And Justice For Mall, page 2
‘It’s kind of … big,’ I said finally.
‘Yes!’ Webster said, as ever misinterpreting what I meant.
But Patrick, who had clearly either been here before or seen the listing online (no doubt after Angie had found it; I made a mental note to ream Angie out when I got back to the apartment we were still sharing in Burbank), had been paying less attention to the place itself and more to my reaction. What he was seeing was clearly not what he’d hoped to see.
‘You don’t like it,’ he said. A bit of the Cockney end of his accent was audible, and that’s unusual. Patrick can do a remarkable unspecified American accent and several regional ones when he’s acting. He learned to do them when he first came to the US for a small role that got him noticed by TV producers, who gave him a medium-sized role on a series that became a starring role on the same series, and so began Patrick McNabb’s career. Then he was getting divorced and was charged with murder, and that’s the story our grandchildren will hear (if it lasts that long) about how we met. It’s a story told elsewhere if you’re interested.
‘I didn’t say that,’ I told him. It’s a time-honored way to say, yes, you’re right, without actually sounding like an old stick-in-the-mud.
Patrick looked concerned. ‘Tell me what’s bothering you.’
I didn’t want to have a frank conversation with Patrick in front of his ex-fiancée and our mutual attempted murderer. Call me crazy. ‘We can talk about it later. I don’t hate the house, but it’s really not my idea.’
To his credit, Patrick did get that and he nodded. ‘We can talk about it at my house,’ he said.
‘I’m going back to the apartment tonight,’ I reminded him. ‘I have stuff there I need for work tomorrow.’
Webster was watching us with an inscrutable expression on her face, and that wasn’t making this scene any easier. ‘I have a few other properties I can show you,’ she said. To Patrick. ‘Remember, we went through this the last time and I found you the home you’re enjoying now, didn’t I?’
The palm trees were intimidating me. The atrium was intimidating me. Emily was definitely intimidating me. This house was, well, not going to be my home, ever.
‘I think maybe we’ll do some more looking on our own,’ I answered her, despite not having been addressed at all. ‘We’ll call you in a couple of days.’
‘I’m sure I have something you’ll like, and I have access to listings that won’t show up on Zillow,’ Webster said.
‘Maybe we should let Emmy handle this until we find the right house,’ Patrick mused. I felt my throat dry out just a bit. We had to use a homicidal maniac to find a house my boyfriend and I could agree upon?
My phone buzzed and there was a text from my boss, or at least the partner I deal with most often, Holiday Wentworth. Holly had become something of a work friend but if she was texting it was serious.
Did you take on the Jack Schoenberg case?
How could Holly have found that out? I hadn’t told her, but only because there hadn’t been time in my afternoon after Riley left. But if there was one thing this interruption was doing, it was providing me with an opportunity to exit the real-estate situation I had found myself in. Good old Holly.
‘I have to take this,’ I said, despite knowing that a text would probably have handled the immediate question Holly had asked. Without waiting for a reply, I walked to the other end of the atrium, which took a while because the room was the size of a baseball diamond. I told my phone to call Holly, which it did.
‘What are you doing taking that murder case?’ Holly asked as soon as she picked up. I miss the old days, when people had to wait until you spoke to know you were on the other end of a phone call. But it’s this century and there’s no going back.
Holly’s question caught me off guard. Why wouldn’t she want me to take on Riley’s case? ‘I’m the head of the criminal justice division,’ I said. ‘You made me take that title. Are you saying I can’t accept a case without permission?’
She let out a low whistle. ‘Wow. We just a little bit testy today?’
‘Sorry.’ I lowered my voice even more to make me less audible to everyone but Holly. ‘Patrick is making me look at houses.’
‘I thought you wanted to move in with him,’ she said.
‘I do, but he wants to move into Xanadu and I’d like a nice little place with a picket fence Anyway, what’s wrong with me taking the Schoenberg appeal? The convicted man’s daughter came and asked me to help her dad get out of jail.’
There was a light sigh from the other phone. ‘I know. You’re the third attorney she’s asked in our firm alone, and we only have two criminal lawyers.’
‘You mean she asked Jon before me?’ Jon Irvin was my only staff attorney in the criminal justice division of Seaton, Taylor, and even he spent most of his time working on divorces and custody cases. Which, to be frank, is mostly what I do and what I had wanted to do when I moved to Los Angeles from New Jersey.
‘This is no time to worry about not being the first choice of an eleven-year-old,’ Holly pointed out. ‘Everybody is turning this case down, and for a very good reason: the guy did the murder.’
Coming from Holly, who is a very good lawyer and an excellent judge of character (case in point: she hired me), was not encouraging. ‘I just told her I’d look at the files,’ I said. ‘I didn’t commit. How do you know he’s guilty? I can’t imagine you looked into a criminal matter.’ Holly never took anything but the highest-profile family law cases we had, and she brought in business, which is why her name is in the firm’s logo and mine is … going to be on the firm’s home page the next time they do a website redesign.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Holly said. ‘But I was following the case when it was happening, not long before you got here, and I know the lead detective who worked it socially.’
‘You’re saying he worked it socially?’
‘I’m saying I know her socially.’ There was a grin in Holly’s voice.
‘So it’s not Lieutenant Trench, unless I’ve missed a great deal of news,’ I said.
‘No. Believe it or not there are other detectives in the homicide and robbery division of the LAPD. I know Lieutenant Valdez, she’s very good and she said she had the case cold. The jury saw it the same way.’
‘When you say she’s very good …’ I began.
‘How much do you like your job?’ Holly asked.
I hadn’t actually thought about it before. ‘Quite a bit,’ I admitted.
‘Then don’t finish that sentence.’
I nodded as if Holly could see me. ‘I don’t see any harm in looking over the police reports and the court records,’ I said. ‘If I’m as convinced as you that the guy killed his wife, I’ll stop there. But I promised the little girl I’d look into it, and I will.’
Holly has gotten to know me well enough in the past two years that she could have expected nothing other than that response. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I’m willing to bet the girl made you take the case pro bono, so I don’t want you missing time on paying work when you’re doing this, OK?’
‘The way you say that makes me feel like I should have charged a preteen our usual hourly rate,’ I said.
‘Riley Schoenberg inherited roughly four-point-seven million dollars when her mother died,’ Holly said. ‘Her mother Helene was the inventor of ImagiNails.’
‘ImagiNails?’ I said. ‘She worked in construction?’
‘Google it,’ Holly said, and hung up.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw Patrick standing there with the still eerily grinning Emily Webster.
‘So. Something smaller, then?’ she said.
THREE
‘There’s a very simple solution,’ Angie said. ‘Don’t move out.’
We were in our living room, which led into our kitchen, where there was a pile of empanadas and arepas and one cachapa from the Venezuelan restaurant we’d discovered on Grub Hub. And we’d already eaten. It was kind of amazing in its own way, especially given how Angie never gained so much as an ounce. The two hours a day she spent exercising, in addition to her full-time job as Patrick’s executive assistant and her (very) part-time job as apprentice of sorts to Nate Garrigan, the investigator who works with me from time to time, had clearly been paying off. I admired it as one does a noble deed performed by someone else.
And I will admit, it was awfully easy to be there with Angie, no makeup, no shoes, no bra if I’m being honest, and just relaxing. I loved Patrick passionately but I was never fully relaxed when in his house. He has such a larger-than-life presence and an energy level that hummingbirds would envy. It’s just short of exhausting to keep up with him. Relaxing? You never know what’s going to happen next. That’s intriguing and exciting but it’s not relaxing.
‘You’re just saying that because if I move out you’ll have to find another roommate,’ I told my best friend. I did feel bad about ‘abandoning’ Angie after she’d actually moved to LA just to save my life, but that was a while ago and she could have gone back to Jersey if she’d really wanted to. I guess being the executive assistant (I am bound by law to use the whole term) to a major television star was somehow more attractive a life than running three Dairy Queen franchises in central New Jersey. Imagine.
‘Or move into a smaller place I can afford,’ she said. ‘But you know I don’t want to do either of those things. All my stuff is here.’
‘There are people who will help you move your stuff,’ I said. ‘They’re called … what’s the word? Movers. That’s it. They’re called movers.’
‘Mock me in my time of need. Go ahead.’ Angie got down on the floor and started doing sit-ups. After empanadas. I’m asking you.
‘Hey, you’re Patrick’s most exalted assistant,’ I began.
‘Executive.’ She wasn’t even breathing hard.
‘Fine. You must have been in on that great big barn he showed me today and you definitely knew I was going to find it – at best – incredibly excessive.’
‘What’s your point?’ She switched to push-ups because I guess sit-ups weren’t showy enough.
‘Why didn’t you say something to Patrick so I could have avoided seeing our old pal Emily Webster and touring Madison Square Garden? And by the way, what about all of a sudden Webster being Patrick’s realtor again?’
‘You want me to tell Patrick you’re going to hate the house he picked out? That’s your job, pal.’ Angie lay on her back and started doing bicycle legs, her favorite ridiculous exercise. I’d started doing some workouts I watched online from a company called Body Project and was worn out after the least strenuous videos. This is one of the differences between Angie and myself. ‘As for your buddy Emmie, my understanding is that she was the agent attached to the house, not to Patrick. At least, not like she used to be attached to Patrick.’
Wink, wink; nudge, nudge.
‘You could have warned me. I practically called in the National Guard when I saw her standing on the sidewalk in front of the estate.’
‘That kind of thing is good for you. Gets the blood flowing.’
‘Yeah. Generally out of my body.’
Angie stood up without so much as a grunt and picked up two twenty-pound dumbbells (weights, mind you; not some unusually stupid toddlers who were just lying around) from the floor. She started doing curls and lifts. This was going to get on my nerves, despite my seeing it every single day we’d lived together. It wasn’t Angie’s intention to make me feel physically inadequate. She just did that naturally.
‘So what are you going to do about this girl and her dad the murderer?’ she asked me.
‘That’s it; keep an open mind. What do you mean, what am I going to do? I’m going to look through all the information I can get on the case and then decide how to proceed. If there were errors made in the original trial or there’s evidence that didn’t get entered and might clear Riley’s dad, I’ll go ahead. If it’s clear that he definitely did it – and everyone seems to think that’s what happened – I’ll try and break it to her gently.’
Angie was watching her bicep expand and contract very closely. ‘You won’t do that,’ she said.
‘Yes I will. I just told you I will.’
‘I’m saying.’ She switched to the other bicep. ‘You think that you’d just calmly tell Riley her dad killed her mom and move on to the next divorce, but I know you and you won’t do that. You’ll see some loophole somewhere or get Nate involved and the next thing I know I’ll be tracking down one of the mom’s ex-boyfriends or something.’
I put my head back on a couch cushion. It felt good so I closed my eyes, too. That felt better. With any luck at all I’d be asleep and out of this conversation in a couple of minutes. ‘I can only do so much,’ I told Angie. ‘If there’s nothing to base it on, I can’t go ahead with a request for a new trial.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She either wasn’t convinced or her left bicep was the most fascinating thing on the planet. I was betting on the former because I didn’t find Angie’s arm all that amazing. There are men who would. Some women, too.
‘Believe what you want. The law is the law.’ Yes, eyes closed was definitely the way to go.
‘I thought you got everything emailed to you,’ Angie said. I heard the weight being placed on the floor. She was about to start high knees. Angie’s workouts weren’t as organized as the ones from the Body Project, but they were more predictable. ‘Why aren’t you looking at all that stuff now?’
‘I’m off the clock,’ I told her. ‘I’m actually asleep now.’ Just to prove my point, I stopped moving entirely and let the sofa engulf me. Better and better.
Her feet started rising off the floor and coming back down again; I could picture her doing that sort of stylized slow march, but she’d twist her torso into each knee raise and ‘work the obliques.’ Maybe it was time to move out if I could follow Angie’s workouts without actually opening my eyes.
‘You’re afraid you won’t be able to find something for an appeal and that’s why you’re putting it off.’ Patrick wouldn’t be goading me, either. He could get into my head in ways Angie couldn’t, but she was still the champion at figuring out my psyche. We’ve known each other too long.
I started to fake snore.
‘You’re not fooling anybody,’ she said. Her voice was still annoyingly devoid of any sign that she was exerting herself. ‘You know I’m right.’
‘Fine.’ I forced myself to open my eyes and sit up from my comfy couch just to prove Angie wrong. ‘I’ll look at it right now.’ I pulled my laptop out from a drawer in our coffee table (who was going to get the coffee table when I moved out?) and turned it on. The laptop was issued to me by Seaton, Taylor and was bought as part of a bulk purchase, so it was going to take a few minutes to boot up. This is the price a corporation pays for not paying the price a regular person pays. I was willing to guess the corporation was perfectly happy with the trade-off.
‘Don’t do it for me,’ Angie said, but there was an edge of amusement in her voice. She moved on to jumping jacks. I’m sure our downstairs neighbors loved every moment of it.
‘I’m not.’ I was watching the blank screen on the laptop as if it actually contained any information at all and instead got the reflection of myself with no makeup, not enough sleep and a little bit of empanada on the corner of my mouth. I wiped that off with a napkin but the image I was looking at wasn’t improved by very much. And the damn laptop just took its sweet time starting. I began to think it was intentionally mocking me. ‘I’m doing it for Riley.’
‘I totally believe you,’ Angie said. We’re both Jersey girls, so I knew she didn’t mean that.
Just before I would have dozed off, the screen came to life, and my operating system shortly (by relative standards) after that. I made a mental note to buy myself a personal laptop that would probably add twenty per cent to my leisure time. Because I remembered leisure time. That was when I used to go down the shore and lie on the beach. Except that was 3,000 miles ago.
I began by looking up ImagiNails because that was what Holly had suggested I do. And it turned out, after several web pages and three YouTube home manicure videos, that it was a company specializing in synthetic finger- (and toe-!) nails with a twist: they bonded with the original, natural nails and actually grew, but they were stronger than the organic ones.
Riley Schoenberg’s mother, Helene Nestor, had gotten out of college with a degree in organic chemistry but didn’t want to become a doctor, at least not a medical one. The ImagiNails website and Facebook page were both very proud to note that she did eventually earn a PhD at Stamford University in physics, which I believed was a whole other branch of science, but I was a political science major who had gone to law school so I’m probably not the person to ask. Still, Helene had not gotten her doctorate until she’d already made her first ten million dollars.
Helene (sorry, Doctor Helene) had developed the formula for ImagiNails in her spare time while working as a receptionist for a commercial fishing concern in San Pedro, California fifteen years earlier. Once she’d proved that it could work and had been preliminarily approved by various federal agencies, she and three investors started the business locally out of a storefront in Long Beach. The business quickly relocated to Santa Monica when Helene and her partners realized the one-time-only use of the product required it to have a more upscale price (that is, more expensive) and therefore should be located in a ritzier neighborhood.
In Santa Monica it took off and almost immediately ImagiNails was being offered in salons all over Southern California. The storefront shop eventually closed so the company could concentrate on serving its customers, who in turn provided the product to rich women (and some men) on the west coast and eventually internationally.
