Red Hot Lies. Laura Caldwell
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her vocabulary, her thinking, to fit whatever she was talking about or dealing with. She didn’t seem like a natural at her job as Forester’s lawyer, but he could also see that she believed she could be good at it if she just tried her ass off.
It would be an uphill battle for her now that Forester was dead. He’d gotten the feeling from everyone at the firm that they thought of her as the pretty girl who’d lucked into the gig.
He pulled into the alley behind his house and then into the garage. “Again, I’m sorry you’re going through this, Izzy. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Okay, thanks.” Her voice sounded far away, fragile.
He hated to do it, but he hung up.
15
Between the meeting with the detectives and Mayburn’s rejection I was feeling scared, my anxiety soaring. I paced my office. I picked up my phone over and over. I couldn’t think of who else to call, and so I kept banging the phone onto the base.
Q opened the door and came inside. “Need anything?”
Behind him, I could see Holly, the assistant of the attorney next door, watching us. “I need you to get Holly to stop staring at me.”
“Oh, ignore her.” He looked over his shoulder and waved a hand. “She’s two bad decisions away from being a crack whore.”
I sat down. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Sounds like what you need is a Halloween party with a lot of gay men.”
I groaned. “I forgot.” Q’s annual party was that weekend.
“Max and his mother have been decorating for days.”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“I don’t want to do it either. I’m so not in the mood. But you have to come. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Sam was supposed to come with me.” I swallowed. I was supposed to do everything with Sam. For the rest of my life.
“You can still wear the pumpkin costume,” Q said.
I managed half a laugh. “I did not get a pumpkin costume, you pervert.”
Q’s big idea had been for me to dress as a pumpkin and for Sam to stick pumpkin seeds all over his face and wear a name tag that said, Peter the Pumpkin Eater.
“It’s not for a few days,” Q said. “Give it some thought.”
“A few days. That seems so far away.” For a long time, I’d been able to see my entire future before me—my work with Forester, my marriage to Sam. When it was all overwhelming me it seemed that the future was just a postcard—appealing and detailed on the front but flat when you really looked at it. And yet now that I had no idea what the next day would be like, I craved that pretty picture.
I glanced at Holly, then back at Q. “What are they saying? Does anyone know anything new?”
Q sighed. “It’s just Tanner flapping his gums. But nothing new.”
I felt a presence outside my door, I saw two first-year attorneys walking by, pausing for a second when they got to my office. One threw a nervous smile my way. The other glanced around.
“Hi, guys,” I said.
I was usually a favorite among the law clerks, all of whom were stellar students from the local law schools. I was closer to their age than a lot of the other lawyers. I would sometimes drink with them after work, and I would give the straight skinny about whose butt to kiss and who to avoid.
But now they looked at me with curiosity and something approaching pity. “Hi,” they said then kept walking.
I wanted to yell out, Nothing to see here! Instead, I stood, closed the door and grabbed my suit coat off the back of it. I put it on and looked in the mirror. My lightly freckled skin appeared pale with a faint gray hue, and my hair, normally bright and orange-red, looked faded. It was as if, in a twenty-four-hour span, I’d lost some of my luster. The thought only powered me into action.
I looked at Q. “I’ll be back.”
He squinted his eyes, probably sensing I could get myself into trouble. “Why don’t you …”
“I’ll be back.” I turned, opened the door and stormed down the hallway.
I marched to the elevators and pushed the button repeatedly. I rode for two floors then made my way to the last door down the long hallway. Tanner’s office.
Inside, Tanner was on the phone, his chair turned toward his windows so that he didn’t notice me at first. I stood in the doorway, trying for patience, and looked around the place.
Every partner at Baltimore & Brown was encouraged to decorate their office in their own way and each got a small budget, but Tanner had clearly gone over his. His desk was a massive Oriental-teak affair, carved in detail and polished with a rosy, high gloss. His rug was plush, swirled in shades of crimson. Unlike most of the other lawyers who dealt with the overhead fluorescents, Tanner’s office was lit by a trio of antique lamps.
He must have sensed me there, for he turned in his chair. The exhaustion in his eyes seemed to mirror mine.
“I’ve got to go,” he said into the phone. “Hi to Peg. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He waved me toward the brocade couch across from his desk. I closed the door and took a seat.
Tanner’s eyes moved to the closed door, then to me. No one called the stage directions in his office except Tanner. I was past caring.
“How are you?” Tanner said. He looked as if he cared about the answer, which threw me.
“I’ve been better.”
He nodded. He stared out his window for a moment, then back at me. “What do you need?” He glanced down at his watch.
There it was—the typical brusque tone, the usual attitude that assumed everyone would run around him like obsequious puppies. I was glad for the condescension. It put me right back in the mood.
“You know what I need?” I said, heavy on the sarcasm. “I need you to stop spreading rumors about my fiancé. The whole firm is talking about Sam and the bearer shares and the safe and Forester. And the only way they could be finding this out is from you or Q. And I know it’s not Q. I’d have thought that you’d respect the privacy of another lawyer.”
Tanner didn’t say anything immediately, but his face softened into empathy. This left me feeling off-kilter. Tanner rarely listened or heard or thought about anyone apart from himself. Finally, he said, “I would think that you would appreciate my position.”
“What position is that? This is none of your business.”
His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head as if disappointed. “Izzy.” He paused. It was the first time he hadn’t called me Isabel. “What was I supposed to do here? I found out that the fiancé of one of my associates, one of the firm’s best associates, appears to have stolen a lot of money from one of our biggest clients. I have to tell my partners about that. It is my fiduciary duty to do so. And if those partners tell their associates and the associates tell the secretaries, I cannot control that.”
I blinked. He was right. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head, brushing off my apology.
“No, really, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just personal, what with Sam being gone, and then Forester. I’m having trouble seeing things correctly.”
“Yeah. We’re all having a tough time with Forester’s death.”
“I know. I realize you knew him much longer than I did. How … how are you?” I almost stumbled over the last few words. I’d never imagined being