject. The casino had discouraged Naya from coming when she’d set up the appointment, but she’d persisted. Without a subpoena and depending, as it did, on Naya’s charm and the goodwill of strangers, they both knew the trip was a long shot. But it was something tangible they could do to move forward.

  Sasha sat behind her desk and worked her way through the piles of documents that seemed to multiply overnight. Every morning, she sorted and purged the mound of papers on her desk; she scanned those she wanted to keep, as part of her Sisyphean effort to run a paperless office, and tossed the hard copies along with the pure junk. Despite her paperless goal, each morning, the document mountain seemed, if anything, taller.

  She was feeding correspondence into the scanner function of the printer/copier/scanner beside her desk, when she heard footsteps in the hall. She swiveled her chair around to face the door, half-expecting to see Connelly’s face in the doorway.

  Instead, she saw Greg’s. Behind him, Nick Costopolous. She recognized Nick at once, despite his rumpled clothes, mussed hair, and aviator shades. Greg had obviously dragged him out of bed.

  Whenever she’d seen Nick at Prescott & Talbott functions, his hair had been gelled and carefully arranged to appear casual. He wore tasteful, expensive clothes and hipster shoes. He had olive skin, jet-black hair and eyes to match, and a blindingly white smile. He was tall and fit. She had a vague memory that his job involved a lot of physical activity.

  Sasha usually gave him wide berth. He was overtly flirtatious and borderline creepy, as far as she was concerned. She had never really understood what Clarissa had seen in him, beyond his looks, but one of the secretaries had once mentioned that the two had been high school sweethearts, and their families were partners in some sort of business. A restaurant, maybe.

  Greg rapped his fist on the doorframe and gave her a weak smile. “Knock, knock.”

  “Come on in,” she said, waving them inside.

  Greg stepped through the doorway, followed by Nick, who pulled the door shut behind him and stood just inside, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  Sasha walked around to the front of the desk to greet them. Front and center in her mind was the thought that she was alone in her office with two men whose estranged wives had been brutally murdered within the last week.

  “I’m sorry about Clarissa,” she said to Nick, careful not to stand between him and Greg. She didn’t feel that she was in any immediate danger, but she saw no point in being careless.

  Nick pushed the glasses up through his unruly hair and perched them atop his head.

  “Thank you,” he said. He looked straight at her. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and a five o’clock shadow completed the picture.

  She could smell liquor and stale cigars on his clothes. She glanced at Greg, who seemed to have pulled himself together and taken charge of the situation.

  “We need to talk to you,” Greg said.

  “Go ahead and sit down,” she said, gesturing to the pair of Queen Anne guest chairs in front of her desk.

  Nick collapsed into the closer of the chairs and slumped forward. Greg clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past him to the farther chair.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” Sasha suggested.

  Greg shook his head. At the same time, Nick nodded.

  “Please,” Nick said. “Cream and sugar.”

  Greg shrugged. “Okay, sure. Just Sweet’N Low for me. Thanks.”

  Sasha started toward the door.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” Greg snapped to attention.

  “I’m going to run downstairs and get us coffee. I’ll be back in three minutes, tops. Hang tight.”

  She pulled the door shut and hurried down the stairs to the coffee shop.

  The shop was empty. Through the pass-through, she could see Kathryn in the back, flirting with Jake.

  “I’m grabbing some coffees,” Sasha yelled.

  “You’re going to drive me out of business!” Jake yelled back.

  Sasha scooped up a handful of stirrers, creams, and sugar packets and tossed them into her cardigan pocket, making sure she grabbed the artificial sweetener for Greg.

  She poured coffee into three of the glossy black mugs from the stack near the thermos on the counter. She threaded the thumb and fingers of her left hand through two of the handles and picked up the third with her right.

  As she walked gingerly toward the door, maintaining posture that would have made her late Nana Alexandrov proud, Kathryn came around the corner, still giggling over something Jake had said.

  “Whoa, do you need a hand?” she asked.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ve got them.”

  A hand would have been nice, but Sasha thought Nick might jump out of his skin if Kathryn walked through the door. He was keeping it together by a thread.

  “Okay, then. See you later.”

  “See you,” Sasha called over her shoulder as she started her careful trip up the stairs, focusing on keeping the mugs level.

  When she neared her closed door, she could hear Greg and Nick talking in low, serious voices. She tapped on the door with the toe of her pump. She waited a few seconds and was about to tap again, when the door swung in.

  “Thanks,” she said to Greg. “Here.” She nodded toward the mug in her right hand, and he closed the door behind her and took the coffee from her. He returned to his seat.

  She transferred one mug from her left hand to her right. She stopped at Nick’s chair, and he took the mug from her right hand with shaking hands. She reached into her pocket, doled out the creamers, sweeteners, and stirrers, and then took the seat behind her desk.

  She sipped her coffee and watched Nick struggle to tear open a sugar packet with trembling fingers. He dumped the sugar and creamer, then stirred the coffee in a hurry.

  Beside him, Greg had neatly torn open the corner of his pink Sweet’N Low packet and was shaking just a bit into his mug. Then he carefully folded over the top of the open packet and placed it on the corner of Sasha’s desk while he stirred his coffee with a slow, precise motion.

  Sasha let them both take a drink before she spoke again.

  “So, before you guys tell me what’s going on, we need to get some things straight.”

  Greg continued to sip his coffee, unperturbed, but Nick immediately put his down on the small table between the two guest chairs, sloshing coffee over the side of the mug with his unsteady hands. Nick leaned forward.

  “I don’t know what this is about, but I represent Greg in his criminal matter. Anything he tells me related to that matter is a privileged attorney-client communication.” Sasha looked directly at Greg and said, “But, there’s a question whether anything you say about the case in front of Nick would be deemed privileged, so we’re not going to discuss your case right now. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Greg said immediately. “This isn’t about me.”

  “That’s fine,” Sasha said, “as long as we’re clear.”

  She turned to Nick. “And, Nick, I don’t represent you. So anything you tell me here, especially in front of Greg, is not going to be privileged.”

  Nick nodded, his eyes confused, and then turned to Greg.

  Greg paused, the mug halfway to his mouth, then placed it on the table beside Nick’s. He gave Nick a meaningful look and then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”

  “Down the hall to your right. It’s the last door on the right,” Sasha directed him.

  He held Nick’s gaze for a moment then walked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “I need a lawyer. I need
you to be my lawyer,” Nick said; the words tumbled out fast and desperate as soon as the door closed. He lifted the coffee mug again with shaky hands.

  Sasha pursed her lips, considering her response.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said. “This is a prospective client meeting, okay? So, you go ahead and tell me your situation so I can evaluate whether I can or will represent you.”

  Nick nodded, fast, and fixed his red-rimmed eyes on her.

  “The police think I killed Clarissa. I didn’t, I swear.”

  She knew it had been too much to hope he just wanted to know how to get back into his house.

  “Why do you say that? Have you spoken to the police?”

  “No. But, they’ve called my cell phone, asking me to come in and identify her body and talk about the divorce. How do they even know about the divorce? I only found out last night!” His voice rose, panicked and angry.

  “Nick, I need you to calm down,” she said in the tone she used when she babysat her nephews. “Start by telling me what happened last night.”

  He swallowed hard and said, “Thursday nights I go to the Greek social club over on East Carson Street. Play some cards, watch whatever game is on. Drink some Ouzo, eat some mezethes. Just hang out.”

  “Okay, did you see Clarissa before you left?”

  “Yeah, she came home from work about an hour before I headed out. She was bitchin—er, complaining—about being tired. She went to bed, said she needed to rest. I figured she was, you know, still upset about Ellen.”

  The coffee was back on the table, and Nick was drumming the rim of the mug with his fingers while he spoke. Nervous, but not obviously lying, as far as Sasha could tell.

  He continued, “Before I left, I yelled up the stairs to let her know I was going. She didn’t answer, so I figured she was sleeping. I tried not to make too much noise on my way out.”

  “Had you two been having problems?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He sounded lost, like a small boy.

  “Okay, when did you get the divorce papers?”