Book 1 - Active Trust (3 page)

Naturally, Michelle was right.
She received a message on her cell phone that a client was awaiting
her arrival into the office as quickly as possible. She dressed
casually, but smartly and sped off to the boxy enormous building
that is Briggs & Trice.

She walked briskly past the
doorman and receptionist at the building’s entrance and greeted
them with hellos. She pushed the “21” button and was whisked away
to the floor containing her average sized office.

She sauntered in, brushing her
lush, wavy brown hair behind her ears. Arriving at her office, she
found The Governor’s wife sitting there, waiting patiently.

“Mrs. McBride, I wasn’t
expecting you. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Please call me Donna,” she
said, looking defeated.

“Yes, of course, Donna. Is there
something I can do for you this morning?”

“Yes, there is. I mean, I just
don’t know what to do anymore. I love this man and we have been
together for decades and he’s pulling this?”

She tried to quell her tears,
but they flowed freely. Michelle knew that she was going to be
there for a while, but she was sympathetic to The Governor’s wife.
She’d felt the sting of a cheater in the past and knew that Mrs.
McBride needed to know the truth once and for all so that she could
deal with the consequences, no matter what they were.

Michelle opened her desk drawer
and offered up a box of tissues to her client. Mrs. McBride grasped
at several tissues and dried her tears. She had obviously been up
all night and was on the verge of exhaustion.

“He came home this morning,
smelling of some other woman’s perfume. I’m not even sure what to
do anymore.”

“I can assure you that we are
already on the case. I have hired a discreet private investigator
to look into the matter and we are assured frequent updates on the
matter. If The Governor is up to no good, we will know.”

Just then her cell phone alerted
her to a text message received. It was Chase with an update.

“Mugs, 3pm sharp –CF”

Michelle put her hand on Mrs.
McBride’s shoulder and provided her with some words of hope.

“If he is doing something that
he’s not supposed to, you are protected with Briggs & Trice. We
will find the truth for you and initiate legal proceedings should
you wish to take this further. We will provide you with a lot of
options so that you can secure your next steps in life.”

Mrs. McBride wiped her tears
again and said, “Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I am so glad to have
retained your services.”

“Of course, Donna, any time you
need us, we are here. Also, here is the card of my receptionist
Phillip Brant. If you cannot reach me for any reason, you can talk
to him. He’s a good kid, fresh out of college and eager to
help.”

“Thank you,” Donna said, taking
the card from her lawyer.

“Another thing, here is the card
of a well respected and discreet counselor, Dr. Francisco. You can
talk to her any time and she only sees high profile clients like
yourself.”

“Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I don’t
know what I would do without your services.”

Mrs. McBride left the large
building and entered into a waiting black car. The car sped off and
Michelle eagerly awaited the afternoon hours so that she could
learn what Chase was able to find out so quickly.

She texted Chase and said, “You
work quickly; I like that.”

Michelle got into the elevator
with her laptop in her leather carrying case and went to Mugs. It
was too early for Chase to meet up with her, but she needed
breakfast as she skipped it in favor of rushing to the office for
her unexpected client’s visit.

She arrived at Mugs and sat down
at a booth where she opened the lid of her laptop and began
searching for more information on The Governor and his wife. She
pulled her cell phone from her purse and made a quick call to Dr.
Francisco to give her advance warning of a possible call from a
special, high profile client.”

The phone rang and Dr.
Francisco’s receptionist greeted her.

“Good morning. Dr. Francisco’s
office, this is Lenora, how may I assist you today?”

“Good morning, Lenora, this is
Michelle Mayor from Briggs & Trice. Is the good doctor in
today?”

“She is actually out of the
office until later today, but I can take a message for you if you
would like.”

“Sure. Please just tell her that
I have referred a high profile client for her services should she
need them and this is to be kept under her hat.”

“I will tell her. Is there
anything else, Ms. Mayor?”

“No, thank you. That is all. I
just wanted to make sure she had the heads up.”

“Thank you for calling, I will
give her your message.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

She clicked “end” on her cell
phone and realized that it was still super early in the morning and
she was starting to feel hunger pangs.

A waitress came over and said,
“Would you like some coffee, ma’am?”

“Yes, please.”

The waitress approached the
booth with a coffee pot in hand and poured some into the cup she’d
turned over for Michelle.

“My name is Wanda and I will be
your server today. Do you know what you would like, sweetie, or
would you like a few minutes to decide?”

After looking over the menu for
thirty seconds, Michelle said, “Two eggs over easy, a side of
sausage links, hash browns and wheat toast, please.”

Wanda scribbled the order down
on her book and scurried off to the kitchen. Michelle watched as
she handed the ticket through the window into the kitchen. A hand
reached for it and placed it on the line.

Michelle glanced down at her
watch and noticed that it was only 10:35 AM. How was she going to
burn all of those hours until she met with Chase. The anticipation
was beginning to kill her about something that Chase had obviously
found already. This had to be good news for her client, she just
knew it.

Twenty minutes later, Wanda
bounced back over to the table with the coffee pot in one hand and
a plate in the other. She sat down the plate in front of Michelle
and refilled her coffee cup.

“Thank you,” Michelle said,
looking ever so grateful. The feeling of being famished had set in
and she began to tear into breakfast as if there was no
tomorrow.

“You are most certainly welcome,
sweetie. Please let me know if you need anything else.”

She walked off and left Michelle
alone at the table to devour her breakfast. She shoveled it into
her mouth at a rapid pace, eager to get started on the day’s
work.

After eating, she sat there
typing away on her keyboard, looking for more information on
Governor McBride. ‘Everyone has skeletons in their closet,’ she
thought as she searched Google. After Google turned up negative
things from his Democratic opposition, she began searching the
county court docket for any lawsuits or court cases.

Her search only provided her
with one case number and she clicked the link to find that in 1992,
The Governor was involved in a car accident. It was a huge lawsuit
that netted the other party a half-million dollars. After a cursory
Google search of the other party’s name, Michelle learned that he
had been paralyzed from the waist down. It was a shame, just
because the guy had one daughter in 1990, but couldn’t have any
more children following the accident.

‘Wow,’ she thought as she
learned more about Mr. McBride’s victim, Mitchell Rees. Apparently
he was really active in his own community and was just a victim of
being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Michelle decided to burn more
time and went on to Facebook to search for Mr. Rees. He was an
older guy with distinguishing features like the kind of man who
would be in movies. Prior to his life changing accident, he was an
architect. His lack of mobility took away his driving force, so he
gave up and became a couch potato who just holed up in his house
and drank.

Michelle was saddened by this
new information and wondered if the accident ever weighed heavily
on The Governor’s mind. She scrolled through Mr. Rees’ Facebook
feed to its earliest entry and found that he was once so enraged
over the accident that he vowed to return the favor and maim the
man who did it. Mr. McBride wasn’t yet governor then, but a man
without public office and with a whole lot of money and even less
brains.

McBride had been a trust fund
baby to start with and inherited his father’s millions after a
heart attack claimed his life in 1987. The media had reported at
the time that McBride had been a wild playboy and was always drunk
or coked up. Michelle wasn’t sure if this news had anything to do
with the accident, but she was determined to find out.

Michelle turned off her laptop
and stuffed it back into its carrying case and flagged down her
waitress for a check. Wanda returned to her table and asked, “Was
everything okay today, honey?”

“It was fantastic.”

“Here’s your check and I hope
you have a great day.”

She pawed the check facing
downward onto the table and walked away. Michelle turned it over,
glanced downward at the total and fished out a twenty for the bill.
She put it on top of the check and left it on the table.

Michelle got into her car and
decided that, in order to kill time, she would peruse the library’s
record of events from Mr. McBride’s car accident. Surely, they
would have some newspaper records of the incident and events
surrounding it.

She entered the library, found
their microfiche area and began her investigation into the car
accident. There was something about the accident that didn’t sit
right with her and she had to settle the details in her mind.

She looked through the records
and hit pay dirt when she located something about a fundraiser for
McBride to become Mayor back in 1993. He was seen celebrating and
rubbing noses with the upper echelon of the city. ‘One year
post-accident and he’s busy getting funds together to run for
Mayor’, interesting, she thought as she continued her search.

She knew that she couldn’t
expect McBride to lay low and become dedicated to a man whom he
paralyzed, but she knew there was a piece to the puzzle that was
missing.

Going backward through the
fiche, she found nothing for hours. At a time when she was just
about ready to give up the search, she came across a tiny blurb in
the Gazette with the headline: “DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT MAIMS
1”.

She read through the small
article and found that it was exactly the thing of which she’d
spent all of her time searching. She printed off the sheet and
stuffed it into her bag. McBride was driving drunk after a night
spent partying with prostitutes and slammed his silver Mercedes
into the car that Rees was driving. After a head-on collision,
McBride walked away, but paramedics were left using the Jaws of
Life in order to pull Rees from the wreckage.

Michelle was happy that her
curiosity was sated, but had a hankering for more information from
Chase Freeman. She didn’t want to wait and so she texted him, “Can
we meet now?”

Her phone alerted her to a text
message immediately following the one she sent. It read, “Yes.”

She made a beeline for her car
and drove it over to Mugs and awaited his arrival. She saw Chase
walk in and followed behind him closely.

She sat down at the table just
after he did and he handed her a black USB drive.

“You are going to find this
super fascinating.”

“Is that right?”

“Our buddy was at a gala event
last night and left in a car that followed another car to a hotel.
They drove around for twenty minutes before deciding to go to a
hotel room in a nearby city.”

“Fantastic work, but I have to
ask, how did you find out all of this?”

He whipped out his cell phone
and showed her a selfie of himself in a black suit wearing a
chauffer’s hat.

“You mean to tell me that you
drove one of them around?!?”

Michelle was flabbergasted.

“You could’ve blown your
cover!”

“There is no possible way I
could’ve risked blowing my cover.”

“And just how do you know
that?”

“Firstly, because rich people
absolutely never pay attention to their drivers. They just don’t.
Chauffeurs might as well be invisible to people of whom they work.
Sad, but true. I could’ve had three piercings in my nose and purple
hair and no one would’ve been the wiser.”

“Okay, but what about these
pictures. Don’t you think taking photos of the subject would’ve
have given up your identity?”

“You would be correct, but I
didn’t take these pictures. I had my assistant at the hotel as soon
as the subject and his lady friend emerged. She looked rather
inconspicuous and took pictures using her cell phone. You’re going
to love this.”

“There’s more?”

“Isn’t there always more?”

“Go on, go on.”

“Well, the subject was sloppy
drunk and the lady with him, and I use that term loosely, was of
the ‘night’ variety, if you catch my drift.”

“She was a hooker?”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

“Wow, okay. We aren’t done yet,
there is still more work to do on this.”

“Yes, of course. The
pregnancy.”

“Yes, there’s that. We
definitely need to find the pregnant woman and learn her
story.”

“Okay, we are on it.”

Chase left without ordering
anything and Michelle quickly followed him out. She went to her
office and put the USB drive into her laptop. She saw photos of Mr.
McBride and this unknown woman leaving the hotel together and he
was even so bold as to kiss her in public. He was likely very
certain that his wife was none the wiser and wanted to show his
date that he wasn’t scared of any public displays of affection.

‘Is this his favorite hooker or
something? Why kiss her in public?’ Michelle’s thoughts were
running rampant. If these pictures got out, Governor McBride’s
political career would certainly take a hit. Michelle didn’t care
about that and wanted only to satisfy her client’s worries about
his extracurricular activities.