Coached to Death Page 9

  How did I get here? I wondered. How had I gone from the pinnacle of success, ripped from the most romantic night of my life, to wearing an ugly, gray prisoner’s uniform in a windowless room, handcuffed to a dirty table?

  I stared at my hands and kept thinking back to that moment when I’d yelled at Heather. How good it’d felt in that moment to rip her a new one. How righteous I’d been, and how determined to get even.

  I had a few moments then to actually consider if I was capable of murder, and it was a thought I felt I had to entertain, because if someone asked me if I had killed her, I needed to be sincere in my reply, or they might misinterpret my answer for a lie.

  In the end, I decided that I couldn’t murder Heather. I couldn’t murder anyone. Save for defending my sons, I knew I wasn’t capable of that level of violence.

  And then I had another, horrifying thought.

  “The boys!” I whispered. “Oh, God!” And the tears came again in earnest. What would they think of me? What would they believe? Would they visit me, even if I were wrongly convicted? “They will!” I told myself, but still there was a tiny trickle of doubt in the pit of my stomach that bothered me greatly.

  My sons love me, but they’d also been through so much with the divorce and my constant legal battles with their father. This could be the straw that broke the camel’s back for them.

  My thoughts continued down these same, terrible paths for what felt like an eternity, until the door opened and Shepherd appeared, looking smug.

  Well, at least he looked smug until he got an eyeful of me, and then, for a moment, I swear he looked almost . . . guilty.

  Pulling at his tie, he came over and sat down across from me. “Something you want to tell me, Catherine?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Shepherd leaned in. “What’s that?”

  I lowered my chin and mumbled something unintelligible.

  Shepherd leaned in further. “What’s that?” he asked.

  I mumbled again, making a show of wiping at my cheeks with my cuffed hands.

  “I didn’t catch that,” he said, leaning forward a little more.

  Finally, I looked up at him, and in as loud a voice as I could muster, I yelled, “Lawyer!”

  Shepherd jerked and pivoted back in his chair, crossing his arms and glaring hard at me. He wasn’t happy that I’d suckered him in so I could yell in his ear.

  “I. Want. My. Lawyer!” I yelled again, my despair suddenly replaced by a deep ember of fury.

  Shepherd’s flinty stare was ice-cold. Then, with a sneer, he reached into his blazer and pulled out my cell phone. Sliding it over to me, he said, “I’ll give you ten minutes. Then I’m taking back your phone.”

  As he was getting up to walk out, I protested. “Hey! You’ve got to un-cuff me so I can use it!” I wouldn’t be able to hold it up to my ear with my wrists handcuffed to the table.

  “Use the speaker function,” he said, without even bothering to look back.

  And then he was gone, and I was left alone to shake with fury and frustration.

  It took me a minute or two to collect myself. Finally, I pulled the phone close and squinted at the screen. I was surprised to see that it was nearly eleven o’clock. Maks had picked me up at seven-thirty, which meant I’d probably been arrested at Pierre’s at around eight-thirty, which then meant that I’d been throwing myself a pity party for a solid two hours.

  “Which is an hour and fifteen minutes too long, Catherine,” I said to myself. My personal opinion is that no pity party should ever last longer than a quarter of an hour. It was time to pull myself together and solve the problem. “But where do I even start?”

  Closing my eyes, I tried to remember the name of the referral that my attorney had given me. “What did Tony say his name was?” I muttered. “Ray? Or maybe Ron something?”

  I couldn’t remember. But then I did remember that Gilley was currently at home in my guest house, and Tony had left the card of the defense attorney on the table. I was positive it was still there.

  I clicked on Gilley’s number in my favorites and heard it ring loudly from the speaker function. “Come on, Gil,” I said impatiently.

  The call slid to voice mail. “Dammit!” I swore. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

  My sister is well known for her sailor mouth, while I’m much more circumspect, given the fact that I’m a mother and former corporate figurehead, but tough times called for tough talk, and I gave myself a pass on the salty lingo.

  I tried the number again, and my knee bounced with anticipation as the phone rang another four times.

  Then it slid to voice mail. After the tone, I said, “Gilley! It’s Cat. I need help. I’ve been arrested! The police think I murdered Heather, and they’re holding me at the East Hampton police station. I need you to call that attorney that Tony recommended. His card should be on the table, okay? I need you to do that right away, Gil. I know it’s late, but I need him to come down here—”

  The beep of Gilley’s voice mail cut me off, and the call hung up. I stared at the screen for a long time, willing it to ring. Or bing with an incoming text. Something to let me know I’d been heard.

  In desperation, I called Tony’s cell, but it also went to voice mail. Still, I left him a message and kept my fingers crossed that somebody out there would hear my plea. I didn’t want to spend the night in jail, which is exactly where I knew I was headed.

  My eyes welled with tears again as I realized that ten minutes had already passed. Shepherd would be coming in at any moment.

  But the minutes continued to tick by, and no one came in to retrieve my cell or to cart me off to jail.

  I tried Gilley again—still no answer. Then Tony—and couldn’t get him on the line either. And then I wondered if I should call my sister.

  Or better yet, my brother-in-law.

  Dutch, Abby’s husband, is an FBI agent. He and I aren’t necessarily close . . . I’ve heard that he finds me a little overwhelming, and I find him . . . a little dull. I mean, he’s definitely a beautiful man, yes, on the inside but especially on the outside, and he takes care of my sister better than anyone else ever could, but as far as personality goes, he’s a little too vanilla for me.

  Still, Dutch had connections, and I wondered if a call to him via my sister would yield me a little latitude.

  But that was going to be a tough call to make.

  I’d also heard that there was a betting pool going around Dutch’s bureau as to when I’d get arrested. I had always found that notion hilarious until about three hours ago. Now it just made me want to cry.

  And what would Abby say about all this? My guess was that she’d either be judgmental or sympathetic, and if she started out as judgmental, I’d remind her that she’d been arrested more times than I had at this point.

  Also, I reasoned, her intuition could prove invaluable to me right now.

  My finger hovered over her name in my list of favorites. I couldn’t really tell you what my hesitancy was; maybe it had to do with being the older sibling and always being the one never to cause trouble but instead always being able to solve it. Abby was the troublemaker in the family, and I’d spent nearly forty years sitting on my high horse about it.

  I looked around the bleak little room, noticing a camera up in the corner of the ceiling and wondering how many police were gathered round a monitor, laughing at my expense.

  I offered the camera the finger, and then used the same middle digit to tap on Abby’s name in my phone.

  To my immense relief, she picked up on the third ring. “Cat?” she said loudly. There seemed to be a lot of noise in the background.

  “Abby!” I sang, overjoyed to hear her voice.

  “What’re you doing calling me so late?”

  “Well,” I began, “it’s an interesting stor—”

  “Listen,” she interrupted sharply, “Cat, I can’t really talk right now. I’m in the middle of something.”

  For a second, I was taken aba
ck. How could my own sister be so dismissive? “I wouldn’t have called if it weren’t an emer—”

  Three loud pops cut me off. They sounded like gunfire. “Holy shit! Cat, I gotta go, okay? Call me tomorrow, and we’ll talk.”

  “Wait! Abby! Was that a gun?”

  The phone beeped, and all sound on her end of the line went dead.

  “Abby?” I said desperately, my voice choking with emotion. “Don’t go . . .” I hit on her phone number again, and the call went immediately to voice mail. “Why?!” I cried. I tried her one last time, but just as her voice announced that I’d reached her voice mail, the door to the room abruptly opened and Shepherd came in, followed by another man in a charcoal suit and burgundy tie.

  At first, I thought he might also be a detective, but then I got a better look at him and knew he wasn’t.

  For starters, his suit was perfectly tailored. Exquisitely so. The tie was definitely top of the line as well, and he wore a solid-gold Rolex and what I suspected were Movado cufflinks. His shoes were Italian leather, and he carried a briefcase that was likely also Italian leather.

  He had dark skin, a bald head, and the most gorgeous almond-brown eyes. I found him quite striking.

  And maybe a little intimidating too.

  “Ms. Cooper?” he said softly.

  “Yes?” I said, my voice cracking.

  “I’m Marcus Brown. Your attorney.”

  I blinked. I was fairly certain that Tony had offered me a different name. Then again, I realized that the man in front of me—though a stranger—was still willing to help me at nearly midnight on a Friday, and no way was I in any position to turn that down. “Thank you so much for coming at such a late hour,” I said, my lower lip quivering with the emotional relief of the moment.

  “Least I could do,” he said with a warm smile.

  That warmth vanished, but the smile remained when he turned to Shepherd. “Has she eaten?” he asked bluntly.

  “Has she eaten?” Shepherd repeated. “What do we look like, a bed and breakfast, Counselor?”

  “You arrested her before she’d had a chance to have dinner, didn’t you?” Marcus replied calmly.

  “How should I know?”

  “I have it on authority that it was prior to her meal being served. She may be your ward, Detective, but she still has rights. Bring her a sandwich and something cold to drink.”

  Shepherd stood there, looking stunned. He opened his mouth to reply, but Marcus cut him off.

  “I’ll need some time with my client, Detective,” he said, turning away from Shepherd dismissively to walk over and sit across from me.

  I watched with wide, greedy eyes as Shepherd stood there in the doorway as if he didn’t quite know what to do.

  “That’ll be all, Detective,” Marcus said, the soft manner of his voice disappearing for a deep, resonating baritone.

  Shepherd’s eyes narrowed, and his lips pressed tightly together, but he still stepped out into the hallway and slammed the door shut.

  After he’d gone, Marcus seemed to notice my cuffed hands. “How long have you been like that?”

  I held my hands up feebly. “Since they put me in here. Probably a couple of hours.”

  Marcus’s own eyes narrowed, and he pushed back from the seat with an “Excuse me for one moment.”

  He left the room but was back in less than a minute with a uniformed officer. “Turn your wrists up, please,” the officer said.

  I did, and he produced a key. I wanted to cry when the handcuffs clicked open and dropped loudly to the tabletop. “Thank you,” I said to both of them.

  The officer offered me the hint of a smile and left the room.

  “Better?” said Marcus.

  “Yes,” I said. “Much.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  As Marcus settled his briefcase onto the table and worked the latches to open it, I reached over and touched his wrist to get his attention. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” he said, pulling out a yellow legal pad and setting it in front of him.

  “I don’t mean to be rude with this question, but I am actually wondering . . . who are you?”

  There was a twinkle in Marcus’s eyes as he answered me. “I’m your attorney, Ms. Cooper.”

  I bit my lip. “So you say, but, Mr. Brown, I didn’t call you, and I have no idea who did.”

  “I was retained by someone who is looking out for you, Catherine,” he said gently.

  His soft tone and his confidence gave me such courage. Still, he was a puzzle I couldn’t quite put together. “Did Gilley call you?” I pressed.

  Marcus studied me for a long moment. It didn’t feel like he was trying to stare me down, quite the contrary. It felt more like he was trying to figure out how best to put me at ease. “I’ve been retained by someone who cares about you, ma’am. That’s all you need to know for the moment. Now, why don’t you tell me what this is all about, in your own words, and please start from the beginning.”

  What felt like a very, very long time later, interrupted only by the scarfing down of a sandwich and cola that Shepherd had sent in, I finished telling my story, and Marcus finished asking me a plethora of questions, going over, and over, and over the events of two days before at least a dozen times, until I felt I’d be hearing my own voice reciting the same story in my dreams.

  At last, Marcus said, “All right. We’re ready. I’m going to call for Shepherd, and he’s going to ask you lots of questions. At the end of every question, I want you to turn to me, and if I nod, then you may answer that question. Under no circumstances should you answer a question before checking with me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” I said wearily.

  “Excellent,” Marcus said.

  He got up and went to the door. Opening it, he spoke to the same uniformed officer outside who’d unlocked my handcuffs and brought me the sandwich, and then he came back to sit next to me rather than across from me.

  “How was your sandwich?” he asked.

  “It was fine,” I said. Actually, it’d tasted like cardboard, but for some reason I’d found myself famished when it was placed in front of me.

  “Good,” Marcus said. Then he studied me again critically. “You must be tired.”

  “Exhausted, actually.”

  “I bet. It’s after midnight, so hopefully Shepherd will be tired too. It’s better when the guy asking questions isn’t as sharp as he could be.”

  I rubbed my eyes. They were dry and gritty. “I never would’ve thought such a lovely evening was going to turn out to be one of the worst nights of my life.”

  “I heard that Shepherd arrested you at Pierre’s in front of the dinner crowd.”

  “It was humiliating.” For the first time I thought of Maks, and what he must be thinking. “Marcus?”

  “Yes, Catherine?”

  I stared at the table, unable to meet his eyes as I asked my next question. “I was out to dinner with a genuinely beautiful man at the time that Shepherd decided to ruin my evening. Could I trouble you to contact him and explain all this? And maybe apologize on my behalf for the ruined night out?”

  “You don’t want to call him yourself?”

  I bit my lip. It was hard to even think of ever having the courage to reach out to Maks again. He’d no doubt never want to see or hear another word from me, but for some reason, I felt I owed him an apology. “No,” I whispered. “I don’t think I’m brave enough. And I don’t think that he’d really care to be contacted by me, either.”

  Marcus didn’t say anything, so I looked up, and his expression was unreadable. I was about to ask him what he thought when Shepherd entered the room, carrying his own legal pad.

  “Let’s get this party started, shall we?” he said.

  I glared at him, loathing the man with a passion.

  He looked down at his notes for a moment, then up at me. “Who were you out with tonight, Catherine?”

  I turned t
o Marcus and was surprised to find his brow furrowed as he stared at Shepherd.

  “How is that relevant to the charges you’ve filed against my client, Detective?”

  “Your client has been arrested for murder, Counselor. Everything associated with her is relevant at this point in the investigation.”

  Marcus’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but finally, and without taking his steely glare off Shepherd, he nodded for me to answer.

  I tugged at the gray scrub top I’d been given, uncomfortable with how emotional I felt at the mention of Maks and how much I was afraid my voice would break as I spoke about him. I decided to keep it as simple and short as possible. “He’s a business associate.”

  Shepherd cocked an eyebrow. “A business associate?”

  “Yes.”

  Shepherd scratched his chin, which was clearly showing a five o’clock shadow. “You two seemed pretty chummy for business associates.”

  “Well, I can’t really speak to what you find chummy, Detective,” I said. “For all I know, you weren’t hugged enough as a child and as an adult you find a handshake promiscuous.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marcus duck his chin and clear his throat as a cover for the chuckle that had started to escape him.

  Shepherd, on the other hand, was staring at me with surprise. Good. I liked that I’d rattled him, if only a little.

  “Do you normally dance with your business associates?” Shepherd said next.

  “Only if they’re good dancers,” I replied, and then I remembered that I’d forgotten to look to Marcus, but he covered another laugh and sat back in his seat as if he were enjoying this.

  Shepherd tapped his finger on the table. “What business do the two of you have in common, exactly?”

  I looked at Marcus, and he nodded. “The gentleman I was about to have dinner with is interested in available office space in the building I own here in town. At least, he was interested before you showed up to ruin our evening.”

  “Yeah,” Shepherd said, “he did look pretty interested.”

  I glared at him, and he glared back. “Are you insinuating something, Detective?” I said icily.

  “Nope,” he replied. “Well, maybe. I just find it curious that you’re dating so soon after your divorce, Catherine.”