Entitlement? Derision?
His eyes had been their familiar blank and unreadable, but his lips had twitched, the left corner tugging into a smirk the same way Leigh had seen when Andrew was a boy promising her that he hadn’t eaten the last cookie, he had no idea where her history assignment was, he hadn’t drawn a dinosaur in her Algebra II textbook.
She wrote down the time stamp so she could go back to it later.
Reggie called out the obvious. “Valets come with their cars. Andrew tips the guys for both of them. You can see here where Karlsen gives Andy her business card, then another kiss on the cheek. She gets into her Beemer. He gets in his Merc. They both turn in the same direction, north on Wesley. Not the best way for him to get home but it’s a way to get home.”
Leigh tuned out Reggie’s road-by-road call-out of each twist and turn the cars took. She thought about the finally, as in nice to finally meet you. Leigh had come on to the case last night, but Andrew had fired Octavia two days ago. That left at least forty-eight hours for Reggie Paltz to dig into Leigh’s life. Where else had that finally led him? Had he located Callie, too?
“Then it’s south on Vaughn, then we got no more CCTV or traffic cams,” Reggie continued, seemingly clueless to her internal conflict. “You can see from this last shot that Andrew’s Merc has dealer plates.”
Leigh knew he was expecting her input. “Why is that relevant?”
“Andrew took a loaner off the lot that night. His personal car was in the shop. Classic cars are finicky. It happens sometimes, but not a lot of times.”
Leigh drew a box around the word car. When she looked up, Reggie was studying her again. She didn’t have to think back through the conversation to know why. They were getting to the part where Andrew’s actions would be harder to explain away. Reggie had been testing Leigh with his crass language, trying to see if his bitches and tits and lap dance would draw a rebuke that would indicate she wasn’t on Andrew’s side.
She kept her tone icy cold, asking him, “Did Karlsen tell Andrew to follow her back to her place?”
“No.” He paused after the word, making it crystal clear that he was on alert. “Karlsen says in her statement she told him to call her if he was interested. Her memory’s shaky after she got her car from the valet. Next thing she’s sure about, she’s waking up and it’s morning.”
“The police are saying Andrew spiked her drink?”
“That’s the theory, though if he slipped her a roofie, it doesn’t show on the videos or in her tox screen. Between you and me, I pray to the good Lord that she was drugged. You’ll see what I’m talking about when we get to the crime scene photos. You’re gonna wanna do everything you can to get them suppressed. I didn’t even download the files to my laptop. Everything’s encrypted under Triple DES. Nothing goes to a cloud because a cloud can be hacked. Both the primary and the backup server are locked in that closet over there.”
Leigh turned, seeing a serious-looking padlock on the steel door.
“I’m very careful when I work these high-profile cases. You don’t want this shit getting out, especially when the client is wealthy. People come out of the woodwork looking for money.” Reggie had turned the laptop back in his direction. He typed two-fingered. “Idiots don’t realize it is a hell of a lot more lucrative to work on the inside than it is to have your nose pressed against the glass.”
Leigh asked, “How do you know me?”
He paused again. “What’s that?”
“You said nice to finally meet you. That implies that you’d heard about me, or you were looking forward to—”
“Ah, gotcha. Hold on.” More pecking on his damn laptop. He swiveled it back around to show her the screen. The Atlanta INtown masthead filled the top of the page. A photo showed Leigh walking out of the courthouse. She was smiling. The headline explained why.
LAWYER: THERE’S NO DATE STAMP ON URINE.
Reggie gave her a shit-eating grin. “That’s some jujitsu lawyering, Collier. You got their own expert witness to admit he couldn’t say whether the guy pissed in his wife’s panty drawer before or after the divorce.”
Leigh felt her stomach start to unfurl.
“You got some balls telling a judge that water sports fall under spousal privilege.” Reggie barked out another laugh. “I showed that shit to everybody I know.”
Leigh had to hear him say the words. “You showed the story to Andrew?”