who I am. He knows I called him. He had someone go through my place. He had someone follow me to Palm Springs. I mean, you should have heard him on the phone. He was very threatening. But he’s just going to deny everything. And what am I gonna say? I mean, at this point the only thing I can say is that someone broke into my apartment. And that I think someone was following me in a black car. I can’t prove anything. I’d sound like a nut.”
“But we’ve got these pictures, this file, the phone records, and the guy in Palm Springs. There’s too much information out there. It all points to Steele being the murderer.”
I filled my mouth with the cold wine and held it there, thinking. I swished the liquid from one cheek to the other and then swallowed. “I dunno. So Steele’s the killer. Maybe they arrest him, but I just think there’s something else here that we don’t know. Something we can’t see. I mean, why would Andersen be so pissed?”
“Well, he probably doesn’t want any of this coming out.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a big deal for him. I mean you heard that guy at the party, y’know, what’s his name. The guy you work for who said Andersen is gay. I mean, apparently everyone knows, so there’s no harm to him there. Besides, it’s not a big deal for a lawyer to be gay in Los Angeles. For Steele, it’s a bigger issue. So why is Andersen so involved?”
“Well, you don’t know for sure that he is. I mean, maybe he told Steele about your call and it was Steele who had you followed and who had your apartment turned upside down.”
“Hmmm. Maybe.” I emptied and refilled my glass. I was beginning to feel drunk. My face felt flushed and I rolled my head back on my shoulders, relaxing. It was all beginning to feel less real and more like an academic exercise. What do you do when your client turns out to be a murderer and is hunting you down? That wasn’t in the textbooks.
I went quiet. I could go to the police and get rid of Steele. Surely, based on this evidence, they would have to arrest and retry him, presumably to another conviction. But that still left Andersen. But maybe Liz was right. Maybe Andersen wasn’t really involved. And then there was my own career to think about. Would there be anything left of it if I turned Steele in? Did I care? I never wanted the job at K&C anyway, or so I thought.
“Wait a minute,” Liz broke the silence. “Did you say Sharon told the lawyer that she’d already started moving things out of the house?”
“Yeah.” I looked over to see Liz holding a sheet of paper.
“Well, this looks like a deed to a house. It’s signed by both Sharon and someone else and dated about a week before the murder.”
“Let me see that.” I held out my hand and took the paper. It appeared to be a deed dated five days before the murder and two days before Sharon’s meeting with Murdock. “Well, shit, it looks like she bought a house.”
“And this isn’t a copy either. This is the original.” Liz pointed at the face of the document and showed me. “Could she have paid cash? It doesn’t look like this was ever recorded.”
“I suppose, apparently she was loaded.”
“And look at this.” Liz leaned over and handed me a yellow legal pad with a list of things on it as well as a phone number and some other kind of number. “What do you suppose that is?”
“Well, she supposedly told Murdock that she’d already started moving things out of the house.” I read through the list. It had generic descriptions such as “four boxes from garage” and “clothes” as well as more descriptive things like photo albums, wood carving, chest, and computer. All together, there were about twenty things written in a column down the left side of the page. Across the bottom was an eight-one-eight phone number and a seven digit number labeled “confirmation.”
“Maybe this is her list of things she was going to move, or did move,” I mumbled as I flipped the page and then fanned through the rest of the pad. There was nothing else. It was empty. I tossed the pad back on the coffee table and set my head back on the pillow. There was no answer, no clear direction.
The conversation