Mistress of Justice (36 page)

Her hand paused as she heard the man’s sobbing. The raspy voice wheezed between the sobs. “Why, why, why? …”

“You!” she whispered.

Ralph Dudley wiped his face and stared at her at her in raw hatred. He didn’t pay any attention to the rock in her hand. He stiffly rose, walked to an overturned trash drum and sat on it, gasping for breath. “Why did you do it?”

“Are you out of your mind?” She pitched the rock away and began brushing her coat off, rubbing at the oil and grease stains. “Look at this! Are you crazy?”

The old partner stared blankly at the ground. “I followed
you from your apartment. I don’t know what I wanted to do. I actually thought about killing you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You followed me. You bribed my … You bribed Junie to find out about me. Then I asked an associate if he’d seen you in my office and he said you had.”

Taylor shrugged. “You lied to me, Ralph. You lied about being in the firm a week ago Saturday.”

“So?” He smoothed his mussed hair, examined his damaged coat.

“What were you doing in the firm?”

“It’s not any of your business.”

“Maybe not. But maybe it is. What were you doing?”

“I love that girl.”

Taylor said nothing.

“She makes me feel so alive. I hate it that she’s in that business. She does too, I know she does. But she doesn’t have any choice.”

In her mind she saw the cheap red plastic napkin ring.

Poppie …

Taylor’s fear had changed into pity. The desires to flee, to slap him, to put her hand on his shoulder and comfort him were balanced.

He lifted his head; the cold light, shining down from above, hit his narrow face and made him look deranged and cadaverous. He started to speak then lowered his face into his hands. A dozen cars crashed over a pothole in the street next to them before he spoke. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what, Ralph?”

“Tell Wendall Clayton about us.”

“I didn’t tell Clayton anything.”

“Somebody …” He wiped his face again. “Somebody told him.”

“Oh, please …” Taylor laughed. “That law firm is like Machiavelli’s villa. Everybody’s got spies.”

“But why did you go to the West Side Club? Why did you follow me?”

“There are problems at the firm. I needed to know where some people were at a certain time. I got the feeling you were lying to me so I followed you after dinner. Now, tell me what you were doing at the firm.”

He shook his head.

Just as she had with the cop who’d arrested Sebastian, Taylor now lowered her head and said, “Ralph, I can put you in jail for a long time—because of that girl. And I’ll do it if you don’t cooperate. No bullshit. Tell me what you were doing in the firm.”

The look of hatred in his face chilled her but he finally said, “Junie’s father died two years ago and left her some money. But her mother and stepfather’re keeping it all tied up. They’re trying to get it for themselves. I’ve been spending every weekend and half my nights at the firm, learning trusts and estates and fiduciary law. I’m going to get the money back for her.” He wiped tears. “I couldn’t tell anybody at the firm because they’d find out she’s not my granddaughter and then … they might find out the real situation. Besides, I’ve borrowed against my partnership draw so much the firm’d fire me if they knew I was spending my time on a project that wasn’t making Hubbard, White any money.”

He looked up, wretched and lost. “I’m really not a very good lawyer. I can charm people, I can entertain clients … but this is the only real law I’ve done in years.”

“Prove it to me.”

He said stiffly, “I don’t think I owe you anything more.”

Once again the same dark power she’d felt before filled Taylor Lockwood’s heart and she whispered harshly, “Prove it to me or I go to the cops.”

A wounded animal, Dudley hesitated. Then he glanced down, opened his briefcase. Shoved it toward her.

She knew little about trusts and estates law but it was clear that these documents—petitions to the Surrogate’s Court, copies of cases and correspondence—bore out what he’d told her.

“You were in the firm early Sunday morning after Thanksgiving.”

“Yes” he answered as if he were a witness under cross-examination.

“You used Thom Sebastian’s key?”

“Yes. I didn’t want anybody to know I was in that night. I got there about one-thirty. After I’d been to the West Side Club.”

She asked, “Where
were
you in the firm?”

“Just the library and my office. The rest room. The canteen—for some coffee.”

“Did you see anyone else there?”

Dudley rocked slowly back and forth on the trash can, under the rain of harsh streetlight. His breath popped out in small puffs as he worried the tear in his coat. “As a matter of fact,” he answered, “I did.”

The loft door was open. She paused in the hallway, seeing the trapezoid of ashen light fall into the corridor. Taylor felt a jab of panic. In a burst of frightening memory she remembered the white car driving them off the road and, though at the time she believed the thief had intended only to scare them, she thought for an instant that the man had come back and killed Mitchell. She ran to the door and pushed inside.

He was lying on the couch, wearing blue jeans and a wrinkled dress shirt. His hair was mussed and his arms lolled at his sides. His eyes stared unmoving at the ceiling.

“Mitchell?” she asked. “Are you all right?

He turned on his side slowly and looked at her. A faint smile. “Must’ve dozed off.”

Taylor crouched next to him and took his hand. “I thought … you were hurt or something.”

She felt the slight pressure of his hand on hers. He looked at her jacket and jeans. “What happened to you?”

Taylor laughed. “Little wrestling match.”

“Are you all right?”

“You should see the other guy.” Then she said, “I know who the thief is.”

“What?” His eyes returned to life. “Who?”

“Wendall Clayton.”

“How do you know?”

“I eliminated Thom and Dudley.” She told him about Sebastian’s adventure with the police and the old partner’s attack on her. Then she said, “Clayton let the thief in that night.”

“But he wasn’t in the firm,” Reece said.

“Yes he was. Dudley saw him. And Clayton’s key entry didn’t show up because he got to the firm on
Friday.”

Reece nodded, eyes closing at the obvious answer. “Of course. He was there all weekend, working on the merger. He didn’t leave until Sunday. He stayed two nights. Must’ve slept on the couch. I should’ve thought about that.”

Taylor continued. “I just went back to the firm and checked his time sheets. We would’ve seen that he’d ordered food in and made phone calls and photocopies but all those records were erased, remember?”

Reece’s smile faded. “That doesn’t mean he stole the note though.”

“But Dudley told me something else. About three-thirty or four on Sunday morning he saw this man, like a janitor, walking through the firm with an envelope. Dudley thought it was odd that he was carrying something like that. He noticed he went into Clayton’s office with the envelope but came out without it. Dudley didn’t say anything to him—or to anyone else about him—because he was working on something unrelated to firm business.

“I talked to my private detective. He said there is a Triple A Security—the receipt I found in Wendall’s desk—and he checked the grapevine. It’s in Florida. He said they’re a firm that has a reputation for doing labor work. Which he tells me is a euphemism for rough stuff, like stealing documents and bugging offices and even driving people off the road. That’s who Dudley saw. Clayton let him into the firm and he stole the note after you went home.”

Reece said, “And you think the note’s in that envelope?”

“I think so. Like you said, he probably hid it in a stack
of documents in his office. I’m going to search it. Only we have to wait. He was still at his desk when I left the firm and it didn’t look like he was going to leave anytime soon. I’ll go back to the firm and wait till he leaves for the night.”

“Taylor … What can I say?” He hugged her, hard, and she threw her arms around him. Their hands began coursing up and down each other’s backs and suddenly it was as if all the compressed tension they’d felt over the past week had been converted into a very different kind of energy … and now suddenly erupted.

The room vanished into motion: his arms around her, under her legs, sweeping her up. Reece carried her to the huge dining room table and lay her upon it, books falling, papers sailing off onto the floor. He eased her down onto the tabletop, her blouse and skirt spiraling off and away, his own clothes flying in a wider trajectory. He was already hard. He pressed his mouth down on hers, their teeth met and he worked down her neck, biting. Pulling hard on her nipples, her stomach, her thighs. She tried to rise up to him but he held her captive, her butt and leg cut by the sharp corners of a law book: The pain added to the hunger.

Then he was on top of her, his full weight on her chest, as his hands curled around the small of her back and tugged her toward him. She was completely immobile, her breath forced out of her lungs by his demanding strokes.

Taylor felt a similar hunger and she dug her nails into his solid back, her teeth clenched in a salivating lust for the pain it was causing.

They moved like this for minutes, or hours—she had no idea. Finally she screamed as she shuddered, her toes curling, her head bouncing against the table. He finished a moment later and collapsed against her.

Taylor lifted her hands. Two nails were bloody. She shoved the law book out from underneath her; it fell with a resonant thud. She closed her eyes and they remained locked this way for a long time.

She dozed briefly.

When she awoke a half hour later she found that Reece
was at his desk, dressed only in a shirt, scribbling notes, reading cases. She watched his back for a moment then walked to him, kissed the top of his head.

He turned and pressed his head against her breasts.

“It’s up to you now,” he said. “I’m going to proceed with the case as if we can’t find the note.” He nodded at the papers surrounding him. “But I’ll hope for the best.”

At three in the morning, wearing her cat burglar outfit of Levi’s and a black blouse, Taylor Lockwood walked into Hubbard, White & Willis.

Her black Sportsac contained a pair of kidskin gloves, a set of screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, a hammer. The firm seemed empty but she moved through the corridors in complete quiet, pausing in darkened conference rooms, listening for voices or footsteps.

Nothing.

Finally she made it to Wendall Clayton’s office and began her search.

By four-thirty, she’d covered most of it and found no sign of the note. But there were still two tall stacks of documents, on the floor beside his credenza, that she hadn’t looked through yet.

She continued searching. She finished one and found nothing. She started on the second one.

Which was when jaunty footsteps sounded on the marble floor in the corridor nearby and Wendall Clayton’s voice boomed to someone, “The merger vote’s in six hours. I need those fucking documents now!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN