“Looking good,” Joelen said, tightening Deirdre’s head scarf around her own head and putting on Deirdre’s sunglasses.
“Front row, second seat in on the left,” Deirdre said. “Break a leg.”
“You break a leg, too,” Joelen said, giving Deirdre a hug. “Be careful, okay?” She took Deirdre’s crutch and, faking a limp that made her look like Quasimodo, started for the door. “Too much?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Yeah. Dial it back, just a smidge.”
Chapter 41
Deirdre cracked open the restroom door just in time to catch a glimpse of Detective Martinez following Joelen into the chapel. So far so good. As soon as he was gone, she hurried through the lobby and outside. The umbrella made a surprisingly serviceable substitute for her crutch.
The limousine met her as she reached the end of the walkway. Its front passenger door swung open. She got in. Tyler reached across her and pulled the door shut. “Everything okay?”
Deirdre took off Joelen’s sunglasses and dropped them in her coat pocket. “So far so good.”
Tyler pulled out into the street and headed back toward Westwood Village. “You were right, by the way. There’s no record of a new warrant to search your house. And there’s nothing in the West LAPD blotter about any mugging yesterday in or near your lawyer’s office building.”
“You don’t think Detective Martinez was ordered up from Central Casting, too?” Deirdre said hopefully.
“No. He’s real. And very competent.”
Minutes later, they were double-parked in front of Sy’s office. “Your car’s up on the second level,” Tyler said, offering Deirdre her car keys. “Why won’t you tell me what you’re doing? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m just waiting to see who shows up. I’ll be invisible.”
“Invisible?” He sounded skeptical. “Why do you have to do this alone?”
“I just do.” Sure, something could go wrong. She was willing to put herself at risk. She wasn’t willing to risk putting yet another person, someone she cared about, in danger. Her thoughtless actions had already harmed Sy. And she wasn’t about to go to the police. Not yet, anyway. She was already considered a suspect, and as Sy said, once they had a suspect they did their job and built a case. “Besides, you need to go back for Gloria and Henry, and to rescue Joelen if it turns out she needs rescuing.”
“Here.” Tyler gave her a slip of paper. “This is the number of the car phone in this rig. Promise you’ll call if you need backup. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Deirdre leaned across and kissed Tyler on the cheek. “Thanks.” She got out of the car and entered the building, then turned and watched as Tyler pulled the limo away from the curb and drove off. Then she turned back. Centered herself. Reviewed her plan.
First thing she’d do would be to go into Sy’s office, unlock the drawer, take out the envelope she’d left in it, and put it on top of the desk in plain sight. Then she’d settle into the closet and wait. She’d photograph, not confront, whoever came. Wait until the person was gone so she could safely emerge from hiding. Develop the snapshots, take her evidence to Sy, and together they’d bring it to the police.
Deirdre started up the stairs. The tip of the umbrella thumped each time it connected with the glazed tile floor. She was halfway down the second-floor hallway when she froze. The door to Sy’s law office was ajar. Someone was already there.
She tucked the umbrella under her arm and used the wall for support so she could approach the door silently. The door hadn’t been broken in, so whoever it was knew how to pick a lock and disable an alarm. She stood very still, just outside in the hall, listening for sounds. Footsteps. A cough. Anything that would tip her off to whether the person was still there.
She crept closer. Nudged the door open a bit more. It was dark in Vera’s outer office. No one was in the room. But the door connecting to Sy’s office was open. Creeping even closer, Deirdre heard a thump. The sound of a drawer being slammed shut? She fought the urge to flee. Instead, she forced herself to push the hall door open a bit wider. The hinge squeaked and she pulled back, waiting for someone to emerge. When no one did, she slipped inside, crossed the room, and closed herself in the supply closet.
She waited, her heart banging in her chest, afraid that any moment she’d be discovered. But still, there was silence.
Through the gaps between the louvers in the closet door, Sy’s office looked empty, too. But now she heard a shuffling sound. Footsteps? She felt for the camera she’d left on the shelf and took it down.
A black shadow crossed directly in front of her. Deirdre reared back, banging her head against a shelf. The person had been moving fast and was backlit. She’d have to wait—
The phone rang.
Deirdre aimed the camera at the desk where the light on the telephone was blinking. She looked through the viewfinder.
The phone rang again. The figure came back into her field of vision, moving away from her toward the desk. A man.
Click. She took a picture.
The man picked up the phone. After a pause, he said, “I know.” Click. Deirdre’s grip tightened around the camera and she took picture after picture of the man’s back, the camera whirring after each click.
He sat in the desk chair. “It’s not here,” he said. Eets not hyere. Deirdre froze. She knew this man’s voice. This was no intruder. It was Sy, sitting at his own desk in his own office. He must have been released early from the hospital.
Deirdre didn’t want to pop out of the closet and startle him. That was all he needed with his cracked ribs and concussion. So she crept from the closet, through Vera’s office, and continued out into the hall. Pretending she’d just arrived, she rapped at the outer office door with the umbrella handle and called out, “Hello?” When Sy didn’t answer, she rapped again and started through Vera’s office to the open connecting door. “Anybody here?”
She entered Sy’s office. He was still at his desk, now talking heatedly into the phone. When he paused, Deirdre came up behind him. “Sy?”
Startled, he swiveled to face her and did a double take. “Deirdre?”
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” she said, taking off her wig and the cap underneath it and shaking out her hair.
In a quiet voice, Sy said into the receiver, “I have to go.” After a brief silence, he added, “I will let you know.” He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and gave Deirdre a wry smile.
It took a moment to register. No bandage around Sy’s head. No stitches down the side of his face. No blood in his eye. He rubbed his chin, his pinkie ring catching the light. “Tests were all coming back normal. I told them I had enough. All those tubes and wires—too much for bumps and bruises.”
Bumps and bruises that had miraculously vanished. Deirdre followed Sy’s gaze to the foot of the deer antler coat rack. There sat a bulky briefcase that hadn’t been there an hour ago. It was the same one that Sy had brought over to her father’s house, the one from which he’d pulled her father’s will, the one that had supposedly been stolen when he was attacked.
“The police recovered it,” Sy said, answering the question Deirdre hadn’t asked.
“Really?” Deirdre wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that Sy thought he’d been mugged. That he was here in the office because he was a tough guy who’d lost patience with overcautious caregivers. That, throughout her father’s life and even after his death, Sy was still her father’s best friend, the surrogate uncle who’d always been there for her and Henry and always would be. “Did they catch the guy?”
“No, but they found my briefcase”—and there was just a heartbeat of hesitation, Sy’s tell—“just around the corner in a Dumpster.”
Sure they did. Deirdre leaned against the desk, feeling sick. Because there beside Sy was the envelope she’d locked in the drawer, the title scrawled across it in black marker. It had been torn open, and the blank sheets of paper that she’d tucked inside were strewn across the desktop.