The Big Fix (20 page)

“It doesn’t matter, though,” he continued. “They’re going on the assumption that Lily was able to get rid of it somehow, maybe by handing it off to one of her fellow warriors against animal cruelty.”

“Which is totally unjustified!” she said, the crusading light flashing in her eyes. “Those fascist assholes have no right to go after my friends.”

“Be that as it may, they are. It’s not an unexpected tactic, and not an avenue they can afford to ignore. They’re pressuring us by pressuring them, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

“But they’re digging into things that aren’t remotely connected to the case, things in their personal lives. It’s not right,” Lily-Ann said.

“No, but it’s legal,” Nigel said, keeping his cool. He reminded me so much of Thomas.

“Yeah, and I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Fuck it all. Maybe I should take the plea deal,” she said, her bravado deserting her.

“You can’t do that!” I said.

Nigel looked as if he’d heard it before. “Unless you’re telling me you killed your sister, and you want me to shop around for the best place for you to serve out a life sentence, I suggest you stop talking like that.”

She rose and crossed to the window, looking as if she’d like nothing better than to open it and run. “Why should I? Hell, maybe I did do it. Maybe I snapped and went all Rambo on my own sister.”

Her outburst washed over Nigel like raindrops on a duck, but I was worried by the look I’d seen in her eye. She might be holding it together with her combo of righteous indignation and a smart mouth, but she was scared. And possibly close to breaking.

I went to stand next to her, careful not to crowd her. “Listen,” I said softly, “if it helps any, I believe you didn’t kill your sister.”

She whirled on me. “Who the hell are you to say that? You don’t know me. You didn’t know my sister, and you don’t know my fucking family! If you did, you’d know Conrads are capable of anything.”

Okay. Not one to react well to someone being “nice” to her. Yeah, a jury would just
love
her. But her outburst did trigger an idea.

“Even your mother?” I asked. When Lily stared at me blankly, I added, “She wasn’t at the funeral. Does she know one end of a gun from another?”

Lily looked appalled at the thought. “Well, yes—she and my father used to take us skeet shooting all the time when we were kids—but there’s no way … she couldn’t … you’re not implying she killed Angelica, are you? Even a Conrad wouldn’t…” She looked at Nigel, whose eyes lit at the new possibility.

“I admit, it doesn’t seem likely, but if she doesn’t have a credible alibi for the time of Angelica’s death we could use it to plant reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury,” he said.

“No,” Lily said, voice low, face set. “You don’t know her. She can be a bitch, but she’s not a murderer.”

“Okay,” I said, impatient with her refusal to consider an avenue that might help her own cause. “You’re right. I don’t know her, or if she had any reason to want your sister dead. But I do know your brother-in-law. And I know for a fact it is at least possible that
he’s
the fucking asshole who shot Angelica. Him, personally.”

“What?” Lily said, stunned.

Nigel looked at me steadily. “I think you better explain that, Ciel.”

Oops. Probably shouldn’t have gone quite that far. But if it kept Lily from making a premature—and really ill-advised—confession, so be it. I took a breath. “I will. But first, why was Angelica divorcing Jackson? It wasn’t just his cheating, was it?”

Lily twisted her mouth into a wry smile. “No. She was very understanding of the cheating, as long as he was discreet. She once told me screwing starlets and fans was like masturbation for him—distasteful, but understandable in a man who oozed as much testosterone as he did. She used to joke that at least it kept the sheets at home clean.”

Ouch. Yeah, sounds like a man with size issues,
I thought.
Always trying to prove his virility.
“But she didn’t feel that way when it was you, did she?” I said.

Lily’s face registered a flash of naked pain. “No. She didn’t. That was when she brought out every piece of ammo she’d saved up over the years. She didn’t just want to divorce him. She wanted to destroy him. All because of my stupidity.” Lily took a deep breath. “He knew she could do it, too. There was something in her file that scared the hell out of him.”

“Did she tell you what it was?” I asked.

“She never said—she was mad at me, too, remember. But from the way Jack acted after he found out what she had on him, I know it was something big.”

“Do you have any idea where she might have kept that file?” I asked. If I could get my hands on it …

“If I had to guess, it’s hidden somewhere in Jack’s home office. That’s where she used to hide his birthday presents. She said it was the last place he’d think to look. I know she kept the file on a thumb drive—she showed me that much—so she could have slipped it anywhere.”

“Okay, let’s forget about Jack’s alibi for a minute,” I said. “That file sounds like a damn good motive for murder for him.”

Nigel nodded. “Yes, he has motive. You can even make an argument for means, since he does own quite a few guns of the caliber in question, and is proficient with them. But the opportunity … that one’s hard to argue, seeing as how dozens of witnesses were working with him—in another state—at the time of the murder.”

“And besides, somebody tried to kill
him
at the funeral,” Lily said.

“Or possibly your father,” I added for the sake of keeping the facts straight.

“Or my father,” she conceded. “But you can’t tell me Jackson would have set up something so risky for himself. According to the news, that bullet missed him by inches. Maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe he
didn’t
have Angelica killed.”

“About that…” I said. Damn, I hoped I wasn’t going to regret this. I’d done enough regrettable things recently—I didn’t need to add to the list. “Look, before I go any further, I’m going to have to ask that this stay between the three of us. In fact, I shouldn’t say anything at all, not before I have you sign one of my nondisclosure agreements. Would you be willing to do that?”

Nigel was looking wary. “If you give me time to read it carefully, and I find nothing egregious about it, I suppose so.”

Lily-Ann inclined her head toward Nigel. “If he says it’s okay to sign, I’ll sign.”

“Great! I don’t think you’ll find anything confusing about it. Thomas drew it up for me himself, and he’s pretty clear cut. Do you have a computer and a printer I can borrow? I can access it online.”

*   *   *

Nigel finished paging through my standard contract. He was a fast reader, but I could tell he hadn’t skipped a line of it.

“So,” he said, “as I understand it, in exchange for your services, we agree not to disclose anything about how you go about performing said services, or anything we learn, advertently or inadvertently, about you or your associates during the course of your performing said services. Is that about it?”

“That covers it nicely. Of course, for our purposes here today, my ‘services’ entail telling you certain information I’m privy to, and demonstrating how I came to be privy to it. Also, you’ll notice I nulled out the portion of the contract that deals with my fee. I’m not charging you anything, of course.”

He studied my face, considering God knew what. Coming to a decision, he signed with a flourish. Lily-Ann followed suit with her copy of the contract, which she’d given only a cursory glance. Guess she trusted Nigel.

I collected both contracts and checked the signatures, to make sure they hadn’t signed “Mickey Mouse” or “Donald Duck.” Not that it would matter much if they had. Thomas had creative ways of dealing with clients who willfully broke a contract, no matter how cute they got with their signatures.

Satisfied, I folded the documents and stuffed them into my purse. This was the tricky part with all new clients. (If I was honest, it was also kind of fun.) Deep down, they were always sure the person who had referred them to me was mistaken. They never really believed it until they saw it for themselves. Some of them even fainted. And those were the ones who’d heard about aura adaptors through the grapevine before they approached me. Nigel and Lily-Ann were getting it cold.

“Okay,” I said. “The reason we can’t rule out Jack just because there was a probable attempt on his life is because that wasn’t the real Jack.”

Nigel looked skeptical in the I’m-listening-politely-but-I’m-not-buying-it way lawyers have. (Thomas was a master at that look.) “What? Are you saying Jack sent some sort of stunt double to his wife’s funeral? Does he have a twin brother we don’t know about?”

“Not exactly a stunt double, no. Or a twin. More like … me.”

“What are you talking about?” Lily-Ann said.

“I’m saying I was standing in for Jackson at the funeral, just as I was when Angelica was shot. It’s my job.”

They both stared at me, saying nothing. I took that as an indication to continue.

“It was while I was pretending to be Jackson on the set that he left my client hideaway—a guest ranch in Arizona—for several hours. In other words, there was, at the least, a window of opportunity for him to kill your sister, and to hide what could be the murder weapon in my barn for later retrieval.”

Lily spoke first, sounding like a kid who’d been offered an ice cream cone, only to have it snatched away at the last second. “Nigel, she’s crazy. Get her out of here.”

Nigel ignored her. “You found the gun in your barn? I was told the police didn’t have it.”

“Uh … well, they don’t. Not last time I checked, anyway. I’ll explain that part later,” I said, loosening my belt and kicking off my shoes.

I called up Jackson’s aura and waited for their reaction.

Lily jumped up and backed away from me, almost tripping over a small table in her rush. “What the fuck?” she said, looking decidedly pale. I hoped she wasn’t a fainter, because it was a marble floor. Guess that worked better than carpet with Nigel’s wheelchair.

Nigel stared, processing. Finally he asked, “What are you?”

I dropped the aura and refastened my belt. Left my shoes off, though, because, hey, barefoot is always better than wearing shoes.

“I’m an aura adaptor. So is Thomas, by the way.”

“There are more of you? Are you … human?” This from Lily, who was keeping her distance.

“Completely and totally human,” I said, doing a slow spin so they could see I was still me from all angles. Then I went into my spiel about how we had a genetic quirk that allowed us to project the aura of anyone whose energy we touched, yadda yadda yadda. I had to go over it with all my clients, after which I typically reminded them of the contract they had signed and pointed out, ever so politely, that my legal shark brother would divest them of all their worldly possessions if they ever divulged what I had shown them.

I somehow didn’t think I would need to state that to Nigel, who was no longer looking shocked, only highly curious.

“You say you can become anyone?” he said.

“Not become. I’m always still me on the inside. All I can do is project their aura. In other words, take on their physical appearance.”

“Can you do me?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and loosened my belt again. “Give me your hand.”

He extended his arm, I took some energy, and voil
à
! I was him. Only I was still standing, and could walk around.

“But you’re not paralyzed,” he said.

“Nope. I took care not to project your injured spine and I left some muscle tone in my legs.”

“You can pick and choose parts?” Lily said, gradually becoming less fearful and more fascinated.

“Yeah. Though usually it’s easier to project the whole package. Requires less concentration, and less effort to keep it up. It doesn’t make much difference for short adaptions, though.”

I had, of course, been speaking in Nigel’s voice, and had unconsciously mimicked the rhythms of his speech. I tend to do that automatically—Mom says I have a good ear. Nigel couldn’t quit staring at me.

Finally, he gave himself a shake (only his upper body and head moved) and said, “Could you stop, please? It’s … rather disconcerting to talk to myself.”

I dropped his aura at once.

“So, do you see what I mean about Jackson now? I don’t know for sure he’s the guilty one, but I sure as heck know he
could
be. That’s something, right?”

Hope sparked in Lily-Ann’s eyes for the first time since I’d arrived. Nigel squashed it with a brutal truth.

“But judging from the impressive stack of papers your brother drafted, and we signed, knowing how it’s possible isn’t going to do us a bit of good in court, is it?”

“Not in court, no. But I swear I will find a way to help you. I won’t let an innocent person go to prison. You have to believe that.”

Chapter 18

Billy and I picked up food at the In-N-Out drive-thru and checked into a hotel, where we proceeded to stuff our faces with their legendary Animal Style burgers (the grilled onions were fabulous) and Animal Style fries (topped with cheese, secret sauce, and more grilled onions) from the not-so-secret menu as we discussed our findings. He hadn’t gathered much of any use, either from the funeral guests or from his shopping spree with Frannie.

I’d left Nigel and Lily-Ann, both still somewhat agog from my revelation, with a promise to get back to them soon. I told them to stay the course, that I was meeting with a trusted friend who was helping me work on a plan to find out who the real killer was.

Yeah, “plan” might have been an overstatement. We were still at the bouncing-around-one-ridiculous-idea-after-another stage, hoping something would fall into place. But I didn’t want Lily-Ann to worry. I had faith Billy would come up with something—he was a master at getting out of trouble.

The first thing I told Billy was that I’d had to tell Nigel and Lily-Ann about adaptors. Not nearly as uptight about revealing our ability as Mark was, he shrugged it off. All he asked was if I’d made them sign the nondisclosure agreement.