Lawyer Trap

25





DAY FOUR–SEPTEMBER 8

THURSDAY EVENING


Teffinger worked his ass off all day until eight o’clock. He felt like a three-legged, broke-dick dog that someone had entered into a horse race, but wasn’t too tired to walk down the stairs to the parking garage and point the Tundra toward Davica’s house.

Come over tonight. I have something to show you.

That’s what she’d said this morning and the words hadn’t left him all day.

He’d pretty much dismissed her as a viable suspect in the murder of Angela Pfeiffer as soon as they found the second body. Now, with four, he couldn’t picture her involved even in his wildest scenarios. And he certainly couldn’t get a mental image of her cutting someone’s head off with a hacksaw, or gouging someone’s eyes out.

Men use hacksaws.

Not women like Davica.

When he arrived, Davica answered the door wearing only a thin long-sleeve white blouse with rolled-up cuffs, barely long enough to cover the top of her thighs. She must have just showered because her hair hung wet. An expensive fragrance floated around her. When she hugged him, he hugged her back.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she said.

“How could I not?”

Two steps into the atrium, he found what she wanted to show him. The four pieces of modern art that had been on the walls were gone. In their stead hung four of Teffinger’s paintings.

“You like them?” she asked. “Apparently they’re done by some local guy.”

Teffinger smiled and walked over to the closest one, a twelve-by-sixteen landscape, looking up a hill into a clump of Ponderosa pines, backlit by an early morning sky. “I painted that one at Lair of the Bear,” he said. “I remember the wind kicking up halfway through it and almost driving me nuts.”

“So it’s plein air then?”

He nodded.

“Right. I’m not good enough for fancy air. Look right here,” he said, indicating.

She obliged.

He pointed out a small bug imbedded in the paint.

“There’s your proof,” he said.

“Very impressive, a painting with protein. You don’t charge extra for those, I hope,” she said.

He nodded. “Afraid so. Five bucks each.” He studied the background and found another one. “To support my coffee addiction. How’d you find out that I paint?”

“I know lots of stuff about you.” She linked her arm through his and led him off. “Come on.”

They ended up taking a walk through the neighborhood, carrying plastic glasses of wine, as a bright orange Colorado sunset hung over the mountains. Teffinger had a few questions to ask and knew if he didn’t get to them soon, he never would. “Just out of curiosity, where do you get your legal work done?”

“I stay away from lawyers for the most part.”

“Smart move,” Teffinger said. “Have you ever used Hogan, Slate & Dover for anything?”

She nodded.

“A minor matter, a couple of years back.” Teffinger tried to not appear surprised. He didn’t really expect to find a connection. “Why? Are you going to pump them for secrets about me?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Do you happen to know Rachel Ringer, of that firm?”

“Not that I recall—I basically only dealt with one of the senior partners, Jacqueline Moore. Why?”

He swallowed.

“She’s one of the bodies we came across,” he said. “Actually, we found her buried under Angela Pfeiffer.”

She stopped and studied his face.

“You found her under Angela?”

He nodded.

She looked confused.

“That is so freaky.”

He agreed.

“So you only dealt with that other lawyer, what’s her name?”

“Jacqueline Moore,” she said.

“Right, Jacqueline Moore.”

“Even that was fairly brief,” she said. “She has a pretty abrasive personality.”

“Is that the only connection you have to Rachel Ringer that you can think of?”

“Right,” she said. “Except I wouldn’t call it a connection.”

Teffinger sipped the wine.

The sunset, so spectacular just a few minutes ago, was already losing its intensity.

“How about Catherine Carmichael?” he asked. “Do you know her or have you ever heard of her?”

“No.”

“She was also found at the site,” Teffinger said.

“The only one I know is Angela,” she said.

“Okay.”

In another ten minutes, it would be dark. Up ahead, a sprinkler oscillated, shooting onto the sidewalk at the end of every arc. Teffinger paused while Davica ran through it. “Come on,” she said. “You can do it.”

So he did.

When he caught up, he had one more question. “I don’t suppose that you or Angela were ever part of any cult or gang or anything like that,” he said.

She gave him a startled look.

“Teffinger, you come up with the weirdest questions, I swear,” she said. “No, we weren’t. Now I have a question for you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And what might that be?”

She stopped and put her arms around his neck.

“When we get back to my place, are you going to screw me silly, or what?”

“To be honest,” he said, “it’s about the only thing I’ve been thinking about all day. But I can’t.”

She made a face.

“You’re such a tease,” she said.

He got serious.

“Believe me, it’s worse for me than you.”

She slapped his ass.

“I doubt that,” she said.

When they got back to her house, she uncorked another bottle of wine and they sat in front of the fireplace and talked until midnight. Then Teffinger retreated to the spare bedroom and tossed for ten minutes before falling asleep.