AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mac agreed. “Yes. Though I don’t know how we’re going to find her…or him…not unless we go door to door in Lemur.”
“There might be a way to smoke Altamirano out,” Gus sad thoughtfully.
Mac’s brow rose, expectantly rather than skeptically.
Gus smiled now. “At the risk of sounding like a lawyer, why don’t we sue the bastard?”
Gus Benton initiated an action against P. S. Altamirano, his or her agents, and all the publishers of Afterlife for breach of copyright. He drafted the statement of claim on the basis that the defendants had stolen and used his sister’s ideas and notes without permission, acknowledgment, or fair compensation. The claim was ambit and bold, brilliantly drafted to imply that the claimant had evidence without actually making an untrue statement. Gus knew full well that they would probably fail in court, but that was not the purpose of filing the action. He made an appointment to see Jacqui Steven, telling himself it was because it had been a while since he’d practiced law, and he would only have one chance at this.
Two years ago now, Jacqui had taken a job with a small firm in Kansas City months after she’d been fired by Crane, Hayes and Benton, now just Crane and Hayes. Gus had stayed away from her, determined that she, at least, should have the chance to rebuild a career.
And so when he called by, she closed her office door and shouted at him for a good ten minutes. Indeed she might have hit him if the walls of her office had not been glass and assaulting clients frowned upon. He let her go on. Standing in front of her, there seemed no good reason for having allowed her to drift from his life.
“I’m sorry, Jac,” he said in the end. “I thought…I just didn’t want you to… Hell, I was an idiot.”
She glared at him. “Was?”
He smiled. “Okay, I am an idiot. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but it was never that I didn’t want you. I’ve missed you.”
Her arms remained folded across her chest. “You look well. No walking stick.”
He jumped and clicked his heels, wincing as he landed. “Good as new…nearly.”
“What do you want, Gus?”
“Two things…neither dependent on you agreeing to the other.”
“What?” Jacqui demanded, irritated that he was so disarming.
He handed her the documents. “I was hoping you’d check these over for me.”
Jacqui took the file back to her desk and ran her eye over the pages. “You’re suing P. S. Altamirano?”
“Just trying to get her attention.” Gus told her everything, aware as he voiced it that he sounded delusional.
Jacqui’s face softened, her eyes sympathetic and concerned.
He countered preemptively, in case she decided to call security or a doctor or both. “Look, Jac, I know this sounds absurd, wishful…but it’s not just me. Mac agrees.”
Jacqui rolled her eyes. “Mac fell in love with Theo the day he met her.” She looked back at the file. “You have Theo’s notes?”
Gus shook his head. “Not really. They were lost when Cowell burned my house down. But Mac saw them.”
“You’re sailing pretty close to the edge here, Gus. You could get yourself disbarred.”
“I couldn’t get a job as a lawyer now, anyway. And didn’t you hear? I’m a private eye now.”
Despite herself, Jacqui smiled. “I think I know where you could find copies of Theo’s notes… They may be admissible since the originals have been destroyed.”
“Theo made copies?”
“After the first time the police seized everything, I advised Theo to take photographs of all her notes with her phone and send the images to herself.” Jacqui didn’t take her eyes off his face. “I created an account for her on my private server as an added backup. They could be there.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No.” She broke the gaze and moved behind the desk to her computer and typed. “To be honest, I forgot about it till just now, and it was never intended for me to monitor what Theo was doing…only so she had somewhere to send and back up her files. Here you go.” Jacqui turned the screen around. About ten emails with attached files. She opened the first—an image of two pages of a notebook, written in Theo’s hand with the characteristic pictographs she used when plotting.
Gus stared. “My God, that’s it!”
