Her baby blue eyes widened in surprise as she looked back and forth between the two of us. “Ms. Kingsley, Mr. White. What a surprise.”
“I’ll bet,” Lugh said, adopting my hostile conversational style.
She blinked innocently. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked.
Her poker face was a hell of a lot better than mine. If I hadn’t known better, I might have believed she had no idea why we were here.
“I’m sure you’re aware, Ms. Paget, that breaking and entering is against the law,” Adam said.
Adam has an uncanny ability to intimidate, and it looked like his juju was working overtime with Barbie. Her face paled and her mouth dropped partway open. So much for the poker face.
Adam laughed. “Come now,” he chided. “How can you act so surprised? If you’re going to brag about evidence you found in my house, it should come as no great shock that I know you broke in.”
With a shudder, she moved to the chair behind her desk and slowly sat. Her face had not regained its color. She glanced up at Adam’s face, but couldn’t seem to hold his gaze for more than half a second. She shook her head.
“How exactly did I brag about the evidence?” she asked, her voice shaky.
Maybe she was a really great actress, but it sure seemed to me she was genuinely surprised and distressed by Adam’s accusation. Lugh and Adam shared a look, and I remembered that I wasn’t currently in control of my body. I wanted to peer into Barbie’s face, looking for evidence of a lie. Not that I’m that great at telling when someone’s lying to me, but still…
Lugh reached into my pocketbook and pulled out the letter Brian had received, handing it to Adam, who handed it to Barbie. Annoyingly, Lugh still didn’t look at Barbie, so I couldn’t see her reaction. He seemed inordinately fascinated by the potted fern that languished in one corner of the office.
“Where did you get this?” Barbie asked.
Lugh was still examining the fern, and I felt the first stirrings of real irritation. What’s so fascinating about the damn plant? I asked.
Lugh didn’t answer.
“Are you sure you don’t know?” Adam asked Barbie.
Damn it, Lugh, turn your head!
“I didn’t write it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It finally occurred to me that Lugh was studiously refusing to look in Barbie’s direction for the sole purpose of pissing me off. It was working, too. Sometimes, his ability to push just the right buttons is downright scary. I didn’t particularly want to be roused from my funk, but Lugh knew just how to goad me out of the soothing numbness.
I hated the fact that Lugh had manipulated me into this move, but I started to rally my mental forces to kick him out.
“But you know who did,” Adam said, and Barbie didn’t answer.
I wasn’t shocked that Lugh resisted my attempt to wrest back control. Damn him, he was going to make me fight for it. Feeling a bit like a marionette on his strings, I struggled harder to shut him out of my mind.
“Ms. Paget,” Adam said, “I found a long blond hair lying on the floor near the whip mentioned in the letter. What do you suppose the chances are it’ll match yours and help convict you?”
I was sure Adam was bluffing about that; otherwise, he would have mentioned it to me earlier. However, Barbie couldn’t know that, and Adam sounded pretty damn sure of himself.
Still, Lugh wasn’t letting me take control back, and a little of my habitual panic was seeping into my efforts. I wanted Lugh out of the driver’s seat, and I wanted him out now. Trying to still the panic while drawing energy from my anger, I visualized slamming the doors of my mind shut, then double-locking them to keep Lugh out.
His resistance faded as if it had never existed, and I was back in my own body, my pulse beating frantically in my throat. My stomach lurched unhappily with my now habitual post-control-change nausea. Thanks a lot, Lugh, I thought as I struggled not to toss my cookies.
I turned to look at Barbie, and she looked as panicked as I had felt a moment ago. Her hands had clenched in white-knuckled fists around the letter, and she was panting like she’d just finished doing push-ups.
“You’ll go to prison, Ms. Paget,” Adam said. I saw that he had taken a seat in front of her desk and was lounging in it casually, his long legs stretched out in front of him, a smug expression on his face. “Probably not for long, but you’ll still lose your PI license, and you won’t get it back. Ex-cons have a lot of trouble finding work, you know. You’ll be lucky to get a job flipping burgers.” He made a mock-regretful face. “And you can forget about keeping Blair at The Healing Circle. But don’t worry. There are some excellent nursing homes for the indigent.”
Barbie’s eyes closed in pain, and when she opened them again, I saw the glimmer of tears. If she hadn’t just ruined my life, I’d feel a lot sorrier for her. Still, it wasn’t just her we were threatening, it was her helpless, innocent sister.
I was all ready to step into the “good cop” role, but before I figured out what to say, Barbie spoke up again.
“What do you want?” she asked, and I could hear the tears in her voice even though she hadn’t let any fall. “If you were planning to arrest me, you would have done it already.” She glanced briefly up at me. “And you wouldn’t have brought Ms. Kingsley with you.”
Adam shrugged. “That wasn’t my initial plan, but don’t fool yourself into thinking I won’t arrest you if you don’t cooperate.”
She drew in a deep breath and sat up straighter in her chair. The tears had vanished, and she looked grim and determined. “Tell me what you want.”
“I’d like you to tell me how you ended up working for Jordan Maguire—because, frankly, this doesn’t look like his kind of place—and what, exactly, he’s hired you to do.”
Barbie shook her head. “I don’t work for Jordan Maguire. I was hired by Jack Hillerman, Mr. Maguire’s attorney.”
“A technicality. My question still stands.”
She squirmed, then looked up at me. “I’m very sorry,” she said, and she sounded sincere. “When I first took the job, I had no idea…” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze dropped to her scarred desktop.
I should have hated this woman, but either my emotions were still muted, or I recognized Barbie as a victim. I took the seat beside Adam, and we both waited in silence for Barbie to continue. She took another deep breath, then folded her hands on the desk and looked up.
“Mr. Hillerman originally hired me to dig up dirt on Ms. Kingsley,” she said, addressing her answer to Adam. “I was to follow her and try to find incriminating information for the lawsuit. He offered me a more than generous retainer.” She grimaced. “I should have known something was fishy, but I just couldn’t turn down the kind of money he was offering.”
“And how did Hillerman end up hiring a second-rate PI to investigate for a client of Maguire’s stature?” Adam asked.
Her eyes narrowed in a glare. “I’m not a second-rate PI! I happen to be very good at my job.”
Adam swept the office with a contemptuous look. “Yeah, I can see you’re the pinnacle of success.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Appearances can be deceiving. I could rent a fancy office in a better part of town, or I could give my sister the best care money can buy. I decided my sister was more important than my office.”
I could tell from Adam’s expression that he was going to continue growling at her. I didn’t think that was going to get us what we wanted, so I interrupted.
“You may be real successful,” I said, “but it still seems unusual for a guy like Hillerman to hire you. He’d have taken one look at this place and turned right back around. Assuming he’d even bother to come after finding your address.” Like I said, this was one of the seedier sections of Broad Street, and Hillerman would have known that.