The Two Lila Bennetts

by Fenton, Liz

  Ethan or Sam. And as much as I hate to admit it, Carrie. I tried to convince myself that there’s no way that she could be capable. But I’ve certainly given her the right motivation. Did she snap? Is this her twisted way of making me pay? My mind begins to race at the possibility, but I shake the thoughts away. Tomorrow I will unravel that mystery. I have more important tasks at hand.

  “I still don’t completely get it. But if you insist on blowing up your entire life, I guess I’ll have to watch from the cheap seats as you detonate it,” Chase concedes.

  I stand up, lean over, and wrap my arms around him. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “You’re welcome,” he says before looking down at my shoes. “I’m glad you wore the cherry-red Manolos today. If you’re going down swinging, at least you’ll look fabulous.”

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring out the window of my office at the streets of downtown Los Angeles when Chase buzzes and lets me know I need to take off or I’ll be late to my next meeting.

  “Got it,” I say and stand up, grabbing my bag and straightening my jacket, pulling on my pencil skirt that has always been a bit too snug and cuts into my waist. I make a note to get rid of it.

  “I love that you’re dumping him in public.” Chase smirks as I pass him.

  “That way he can’t make a scene,” I say with a smile. I had Chase call Jeremiah and move our meeting to Hotel Indigo, the contemporary boutique hotel across the street, hoping it will sting less if he’s sitting in one of their plush lime velvet booths, staring at the wall of fedoras that hang from the ceiling.

  I jaywalk across Francisco Street and push my way through the heavy glass doors, spotting Jeremiah typing on his phone in a booth behind the bar.

  I greet him and slide in on the opposite side, facing him. “Thanks for meeting me here.”

  The bartender walks up and sets a bloody mary in front of him, then shoots me a questioning glance. “Nothing for me,” I say and shake my head.

  “You sure?” Jeremiah asks, carefully lifting the glass to his lips. “They make them good here.”

  “I’m sure, thanks,” I say, running my hand through my hair and sitting up a little straighter.

  “Suit yourself, then.” He pulls out a thick notepad, notes scrawled in blue ink covering the page. “I’ve already begun to put some thoughts on paper. I think this lawsuit is total bullshit. We need to go after Vivian this time. Attack her char—”

  I cut him off. “You want to attack the character of your late wife?” I stare at him incredulously, noticing how beady his eyes are. The way his chin juts out like a knife. I never paid attention to those details before. His charm camouflaging his flaws.

  “I think we should revisit the affair.” He glances at his notepad. “She recently had lunch with that old college boyfriend.”

  “An affair was never proven. And the police cleared him. His alibi was airtight,” I say calmly. “He was at the movies with his wife. The kid taking tickets confirmed it.”

  “That pimple-faced teenager could have been wrong. He was probably texting when they walked in. And his wife could have been covering for him.”

  I start to interrupt him again, and he puts his hand up. “Hear me out. Maybe Vivian broke things off with him, and he got upset. Followed her home from Pilates. Hit her with the lamp.”

  I snap to attention. “The lamp?” I repeat the words, and his eyes bulge, his face turning red.

  The murder weapon was never known during the trial. The police and coroner agreed that Vivian was bludgeoned with an object. But that object was never determined or found. The lead investigator on the case had speculated it could have been a number of things: a fire poker, a paperweight, a lamp. But nothing was found in Jeremiah’s home. He also couldn’t account for anything that was missing other than some valuables.

  The lack of a murder weapon was the main reason Jeremiah wasn’t convicted. I feel like I’ve been sucker punched in the stomach, and it takes a second to catch my breath.

  Jeremiah quickly recovers. “I just mean the murder weapon, whatever it was. Wasn’t it your guy that said it could have been a lamp?”

  “He speculated that it could have been that or a number of other things,” I say, my stomach churning as I connect the dots. “But the police couldn’t prove that any of the objects that could have killed her had ever been in your house. As you might recall, my defense was that the intruder used something he’d had with him. But a lamp? Why would an intruder bring a lamp into your house, Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah’s face turns red again. “I don’t know. If they ever find him, they should ask him.” He holds my gaze for a beat too long, and I can see that his hands are shaking slightly. His next words are a non sequitur. “Let’s talk about what your strategy is.”

  I stare at him, all the pieces falling into place. My gut screamed at me from the minute I took this case. He’s guilty, it tried to tell me. Yet I looked and didn’t see any red flags, so I’d told myself it was okay. That I was on the right side of it all. But I knew all along. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to represent you.” I pull a sticky note out of my bag and begin to write. “I can refer you to one of the other attorneys at our firm who specialize in—”

  “What do you mean, you can’t represent me?” Jeremiah asks, his voice barreling through the room. A woman in a red dress at the bar glances over. We make eye contact, and she looks away, taking a drink of her white wine.

  “I think you did it,” I blurt, and the words hang in the air between us.

  His head snaps back at my assertion, and then he sneers. “Do you really care if I did it, Lila? Why do you think I chose you? Because guilty or not, you battle till the end. You love the fight. You’re like a boxer in the ring.” He knocks back the last of his drink. “This is going to be a fight, and I need the toughest there is. I need Tyson. For you to bite an ear off if necessary. And you would.”

  I grimace at the idea that he thinks of me that way. But then again, when he met me, that’s who I probably was. I hold out the sticky note. “Sam will find someone better for you. Better yet, you can hire him. There’s no better Tyson, trust me.”

  Jeremiah grabs the note and crumples it in his hand. “You’re going to regret this. I’ll make sure it’s the end of your career here, bailing on me like this.”

  “I never agreed to represent you for the civil part in the first place. So I’m not bailing. I already got you off for murder. You’re welcome.” I pick up my tote and start to leave.

  He grabs my elbow. “You can’t do this,” he says, snarling.

  I shake my hand hard to try to break away from him. The woman notices us again, and I nod to let her know I’m okay. I’m sure she thinks this is a lovers’ spat. How many times had he and Vivian been through this? She didn’t do what he wanted, and he got physical. A surge of nausea rips through me as I fully realize my part in helping a killer go free. In the knowledge that there was not a damn thing any of us could do to change it.

  “Let go of me,” I say through my teeth.

  Jeremiah releases my hand. His jaw is clenched, and I’m staring at the man I’m now sure killed his wife. “One piece of advice. You can’t run from your secrets forever. Eventually they’ll catch up to you with a vengeance. Trust me,” I say before turning around and walking quickly toward the exit, refusing to look back.

  Chase knocks softly on my office door a few minutes after I return from Hotel Indigo. “Come in,” I call.

  “He’s down in Sam’s office,” he confesses gingerly. He’s still a little off from our earlier conversation. Still digesting all the change. “He’s going nuts.”

  “I figured as much.” I hit the Print button and pull the warm paper out. “I need you to do one more thing for me.” I hand him the sheet, and he scans it quickly.

  “Lila.” He shakes his head. “You can’t send this. Telling Vivian’s family about your privileged conversation with Jeremiah.”

  “He did it, Chase. I always
knew. And damn it, I ignored it to take the easy win.” I think about all the other times I’ve looked the other way because it was simpler to do so. “Now they have a chance to prove it.”

  “If what you did with Greenwood’s wife doesn’t get you disbarred, this certainly will.” Chase gives me a strange look. Almost as if he’s never seen me before. “It feels like you want them to punish you.”

  “Maybe I do,” I say. Then I add quickly, “Send it anonymously. Contact that guy we used for the Santos case. The one with the beard who always smells like weed.”

  “Fine.” Chase slips the paper into a manila envelope. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” His tone is low, and his face is slack. He knows once he sends this there is no turning back.

  I grin for the first time all morning. “Don’t worry. I do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  FRIDAY

  CAPTURED

  I throw my hands up in front of my face instinctively when I hear the crack of the bullet, bracing myself for it to penetrate my skull. Time suspends, and I can feel each rapid heartbeat knock my chest, the blood pump in my ears. I see Ethan’s lopsided grin when he proposed, his hand shaking as he held out the ring. I’ve read stories about people who marry sociopaths. Hell, I’ve defended them. But I thought I was more intuitive than that. I thought I knew my slightly nerdy, bookish, introverted, moody but lovable husband. The man who’s watching me on the camera right now, waiting for the bullet to end me. I cower on the floor and brace myself for the impact. For the life I thought I knew to be over. And that’s okay. Because the agony in the fact that I’ve driven Ethan to do this is the most painful part of all.

  But I’m still breathing. There is no pain. Only silence after the deafening pop. I tear my head around and stare at the wall behind me. There is a divot in the concrete where the bullet ricocheted off it.

  He missed?

  My gaze makes its way to Q. He’s still pointing the pistol at me. But it’s moving ever so slightly. Up and down. Up and down. Is he shaking? Did he mean to bypass me? Or did he simply miss his mark in the heat of the moment?

  “Q?” I say his name, but my mouth is so dry it comes out as more of a whisper.

  “Shut up!” Q says through gritted teeth. He starts to pace, the gun still aimed in my direction.

  His cell phone rings, but he ignores it. It must be Ethan demanding to know why there’s a bullet in the wall instead of in my body. After all, I’ve informed Stephanie that he’s involved. If she tells the police, that could be it. But this Ethan, the one I had no idea existed, has hired a masked man to abduct, demoralize, harm, and ultimately kill his wife, so he will not let this all be for nothing. He’ll want to get away before they get to him. And he’ll also want Q to dispose of me. But maybe he made a mistake and left a clue that will lead the police to me in time. Although it seems as though I have very little of that left.

  “Q?” I try again. I need to break through, get him to listen. To talk. Anything.

  “I told you to shut up. I need to think. This isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just shut up!” he says and runs his hand over his mask.

  I say nothing and take a long breath in. I’m still here. I’m still alive. And there’s a chance he’s not going to kill me. At least that’s what I want to believe as I glance at the hole in the wall again. Q’s phone beeps several times. He pulls it out and looks at it, then shoves it back into his pocket. I try to work out what’s going on between him and Ethan. Is Q no longer on board with the plan—whatever that plan was? Is there a disagreement about payment? Q wants more? I would. I’d want a fuckload if I was doing someone’s dirty work for him. The only problem is we don’t have that kind of money. I do well, but not that well. Not take-my-wife-hostage-and-kill-her-for-me well. Do they have a history, Ethan and Q? Does Ethan have something on Q? Maybe I’ll never know.

  Ethan told Q I had brought this on myself. Those words still haunt me. It’s the this part of his statement that bothers me the most. That he believes I deserve this because I had an affair. Because I defended Jeremiah too well. Because I did something stupid in law school. Only the affair directly affected him. And while it was terrible, was it this terrible?

  Something nags at the corners of my mind, willing for me to let it take shape. Words I heard Q say earlier that I’ve heard before. I only keep a client off the stand when they’re guilty . . . I’d said it flippantly to someone once. I remember thinking I shouldn’t have uttered it out loud, and I certainly hadn’t meant it. I had been making the point that sometimes there are too many holes in a story to survive a good cross-examination. But to whom had I been speaking? I squeeze my eyes tight and beg my tired mind to recover the entire thought.

  “Q, please, talk to me. I need to know. Is it really Ethan who’s behind this? I know you said it was, but did you mean it?” I’m surprised that my voice is cracking. That tears are springing from my eyes. Because I still love Ethan. My heart hasn’t caught up with what my mind knows. Or thinks it knows.

  He stops walking, the gun still trained on me. One pull of the trigger, and that’s it. I’m done.

  “Q?” I try again. “Please . . .”

  “I told you to shut up!” He hunches his shoulders and punches the wall. “Fuck,” he says, shaking his hand.

  “You’re hurt,” I say, watching the blood from his knuckles run down his arm.

  “No shit.”

  His phone rings again. He looks at it and huffs, then puts it away again.

  “What’s going on?” I jiggle my leg because it’s fallen asleep. My pencil skirt is now ripped almost all the way up to my waist. My blouse is stained with sweat. My bare legs have taken on a grayish tone from dirt and dust.

  “I didn’t disagree with you when you said it was Ethan.”

  “I know, but you also didn’t directly say it was . . .” I don’t finish my thought. I wait, hoping he’ll fill the silence.

  “You calling me a liar?”

  I shake my head. “It seems odd that you’d want me to know he was responsible for my abduction before I made the call to Stephanie.”

  Then it hits me. They knew I’d tell her. They wanted me to tell her. I shake my head at my stupidity. I was so desperate to speak to someone who could help me that I ignored the absurdity of them letting me make the call in the first place. This isn’t an episode of Bosch. These are real-life kidnappers who would never want anyone to hear my voice again unless it benefitted them somehow. And I walked straight into their trap, thinking I was helping myself when I was only hurting Ethan. Yet again. What does that say about me? That I was so quick to assume that Ethan would make the kind of terrible choices I have? Clearly I’ve learned nothing. He isn’t anything like me, which is one of the many reasons he’ll be better off without me.

  “Damn it,” I say.

  “I see you’ve figured it out,” he answers. “You did exactly what we wanted you to do. I actually thought you were smarter than that. But my partner knew different.”

  “That I’m not smart?” I look up at the camera.

  “No—that you’d be so focused on the possibility the phone call could help you, you wouldn’t notice the trap. That you’d be so arrogant as to think you could outsmart us.”

  Who gets me like that? My mom is the only person who knows me better than I know myself, and there is no way she has anything to do with this. And if it’s not Ethan, then who?

  Suddenly I remember who I spoke the line to.

  I whip my head around to stare at Q’s unique eye color—how could I have missed it? But, God, he was just a kid back then. No older than thirteen. I remember him as sweet and quiet. Seemed to really look up to his older brother. The brother that I realize now infiltrated my life so easily. He has a new name, his hair is dyed blond. But I have no doubt it is he who is behind this now, the pieces of this complex puzzle finally clicking into place. My chest heaves as my mind races through our histo
ry together. The laughter I realize was fake, the loyalty I felt from him an elaborate ruse so that he could gain my trust. If you had asked me a million times who had kidnapped me, his name would have never escaped my mouth.

  I force myself upright and shuffle toward the camera.

  “What are you doing?” Q asks, his voice shaking slightly. “I still have this gun pointed at you.”

  “I’m aware,” I say, working hard to keep the terror out of my voice.

  “Now you’re telling me what to do?” He purses his lips.

  “I am,” I answer slowly, then face the camera, hoping I’m not miscalculating. That what I’m about to say won’t backfire on me. “Because I know who you are. I know who’s been watching.” As I speak the words, I hope I’m wrong.

  “You’re bluffing,” Q says, but I hear something in his voice. Relief?

  I turn my back toward the camera and look at him. I whisper so the microphone won’t pick it up. “You can let me go. You don’t have to do your boss’s bidding anymore.”

  “No, I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just walk away.”

  I stare at him for a moment, wondering what’s going through his mind. Wondering why he was cast as the heavy.

  “It could work like that. You could take control of this. You have more power than you think.” I speak quickly.

  He shakes his head. “Not gonna happen. There’s a lot you don’t understand,” he says loudly. But his eyes are soft from behind the holes in his mask. Is he sending me a message? I decide to leave it there. Not to push him anymore.

  I turn back toward the camera and take a deep breath. Ironically, this is the one time in my life I’ve never wanted to be more wrong.

  “I know who you are. Come on out. It’s time we speak face-to-face.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  FRIDAY

  FREE

  I’m still on a high as I walk down the hall toward the elevator bank. Sam is on the floor above, and as I push number twenty-three, I take note of my balanced breath, my steady heartbeat, my clear head. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have clarity. Is this what it means to do the right thing? The doors open, and I step inside next to a dark-haired woman in a black power suit who is barking orders into her headset while simultaneously pecking on her phone. I told you to get me that brief. Opening arguments are tomorrow. She glances up as if noticing me for the first time, and when our eyes meet, I get the strangest sensation. As if I’m watching myself. As if I’m seeing what my life would be like if I stayed here at Douglas, Shirby, and Jones. I smile at her knowingly, and she nods, then returns to her call, her voice shrill. I tune her out until all I can hear is the Muzak. It’s the song “Easy.” Possibly a preface to what’s coming? Well, if it is, sing me home, Lionel!