Authors: Linda Grimes
“
What?
” he said.
“According to your sisters. But it’s okay. Molly assures me that you’re only being polite,” I said.
He shook his head. “Ciel, I don’t ‘flirt’—”
I lifted one eyebrow. “No?”
“
No.
I may
smile
at people, some of whom happen to be female. But smiling is not flirting.”
“It is when you have a smile like yours,” I teased.
“Thank you. I think,” he said. “Tell you what. For you, I’ll make an extra effort to be surly to all the other girls from now on.”
* * *
I was at the shower in time for the opening of the gifts, and was as surprised as Thomas and Laura were to see the assortment of flavored body oils “I” had given them. Siobhan and Sinead looked on like two saints, but I could see the horns beneath their halos.
Doyles. They were always there in a pinch, but they could never resist making sure you felt it.
After everyone had a good laugh (especially Laura, who seemed to enjoy Thomas’s initial scandalized reaction), Billy made an entrance, apologizing for being late. Auntie Mo admonished him, Billy dimpled away her frown, and all was well.
The room was a gloriously kitschy mess of heart-shaped balloons, silver streamers, and cheap paper bride-and-groom decorations. Looked like the trip to the wedding store had been a success. It was
perfect.
Kudos to Billy’s sisters.
I
was
disappointed to see the spread of Thai food had been decimated before I got there. Only the tantalizing aromas lingered, jabbing my empty stomach. I’d barely taken a bite of anything at the bistro, intent as I was on the table next to me.
“What did I eat?” I whispered to Billy when he came to greet me with a kiss, as everyone naturally expected now that our relationship was out in the open.
“More like what didn’t you eat,” he said. “You were ravenous.”
I groaned. Quietly. “Was it good?” My salivary glands were tingling at the thought.
“Succulent. The drunken noodles were particularly tasty—so soft on the tongue, with just the right amount of heat,” he said.
I groaned again, and not entirely from hunger. “You are a cruel man.”
Mark joined us in time to hear my stomach growl, which he graciously ignored.
“Billy,” he said. “Glad you could make it. Ciel, thanks again for taking care of the details. Great party.”
Billy nodded to Mark and grinned at me. “Need a tissue, cuz? You look like you might be about to”—there was an infinitesimal pause—“sneeze.”
I gave Billy a dirty look before answering Mark. “Well,” I said, wobbling, which I chose to blame on my heels. “I can’t take all the credit.” Or any of it, really. “Sinead and Siobhan were a huge help.”
The two of them were currently holding court at the center of a crowd of young lawyers, under the scowling eye of my big brother. Now that Thomas considered me to be Billy’s problem (yes, that made Thomas a chauvinist, but that was Laura’s problem), he’d shifted his protective tendencies to Billy’s sisters. Laura finally drew his attention back to the presents when she held up matching his-and-her honeymoon underwear—a thong for Laura and baggy boxers for Thomas.
“Jesus,” Thomas muttered after he read the card that had accompanied the gift, and shoved them back into the festive, heart-covered tissue-stuffed bag Laura had pulled them from. “Um, thanks, Mom.”
“What? You need to give the boys space to breathe—I want grandchildren,” Mom hollered across the room, and then joined my little group, putting one arm around Mark and one around me. I suspected she may have had a glass or three of wine.
“You two did a marvelous job on the shower. See, honey? I told you it would be fine.”
“I’m afraid I left it all on Ciel’s shoulders,” Mark said. “All I did was show up—she took care of everything else.”
“No, I didn’t. Really. Sinead and Siobhan deserve the credit,” I said.
Mom beamed at me, obviously not listening, lost in a happy haze now that one of her children was finally getting married. “I’m proud of you, sweetie.” She let go of Mark and tugged on the hem of my dress with both hands. Didn’t help the length at all. “Billy, you put what I said about grandchildren on hold. You got that? First things
first,
” she said meaningfully.
“Mom!” I said, giving her my I’m-shocked-you-said-that look, which she ignored.
Billy nodded dutifully. “Whatever you say, Auntie Ro.”
After Mom wandered off to mingle, Mark said, “So, are you going to tell me where you were for the first half of the shower, Howdy?”
Ack.
“I … um, I…” Damn, I couldn’t flat out lie to him.
“What gave me away?” Billy asked.
“You’re better at walking in heels than Ciel is.”
* * *
After the party, Mark, Billy, and I went up to my office. I sat behind the antique wooden desk, borrowing confidence from its size. Billy sprawled in one of the burgundy leather chairs I have for clients, and Mark perched on the edge of my desk.
Fortunately, no one else had noticed my switch, not even the other adaptors. Guess Mark was just extra observant, probably because of all that spy training.
Thomas and Laura were on their way to Thomas’s D.C. house with a trunk-load of amusing gifts. The out-of-town guests, including Billy’s parents (with Molly) and mine, had retired to their respective hotels to get some sleep before their early flights home the next morning.
Sinead and Siobhan were being shown around town by two Thomas-approved (and appropriately terrified) young lawyers from his firm. Thomas had given their names and addresses to Auntie Mo and Uncle Liam right in front of the girls and the two gentlemen in question. And gentlemen they would be, I had no doubt, considering the look Uncle Liam had given them. He was every bit as charming as his son, but tended not to waste it on the young men who wanted to date his daughters. The girls would meet me at my condo later. (Brian had decided the second queen-size bed in James’s hotel room beat the couch in my living room, and was bunking there.)
“Okay, gather round,” I said after giving the guys an account of my day up until my text to Billy. They both joined me behind my desk, standing on either side of me.
“I started recording right after Mr. Conrad—Joseph or Joe, depending on who’s talking to him—handed a large envelope to the gray-haired guy. His name was never mentioned, but I got a picture of him before I left the restaurant. Well, kind of.” I showed them the blurry image on my phone, a side view of the guy, with the top of his head cut off. I shrugged off the poor quality. “It’s not easy taking a picture one-handed and without being noticed.”
“It helps if you’re smarter than your phone,” Billy said, patting my head. I tried to elbow him in the gut but he was ready for me, blocking my arm. “
Kidding,
cuz. You did great to get a picture at all.”
Mark took the phone and studied the screen, making a few adjustments with some apps I didn’t know I had. “I can work with that,” he said after forwarding the photo somewhere, and handed it back.
I started the video. All three of us stared at the spinning fan on the screen as if it would offer insight into what we were about to hear.
“The handwriting samples?” came the voice of Gray Hair. The audio wasn’t bad, considering how softly they’d been speaking and the background noise of the other diners.
“I don’t know why a business document wouldn’t do. She signed those, too.” Elizabeth’s voice.
“What I do is an art. If you want a copy, use a machine,” Gray Hair said, disdain coloring his words.
That was when Joseph had taken the letters from Elizabeth and handed them to Gray Hair. “We’ll need those back, along with the certificates,” he said.
I paused the video. “They were letters from Angelica to her mother—I caught a glimpse of the return address.”
Mark nodded and started it playing again.
“Those are very important to me.” Elizabeth’s voice. If she felt any overwhelming grief for her daughter, she controlled it well.
“Of course.” Gray Hair’s voice. “I can assure you they won’t be damaged in any way.”
My waiter’s voice intruded, comparatively sharp and clear, asking to take my order.
I reached over and stopped the video. “That’s pretty much all there is. The man left, and the Conrads ordered dinner. They didn’t say another thing about the transaction. I slipped away as soon as I could to get here. So, what do you think it all means?”
Mark picked up the phone and replayed the video, holding it closer to his ear. When it was done, he tapped a few spots on the screen. “Just sending it to a guy I know in acoustics.”
“Well?” I prompted. “Those certificates—stock certificates of some sort, I assume—why would the Conrads be handing them over to this guy? Could they have been trying to sell them to raise money for Lily-Ann’s bail? But in that case, why the samples of Angelica’s writing? Is this as shady as it seems to me?”
Billy looked thoughtful. “Sounds to me like the Conrads don’t like where some of their daughter’s assets were allocated. What do you think, Mark? Are dear old Mom and Dad trying to fabricate a retroactive stock transfer before the will is read?”
“Could be. I’ll know more after I find out the background of their companion.”
“Could this mean the Conrads are involved in their daughter’s murder?” I said. Horrible as that sounded, it would at least clear my client. And my conscience.
Billy, quick to guess my underlying reason for the question, gave me a reassuring look. “Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. They do strike me as the sort to eat their young.”
Happy as I was that Jackson might not be culpable, it made me more concerned about Lily-Ann. Was an innocent woman in jail? Maybe she
wasn’t
trying to frame Jackson—maybe she thought it must be him because she couldn’t imagine her parents doing such a thing.
I chewed my lip, but only because I didn’t want to bite a fingernail in front of the guys. “I suppose I ought to talk to Thomas about it. He’s consulting with Nigel Overholt on Lily-Ann’s case. I hate to think of her sitting in jail if she didn’t do it.”
“You really want to drag Thomas into this a week before his wedding? Even if he could help—which is doubtful—can you imagine what your mother would do if he’s distracted?” Mark said.
“But,” I started, and then stopped, because he was right. Mom would freak if anything threatened The Event. And it wouldn’t be fair to Thomas, who was having a tough enough time coping with the wedding as it was, or to Laura either. She deserved her big day to be as free of outside problems as possible.
“Okay, I won’t drag Thomas into this”—
yet
—“but I have to do
something.
”
“Look, Ciel, I’m on a tight schedule this week, a job that can’t wait.”
So, what else is new?
I thought, but resisted rolling my eyes. “After the wedding—which I’m hoping like hell I can make, because disappointing your brother is not high on my list of favorite things to do—I’ll look into the Conrads.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you disappoint Tom,” Billy said.
Uh-huh. I knew it.
But that wasn’t my concern now.
“Look, I talked to Nigel yesterday—he thinks Lily-Ann is innocent, and Thomas trusts his opinion. I can’t just let her rot in a jail cell all week.”
Mark’s eyes bored into me. “What did you tell Overholt?”
I huffed an exasperated sigh. “Relax. Nothing about adaptors. Thomas told him I was counseling Jackson through his snake phobia, and Nigel wanted to pump me for any info I might have learned about him and the Conrads. Oh, yeah, and he told me Lily-Ann and Jackson were having an affair.”
“Well, there you are,” Billy said. “The other woman. Maybe the police have the right person after all.”
I shook my head. “Before this thing with the Conrads, I was leaning”—hoping—“that way, too. But now … listen, maybe I
should
run this by Thomas.”
Mark shrugged, looking deceptively sanguine about the whole thing. “Go ahead. I’m sure Ro will understand if he gets distracted by the case. Which, being Thomas, he would.”
I gave him a dirty look. “I can’t just do
nothing.
”
“For now, what if
we
post Lily-Ann’s bond?” Billy suggested. “Then at least she won’t be sitting in a cell until her trial.”
“The judge set an enormous bail,” I said. “Way too much for me, and probably too much even for you. But thanks for the offer.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Mark said. “
If
you’ll promise to stay out of it and focus solely on your brother’s wedding for the next week. Laura could use your help. All the special-ops training in the world couldn’t prepare her for Ro and Mo in a frenzy.”
“Really? You can afford it?” I said.
“Let’s just say I have access to special funds to use as I see fit,” he said.
I jumped into his arms on a springboard of relief, hugging him tightly, without a second thought.
Until I heard Billy’s voice behind me: “Gesundheit.”
It had to be the longest week of my life.
Sure, I wasn’t—for the time being—worried about Lily-Ann. Mark had been as good as his word, and she’d been released the morning after the shower. She had to wear a tracking anklet—he’d made sure of that—and her passport had been confiscated, but it was way better than sitting in a cell. Especially since Nigel was letting her stay at his place in the Hollywood Hills, which from all accounts (i.e., star tours of celebrity homes) was one damn fine place. That made me think more than ever that Nigel truly thought she was innocent. Surely he wouldn’t let her stay with him if he was at all doubtful.
Then again, this was the guy who’d tried to hang glide off the Hollywood sign. He obviously wasn’t risk-averse. Also, I suspected he hated to lose as much as Thomas did. If he thought letting her stay with him showed his confidence in her innocence, and would help her case, he might do it for that reason alone.
And then there was Jackson Gunn. What had he wanted me to find out about the Conrads? Was it really if they were going to post bail for Lily-Ann, or had it been something more, something to do with those stock certificates, perhaps? What would he do if he found out the Conrads had them? If he
had
murdered his wife, no telling what he might be capable of where his in-laws were concerned.