“It’s not like he hasn’t got plenty. I’m his son.” He pounded the bottle against his big chest.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression.” I tried a weak smile, hoping to calm him a little. He was too wasted to be useful, and I could see some definite drawbacks to exchanging chitchat with a violent drunk.
“He’s hiding it all away. Like a fucking chipmunk. In his little hidey-hole. Bastard.”
“Hidey-hole?” I’d just keep him talking as I eased away.
“You don’t know about that, huh?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“He’s got someplace he hides the good stuff. Like Adolf fucking Hitler. My old man and his motherfucking secret stash.”
Paranoids of the world, unite.
“Do you have any idea what he keeps there?”
“How the hell would I know? I’m only his eldest son. His heir.” He spit the word out.
“Is that why you were at the house the other day?”
He looked closer at me, leaning forward, his breath assaulting me in a wave.
“How d’you know I was at the house?”
“I think someone mentioned it.”
“That prick at the house. Acting like he owns the place. Telling me—me”—he banged the bottle against his chest again—“that I need permission to be there.” He used the back of his hand to rub at his forehead, the bottle still clenched in his fingers. He slumped toward the door frame, his eyes half-closed.
“Did you see your father when you were at the house?”
“No.” His voice was quieter now, a huge yawn splitting his face.
“Did you see the cat?”
“Whadthafuck?”
“The cat.”
He stared. Maybe he’d burned through too many brain cells to keep up with the conversation. Which would be handy if I had to spray him. No permanent damage.
He was half passed out, turning away and stumbling back into the apartment.
“Just one last question, Mr. Masterson,” I called loudly. He stopped, turning to look at me over one shoulder. “Why were you in Pioneer Square last night?”
A feral look crossed his face and his eyes opened wider. He suddenly didn’t look nearly so impaired. I grabbed for the cap and raised the can as he slammed the door in my face.
Chapter Fifteen
I went straight for a Starbucks iced tea and a cranberry scone. It took the place of the shower I craved after standing too close to Stewie for too long. A drunk called Stewie. That suddenly struck me as funny and I started to laugh. Hard. Loud. Inappropriately.
A man reached out and pulled a woman closer, moving between me and her. Protecting her from the dangerous, crazy woman. Me. The laughter wouldn’t stop. My sides ached, and I had to set my drink on a nearby table. They were right. I was crazy. Certifiable. I’d tripped over a dead guy. I had a black eye. I was risking the first straight job I’d ever had for a damn cat, and, God help me, I was married.
I gasped for air, slumping into a chair. Two teenage girls from the next table gawked openly. I waved. They bent their heads together and started whispering fiercely, their eyes darting back to me again and again. Best friends sharing secrets. Every thought, every experience pored over in minute detail. Together. I shook my head, fighting tears. Since when had I become Miss Mood? It was nothing. Just teenagers. So what that I’d never been that young? I had things to do.
Bud Masterson made his brother look like a temperance society elder. Bud smelled of stale sweat, beer, and cheap cigars. My stomach roiled in protest. I wanted to know where he’d been last night, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that bad. He hung on to the door frame of his little house and looked at me through bleary, bloodshot eyes.
“Took you long enough.” His response to my knock came with a spray of saliva. I took a step back.
“My name is Sara Townley. I work for Abercroft, Hamilton, and Stearns.” I handed him a card.
“Fifty bucks.” He handed me a fifty-dollar bill, dropping the card.
I stared at the money, then handed it back.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m from the law firm that represents your father.”
“My father. Hell, you’d be lucky to get a fifty from that bastard. Fucks for minimum wage and bennies.” He lurched forward, grabbing my arm. The money fluttered toward me.
“I just have a couple of questions to ask.” I tried to pull away but his grip tightened.
He reached for his zipper, yanking me into the house.
“Hey.” I knocked into the doorjamb, dropping my bear assault spray. Shit. It rolled away. In the next instant he’d pushed me to my knees, still fumbling with his zipper.
I tried to get up and he grabbed my hair.
“Let go.”
“I paid you.” He pushed me back and I slammed against a hall table, knocking something off it to crash against the tiled entry.
“I don’t care.” I pushed back.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and jerked me hard toward him. I used the momentum to put everything I had into the knee I gave him in the groin. He squeaked, his eyes bulging, and then dropped first to his knees, then to the fetal position, clutching himself. I dusted my hands in satisfaction. The old ways really were the most reliable.
I took a step back and straightened my clothes, rubbing at the knot on my head where he’d pulled my hair. I picked up the can.
“No means no.” I pointed it at him.
“Paid you.” He gasped, the discarded bill lying next to him on the floor.
“You don’t have that much money, buddy.” Another guy who couldn’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I lowered the can.
I stepped over his prostrate form to get to the door. A woman was tottering on high heels down the walkway. She was all platinum hair and blue eye shadow, her forty-plus years shoehorned into a fuchsia minidress.
“I don’t think he’s up to company.”
She stopped, one hand on an outthrust hip. “There’s still a charge. If I come, I get paid. It don’t matter nothin’ if he can’t get it up or whatever; I still get paid.”
I turned and looked. Walking over to a half-dead shrub next to the porch, I plucked the fifty-dollar bill from its branches. I handed it to the woman.
“Here you go.”
She tucked it into the top of her dress. “Gotta have rules, you know.”
“I understand completely,” I assured her, moving toward my car. “I have rules myself.”
“Me, too,” a man in coveralls said from the curb. He was standing next to a tow truck, winching a black Corvette into position. With a scream of gears, the car was up and the man touched the brim of his cap before levering himself into the driver’s seat. Smiling, I watched the repo truck take Bud’s car away before I got into my own car.
I drove back to the office. A Mariners game had traffic tied in knots, which gave me too much time to think. I rolled the window down all the way, but I wasn’t moving fast enough to stir any type of breeze. Too many near misses. My misplaced furball had been hanging around some pretty unsavory types. Meeting Jepsen had left my skin crawling, and I wouldn’t be caught again in the same area code with either Masterson offspring without a SWAT team. Or maybe one Navy SEAL.
In the last twenty-four hours I had a missing cat, a dead body, and a live husband. In the last four hours alone I’d managed to do the meet-and-greet with a snake-oil salesman, a nut-job junkie, and a potential rapist. I had a black eye, an expedition-sized can of bear spray, and an urge to scream. What the hell happened to my life?
Traffic crept along as the pain at the back of my head crept forward. I reached over and opened the glove compartment, hoping to find a bottle of acetaminaphen waiting for just such an occasion. No such luck. Figured. I wanted to be sharp. Lying took a lot of energy, and the truth about my day would not make the husband a happy guy. I might not be an expert on him, but I was pretty sure his definition of a safe afternoon at the offi
ce wouldn’t include mail theft and felons. Maybe I could distract him with sex. He was a guy. And pretty interested. That thought helped my headache a little. Things weren’t so bad if a great-looking guy wanted to jump my bones. I’d had worse days. Remembering, I groaned, reaching for the rearview mirror and taking a look at myself. Wild hair, ghostly pallor, a dark circle under one eye, and a shiner around the other. Per-fect. Forget the Mata Hari routine. Connor was interested, not blind.
Traffic finally loosened up, and I parked Joe’s car in the lot. I considered just going home. It was already four o’clock, and a nap sounded good. Then again, if Connor was up there, there’d be no rest for the wicked. I went back to the office. I was on the way up in the elevator when it occurred to me: I hadn’t checked all the files. Sure, Masterson’s main file was missing or hidden or just not there or whatever, but the billing files were kept separately. Lawyers were anal about billing. Every tenth of an hour or six minutes, a client got billed. And with that time came a description of the work done. Most of the lawyers at the office couldn’t stop talking if their lives depended on it. Maybe the same was true for pontificating on the amount of work they did to deserve such exorbitant fees.
I sauntered into the file room as if I were out for a casual stroll. This late in the afternoon it was deserted. I walked past the movable aisles to the back of the cavernous room where the billing files were kept. A quick search showed no file for Millicent Millinfield, but that didn’t surprise me. I’d gotten the impression that the firm hadn’t done much work for her directly. I moved to the Masterson files. One for the company, inches thick, and one marked PERSONAL, much smaller. I pulled out the business file, checking the last several months as quickly as I could. Employment agreements, worker’s compensation claims, contract disputes, financing plans. Several telephone conversations with M. Millinfield. If there was something obvious here, I couldn’t see it. There were two lawsuits in progress: Masterson v. Masterson, some sort of family dispute, and Jepsen v. Masterson Enterprises. Both were being handled by the same firm. Maybe they specialized in suing Masterson Enterprises. I flipped to the Jepsen tab. There were lots of letters, responses to subpoenas, interrogatories, a deposition that got canceled in March. Then nothing, really. A couple of letters, but they must have been follow-ups, because none took longer than a few minutes to draft. The only other interesting thing was Masterson’s failure to pay. I guess if you’re fabulously wealthy, you can wait six months to pay your bills and no one hunts you down. Sort of like being the Queen of England.
Footsteps echoed down the hall and I held my breath, carefully sliding the file back into its spot and standing still. There was some rustling in the next aisle, a muttered curse; then the footsteps moved away. I took a deep breath and pulled the personal file. Masterson hadn’t used the firm personally in months. He was probably running the legal fees through the company. On March 5, Masterson had been charged for a missed appointment with M. Millinfield. Millicent. Just days before she died. The notation was ep. Masterson was paying for Millicent or she was acting on his behalf? Ep, ep. Escrow prep? Land, maybe, or some new business venture. Maybe they were having an affair and legal services were thrown in as a perk. Some women liked diamonds; some might like sound legal advice. I could only hope Millicent got dinner first.
I put the folder back and checked to make sure the coast was clear before leaving the file room and going back to my office. I dropped into my chair and closed my eyes, rubbing my shoulders. It didn’t mean anything. I was sneaking around my own office, risking my job, for a whole stack of I-don’t-knows. It was crazy. I could lose my job. Jeez, I’d even taken to stealing other people’s mail. A federal offense. What was I thinking?
The phone jarred me. Jumping, I snatched at the receiver, unsettling a stack of papers on my desk that threatened to avalanche.
“This is Sara Townley.”
“Where are you?”
“Russ?”
“You were hoping for Ed McMahon? Or maybe a certain green-eyed god we both know?”
“Where are you?” I shifted the papers into a more upright stack.
“It’s five o’clock on Tuesday. Where would I be? Where am I every Tuesday at five?”
“Oh, God.” I glanced at my watch, catching the corner of my paper pile. I made a grab for it. “I’m sorry. I lost track of the time.”
“So get your butt down here.”
“Russ, I’m really—” The buzz of the disconnect sounded in my ear.
The phone rang again. Grand Central Station, may I help you?
“This is Sara.”
“It’s Joe.” His usual tenor was lost in a whisper. I turned to look at the cubicle wall. I knew he was over there, so why the heck would he call me?
“Why are you calling me on the phone?” I whispered back.
“I just talked to one of Morris’s paralegals. Lady Liz is on her way down to see you.”
I sat up straighter, dread sliding along my spine.
“She never leaves the forty-second floor.”
“Well, apparently she’s making an exception today. For you.” He drawled the last syllable.
“Do you know why?”
“No idea, but I wouldn’t hang around if I were you.”
After the previous evening, I just wasn’t up to crossing swords with the she-dragon. I would, in fact, prefer the cops any day. My head pounded with a renewed vengeance.
“I’ve got one quick question. What does ‘ep’ stand for?”
“What’s the context?” Joe was all business.
“I saw it in a billing file.”
“You taking up accounting? You can’t add.”
“You should take your act on the road.” I stood up, peering over the cubicle wall, on the lookout for Elizabeth. She’d be wanting that daily report, no doubt. What was I going to say? Gee, sorry, but I spent the day skulking through our file room and stealing other people’s mail? Somehow I didn’t think that would improve my employment situation.
“ ‘Ep’ means estate planning. Wills and health care directives and—”
“Trusts.” My adrenaline surged. “I’m outta here. Distract her for me, okay?”
“I wouldn’t, except you already look like people have been pounding you for fun. Use the back stairs.”
“You’re a pal.”
“Sara, about before . . .”
“Before what?” I grabbed my laptop and jacket, peeking out of my cubicle.
“The marriage thing.”
“What about it?”
Joe stepped out of his cube and moved closer. “Is it true?”
“You don’t believe it?”
“It’s just . . . well, you work as many hours as I do. I’ve never seen you with anyone but Russ. You never talk about anyone, and I thought . . .”
“You thought I’d never get married?” I asked.
“I thought you were gay.”
It was stifling in the stairwell. I walked down three flights, my mind fixated on Joe’s assumptions. So my personal life had been a little slow lately. Except for the quickie marriage, of course. But Joe didn’t know about that. In a Victorian environment like Abercroft, Hamilton, and Sterns, an alternative lifestyle wasn’t something you’d bring to work, so maybe Joe’s conclusion made sense. But I considered Joe a friend. I spent a lot of time with him. Or next to him, anyway. How could he get it so wrong?
Already slick with sweat, I bolted down the last two stairs before the landing just as the door was opening. Reaching past the startled man, I grabbed for the knob, grateful that I wasn’t going to have to clomp down all forty-one flights.
“Do you mind if I go in this way? I’m really not up to walking all the way down.”
“Stupid to lock them, isn’t it? It’s got to be against the fire code.” The man waved me through.
“No kidding. You one of those morally opposed to elevators?”
“Claustrophobic.” He sighed. “Have a good one.”
“You, to
o.”
Blasted by the arctic blow of the air-conditioning, I hurried toward the elevator. Catching the doors as they started to close, I pushed myself into the crowded car, ignoring the irritated looks of my companions.
I was first out of the elevator. The foyer was crowded with nine-to-fivers heading out for the day. I swam upstream, making my way to the Starbucks in the lobby. Russ waited at our usual table against the windows with a Frappuccino in front of him and a Tiazzi waiting on my side of the table.
“Sorry I’m late,” I huffed.
He stood, staring. Then he reached out and took my chin in his hand, turning my face. He whistled.
“Nice shiner.”
“Thanks, I grew it myself.”
“You’ve missed your calling.”
I looked toward the window, trying unsuccessfully to see my reflection in the metallic glint. On second thought, I didn’t want to know.
“Maybe I should try some makeup or something?” I sat down in the chair, using the empty chair next to me to hold my jacket and computer case. Reaching up, I probed the swollen lid of my sore eye.
“It’s barely noticeable.”
Russ was an excellent liar and a good friend. Picking up my glass, I slurped juice and tea through the straw, shuddering as the frozen berry taste slid down my throat and cranked my headache up to blinding.
“Russ, did you ever think I was gay?”
“What?”
“Joe didn’t believe me when I told him I was married. He said he thought I was gay.”
“You told him?”
I thought back, sipping on my juice.
“Well, not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“I asked him what he’d say if I told him I’d gotten married.”
“And he said . . . ?” Russ prompted.
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