Phyliss stared past us, her gaze unfocused. “I never really felt like she was there to hang. It was like she just wanted the latest dope on office politics. Lilah was superambitious.” She quickly added, “Not that we all weren’t, but…”
Phyliss again paused suddenly. It was a dramatically effective gambit that both she and some rather famous actors overused. But it could be handy in a closing argument.
This time, I did the prompting. “She was more so?” I asked. “How?”
“No wasted motion,” Phyliss said. “She was totally focused on the bottom line one hundred percent of the time. Lilah did the work, no question about it. And she was good. But she worked the personal angle just as hard-”
“You mean schmoozing with the partners?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah,” Phyliss replied. “She had the looks, and she used them. Bent the men around her little finger like they were pipe cleaners.”
I detected more than a tinge of jealousy in Phyliss’s voice. I couldn’t say I blamed her.
“She ever have an affair with any of the partners?” I asked, thinking that our buddy Lyle Monahan, the senior partner, was a likely conquest. “Or a client?”
“Clients, I wouldn’t know about,” Phyliss said. “We didn’t work the same cases. Partners…not that I ever heard. And I would have, because that kind of news travels fast around here.” She paused, then added, “I really don’t think Lilah did have anything happening on the side. She was smart enough to know better than to play favorites. Lilah never let anyone in too close. Not us, not the partners-nobody.”
“Did you know she was married?” I asked.
“None of us did. And that was a shocker. Believe me, Lilah being married to a cop was not something any of us would’ve guessed.”
This appeared to be a popular sentiment. Since we seemed to have come full circle, I asked Phyliss if she had any other observations or information to add. She didn’t.
“We need to talk to Joel,” I said. “Do you know where his office is?”
“Two doors down,” Phyliss replied. “Though he probably left for lunch by now. Come on, I’m on my way out. I’ll show you.”
We followed Phyliss down the hall. Before we got to Joel’s office, a young male voice called out to us.
“Can I help you with something?”
The voice belonged to a male secretary in a shirt and tie who was eating an obnoxiously healthy-looking sandwich of sprouts and avocado at his desk in one of the partitioned cubicles. The nameplate next to his computer said he was Teddy Janeway.
“Joel Carstone?” I asked.
“May I ask what this concerns?” Teddy inquired, his tone polite but firm.
Why oh why couldn’t I get a secretary like this instead of Melia? Then I remembered Audrey’s reaction when I told her the salary range at the DA’s office.
Bailey identified us, then explained, “We want to talk to him about Lilah Bayer.”
“Really?” Teddy remarked, looking at us with interest. “Let me see if I can find him.”
He picked up his phone and punched in numbers.
Phyliss gave us a mock salute. “Since my duty seems to be done here, and I’ve got about seven minutes left for lunch-”
“No worries, Phyliss,” I said. “You’ve been great. Thank you.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
She moved in long, fast strides toward the elevators, and Bailey and I went over to Teddy Janeway’s desk. He hung up, shaking his head. “Joel’s not answering for some reason.”
“Do you know how long he’ll be gone?” I asked.
“Twenty minutes, tops. None of these juniors get a real lunch.”
So the cliché about slave labor in the big law firms was true. On the other hand, I had little cause for celebration. My hours were no better and my pay was a heck of a lot worse. I pushed away this irksome train of thought and considered what to do next.
I didn’t want to wait. Based on what we’d seen so far, it seemed unlikely that Joel would give us anything new. Plus, I hated waiting-for anything.
“Did you happen to know Lilah?” Bailey asked Teddy.
“As Lilah Rossmoyne,” he replied. “And if you’re wondering whether Joel knew her well, the answer is no. He was just a junior associate, so he didn’t have any clout. And he’s not the political type, so he didn’t have any juicy information either. Therefore, Lilah had no use for him whatsoever.” Teddy’s tone implied he had uniquely confidential information.
“How well did you know her?” I asked, intrigued.
“We didn’t hang,” Teddy replied. “But I keep my eyes open, so I notice things. And from what I saw, Lilah really didn’t have any friends.”
I nodded. “Which is why no one knew about her marriage to Zack.”
“Exactly,” Teddy replied, then looked around the near-empty office. He wiped his mouth neatly, dropped the napkin into the wastebasket, and stood up. He leaned toward us and spoke in a low voice. “But when the case first broke, I saw a picture of her husband on the news.”
Teddy again scanned the room quickly before continuing in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I recognized him,” he said. “You can ask anyone around here. I’m one of those people who never forget a face, even one I’ve only seen for a few seconds.”
Pattern recognition. Some have it, some don’t.
Teddy had stopped to let a beat of silence build the suspense. Seriously, what was it with the people in this law firm and their addiction to the “pause for dramatic effect”? If I’d worked here, I’d have smacked someone by the end of the first week.
“And?” I prompted.
“It was just a few months before the murder,” Teddy said. “He was here-”
“Here?” I asked. “In the office?”
Teddy shook his head. “No, he was sitting in a car, parked out in front of the building. But in a regular car and civilian clothes.”
“What made you notice him?” I asked.
People sitting in parked cars couldn’t be that unusual around here. The area was filled with twenty-story office buildings.
“The fact that I saw him out there on at least three different days,” Teddy said. “And the way he just sat there, watching the front entrance, not doing anything. Something about the way he looked just…bothered me.”
It bothered me too.
“Why didn’t you tell the police about this?” I asked.
“I did,” Teddy said, his tone peevish. “And I can’t remember which cop I told, so don’t ask me for a name,” he said, anticipating my next question. “I just remember that when I told him, the cop looked at me like, ‘Uh-huh, sure,’” Teddy mimicked and then sniffed. “He didn’t believe me-thought I was one of those fools who’ll say anything to get his name in the news.”
Bailey and I exchanged a look.
“We believe you, Teddy,” I said.
47
Bailey and I thanked Teddy and left the plush confines of Lilah’s former employer.
I thought about our next move. Especially after having heard what Teddy had to say, I wanted to get a better sense of who Zack was.
“Want to hit Glendale PD?” I asked.
“May as well,” Bailey replied.
Glendale was only twenty minutes from downtown, but it still felt like the older, middle-class suburb it’d been back in the ’50s. The Glendale Police Department was smack-dab in the middle of the residential section of town. It struck me that this would’ve made the skinhead attacks on the station that much scarier for everyone involved. Which, of course, would’ve made Lilah’s defense tactic that much more effective.
I’d hoped to talk to the lieutenant who’d testified at the trial about the attacks by the skinheads, but he wasn’t in. We settled instead for Sergeant Paul Tegagian, a jovial, slightly pudgy man who seemed happy to have the distraction of chatting with us.
“Call me Paul,” he said when we’d introduced ourselves and the reason for the visit. He gestured to a couple of metal-framed chairs in his tiny office and plunked himself down in the secretary’s chair behind the small, cluttered desk.