Knock 'em Dead (13 page)

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. I got it.

“What are you doing?” he asked as I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my purse in the process.

“I’m going to see Jane.”

He stayed seated. “While you’re there, you might want to ask her who she’s pissed off.”

“Why?”

“Someone here in West Palm sent the information about Jane’s prior arrest to Brent. Plain brown envelope left on the floor of the lobby with nothing but Brent’s name typed on the front.”

“Jane does not have enemies.”

As I started past him, Liam closed his large, warm fingers around my wrist. An electrified tingle shot right through me.
Wow. Zing. Shit!

He stood, letting his hand slip away in the process. “I hate to break it to you, Finley, but she has at least one.”

“T
he minute you get out of jail, I’m going to kill you myself,” I told Jane as she sat shackled to the seat across the table from me. My hands balled into tight fists, forcing my nails to dig painfully into my palms.

Protocol, specifically being the employee-agent of Jane’s legal adviser, allowed me to meet with her in one of the counsel rooms at the detention center a few blocks from my office. The place smelled stale and dank. And it was noisy. Buzzers went off incessantly as people entered and exited every door and hallway in the facility. Loud, boisterous conversations filtered in from the holding areas and exercise yard. More distant, muted bass voices wafted over from the men’s side of the building.

Jane had the decency to cast her eyes down. Even the top of her head looked guilty.

“Well?”

She shook her head sadly, slowly. Normally, her dark brown hair was impeccably styled. Now it hung limply to her shoulders, parted haphazardly off to one side. When she looked at me, I read all sorts of emotion in her dark eyes. Anger. Fear. Apology. Frustration. All diluted by the tears threatening to spill over her mascara-free lower lids. “Liam’s right,” she finally admitted. “I did lie to the cops.”

I knew that. What I wanted to do was reach over, grab her by her orange-clad shoulders, shake her, and demand she help me help her. I wasn’t digging into her past for fun. I was doing it to get her butt out of this hellhole. I was scared for her. Really,
really
scared. And scared that no matter how much I wanted it, none of us would be able to gather enough information to help her, and she’d end up in here for life. Or death. I shuddered. “Why?”

With her hands secured, Jane crossed one over the other in order to shove some of the dark brown hair back off her forehead. She broke eye contact and shrugged.

My simmering temper returned to a rolling boil. “I’ll track down Molly Bishop and grill her like a cheese sandwich if I have to.”

“You won’t find her.” Jane was pretty defiant for someone facing up to three months in jail pretrial.

“Oh yes, I will. If you won’t talk to me, I guarantee you, by the time Liam and I get finished with her,
she
will.”

“No, she won’t.”

“Well, then.” I slammed my fist on the warped tabletop. “I’ll leak what I’ve got to the press and they’ll—”

Jane tried to jump to her feet, but ended up snagged by her chains and accomplishing nothing more than scraping the metal chair against the floor and frustrating herself. “Do not do that,” she said through gritted teeth. “Okay, I’ll tell you about the deal.”

“Don’t lie,” I warned.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said earnestly. “You and Liv and Becky deserved better. I should have been honest with all of you. Stupidly, I thought it was easier to pretend that chapter in my life was ancient history.”

Most of the initial tension drained from the room. “I’m sure it would have been had it not been for this whole Paolo thing. So spill, and don’t leave out anything.”

“Molly was a great roommate and a dear friend. It never mattered to her that I was the scholarship student and she was, well, pretty much the richest girl on campus. She told me all about her life: winter breaks in the Alps, Paris in the springtime, and summers spent sailing the globe. I told her about life in the trailer park.

“By the age of twenty, she was a master at playing her parents.”

I could relate to that. While I wasn’t yet a master, I’d had more than a few successes against the force greater than myself—my mother.

“Molly wasn’t a bad person, she just had bad habits.”

“Drugs?”

Jane nodded. “Drugs, alcohol, sex. She was pretty wild and liked to party. Looking back I believe, subconsciously at least, she was desperate for some real attention from her parents. Negative or positive.”

“Molly and the guy impaled with the shoe?” I prompted. The plain white face of the large clock mounted above the door told me I had about twenty minutes until I was due to hook up with Becky and Taggert. Twenty minutes to get all I could out of Jane to help in her defense.

“His name was Michael Fry and he was a lot like Molly. Great home, great parents, too much disposable income. Aside from the drugs and alcohol abuse, he also had anger management issues. He liked to hit her.”

My stomach seized. “Sounds like a real winner.”

“Molly could pick ’em,” Jane agreed, her shoulders slumping forward. “I’m not saying she was a saint, far from it. Molly liked to live on the edge. Her parents were decent, clueless people. All Molly had to do was say she was sorry, bat her mink lashes in their direction, and they flew into action.

“There was no way they’d let their precious daughter have her reputation besmirched.”

“The detective in Charleston said she was on probation.”

Jane nodded. “Only because Mommy and Daddy couldn’t get back from China in time to get the DUI charges swept under the rug.”

“Okay, fine. I understand covering up a DUI, but Jesus, Jane! She stabbed a guy with her
shoe
. Why the hell would you claim to do something so freakishly insane? Don’t look at me like that. Liam showed me the crime scene photos. You couldn’t possibly have shoed the guy.” I pointed out every inconsistency Liam had shown me in the crime scene photographs. “The question remains. Why
did
you cover for Molly?”

“Money.” The word sounded like a curse as it passed Jane’s lips. “Even with my scholarships and part-time jobs, I was nearly twenty thousand dollars in debt by the end of my junior year. When I admitted my guilt, Senator Bishop paid off my loans and covered my last year’s expenses.”

“What about Michael What’s-His-Face? Weren’t you afraid he’d remember what really happened and—”

Fervently, Jane shook her head. “No way. Neither the Bishops nor the Frys wanted to risk the fallout. Michael had already gotten an appointment to the Naval Academy. They had a vested interest in making sure their son’s record remained unblemished.”

“So everyone let Molly continue down her self-destructive path?”

“One of the conditions I placed on accepting responsibility and the money was that Molly be placed in a residential treatment center.”

“I’ve got to talk to her,” I said, rummaging around my purse for a piece of paper and a pen.

“You can’t.”

I didn’t even try to hide my frustration as I met and held Jane’s gaze. “Your loyalty is commendable. Stupid and against your own self-interest, but commendable. I can’t say anything to Taggert or Becky because they’d be forced to disclose the information to the state attorney. But I want to talk to her, make sure she hasn’t grown a conscience in the last ten years. The last thing we need is her popping out of the woodwork and spilling her guts to the authorities.”

“You can’t.”

“Jane. Don’t be an ass. Someone here in West Palm tipped Brent off on the Charleston incident. What if they know the whole story?”

“Not possible. Aside from the Bishops, the Frys, me, and now you, no one knows the truth.”

“Liam knows.”

“Whatever. Isn’t he banned from telling anyone because he kind of works for me?”

“Technically. Maybe.” Nearly out of time, I rose. “Sorry, but I’m meeting with Taggert and Becky at Bacio’s so I’ve got to go. Since you’re not being all that forthcoming, I’ll just Google Molly Bishop and find her myself.”

“No. You won’t.”

I was taken aback by the unequivocal delivery of her statement. “You know I will. Given some time, I can find anyone.”

“We have a ‘no Googling our friends rule,’” she reminded me.

Actually, that rule had been my idea. I didn’t have anything to hide, I just thought the computer made it too easy to find information. Friends shouldn’t Google other friends. It feels too much like a high-tech version of rifling through someone else’s panty drawer or medicine cabinet. “Doesn’t apply. Molly Bishop isn’t my friend.”

“She also isn’t alive. She OD’d about five years ago.”

“Freaking hell.” As much as I wanted to stay and grill Jane for more details, I just didn’t have the time. Bacio’s was on South Rosemary and I practically had to jog in the sweltering early afternoon heat just to reach the restaurant a mere ten minutes late.

My blond hair was slightly damp. Perspiration trickled down my back and into my cleavage, so I spritzed myself with perfume before scanning the room for Becky and Taggert.

Weaving my way through chairs and the strong, pungent smell of garlic and red sauce, I realized Becky and Taggert were seated at a table for six. Weird. Bacio’s was almost always filled to capacity during lunch. They needed every available seat, so I didn’t get why they’d donated a six-top when a quad would easily have accommodated the three of us.

Graciously, Taggert lifted out of his chair when I reached the table. He smiled politely, but the action never made it all the way to his bleached gray eyes. A tall server with a half apron sporting the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag tied around his slender hips held out my chair.

I placed my purse off to the side, then put the napkin in my lap as I greeted Becky and the decrepit attorney. “Jane sends her regards.”

“You went to see her?” Taggert asked.

He sounded slightly miffed. Maybe he was one of those proprietary types who insisted on being kept in the loop at all times.

“Yes.”

“And?” he prompted.

I shrugged and diverted my eyes to watch the waiter fill my water glass. “We need to get her out of jail.”

“Faulkner has already made his ruling.”

Becky and I exchanged surprised glances. “Before he had all the information.”

Taggert shook his head, the thick shock of white hair immobilized by some sort of industrial hair spray. “I’ve seen the arrest reports and read the statements. Ms. Spencer was involved in a prior stabbing. It will be almost impossible to overcome the state attorney’s assertions that she is a threat to the community. Add to that Ms. Spencer’s…reluctance to discuss the event, my hands are tied.”

“Well, untie them.” Legend or not, I didn’t like Taggert. He came off like a doddering old quitter. “You could file a Motion in Limine. The charges were dismissed as unfounded. A fact Brent failed to mention to the court. They have no bearing on the current charge. Better yet,” I continued as I accepted a menu from the server, “Jane really, really doesn’t want to relive the event.”
Or be placed in a position to commit perjury again.
“You could try an ex parte meeting with the judge to explain the circumstances.”

Taggert’s cheeks turned a fairly bright shade of red. “And where did you get your law degree?”

It was my turn to blush.

“I got mine at Emory,” Becky cut in, saving me from leaping over the table and shoeing the old coot. “Finley’s right. Either of those options has a decent shot at getting Jane released on bail.”

“Please excuse my bluntness, Ms. Jameson, but your practice is limited to contracts and mergers. Criminal law is my milieu. I think I’m in the best position to determine what is and isn’t in the best interests of my client.”

“So, what
is
your plan?” I asked.

“Evidence. Judges like evidence. I’m considering hiring an investigator to find and interview everyone who had contact with Ms. Spencer and Mr. Martinez on the night of the murder.”

“We’ve got that covered.”

Now, I would have thought Taggert would be grateful. After all, our initiative saved him from having to get off his butt and actually do something proactive. My annoyance with the old geezer began to chafe. He didn’t look grateful, he looked irritated.

“If and when I require your assistance, Ms. Tanner, I will ask for it. Until then, stay out of my case.”

“She’s covered,” Becky said. “As an employee of my firm, she’s bound by the same privilege as the rest of us. Including our investigator, Liam McGarrity.”

“Ex-cop Liam McGarrity?” Taggert asked.

“Yes,” I said, sounding a lot like a Tammy Wynette’s 1969 ditty about standing by your man. Judging by the curious arch of Becky’s eyebrows, my defense of Liam hadn’t gone unnoticed. Except by Taggert.

“Ms. Jameson was—”

“Becky,” she interrupted, probably not for the first time.

From his seat across from mine, Taggert conceded. “
Becky
was telling me that she will not be acting as cocouncil but rather in an advisory capacity only.”

“As it pertains to this case,” Becky said. “I still have an executed agreement with Jane to represent her in all matters other than this criminal charge, so privilege is preserved.”

For a split second, I wanted to say, “Take that!” then stick my tongue out to punctuate my childish urge. But I knew it wouldn’t serve any purpose other than to make me look like a fool.

The tension at the table was palpable. It didn’t last long. Drawn by the sound of someone coming up behind me, I turned, expecting the server. Instead I found myself looking up into the smiling face of Fantasy Dates owner Shaylyn Kidwell. On further examination, I realized she wasn’t smiling, just suffering the aftereffects of recent collagen injections. Her lips were so plump she looked a little like a trout.

Zack Davis was right on her heels, looking dark and dapper. As a couple, they were quintessential Palm Beach. Tanned, toned, and impeccably dressed.

Taggert stood and greeted them with more gusto than he’d shown me. Then again, I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t at the top of his Christmas card list.

Their arrival took me by surprise and judging from Becky’s discreet, wide-eyed look, she hadn’t known Shaylyn and Zack should be in this strategy session either.

“Glad you could make it,” Taggert said as the couple took seats on his side of the table. We were reminiscent of the Sharks and the Jets. It was very
West Side Story
.

“We want to do everything we can to help Jane,” Shaylyn insisted as she smoothed her perfectly styled dark hair. A huge—we’re talking double digits—teardrop diamond ring acted like a laser pointer. Its reflection climbed the wall, then zigged and zagged across the ceiling.