"What did the attorney tell you?" she asked.
He didn't seem surprised that she'd put it together. "She told me her office is located in Williamsburg."
Interesting. But certainly not a stop-the-presses revelation. "We knew Lovesprettyboys was in that area back during the initial investigation. That's why the stakeout was conducted there. So why do you think the attorney might be specifically linked to Dr. Kean or her family?"
"Call it a hunch. I had some misgivings when I left the office Tuesday."
"I trust your hunches more than I trust most people's studied findings."
"Ditto," said Brandon.
"Hearing the attorney's location just made me a bit more suspicious and I wanted to check a few things out." He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small stack of folded pieces of paper, handing her the top sheet. On it was a printed screen shot from a Web page, one of those doctor report-card sites, and it was focused on Dr. Alfred Underwood. He had been sued for malpractice twice, which, in his line of work, probably wasn't a bad record.
"Look who represented him," Wyatt said.
She did, and felt absolutely no surprise when she saw Claire Vincent's name. "You really ought to patent your hunch method."
"It gets better." He handed her the next sheet. This time, the page was a printout from an online newspaper article. Wyatt had cropped out most of the text to focus only on the photograph, a woman identified as the attorney Claire Vincent herself.
"She might be attractive if she got the stick out of her ass," Lily muttered, predisposed to disliking the woman intensely.
"And got rid of the awful hairstyle and glasses," Wyatt agreed. "She's rather distinctive, isn't she? I recognized her immediately when I saw the photo."
Lily tilted her head in sheer surprise. "You've met her in person?"
Shaking his head, he explained cryptically, "No. Just held a door for her."
"Must have been a pretty impressive door."
His eyes glittered as he dropped the next bombshell. "It was the door to the Eastern Virginia Plastic Surgery
Center. Ms. Vincent was coming in just as I was leaving the other day."
"Bingo," Lily whispered, realizing why he was so confident that this whole case was somehow connected to Dr. Kean and her family. It all made sense now.
Someone in that practice had gotten the family's trusted attorney to work on Jesse Boyd's appeal and there could be only one reason why.
They were getting close-she could feel it right down to her very core.
"Ready?" Wyatt asked. When she murmured her assent, he nodded at Brandon. "Go ahead."
Brandon clicked the touch pad to start the clip, skimming through the introductions to the meaty part of the workshop, when the actual speakers all got their turn at the microphone. Lily listened intently as the first one began educating his audience about the most recent procedures in sucking the fat out of people's posteriors. Charming. And his pompous, older-sounding voice was utterly unfamiliar.
"Not him?" Wyatt asked, frowning.
Almost feeling as though she'd disappointed him, she slowly shook her head.
"Continue." He bent over the back of her chair, his hand on her shoulder, listening along with her to the next speaker. This one sounded younger, forthright, and brusque. And, again, was no one she'd ever heard before.
Wyatt s hand tightened on her shoulder, not a lot, just enough to indicate his rising tension. "Keep going. We're not finished yet."
Lily nibbled on her bottom lip, leaning so close to the laptop's speakers, her hair brushed the screen. Her heart pounded furiously. Wyatt seemed so sure. She almost held her breath as the next speaker began. Then disappointment made her release it in a gush.
"No," she said after the third man spoke only a few words. He sounded young and even a little flirtatious. Not the cold, arrogant voice she remembered. "It's not him. None of them are him."
Brandon sank back in his lounge chair, muttering a curse. Wyatt straightened and turned away, crossing his arms and tilting his head down, as if studying his feet. Though he appeared disappointed, he certainly didn't look thrown. Nothing ever really threw the man for long.
"A miscalculation, then," he said, sounding thoughtful. "I don't believe in coincidence, of course. I still strongly believe Dr. Kean and her family have something to do with this and that they brought that attorney into Boyd's case. But who…" He shook his head, visibly frustrated. "I'm sorry I got your hopes up."
"Don't apologize to me," she said. "Not for anything, not ever. I intended to listen to clips from every workshop, anyway. This just knocks one out of the way. We'll figure it out."
He nodded absently, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw.
"Hey, there a party going on back here?" a woman's voice suddenly called, shocking all three of them into near immobility. "Nobody answered out front, so I decided to come around."
Lily didn't have to turn completely around to recognize Jackie Stokes, who had opened the gate at the side of the house and stepped into the courtyard. Her heart started to pound, and on the table, her hands clenched into tight fists.
Please don't let her hate me.
Jackie, who still stood just inside the gate, suddenly froze. Her keys, which she'd been holding in one hand, slipped unnoticed from her grasp, landing on the flagstone walkway.
She hadn't even gotten a good look at Lily yet; from where she stood, she couldn't have seen more than her profile. But it had apparently been enough.
"Oh my God," the other woman whispered. She appeared in shock, her mouth open in confusion, her eyes wide and quickly filling with tears. "Is it you? Is it really you?"
Lily pushed the chair back and rose, turning to face the woman who'd become so close to her in the months they'd worked together. "It's me, Jackie."
They stared at each other from about a dozen steps away, not moving for a second, as if Jackie needed to give her brain a chance to catch up with what her eyes and ears were telling her. Then, with a shriek, she cried, "Lily!"
Flying across the courtyard, Jackie threw her arms around Lily, hugging her tightly enough to cut off her circulation. "It's you, it's you, it's you," she kept whispering, stroking Lily's short hair, wetting her cheek with her tears. "Oh, thank you, Jesus."
Lily was crying, too, by the time Jackie released her and stepped back to stare her in the face. Jackie might be angry when she found out Lily had been hiding all these months, but at least for a few minutes, her friend had made it clear that she was very happy Lily was alive.
Offering Jackie a tremulous smile and reaching for the other woman's hand, she drew her over to where Wyatt and Brandon stood, watching silently, shoulder to shoulder.
*'If you're going to thank somebody, these two would be a good place to start. Because they saved my life."
Chapter 12
The private investigator called at eleven a.m. Friday. It seemed far too early for news, but there was always hope. "Do you have something?
"You could say that," said the PI, who called himself Jonesy, an ex-cop who'd been fired for roughing up suspects. Though obviously an alcoholic, with the spider veins on his nose, the sloppy clothes, and the bright red cheeks to prove it, Jonesy was good at what he did. And, most important, discreet. "Easiest job I ever took."
He sounded as if the case was solved. Was it really possible? After such a short time, just twenty-four hours since he'd been put on the job, had he really come up with a lead on Lily Fletcher? There had been no doubt the woman would come crawling back to D.C. when she heard the news about Boyd, but this soon? It seemed almost too good to be true.