Sleight of Hand

CHAPTER Twenty-Seven

Dana’s jaunt to the West Coast had played havoc with her business. She spent the weekend writing the reports she’d put aside to go on her wild-goose chase. On Monday, she testified in an insurance case. Minutes after she left the courtroom she’d received a call from an attorney representing a Baltimore Ravens running back who had been accused of beating up his girlfriend. Dana usually refused to represent batterers, but the player swore he was innocent and Dana believed him by the time she finished talking to him at his lawyer’s office.

After the meeting, Dana took the elevator to the garage under the attorney’s building. She was getting into her car when her cell phone rang.

“Cutler,” she answered as she slid behind the wheel.

“Hey, I’m glad I caught you. It’s Alice.”

Alice Forte was a divorce attorney who had hired Dana on several occasions.

“What’s up?” Dana asked.

“Marta Osgood was just here. She thinks Theodore is skimming from the business and hiding assets in an offshore account.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s possible. He is a slimeball.”

“Send me what you’ve got and I’ll get right on it.”

“Will do. Say, did that woman ever hire you?”

“What woman?”

“This was a week or so ago. She called me for a reference. I said you were pretty good when you were sober.”

Dana laughed. “Thanks a bunch. What was her name?”

“I can’t remember it.” Forte paused. “She had a French accent.”

Dana had started to put her key in the ignition but she stopped.

“Do you remember anything else about her?”

“Not really. She called me around ten last Thursday. She wanted to know if I would recommend you. I said you did a great job and had a terrific reputation, so she asked how she could get in touch. I gave her your number. That’s about it.”

“Was her name Margo Laurent?”

“Yeah, that’s it, Laurent! So did she hire you?”

“Yes, she did. Thanks for the referral,” Dana said, and ended the call.

Carrie Blair had called Alice and the Queen Anne Players last Thursday, so something must have happened on Wednesday or Thursday that prompted the calls. As Dana drove out of the parking garage she tried to remember what she’d been doing on those two days. Jake was away and she’d stayed home when she wasn’t working, so the triggering event had to be connected to one of her cases. There was a drug conspiracy case in federal court and a state vehicular homicide, but she’d finished most of her work in the criminal cases. She was investigating two divorces for Alice and one for another attorney. Then there were several cases for United Insurance.

Dana frowned. Whatever happened had to have happened on Wednesday, because she had slept most of Thursday. Wednesday night and early Thursday morning she’d worked on an insurance case but that couldn’t be it. The case was a big nothing. Lars Jorgenson was claiming that he’d been permanently injured in a car crash. He walked with a cane and had a quack for a doctor. The insurance company had dealt with this doctor before and they didn’t buy it, so Dana had camped outside Jorgenson’s apartment and had eventually photographed him jogging.

Then the crazy woman chased her!

That had to be it. Dana remembered taking pictures of Jorgenson jogging when this couple walked out of a condo. The woman had looked her way before screaming and running toward her. Dana had peeled out and had seen the woman stop in the middle of the street. Was the woman Carrie Blair? Had she been close enough to read Dana’s license plate? If she got the number, finding the owner would be easy for someone in law enforcement.

Dana sped home and raced down to her office. She had sent the photographs from the Jorgenson case to the insurance company, but she had a duplicate set in her file. Dana found the Jorgenson file and took out the photographs. She spread them across her desk and examined them with a magnifying glass.

It was Carrie Blair. Who was the man? If she could find him he might be able to tell her what was behind Blair’s scheme. She would have to blow up the photo so she could get a good look at the face of Carrie Blair’s companion.