Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Dawes’s eyebrows shaded his watery-blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Jennifer. But if you had a specific preference, you should have made it known via the mentorship paperwork. We certainly would have taken that into consideration.”

  “Mentorship paperwork? What mentorship paperwork?”

  A fleshy crease appeared between Dawes’s thick brows. “You should have received it several weeks ago. Judy sent it to the address on file.”

  And then I understood exactly what happened.

  Judy.

  The firm’s legal assistant/receptionist/desk troll. Somewhere between a hard-worn forty or a very young sixty-five, Judy’s hobbies included scowling, knitting, and misplacing documents I’d left with her to copy. She also had this cute habit of double-booking me for appointments and writing down the wrong numbers on my phone messages.

  “I never received any mentorship paperwork,” I said.

  “I apologize for the oversight, Jennifer, but mentorship assignments have already been proposed and accepted for the remainder of the quarter. Of course, if you’re dissatisfied with your assignment for any reason, we can always consider a change for the next quarter.”

  “When do I find out who I’ve been assigned to?”

  “You mean you didn’t receive a call from Judy about that either?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Very odd,” Dawes said. “She must have misplaced your number. Anyway, you’ve been assigned to Sam Shook. Valentine seemed to think you’d have a lot to learn from him. Just as he thought Melanie could learn a lot from Kristin Flickner.”

  “Wait. Melanie Beidermeyer is shadowing Kristin Flickner?”

  “And a good decision it was too. They seem to be getting along famously.”

  We both glanced across the room, where Melanie was treating Kristin to a girly giggle while clutching her forearm like an old friend.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Famously.”

  “Well, I’d better be getting back to my office. You be sure and let me know if there’s anything at all I can do for you, Jennifer.”

  I snagged him by the Armani suit sleeve before he could slide away. “Would you mind if I asked you what in particular made Valentine think I’d be a good match for Sam Shook? I mean, it’s nothing personal, but I guess I was hoping for someone a little more . . . dynamic.”

  “Dynamic how?” Dawes asked.

  “You know. Someone ambitious. Someone charismatic. Someone—” It was Dawes’s smile that tipped me off. That, and the sound of someone clearing his throat right above my shoulder. “Who’s not standing right behind me.”

  Fuckola.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just leave you two to get better acquainted.” Dawes grinned, revealing enough poppy seeds in his teeth to plant an entire field. A fact I chose not to mention just like he’d chosen not mention that Sam Shook had been hovering over my shoulder. Dawes turned to leave. “Good to see you, Sam.”

  “Good to see you too, Gary.” His voice was melodic. Lilting. Ever so slightly accented. The r becoming a soft, silky d the way Shook pronounced it. English may not have been his first language, but I had a feeling he’d speak it far better than I did.

  “Miss Avery, would you care to accompany me to my office?”

  I took my time setting down my bagel plate, delaying the moment when I had to face Shook as long as humanly possible. Not that an extra ten seconds was likely to arm me with the right crowbar of words to extract my own foot from my esophagus, but hey. Every little bit would help.

  I turned.

  I smiled.

  I died a little.

  Shook was sort of beautiful.

  And by “sort of” I meant ridiculously, devastatingly, insanely, and pretty much any other adverb which at any point had been used to describe the degree of a romance-novel hero’s retina-scorching comeliness.

  What he lacked in Shepard’s rugged masculinity and Valentine’s gritty danger, he made up for in finely calibrated allure. Dark, intelligent eyes. The skin below them ever so slightly darker than the rest of his face, which borrowed the color of milky tea with honey. His fine, straight nose brought to mind words like aquiline and patrician. Worst of all, a sweet, sensitive smile. Rightly, he should be giving me a thorough stink eye for what I’d just said.

  “Of course.” I nodded with the enthusiasm of a bobblehead doll.

  I followed him out of the conference room and down the richly wood-paneled hall, fascinated by the way he walked. Silently, and with infinite grace. More like a ninja than a lawyer.

  In the small corner office, he closed the door behind us and gestured to one of the armchairs across from his desk.

  “Please. Make yourself comfortable.” He shrugged out of his blazer and hung it on a hook on the back of his door. “Would you care for some coffee?” The long, slender vessel in his hand gleamed like an outsize bullet.

  “No, thank you. I’m good,” I said, the taste and texture of bitter coffee grounds still fresh in my memory.

  “Are you certain?” Steam curled from the thermos’s mouth as he decanted the contents into a coffee mug. A mug I couldn’t help but notice had a handle like the butt of an AK-47 and the Walking Dead logo emblazoned on one side.

  “I bring this from home. I find myself unable to drink what is provided at the community urn.”

  “In that case, I’d love some.”

  “Splendid.” Shook retrieved a Styrofoam cup from the water cooler next to the file cabinet and shared it out.

  “Thank you.” I blew on the steaming liquid while examining the many, many framed diplomas wallpapering Sam Shook’s office.

  His name, as it turned out, wasn’t Sam Shook at all, but Sahem Ashook, and he had not only a JD, but a PhD in psychology, a master’s in applied physics, and a couple of bachelor’s degrees in art history and the humanities. Just for fun, I guessed.

  “You don’t have to lie, you know,” Shook said.

  As openers go, this one was enough to drain the blood from my face like water flushed from a toilet.

  Clearly we had a lot to learn about each other.

  “What I mean is,” he continued, “it’s all right that you would have preferred Kristin to mentor you. She’s an excellent lawyer with experience in areas that might be of greater interest to you than mine.”

  Shook had clearly spent time coaching all traces of an accent from his voice, and had succeeded, but for the subtle caress of tongue against palate when it came to his r’s.

  “No, it’s not that—”

  He raised one dark eyebrow, and suddenly I found myself saying, “Okay, it is that. But it’s nothing personal. At least, nothing personal to do with you.”

  Why the shit was I telling him this?

  I began to wonder if this eyebrow thing was some kind of East Indian Jedi mind trick that rendered me incapable of lying.

  Me, incapable of lying. Now there was a horrifying thought.

  “You don’t owe me any explanations, Miss Avery.”

  “Please, call me Jane.” Because Miss Avery usually meant I was about to be on the receiving end of a lecture.

  “You don’t owe me any explanations, Jane. Nevertheless, I did agree to be your mentor, and I do think our partnership could be beneficial to you.”

  “So does Archard Everett Valentine, apparently. Don’t tell me you’re his best buddy as well.”

  “On the contrary.” Sam matched the tips of his long, elegant fingers below his chin. “I’m his divorce lawyer.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sound of a needle scratching violently off a record echoed in my mind. “Mr. Shook—”

  “If I am to call you Jane, you must call me Sam.”

  “Sam, when I was looking at potential law firms to apply to for internships last year, I specifically chose Dawes, Shook, and Flickner because it didn’t handle divorces.”

  “Normally this is true. But as a relatively new partner, it is in my best interest to do whatever Gary Dawes would lik
e me to do, and as you mentioned, Gary is close friends with Valentine.”

  “But Kristin Flickner is an even newer partner than you are. Do you mind if I ask why it is you ended up with this particular honor?”

  “I practiced divorce law for a time before I left Chennai.” He took a long sip from the zombie mug, consulting the bottom like he might be reading coffee grounds instead of tea leaves. “Also Kristin declined to represent him based on a conflict of interest.” Despite the pause, Shook’s face gave no indication he knew that the “interest” in question was Valentine pouring Kristin the pork.

  Within the pocket of my not Antonio Melani blazer, my cell phone announced I had a text message. I quickly pulled it out and glanced at it, a little pop of adrenaline sizzling through my nerves when I saw Shepard’s name on the screen.

  What the fuck are u doing in Shook’s office? U were supposed to text me before u left the conference room.

  Shit.

  Yesterday—a long, newsless Sunday I’d spent utterly alone in Shepard’s safe house apartment—he’d called me to work out an elaborate code that would allow him to track my every move while I was inside the building. I was supposed to text him any time I changed location in the office. Naturally I’d managed to cock it up already. My question—how the hell did he know I wasn’t still in the conference room?

  How the hell did you know I wasn’t still in the conference room?

  “We can always talk later if you are otherwise engaged.”

  “What?” I glanced up to see Sam looking at my phone, his head inclined at a patient angle that filled me with instant guilt. “No. I just got a message from my building super about a potential invasion of naked mole rats in the basement.” Lie. “I hear it’s been an ugly one so far. Valentine’s divorce.” Not that I expected Sam to part with much information, but I figured a little nudge couldn’t hurt.

  “In that, you are correct.” Sam smiled solicitously as my phone buzzed again in my lap.

  I glanced down.

  I can see u.

  Now, there were several problems with this revelation, not even counting his insistence on abbreviating the word you.

  The first: Sam Shook’s office was on the fifth floor of the building, meaning there was no way Shepard could be watching us from the street. The second: the office’s only window faced the building opposite across a two-way, six-lane main drag—too far away for me to make anyone or anything out with the naked eye. Which led me to problem number three: Shepard had to be watching me through some sort of high-powered scope. This thought should have been more alarming than it was erotic.

  Should have.

  A third text message arrived as I was composing a hurried reply.

  Nice blouse. New?

  I leaned an elbow on Sam’s desk and conspicuously scratched my hair with my middle finger.

  Fucker.

  He knew damn well I’d had to rely on the new set of clothes dropped off by one of his random, black-clothed minions to replace the stuff he’d swiped from my duffel bag.

  What had he given me?

  A tight black pencil skirt and a blouse on which I had to leave the top two buttons undone lest my boobs bust them open Hulk Hogan–style. Also—and this was the thing that really chafed my cheeks—orthopedic flats. The kind worn exclusively by schoolteachers and church ladies with wicked corns.

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to talk another time? You seem most preoccupied.”

  “I apologize. It’s been a stressful weekend.” I took another swig of coffee and set my phone facedown on the desk. “About Valentine, though. I’ve only met the guy twice, but he seems like a piece of work.”

  Somewhere deep inside my brain, a little voice pointed out that on both occasions, my own behavior hadn’t exactly been nonprovoking. What with the kidnapping and the cocktail crashing. So like any reasonable adult, I mentally duct-taped the little voice’s mouth shut.

  “And what makes you say this?” Sam asked.

  “He hates orphans. He said so himself.”

  Big, fat lie.

  And not even a good one. But better than admitting Valentine had asked for my panties, or worse, that I had ponied them up.

  “Luckily, his feelings with regard to parentless children are not a prominent factor in these divorce proceedings.”

  Bzzz.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Let me just turn this off.” I picked up the phone and peeked at the text message.

  Calling it now. Five years and homeboy’s going to be bald on top.

  How can you even know that? I hastily typed back.

  Shepard’s response pinged back instantly.

  No way could I get a headshot in with that glare.

  Headshot.

  I hadn’t asked specifically what Shepard had done in the army, and now I felt quite certain I didn’t want to know.

  Sniper. Try as I might, I couldn’t put the word back on the shelf now that it had tumbled into my brain. I made a show of turning the phone off and putting it back in my pocket. “I imagine the whole nose candy and whore thing is a factor.”

  “You mustn’t believe everything you read in the tabloids, Jane.” Sam gave me a gently censorious look.

  And as he said this, I knew why I had brought the extracurricular activities up.

  Because I didn’t believe them.

  Despite Valentine’s hammered-shit appearance and postured bad-boy aura, there was something about him that didn’t gel with the whole paid-sex-and-stimulants vibe. Not class, exactly, but something deeper. Something darker and profoundly mysterious.

  “Whatever else may be said about Valentine, he is startlingly generous.” Sam toyed with a sleek black pen that probably cost more than my entire outfit, dexterously twirling it down his fingers like a baton.

  “Oh?” I lobbed the single syllable over the desk like a shuttlecock, waiting to see if he’d swing.

  Whether Sam knew it or not, this was a formative moment in our relationship. One where I got to determine how much information he was willing to part with, and how hard I’d have to work for it. When he leaned in with a sly, conspiratorial little smile, I nearly crushed my Styrofoam cup in the effort of not doing a spontaneous tap dance complete with jazz hands.

  Sahem Ashook liked to gossip.

  “He offered a complete fifty-fifty split of the financial and physical assets in addition to alimony and ownership of their summer home in Seattle and the Denver penthouse apartment. But his soon-to-be ex-wife believes she is entitled to roughly seventy-five percent of the monetary assets as well as sole ownership of the physical assets and all property accrued during the marriage as compensation for Valentine’s alleged mental cruelty and verbal abuse.”

  Never was there a lawyer born who didn’t pronounce the word alleged with special fondness.

  “You sure as hell have your work cut out for you on this one.”

  “We have our work cut out for us. I thought you might assist me in deposing Mr. Valentine’s character witnesses today.”

  I sat up in my chair like an Airedale catching the scent of fox musk. The day had become a hell of a lot more interesting all of the sudden.

  “I’d be happy to assist,” I said.

  “Splendid. If you would be kind enough to meet me in the Woodshed at a quarter till ten, we’ll go over who we’re expecting and their relationship to Valentine before the first one arrives.”

  “The Woodshed?”

  “This is the nickname I gave to the small conference room next to Dawes’s office. He likes to avail himself of it for the many ‘motivational one-on-ones’ I seem to have a talent for earning.”

  “Sahem Ashook,” I said, reaching across the desk to shake his hand, “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

  His grip was strong and warm from his coffee cup but not as smooth as I’d expected it to be. It left me wondering if he might also be a master carpenter in addition to all the various and sundry specialties declared by the paper on
his walls.

  “Jane Avery, I believe you are correct.”

  I had begun to think of them as the Not-So-Magnificent Six.

  The Prostitute. The Burglar. The Gardener. The Cook. The Teacher. The Therapist.

  Valentine’s very own wildly dysfunctional Justice League of character witnesses, and each one of them more disastrous than the last.

  By the fifth witness in, Sam looked like he wanted to throw himself out the window. Luckily for him and for me, there were no windows. That this setup drove Shepard certifiably batshit crazy was just an added bonus.

  My self-declared bodyguard had insisted that I reschedule the meeting for somewhere he could keep an eye on me, but I politely declined. Politely meant suggesting several ways in which he could apply his donkey dick to his own person.

  He’d responded by checking in with me approximately seventy-two times while I sat through interview after interview, frantically noting down things about Valentine that proved as interesting to me as they were useless to Sam.

  For example:

  From Rhonda Betts (bleached blonde, sooty eyed), lifelong working girl: “Abusive? Hell naw. I mean, he liked to do butt stuff sometimes, but he paid extra for that.”

  Here, Sam had shot his cuffs and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

  From Jeremy Blivens (balding, rat faced), childhood friend of Valentine and repeat guest of the state penitentiary: “When we was kids, Val was the most honest thief I ever met. Anytime we were gearing up for a job, he was always the guy that tried to get in without busting a window. Destroy as little property as possible. Thoughtful guy, right?”

  Here, Sam had loosened the knot on his tie and unbuttoned his collar.

  From Jarek Kozlowski (whiskey bloomed, sun leathered), Valentine’s former topiary shaper and lawn mower: “Anytime he asks me to dig six-foot-deep hole on property, he gives me big tip.”

  Also from Rhonda, who came back for her purse: “Yeah, he always gave me his big tip too.”