Diane & Jacob Anderson Minshall Blind Leap (pdf)

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• 167 •
DIANE AND JACOB ANDERSON-MINSHALL
Tucker was put on a silent hold. She wondered if it cost a great
deal extra to entertain callers with music while they waited. Music was
better, because then you didn’t wonder if you’d gotten cut off somehow.
But you’d have to be really careful about choosing which kind of music
to use, making sure it fit with your audience. She thought back to the
hip-hop concert at El Rio before any of this had happened and tried to
imagine if Blind Eye greeted callers with Katastrophe’s “Let’s F*ck
and Then Talk about My Problems.” She hummed a couple of lines
and was having a good chuckle when Jennifer came back on the line,
breathing hard.
“Tucker?”
“I’m still here.”
“You’re right!” Jennifer exclaimed. “The Jammed and The
Estrogen Files are both filed under T. I would never have done
something like that. I can’t believe this. What should we do? Should I
call the police?”
No, no. Don’t steal my thunder. “We don’t have anything to tell
the police,” Tucker said. “We need to know a lot more about who might
have been in Jeff’s office before we can jump to any conclusions. Why
don’t you give me a little while to confer with Yoshi, my boss, and get
back to you?”
“But if they didn’t find what they were looking for and there is a
connection to Jeff’s death? Is my staff in danger?”
I don’t know. Maybe. Tucker tried to still the tremor in her voice
before answering. She wasn’t sure how to soothe Jennifer’s fears.
“I’m sure it’s all going to be okay,” she said. It was the kind of
thing she used to say to her sister, who’d been so sick as a kid. Over
the years she’d repeated, “It’s going to be okay,” over and over like a
prayer. She hadn’t believed it then and she wasn’t sure about it now, but
she said it anyway.
It seemed to work. Jennifer gave Tucker until the next morning to
talk with Yoshi and call back.
Before she had even hung up the office phone, Tucker punched
Yoshi’s number into her cell. Her boss was going to be so proud of her.
She was disappointed when the call went straight to voice mail. She
• 168 •
BLIND LEAP
didn’t want to share her good news with an automated system, so she
just asked Yoshi to call the office ASAP.
She wanted to call Velvet next, shout into the answering machine
that she’d proven Jeff didn’t kill himself, but she didn’t want to give her
girlfriend false hope. Right now all they had were two screener DVDs
out of alphabetical order. It was hardly a smoking gun.
Instead she called Bud. She was surprised when she landed in
voice mail again. Maybe he’d turned it off to interview hard4u, Tyrone’s
alibi for the Saturday night Jeff died. Tucker had insisted he handle that
important interview partly out of spite to pay him back for making her
crawl through that bathroom window.
They’d met with Jeff’s lawyer, Vincent Broadwell, that morning,
and Bud was pretty confident they could rule out anyone offing the vic
for financial gain. The DB didn’t have any life insurance—in fact, Jeff
didn’t have a lot of paperwork on file. Maybe he shared Bud’s less-
than-positive view of lawyers: nothing but a bunch of shysters, if you
asked him.
Broadwell said he was an acquaintance of Jeff’s, which probably
meant fuck-buddy. The lawyer said he’d only come to represent Jeff
recently, but it wasn’t like in the movies where the guy’s saying, if I get
killed, look at so-and-so for it. They were just putting together a batch
of standard material to do with the baby. Broadwell said they hadn’t
finished hashing out the new will, so an earlier version would stand.
In that five-year-old document, Tyrone Hill stood to receive mostly
sentimental objects while any funds reverted to Jeff’s parents.
After the discussion Bud told Tucker his money was on the
Cocitaux broad. Broadwell had insisted that Jeff planned to play
daddy, and way more than just in name. The lawyer happened to have
both sides’ paperwork. Cocitaux and Thompson’s proposal would’ve
significantly restricted Jeff’s involvement with the child and barred
Tyrone from any unsupervised contact. Neither side had managed to
con the other into signing, but with Jeff out of the picture, it looked like
everything worked out best for the two mommies. Even if Conant’s
parents sued for custody, the best they’d probably get was visitation
rights. Judges hated taking kids away from the biological mother, even
if she was a dyke.
Tucker left a message that would make Bud grind his teeth. “While
you were out, getting to know hard4u really well, I solved the case.
• 169 •
DIANE AND JACOB ANDERSON-MINSHALL
Call me.” That ought to get his attention. Or maybe she should have
mentioned beer and naked women.
Tucker hung up and wondered what someone would have hoped
to find in Jeff’s office. Why they would have searched the screeners.
Maybe it was completely innocent. Some clueless new film director
might have sent in a wrong version and wanted to get it back and swap
it for the right one without admitting to his mistake. There could be
a boring, logical explanation for the disorder. She closed her eyes
conjured up the inside of Jeff and Tyrone’s apartment. The screeners.
He’d taken some of the screeners home to watch.
Tucker yanked open her top desk drawer. Damn, Bud had given
her the disc he couldn’t play on his DVD player. Where had she put
that? She wasn’t as organized as Jeff or Yoshi, or even Velvet, and some
of the drawers of her desk were crammed with an assortment of music
CDs, notes she scrawled down about Blind Eye procedure, sandwich [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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