Lance claimed to be working on this idea, and she worried anytime he grew serious about business matters. She knew he smuggled dope, but it was just pot and hash from Mexico and there was little risk. They needed the income, and she liked him out of the house occasionally.
She didn't hate Patrick, not the dead one anyway. She just hated the fact that he wasn't dead, that he had been resurrected and was back to complicate things. She'd first met him at a party in New Orleans, during a period of time when she was pouting with Lance and looking for another husband, preferably one with money and promise. She was twenty-seven, four years out of a bad marriage and restless for stability. He was thirty-three, still single and ready to settle down. He had just accepted a job with a nice firm in Biloxi, which was where she happened to be living at the time. After four months of nonstop passion, they were married in Jamaica. Three weeks after the honeymoon, Lance sneaked into their new apartment and spent the night while Patrick was away on business.
She couldn't lose the money, that was for certain. Her lawyer would simply have to do something, find some loophole which would allow her to keep it. That's what he got paid to do. Surely the insurance company couldn't get the house, the furniture and cars and clothes, the bank accounts, the boat, the fabulous things she'd bought with the money. It just didn't seem fair. Patrick had died. She'd buried him. She'd been a widow now for over four years. That must count for something.
It wasn't her fault he was alive.
"We'll have to kill him, you know," Lance said in the semidarkness. He had moved to a cushioned chair between the bed and the window, his bare feet draped over an ottoman.
She didn't move, didn't flinch in the smallest way, but thought about it for a second before saying, "Don't be stupid." This she offered with little conviction.
"There is no alternative, you know that."
"We're in enough trouble."
She only breathed, her wrist still stuck to her forehead, eyes closed, perfectly still, and actually quite happy that Lance had broached the subject. She, of course, had thought about this within minutes of being told that Patrick was headed home. She had walked through various scenarios, each leading to the same inescapable conclusion: to keep the money, Patrick must be dead. It was, after all, an insurance policy on his life.
She couldn't kill him; that was a ridiculous notion. Lance, on the other hand, had lots of shadowy friends in dark places.
"You wanna keep the money, don't you?" he asked.
"I can't think about it now, Lance. Maybe later." Perhaps real soon. She couldn't seem eager or Lance would get too excited. As usual, she would manipulate him, string him along into some devilish plot until it was too late for him to back out.
"We can't wait too long, baby. Hell, the life insurance company's already got us choked."
"Please, Lance."
"There ain't no way around it. You wanna keep this house, the money, everything we've got, then he's gotta die."
She didn't speak or move for a long time, but his words delighted her soul. In spite of half a brain and many other flaws, Lance was the only man she'd ever loved. He was nasty enough to take care of Patrick, but was he smart enough not to get caught?
THE AGENT'S NAME was Brent Myers, from the office in Biloxi, sent by Cutter to make contact with their prize. He introduced himself and flashed a badge at Patrick, who hardly acknowledged it while reaching for the remote. "A pleasure," he said as he pulled the sheets over his boxer shorts.
"I'm from the office in Biloxi," Myers said, genuinely trying to be nice.
"Where's that?" Patrick asked, poker-faced.
"Yes, well, I thought we should meet and get to know each other. We'll be spending some time together during the next few months."
"Don't be so sure of that."
"Do you have a lawyer?"
"Not yet."
"Do you plan to hire one?"
"Absolutely none of your business."
Myers was obviously no match for a seasoned lawyer like Lanigan. He placed his hands on the railing across the foot of the bed, and stared at Patrick with his best effort at intimidation. "Doc says you might be ready to transport in two days," he said.
"So. I'm ready now."
"There's quite a party waiting on you in Biloxi."
"I've been watching," Patrick said, nodding at the television.
"Don't suppose you'd want to answer some questions."
Patrick snorted his contempt at this ludicrous suggestion.
"Didn't think so," Myers said, and took a step for the door. "Anyway, I'll be escorting you home." He tossed a card on the sheets. "Here's my hotel number, in case you want to talk."
"Don't sit by the phone."
Chapter 10
SANDYMcDERMOTT had read with great interest the news accounts of the amazing discovery of his old pal from law school. He and Patrick had studied and partied together for three years at Tulane. They had clerked for the same Judge after they passed the bar exam, and they had spent many hours in their favorite pub on St. Charles plotting their assault upon the legal world. They would build a firm together-a small but powerful firm of hard-charging trial lawyers with impeccable ethics. They would get rich in the process, and they would donate ten hours a month to clients who couldn't afford to pay. It was all planned. Life intervened. Sandy took a job as an assistant federal prosecutor, primarily because the pay was good and he was a newlywed. Patrick got lost in a firm with two hundred lawyers in downtown New Orleans. Marriage eluded him because he worked eighty hours a week.
Their plans for their perfect little firm lasted until they were about thirty. They tried to meet for a quick lunch or a drink whenever possible, though the meetings and the phone calls happened less frequently as the years passed. Then Patrick escaped to a calmer life in Biloxi, and they hardly spoke once a year.
Sandy's big break in the suing game came when the friend of a cousin was maimed on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf. He borrowed ten thousand dollars, opened his own shop, sued Exxon and collected close to three million dollars, one third of which he kept. He was in business. Without Patrick, he built a nice little firm of three lawyers whose specialty was offshore injuries and deaths.
When Patrick died, Sandy actually sat down with his calendar and determined that it had been nine months since he'd talked to his buddy. Of course he felt lousy about this, but he was also realistic. Like most college friends, they had simply gone their separate ways.
He sat with Trudy through the ordeal, and he helped carry the casket to the grave.
When the money disappeared six weeks later, and the gossip started, Sandy had laughed to himself and wished his buddy well. Run Patrick run, he'd thought many times over the past four years, and always with a smile.
Sandy's office was off Poydras Street, nine blocks from the Superdome, near the intersection of Magazine, in a beautiful nineteenth-century building he'd bought with an offshore settlement. He leased the second and third floors, and kept the bottom one for himself, his two partners, three paralegals, and half a dozen secretaries.
HE WAS VERY BUSY when his secretary entered his office with a grim face and said, "There's a lady here to see you."
"Does she have an appointment?" he asked, glancing at one of three daily-weekly-monthly planners on the edge of his desk.
"No. She says it's urgent. She's not leaving. It's about Patrick Lanigan."
He looked at her curiously. "She says she's a lawyer," the secretary said.