“That’s acceptable, then,” she said after a brief pause.
“I expect regular updates on your progress. I’m taking my husband’s ashes up to New Jersey this afternoon for the memorial service.” She pulled another neatly typed sheet of paper from her tote. “These are all my contact numbers with the dates and times most convenient for you to reach me.”
Paranoid, grief-stricken, and anal. Great combination.
“Do you have a cell phone or a pager?”
I was a little surprised. No one had ever asked me for that information. “I have voice mail,” I offered. “I check my messages regularly—”
“I prefer a direct number,” Mrs. Evans said in a way that pretty much said it wasn’t so much a preference as a requirement.
Grabbing one of my business cards, I hated myself as I scribbled my cell number on the back. Something told me giving Stacy Evans unrestricted access to my life was something I would definitely live to regret.
By lunchtime that prophetic thought was fact. Stacy had called no fewer than three times. Once on the office line and twice on my cell. Now, as I walked slowly down Clematis Street, on my way to meet my friends Becky, Jane, and Olivia, my purse was vibrating incessantly. I checked the incoming number, recognized it as Stacy’s, and refused to answer. She might be a close, personal friend of Vain Dane, but I wasn’t her indentured servant. At least not between twelve-thirty and two. Which was my definition of the forty-five-minute lunch hour.
The best part about being a estates and trusts paralegal was the relative freedom. No one ever questioned my ab-sences from the office, so long as I grabbed a few folders and mumbled something about filing things with a court clerk. No one seemed to notice that my “meetings” were almost always linked to mealtimes. Or if they did, they didn’t say anything, which suited me just fine.
Downtown West Palm Beach was crowded, but that was about to change. Locals claim there are two seasons in Florida, summer and snowbird. Summer lasts from February through the first week of November. Snowbird season lasts roughly from Thanksgiving through Easter, defined mostly by caravans of RVs clogging I-95 as their occu-pants flee winter in search of a milder climate to wait out the snow melt.
For year-round residents like me, it means parking lots filled beyond capacity, long grocery-store lines, and forget trying to get a prescription filled. The pharmacy is apparently some sort of Mecca for the sixty-five-and-older crowd.
Easter is late this year—two additional weeks of “Season” before they head back to their homes and families.
A horn blared, startling me. I ducked to avoid a low palm frond as I maneuvered past a white-haired woman and her walker. I know I should feel compassion. Respect my elders, yada, yada, yada. But, in my defense, whoever made those rules was never cut off on the highway by a ninety-year-old whose reflexes no longer included a glance in the rearview mirror before a lazy lane drift.
I allowed myself a subtle vanity check as I neared the corner at North Olive Street. Sushi Rok was a trendy, relatively new Asian/Japanese seafood place that catered to the business crowd. It was a good choice for lunch, since the tourists tended to avoid this place in favor of the more casual spots that welcomed shorts, T-shirts, and scrunchies.
Okay, I had to admit, while I loathed every second I spent in my gym, the results made it all worthwhile. Especially now that I was entering the danger zone, when my body started acting like a cereal-box disclaimer: some settling may occur during shipment.
Spring meant one thing to me—Lilly Pulitzer. I’d paired my seventy-percent-off-because-of-a-lipstick-smudge hibis-cus pink cardigan tied around my shoulders with a—gulp— full-price patchwork dress in her signature citrus colors.
Since the cotton spandex dress was both form-fitting and left my arms bare, I did have to give a little mental nod to my stump-necked personal trainer, Neal, who pushed me mercilessly. While I was giving silent praise, I also thought of my wonderful dry cleaner, who managed to turn the smudge into little more than a faint ghost near the jeweled neckline of the worsted cashmere sweater.
The ensemble, paired with my new purse and strappy sandals, was, I decided, really, really flattering. Lilly
is
the blond woman’s best friend.
The restaurant was fairly crowded. A low buzz of over-lapping conversation was punctuated by the clinking of glasses and tableware. Shoving my sunglasses up on my head, I scanned the tables for my friends. It took just a second for me to spot Olivia, casually waving her hand.
I weaved toward the table, checking out the men in the room on single-woman autopilot. Well, I wasn’t completely single. And the pilot in my life is actually Patrick.
Thinking of him should have made me happy, giddy . . .something. Something more than comfortable.
I sighed heavily as I joined Olivia and Becky. “Jane’s late?” It was a rhetorical question. Jane was always late.
Jane would die late. Olivia was on her Blackberry, so I directed my greeting to Becky.
Becky sipped on peach iced tea. Her dark brown eyes were hidden behind orange-tinted glasses. Rebecca Jameson and I have been friends since college. She’s a junior associate at the firm, a contracts specialist working under the watchful eyes of Ellen Lieberman, only female partner and all-around über-bitch.
I’m the one who convinced Becky to apply after she graduated with honors from Emory Law School. I’m also the one who suggested she focus on some area of the law other than contracts. Becky didn’t heed my advice, which, it turns out, worked in her favor. For some unknown reason, Becky and Ellen actually work well together. As well as anyone can work with Ellen, who, incidentally, believes the road to success requires draining all estrogen from her being. Ellen Lieberman is all drab suits, Birkenstocks, and gray roots.
Becky was dressed in taupe slacks and a cotton blouse in her favorite shade of orangey red. “Nice top,” I complimented.
“Thanks,” she replied, twisting her long hair into a knot as the midday sun streamed in from the window at her back. “Coffee’s on the way.”
I smiled, grateful that my friends loved me enough to anticipate my continual need for caffeine.
Turning my attention to Olivia, who was slipping her latest and most favorite electronic toy into her purse, I said hello, then asked, “How is Garage Boy?”
Olivia’s perfect mouth turned down at the corners. “He is not a boy.”
“He lives in his parent’s garage,” I pointed out. “He’s thirty-six. He doesn’t have a job. He’s—”
“An asshole,” Becky finished unapologetically. “Geez, Liv, cut him loose and find a real man.”
“Like you?” Olivia returned smoothly. “Your last date was when? Your high school prom?”
Becky smiled, since we all knew the assessment wasn’t all that far off. “I’m building a career. There’ll be plenty of time to find Mr. Right later.”
“Later, huh?” Liv asked. “Like when you’re alone in your apartment, about to hit fifty, watching reruns of
The
Gilmore Girls,
while you devour an entire box of Moon Pies and are surrounded by sixteen cats?”
“Do not mock the Moon Pie,” Becky cautioned as she glanced around the restaurant. “It’s my comfort food.”
“Ladies?” I interjected, knowing full well the constant barbs could go on indefinitely. Becky and Liv enjoyed teasing each other. Probably because they were polar opposites.
“That was an e-mail from Jane,” Liv said. “She can’t get away.”
Becky and I both gave little groans, then immediately grabbed our menus. I was vacillating between the yellow-fin tuna special and California rolls when the waiter arrived with my coffee.
“We’re still waiting for the fourth?” he inquired. Predictably, he spoke predominantly to Olivia. It used to bother me, her getting all the male attention. Now I understand they can’t help it. Olivia is just
that
pretty. Exceptionally pretty. She has exotic coloring and flawless features. At first glance, most people think her violet eyes are fake—those horrid contact lenses created in hues not known in nature. They’re real, as are her high cheekbones, bowed lips, tapered neck, ample boobs, small waist— Hell, her whole five-seven, size-two body is just a thing to be envied.
“Actually, it will just be the three of us,” Liv supplied.
She batted her lashes. Flirting was as natural to her as breathing. “Could we have a few minutes?”
“Certainly, ladies,” the waiter said. “I’ll run and get you another cucumber water while you decide.”
He was attractive enough to warrant my glancing over the top edge of my menu to assess his butt. “Too skinny,”
I murmured.
“Too short,” Liv added.
“I’d do him,” Becky announced.
“You’ve been celibate too long,” I said with a sigh. “You’d do anyone.” I looked up at my tablemates. “Thanks to your recent color change, Becky, we now look like we belong on
Petticoat Junction.
”
Becky twirled a lock of her recently tinted red hair. “I’m Betty Jo. Wasn’t she the red-haired one that ended up with the cute crop duster? Speaking of pilots, how is Patrick?”
I shrugged. “Fine. He’s due back late tonight.” Again I hated it that thinking about him did little to inspire my fantasies. On paper, he was
the
guy. The
one.
The man of my dreams. He was thirty-four, moderately tall, blond, blue-eyed, and a pilot. Perfect, right? His income potential is on target; he’s intelligent, funny, and athletic; we like a lot of the same things—the beach, movies, restaurants,
etc.
Genetically, he’s the ideal person to father my children.
There’s just no . . . magic.
I long ago abandoned fairy-tale
special,
but I’d like it a lot more if I felt my heart flutter when I opened the door.
Or, in the alternative, toe-curling sex. The sex was okay.
Patrick was considerate enough to be . . . methodical. Methodical was satisfying, but it didn’t exactly inspire passion.
When I’m with Patrick, all the foreplay is accomplished in a determined, specific order. It’s like sex has a preflight checklist that he has to complete before he can achieve lift-off.
I frowned and laid my menu on the table to await the return of the server.
Liv reached over and patted my hand. Twin chunky bracelets clunked against the tabletop. “Still no fireworks?”
I shook my head. “Not even a spark.”
“It won’t get any better,” Becky commented. “In my experience, bad sex is not like good wine. It doesn’t improve with time.”
“When was the last time you had sex?” Liv asked. “Bad or otherwise?”
“I’m trying to remember,” Becky drawled. “Let’s see, it was on a sofa after my boyfriend’s parents went to sleep.
No, wait! That was
you.
”
“Tease me all you want, Betty Jo,” Liv responded. “At least I’m not wedded to my work.”
“Weddings
are
your work,” I inserted. “Speaking of which, any good bridezilla stories to share?”
Liv is a much sought after wedding planner, with clients on both sides of the bridge.
I should explain that “the bridge” is the section of Okeechobee Road that crosses the Intracoastal Waterway, separating West Palm Beach from the super-rich, invitation-only world of Palm Beach. Old money, like the Posts, the Flaglers, and the Kennedys, mix reluctantly with the new-money residents.
New money
is something of a misnomer, since nothing much in Florida predates 1924. Nothing but the family fortunes used to build some of the most incredible ocean-front mansions on the East Coast. Along with offering primo golf and deepwater slips for personal yachts, Palm Beach is an event haven.
Liv and her partner, Jean-Claude DuBois, had turned Concierge Plus from kid’s party planners into
the
premiere wedding coordinators in the area. Now they were branch-16
Rhonda Pollero
ing out into coordinating other things, like some of the elaborate balls that raised funds for a diverse list of charities.
Still, the wedding mishaps were my personal favorites.
Probably because I derived some sort of childish, perverse comfort knowing that if I wasn’t happily walking down an aisle, no one else was, either. Which makes no sense what-soever, since I really don’t have any burning desire to embrace hearth and home. Not yet.
Lunch was pretty uneventful. Good food, casual chitchat, and a lot of laughs. I prepared to leave feeling recharged, ready to tackle the remainder of my day.
Becky and I waited with Liv until the valet brought her champagne-colored Mercedes convertible around to the front of the restaurant. Unlike me, Liv was making really great money, but, like me, she spent freely.
Becky was probably earning three times my salary, but her only vice was clothing, so she had more money in the bank than any of us.
As soon as Liv pulled away from the curb, Becky turned and said, “I heard Victor sent a case your way this morning.”
“Yeah.” I recounted my strange meeting to Becky before scrolling through the messages on my cell phone. Stacy Evans had called two more times during lunch. I glanced at the time on the screen. According to the schedule she’d given me, she was just about to board a plane for Newark.
With any luck, she’d land a few minutes after I was done for the day.
“What does she expect you to do?”
If you don’t love your job,
then you’d better love your paycheck.
Two
Becky’s question was still haunting me as I returned to work. I would have pursued it with her, but we followed an unwritten rule when it came to work and socializing. We always part company at least two blocks from the office so no one, meaning Margaret, would catch on that I took leisurely lunches with a junior associate. Margaret long ago appointed herself chief of the employee police. She wouldn’t approve of an attorney and a paralegal having lunch together. Especially if said lunch exceeded the time allotted by company policy.
In reality, I think Margaret is just miffed that there’s a support-staff hierarchy. Specifically, she’s pissed that I’m higher up on the food chain than she is. Frankly, I wear better shoes than she does, too. Not that that’s hard. I shuddered at the thought of Margaret’s shoes. And forget that I actually have a degree and she doesn’t. In Margaret’s world, lawyers are gods, and the rest of us should all be judged solely on seniority. Which would work out pretty well for her, since she’s been sitting at the reception desk for thirty-one years.
I shivered uncomfortably. The mere thought of sitting at the same desk for more than a quarter-century made me want to gnaw through my wrist for a vein.
Not that I was making a lot of headway in the move-up-and-succeed department. There was no vertical move for me. Unless, of course, I took my mother’s counsel and went to law school. Right! Like taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt to do basically what I do now makes sense. If I’m going to be in debt, it’s going to be for important things, like Lulu Guinness stuff.
Much as I didn’t want to dive headfirst into the uncharted waters of the Evans case, I figured I should get started. For one thing, I was pretty sure Stacy would be calling me in the morning, if not the very instant she touched down in Newark. And, on a more immediate note, Victor Dane was in the building and might get some wild hair about checking up on my progress.
I knew he was in because his stupid seven-foot-wide Hummer was hogging up a good portion of the parking lot.
Seated back at my desk, I tapped a pen against the blotter as I tried to formulate the best plan. Florida had very user-friendly probate laws, so it only took me forty-five minutes to fill out the forms necessary to open an estate.
Stacy had already signed the forms on her visit to the office that morning.
Normally, I would run to the clerk’s office, get Letters of Administration, then start an inventory. Once I had that in my hand, I’d meet with one of the tax associates and formulate a plan for transferring title to the surviving spouse.
The point of all the paperwork was to make sure the client’s tax liabilities were minimized and to recommend the best way to preserve assets based on the age and needs of the beneficiaries.
But this case wasn’t normal. Not at all. I didn’t have the first clue how to investigate a murder, let alone a non-murder murder.
So, I read Mr. Evans’s will. Nothing sinister in the twenty-page document. The usual things were covered—basically all the real and personal property went to his wife, with the exception of a specific bequest to his son. The ten-percent ownership in Evans & Evans Jewelers retained by Marcus Evans upon his retirement transferred directly to his son, Abram, in accordance with a partnership agreement.
I flipped through the papers provided by Stacy, found the partnership agreement, and slapped a bright pink Post-it note on it. I scribbled a message that I needed to send this to the Contracts Department, standard practice to ensure everything was in order and in full compliance with the laws of the State of New York, where it had been drafted.
All that stuff was well inside my professional comfort zone. But I still wasn’t sure how to approach the whole “my husband was murdered” thing. I needed help, so I pulled out my firm directory and started running down the alphabetical list of names.
I dismissed three of the paralegals out of hand. I knew two of the litigation assistants were in trial, so they wouldn’t be available to give me a crash course on murder investigation. The third non-possibility was Debbie Gayle. She was on maternity leave. Again. The woman was like a freaking machine. Three kids in four years. Two of them were born in the same year but weren’t twins. God, what did she do?
Have sex in the backseat on the way home from the hospital? I conjured up a mental picture of Debbie. Pretty, if you could look past the sleep-deprived, dark circles under her eyes. Her short, no-fuss brown hair was always slightly mussed, as if she’d had only enough time to run her fingers through it. Very little makeup. Then again, if I had three kids under four, I’d be hard-pressed to shave both my legs on the same day. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Debbie without a yucky blob of baby barf down her back.
It was enough to make me rethink the whole having-children thing.
I cringed when I got to the next possibility. I rolled my chair back in order to refill my coffee cup, my eyes still fixed on the company directory. Maybe I was hoping that if I stared at it long enough, her name would morph into something else. No such luck.
Very few people intimidate me. Mary Beth is one of those few. In fact, she is at the top of the make-me-feel-like-a-lesser-lifeform list. Mary Beth is one of those people who can do everything and do it perfectly. She’s the Martha freaking Stewart of legal assistants—without the felony conviction, of course. To make it worse, she’s very, very nice. It would be easier if she was a snot, but she isn’t.
Aside from being genuinely kind, she volunteers for everything. Not only does she never forget a coworker’s birthday, she bakes cakes, circulates cards, and organizes all our holiday parties.
Her office is a thing of beauty. Mary Beth even made her own curtains. “Curtains,” I muttered with a grudging smile, sipping on my coffee. The fact that she can sew is annoying enough. The fact that she redid her own office at no cost to the firm is just . . .
wrong.
I knew she’d help me. Mary Beth doesn’t know how to say no. But it would also mean I’d be on her radar. Mary Beth wouldn’t stop at helping me with the Evans case.
No, she’d keep helping. Her help would spread into other areas. It would start innocently enough—interoffice e-mails to check on my progress. Then it would escalate. She’d drop by to offer tips and helpful hints. After that would come the invitations to the dreaded home parties. Recipe swaps, storage-container parties, and, worst of all . . .faux-jewelry sales.
I cringed at the thought of spending an evening pretending I liked competing with other women by seeing how many words I could make out of
gold plated
in sixty seconds or less. I imagined myself frantically scribbling log, old, dog, late, tall, blah, blah, blah, all in the name of winning a not-available-in-stores pot holder or set of plastic coasters.
My fingers hovered over the keypad of my phone. Was it worth it? Was I willing to consign myself to the fiery pits of home-party hell, all in the name of investigating a non-crime? As much as I loathed the idea of a risking a week-day evening trapped in the nether regions of cream cheese hor d’oeuvres, it was my job.
Mary Beth answered her extension on the third ring.
Her voice was annoyingly perky. Kind of like a like an overeager cheerleader on speed.
“This is Finley down in Estates and Trusts.”
“Hi, Finley!”
I could almost see her painting a poster that read GO
TEAM! BEAT STATE! in brilliant primary colors. I explained my situation as I listened to the sound of her flipping through her Rolodex.
“I’ve got just the person for you,” she gushed. “His name is Liam McGarrity.”
I wrote the name on a Post-it, along with the phone number she provided. “Thanks.”
“I’ll go ahead and send you an e-mail with my new case tracker as an attachment,” Mary Beth offered. “It’s user-friendly and has all the pertinent investigation contacts, including a recommended timeline that automatically computes your billable hours along with outside contractor costs. I’d be happy to come down and—”
“I’m good,” I interrupted. “Thanks so much. Sorry, Mary Beth, I’ve got another call,” I lied. My e-mail dinged her incoming message almost before I had a chance to disconnect the call.
After opening the document, I swallowed more coffee along with a groan. I didn’t see myself filling out a fifty-plus-page checklist for a simple car accident. Scrolling down, I made notes on people to contact and other highlights. Thanks to Stacy, I already had the police report. According to Mary Beth’s tomelike bible, I also needed the hospital records, an autopsy report, and a background check on Marcus and his family, friends, and business associates.
I sent a quick e-mail to thank Mary Beth. Unlike my col-league, I didn’t include an animated happy face with little hearts coming out of its ears in my reply.
The letters of request didn’t take much time, so when I was finished, I dialed the number for Liam McGarrity.
While I listened to the phone ring, I thought about his name. It sounded masculine and— “McGarrity.”
Forget the name. The voice was very deep, very sexy.
Which meant he was probably a middle-aged, balding redhead with a bulbous nose and chewed fingernails. It was one of those cruel jokes of nature. Men, in my experience, are like God’s little Mr. Potato Head projects. If they’re smart, they’re ugly. If they’re funny, they’re snide. If they’re cute, they’re jerks. For every positive, there’s usually an offsetting negative that makes them . . .
men.
“Hi. This is Finley Tanner from Dane, Lieberman.”
“Yeah. I got a call from Mary Beth.”
I rolled my eyes. Her efficiency was daunting. “Yes, well, um, I need some—”
“A mechanical review on the car and a complete background.”
“Well, yes. Seems like Mary Beth covered everything.”
“She always does,” he agreed. “I’ve got a thing this afternoon that might run long. I’ll be by in the morning. Say, nine?”
A “thing”? What the hell is a “thing”?
“Say ten,” I suggested, knowing the odds of my actually being at my desk would be better then.
“See you at nine, later.”
Later?
Surfer vocabulary. I was ready to lay odds that his “thing” was the afternoon high tide. A pudgy redhead on a surfboard wasn’t a pretty mental image.
But it stayed with me through the remainder of the day.
It followed me to my car and still irritated me as I slipped behind the wheel.
“Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered, finally focusing on my commute just in time to realize I’d passed the exit to my mother’s posh digs. Traffic was at a virtual crawl, so I briefly considered pulling onto the shoulder and reversing my way back to the off-ramp. Except that the shoulder was closed because of construction. And—oh, yeah—it’s illegal.
Normally, I would have blown off the chore of watering my mother’s plants. But she was due back from her husband hunt this weekend, and I needed to inventory the damage. My mother’s cruises were costing me a flipping fortune. She was currently steaming her way back from twenty-eight days in the Mediterranean, and if I didn’t start replacing plants soon, I’d never be able to hide my inattentiveness. It was a small price to pay. Way better than admitting that in the month she’d been gone, I’d watered her prized orchids exactly twice.
I’m such a wrong person for this chore. The only kind of flowers I like are
delivered.
Her plants seem to sense this. It’s like the little bastards make a suicide pact the minute they see me walk through the door. Leaves drop, buds rot. It isn’t pretty.
The whole “water my orchids” thing is penance. Yet another way my mother has to subtly remind me that I’m a failure. My brown thumb is legendary. My sister, Lisa, on the other hand, could breathe life into firewood.
But Lisa is in New York, finishing her residency and planning the September wedding of the century. It isn’t just a residency. No, Lisa wouldn’t settle for
just
becoming a doctor. Nope, she’s spent the last three years specializing in pediatric oncology. My mother likes to tell anyone who stands still about her daughter who is going to cure childhood cancers. It works kind of like this: Total stranger, “Do you have any children?”
My mother, “Yes, I have a beautiful daughter, Lisa. She graduated at the top of her class from Harvard Medical School. She was on a complete academic scholarship. Lisa is engaged to marry Dr. David Huntington St. John the Fourth. He’s the son of Georgia State Supreme Court Justice David Huntington St. John the Third. Lisa and her fiancé plan to have a fall wedding—at the family estate in Buckhead, of course—because David the Fourth is spending the summer in Central America donating his time to Doctors Without Borders. Oh, wait . . . yes, and I have another daughter, whose name escapes me at the moment.”
I swallowed my own pettiness. Truth be told, Lisa is a decent person, and David Four seems like a great guy. It’s just that the better they are, the worse I look to the rest of the world in general and to my mother in particular.
It doesn’t help that my mother is Cassidy Presley Tanner Halpern Rossi Browning Johnstone, former rising star for the Metropolitan Opera. Cassidy is actually a stage name, made legal for a hundred bucks back in the seventies. She thought it sounded better than her birth name, Carol more exotic and more in keeping with her destiny.
My mother had a beautiful voice. Her promising opera career was cut short by nodules on her throat. The removal of those nodules turned her amazing voice into something less than what is required of a star soloist. So she embarked on a second career—serial marriage.
It worked out pretty well for me. My mother’s first husband was Jonathan Tanner. I was eighteen months old at the time. He adopted me and treated me like his very own.
Which was a good thing, since I didn’t find out he wasn’t my biological father until I was thirteen. And I only found out then because I had snuck into my mother’s lingerie drawer because I wanted to know what a two-hundred-dollar bra looked like. That’s when I found my birth certificate and my adoption papers.