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“Peter Johnson. He covers the Hill.” She ordered herself not to make a face.
“I see.” Markham pursed his lips. “His interest in Cassie seemed more than professional.”
“Anything is possible.” Lacey shrugged. So Markham didn’t like Johnson. But she didn’t like Johnson either. Markham might be wary of any man paying attention to Cassandra. Lacey stood up. “What about Henderson Wilcox?”
“Ah, yes. Henderson.” He flipped on a light switch so she could see her way to the front door. “Let me show you out.”
“Yes. Henderson. Well?” She wasn’t going to let him squirm out of the question.
“Henderson and I used to be friends. We had a falling out.”
“Over Cassandra?” She stepped over a pile of envelopes.
“Oh God no.” He fumbled with the lock on the front door.
“Work. Here at Garrison of Gaia.” He gave her one of those looks like he was going to share something big, which usually meant it was useless information. “Between you and me, Henderson’s really kind of a screwup. I always had to clean up his messes. He totally fouled up a lawsuit for us. A miracle the judge didn’t throw it out.”
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“But you seemed so unhappy that he left Garrison of Gaia for a new job.”
“I felt betrayed. Just because he’s a screwup doesn’t mean I want to see him change sides, especially when we’re so backed up and short-staffed.” Markham gestured with both hands spread wide. “Although handing the bad guys a major screwup might be a good strategy. Human nature is funny, isn’t it?”
Through the glass she could see someone stringing old-fashioned Christmas lights in a multitude of colors over a storefront across the street. The sight cheered her up, but it seemed to have no effect on Alex Markham. She wanted to flee this cold little office. He opened the door for her.
“I’m not really sorry to see Henderson go,” he said, “but he left us in the lurch when we could have used him, used his connections.”
“So now he’s got a window office on K Street.” Lacey took a mental snapshot of the place. The lobby looked just as shabby as her first impression. Could Markham resent Henderson Wilcox not just for leaving them in the lurch, but for landing in the lap of luxury, while they were still toiling in the fields? Yes, human nature is funny, she silently agreed. “If you think of anything relevant, Markham, please call me.” She handed him her card. “Listen, I don’t presume to think I’m going to find out who did this. I’m just keeping a promise. To Cassandra.”
“Of course. I understand. Maybe next time we can discuss more pleasant things.” As they fell silent, the sounds of lutes and flutes from his Folger Consort CD could be heard. The music was beautiful and it almost elevated the moment. “Music perhaps.”
Lacey stepped outside. The door shut behind her. She heard the lock turn with a sharp click.
Chapter 21
In Washington, D.C., you have to read the fine print.
Ensconced in a large green velvet chair at Starbucks, Lacey watched the D.C. cops busily engaged in one of their favorite activities: Towing an entire row of cars lined up down the block. A muscular black cop directed the towing of a silver Lexus, and a white cop was dealing with the next one in line, a black Lincoln limousine.
Poor suckers, Lacey thought. Not the cops, the drivers. No doubt they’d either not seen or ignored the hand-scrawled temporary NO PARKING signs taped below the parking meters, with their barely legible blur of prohibited dates and times. These signs were usually impossible to read until drivers were already out of their cars, and by that time, having wedged themselves into a too-good-to-be-true parking space in the District, many were tempted to take their chances. Just more fine print, and Washington was full of it. In due course of events, D.C. Parking Enforcement would tow them away to that Great Impound Lot in the sky—or in Anacostia in far Southeast, which was nearly as distant. Just another day on the job for the only District government department universally acknowledged to function with chilling efficiency. Until you asked them to find where they’d towed your car, that is.
Lacey arranged to meet Brooke Barton after she left Garrison of Gaia. If anyone could decipher the fine print on Cassandra’s lawyer friends, it would be Brooke, Lacey’s favorite attorney and slightly loony best friend. They chose the coffee shop near the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue because Brooke had been attending a hearing on some important matter of national security.
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Happily, Lacey’s observation of the towing crews was interrupted by Brooke, who dashed in the door, waved hello, and rushed to the counter for a double espresso. She was looking very professional in her gray flannel suit and red scarf, but frazzled as well. She added cream and sugar. Lots of cream and sugar.
“Have some coffee with your sugar,” Lacey said. “For an alleged health nut, you really know how to fall off the wagon.”
“Why fall halfway?” Brooke smirked. “If you’re gonna fall, why not take a flying leap?”
“How was the hearing?”
Brooke moaned. “Deadly. Lucky me, I had to play messenger service for my idiot colleague who forgot his papers. He’s got a sieve for a brain. Too much espresso, probably.” Brooke added more cream to her espresso.
“And how is your brother, the idiot colleague?” Lacey liked Brooke’s allegedly brilliant but terribly absentminded sibling.
“Benny’s the same, the twit. He owes me big-time. Anyway it was a complete waste of time, except for seeing the Capitol itself. Always a kick. So we wound up in a confab in the President’s Room off the Senate chamber. The hearing was so riveting I was able to concentrate fully on the ornate excess. Red leather sofas.” Brooke sighed. “Mirrors and murals everywhere.
If only the level of discourse within it could live up to that beautiful building.”
“And everyone wearing a gray suit, I’ll bet,” Lacey said.
“Of course, but none so chic as mine, and that reminds me, I have to go shopping tonight. Must buy useless expensive presents for fellow overpaid attorneys. The holidays, you know.”
Brooke savored the aroma steaming out of the cup. “I need something to slap me awake after that boring hearing.”
“We don’t do that awkward gift exchange thing at The Eye.
We’d be exchanging paper clips. Or staples. Or Post-its.” Lacey was grateful that after coffee with Brooke she could finally go home. “So what do you buy lawyers who already have everything, Miss Lawyer Who Has Everything?”
“Something crystal, something silver, something distilled and bottled in Scotland. If you have it monogrammed, they can’t re-gift it, they’re stuck with it, so you won’t get it back next year. I always have it monogrammed.”
“Fascinating, Brooke. I knew you were the right person to
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ask about the subtle nuances of interpersonal dynamics among lawyers.”
“You’re so right!” Brooke laughed. “I’m listening.”
“And it’s not for publication by DeadFed.” Lacey paused.
“Attorney-client privilege.” Brooke rolled her eyes in silent assent. “Cassandra Wentworth woke up today. Mac made me go see her. She asked for me. Of all people.”
“Wow. Quel scoop. And? Can she nail the bastard who attacked her? Did she know who it was, can she name him, or was it just some random madman? An evil dwarf?”
“She doesn’t remember a thing,” Lacey said. “Or at least so she said this afternoon.”
“Damn! Did you get anything at all?”
“Yeah, I got plenty. I got insulted by Cassandra, so the knock on the head hasn’t improved her personality. I got volunteered by Mac to—”
“Investigate, of course, to collar the creep who cracked Cassandra’s cranium.”
“Her friends call her Cassie.” Lacey opened her eyes.
“Rhymes with Lassie. Like she’s a friendly freckle-faced kid with a big dog. Well, there is a big dog. But she doesn’t seem anything like a Cassie to me. She doesn’t even look like a Cassie.”
“She has actual friends? I thought perhaps she had only comrades. Coconspirators. Fellow travelers.”
“Oh, they are all that too. They ambushed me coming out of Cassandra’s hospital room. Three of them, all lawyers, and they all work for this environmental thing, Garrison of Gaia, or did.
One of them has apparently left the fold. I thought you might have heard of them.”
“Garrison of Gaia.” Brooke nodded. “GOG, although some call it GAG, as in gag me. They’re like those people who break into laboratories to free the puppies. Only these people are not about the puppies, to hell with the damned puppies, they’re all about the Earth, dude, love it or like, you know, bleeping leave it.”
“I got that they’re fairly extreme.” Lacey noticed the tow trucks were moving the last of the limousines. “And humorless, which is worse.”
“Much worse. I’m not saying they’re always wrong necessarily, but humorless? A fatal flaw. Now, names!” Brooke commanded. “I need names.”
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“Alex Markham.”
“Hmmm.” Brooke fiddled with her long blond braid, which was coming loose, and then tossed it over her shoulder. “I know an Alexander Markham, must be the same. Reasonably cute, but politically in the deep woods. Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Sort of an alternative lawyer, the kind who doesn’t even own a suit, even a bad one, it would be selling out to the System. Tree hugger. Rumored to be a cokehead. Does some pro bono cases, usually badly. Never seen him in a suit.
Suits don’t work well for hugging trees. Except lawsuits.” Her eyes lit up. “You could write a ‘Crimes of Fashion’ column: Lawyers without suits! Stuffed shirts without the shirts! Briefcases without the briefs!”
“Stop, stop, I have unattractive pictures in my head.” Nevertheless, Lacey pulled out her notebook and started making notes. “Markham’s a cokehead, really? And why does the name Henderson Wilcox sound familiar to me? Expensive suit? A little too tight? Like his briefs?”
“Ah, Wilcox. Sure you’ve heard the name. He’s the ne’erdo-well little brother of Senator Pendleton Wilcox, whom I think of affectionately as Senator Snidely Whiplash. Actually not so affectionately.” Brooke mimed twirling a sinister mustache. “Square head, evil eyes, big teeth like a wolf?”
“Okay, now I know him. I’ve seen the political cartoons in the paper. You don’t like Senator Whiplash?”
“I do like him, for comic relief. He’s a major reactionary, and not in a good way. His bills never get out of committee. Although I have to make a point to remember his name is Wilcox.
I’ve actually almost called him Senator Whiplash a couple of times.”
Some of Cassandra’s editorials against Senator Wilcox were coming back to Lacey, along with the words “fatuous” and “deluded.” “Alex Markham apparently hates this Henderson Wilcox character because he left the nonprofit to go to a big K
Street firm,” Lacey said. “Went over to the Dark Side is the way I heard it.”
“Wow, so Baby Whiplash made it out of the nonprofit salt mine. Interesting.” Brooke mulled this over. “And here you are talking to the Dark Side over espresso! My take on why Henderson Wilcox had a job with Garrison of Gaia in the first place? Must have been a pity placement. Probably no one else
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would take him on right out of law school. They might not even have paid him, or not much. Another pro bono baby. Works for free, and worth every penny. Also maybe he wanted to throw a slap at his big brother by laboring for the loony left. Couldn’t have been a matter of principle. Between you and me, from what I’ve seen of him he’s not that bright and he has no real moral convictions. Runs in the family.”
“If that’s so, then why would a big law firm take him on now?”
“This new job? Well, big brother is a Senator. Probably big brother had enough embarrassment, got sick of little brother working for eco wackos. Had a word in someone’s ear. Do a Senator a favor, get a favor back. Henderson is the embarrassing brother, you know the type. Politics is full of awkward siblings. Somebody has to take them in.”
Lacey stretched. She ran her hands through her hair. “So what’s your take on these two guys? Are they capable of assault?”
“Personally, Lacey, I think Markham has the political smarts of the tree toad that he loves so well. But his charm is razor thin. He’s a snake. And in the case of poor Wilcox, the gene pool is just too shallow. I wouldn’t believe a word either of them said, even under oath. But as for attacking someone in an alley with a blunt instrument? Neither one strikes me as particularly physical and aggressive. But who knows what evil lurks?
Now, didn’t you say there was another one?”
“A woman. She and Alex Markham and Cassandra are all housemates. And apparently Wilcox is an old boyfriend of Cassandra’s who seems to be guilt-stricken that he wasn’t there to protect her. Have you heard of Wendy Townsend?”
“Oh yes. The woman voted most likely to spend a year in a tree without a clue.” Brooke snickered. “What was your impression?”
“She stunned me with a toxic cloud of perfume. What do you think of her?”
“The perfume!” Brooke made a face. “Gardenia, right?
She’s just like the rest of them, always proselytizing, always in your face, never gives it a rest for a second, can’t see the forest for having a tree jammed up their— Well, you know. When you’re in a meeting with her, you stay by the door so you can make a quick escape. And get a breath of fresh air. It’s sad really. Wendy’s always struck me as desperate, driving people away when she thinks she’s doing just the opposite.”
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“Where do you know all these people from?”
“Oh, I thought I told you. Garrison of Gaia sued a client of ours. We won. They lost. End of story. Wasted a lot of money, theirs and the client’s. Not that I consider paying massive attorneys’ fees wasting money, actually, not when I’m the attorney.”
“Is she capable of attacking someone physically?” Wendy Townsend had enjoyed making Lacey uncomfortable, particularly with her dog Bruno the killer beast, but that didn’t make her an armed assailant.
“Wendy is pretty passionate. I think she has the temper for it, if not the strength. And she’s, ah, what’s the word? Unforgiving. She’ll take a grudge to her grave.”
“When I was at the hospital, both Markham and Wilcox demonstrated some manly snorting and pawing the ground over Cassandra.” Lacey sighed. “Like a couple of bull moose bellowing over their prize doe.”
“Over this shrill, mousy little woman you’ve told me about?
Baffling. There must be something to her, or else the meek shall inherit the pheromones.” Brooke and Lacey had often discussed the strange animosity between Washington men and Washington women, the problem of the apparently jammed pheromones in the Nation’s Capital. Lacey was very grateful she had finally connected with Vic Donovan, and Brooke was gaga over her fellow conspiracy nut, Damon Newhouse. But it had taken time, way too much time, for romance to fall into place in their lives.
“Apparently after the attack everyone flew to the hospital to declare their undying love.” Lacey shook her head. “They said they’d been there off and on since Friday night. A vigil. And then I get in to see her first. Made me Miss Popularity, I can tell you.”
“Something funny is going on in this town,” Brooke said.
“Maybe this Cassandra Wentworth is a raving beauty and we just can’t see it. Or maybe these guys have been affected by some sort of pheromone fog. Some secret chemical weapon.
Weaponized female pheromones. I’ll have to check with Damon.”
“Very funny.” Lacey laughed, one eyebrow arched skeptically.
“Okay, I’m reaching. But it’s a theory.” She swirled the last
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of the espresso in her cup. “What else are you hearing from this cult of Cassandra worshippers?”
“Cassandra volunteered at Garrison of Gaia for a while, Wendy told me. That’s how they met, and they all seem to have slept with each other. Not sure about the two women, but after finding out Cassandra has actual friends, anything is possible.
Cassandra has dated Markham and Henderson Wilcox, Wendy said she’s been with Henderson, and she and Markham seem pretty tight. Friends with benefits. I haven’t even mentioned the big killer dog that wanted to take a bite out of me for dinner.”
“You’re kidding.” Brooke drained the rest of her sugared espresso and gazed morosely into the cup. “Maybe the pheromone jammers have been taken off the White House roof.
Maybe now the CIA is pumping wild pheromones into jet plane chem trails over the District and it’s all a mad CIA sex stimulant experiment run amuck.”
“It’s a theory, Brooke. That reminds me, I saw your mother last night.” Lacey drank the last of her coffee.
“That’s right, at the Nativity at that little church with the big name.” Brooke grinned at Lacey. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.
This damn lawyering business really cuts into my personal time.”
“I had no idea your mom and Vic’s mom were such good friends.”
“Yeah, apparently they just clicked. I think it’s so cute. It didn’t hit me that Nadine Donovan was your Vic’s mom until Mom called me last night. Wow, small world! So did you find anything out? I thought maybe you went back to the neighborhood to search more alleys after you ditched the moms. You saw a child in a shepherd’s robe. A shepherd’s robe was stolen from the church. Two plus two, right?”
“So you do believe it’s a child? Not an evil alien dwarf?”
Lacey refrained from telling Brooke that the child was actually a girl. Let Damon Newhouse go off the deep end, Jasmine would be safer the less anyone knew about her. Maybe Damon would decide the child was a shape-shifter and could appear in any form to baffle observers.
