A Job to Kill For

by Janice Kaplan

  “Nice!” I said clapping, as I got out of my car.

  He turned around and grinned, then, clutching his board, pretended to bow. He fit right in with the teenagers around him—somewhat awkward, trying too hard to be cool. As in his office, social niceties seemed to escape him. Instead of coming over to say hello, he moved over to a low stone wall that had been rigged for more tricks. Taking off from a short downhill, he soared into the air again, went across the wall, spun around, and came down, this time with a clumsy thud. He tripped over the board but managed to stay standing.

  “Chopped, dude!” called one of the young men holding his own neon-colored board.

  Hal got on his skateboard and zigzagged across the pavement in my direction. Just when I thought he’d crash into me, he jumped backward so the board flipped into the air. He caught it and held it above his head like a trophy.

  “The intrepid Lacy Fields comes to see me again,” he said. “Can I teach you how to kick flip? Do an ollie?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Really, it’s easy-peasy. Just follows the laws of physics. A body in motion stays in motion. What goes up must come down. All very fundamental. First-year Newtonian principles.”

  “I want to talk to you about Derek Howe,” I said, knowing Hal could go off on tangents forever. “He died the night of a Delta ij initiation.” I’d promised Grant not to discuss his own initiation—and I wouldn’t.

  “Coincidence. Or co-ink-ee-dink, as some like to say. Tragic, tragic. Hard-working boy. I’d been busy with the ceremony that night and he stayed in the lab. I needed some results for the morning.”

  “You mean he worked in your lab?”

  “I put his name on the breakthrough paper I published,” Hal said defensively. “In fact, I listed all three of my research assistants. Of course, I got first author. And full credit as the genius. Because I am.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Could it really have been Derek’s breakthrough?” I asked softly.

  If I’d hit a chord, it wasn’t obvious. Hal threw back his head and laughed raucously. “My undergraduate assistants crunch numbers. Crunch data. Crunch my M&Ms. If one of them turned out an original theory, I’d eat my kaleidoscope. Never happens.”

  I knew enough about college campuses not to be fooled by the ivory towers. Academics could be as cutthroat and competitive as CEOs. But even with that, killing a student to take credit for his work sounded far-fetched.

  “Let’s talk about Cassie Crawford,” I said, ready to explore a different direction. “Why did she care so much about Derek?”

  “I don’t think she cared soooo much. She cared a little.” He held thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “It was her freshman year, and he took her out on a couple of dates. Then he died.”

  Cassie and Derek had dated? Interesting information. But I didn’t need to let on that it seemed important. “Hal, I really meant why Cassie cared recently. Last time we spoke, you said she’d been asking you a lot of questions about Derek.”

  Hal looked around, then pointed in the direction of the giant Ferris wheel at Santa Monica pier.

  “How much do you like riding that Ferris wheel?” he asked.

  “Never been on it,” I admitted.

  “Unacceptable.” He put down the skateboard and grabbed my hand. “We’re going right now.”

  “Actually, we’re not.” I shook my hand free. “I don’t like heights.”

  “That’s why you need to go,” he said. “Gives some perspective. Go way up high and everything below seems so small. You wonder why you’d fretted so much. Like fussing about ants.”

  “Another time,” I demurred.

  With a demonic half smile on his face, he turned to me and whispered, “Worried we’ll get to the top and I’ll throw you off?”

  “It never occurred to me,” I said.

  “Well, Lacy Fields, maybe it should occur to you. You worry about the wrong things. And people like that end up dead.”

  We had a rousing family dinner, with everyone sitting on the deck and competing to tell their best stories from the weekend. Take-out food served on bright-colored plastic plates didn’t exactly qualify me for the Martha Stewart Medal, but I’d go for camaraderie over cuisine any day. In the glow of the candles, I looked at my children and knew all over again that I’d do anything in the world to keep them safe. I didn’t really understand Hal Bohr’s agenda—or his final threat to me. Now I wished I’d issued a threat in return. You want to know who ends up dead, Professor? Anyone who threatens my children.

  The next morning, I got the kids off to school, then called Paige to say I needed to talk urgently.

  “I’m going for a power walk in the mountains when I finish teaching,” she said. “I have an early day. You can join me.”

  I peeked out the window at the gray, drizzly sky. Anybody who bragged about LA sunshine had never been here in the winter.

  “Interested in meeting me for a pedicure first?” I asked. “I know a great place run by a registered nurse. Very sterile. My treat.”

  “No thanks. Seems silly to have someone else polish your toes when you can do it yourself.”

  “As long as you can still reach them,” I joked. But she took me seriously.

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to insult you. Maybe you should do yoga.”

  “Never tried,” I admitted.

  “Then let’s meet at the Yoshi Bikram yoga studio. I’ll switch and do the power walk tomorrow. I can be flexible.”

  I’d bet she could be flexible. I pictured her long legs tucked behind her ears. Well, at least we’d be sitting. Lesser of two evils. “What time?” I asked resignedly.

  When I arrived, early that afternoon, Paige had already changed into pale blue spandex shorts and matching top that left a wide expanse of tanned, toned midriff exposed. I hastily threw on my gray sweats.

  “You may be uncomfortable in that,” she said, eyeing my outfit as we walked to the studio. As soon as she pushed open the door, I staggered back.

  “Why’s it so hot in here?” I asked.

  “Bikram’s done in a warm room to help the muscles relax and encourage an energy flow.”

  “More like a sweat flow,” I said, wiping my brow. “What’s the temperature in here?”

  “About one hundred thirty degrees.”

  I clutched my chest. “I think you die at one hundred seven. The brain fries or something. Jimmy had to go to the ER once for a fever of one hundred five.”

  “That’s different,” she said. She calmly settled on to a mat, folded her lithe legs so her heels rested on her thighs, and waved to me to join her. “I’ll show you a few positions before the yogi gets here. Classic lotus. Very simple.”

  I sat down and stuck my legs straight in front of me. I had a better way to spend a few minutes.

  “Paige, I need your help. You and Cassie were close friends. Did she ever talk about a guy named Derek Howe? She might have dated him for a while back in college.”

  “I don’t know the name,” she said, her back straight and her hands resting gracefully on her knees. She closed her eyes, a peaceful expression crossing her face.

  “He died,” I said urgently. “The papers Cassie hid in the library that night with you weren’t about Roger—one was about him.”

  Paige’s eyes shot open. I’d clearly blown her yoga bliss. “Oh, you mean Doogie. Sure. She hadn’t talked about him in years, but he came up recently. Something about his death had her worried. It started because a rich guy wanted to donate an endowed chair for the physics department. I forget who.”

  “Randall Scott,” I said.

  She unwrapped one lissome leg from lotus position and tucked it behind her. “Right. It would have been the Randall Scott Chair in Theoretical Physics. Cassie figured the first person to get it would be a young professor named Hal Bohr. Something about that worried her.”

  “She didn’t like Bohr?” I asked. I felt my heart pounding harder and clenched my fists. Better if I didn’t faint from
the heat before she answered.

  Paige moved her willowy limbs again. “King Pigeon position,” she said. “Want to try it? Your muscles should be warm by now.”

  I crossed my legs Indian-style. “Bohr,” I repeated.

  She nodded, her long, supple neck glistening. “Roger had introduced Cassie to Randall, so she worried about any whiff of scandal. Nothing could go wrong. If I remember, she’d dug up some connection between Bohr and Doogie that she didn’t like. She decided to discuss it with her boss, Elsa.”

  “Did she ever do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Paige, stretching her nimble torso backward. She stayed there a moment, then pulled herself back up. “We spent most of our time talking about Roger.”

  Worry about the wrong things and you end up dead.

  “Cassie planned for every eventuality with Roger,” Paige said, back on her favorite subject. “She even talked about cashing out some jewelry so she’d have her own money if he left. She didn’t want to be desperate during a divorce.”

  My brain had turned soggy from the heat. I dropped my head to my knees.

  “Nice stretching!” Paige said encouragingly.

  Cashing out jewelry. Selling a necklace at Christie’s. Billy with a million-dollar diamond. “Do you know how she planned to sell?”

  “Secretly. Roger couldn’t know, in case he didn’t plan to leave.” Paige rolled her eyes, obviously disliking deception. “I think she asked someone to do it for her. Not me. I’m not good at conniving.”

  “How about Billy Mann?”

  “Could be. Cassie trusted him. The biker with a heart of gold, she called him.” Paige slowly rolled her shoulders forward and backward, loosening her upper body. Then she looked up at me. “Are you okay? Do you want to stretch some more before Yogi Yoshi arrives?”

  I staggered to my feet, seeing black spots in front of my eyes.

  “I think I’m stretched about as far as I can go,” I said.

  Just then, the door opened and a yogi dressed in white minced in on pale bare feet.

  “Ah, good afternoon, ladies,” he said.

  I gave a loud, wheezing cough and tried to get past him. He looked at me and raised his thin eyebrows. I had sweat pouring down my face, hair stuck to my forehead, and a hand clutching the door so I didn’t fall over. “I like my studio filled with tranquility,” he said in a high reedy voice. “I’m not feeling that now. We clearly need to seek harmony.”

  “I’m with you on that,” I gasped. “Harmony and tranquility. I could use them. But I know a better place to look.”

  Without changing out of my sweats, I drove over to Jack Rosenfeld’s office. From the look the receptionist gave me, I might as well have come in wearing sackcloth and ashes.

  “He’s on a conference call and can’t be disturbed,” she told me when I asked for Jack.

  “I swear I’m a client,” I said, repeating my name. “I was in the other day. Better dressed.”

  “He’s on a long conference call. With London.”

  “It’s the middle of the night there.”

  “Then Hong Kong.”

  I sighed. “Is Rachel Royce available?”

  She turned her back to make a call and seemed surprised when she hung up. “Ms. Royce said you can come right back,” she reported.

  I gave her the haughtiest glance I could muster, then scurried down the long hall. As an associate in the firm, Rachel had a less impressive office than Jack’s, but the large window still offered a decent view. Three vases of flowers at various stages of wilting suggested grateful clients, amorous admirers, or both.

  “Hi, Lacy,” she said, bouncing up with her bright smile. Apparently nobody had told her that associates at law firms were overworked and miserable. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “My sweats are kind of sweaty,” I admitted, brushing a hand across my backside.

  “Don’t worry.” But she gestured to a hard-backed chair instead of the upholstered couch.

  “Are you working with Jack on this crazy case I’m involved in?” I asked, perching on the edge of the chair.

  She nodded. “Yes, but Jack’s the senior partner. I’m not really supposed to have direct client contact.”

  “Well, he’s busy. Plus he thinks Molly’s a reasonable suspect.”

  “She has motive,” Rachel conceded. “And then there’s the fact that you were at the scene of two crimes.”

  I hadn’t really thought of it that way.

  “I found out why Billy Mann had the necklace,” I blurted. “Cassie gave it to him to sell for her. She didn’t want Roger to know.”

  Rachel rolled a green Cross pen through her fingers. “She’d authorized the sale at auction?”

  “I don’t know if they had a notarized signature,” I said. “But she asked him to do it. Aboveboard. Maybe he didn’t look like it, but Billy was a reliable friend. Nothing more to it than that.”

  “How about what you told Detective Wilson?” Rachel asked, her eyes twinkling and her lips twitching to keep from smiling. “About Billy Mann being every woman’s fantasy.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “It’s been the most forwarded e-mail in the office.”

  I laughed. “It got me out of the interrogation room. And possibly gave Mrs. Wilson a couple of interesting nights.”

  Rachel grinned. “I wish I’d met the guy.”

  “You would have liked him. Billy took care of people. He’d always been there for his disabled brother, and he was there for Cassie when she needed him. I’m convinced now they weren’t doing anything illicit.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Rachel agreed, glancing at one of the vases of flowers. I wondered what slick stud had sent them—and then turned out to be a creep.

  “Billy wasn’t what he seemed. I sensed that the first time I met him. It’s why I went on his motorbike.”

  Rachel looked at me dubiously. Maybe she didn’t know that part of the story—or maybe I’d given myself more credit than I deserved.

  “Anyway, his parading me in that yellow dress made sense, too. Instead of protecting himself, he’d been preserving Cassie’s reputation.”

  Now Rachel was completely lost. But she made a note to herself, and I knew she’d figure it out later.

  “So you think Cassie and Billy were friends. She handed him the diamond to sell.”

  “Right.”

  Rachel tapped her pen against the desk. “At the risk of sounding like Jack, that’s all very well, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her. If Cassie gave him the diamond surreptitiously, he had every reason to want her dead so he could keep the money.”

  “It’s not who he was,” I said, frustrated. “We have to think differently. Molly Archer Casting is famous for casting against type. Let’s try it. Forget Billy and Roger. Forget me and Molly. Something else had Cassie’s attention just before she died. A professor of physics named Hal Bohr.”

  “Really?” Rachel laughed. “Wasn’t there a famous physicist Niels Bohr? I remember that from high school, but don’t ask me anything more about him.”

  “Different guy.” I paused. “Anyway, are you ready for a long story?”

  Rachel smiled. “Not too long. I charge by the hour, you know. But I’m much cheaper than Jack.”

  “And less judgmental, I hope. Especially when I tell you that I tried to take some papers from Cassie’s apartment the other day. Somebody attacked me on the way out and grabbed them. Then he tied my hands and locked me in a closet.”

  Rachel blinked a few times. “For real?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  Rachel groaned. “Lacy, you know Jack has to hear this.” She got up. “Come on with me.”

  We hurried down a hall and around a corner.

  “Conference call over?” I asked, as we walked into Jack’s office.

  He nodded. “And lunch was just beginning. Late lunch. Very late lunch.” He looked longingly at a pretty plate of lobster salad waiting on his round conf
erence table. Another nice thing about being a partner at a fancy firm—an in-house chef.

  “You can eat,” I said.

  “And Lacy can tell you about her escapade the other night,” said Rachel.

  Jack crossed to the conference table. “Is the story going to make me lose my appetite?” he asked.

  I shook my head and launched into the relevant details. When I got to the part about the secret compartment in the book, Jack looked impressed. As I outlined the documents I’d seen, Rachel took furious notes. But once I began to describe the man with the gun dragging me to a closet, Jack put down his fork.

  “Does Dan know about this?” he asked when I’d finished.

  “No. And with attorney-client privilege, I assume he never will.”

  Jack pushed away his plate. “Lacy, you’ve definitely given us something new to pursue. But I’m glad you’ve spent some time with Rachel because you see how competent she is. As you realized with the will, it works a lot better if we do the investigating.”

  “Are you going to give any of this to the police?” I asked. “Maybe not my part in it. But just enough to get them on the right trail?”

  Jack and Rachel exchanged a glance. “There’s not a lot of real evidence here,” Jack said finally. “Cassie could have hidden papers for reasons that had nothing to do with her death.”

  “But after she’d been poisoned, she got on the ladder to get them,” I said. “As if she somehow knew.”

  “That may sound a little, um…mystical to someone like Detective Wilson,” Rachel said.

  “We’ll do what we think is best,” Jack said appeasingly.

  I stood up and tugged at the drawstring of my sweatpants. With all this anxiety, I’d lost some weight. Though maybe the cabbage diet would have been easier.

  “I’ll do what I think is best, too,” I said, done for the day with my condescending legal counsel. “But just so you know, my new goal is harmony and tranquility.”

  Chapter Seventeen