Текст книги "The Opportunist"

Автор книги: Tarryn Fisher

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

It hurts so much to hear him say ‘wife.’ I know it shouldn’t, but it does.

“You can’t guilt me into defending that viper! Besides, Leah would never agree to it,” I shoot back at him, “there is a mutual hate between the two of us, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Leah will do what I tell her to do. I need your assurance that you will do everything in your power to help her.”

I feel a rush of adrenaline. I could take the case and loose on purpose! Yes! But, I know I would never. My days of toying with people’s lives are over. O.V.E.R.

“I can’t,” I am digging my fingernails into my thighs to keep from screaming.

“Yes, you can,” he says, placing both hands on my desk and leaning towards me. “You’re obsessed with your own success—always have been. Take it. Win the case, Olivia. You’ll be rich, famous…and I might even consider forgiving you.”

Forgiveness? I picture myself having dinner at their house; just me, Leah, Caleb and their kids…

I almost laugh out loud.

I glare at him. He’s still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. Red-head marrying, amnesia getting, bastard!

“I’ll see you in the boardroom at nine o’clock to let you know my decision,” I say, ending the conversation. He gives me a look I can’t decipher and he straightens up to leave.

“Make the right decision, Duchess,” he says before walking out the door.

“Duchess,” I snicker and I throw a stack of sticky notes in his wake.

I take exactly one hour and forty-five minutes to compose myself. The indescribable shock of seeing him after so many years has left me slumped in my chair like a discarded rag doll. I keep seeing the part where he turns around and I splatter coffee out of my nose.

I do breathing exercises. I tranquilize myself with thoughts of happy rainbows and ice cream, but the colors keep turning black and the ice cream melts into a dismal mess. When I have grasped onto some semblance of calm by stabbing a letter opener repeatedly into Leah’s case file, I head over to the boardroom.

“He is hot!” the secretary whispers to me as I pass her desk.  I feel my eye twitch.

“Oh, shut up.”

When I walk into the room, I see Leah first. How could I not? She is still surrounded by a halo of red hair. It seems brighter than four years ago, more vibrant. I wish I had listened to Dobson the rapist, that day in the rain and gone home, than none of this would be happening.

Caleb stands when I enter. Charming. Leah looks away. Bitter.

“Olivia,” Bernie says beaming at me. “I’d like you to meet Leah Smith and her husband Caleb Drake.”  We all shake hands and I take my seat across from them. Caleb who has his arm slung over the back of Leah’s chair, smiles at me like we’re old buds and then winks.

  So unfair.

Leah looks at me through her lashes and doesn’t even attempt to smile.

 “I’ve reviewed your case, Mrs. Drake—”

“Smith,” she corrects me.

“Right.  I pride myself on being honest, so I’m going to tell you upfront that the prosecution has an air tight case. ”

Caleb grunts a little at my mention of honesty. Leah looks green. I continue, despite the dirty looks Bernie is giving me. She thinks I’m going to scare them off and ruin the firm’s chance with the case. “They have witnesses that are willing to take the stand and testify that you had everything to do with doctoring the results of the drug, Prenavene.”

  I clasp my hands beneath my chin and watch Caleb squirm next to his filthy, disgusting wife.

“The current DA has the highest prosecution rate in the state of Florida. They are going to come after you for this with their guns pointed, do you understand that? Everything that you are, who your father was—it’s all going to come out in court. When they are done, there won’t be a lie left to expose.”

Leah stares at me blankly. I know I have scared her far worse than I should have. There are tears swimming in her eyes. I go in for the kill.

“You don’t always win,” I say, looking at her pointedly. She looks up at me, recognition fresh in her eyes. The room is quiet. Everyone is either aware that there is something going on or they are asleep. I don’t move my eyes from Leah.

“Can you help me?” she says, finally and I hear the desperate strain in her voice. I sit back in my chair.

This is something—my nemesis asking me for help. I knew karma would come for both of us but geez, it’s really kicking her ass. I have control of her life. I look at Caleb. I have control of his life too. I take my time answering her. Standing up, I walk with my hands clasped behind my back.

“I can.”

She seems to visually sag in relief. “What are you willing to do to be found innocent in this case?”  She was silent for a moment as she studied my face, the same way I was studying hers. Then, she leans forward in her seat, resting her bright red fingernails on the conference table like she is touching piano keys.

“Anything. I’ll do anything.” And as I sit there bound in a moment so frigidly tense I get goose bumps. I believe her. We are the same. Both of us are willing to barter with our souls to ensure our happiness. We’ve loved the same man. We’ve engaged in a dirty, tug-of-war to possess him, and we both have something to atone for.

I take the case. I will have to discredit their witnesses, demonize her father and paint Leah into the good person that she is not. I’m not doing this for my career—despite what Caleb thinks. I’m doing this for the time he pulled over and refused to keep driving until I sang along with “Achey, Breaky, Heart,” and for the time he kissed me on his bedroom floor while holding my hands above my head. I am doing this because he still calls me Duchess.

It’s the same guilty game I’ve been playing all along, to be near Caleb regardless of the circumstance or cost.

Caleb, Caleb, Caleb.

We end our meeting with plans for the next and we all make a big to-do about shaking hands. Bernie is big on shaking hands.  Afterwards, I rush to the bathroom and stick my hands underneath the scalding water until they turn bright red. I hate it that I had to touch her.  Bernie is waiting for me at my office.

“What was that about?” she snaps, which is very uncharacteristic of her.

“None of your business. I have the case and I’m going to win it, so back off.”

“That‘s my girl,” Bernie croons, and then she walks off without anything else from me.

Chapter Sixteen

 After nine months of preparation, the case goes to trial. One of the prosecution’s witnesses is male. When I cross examine him he gets angry at my accusation that he was jealous of Leah’s promotion, and calls her a spoiled bitch from the stand. The second of the witnesses was laid off by Leah’s father a few months into the clinical trials of Prenavene. I show the jury five separate letters the witness wrote to Leah’s father, first begging for her job back, and then threatening to destroy him in any way she could. The third witness was not at work the day she claims she saw Leah changing the trial results in the computer. I have a speeding ticket and a video of her auditioning for American Idol to prove it.

I am master of the façade; when Olivia the lawyer walks into the courtroom, she is poker faced and collected, a poster child for female equality and young strength. I am so good at pretending, that sometimes I lose track of who I really am.  In the evenings after court, I unravel my bun, run my fingers though my hair and walk down to the ocean to cry (Yes, I am still melodramatic). I wish that my mom was still alive. I wish that—

Caleb is in the courtroom every single day. I am forced to see him, smell him, interact with him…

He still spins his thumb ring. I notice that he does it most when I am talking. He’s waiting for me to do something crazy and irrational, I know. But, I am in control, I have a job to do and no, it’s not about winning the case for me anymore. It’s about him and my atonement.

My witnesses take the stand one by one, and my case builds muscle. I handpicked the desperate—the people who have the most to lose if Leah loses, the retiree’s that will not see their pension, the young chemists who are just beginning to propel their careers.

Leah watches me through narrowed snake eyes as I carefully clip the strings of incrimination from around her. Sometimes I swear I see admiration there, too.

On my birthday, I am early to the courtroom because there are some things I want to go over before the trial starts. Caleb is sitting in his usual spot without Leah.

“Happy Birthday,” he says as I snap open my briefcase.

“I’m surprised you remembered,” I say, not looking at him.

“Why is that?”

“Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”

“I never forgot you,” he says, and it looks as if he’s about to say something else, but then the prosecutor walks in and he clamps his mouth shut.

By week nine of the trial, I have called seven witnesses to the stand. Out of the thirty employees who worked under my client to formulate Prenavene, only seven are willing to come forward and testify on her behalf. Of those seven, are three whose loyalties to her are unwavering and four I manipulated onto the stand.

I take what I can get and spin their testimonies to my advantage. When the prosecutor places his witnesses on the stand, I discredit them. A woman has lost her husband to a heart attack, brought on by the premature launching of Prenavene. I showcase her husband’s pre-existing heart condition and his unhealthy diet. A Veteran has hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills due to his treatment, after the drug ate through his liver and he needed a transplant. I bring to light his alcohol addiction which destroyed his liver long before Prenavene had a go at it.

We paste the weight of the blame onto her father, who cannot suffer the consequences from his grave. It grieves her to do this, to tarnish his name, but I remind her that if he were alive, he would be sitting where she is and would have gladly taken the fall for his little girl.

Leah takes the stand last. We contemplate not putting her up there at all, but decide it necessary for the jury to hear her sweet voice and look into her terrified eyes. She plays vulnerable well.

“Were you aware, when you signed the release forms, Mrs. Smith, that it was not Prenavene that was handed over to the FDA, but in fact it’s non-generic version-Paxcilvan?” I stand slightly to her left, my eyes reminding her to remember how to answer the questions, which we had rehearsed a dozen times.

“No, I was not.” She raises a pink tissue to her inflamed nostrils and blows gently. I look at the jury out of the corner of my eye. They are watching her carefully, probably wondering if she was capable of such deceit—this delicate girl in her lavender dress. I remember the time in my apartment when she was blowing smoke from her crimson lips, her eyes lined in black kohl.  She is capable, I tell them in my mind, of that and so much more.

“What did your father, the late Mr. Smith,” I say looking at the jury, “tell you that you were signing?”

“Releases,” she admits weakly.

“And did you read these releases before adding your signature to the page? Did you observe the results yourself in the lab?”

“No,” she looks at her lap and sniffles, “I trusted my father. If he needed my signature, I gave it to him without question.”

“Do you believe that your father was aware of the inaccurate results of the testing of the drug Prenavene that was in those documents?” This was it—the hard part. I see Leah struggling with herself, trying to coerce the words from her lips. It made it all the more believable to the jury, her hesitancy to badmouth her daddy.

“Yes, I think he was aware,” she says looking directly at me. Tears are pooling in her eyes. Cry them out, I will her with my mind, let them see how destroyed you are over this. Her tears gush down her cheeks and I see her again standing on my doorstep the night Caleb was at my apartment for dinner. Manipulation tears.

“Ms. Smith,” I say finally giving her a second to compose herself, “do you have anything to say to the families of the victims of this drug—the families who lost their loved ones due to the deceitful, careless behavior of OPI-gem?”

“Yes.” At this point she breaks down, hugging herself and sobbing, her tears dripping from her face into her lap.  “I am so sorry. I am disgusted and deeply remorseful at the fact that I took part in their deaths. I would do anything to change what happened. I want them to know that I recognize that my apology is worthless, that it will never bring mothers and fathers and daughters and sons back, but that I will see their faces till the day I die. I am sorry,” her hands come up and cradle her face.  Bravo.

 I breathe a sigh of relief. She did it—she pulled it off.

“Thank you, Ms. Smith. That will be all Your Honor.”

The prosecutor cross-examines Leah next.  She stands firm. She plays dumb so well. I silently applaud her wide-eyed terror.

When she walks down from the stand and takes her seat, our eyes meet in a knowingness that transcends a normal lawyer/client relationship. Did I lie okay? Her lashes ask me. Am I being soft enough to convince the jury? Her mouth pouts.

You are a gifted actress. I say with a flick of my eyes. And I hate you.

I turn in my seat to look at Caleb. He is looking at me and not his wife. He acknowledges the success with a tight lipped nod of his head.

We break from trial on the first of September. In the morning Leah’s verdict will be read. I am a mess. I am lounging around in my condo. It is dark outside and I can see a few twinkling boat lights creeping along the ocean’s surface. I haven’t washed my hair since yesterday and I am wearing sweats and an old t-shirt when the doorbell rings. Funny. Usually if I have a guest, the front desk will call up before opening the elevator. I plod to the door in my socks and open it without looking through the peephole which is a very bad habit. Caleb is standing in my doorway in a wrinkled suit, with a bottle of wine in one hand and a greasy bag of take-out in the other. I let him in without a word. I am not surprised, I am not mortified. I am Olivia and he is Caleb.

He follows me to the kitchen and he lets out a low whistle when he sees my view. I grin and toss him a corkscrew for the wine. He opens the cork, while I go to the cabinet for two glasses. I start carrying everything to the table, but he points to my balcony. It faces the ocean and the only way to get there is by walking through my bedroom.

We carry everything outside and sit at the wrought iron table that has never been used. He brought sushi. We prop our feet up and eat in silence, watching the waves lick at the sand. There is a heaviness between us, but isn’t there always?  After tomorrow there will be no more excuse to see each other and though we have not said much on a personal level, there have been looks exchanged, small words…

I am so tired of this cycle, this constant struggle to breathe the same air as him. I look over and see that he is watching me.

“What?”

“Don’t marry Turner.”

“Pfffff,” I say. “Why do you hate him so much?”

Caleb shrugs and looks away. “He’s not your type.”

“Really,” I mock. “What do you know anyway? You have terrible taste.”

We sit in silence for another few minutes, and then he says, “If you’ve never trusted me on anything, trust me on this.”

 I sigh, and change the subject.

“Remember our tree?”

“Yea, I remember,” he says softly.

“They cut it down.”

His head snaps over to look at me.

“I’m just kidding,” I giggle.

He smiles and shakes his head.

“What difference would it have made? Our whole relationship was cut down,” he grins, but it is a bitter grin.

“Put through the grinder,” I remark.

“Pulverized,” he adds.

He leaves after that. Hours after he’s gone, I can still smell him in my halls. My condo feels cold and empty without him. I would give it all up, the money, the fancy job, the condo….I could live in squalor with him and be happy. I think. Why didn’t I realize that before? Before, I screwed it all up. I can’t sleep, so I sit on the couch and stare at the ocean. I am still sitting there when the sun rises. I get ready for court, make myself some coffee, and walk out my door. Today is the last day.

We win the case.

Leah is found not guilty of falsifying documents, not guilty of clinical trial fraud, and guilty of ethical misconduct of responsibilities. She pays a fine of one million dollars for the latter and is sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. I am not celebratory. I could have put that bitch in prison and stolen her husband.

The victory dinner is held at a posh restaurant in South Beach. I am extricating myself from a handful of well-wishers when I spot her sashaying over to me. I eye her sexy black dress with distaste. She is so polished and coiffed, she looks like a magazine cutout. I am wearing a simple, cream sheath dress. She is the Devil tonight and I am the Angel.

“Olivia,” she purrs, sauntering up with a glass of wine in her hand, “cheers to our win. It was all very well done.” She clinks her glass with mine and I smile tightly.

  “Thank you?”

“I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand why you did it. You saved me. Unless, it’s because he asked you to.”

As if on cue, we both look over at Caleb, who is laughing and chatting with a group of friends.

“It must have been very hard for you to be around him.” She is watching him, possessively.  I am struck by how much I miss hearing his laughter. It rips me to my core, that he belongs in her life and not mine.

“He’s not the kind of man a woman can easily forget,” she continues sweetly, and if I wasn’t the type of girl that played her game, I would have thought her sincere.

“No, he’s not,” I admit freely.

“You watch him all the time—I see you do it, Olivia.”

I look at her bored. She is playing games with someone who knows how to play them better.

“Does he look at you, the way I look at him?” I ask casually.  Ahh, there it is—the ill-disguised anger.

And, by the look on her face, I know I’ve struck a nerve. She opens her mouth to say something but I hold up a hand.

 “Leah, go be with your husband,” I say, “before he realizes that he’s still in love with me.”

And as if right on cue, Caleb turns to look at me, not at his wife—at me. Our eyes lock for the briefest of seconds, Caleb’s and mine, amber and blue.  Leah witnesses our exchange and though she remains the epitome of decorum and class, I see a whiteness appear around her lips. Her anger rolls toward me, though what I feel coming from him pushes it away.  He is longing, as am I.  I garner what remains of my self-control and tell myself the truth: Not mine, not ever.

I set my wine down on the nearest table and walk quickly out of their lives. Some things were better left alone.

The following morning I turn on the TV only to see a familiar mug shot.  I squint at the picture and groan when I hear the name.

“Dobson Scott Orchard was detained by police at the Miami airport last night trying to board a plane to Toronto.  Police have taken him into custody where accused rapist is being questioned. Among his victims are seven women whose ages range from seventeen to thirty. Five of them have come forward and positively identified him as the man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted them. Police are urging anyone else victimized to step forward at this time…”

The camera then shifts to a picture of Laura Hidleson, naming her as Dobson’s first victim. I wave at her picture and shut off the TV.  Life is all about choices, I decide—good ones, bad ones, selfish ones. But, it seems the safest one I ever made was not walking underneath his umbrella, the day I ran into Caleb.

Chapter Seventeen

Turner decided to move to Florida after I won the case.  He sold his house in Grapevine, bought a new wardrobe of pastel oxfords, and traded his Lexus for a shiny, yellow corvette. I feel invaded when I come home one day and find my living room filled with his neatly labeled boxes. Downstairs Closet, Game Room, Office, they proclaim in handwriting that I know must be his mother’s. I wander through the maze of Turner’s belongings and hope that he doesn’t plan on unpacking them here. I have no room for dartboards and autographed pictures of Diego Maradona.  We argue about it for a week and eventually he agrees to put his belongings in storage. With the boxes gone, I work on adjusting to my new ‘live in’ who patrols the hallways of my condo in white jockeys, singing show tunes in a Texan drawl. My fridge is filled with beer and salsa, and for some wild reason this annoys me more than the piles of dirty laundry that I find tossed around the house.

One morning I wake up to find the words ‘You’re Hot’ scrawled on my bathroom mirror in lipstick. I grit my teeth throwing away the destroyed fifty dollar tube of Wine Gum and then spend ten next minutes scrubbing away the residue with vinegar. When it happens a second time, I hide my lipstick. Between the months of March and May, I find seventeen curious stains on my ivory sofa, twelve shoe scuffs on my wall and thirty seven bottles of beer left haphazardly around the house. He takes me out to dinner on our anniversary and wears a teal button down, with white pants and white crocodile loafers. I remember Caleb’s tasteful choice in clothes and I feel embarrassed by Turner’s flamboyance. This is not a game of comparisons, I remind myself. He tells me he loves me a whole lot and each time I inwardly cringe.

Oh, what do you know about love? I silently complain. You’ve never cheated to have it.

Handsome Turner, who adores me and treats me like an expensive accessory, I even hate the way his pillow smells.

Caleb brought this on, damn him. I was happy, in a delusional sort of way, but happy nonetheless.  And now—and now, all I can think about is his crooked smile and his smell and the way his eyes rake over the world in amusement.  I psychoanalyze my relationship with Turner and when I can come to no sound conclusion, Cammie and I meet to discuss the matter.

We chose a small French café down Las Olas Avenue and drink coffee from a French press.

“He’s a filler,” Cammie says with more conviction than a suicide bomber.

“What does that mean?” I am studying the menu, contemplating an almond croissant.

“You know—stuff something into your heart quickly to stop it from cracking open…from bleeding out...”

“Like, I dated Turner to stop thinking about Caleb?”

Cammie nods.

“Why couldn’t you just say that?”

“Because, when you speak figuratively, it makes you sounder smarter.”

I blink at her a few times before tossing aside my menu.

“So what do you suggest I do, smarty pants? I already had his wife acquitted of her crimes.”

“Wait,” Cammie says. “I’m not even talking about Caleb, here. All I’m saying is that Turner is wrong, wrong, wrong for you.”

I sigh. Why does everyone keep saying that?

Two weeks later, I am at my absolute wits end with ‘faking it.’ Turner is all over me and I am tired of pushing him away and finding excuses. I decide to take a day to myself. I part with my frowning fiancée at the front door, giving him a hasty kiss on the lips. He’s calls after me, asking when I am going to be home, but I ignore him and keep walking. When the elevator doors close, I slide to the floor and place my head between my legs. I feel like I can breathe again. Shopping sounds nice or maybe some time at the spa, I know a girl who can get me in at the last minute. But then my thoughts titter and drift to the man that I am still in love with, and I know that a day anywhere, is a day away from him. So, I settle for the next best thing, something that I haven’t done in a very long time.  I pull my cell phone from my too expensive purse and hit number ‘one’ on my speed dial.

“Cammie, it’s me,” I whisper into the phone, although I am obviously alone and no one can hear me. I feel guilty for what I am about to say. “Do you remember the old days in the Detective Gadget mobile?” There is a long pause in which I check the screen to make sure we are still connected.

“You’re out of your mind,” she says finally. Then after a long pause, “Who are we spying on?”

“Who do you think?” I ask, toying with the strappy thing on my purse.

Another pause.

“NO! Absolutely…NO! I can’t even believe…where the hell are you?”

“Come on Cam, if I had another friend to ask, I would…”

“You certainly would not ask anyone else to do something so psychotic. And, if you did, I would be highly offended.”

“I’m on my way to your house,” I say throwing my car in reverse and curtailing out of my spot—diva style.

“Fine. I’ll be ready and waiting. Make sure you pick up the coffee”.

Thirty minutes later, I arrive at Cammie’s neat, cul-de-sac house and park my car haphazardly in her driveway. She has flower boxes on the windows and garden gnomes in the peonies, a lovely cottage for such a witch to live. She opens the door before I can ring the bell and pulls me inside by the waistband of my pants.

“What car are we taking?” she says all businesslike.

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

She snatched the coffee from my hand and looks at me over the rim.

“Of course I want to, but I would look like a bad person if I didn’t object at all.”

I shrug. I stopped trying to soothe my conscience years ago, but to each his own.

  “Your car. He’s never seen it, so we have less chance of being spotted.”

She nods while grabbing a duffel bag off the couch.

“Do you know where this joker lives?”

“I totally know,” I mock her tone and follow her into the garage. “I am his lawyer—duh!”

“Yea?  So, what position do they—” At this point Cammie says something really crude. I flinch. I have grown to dislike the ‘f’ word. Pretty and delicate Cammie started swearing after Steven, who cheated on her twice and stole seventeen hundred dollars from her dresser drawer. Ever since that fateful afternoon when she found Steven copulating with his secretary, she developed an obsession with saying the ‘f’word, and calling girls ‘trashy bitches’.

“Probably the same position Steven and Tina were in when you found them doing the nasty,” I say.

“Touché,” she replies. “So are we spying on the trashy bitch, too, or just Mr. Wonderful?”

“Caleb,” I say decidedly. “I want to spy on Caleb.” Cammie nods her head and puts her black SUV onto the highway.

“Call his office.”

“Why?” I ask rummaging around in the duffel to check the supplies.

“So we know where he is and what he’s doing today, genius.”

“I can’t,” I say my finger poised above the buttons.  Cammie snatches the phone from my hand and dials herself.

“Weakling,” she mutters and then, “Hello, hi, I’m with Sunrise Dental and I’m trying to locate Mr. Caleb Drake. He missed his appointment this morning and…oh yes? Really? Well that’s perfectly understandable then…all right…I’ll call back to reschedule, thank you.” She hangs up the phone and smiles triumphantly.

 “They’re out of town!”

“Okay,” I say shaking my head in confusion. “Why are you so happy?’

“Because now we can break into their house!” she states, making a truly demonic face at me.

“You are crazy,” I say turning away from her and staring out the window. “Why is it that I need to vomit all of a sudden?”

“You’re going to love it, trust me. I broke into Steven’s place after he screwed that trashy bitch and found all kinds of interesting stuff—he had this thing for Asian…men.”

“You broke into your ex’s apartment?” My head was swimming now. “How do I not know about these shenanigans and when did you turn into me?”

“You’ve been busy. Lucy and Ethel didn’t break in to spy—Ethel broke in to find her grandmother’s earrings which she had left there.”

“Okay, first of all, stop referring to yourself in first person, Ethel and second of all, I am not breaking into their house!”

“Since when did you become the moral police?” she took a violent sip of her coffee.

“I am a lawyer.”

She frowned.

“And an adult.”

She snorted.

“And I have already caused a lifetime’s worth of trouble for that man.”

That last statement seems to enrage her because she starts sputtering. She comes back at me in full Texan drawl.

“And he for you!” she points a finger at me and then slaps the steering wheel. “He keeps coming back! Damn it Olivia, he keeps finding you and you have the right to know why. He’s messed up your life at least four times now. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE DON’T USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS!”  She bares her middle finger at a Mercedes as we speed past. “Besides, let’s not forget that Leah did a little of her own breaking and entering back in the day, when she went all Fatal Attraction on your apartment.”

That was oh-so-true.

“I know their house alarm code,” I say weakly.

“How?” her eyes are wide with admiration.

“Something set it off once while Caleb, Leah, and I were in a briefing and the alarm company called his cell to verify the code before they would deactivate it.”

“Now all we need is a key,” she smiles at me and turns off the Parkland exit.

“They keep a spare in a birdfeeder in the backyard.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard him telling the maid on the phone when she locked herself out.”

She swears at me, uses the “f” word and calls me creepy.

“Yes, and you’re a trashy bitch.”

We are standing in the foyer of Leah and Caleb’s mammoth house. I, guiltily, while biting my nails, and Cammie without concern is strolling around touching their things. I watch her and wonder who would win if she and Leah were to get into a fight.

“Look at this?” she says, lifting a filigree egg from an ornate gold table.  “This is worth at least a hundred Cartier purses.”

“Put it down,” I hiss at her, spitting a piece of acrylic from the corner of my mouth. Their house was a museum and Leah was its main attraction. Everywhere I looked there were paintings and photographs of the red-headed beast, some of them gracious enough to include Caleb. I shimmied out from under her gaze and went to stand under an alcove.

“We’ve already broken in, we might as well make the best of it,” she chirps at me.

I follow her to the kitchen, where we look inside their fridge. It is stocked with everything from Bulga caviar, to Jell-O chocolate pudding.  Cammie extracts a grape from a bunch and pops it into her mouth.