“She brought them every day,” his mother said when Jay’s jaw tightened. “And every day, all she talked about was you.”
* * *
? ? ?
Zara teetered on the windowsill when Faroz and Tony walked into her office, startling her. With one hand on the flimsy curtain rod and the other on her phone, she was precariously positioned. One wrong step and she would tumble to the ground.
“I told you she was one of us,” Faroz said.
Tony nodded. “I knew it when she came to the interview with only one shoe.”
“I got stuck in a grate.” Zara stretched, trying to get her phone as high as possible. “How about some help here?”
“You seem to be handling it all just fine,” Tony said. “What exactly are you doing?”
“I’m trying to take a picture of the crash test dummy lying on the floor in the corner.” She pointed to the dummy they used in personal injury cases to show how a body moved or didn’t move on impact. He had a sculpted head with two black button eyes and a movable torso and joints. Janice had dressed him in a low-cut pole bitch shirt and a pair of tiny jean shorts.
“Might I suggest a change of vantage point to someplace more secure?” Tony suggested. “Not that I want to interfere with your creative process but I don’t think our insurance covers injuries that result from deliberately putting yourself in danger because you have a kinky crash test dummy fetish.”
“I need this shot.” She leaned forward and the curtain rod bowed and swayed. “It’ll help me solve the case.”
“Detectives solve cases,” Tony pointed out. “Lawyers litigate them. If we solved all our cases we would have no way to make money.”
“This one needs to be solved.” She snapped a quick picture seconds before the rod broke. Zara lost her balance and fell but managed a save and landed on her feet.
“Nine-point-one for the roundoff finish.” Tony clapped. “The Europeans voted as a bloc so your score is lower than expected.”
She sent them both a look of disapproval. “It would have been a ten if I’d had a little help.”
“I believe in people learning lessons the hard way,” Faroz said. “That’s how I learned not to stick my head in an oven.”
“Really?” Tony gave him a curious look. “I didn’t have to learn that lesson. It was one of those things I just knew. Like don’t run into traffic or drink turpentine.”
“Wish someone woulda told me about the turpentine,” Faroz muttered. “Kept thinking I had indigestion.”
Zara checked her shots and motioned for them to join her at her laptop. She clicked to the pictures of Bob and the zombie bride on the restroom floor.
“What do you see?”
“I see that you’re into porn.” Tony made a tsk tsk sound with his tongue. “To be honest, I would never have thought that about you. But to each her own. However, as managing partner, I feel it necessary to remind you that porn is not permitted in the office.”
Zara tipped her head back and groaned. “This is our client Bob Smith and a woman from the zombie party. The pictures are his proof that someone got a camera into the party past J-Tech’s security.” She held up her phone. “Now, what do you see?”
“I see your dummy is positioned wrong,” Faroz said. “He should be naked, on his front with his head on her—”
“Not that.” Zara shook her head impatiently. “The angle. Where would the person who took the picture have to be standing?” She pulled out a 3-D scale drawing of her office. “I was in the restroom at the party venue a few times. It’s slightly larger than my office. But to get a picture of the dummy from that angle, I would need to be at ceiling height.” She flipped to another screen with pictures of the dummy taken from different angles.
Faroz studied the picture intently. “Maybe he had the camera on a selfie stick. Or he could have blown the pictures up.”
“First of all, ‘he’ would have to be a ‘she’ because they didn’t have gender-neutral restrooms and anyway I’m pretty sure someone would have noticed a nine-foot man standing in the corner. Second”—she flipped back to her pictures—“you can see where I blew these up. The angle still isn’t right.”
“Is this why you haven’t filed a petition yet?” Tony asked. “You don’t think the pictures are real?”
“I do think they’re real, but something doesn’t make sense. I need to visit the venue. It’s all about perspective.”