"Either he's crazy or somebody's backing him."
"Exactly, but who? And why not approach me directly? Why go through Thomas?"
"Does it matter?" Jack said, leaning back again. "A valuable piece of real estate lands in your lap. You can either live in it or sell it. You don't need me, you need a tax attorney."
Alicia sensed him withdrawing, losing interest. She rushed forward with the rest of her story.
"But I can't live in it, and I can't sell it. When I turned him down, Thomas hired some high-priced attorneys to challenge the will. I can't take possession until this is resolved. They even got a court order to board up the place, so I can't even take a look around inside." Not that I'd ever want to.
"Why board it up?"
"Apparently it's been broken into since it's been empty. Thomas says he wants to protect what he expects to be his property once his challenge to the will is upheld. He's even hired a security firm to guard the property."
Jack smiled. "All this from a guy with no income. Your half brother is very resourceful."
"That's not the word I'd use for Thomas."
"Still, you don't need me—you need a lawyer." Alicia bit her lip. No, she needed Jack for what she wanted. But how would he react when she asked?
Sometimes it's good to deviate from routine, Jack thought, trying to look interested. And sometimes it isn't.
This meeting, never would have happened if he'd followed his usual MO. He always talked to prospective customers before setting up a face-to-face. That way he avoided the Dr. Claytons of the city—people with problems that could be remedied by more orthodox methods.
But because he'd already met Alicia, he'd set up the meeting without the usual preliminaries.
Not a complete waste of time, he thought, but pretty damn close. The only thing that saved it was the good doctor herself.
Something about Alicia Clayton intrigued him. He met lots of people with secrets. Virtually all of his customers were hiding something. He was used to not hearing the whole story on the first pass. And he'd become adept at spotting the holes. He couldn't tell what they'd skipped, but he knew when they were holding back.
Alicia Clayton was different. He couldn't get a read on her. Either she was hiding nothing, or she was so good at hiding that she could hide everything, even the fact that she was hiding something.
Jack chose the latter. Because looking at her sitting here across the table from him, he sensed that she had a good figure under that coat and bulky cable-knit sweater, but she was hiding it. In fact, she could have been a striking woman with those fine features and dark, dark hair. Attractive in a steely way. But she chose not to be. She chose to downplay her looks. Hide them.
Well, how he looked was her call. And she wasn't exactly in the glamour business.
Didn't pay to read too much into these things, he supposed.
But she was so utterly composed. Too composed. Almost… wooden.
What else was she hiding? This woman wasn't just locked down tight, she was hermetically sealed. And that took practice. Many years of practice.
All of which intrigued him. Who was this woman who seemed to want to hide everything!
But he knew he was unlikely to pop any of her seals this morning. So he was looking for a way to bring this little tete-a-tete to a close when she leaned forward.
"I had a lawyer," Alicia said. "Until Friday when he was murdered."
Jack smiled. Lawyers who did wills and such didn't get murdered. "You mean 'killed,' don't you?"
"No. I mean murdered. Can you think of a circumstance when a car bomb is anything but murder?"
Jack straightened in his seat. The story had been all over the radio and TV.
"That car explosion in Midtown?" he said. "He was your lawyer?"
Alicia nodded. "We were supposed to meet that morning. I guess someone didn't want him to make it."
Uh-oh. Did he detect a little paranoia here?
"What makes you think you're the reason he was killed? I read they found some cocaine in what was left of his glove compartment."
"I see lots of coke users," she said. Her face remained a mask, but Jack noticed her right hand clenching into a fist. "Most of the parents of my babies are drug abusers. Drugs are how they got the virus that they passed on to their kids. I didn't see any signs of that in Leo Weinstein."
She leaned back and seemed to relax—with an effort, Jack thought.
"Of, course, I could be wrong. But Leo's isn't the first violent death connected with this will."
Jack found himself leaning forward. "Another lawyer?"
Alicia shook her head. "No. When I came to the obvious conclusion that someone was bankrolling Thomas, I wanted to find out who. I hired a private investigator—you know, to follow him, find out who he meets with, the TV detective kind of stuff. I didn't know what I was going to do with the information, but all this mystery and subterfuge was bugging me. I mean, if someone wants that man's house so badly, why not approach me directly? Why go through Thomas?"
"And what did you learn?"
"Nothing." Her steel-gray eyes bore into him. "One night, about two weeks after I hired him, the investigator was killed while crossing East Seventy-fifth Street. Hit-and-run."
Jack drummed his fingers on the table's ringed surface. Okay, so maybe she's not paranoid. Could be coincidence, but if you hire two people to look into a problem and both of them wind up dead, who can blame you if you suspect a connection?
Obviously someone who wished to be anonymous wanted the Clayton house. Wanted it bad. They'd made a "name-your-price" offer, and when that was turned down, they went to court.
But it was one hell of a leap from there to say that they were killing anyone who stood in their way. Besides…
"Okay. Two people you hired to help you are dead. Maybe there's a connection. But think about it: If someone is eliminating people who get between them and this house, why haven't they removed the biggest stumbling block—you?"
"Don't think that hasn't kept me up nights since Friday. I don't know anything about the will. I didn't attend the reading. And when I hired Leo—the attorney who was murdered—I simply had a copy sent from the executor's office to his. So I've never seen the damn thing. But that's going to change. I'm going to get a copy for myself and see what the terms are. I do remember Leo saying something about the will being 'rather unusual.'"
A question hit him. "Did you ever live there? In the house?"
She didn't move, but Jack had a feeling that Alicia had receded to the other side of Julio's.
"Till I was eighteen. Why?"
He shrugged. "Just curious. I still don't know what you want me to do. I don't do bodyguard work, so—"
"I want you to burn the place down."
Jack stared at her, trying to hide his shock. Not at the request itself—lots of people had come to him over the years looking for a torch job—but at the unexpectedness of it. He hadn't seen this one coming.
He made a show of cleaning out one of his ears. "I'm sorry. I thought you just said you wanted to burn down a house for which you've already been offered four million dollars."
"I did."
"Can I ask you why?"
"No."
"You're going to have to give me some kind of explanation."
Alicia shifted in her seat. "Why should you care?"
"It's the way I work."
She sighed. "All right. Maybe I'm just tired. I may be a doctor, but I don't make a lot of money. I could be making more in private practice, but the Center is what I want to do. Whatever I've managed to save after living expenses and paying back my education loans,—and believe me, I've got six figures worth of those—went to retainers for the investigator and the lawyer. I'm just about tapped out, Jack. I don't want to start all over again with a new lawyer. And frankly, I'm a little scared. I just want this over with."