“Meet me in the study,” she said and then plastered the charm back on as she clasped hands and made excuses on her way out of the room.
“Good Christian babies?” Ezra said.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Clay countered as he offered Ezra the arm Charity had ignored. “Shall we?”
Ezra shook his head and slapped the offered arm away.
“Just try and remember that not everyone finds the asshole schtick cute,” he said as he started after the judge.
Clay scratched his jaw with his thumb, the stubble rough under his nail, as he watched Ezra walk away.
“Who thinks it’s cute?” he asked dubiously. Then he shrugged the question off and followed on Ezra’s heels.
***
“Melanie Ledger,” Charity said. She poured herself a glass of wine with a steady hand. “And Franklin Collymore. She came alone. He was with his wife, but she left before him. Their nanny had some sort of family emergency? She took an Uber, so he’d have taken the Lexus when he left.”
She hadn’t asked them to sit down. Clay did anyhow, slouched in the leather armchair next to the heavy antique filing cabinet Charity had sourced her wine from a second ago. His boots scuffed up the pile on the heavy cream rug that covered most of the floor.
“What about Melanie?” he asked. “What did she drive?”
Charity lifted the glass to her mouth and took a long, thirsty drink. Then she wiped the excess off her lower lip with her thumb, the approachable soft apricot color smeared over the pad. She swallowed hard and set the glass down on the desk.
“A gray Bentley,” she said. “Her bag will be in it. The keys too.”
“My kind of woman,” Clay said. “Expensive tastes and easy to rob.”
Charity gave him an unimpressed look. She rubbed her finger against her forehead, just above the arched line of her perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Don’t get me wrong, but I asked you to do a job, to solve a problem for me, not to audition for the role of my catty gal pal. I don’t want to associate with you people any more than I have to. So can we get on with this?”
You people.That never meant anything good.
Clay twisted around to look over at Ezra, who had stationed himself in front of the study door with his arms crossed.
“Does she mean us?” he asked.
“You, maybe,” Ezra said mildly. Too mildly if you knew Ezra as well as Clay did. “I’m a pillar of the goddamn community, Clay. Ask anyone.”
Charity made a disgusted sound. “Don’t pretend you’re offended,” she said. “We all know what you are.”
“Same as you,” Clay said. “Or does our money suddenly get clean once it passes through your hands?”
Charity gave him a thin slice of a smile. “That’s what I have accountants for.” She snatched her wineglass up and slopped wine over her fingers. The red liquid dripped onto the desk as she cursed under her breath and switched hands. “I gave up being idealistic about the law the first time I ran for office and saw how the meat grinder worked. We do business, you and me. That doesn’t mean I have to enjoy your company, any more than you do mine. Now can we get on with this? If my career tanks because I snubbed half my supporters, I might as well have just called my lawyer instead of asking you to deal with it, Ezra. Her hourly rates might be extortionate, but we’re done once I pay her invoice.”
She drained what was in her glass in one gulp. Then she shook the wine off her fingers with an irritated flick of her hand. Clay looked around at Ezra and raised his eyebrows expectantly. It took a second, but then Ezra shrugged and gave him the nod to get on with it.
Clay pushed himself out of the chair in one quick, smooth motion. Despite her poise, Charity stumbled back a step in alarm. He grinned at her, wide and lazy.
“Coat check?”
She stared at him for a second, but then she waved her hand out the window. “They set up in the garage,” she said. Her composure slipped for the first time, and she licked her lips. “What… what… exactly are you going to, um, do with the bodies?”
The memory of Buchanan—well, who they’dthoughtwas Buchanan at the time—chopped up so he’d fit in the barrel flickered through Clay’s mind. He grimaced at the unsettled feeling it left in his gut.
He’d done worse. Grade might turn corpses into Spam, but Clay made the corpses to start with. It still left him a bit disturbed to think about it.
“Yeah,” Clay said. “You don’t want to know.”
He turned to go. Ezra pushed himself off the door and stepped out of the way. They were about to go out into the hall when Charity broke the silence.
