No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) (10 page)

“Tell me about your company.”

“CGM, Inc. is a large international medical and biotechnology research facility. We have clinics, laboratories and research centers across the U.S. and abroad.”

“I thought you said you’re a lawyer.”

“I am. Corporate law. I’m just one of about twenty lawyers employed by the company.”

“That’s a lot of lawyers for one company.”

He laughed. “Actually it’s quite small for an international company the size of CGM.”

“So how long have you been working with Basia?”

“Our company has been working on and off with her for a couple of years now. I never required her services until recently when I had some Polish documents that needed translation.”

“Do you have a lot of clients from Poland?”

He studied me for a moment, a guarded look coming into his eyes. “We have quite a few clients from Poland, actually. That’s why Basia has proven to be so invaluable to us. Polish is her first language, after all.”

“Yes, I know.”

We sat for a minute, both of us sizing up the other and trying to decide if we could trust each other. His next comment surprised me.

“Look, would you like to get some dinner? I’m famished. The pub has a dining room if you’d like to move there.”

Some decent food might help me clear my mind. “Sure,” I agreed.

Finn stood and took his jacket, motioning for me to go first. As I brushed past him, he directed me toward the dining room, casually putting his hand in the small of my back. Heat shot from his fingertips through the thin material of my dress and all the way to my toes. I yelped in a very unladylike manner. Finn quickly removed his hand and I felt my cheeks burn in embarrassment.

When we arrived at the dining room, a maître d’ sat us at a table for two facing the street. It was starting to get dark, so she lit a little candle on our table. I hid my hot face behind a menu until my color returned to normal. Eventually, I decided on a grilled chicken salad and Finn ordered the Irish stew. He said the Irish wine was decent, so I agreed to a glass.

After the waiter brought us our wine, Finn took a sip and looked out the window. “I realize this is an awkward situation for both of us. We don’t really know each other. But I need your help and I think you could use mine. I’d like to make a suggestion that we take a leap of faith here and trust each other. What do you say?”

“I usually like to know where I’m leaping before I make the jump.”

“Will it help if I go first and tell you what I know?”

“It might,” I admitted, taking a sip of wine. Finn was right; it was good. Really good.

“Okay,” he said. “Then I’m going to lay it out for you. I don’t know much about you other than you’re friends with Basia, you’re into computers, and live in Jessup, Maryland. If I put two and two together, I’d venture a guess that you’re working for the government, CIA, FBI or NSA. More likely NSA since you live in Jessup. I don’t care about that. What I do care about is that Basia was involved in an important project for my company when she suddenly disappeared along with the documents she was working on.”

“What kind of documents?”

“A contract for a foreign client written in Polish. She didn’t happen to send the documents to you, did she?”

I decided neither to deny nor confirm anything. “Why would she send me papers that belonged to your company?”

“Because I think she was afraid. And frankly, she might have good cause to be frightened.”

That was a major revelation and I narrowed my gaze as I looked at him. “Why would Basia be afraid?”

Finn leaned forward on the table. “It’s complicated. The documents I sent her required a bit of special handling.”

“What kind of special handling?”

“The documents were not part of my normal workload and they involved Bright Horizons, our fertility clinic. I don’t normally do work with that branch of the company and I had obtained them under, let’s say, unusual circumstances from another attorney at the firm. From what I was able to discern, the documents were copies and the original had been written up months earlier. Obviously I couldn’t read them, so I sent them to Basia so she could tell me what they said.”

“Did you find out what they said?”

“She called me after doing a first draft of the translation and said the contract seemed extremely unusual to her and not at all the kind of thing we typically do at CGM. After listening to her initial concerns, I took my findings to my bosses and everyone got nervous. They yanked me from the case and told me to retrieve the documents from Basia at once and forget I’d ever seen them.”

I was very interested now and leaned forward. “Why? What was so unusual about the contract?”

“Well, first of all, the firm never negotiates the kind of deal that was stipulated in the contract. It provided for living arrangements, and a stipend between two parties that were apparently involved in some kind of medical research at the firm. CGM usually negotiates legal contracts that protect the company from unwarranted malpractice suits from clients. There are also other types of contracts that are standard for the operation of a large, international corporation. But the kind of contract that Basia was translating was highly irregular and certainly something I suspect the company shouldn’t be involved in.”

“You mean it was illegal?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that the company is not in the business of conducting personal legal contracts between clients for services not clearly outlined. I considered it quite disturbing.”

I thought for a moment. “Was there anything else unusual about the documents?” I was thinking of the code Basia had penciled in on the bottom of one of the pages.

He fiddled with his napkin. “Well, Basia told me she was also concerned because an address in Warsaw on the contract didn’t seem right to her. She’s quite familiar with the city, so I trusted her judgment on this.”

I hadn’t expected that. “What address?”

“Actually, there happened to be two addresses in the contract. One was for our branch office in Warsaw. The other was presumably the address of a medical institution used by Bright Horizon’s employees. That’s not so unusual because we often work out of a country’s medical establishments as part of a medical exchange. We offer our expertise in everything from cancer treatments to AIDS research and in return, they permit us to use their facilities. We have agreements like that with several countries, as do many other American medical research and biotechnology institutions.”

“So what was the problem?”

“On a hunch, I had a friend of mine in Warsaw check out the second address. Basia was right to be concerned. There is a building there with that address, but no medical institution in sight.” He took another sip of his wine. “So, I decided to run the medical identification number of the supposed institution. It was bogus.”

I remembered now that when Paul had translated the documents for me last night, he’d mentioned something about the “recipient” being required to go to specific doctors. I hadn’t thought it significant at the time, but now I did.

“So, what exactly does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that if this contract was put into place, and presumably it was, CGM’s client in Warsaw has been going somewhere other than a licensed medical facility.”

I thought for a moment. “Do you know what the client’s medical condition is?”

Finn nodded. “She’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” I said loudly enough to startle the waiter as he appeared with our dinners. He was about sixty years old, of Indian descent with dark hair peppered with gray.

“Congratulations,” he said, putting my dinner in front of me. “How wonderful. Is it your first child?”

I looked at him in horrified shock. “I…I…”

“I had a feeling about you two from the moment I saw you enter the room,” he said, beaming. “I feel good karma here. A very strong spiritual connection.”

With that pronouncement he left. My cheeks burned again, but Finn sat back in his chair and laughed, clearly amused by my discomfort.

“Well, that was awkward,” I said.

“Seeing as how we just met, yes,” Finn said, but he didn’t seem that bothered. “But an innocent mistake.”

“Yeah, innocent,” I said as nonchalantly as possible. Like people accused me of being pregnant every day. Anxious to steer the conversation back on safer ground, I asked, “So, how many foreign clients does Bright Horizons typically have?”

Finn sipped his wine. “Thousands. The company is a world leader in the reproductive health field.”

“Is the branch office in Warsaw large?”

“Not compared to other foreign locations, but it is comfortable enough, I suppose.”

“I presume the kind of medical care and research offered by CGM and Bright Horizons is rather expensive.”

“Yes. But if you want the best, you have to be willing to pay for it.”

“So, if you have enough money, maybe you could pay extra to have the company set up an unorthodox agreement?”

Finn looked grim. “Until recently, I would have given a resounding no to that assumption. As the company’s lawyer, I’d have strongly advised against it.”

“That’s probably why you weren’t in the loop. You said you got these papers from another lawyer in your company under rather unusual circumstances. Do you mind sharing what you meant?”

Finn shoved his fingers through his hair and I thought he looked really troubled. “One of the senior attorneys in the Washington office, Harold Small, was killed about a month ago in a car accident. I was friendly with him and his wife, Chloe. A few days after the funeral, Chloe called me. She said she found some papers in a safety deposit box she hadn’t even known Harold possessed. My name was on the outer envelope. Imagine my surprise when I found company documents inside. It was odd because I’d never seen these documents before, never worked this particular case and couldn’t figure out why he’d marked them as mine.”

Intrigued, I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “Is it standard practice for employees to secure company documents in private safety deposit boxes?”

“Of course not. Aside from the strange fact that my name was on the envelope, there was no accompanying note from Harold saying what the papers were and what I was supposed to do with them. Since they were in a foreign language, I had no idea what they said.”

“So you decided to send them to Basia for translation.”

“Yes. There was something odd about the whole matter, so I asked her to be discreet and talk to only me about them. When she eventually got back to me a few days later with her concerns, I realized just how unorthodox and disturbing these documents were.”

“And that’s when you brought it up with your bosses at CGM?”

“Yes. Except instead of giving me answers they demanded the documents back and told me to keep my mouth shut. But when I tried to retrieve the documents from Basia, I discovered that both she and the papers had disappeared.”

“So, you’re desperate to get them back to save your job.”

“It’s not my job I’m worried about. Not anymore, at least. Now I’ve got a bad feeling about Harold’s car accident. It was ruled accidental, but since these documents surfaced, I have sudden misgivings. Add to that Basia’s sudden disappearance with said documents and I’m really getting worried.”

Those seemed like ominous developments to me and I could see why Finn was concerned. And, as far as I knew, he didn’t even know about the men chasing me around with guns.

“I don’t get why Harold would put the documents in a safety deposit box,” I said.

“I don’t know either,” Finn said.

We both contemplated that in silence while eating. “Do you know the names of the people involved in the contract?” I asked after a while. Maybe Finn had omitted them before sending the documents on to Basia to protect attorney-client privilege or something like that.

Finn shook his head. “I gave Basia the documents exactly as I had received them. She said the contract was generic with ‘client’ and ‘recipient’ substituted for names. It’s not that unusual. This is often done to preserve the privacy of the clients when translation is needed. But I’m pretty sure I know at least the first name of the woman in question. And in yet another strange turn, she too has disappeared.”

“How did you get the woman’s first name?”

Finn finished his wine, refilled the glass and topped mine off. “My friend in Warsaw agreed to stake-out the bogus medical establishment for me,” he said, setting the bottle back on the table. “For about a week, he saw a pregnant woman regularly visit the so-called clinic. He followed her home to her apartment, trying to learn all he could about her. About the time I took my concerns to my bosses, she apparently vanished. The neighbors told my friend that she had moved in about eight months earlier, lived alone, kept to herself and was pregnant. They never saw anyone visit and the woman made only two trips outside daily. Then suddenly one day, the woman spills her guts to the old lady next door, saying she is afraid for her life. Shortly after that, she vanishes. The same neighbor said she saw the woman get into a foreign car driven by a dark-haired woman and she hasn’t been seen since.”

“So, maybe she just went somewhere to have the baby,” I offered.

“Maybe. But why tell the neighbor she was scared? And why the contract to make certain she visited the bogus medical establishment?”

I didn’t know the answers to those questions, so I shrugged. “None of the neighbors knew her name?”

“Just Judyta, or Judith in English. There are probably a half million or more Judytas in Poland, so it’s not much to go on.”

I agreed with him. “So what’s the bottom line?”

“It seems pretty obvious to me. There’s something strange going on at CGM. Now that Harold is dead, it’s fallen to me to figure it out.”

He’d said it simply and eloquently. I looked at him with a mixture of admiration and suspicion. Could it be that I sat across the table from a decent human being…and a lawyer to boot? Or did he have some other underlying motive?

“Aren’t you nervous doing something like that?” I asked. “What if it’s something unethical, or worse, illegal? We’ve all seen what happens to whistleblowers.”

“How can I not follow through? The woman in Warsaw may have believed she received legitimate medical treatment. As far as I know, she didn’t. Since she’s pregnant, we are talking about two lives in potential danger here. Besides, I strongly believe Harold hid and then marked those documents for me for a reason. I need to find out why. Can you help me?”

I set down my fork and studied him across the table. He met my gaze evenly and without blinking. Again I was taken aback by the startling emerald color of his eyes and the way they seemed to be measuring my worth. I’d bet he was tough to face in a courtroom.

I wanted to trust him, I really did. And it couldn’t hurt to let him in on at least part of the truth.

“Okay, my turn. Basia sent me the documents for safekeeping. Unfortunately, they were stolen from me last night.”

Finn gaped at me. “Stolen?”

I told him about my encounters with Beefy and Mr. Middle Eastern Guy and how the papers were taken from my apartment while I slept. I omitted the part about the papers being under my head. The entire universe didn’t need to know I was an idiot.

“My God.” He whistled. “Were you harmed?”

“No, I got lucky.”

“You don’t know which of them stole the papers?”

“Nope and it could have been someone else for all I know. I was asleep so I, ah, didn’t see or hear a thing. But Beefy was in my kitchen today looking for the documents and seemed pretty upset when I told him someone else got to them before he did. He doesn’t, by any chance, work for your firm, does he? Because if he does, can you call him off before he kills me—either accidentally or on purpose?”

Finn looked appalled. “A hired thug? My God, Lexi, I truly don’t know what to say except that I sincerely doubt it. I just can’t bring myself to believe that my company would hire someone to threaten you with a gun and break into your home, no matter how desperate they were to get the documents back.”

From what I’d heard so far about CGM and Bright Horizons, I wasn’t so sure of that. “Then what’s your take on Mr. Middle Eastern Guy?”

He paused for a very long moment and I noticed he looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I can’t say for certain except that we do have a very large Arabic clientele. Tell me, Lexi, did you have a chance to look at the documents before they were stolen from you?”

“I did, but like you said, they were in Polish.” I decided not to tell him I’d had Paul look over them for me.

“Was there a note from Basia?” he asked. “Instructions of any kind?”

“She just told me to keep them safe and she was going out of town to help a friend.”

He looked interested in that tidbit. “She didn’t say who she was going to visit or where?”

“No.”

“Was there anything else unusual about the documents? Had she provided a translation, for example?”

“No translation,” I said. “Just the seven pages of the contract in Polish.” I got a distinct feeling he was fishing, but decided not to mention the code she had penciled in at the bottom of page three.

“Look,” I said. “Something else is bugging me. You said the contract provided for specific living arrangements, special doctors and a stipend. Aside from the fact that CGM doesn’t typically handle such legal arrangements, what’s up with that?”

Finn shrugged. “I suppose I could take an educated guess. It’s no surprise some wealthy men pay women to act as surrogate mothers for their offspring. They have very specific requests to see that the pregnancy and birth goes exactly the way they want. Many insist on no contact with the mother after the child is born. For a few of them, it’s a purely business transaction and they purposefully seek out women who understand that well and will perform to those expectations.”

That seemed really creepy to me—a business transaction involving human lives. “Yuck. I guess I’ve lived a really sheltered life.”

“I should point out that this is quite rare. Most people who become involved with surrogate pregnancies are just ordinary men and women trying to have a baby. But the point is that to my knowledge, Bright Horizons has never had any involvement in surrogate pregnancies of any kind.”

After that, we seemed to run out of things to say on the topic, or perhaps we both needed a little time to digest the information we had learned. We ate and talked for a while longer, eventually discussing other matters that had nothing to do with people trying to kill me or men paying women to have their babies.

I learned Finn was born and bred in Cork, Ireland and had come to the U.S. to go to Georgetown for law school and then decided to stay. His Irish accent was faint, as if he had worked to tone it down, but it came out occasionally when he pronounced certain words. He also had an off-kilter sense of humor surprisingly similar to mine. Of course guys as good-looking as Finn rarely looked twice at a girl like me, but for this night, regardless of the circumstances, I was the one sitting at the table having dinner with him. Since these occasions didn’t come my way often, I planned on enjoying every moment. Maybe change wasn’t so bad after all.

After we had finished dinner, Finn graciously paid the bill and then walked me to my car. Once in a while his arm would brush against mine until my nerve ends were jangling. I didn’t know if the arm brushing was accidental or he was sending me a covert message that he liked me. How could a person tell? Maybe I was supposed to brush his arm with mine to indicate reciprocal interest.

He stood close enough now so that I could smell him, a pleasant scent of male and expensive aftershave. The attraction thing was in full bloom, at least on my side, even though my brain kept protesting that this wasn’t a date and I’d just met him. However, my body wasn’t even remotely listening to what my brain was saying. For once, I got a feeling of what it must be like to be a guy.

We arrived at my car and I unlocked the door. We turned to look at each other. Finn stood so close that I could see the smile crinkles at the edges of his eyes. He smiled at me and, in a moment of inspiration, I swung out my arm, hoping to catch his in a light brush. Instead I hit the car door and it slammed on his fingers.

“Bugger that!” he shouted as I looked on in horror. Swearing and shaking his fingers, he hopped around like a rabbit on steroids.

“Oh. My. God,” I screeched. “Are you all right?”

He looked ruefully at me, gripping his fingers with his other hand. “I’m, ah, fine. I’m sorry. I crowded you.”

“No, no,” I protested. “I’m sorry. I liked being crowded.” My face turned beet red…again.

Finn reached into his jacket. For one weird instant I thought he was reaching for a weapon to shoot me for being a social imbecile. Not that I would have blamed him. But instead, he pulled out a business card and handed it to me. It was embossed in gold and had Finn’s name and the impressive title, “Attorney-At-Law.” It also had his work address as well as fax, phone and cell numbers. The logo for CGM, Inc. was a double rainbow in front of a snow-covered mountain. Pretty classy looking.

“Can I have your cell number?” he asked. “In case I need to get in touch with you quickly.”

“I don’t have a cell,” I said. Until these past few days, there was no one I needed to call on a moment’s notice except Basia.

He looked at me in astonishment. “No cell? And you work for the NSA?”

“I never admitted to that,” I said. “Even if I had, my operating hours for protecting America are nine to five. I can give you my work number if you’d like.”