I don’t know why I’m even shocked that you carry tools with you for breaking and entering,” I tell Kennedy as I watch her crouch down in front of Richard Covington’s door.
It’s been a week since I walked in this house to find Richard shot dead on the floor of his library. I had two cases to try and spent the rest of my time pulling up as much information as I could find on Richard and Stephanie. I probably never should have told Kennedy that I wished I could have an hour inside of Richard’s house to see if I could find anything that would help with the case. An hour later she knocked on my door and told me to wear black and bring a flashlight.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. You know I could be disbarred for this, right?” I complain to Kennedy as I turn my back on her and stare out over the dark lawn. If I’m not watching it happen, I can just plead ignorance if we get caught.
“I thought you were going to quit. Who cares if they fire you?” Paige whispers as she aims her flashlight at the door so Kennedy can see.
“There’s a big difference between being fired and being disbarred, Paige. If we get caught, I could lose my license and never be able to practice law again.”
I should really be more concerned about the ramifications of what we’re doing right now. I shouldn’t be standing here while my friend breaks into a crime scene. At least one problem would be solved—my parents would finally know what I’ve been doing when they have to bail me out of jail.
“First rule of thumb if you’re going to make it in this business, Lorelei: always carry a paper clip and a torsion wrench in your back pocket and stop being such a candy ass,” Kennedy explains as she carefully sticks the tools into the lock with the precision of a surgeon performing open-heart surgery.
“I thought the first rule of thumb was to stick it to the man?” Paige says with a laugh.
“What the hell are we going to do if the alarm goes off?” I whisper, glancing behind us nervously.
“The alarm isn’t going to go off because Ted told me they had it disabled for the next few days so detectives can come and go whenever they please,” Kennedy says, her eyes never leaving the door as she fiddles with the lock.
A few seconds later, I hear a loud click.
“Got it!” Kennedy cheers.
She pulls another tool out of her back pocket, this time a Swiss Army knife, and slices through the police tape stretched across the door. She stands up, pushes open the door, and we follow her into the dark house.
“I’ll replace that when we leave. Keep your flashlights low to the ground. We don’t want anyone driving by to see the light bouncing around through the windows,” Kennedy warns.
We all turn on our flashlights and aim them at the ground.
“You’re sure the guard at the front gate won’t tell anyone we were here?” I ask her nervously as we step into the foyer.
“Positive. I went to high school with the guy and a few months ago his ex-wife had me confront him about wearing her underwear and heels. I told him I would send out a mass e-mail to everyone he knows,” Kennedy tells us.
“Oh, my God, that was the guy who pranced around his kitchen in fishnets and stilettos?” Paige asks in shock as I close the door behind us.
Kennedy nods as she shines her flashlight from left to right. “That’s him. The ex came home early from work to see him doing the entire final dance sequence from Dirty Dancing.”
Paige and I stand behind Kennedy while she looks around and decides which direction to head.
“This place is really creepy. Someone died here,” Paige complains quietly as we inch slowly through the foyer and toward the library.
Even though it’s dark and Kennedy has her back to us, I can tell she’s rolling her eyes. “Oh, stop being such a baby. It’s not like his body is still in here.”
“You can’t tell me this doesn’t freak you out a little bit. You just stepped over the exact spot where his body was. That’s just gross,” Paige says with a shiver as we all walk around the bloodstain on the cream carpet.
Kennedy ignores her and makes her way over to the giant oak desk on the far side of the room. “I’ll start with this room. Lorelei, you check the rest of the first floor. This dude has a house the size of a small country. He could have ten offices in a house this large, but instead, he uses the library right on the ground floor. Obviously he’s weird. Paige, you can start going room to room upstairs and see if you can find any other file cabinets or some place where Richard would keep paperwork. He’s got to have a safe in this house—see if you guys can find that too.”
“Why the hell do I have to be the one to wander through the upstairs by myself?”
Paige stands by the doorway with her arms wrapped around herself.
“There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just an empty house. Suck it up and get to work,” Kennedy tells her. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll come across the ex’s closet. She moved out a while ago, but I heard the officers talking the other day when we were here that she left some things behind.”
Even with just the faint beams of our flashlights I can see Paige’s eyes light up with excitement.
“If you need me, I’ll be upstairs.”
She turns and races out of the room and a few seconds later I hear her feet pounding up the stairs quickly.
For the next twenty minutes, I stroll from room to room downstairs, not finding anything of any interest. I make my way back to the library and see that Kennedy has pulled out all the files from the desk and is reading through them.
“I can’t believe Paige was creeped out coming in this house,” Kennedy says with a laugh when she sees me walk in. “She is the biggest puss—SON OF A FUCKING BITCH, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
The uncharacteristic girly scream from Kennedy has me racing over to her. I watch as she jumps up on the chair behind the desk, whipping her hand with the flashlight back and forth under the desk.
“Something touched my leg! SOMETHING TOUCHED MY FUCKING LEG!” she screams.
Aiming my flashlight under the desk, I walk slowly around it until I’m right next to Kennedy’s chair.
“I don’t see anything. Are you sure you didn’t just bump up against the desk?” I ask as I crouch down to get a better look.
“I didn’t bump against the Goddamn desk! Something reached out and smacked my ankle,” she argues angrily.
I try to hide my amusement at how upset Kennedy is right now.
“What were you saying to Paige a few seconds ago?” I ask as I continue my way around the massive desk. “Stop being such a baby?”
I can’t contain a snort of laughter.
“Don’t make me come down off of this chair and kick your ass, Lorelei.”
I laugh again and shake my head at her. “There’s nothing here. I think you just—OH, MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT?!”
Something that sounds like a cross between a rattlesnake and a dying person keens from under the desk. I scramble away from it, tripping over my feet and landing on my butt. My flashlight falls from my hand and rolls across the floor, the beam flashing around the room like a strobe light.
“I told you! I told you something touched me!” Kennedy yells in victory.
I continue scooting backward, as far away from the desk as possible. “Stop sounding so excited that something is under that desk trying to kill us!”
Suddenly, the room is bathed in bright light and I wince, blinking my eyes rapidly to adjust to it.
“Turn off the light! What if someone sees it?” Kennedy yells at Paige, who stands in the doorway.
With a roll of her eyes, Paige stalks across the room then gets down on her hands and knees, the top half of her body disappearing under the desk. The hissing and moaning gets louder when Paige suddenly pops back out from under the desk with a white ball of angry cat in her hands.
“Seriously? I could hear you screaming all the way upstairs. The neighbors probably heard you. Having a light on is the least of your worries,” Paige complains as she stands up with the cat firmly grasped by the back of its neck.
After getting up from the floor, I walk over to the cat.
“Awww, you poor thing. You’ve been alone in this house for a week. She still has dried blood on her paws.”
The cat answers my concern for her by hissing with so much force that spit flies from her mouth.
“While you two idiots were freaking out over a cat, I found some interesting e-mails in a drawer in Richard’s room,” Paige tells us, handing the cat over to me and then bending down to pick up a few pieces of paper that she set down on the floor when she crawled under the desk.
The cat looks up at me with big, sad eyes and right when I feel like we have a connection, she starts the low growl in her throat all over again and hisses at me.
Kennedy hops down from the chair and I turn to hand the cat off to her.
She immediately puts her hands up in the air and shakes her head. “Oh no. Don’t even think about it. That cat is an asshole.”
The cat hisses and tries to lunge out of my arms for Kennedy. I grip her as hard as I can to keep her from ripping Kennedy’s face off.
“Don’t call her that,” I whisper. “Obviously she’s traumatized from watching her owner get killed.”
I hold on to her with one arm and try to calm her down by scratching her behind the ears.
Kennedy takes a step forward and glares at the cat. “Not so tough now, are you?”
The cat growls and I turn away from Kennedy so she’ll stop taunting her.
“So, what are these e-mails you found in Richard’s room?” I ask Paige.
She holds out the pieces of paper and Kennedy takes them from her and glances over them.
“Well, well, well. It looks like Richard’s lawyer was trying to blackmail him,” Kennedy says with a smile. “A month ago he sent Richard an e-mail telling him that if Richard didn’t give him a quarter of a million dollars, he would tell everyone what he knows.”
“Does it say what he knew?” I ask.
Kennedy flips through the pages. “Nope. They go back and forth a few times and Richard basically tells him to fuck off.”
Kennedy hands the papers over to me, and when I see the name and e-mail address at the top of the page, my mouth drops open. “Oh, my God. I know this guy. I went to law school with him.”
Miles Harper. He was in my graduating class and I had a few study groups with him. He was a jerk then and the few times I’ve seen him at social functions since law school have only proved he hadn’t changed a bit.
“Well, then, getting him to talk to you should be a piece of cake,” Paige tells me with a smile.
“Paige, why do you have on sparkly silver shoes?” Kennedy suddenly asks.
I look down at Paige’s feet and sure enough, the black boots she wore here have been replaced with a pair of four-inch stilettos covered in crystals.
“Did you really think I would find the closet of a billionaire’s ex-wife and NOT try on a pair of her shoes? I can’t believe she left these behind.”
Paige twists and turns her foot so that the light sparkles off of her footwear.
“The shoes stay here,” Kennedy warns her.
Paige stomps her stilettoed foot. “But she doesn’t even want them! And she’s got six pairs just like them. These are from Daniele Michetti’s Summer 2010 collection. It’s Swarovski!”
“What are you, Russian?” Kennedy complains. “I have no idea what you’re saying to me.”
The cat growls at Kennedy.
“Oh, pipe the fuck down, cat. Put the shoes back and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Kennedy grabs my flashlight off of the ground and follows Paige as she stomps out of the room to put the shoes back. Kennedy pauses by the door and looks back at me when she realizes I’m not following her.
I resist the question in her gaze, giving her my best pout, and I pet the cat’s head. Finally, she throws her hands up in the air. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
I huff. “Kennedy, I can’t just leave her here. She’s dirty and hungry and all alone.”
Kennedy shakes her head at me and sighs. “Fine. But if that thing so much as looks at me funny on the ride home, I’m opening the car door and shoving you both out into oncoming traffic.”