by Jeanne Adams
“Why? I thought there was an antipathy between you two. And did she choose you to be her attorney?”
“No, but Todd Peterson did,” Paul said quietly.
Torie pulled herself from sleep to answer the phone. The tablet had done its work; she’d slept dreamlessly and deeply.
“’lo?” she managed.
“Ms. Hagen? This is Martha Prinz from Mister Jameson’s office?”
Torie cleared her throat, hoped she’d sound less raspy. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Mister Jameson is ordering a taxi for you, to be there at nine. He wasn’t able to get back into your room last night at the Extended Suites. The police have locked it off.”
“Why?”
There was a pause, then Martha continued. “He didn’t tell me all the details, Ms. Hagen. He did make some purchases for you at Target.” Torie could hear the older woman’s disdain. “However, I’m sure that you would prefer to purchase some additional things for yourself before having to be at our offices to meet with Mister Jameson and the police.”
Scanning the room, Torie saw the Target bags piled on the low dresser next to the TV. She frowned, thinking that the TV had been on when she went to bed. Then again, Paul had been back, so he’d probably turned it off.
“Um, yes, okay. I would.” Torie scrambled to keep up. No way was she meeting the police in the jeans she could see peeking out of the bag. She needed the armor of good clothes to help her get through it. “What time am I expected—”
Martha cut her off. “I was able to postpone the time of the meeting until eleven. It doesn’t give you much more time, but you should be able to find a few things before you have to be here. Also, there will be someone watching out for you, a bodyguard. He’ll be there to protect you, following you, but you need to get what you need and be done with it.”
“Thank you ma’am.” Torie managed to inject some warmth into her voice. Martha might not like her, but she’d protected Torie’s interests by getting her enough time to go buy clothes. Of course, she was warning her not to dawdle at the same time, which was annoying, but Torie chose to ignore that part. “I appreciate the help.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll see you then.”
Scrambling out of the bed, Torie again experienced a momentary disorientation. Spinning in place she looked at the other bed. Hadn’t she…? Seeing the bedspread in disarray she decided that yes, she had been in the other bed, and Paul had evidently moved her or woken her enough for her to move herself. She didn’t remember, but then again, she’d been so tired.
“Time, Victoria Marie,” she reminded herself, as her mother would have. “It’s marching on.” She headed for the shower.
Minutes later, hair in a towel, she surveyed the pitiful mess of stuff Paul had purchased for her. He’d managed a toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant, but the rest was fairly useless. It was another cool day and he’d gotten short sleeves. The jeans were a ten, a fourteen, and a sixteen, and she wore a twelve. The socks worked, and she pulled those on, laughing at the five packages of hose, one in every size but queen. She piled all the rejects back in the large plastic bag, hoping he’d kept the receipt.
“He’s probably already put it on my bill,” she muttered to herself as she dug through the second bag. Sandals. Again, a cool day so they were a no-go, but surprisingly cute. Another pair of jeans, a size twelve this time, and another blouse with blessedly long sleeves.
“This would be more like it. Score one for the bad guys,” she said, snapping the tags off the jeans. There was no underwear of course, but she at least had her bra. Now more than ever she appreciated the taciturn Martha for her thoughtfulness in allowing for time this morning.
“First stop, Macy’s.”
Barefaced but for a little mascara, and clad in the mishmash of clothes Paul had purchased, Torie climbed into the cab right at nine o’clock. The Center City Macy’s opened at nine-thirty, thank goodness. She gave the cabbie the directions and sat back watching the miles pass. She wondered if she could spot the bodyguard. Taking out her phone, she turned it on.
Messages immediately popped up, twenty-seven of them. She scrolled through the list, looking for any that she knew. She recognized Pam’s number, Paul’s, one could possibly be Dev or GoodMama. She winced at the thought. She owed GoodMama a call and a thank you for the warning, though she hadn’t had time to heed it. She also had to apologize for involving Dev in the mess of her life.
Oh, God, I have to call my mother.
She cringed at the thought as she continued to scan the list. The office had called four times. She frowned at that. She wasn’t due back until tomorrow. Torie hoped there hadn’t been a problem with a client.
“Here we are, Miss,” the driver said, snugging up the car to the curb as he rattled off the fare. She dug out the money and handed it to him. “You have a good day now, ma’am. Please call me if you would like me to transport you again.” He handed her his card, and before she’d barely shut the car door, he was off again.
Walking into Macy’s was like walking into Nirvana. The thought of having clothes that fit, not to mention underwear and makeup, put a spring in her step. She had to do this anyway, thanks to the fire, so it was time to begin rebuilding her wardrobe.
When she finished shopping and piled into the cab to go to Paul’s office, she felt human again. Cosmetics were a wonderful boost to the ego, or at least cosmetic saleswomen were. Good-looking pants and proper attire for a meeting made her feel like she could face Detective Tibbet, and whoever else needed to ask her questions. The warm boucle jacket in jewel-bright colors also made her feel feminine and capable, more normal than she had since the fire and Todd’s death.
She’d never even seen the bodyguard.
Although she felt odd carrying four shopping bags into Todd’s office, she hoped Martha would continue to be her ally and tuck them away for her until she could go back to the hotel.
“Good morning. May I help you?” the youthful receptionist chirped.
“I’m here for a meeting with Mister Jameson.”
The young woman’s eyes widened a bit, but she said nothing more than, “I’ll let Missus Prinz know you’ve arrived.”
“Thank you.”
Before she could sit down, Martha strode purposefully around the corner. “If you’ll come with me, Ms. Hagen?”
“May I put these somewhere for safekeeping?”
“Certainly. There’s a closet in my office. We’ll put them there.”
“Thanks, and thank you for helping me with the timing so I could be presentable.”
“You’ll need all the help you can muster, Ms. Hagen,” Martha said coolly as they entered her office. She said no more, just opened the closet door and motioned her to set down the bags. “I’ll show you in, then get you coffee, if you drink it.”
“I do. Sweet and black, please.”
“Certainly. Would you care for anything else?”
“Is Detective Tibbet here already?”
“Yes.”
“No, I’ll just take coffee, ma’am.”
With a curt nod, Martha turned away toward Paul’s office. “Here we are. Brace yourself, and put on your game face.”
Torie couldn’t believe the quiet murmur of advice had come from the sourpuss of an assistant. Nevertheless, she did put herself in negotiation mode, just as she would with a client. Construction clients were usually men, and a woman engineer had to be bold and take the initiative if she wanted to succeed.
Torie was very successful. So she put on her game face.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as she came into the room, taking charge by speaking first.
“Torie, good morning,” Paul said, standing as she entered and coming to shake her hand. He squeezed it a bit, giving her an encouraging look while his back was to the detective. “Looks good on you,” he whispered.
She simply smiled.
“Detective. I’d say good to see you again, but under the circumstances, it’s not
that good.”
“I get that a lot,” Tibbet said, but he grinned as he said it.
“Let’s move to the table, shall we?” Paul directed them to a round table. With deliberate ease, he set their two chairs together a bit and set Tibbet apart on the other side of the table.
“Ms. Hagen, the detective and I have been going over a few things,” Paul said. “However, he would like you to answer some of his questions directly.”
“Of course.” Torie crossed her legs and waited.
Tibbet ran her back through the usual questions about her whereabouts during Todd’s murder, then progressed to the events of the previous night.
“I was quite serious last night, Detective. Having just gotten back from North Carolina, I was exhausted. The only way I knew something was wrong was because of the driver. He’s a hero, if you ask me. He saved my life.”
“Indeed. We think we have an area pinpointed where the shooter would have been positioned.”
“Do you have any leads?” Torie decided it was time to go on the attack herself. “And do you know who leaked the information to the press about the incidents with people whom I’ve dated?”
“That’s being handled. Your lawyer here,” Tibbet said, indicating Paul, “filed a complaint this morning. He’s already offered to do it again several more times if you don’t receive an official apology from the department.”
Torie couldn’t help it, she smiled at Paul. “Thank you.”
“My job.”
It was always the job with Paul. She turned back to Tibbet.
“We’ve already asked you about who might be interested in hurting you. So far we’re following up on things there, but what about Mister Peterson? Do you know anyone who would have wanted to hurt him?”
Torie shook her head to emphasize her answer. “No. No one. In all seriousness, Detective, if there was anyone who did their level best to help people it was Todd. The money didn’t change that one bit, did it, Paul?”
“No, it didn’t.” Paul was as adamant about that as she was.
“He gave a lot of money away, I know that. Of course, he was really good at investing it, too, so the money he won just continued to grow, or so he told me once. Then he’d win more stuff, like golf things. He won a car by doing a hole in one. He’d never shot a hole in one before, but he wanted to give a car as a prize to a charity for the church, and the next thing you know, he’s shooting a hole in one at the Castico Open. You know, the one out the Main Line at the Lands End Course?”
Tibbet nodded, indicating he knew it.
“So without spending more than the fee to play, he was able to give that to the church for the raffle.”
“Would there be anyone at the church who was jealous of the money, or who was pressuring him to give more?”
Glancing at Paul again to see if he had input, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I don’t get to church every week and I’m not in the sort of inner circle that plans things, but I don’t think anyone was particularly upset. The opposite actually seemed to be true. He never minded if they hit him up to cover a shortfall. I think he told the deacon’s committee that he’d match the annual donations.”
Paul spoke up. “I can corroborate that. He was quick to give.”
“Did you know of anyone who wanted more, Mister Jameson? Anyone who was trying to scam him, or get him to join them in some scheme or something?”
“As easygoing as he was, he was pretty sharp about that sort of thing. After all, he was a lawyer before he was a multimillionaire. He was generous, but not a soft touch.”
“How so?” Tibbet paused, his pen hovering over his book.
“He got into it with this guy once. The guy had set up a meeting, seemed to be legitimate and all that. But when Todd and I began to question him, the guy didn’t have good answers. We closed out the meeting, and Todd hired a private investigator. Shut the guy down. He was working for a legitimate charity, but was skimming huge amounts off the top.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“He’s still in jail.”
“The name?”
Paul went to his desk and got out a file. Meanwhile Tibbet turned back to Torie.
“You know about this guy?”
“No, but I agree that Todd wasn’t easily taken in.”
Tibbet wrote the name Paul gave him, and promised to check it out. “So there’s no one you know, no one you can think of that would want to hurt you, Ms. Hagen?”
“No, I really wish I could. I want to be able to tell you someone or give you a name because it would make it less frightening. I don’t know anyone I’ve injured or upset enough that they would do this.”
“I understand,” Tibbet said as he closed his book. “If you think of anyone or anything, no matter how small, a sister of someone you dated that got hurt, a parent, a friend, anything, you let me know.”
Torie nodded and stood to shake hands as Tibbet left. Paul showed him to the door and came back to the table. He pulled two yellow pads from a nearby stack.
“Okay. We’re going to spend some time on a time line, all right? We’re going to start from now and work backwards in time, as much as you can remember. I’ve got a file on the stuff that happened to Todd when he would come home. We’re going to see if any of the dates match.”
He handed Torie a pen and went to his desk for the file.
They worked for over two hours, plodding through her life, dissecting her dates and her work.
“Crap,” she cursed as they reviewed a point that brought her work into play. “I had a call from the office. I need to check my messages.”
Flipping over another page, she clicked over to voice mail and began to listen to what were now thirty-two messages.
Predictably, there were a lot of calls from the press.
“Any idea how the press might have gotten my cell phone number?”
“Does the Chamber have it?”
“Damn.” She sighed. “Yeah, they do. My office does as well, so it could have come from there.”
She jotted down the names and information of the various reporters.
“You’re not obliged to call them back, Torie. They’re just after a story or a scoop or some comment they can use against you.”
Looking up from her notes, Torie managed to smile. “I know, but I guess I want to see who’s calling and who has some decorum about contacting me. If there ever comes a time to talk to the press, I’ll know who to pick.”
Paul looked nonplussed for a moment, then laughed. “Very good. Really.” He grinned at her. “That’s perfect.”
She smiled back. “I thought so.”
She got to a message from her brother and stopped to text him, fill him in on the latest details. Within seconds, she had a ping with a reply.
“No, you goof,” she murmured aloud, texting back. “I don’t want you to fly home again.”
“Your brother?”
Torie nodded. “Yes, he wants to be more of a big brother than a younger one, take care of me. I’m trying to explain that you can’t fight shadows with no names.”
“Good way to put it, as it’s certainly what we’ve got.” He pulled her pages over to his side of the table and began comparing them.
She listened to Pam on the message talking about Dev and how nice he was. Rolling her eyes, she deleted it, and picked up a message from Dev saying that Pam certainly was a hottie and he was glad Torie had introduced him to her.
The next one was from GoodMama. Bracing herself for the worst, Torie began to listen to the message.
“You call me, y’hear, little girl? I ain’t got no mad on, so you call. I know you be thinkin’ I’m mad about the boy, but I ain’t. He had his own warning and didn’t heed it, so’s it’s just as it’s supposed to be anyhow. Now, fergit Devereaux Chance for a minute, and call your GoodMama.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, she clicked the message into saved messages.
“You look like you got a reprieve from the gallows.�
�
“Kinda. My grandmother, the one from New Orleans?”
“The tiny one, the one that had the—”
“The pet bobcat? Yes, that one.” GoodMama had brought her pet bobcat from New Orleans in a cat carrier. In the interest of keeping the fragile peace brought about when GoodMama and Daddy had talked before he died, Torie and her mother said nothing about the cat. As she remembered, Dev and the other cousins who’d come had given the cat a wide berth.
“Does she still have the cat?”
“I don’t think so. She hasn’t mentioned Stiletto in a while,” Torie said as she noted the number. “I guess I need to call her.”
“Do you want to use the landline?” He pointed to the phone by his desk. “Save some battery or minutes?”
“Oh, sure.”
Torie eased into the large leather chair, spinning it carefully to pick up the phone. When she’d dialed, she turned the chair so its back blocked her view of Paul. Talking to GoodMama was going to be nerve-wracking enough, much less with Paul listening in.
“’Bout time.” GoodMama answered the phone without preamble. “I been waitin’ on ya. Some reason you think to keep me waitin’?”
“I’m sorry, GoodMama, I just got the message.”
“You saw it yesterday.”
“I did, but I got shot at and nearly blown up yesterday, so I wasn’t really up for talking.”
“Hmmmmph. Well. Reckon that’s true. You eatin’?”
“Eating? No, I haven’t eaten yet, but it’s not lunchtime.”
“Breakfast, girl. Most important meal of the day. Didn’t your mama teach you that?”
Torie smiled. “Yes, yes she did.”
“Listening’s a good skill to have, little girl.” GoodMama said it with a flat tone, like a warning. “You need to do a lot of it right now. I’m telling you that you need to look at everyone close to you. That Pam, she’s not the one. Nor Dev. Nor that man sittin’ there with you that thinks you mighty fine. Them you can trust. The others? Don’t you trust no one else, you hear, little girl? Dev, he has to come home. Get him outta harm’s way.”