Canyon of the Sphinx (25 page)

Kathlyn smirked. “Someplace
cheap. We’re on a budget.”

“Not with the kind of money
you’ve been making on the lecture circuit.”

“University money. I still get
paid salary.”

Juliana stood up, rubbing her
belly. Her olive green eyes twinkled at Kathlyn but she said nothing of what
she was thinking. Instead, she rapped on the front door and called inside.

“Mama! Time to go eat!”

Mama emerged instantly. Her
appearance was so fast that Kathlyn wondered if the old woman had been
lingering near the kitchen door the entire time, listening. She did look a
little flushed.

“We can’t go out and eat,” she
insisted. “I have too much food.”

“It’s cold by now, Mama,” Lynn
told her. “Let’s go get some ribs.”

Mama fanned herself furiously and
took off towards the kitchen. “Give me a half hour and we’ll have nice, hot
food on the table.”

The four of them watched her go,
disappearing into her chef sanctuary. Marcus and Lynn looked at each other and
snorted; Lynn knew his mother well enough to know how nosy she was and had,
undoubtedly, been listening. Marcus frankly didn’t care.

Kathlyn didn’t particularly care,
either, but she didn’t want Lynn’s mother to bother with cooking again. In
fact, she really didn’t want to eat at all. She wanted to find a hotel room and
spend the night with her husband. Marcus’ kissed her on the side of the head,
snapping her from her thoughts.

“She did go through a lot of
trouble,” he said softly. “We’ll be out of here in an hour. Okay?”

She just nodded, feeling a
strange sense of weakness settle over her now that everything seemed settled
between them. Marcus maneuvered her over to the porch swing where she and
Juliana sat back down to await the feast. Juliana watched Kathlyn’s face
closely as Marcus turned to talk to Lynn.

“Everything okay?” she whispered.

Kathlyn nodded without looking at
her. “Why?”

Juliana shrugged. “Hell, Kat,
after everything we’ve gone through the past month… you don’t seem very happy
about it.”

Kathlyn took a deep breath,
glancing at her husband as he leaned over to pet one of the dogs. “I’m
ecstatic, really,” she said. “Just… tired. It’s been a long few weeks. I just
want to spend some time alone with him, you know? It’s been so long since I’ve
just sat and talked to my husband. And… and I think things have changed a
little bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I just feel
differently.”

Juliana’s expression turned
ominous. “How?”

Kathlyn just shook her head. “I
don’t know. I have to talk to Marcus about it before I can talk to you.”

“I thought you just said
everything was okay?”

“It is. But… but it’s just going
to take a while for me to get past this, I guess. I need to talk to Marcus some
more… about everything. I just really need to get this out of my system.”

Juliana touched her hand. “Just
don’t do anything rash, okay? The guy screwed up, but his motives were pure.
You know that.”

“I know that. But I’m just having
a hard time getting over the fact that he didn’t trust me enough to believe
that I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“He made a mistake. You know
Marcus is passionate and acts before he thinks. I don’t honestly believe he
ever truly thought you’d cheat on him. What he did was directed at Murphy, not
you. He was just protecting you.”

Kathlyn looked at her, then. The
tears were present. “Do you really, honestly think so?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

The tears spilled over and
Kathlyn wiped at them. She didn’t want Marcus to see, but he caught sight of
her anyway. He stopped talking to Lynn and went over to her.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

She shook her head and Juliana
answered. “She’s just tired. Take her out of here, Marcus. Find a nice hotel
somewhere, have a good dinner, and spend the evening together in the bathtub.
That’s what she needs.”

Marcus’ hands were on his wife
but he glanced hesitantly at Lynn. He didn’t want to be a bad guest and leave
Mama making another feast that he wouldn’t eat. But Lynn waved him on.

 “Go,” he assured him. “Take her
to The Wilshire. In fact, I’ll call for you right now and make reservations.”

“You sure?”

“Go, man. Get out of here.”

Marcus clutched Kathlyn against
him and half-walked, half-carried her out to the car. She was still wiping
tears from her eyes, but not before she hugged Juliana and Lynn tightly. From
the bottom of her stubborn, pig-headed, aching heart, she owed them everything.

As the sun set over the great
golden coast of California, Marcus and Kathlyn made their way to the swanky
hotel in Beverly Hills and spent the evening eating shrimp and steak and
champagne in the bathtub. It certainly wasn’t the way they had started their
day, but it was the best way either one of them could have imagined to end it.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

The law firm of Trent, Jones,
Sheppard and Rosskopf LLP had been established by Kathlyn’s great-grandfather
in 1918 when the City of Los Angeles had been a growing metropolis. Kathlyn’s
enterprising great-grandfather, Ethan, had built a massive stone and concrete
building near the corner of 6th and Broadway, a stone’s throw from Pershing
Square. The firm had seen its way through the great crash of ’29, the war to
end all wars, Korea, Vietnam, bad and good economic times. All four of the
firm’s founding partners saw their descendants continue at the helm and, with
the exception of Robert, they were all women.

Jason Trent, Kathlyn’s father,
had passed away two years ago, leaving his sons Robert and William to continue
the dominance of the firm. Robert was in Criminal law while William had
branched into Entertainment Law and Management, much to his father’s
disapproval. But William had at least stayed within the family business, unlike
Kathlyn. Jason Trent had had high hopes for his only daughter since birth, but
she had possessed other ideas. The rift that had started with her choice of
careers had widened until his death, and Kathlyn had never forgiven herself for
letting the separation go as long as it did.

Sitting in her brother’s plush
office on the eighth floor penthouse office had bittersweet memories. It had
been her father’s office and still smelled of his pipe tobacco. Robert sat at
his desk in front of the huge arched windows that looked out over 6th Street,
scrutinizing the documents on his desk.

“Well,” he finally looked up from
the paperwork. “I’ve got some good news.”

They both perked. “What’s that?”
Marcus asked.

“We don’t have to worry about a paternity
suit any longer. Jensen Elder claims she miscarried the child she was
carrying.”

Marcus looked as if he was about
to slither to the floor with pure relief. “Terrific,” he breathed. “But is
there any way to prove she was lying about that?”

Robert shook his head. “No.
Whatever evidence there was is now apparently flushed down the toilet. Those
charges are dismissed based on lack of physical evidence.”

Kathlyn squeezed Marcus’ hand.
“That is good news, Robert. So what else is going on? We’ve got a trial coming
up, you know. We could use some encouragement.”

Robert nodded, flipping through
the reams of paper that was stacked upon his desk. “This is going to be pretty
simple, actually. I think we’ve got a handle on it.”

“You’re serious?” Kathlyn hardly
dared to hope. “Tell me everything.”

Robert put the papers aside and
sat back in his chair, prioritizing his thoughts.

 “First of all, you guys didn’t
do anything wrong. That’s one less thing to have to worry about, covering
tracks and all. Basically, we have two issues here – Jensen’s civil suit
against Marcus and UCPR and your criminal suit. They are separate and will be
treated separately. With Jensen’s latest alleged health woes, I believe I can
get the judge to move the rest of her civil case against Marcus months back on
the docket. That way, we can focus on the criminal trial only for now. And once
the criminal trial is over, if successful, I think it will fairly negate the
need for the civil suit.”

Kathlyn cocked her head
curiously. “Why do you think that?”

“Because,” Robert continued. “I
have a great P.I. who does awesome work. The guy comes up with stuff other
investigators couldn’t even get close to. I put him on the scent of our dear
Miss Elder and he’s come up with quite a bit.”

“For instance?” Kathlyn asked.

“Well,” Robert scratched his
chin. “My strategy, as you know, has been to discredit Jensen more than
actually defend you against her charges. If I can make her look like a
dishonest liar, which she is, then the rest will fall into place. So I
subpoenaed all of the computers she had access to, one at home and three at
work, printers, her PDA, you name it. Anything she would have been able to
touch. I even subpoenaed her home phone, fax and cell phone records. We had our
I.T. guy here at work go through everything. He came up with very interesting
stuff.”

Kathlyn was ready to explode.
“Jesus, Robert, like what?”

Robert’s blue eyes twinkled.
“Like your signature taken with a camera phone and held in a file.”

Kathlyn looked shocked. “What?”

Her brother nodded. “She thought
she was being clever by hiding in her sidekick device. In fact, she thought we
wouldn’t find the sidekick. We only discovered it through an account her mother
had with a mobile phone number that was hardly used. We had to issue an order
to her lawyer to have the device produced. Anyway, that’s how she brought your
signature from the States to Egypt. So she forges a few expense reports,
downloads the signature, uses it, erases it, and
voilà
- unexplained
capital expense reports.”

Kathlyn just stared at him. She
could hardly dare to hope. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. But that’s not the
best part. Seems that Miss Elder has a dark side to her family. Her mother has
a history of suing companies, mostly fast food restaurants, for things like
staples in salads, food poisoning, stuff like that. Then there are slip and
fall incidents in shopping malls and, my personal favorite, stress leave from
her job as a daycare worker. An investigator has a picture of her tandem
skydiving when she was supposed to have a back injury. This woman is insurance
fraud at its very best.”

Kathlyn, moving beyond her
surprise, was beginning to see a pattern. “So her daughter sees how her mom
does it and decides to go for even bigger game, is that it? No petty insurance
fraud stuff for Jensen. She goes after the big fish for sexual harassment and
paternity.”

“Exactly.”

“But why the Fraud part? I don’t
get that. She gains nothing by getting Marcus and I kicked off the site and
investigated by the IRS.”

Robert shrugged. “My thoughts are
that she probably intended to blackmail you both, but things got out of hand
with your incident in the Yucatan and she never got the chance. It’s my opinion
that she began playing a game, a big game, that got out of control. So now
she’s on the roller coaster ride along with the rest of us, hence her
‘miscarriage’. She knew we would demand a DNA test and she conveniently lost
the alleged baby.”

“My God,” Kathlyn looked at
Marcus, equally speechless. “And you can prove all of this?”

“We have public records and a
witness to back it up. But that’s not the best part.”

Kathlyn wasn’t sure how much more
she could take. “What else?”

Robert laced his fingers behind
his head and leaned back in his chair. “We found an ex-boyfriend she tried to
pull into her scheme. Recognize the name Mike Sutton?”

Kathlyn thought a moment. Then
her eyes widened. “Andy’s brother?”

“One of the junior members of
your team, Andy Sutton. His brother is Jensen’s ex-boyfriend. Didn’t Mike visit
you last fall in Egypt?”

Kathlyn was astonished. “He did.
He helped Debra Jo with some of our accounting work. He had just gotten his CPA
and we saw no harm in it.”

“And he had access to your
computer, your files, your bank records and cancelled checks.”

“Yes, but…”

“Wonder how Jensen got your
signature and the idea for this whole mess?”

Kathlyn put her hand over her
mouth, now hanging open in shock. “Mike put her up to it?”

“More like she put Mike up to it.
Then they broke up and he had a flash of guilty conscience, especially when my
P.I. showed up. We worked a deal to grant him immunity to an accessory charge
and he spilled his guts.”

Kathlyn sat a moment, completely
shocked. Marcus just sat in his chair, his head hung, trying to come to grips
with everything. Kathlyn finally stood up, pacing off some of the fury that was
building.

“So all she wanted was money?”
she asked, to no one in particularly. “That bitch tries to ruin my life, all
for money?”