Bone Valley (22 page)

Then I said, “But it wouldn’t matter. Jackson and I would have had to testify, and, wholly aside from the damage to our reputations and the fact that the press would have had a field day, once we were called to testify, we would have had to withdraw as counsel because a lawyer cannot testify in a case where he or she is an attorney of record. You know that.”

Bonita sighed, and nodded. I caught a small flicker of sympathy on her face.

There I had been, just a kid straight out of law school, and I thought this handsome, sophisticated man loved me. Not only had I thought M. David loved me, but I thought I loved him too. What a perfect mark I’d been. What a perfect, horrified fool I’d been when I found out that instead of a sudden infatuation with my charms, M. David had simply calculatedly and deliberately set me up for the sole reason of disqualifying Jackson.

“I remember the…fallout,” Olivia said. I watched as Olivia shaped her words carefully, whether for my benefit, or Bonita’s, I wasn’t sure. “Jackson, once confronted by M. David, was forced to withdraw from representing his client, with a great financial burden for both the client and Jackson,” she said, finally settling on a condensed version of the bare facts, and leaving out the fracas that had naturally followed the revelation that I’d been so easily duped at such a great cost to the law firm.

Still ashamed after all these years, I hung my head. “A lesser man would have ruined me, but Jackson took me under his wing,” I murmured, my face still pointed at the floor, still grateful to Jackson after all these years.

Olivia stood up and walked toward me. “I never loved Fred so much in my life as I did then, or Jackson either. They stood down the rest of the partners who wanted to fire you.” She put her hand under my chin and pulled my face up.

That sordid escapade would have destroyed my career if Jackson and Fred had not supported me. I would have ended up back in Bugfest, Georgia, eking out a meager and disgraced living in my father’s old law office.

But Jackson had forgiven me, had told me not to make the same mistake again, and then had trained me in his own image to become a great trial attorney.

I lifted my head, and I smiled. After all, I hadn’t made the same mistake twice. Jackson’s faith was well placed. “Bonita, why don’t you give Henry a call. After you’re done chatting with him, put him on with me. I’ve already got some ideas on how to work that case against Sherilyn.”

And I made a mental note to ask Jackson to be my coach at the punching bag at the Y. You wouldn’t think a woman trial attorney would need to know how to land a solid blow to the head, but increasingly I was seeing the advantages of just that.

Little did I know.

Rain, in a
kind of pre-hurricane fierceness, stung my face when I left the office that evening, and water was pooling on Shade Avenue deep enough that I worried about my little Honda Civic sloshing through the high waters. But as my car did a car version of the dog paddle, I realized I had to make one stop on the way home, and I spun around and headed toward Bayshore Drive.

Much as I didn’t really want to, I had to go to Sherilyn’s McMansion on the bay and apologize to her. After all, I had tried not twice but three times to punch her, and I had most definitely yelled at her. Though she deserved both the hitting and the yelling at for trying to set me up, still, good professional manners, generally speaking, do not involve attorneys screaming or striking people in their office. We’re supposed to file motions in court instead.

Oh, yeah, and then I still wanted to find out why she and Rayford had dropped the orange-defamation lawsuit, that is, if the post-apology moment should present itself to me to ask.

Given the rain, I whirled my little Honda right up in Sherilyn’s big circle driveway as close as I could get to her gilded front door, and ran toward the house. After I banged on the door, it opened, and a woman in a black uniform answered with a suspicious and unfriendly look on her face.

“May I please speak with Mrs. Moody?” I asked.

“Name?”

“I’m Lilly Cleary.”

She shut the door in my face. I heard a click, probably a lock. Given the events of the afternoon, I wasn’t overly hopeful Sherilyn would send her maid back to admit me.

But moments later, Sherilyn herself appeared, snakelike and seductive, wearing clinging knit in a sea-wash soft blue-green that complimented her hazel eyes and chestnut hair, as well as her ardently trimmed body. There seemed to be an awful lot of cleavage showing for a stormy evening and a new widow.

“Hello,” I said, hoping momentarily for at least an invite out of the rain.

Sherilyn nodded at me, and stood blocking the entrance to her house.

“I’ve come to apologize. For my behavior at the office today. I’m not usually so…aggressive.”

Sherilyn glared at me.

Since her expression didn’t suggest we’d be laughing over cocktails in the next half hour, I said, “Well, then, I’ll be going.”

“It was unexpectedly gracious of you to come by,” Sherilyn said, surprising me. “I accept the apology.”

We stared at each other for a strange moment.

“I told M.D. it wouldn’t work, you know, that you could not possibly fall for the same trick twice.”

This time I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak.

“Really, it’s better this way, don’t you think?”

“How so?” I asked.

“Oh, now we’ll be adversaries in court. You’ll represent the doctor who did this to my face, and my attorney will have a splendid time, really, trouncing you and that fraud, that odious quack. I so look forward to it.”

Yeah, me too. Actually, I realized, I really did look forward to it. Trounced, my ass, I thought. You just wait. But what I said, with a slight smile, was, “Until then, perhaps you would tell me why you and Rayford dropped the lawsuits against Angus and Miguel.”

“You are just totally unbelievable,” she said.

“So are you.”

Sherilyn made a rude noise and shrugged. “If I tell you, will you go away?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Rayford wanted to drop the suit, and I didn’t care. There wasn’t any money in it, it was just…Well, there wasn’t any money in the suit for Rayford or me, and I didn’t care what Rayford did. I was just as happy to be done with those groves.”

“Rayford told me he owned a cattle ranch in Montana or something.”

“That’d be Rayford,” Sherilyn said, and snorted a short burst of gruff, most unladylike laughter. “He was a cowboy or something, but he didn’t
own
any ranch. Rayford was M.D.’s bodyguard. You know, one of those guys who shows up from out west with a dollar inside his shoe and big dreams.”

“So how’d he get enough money to buy half of that orange grove? Bodyguarding pay that well?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. On either question.”

Thinking once again of how fortuitous M. David’s death was for his good widow, I couldn’t resist one last volley. “I see y’all didn’t waste any time putting Delilah Groves up for sale.”

“Don’t be snide, dear.”

“Snide,” I half-shouted. “You tried to cheat me out of a big case.”

“And you slept with my husband.”

Oh, that, I thought. “But he didn’t mean it. It was a setup.”

“Yes, that’s what he explained to me, years ago. And that’s why he put me up to my little attempted coup d’état. M.D. thought it would be great fun, tricking you again. He thought it would take my mind off—well, you know, my face. Now, dear, the wind is blowing rain into my house, and I think you should say good-bye.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Just a couple more questions, please.” I put a chipper, girlish sound in my voice that I didn’t mean any more than I meant I was sorry the rain was blowing into her house. I hoped the wood peeled off her floors and the roof blew away.

Sherilyn laughed. “You
are
totally unreal.”

But she didn’t shut the door in my face.

“One more question—”

“Oh, probably not, but I’m bored with all this rain, and you are amusing in a certain backwoods sort of way. That’s what M. David said about you—an exact quote, if you want to know.”

No, thank you, I didn’t want to know what M. David had said about me, whether exactly quoted or paraphrased, and I had to do that whole inhale, exhale, calm-down thing before jumping to my real point.

“So who do you think killed M. David?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told that cop lady. I don’t know. But if I ever find out, I’ll kill them myself before I turn them over to the law.”

Wow. That was great, I thought. She sounded like she meant it.

Then I thought, so, yeah, she
did
mean it.

“Good night,” Sherilyn said, with a tone of finality.

With that, I figured we were done. But a large, dark man appeared behind Sherilyn in the shadows of her McMansion’s vestibule. “Everything all right, Sherry?” he asked.

“Just fine, dear,” she said, turning away from me long enough to give him a look.

Well, this warranted a moment’s further study, I thought, and leaned in to see the man better. Quickly, my eyes focused on his body, I mean, you couldn’t miss it. It was well developed, this body, and dressed in a tight black T-shirt with some designer squiggle over the chest pocket and tight black jeans.

Having digested the body, I looked at the face. Standard and aging. Gray hair. Dark eyes. Lines and wrinkles and thinning lips and hair.

Running from time, lifting weights at the gym.

This was Theibuet, I was sure of it, remembering back to the night of the antiphosphate rally, the last night of poor Angus John’s life.

Great, this was like giving somebody rope and watching while they tied the noose themselves. Theibuet and Sherilyn, together, in her house, on a dark and stormy evening, with the endowed widow showing off nearly her entire bosom and the man dressed in tight black.

Yeah, these two had something going on.

“You need something?” Theibuet asked me, in a voice with a hint of menace in it.

Before I could answer, Sherilyn said, “Oh, her. She’s just one of M. David’s crazy ex-girlfriends. I think she’s harmless enough. And, besides, she was just leaving.”

“I was not M. David’s girlfriend,” I said, highly insulted by being categorized as “harmless.” Her insults renewed my enthusiasm for taking boxing lessons from Jackson, and for taking her and her lawyer on in court. Wait till I subpoenaed all, as in
all,
of her medical records and read the juiciest parts—and there are always juicy parts—into evidence at trial, and hence, forevermore, into the public record. Instead of enlightening her on the various court-sanctioned, tried-and-true ways I could ruin her life during her lawsuit, I smiled like I meant it. “See you at the depositions,” I said, turned and sprinted to my car, and slogged away home.

Home, where I found Jimmie, naturally enough, in my kitchen, drinking my grocery-store wine.

“It’s not near as tasty as that other stuff you done hid from me, but it’ll sure dog-knock your lights out.”

“Pour me a glass, please, while I dry off.”

“You better let me get you the good stuff. I done been feeding crickets to that durn bird of yours,” Jimmie said. “He chases ’em around his cage till they jump out. I reckon you got a bunch of crickets jumping around on your porch, so don’t leave the door ’ween the porch and the den open, you hear?”

“Why are you feeding Rasputin crickets?” I asked, and then wondered where he got the crickets, completely missing for the moment the real point of his confession, which was that my porch was teeming with little black hopping things.

“Lenora told me to get him on bugs when I told her you was feeding him candy bars.”

“They’re not candy bars, they are trail mix bars. They are organic, they are seeds and oats and perfectly healthy for a—”

“Bugs is better.”

By then the real point was dawning on me, and I went into the den and peered out at the porch. Sure enough, black crickets in small-plague proportions were hopping around in the once-clear space of my screened-in porch.

“When it stops raining, I’ll shoo ’em out into the backyard. It ain’t no big deal,” Jimmie said.

After I finished staring at the black bugs that now populated my porch, I stared at my backyard. The grass was somewhere between ankle and calf high in the spots where it actually grew. So far, I had to conclude that Jimmie as a live-in yardman was not working out especially well.

Jimmie spun around in a half circle, spread his arms wide, and said, “Browning says, ‘the best yet is fixing to be.’”

Despite Jimmie’s encouraging and goofy grin, I seriously doubted if that was the exact quote or was going to be the case. But before I protested, Jimmie winked and said, “Let’s get that wine, you tell me where you got it hid. Then I got me a date next door.”

In nothing flat, while I was still dripping water, Jimmie poured me some wine, then he ran out in the wet night, in search of love and fried meat.

Two black crickets
were sitting on top of my coffee table, and they appeared to be engaged in activities designed to produce more crickets.

Frigging great.

But watching the bugs reminded me about Sherilyn Moody and Gideon Theibuet.

First I’d seen him on an apparent date with the good widow at the antiphosphate rally, then I’d seen them together at Sherilyn’s, and catty old Rayford had practically told me they were lovers. My mind quickly concocted a scenario in which the world-weary wife, tired of being left at home while M. David seduced the younger female population of Sarasota, convinced one Theibuet to off her husband, thereby relieving her of the burden of divorce court and a fifty-fifty split of the assets. I mean, why share if you can get it all?

Certainly from what I could remember, Theibuet would be strong enough to hold M. David down in the slime soup. Plus, with him dead, M. David’s 55 percent of the Antheus shares would be divided between the remaining three shareholders, substantially increasing Theibuet’s own holdings in the mining company.

And I remembered what Miguel had told me—that most of that land had been M. David’s to begin with, which he’d put into the company in exchange for the controlling number of shares. Meaning the remaining three shareholders had acquired not only increased shares, but a huge chunk of valuable land at M. David’s death.

Theibuet began to glow an even brighter shade of red in my mind’s eye.

Shoot, maybe he even had a revenge angle, since Rayford said Theibuet had been involved in the Boogie Bog mess, and lost money.

If Rayford was right about that, Theibuet had revenge, economic gain, and the good widow all as inspiration for murdering M. David.

Hot damn. I’d done it again.

I hoped Josey wouldn’t be mad at me for solving her case, and I pulled out her card, got her number, and rang her up.

“Detective Henry Farmer here,” Josey said, answering on the second ring.

“Oh, good. You’re home.” Without further chitchat, I babbled forth my thoughtful theory about Theibuet and Mrs. Moody.

“You do know you are not an official law-enforcement agent?” Josey asked.

“Don’t you think—”

“I think you need evidence.”

“That’s your job,” I said.

“Raining cats and dogs, you stay high and dry.”

The word
high
made me think of Delvon, which made me think of Lenora, which made me think of Angus, and that led naturally enough to my thinking of Miguel. “Hey, any word on where Miguel is? I mean, I heard that the police want him for questioning in Angus John’s murder. He’s my client and—”

“I told you, Angus John isn’t my case.”

“Yeah, but don’t cops talk with each other? I mean, it’s got to be related.”

In the pause that followed, I listened to Josey breathe for longer than a polite moment. “Just be careful, okay? There’s already dead people in this pile of rocks you keep kicking over.” And she hung up.

Well, damn. Josey was hiding something from me.

Me, who had just basically solved the M. David murder case for her.

I picked up the phone and had dialed the first half of her number before it occurred to me that a more forthcoming source might be Philip’s snitch.

Philip’s snitch, who Philip was paying, without ever once hinting that I should contribute a dime. Philip, who was but a phone call away.

He answered on the third ring. “Hi, Philip, how are you?” I said, for lack of a better segue into finding out if he could find out something for me.

“Lilly? Are you all right? No further problems with Miguel? I can be there in ten minutes.”

“Not unless your Lexus can swim. And, no, no further contact from Miguel. And these rains will probably keep Miguel off the streets. And Jimmie’s with me. And I’m fine. How are you?”

“Lilly, I’m fine. Please tell me what you want.”

“I, er…I just had this conversation with Josey, you know, the sheriff ’s detective?”

“I remember Josey.”

“Oh, good. Anyway, I think there’s been some kind of new development in the Angus murder, but she wouldn’t tell me. Would you mind terribly calling your insider guy at the police department and seeing if he can find out anything? What’s new, I mean.”

“Actually, I have already spoken with my man. Under all the circumstances, it seemed the wisest course that I stay well informed.”

“So, what?”

“This is thirdhand. It’s actually from the sheriff ’s department’s investigation into M. David’s murder. My man got his information from—”

“What?
What?
” I didn’t mean to interrupt, but at this precise moment in time I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the chain of custody or hearsay, I just wanted to know what Philip knew.

“The sheriff ’s department has evidence possibly linking Angus with M. David’s murder.”

“What?”
I asked, suddenly anxious.

“At M. David’s house, in his den, the crime-scene experts found three beer bottles, Dos Equis. One of them had M. David’s fingerprints, and a can of honey-roasted peanuts had Angus’s fingerprints on the lid. They can place the bottles in the den the night M. David was killed.”

“So they had a drink. So what? I drink beer with people I don’t kill.”

“You don’t think Angus and M. David make an odd couple?”

“Pretty much, yeah, but so what? They had a drink together at M. David’s house. They can hardly arrest Angus for murder for that.”

“They can hardly arrest Angus regardless,” Philip said.

“You know what I mean,” I said, trying to resist the urge to snap at him now that I thought I might love him. “What about Miguel? Any of his prints?”

“No, there were the two other bottles, but condensation had washed off the latents. The techies were luckier with M. David’s bottle. And the peanut lid. They ran the prints through AFIS and got a match. You knew Angus had been arrested before?”

“Sure, yes,” I said, though actually I had not.

“And there were a couple of Dos Equis bottles on top of the gyp stack when they found M. David, but, again, no latents. But same brand, so naturally the investigators are inclined to believe there is a connection. That is, in the absence of any other explanation.”

“You got to wonder why anybody is stupid enough to kill somebody and toss out their beer bottles on the scene.”

“There’s more. Josey just got the phone records today, finally. Someone phoned M. David at his house from the pay phone at the pier where Miguel’s sailboat was docked. A little after six p.m. the night he was killed. The maid left at five-thirty, and there were no beer bottles in the den then. When she came in the next morning, she spotted the bottles, but left them where they were because she had other chores, and, after all, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Moody was home.”

“Where was Mrs. Moody?”

“At the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, on a consult. She has ironclad witnesses. She wasn’t anywhere around when M. David died.”

“But she could have set it up,” I said, wholly unwilling to let the woman who had nearly set me up off any retribution hook I might be able to bait.

“Angus could have set it up too,” Philip said, sounding fatigued, and, maybe, a bit sad. “He calls from the pier, offers to set up a meeting, and presents himself at M. David’s house for a drink. Perhaps he even implied he had some deal to propose about ceasing to protest the mine, or some similar plan or offer that would induce M. David to agree to meet him. Then he overpowers M. David, or pulls a gun. The third beer bottle suggests an accomplice.”

That, I thought, would be Miguel. Damn. “Do you have anything that ties Miguel to this?”

“No.”

But I imagined the sound of a hanging “yet” in Philip’s words.

“If Angus was involved in killing M. David, it’s a reasonable assumption Miguel was involved, or knew something about it. Those receipts you gave me suggest that Miguel was involved in making a bomb, even if he didn’t mean to kill Angus. Given all that, and Miguel’s recent aggressive behavior toward you, I think I should come and get you. You’ll be safer here with me.”

I was tempted. I looked out the window in case the rain had stopped in the last ten seconds. But it wasn’t just rain, it was tropical-storm rain with attitude, and with thunder that would kill the living and raise the dead. “No, thank you. You are very kind to worry, but like I said, Jimmie is with me, and when it stops raining, I will go get Bearess. A hundred-pound rottweiler ought to slow Miguel down. And the door is locked.”

Philip gave it another round of convincing me to spend the storm safely in his arms, but I resisted. It wasn’t just the weather; I needed some time alone to consider my recent revelations. That I might love Philip. That Miguel was, after all, just lust that dissipated quickly enough after he tried to kill me.

So I put my best spin on turning down Philip’s offer to come fetch me in a hurricane, I promised him I would be careful, and hung up.

And sat down to think.

What Philip told me suggested that Angus and a third man, who most surely was Miguel, had shared a beer with M. David the night he was killed. If I wasn’t willing to leap to the next step—that is, that they had then killed M. David after sharing a drink with the man in his own den—that meant the beer bottles and the peanut lid with prints had to be a badly timed coincidence.

Or, a setup.

And a setup meant Sherilyn. I mean, hadn’t she just proved she was damned clever at setting up setups?

My head swimming with unproven theories of conspiracies and setups, I checked the locks on all my doors, and poured another glass of the good organic wine.

And I wondered just how much protection an eighty-year-old man and a hundred-pound lapdog would actually be—especially since they were both next door.