Private Justice. Marie Ferrarella
Читать онлайн книгу.
about a face-to-face meeting ultimately had to lie with the senator. She was not about to presume to speak on his behalf. All she could do was lay the groundwork and make sure that no reporters got to Senator Kelley.
Exhaling loudly as if the act would bring her very lungs out, Cindy capitulated. She pulled a notepad closer to her on the desk and wrote out a telephone number. Finished, she pushed the pad toward him.
Dylan looked at it. It was an 818 area code, but that didn’t mean anything. This was the number to his father’s cell phone; his father could be anywhere in the state. Or out of it. Nobody said this was going to be easy, he thought with resignation.
Tearing the sheet off the pad, he said, “By the way, you know my name because it was on my license, but I don’t know yours.”
She didn’t take the opening he gave her. “No, you don’t.”
This was like pulling teeth. Or, actually, more like questioning a hostile witness under oath, he thought. “What is it?” he asked her.
There was pure suspicion in her eyes. “Why, so you can have me investigated?”
“So I know what to call you when I need to get your attention.”
“Through,” Cindy told him without missing a beat.
The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “First or last?”
Cindy cocked her head. “Excuse me?”
“Through,” he repeated what she’d just said to him. “Is that your first name or your last name?”
He was a lawyer all right, Cindy thought. One who wasn’t going to stop badgering her until he got what he was after. Well, she supposed that it was an easy enough matter for him to find out the name of the senator’s Chief Staff Assistant. She might as well tell him now rather than keep the game going.
“Cindy,” she told him grudgingly. “Cindy Jensen.”
That hadn’t taken as long as he’d begun to think it would. His smile was broad. “Nice to meet you Cindy, Cindy Jensen.”
“You know,” she told him, “you’d get along a lot better with people if you lost that mocking tone.”
Now that amused him. “You’re giving me advice on how to get along with people?” Didn’t that fall into the realm of the pot-and-kettle thing?
She took offense at his response and what it implied. “I’ll have you know I get along beautifully with people. Non-belligerent people,” she qualified.
“I only act belligerently with people who are trying to stonewall me.” He looked at the phone number in his hand. “Now that you’ve given me a number where my father can be reached, we can become best friends.”
Her response was immediate and without hesitation. “I’d rather eat dirt.”
“Odd choice,” he commented, keeping a straight face even though he knew he was goading her, “but I won’t stand in your way. Whatever makes you happy.”
“What would make me happy,” Cindy said under her breath as she resumed moving about the office, straightening things up just so that her hands could remain busy, “is if the senator had remembered to stay a little truer to his own principles and not done anything to allow the media the opportunity to jump on his bones like a pack of snarling jackals.”
Dylan had started dialing, but stopped to listen to her. Her tone had dropped and her voice had softened. Her imagery entertained him.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a very colorful woman?” She gave him a look that told him she was not about to be softened up with compliments. “I guess not,” he concluded.
About to continue dialing, he winced as a piercing noise was emitted from the earpiece of the receiver and a female, almost metallic voice, came on the line, reciting the classic instruction: “Please hang up and dial again.”
He was about to press down the button on the cradle when Cindy did it for him. He raised his eyes to hers, thinking she’d obviously heard the jarring message. “Thanks.”
She gave him an ever-so-slight nod of the head to acknowledge that she had heard him.
As he completed dialing the number, Dylan couldn’t help wondering what it was like to have someone who was as loyal to him as this woman apparently was to his father. His first thought was that his father had to be paying her awfully well. But money didn’t buy loyalty, it bought lackeys, and a couple of minutes in Cindy Jensen’s company had convinced him that this woman was no lackey. So then what was she? The senator’s Chief Staff Assistant/head mistress? Or what?
He was going to need to get that cleared up in order to have a handle on the facts here. And on what was and wasn’t, ultimately, a press liability. Because he knew just as well as anyone that cases were first tried in the press. A victory there gave a victory elsewhere a base to grow from, becoming that much easier to achieve.
God knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.
He blew out an impatient breath. The phone had rung now a total of eight times and there’d been no answer, human or machine. In this day and age, that was pretty unusual in his book. Was she giving him the runaround again?
Dylan looked at her. “You sure this is the right number?”
She didn’t like the veiled accusation in his voice. “It’s the contact number that the senator gave me,” she told him.
Dylan frowned, debating hanging up. If there was someone there, how long could they put up with listening to the phone ring? He had his suspicions that it was a bogus number—unless his father was out, and considering the high visibility of his face after the broadcast, he sincerely doubted that.
Of course, there was also another explanation for why no one was picking up. One that absolved the Chief Staff Assistant of any blame.
“How much does my father trust you?” he asked her suddenly.
Cindy stopped moving around the office, stopped neatening, stopped straightening. She slowly turned around to look at him. Just what was this lawyer who might or might not have pure intentions saying?
“I’m the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—”
Dylan raised his hand to stop her in mid-word. This refrain was beginning to sound like a broken record and it was grating on his nerves. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re his Chief Staff Assistant. You told me. Trust me, you told me.”
Two could take that sarcastic tone, she thought, annoyed. “And you remembered. How nice for you.” The words were delivered with a smile that could have frozen a pond in July.
The woman definitely had an attitude problem, but that was something he’d deal with later. Right now, he needed to find a way to get to his damn father. The old man had picked a hell of a time for a game of hide and seek.
“You being his Chief Staff Assistant doesn’t automatically mean that he trusts you,” he pointed out, less than tactfully. “Maybe he gave you that number to throw you off.”
With a disgusted noise, Dylan hung up the phone. Now what? He supposed he could go back to his firm and see if the private investigator they kept on retainer could locate his father.
Her eyes all but shooting daggers at him, Cindy crossed back to the desk and elbowed him aside.
“Give me that,” she said, commandeering the phone and pulling the receiver out of his hand. On a hunch, she hit the redial button, then watched the caller ID screen as the numbers of the phone call he’d just made popped up one by one. Just as she’d thought. “No wonder,” she declared. Cindy raised her eyes to his face, a look of triumph on her own.
What was she up to? “No wonder what?” he wanted to know.
The phone on the other end began ringing. For