AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No. Alcoholics don’t break into—”
“Drug addicts, then. You know some, don’t you?”
“Dad, seriously? I do, and you do, too. You just don’t know you do. I can tell you who in our waiting room is on Valium, Percocet—”
“Do you owe them money? Would they be trying self-help? Taking electronics to sell them—”
“No, absolutely not.”
“—because theyvandalizedus, like they’re angry.”
“I don’t owe anybody money.”
“You owe your brother.”
“Dad, I don’t owe money to anybody else. I didn’t have anything to do with this, so enough with the cross-examination.”
My father didn’t reply, but turned to the cops. “Officers, I have another possibility. My wife practices family law, involving divorce and custody disputes. Her cases are unusually emotional, and it’s possible that an unhappy spouse took out their anger on us. I know stories of disgruntled litigants attacking or even shooting divorce counsel.”
My mother frowned. “I don’t know of any clients who would be that angry at me, but I guess it’s not impossible.”
“Thanks.” Officer Dembek slipped his pad in his back pocket. “Mrs. Devlin, if there are some clients that concern you, perhaps you could generate a list of them and send it to me. I believe I left you my card.”
“I will.”
“Thank you. As I said, we’ll stay in touch.” The two officers headed for the door. “Goodbye, folks.”
“Goodbye, thanks,” my father said, and we all followed suit.
“I’ll check my office,” I said as soon as they left, already on my feet.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I hurried down the hall, angry at my father and worried about the mess we were in, which was getting worse. I reached my office and crossed to the drawer, which hung open. The thumb drive was gone, and so was the petty cash I kept there. Pencils and pens lay scattered on the floor.
John appeared in the doorway. “TJ, do you think—”
“I think this burglary has to do with Lemaire. They took the thumb drive. I don’t know why. They couldn’t have known about it, but it was marked Runstan.”
“Maybe they want to keep quiet whatever was on it.” John’s mouth tightened. “I think this was a warning, too. There’s too much destruction, and they knew Connor’s baseball wasn’t a collectible. They’re telling me they can get to him. They want us to shut up about Lemaire. Message received.”
My gut wrenched. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we shut it down. No more investigation. We’re in over our heads. It’s not our business, it never was.”
“But I just got a lead. Barry Rigel is the man who’s been following us in the Hyundai. I have his address and I’m going to investigate.”
“No, don’t.”
“Rigel could have killed Lemaire, or know why he was murdered.”
“You don’t know he was murdered.”
“Yes, I do. I found emails from his boyfriend on his home computer.”
“You got into his home computer, too?” John blinked, surprised. I brought him up to date and dug the thumb drive from my pocket.
“Here’s the files from his house.”
