The Washington Lawyer (16 page)

“It obviously paid off.”

“Yeah. A bronze wasn't bad, but we really wanted the gold. I always play hard to win. In everything. Anyhow, we lost our last match to England. I did something stupid.”

“What's that?”

“I injured my leg, but played while hurt, ignoring the doctor's orders. I scored one goal, but my career was over. My limp's gone, but I can't play sports that involve lots of running. I paid a price.” She sounded wistful. “I still work out with an exercise bike, weights, and machines. I also do judo. So I keep in shape.”

“Would you play hurt again?”

“Of course.”

He laughed. “Then it wasn't stupid.”

As they finished the mussels and ate their steaks, he asked her to tell him more about her work in Israel. Looking across the table while she spoke, she thought he was genuinely interested.

The waiter cleared their plates and left desert menus.

“Do you have time for dessert?” she asked Paul. “You were working pretty hard on the plane.”

“I have to go into the office after dinner to pull together some stuff for my boss, Andrew Martin, but I'm in no hurry for that. The chocolate mousse here is great.”

“Count me in on that.”

After he signaled the waiter and ordered their desserts, Allison said, “This Andrew Martin must be a tyrant, having you work this late at night.”

He laughed. “Actually, I love working with Andrew. He founded the firm, and he's the managing partner. He is the most incredible lawyer, and I always learn so much, not just about law, but how he deals with clients.”

Paul was so in awe of Martin, she thought. He had Martin up on a pedestal. “You make him sound like some kind of God.”

Paul blushed. “Martin is my patron. He's the reason I came to the firm. And besides, he's a very good lawyer. In fact, right now, he's on the short list to be chief justice. So others agree. The reason I have to go into the office tonight is because Martin has a
New York Times
reporter, Jim Nelson, trying to smear him because of a pro bono case we handled for a Guantanamo prisoner. I have to pull the facts together and meet Martin at his house early tomorrow morning. He has a lot riding on this Supreme Court appointment. It's the ultimate gold ring for a lawyer.”

“Do you think he'll get it?”

Paul wrinkled up his nose for a minute. “He should, but he has a big problem. He's very much a Washington insider and a lot of people don't like that. Another reporter, Rick Potts from the
Washington Post
, did a profile on Tuesday comparing Martin with Abe Fortas. Potts doesn't like Martin, and I'm afraid that may have hurt.”

“If Martin leaves, will that affect your chances of becoming partner?”

He shook his head. “I don't think so. Other partners have given me very good reviews. I should know next September.” He laughed. “In the meantime, I'm trying to stay out of trouble.”

After they finished dessert, the waiter left the check. She wanted to split it. He insisted on paying.

“Thanks, Paul. I enjoyed dinner with you.”

“Would you like to stay in my house tonight? I live alone in the poor part of Georgetown.”

“You have your own house?”

“I bought it with another associate. He didn't make partner and left town to teach in Austin. I bought him out. I could give you a key while I go back to the office.”

“Very nice of you, Paul, but I'll spend the night at Vanessa's. That's where I want to start digging into what really happened to her.”

“If I can do anything to help, please call or e-mail.” He sent his contact info, including home address, to her iPhone.

At the curb, he told her that his office was only a short walk. He raised his hand and signaled a cab for her.

As she opened the door, he said, “Be careful.”

At first, it seemed like an odd comment. But when the cab pulled away, she thought about it some more. If whoever left Vanessa and ran away learned that Allison was trying to find him, he might play rough with her.

* * *

Climbing out of the cab and approaching Vanessa's apartment building, Allison noticed a gray Lexus parked in front with diplomatic license plates. DPL6279. One man in the front, behind the wheel. She couldn't see his face.

In the lobby she removed from her bag the key to Vanessa's apartment and her mailbox in the lobby. She recognized the young man sitting behind the reception desk, Fidelis, a Nigerian engineering student. He greeted her with sad eyes. “So sorry to hear about your sister. She was a nice person.”

“I appreciate your saying that, Fidelis. I really do.”

“Swimming in the sea can be dangerous,” he added.

Allison kept her thoughts to herself and simply nodded.

She stopped at the wall of mailboxes on the other side of the lobby. Vanessa's was jammed with mail, and Allison pulled it all out, glancing through it as she rode up in the elevator. There was nothing of particular interest. Besides bills, catalogues from Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gucci, and junk mail from stock brokers and real estate agents, there were a couple of printed invitations to political fundraisers, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

As she opened the door to the apartment, she took a deep breath. She'd never been here without Vanessa before. Well, she didn't have time for emotions or sentiment. She had a mission: somewhere in this apartment there had to be something that would help her identify that bastard Vanessa had been with in Anguilla—the one who cut and ran, leaving her dead body on a deserted beach at night.

She made a beeline for Vanessa's study. The calendar Vanessa always kept on top might tell Allison whom she went with to Anguilla.

It wasn't there!

She checked the desk drawers.
No calendar!

But what about Vanessa's diary? That would probably tell her about Vanessa's plans for the weekend.

Her sister was obsessive about never taking the most recent volume of her diary out of the apartment, even when she traveled, for fear of losing it. She locked prior volumes of the diary in a bank vault. She told Allison she was guarding her diaries because one day she planned to write a tell-all memoir about her adventures in Washington. “Vanessa in Potomac Land.”

Allison looked in all the desk drawers.
No diary!

Someone must had been in the apartment and taken the calendar and diary.

But maybe she was being too rash, Allison thought. Maybe no one had been here and stolen them. Perhaps Vanessa took the calendar with her. And she could have just finished her recent diary and put it in the bank vault. But then there would be a new one, unless she didn't have a chance to buy a new one.

Allison didn't want to believe that someone had been here and removed these objects. She didn't want to believe that her twin was having an affair with someone so crummy. But if he left her body on the beach, he could easily have done that. Allison, a scientist, couldn't ignore the evidence.

Someone had been there. But her lover might have missed something that gave away his identity.

She booted up Vanessa's laptop on the desk. The password was supermodel. She checked e-mails for the last two months. Nothing about Veteran's Day weekend plans.

She dumped the contents of all of the desk drawers onto the oriental carpet. For the next hour Allison searched carefully through all the papers, and there were plenty, because Vanessa just tossed things in. There were restaurant receipts, movie tickets, Christmas cards, unpaid parking tickets, and tax receipts. But nothing to indicate whom she was dating.

Allison saw a stack of utility bills and bank statements, which she looked through. How sad, Allison thought, that Vanessa, who had made millions modeling, only had about $30,000 in assets. Even the apartment was heavily mortgaged. She had burned through it all.

Allison often wondered how Vanessa had spent so much. She realized her sister was a major shopaholic, constantly buying the designer clothes she had formerly modeled. She had once told Allison, “I'm getting bad financial advice. They put me in a hedge fund that went bust. Allison hoped that's all it was—hoped that Vanessa hadn't gone back to drugs.

Phone bills, Allison thought. That's what she needed. Vanessa might have called the man she was going with to Anguilla, either from her apartment phone or her cell. But she hadn't seen any phone bills. She looked through all the mess of papers again.

No phone bills.

Bastard must have taken those, too.

Allison called Verizon, explained to the customer service rep that her sister died, and asked her to send the current bill with a list of all calls for Vanessa's house and cell phone, as well as the two most recent bills. The Verizon rep, sounding surly, said, “They will be there in a few days.”

“Could you please fax or e-mail them to me?” Allison sounded polite, hoping that would work. “These bills are quite important. They have information relating to my twin sister's death.”

“You'll need a court order if you want a fax or e-mail.”

“I can't believe you're being so unhelpful.” Allison was now raising her voice.

“Company policy.”

“Get me a supervisor.”

“They'll tell you the same thing. It's company policy.”

“Well get me one anyhow.”

“You'll have to call during normal business hours.”

Allison slammed down the phone. She'd have to wait. By the time she got a court order, they would have arrived in the mail.

She went into Vanessa's bedroom. Perhaps her sister hid her diary there because she was going out of town. Or she may have left some evidence of whom she went with to Anguilla. Maybe a note from him.

She looked through the closet. Then the bureau drawers, even the lingerie drawer.

Nothing! Wait a minute, she thought. Her sister kept her clothes in a very orderly way. Every bra and panty part of a matching set; and all neatly arranged—as opposed to Allison, who just tossed clean underwear in a drawer, a habit for which Vanessa constantly berated her.

The lingerie drawer hadn't looked right. She reopened it. Everything wasn't perfectly arranged, as Vanessa kept it. The sets had been disturbed. And wait, that wasn't all. A yellow pair of panties was missing. Vanessa would never have kept a bra if she no longer had the panties. Someone had definitely been in the apartment and taken it.

“Pervert!” she cried out.

She closed all the curtains in the apartment. She walked to the living room and looked out at the street below. The gray Lexus was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Then she remembered Vanessa's bank vault key. Vanessa insisted on putting Allison on the vault box with her. She had told Allison that she had the perfect hiding place for the key. In her pantry, she had a can of Peets ground coffee she kept three quarters full. Always three quarters full. The key was at the bottom of the can.

Allison raced into the kitchen and checked. The key was still there. She took it out and put it into her bag.

Nothing else she could do here this evening. Tomorrow she'd go to Vanessa's office and talk to some of her colleagues. After that, she'd head to the bank vault.

In the shower she got another idea. American Airlines. She called reservations. From her sister's ticket, which she brought back from Ohio, she read off Friday's date and the originating flight number from Washington Dulles to a sympathetic agent, to whom she explained that her sister had drowned in the Caribbean.

“I want to know with whom my sister was traveling.”

“Let me check,” the agent said.

Several minutes of canned music followed. Then the agent came back. “Vanessa Boyd was on a single flight record.”

“Does that mean she was flying alone?” a disappointed Allison asked.

“Not necessarily. If two people, traveling together, book separately, then their reservations appear on separate records. But our computer does not have that information. I'm very sorry.”

Another dead end.

Depressed, she lay down in the small bedroom she always used. She tried hard to sleep. Despite being exhausted, she simply couldn't fall asleep.

* * *

In the hotel room across the alley from Vanessa's apartment, Xiang had put down the binoculars once Allison closed the curtains. He tried to evaluate what he had seen. Allison was definitely searching the apartment for something. Information about whom Vanessa went with to Anguilla? The CD? A vault key?

Being able to see only in the large bedroom, he couldn't tell whether she'd found the CD in one of the other rooms. If she had, he'd have to seize it from her. But perhaps she didn't even know about the CD. If that was the case, he'd have to tell her about it. It would whet her appetite so she'd want to find it. She knew Vanessa. She'd have a better chance of finding it. Then if he stayed close to her, he'd seize it from her.

Either way, Xiang had to confront Allison, and he had to do it now.

Prepared to take charge, he turned to Hu. “I'm planning to draw Allison out of the apartment. Talk to her. I'll need Chou's help. Is he still in the Lexus?”

“Yes. I told him to park a block away.”

“Good. Give me his cell phone number. I'll dial it myself.”

“Whatever you want. I might as well go home.”

“No. I need you, too. A soon as Allison is out of the building, I want you to break into Vanessa's apartment. Try to find the CD or a vault key. If she has them with her, I'll get them. Once you've searched, call me on my cell and let me know. Positive or negative.”

Xiang put on his tan raincoat. He checked to make sure the gun was in his pocket. He wasn't taking any chances.

When Allison was out of their sight in the apartment, Xiang had watched a video of the last Olympic field hockey match her American team had played against England. She had scored a goal. And she played while hurt. She was one tough woman, he was convinced, and couldn't be underestimated.