Anacacho, An Allie Armington Mystery

An Allie Armington Mystery

Beverly Hills, California

Anacacho: An Allie Armington
Mystery
by Louise Gaylord

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is
entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Copyright © 2002 by Louise Gaylord. All rights
reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner, whatsoever, without written permission except in the case
of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. For
information, address Cedar Vista Books, 269 South Beverly Drive,
Suite #1065, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. 866-234-0626

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover
edition as follows:

Gaylord, Louise.

Anacacho/Louise Gaylord. --1st ed.

p. cm--(An Allie Armington mystery; 1)

ISBN 978-0-9841441-0-5 (ebook)

1. Armington, Allie (Fictitious character)
--Fiction.

2. Women lawyers—Texas—Fiction. 3,
Texas—Fiction.

1. Title

Paperback ISBN 10: 0-9786049-0-3

ISBN 13: 978-0-9786049-0-5

Book Designer: Dotti Albertine

Editor: Brookes Nohlgren

The Award-Winning
Xs
An Allie Armington Mystery

Julia Fairchild
A Novel

This book

is dedicated with love

to my husband, Ted, and our children—Ted, Missy, and
John.

“
HEY, ALLIE, GUESS WHO?” Reena
Carpenter’s husky twang slithers through my telephone to rip open
old wounds.

Forget her? Never. Seven years before, Reena,
supposedly my very best friend and loyal sorority sister, ripped
the love of my life right out of my unsuspecting arms. Over time I
managed to erase her from my mind and ease the ache of my double
loss, but in my dreams those sad months following her betrayal
still replay with haunting clarity.

Reena doesn’t wait for my reply. “I’ve snagged a
ride to Houston on the jet tomorrow. Will you see me?”

I manage a constricted, “How did you know where to
find me?”

She gives her famous rusty-nail laugh. “Oh, c’mon,
now. I have my ways. How about meeting me at Rudi’s for lunch?”

A familiar cold nugget settles on the bottom of my
stomach, one I hoped would never return. “Rudi’s is a little too
stiff for my pocketbook,” I say, glancing at the suddenly welcome
stack of case files on my desk. “Besides, I only have one week left
with this grand jury panel and I’m backed up with presentments. I
don’t see how I can possibly...”

“
Please, Allie.” Reena’s voice
pinches with pain. “It’s graveyard.”

Top secret. I haven’t heard that word since our days
at Texas.

I picture Reena Harper, silky blonde locks tumbling
over her shoulders, as she pulls Susie Baxter and me onto her
bed.

I hear Susie chirp, “If it’s graveyard, I gotta shut
the door. You never know who’s out in the hall. Right, Allie?”

Allie. That’s what my father conjured out of my
rather plain but alliterative Alice Armington. I was the giant of
the trio, pushing five-foot-ten, all angles and bones. Heir to my
father’s aquiline nose, along with a healthy dose of his love for
the law.

My resolve never to see the woman who savaged my
past wavers. After all, Reena Harper gave my first three years at
Texas an aura of excitement I have never experienced before, nor
since.

I check the court calendar and see my jury panel has
Monday off for Martin Luther King Day—plenty of time to run through
the cases. Curiosity wins. “All right... I guess. How about
noon?”

“
Thanks, Allie. This means a lot.
See you tomorrow.”

A deep voice behind me says, “Did you say something
about a stiff at Rudi’s?”

I cradle the receiver and swivel my chair to look
into the steady stare of Duncan Bruce, a recent transfer from
Chicago.

Duncan bears his ancestors’ tall, massive build. His
hair and heavy eyebrows shimmer with the blue cast of Highland
Clans.

“
Not that kind of stiff. I was
talking about Rudi’s killer charge for a simple tuna
salad.”

Duncan smiles. “Come to think of it, I haven’t been
back since I took my mother there the last time she camped out in
my guest room.” He settles on one corner of my desk and pitches me
a file. “Check this.”

I scan it, suppressing a thundering roll of envy. I
am an Assistant District Attorney in the Grand Jury Division.
Duncan works in Major Fraud. This file covers a big-time
white-collar theft of more than a million dollars and a glaring
paper trail.

“
Lucky you.” I hand his plum back
and turn to the stack of fifty-plus cases my panel of grand jurors
will hear on Wednesday. Most deal with possession or delivery of a
controlled substance or the never-ending auto thefts.

Duncan can read me like a book. “Tired of your
gig?”

I sigh. “Somebody has to do it. Too bad the bastards
are out on the streets before they ever serve a day. But this is
just the small stuff—the end of the pipeline. I’d give a million
bucks to get my hands on the really big boys.”

“
Better up that ante since the
government has already spent billions.” Duncan takes a few steps
toward the door, then turns. “How about dinner? I have some great
homemade ravioli and salad fixings ready to go.”

This is too good to pass up. Not only is Duncan a
master chef and a great kisser, he lives three floors above me.

“
You’re on,” I say to his
retreating back. “I’ll bring the wine.”

The evening starts well enough. A glass of Chianti
Classico, then a few very nice long kisses followed by a crisp
romaine with crumbled blue cheese. Finally, the pièce de
résistance, morel ravioli with a subtle cream sauce that melts the
minute it passes my lips.

In between cool spoons of spumoni, I bring up the
disparities between my caseload status and his.

Duncan is a reasonable man, but he can home in on a
problem with the precision of a military strike. “If you don’t like
your job, quit.”

“
Did I say that?”

He takes the dish of spumoni from my hands, sets it
on the coffee table beside his, and turns to face me. “No, you
didn’t exactly come right out and say it, but every chance you get,
you complain about how hard you work and never get a decent
case.”

I stiffen and pull away. “Gee, thanks.”

He gives me his attorney’s once-over. “Tell me why
the only woman in her class to serve on Law Review is hiding in the
Grand Jury Division of the Harris County DA?”

Damn, Duncan. He’s evidently picked up on my one
horror: presenting a case. I love doing the research and prepping
witnesses, but the thought of standing up in a courtroom before a
judge and jury makes me weak in the knees.

For some reason I can’t bring myself to tell him
that, so, like most cornered women, I come out swinging. “I’ll tell
you why, if you tell me why you left Chicago?”

This is the one question that Duncan has left
unanswered.

He gives me a pained smile. “I wondered how long it
would take you to bring that up.”

Something in his voice makes me immediately regret
my boldness. I put my arms around his neck, drawing his face close
to mine. “I’ll strike that question, counselor, if you can think of
a decent bribe.”

His relief is more than obvious. “How about this?”
He plants a long, sweet kiss on my lips and ushers me out the
door.

I pout all the way to my apartment, longing for a
cat to kick or a roommate to rag on, but by the time I crawl in
bed, my focus is on tomorrow’s lunch with Reena. What on earth was
I thinking? Facing my enemy after all these years will only bring
back the pain.

I groan into the darkness, wondering if I have some
sort of built-in mechanism that sabotages every male-female
relationship I’ve been in since Paul Carpenter walked out of my
life.

The morning dawns gray and humid. By the time I
arrive at the fashionable uptown restaurant my hair has seized-up
into “brand-new perm” mode. That and the fact that I’m ten minutes
early and I know Reena will be her usual twenty minutes late puts
me in a sour mood.

The maître d’ gushes when I mention Carpenter. A
regular for years, he says. So lovely.

Damn. If Reena’s been a regular at Rudi’s for years,
why did it take her so long to track me down?

He leads me through the dimly lit room to a table in
the far corner. Refusing the offer of a glass of champagne, I spend
the next few minutes composing myself and dealing with that cold
stone at the bottom of my stomach, which is fast becoming a
boulder.

Reena has arrived. A buzz rolls through the crowd.
She unloads five Neiman Marcus shopping bags on the hapless maître
d’, then threads her way through the gawkers toward me.

She is still devastatingly beautiful, a startling
clone of Farrah Fawcett, who paraded across the UT campus some
twenty years before we did. No wonder the Tri Delts were thrilled
to pledge Reena. All the Greeks were after her. It didn’t matter
she hailed from a hole in the middle of the road, they knew she
would be the talk of the campus and she was. Susie and I were
simply drawn along in her wake.

Not that there weren’t plenty of benefits. Reena
played a role in every prank the guys thought up, so Susie and I
not only visited every fraternity house on campus, but also went on
more beer busts than I care to count.

She gives me an air-kiss, settles in the offered
chair, then leans across the table to cover my hand. She rasps,
“I’ve missed you, Allie. Please say you’ve missed me. Just a
little?”

I only hesitate a nanosecond. “I haven’t had much
time to miss anybody.”

It’s almost the truth. My dogged pursuit of the law
and my burgeoning career saved my sanity. After I lost Paul, I
buried myself in a three-year grind at University of Houston Law,
including summer internships and Law Review. Now, the job with the
DA and my blooming relationship with Duncan have almost filled the
gaping hole my first love left.

I see Reena’s smile brighten to a full ten on the
sparkle-meter. It’s her Farrah Fawcett number, aptly dubbed by my
sister, Angela, who noticed the resemblance the first time she came
to visit. Susie added validity when she caught Reena looking at one
of the movie star’s pictures in a magazine then practicing in the
mirror. I grin to myself remembering how Susie and I shortened
“Farrah Fawcett” to “Double F” so Reena wouldn’t catch on.

Suddenly anxious to put a quick end to this
meaningless charade I say, “Maybe we should order.”

When the waiter arrives, Reena orders
vodka-on-the-rocks and, seemingly oblivious to his presence, bends
forward as her face collapses. “Oh, Allie, seeing you is the best
thing that’s happened to me in years.” She pauses to let a single
crocodile tear roll slowly down her cheek, dabs it away with her
napkin, then blurts, “Lately, my life has been one living
disaster.”

Above us the waiter clears his throat. “And what
about you, ma’am?”

I flash him a knowing grin. “My life is fine, thank
you.” Reena glares at my small joke and I order a white wine. When
he walks away, I say, “What do you mean disaster? You have a huge
mansion with staff and a Citation jet to boot.”