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Griff stopped chewing. “Since when?”
“Since you—” Turner’s loud voice startled even him. He froze, listening, then went to the door and looked into the hallway again. “Don’t move,” he whispered to Griff over his shoulder. “Don’t make a sound.”
The lawyer disappeared into the dark hallway. Griff could hear doors—he assumed to bedrooms—being softly closed. Despite Turner’s warning, he went to the French doors and separated the slats of the blinds to peer out, wondering if Hunnicutt’s car parked two streets over had aroused a watchful homeowner’s suspicion. Had anybody noticed a jogger at midnight suddenly disappearing into the dark shadows surrounding a vacant house?
Turner returned, walking on tiptoe. Quietly he pulled the door closed behind himself. “Susan’s a light sleeper.”
“Since when aren’t you my lawyer?”
“Since you murdered Foster Speakman,” the lawyer returned, matching Griff’s angry stage whisper. “Christ, Griff. Foster Speakman! You could just as well have killed the president. Is it true you were screwing his wife?”
Griff held his accusatory stare for several seconds, then crammed the last of the sandwich into his mouth, muttering, “You should be so lucky.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He finished the milk, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I didn’t know a lawyer could fire a client.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you. You’re too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Griff spread his arms wide. All he had on him was the car key and his cell phone clipped to the elastic waistband of his running shorts.
“I’d call you dangerous,” Turner said. “He said you stabbed Speakman in the neck with his letter opener. A paraplegic, Griff. He said Speakman tried to fight back, tried to protect himself from you, but—”
“He who? Who said? Rodarte?”
“Of course Rodarte. He and that silent partner of his came to my office this morning. Rodarte did all the talking. He asked if I knew where you were, and fortunately I could honestly say no.” Turner frowned, unhappy over knowing Griff’s whereabouts now. “Rodarte is having a field day. This time, make no mistake, he’s got you.”
“I don’t get my day in court?”
Turner gnawed the inside of his cheek and cast a worried glance toward the closed door. “Make it quick.” He sat down in his desk chair and tried to look lawyerly—a role hard to pull off in the pajama outfit. “How’d you meet the Speakmans?”
“I was invited to their home. Speakman proposed a business deal.”
Turner looked dubious. “What kind of business?”
“We talked about me doing some ads for his airline.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but he couldn’t tell Turner the truth. Not yet. Foster Speakman’s reputation be damned. As far as keeping his secret was concerned, all bets were off. But Laura shared that secret. Griff would keep it for her sake.
“That’s nuts,” Turner remarked.
“That’s what I told him. But, come to find out, he had a lot of idiosyncrasies and weird ideas. Anyway, he told me to think it over, he would, too, so forth.”
“The wife? Laura?”
“I met her that same night.”
“Instant lust, Rodarte said.”
“Rodarte said that?”
“Words to that effect. He said the two of you had a hot and heavy affair.”
Griff wondered where Rodarte was getting his information. Probably he was merely speculating and making it sound like fact. “She and I got together. Four times to be exact. Over a period of months. The last time we saw each other, she called it off.”
“Why?”
Disinclined to tell Turner more than that, he shrugged. “Typical re
asons. Guilt mostly. I thought I’d never see her again.”
