Was she a victim of blackmail?
Not a perpetrator, Mackenzie thought. That was beyond the realm of possibility. Bernadette was in the position to know other people’s secrets, but she didn’t have the temperament – or the skill – to act on them for her own profit.
And what would she have to hide?
Her friendship with Harris was out in the open. She’d had little to do with him in the five years since his public disgrace, but she hadn’t abandoned him entirely. Since he’d gone to the FBI, the blackmail, extortion, fraud and whatever else he’d been whispering about to Rook had a federal interest. Harris was a former judge. He would know. He wouldn’t need Bernadette’s advice. But he would want it anyway.
“Breaking and entering, Mac?”
She spun around at Rook’s voice. He was leaning in the study door, as if he’d been there awhile, his dark eyes leveled on her. She shrugged. “I’m here to feed the cat.”
“There is no cat.”
“I could have sworn Bernadette said she’d gotten a cat. I have a key.” She held it up for him to see. “We seem to be on the same wavelength this morning.”
“I stopped to see if Cal was here.”
“He’s not. Did you check his office?”
“He didn’t go in. He told his assistant he had a client emergency. He doesn’t answer his cell phone.”
“Is T.J. with you?”
“No.”
Rook’s mood was difficult to read. Mackenzie glanced around the study, which was dominated by Bernadette’s surprisingly simple desk. She had an ergonomically correct chair and glass-front bookcases that ran along an entire wall. Law texts and art history picture books were shoved in among paperback Regency romances she read for relaxation, and bird books, hiking books.
Several photo albums were scattered on the floor in front of one of the bookcases. Mackenzie squatted down and opened one to pictures of Bernadette and Harris at the lake.
“Those were taken awhile ago,” Rook said, standing over Mackenzie.
She looked up at him. “You FBI types must get more training in being stealthy.”
“It’s not that difficult when someone’s preoccupied.”
“I remember this visit,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “It was the summer between my junior and senior years in college. I had a part-time internship at a local museum and a job cleaning rooms at one of the inns in town. Bernadette had my parents and me over for dinner, and I remember how fascinated I was listening to her and Harris talk. He’s a smart man.”
“Judge Peacham must have been devastated when he let it all get away from him.”
“She was.” Mackenzie shut the album and rose, feeling the stiffness of the healing cut in her side. So many questions would be answered by now if she’d been able to hang on to her attacker. “She worried he’d commit suicide in the beginning. I was here once when he called her. It was right after the scandal broke. I was in graduate school – I was down here for research, Harris was drunk, angry at himself at having been exposed. He couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong, legally or ethically. Beanie convinced him to tell her where he was.”
“Where?”
“A rooming house. It was some kind of secret hideout for him. He’d go there and indulge his dark side, I guess. I went with Beanie to collect him. She dropped him off at his house in Georgetown and gave him an ultimatum – never again.”
Rook glanced down at the shut album. “Did she keep that promise?”
“As far as I know.” Mackenzie stepped past him, but turned as she reached the door. “Would you like to check out the rooming house? I hadn’t thought of it until now. I don’t know if Harris still uses it.”
“Can you find it?”
“I think so. If I can’t, I can call Beanie. She’ll remember where it is.”
Rook considered a moment. Outside, Bernadette’s tall shade trees swayed in the wind, and rain lashed the windows. Finally, he said, “We’ll take my car.”
Mackenzie nodded. “All right.” As she started out of the study, she smiled back at him. “Try not to let the cat out when we leave.”
She thought he might have cracked a smile, but she wasn’t sure, which, she realized, was part of the fun of being around him. But she couldn’t think in those terms right now. She had to focus on the job at hand.
“He took the place for a month.” The superintendent, a wiry, middle-aged man with sparse tufts of close-cropped hair, had led Rook and Mackenzie to an ell off the rundown building. “That’s the most he ever takes it for. He comes and goes. He don’t call himself Harris Mayer, though. Harry Morrison. Pays in cash.”
Rook stood on the sidewalk behind the super. The rain had stopped, but thunder still rumbled in the distance. “When did you see him last?”