heels. 'Your friend the dog lover?' she asked.
'Doesn't matter,' Mason answered. 'I'm giving you first chance to explain. Don't waste the opportunity.'
Paula squashed her cigarette into the rough crevasses of a tree trunk, stuck her hands into her back pockets, and dug the toe of her shoe into the dry dirt at its base, scattering the soil, studying it for wisdom. Finding none, she answered without looking up.
'The phone call was Arthur's idea,' she said, folding one arm across her chest, hand tucked under her arm, raising her other hand to her mouth, forgetting her cigarette was gone. 'Gina wanted out of her contract. Arthur was looking for some way to pressure her. He figured she would give up to avoid letting the truth about Emily come out.'
Mason said, 'You knew about the contract negotiations so you told Arthur about Abby and volunteered for the job. If it worked, Arthur owed you. If it didn't, Arthur still owed you.'
Paula shook her head. 'No. It wasn't like that. Arthur told me about Abby. I didn't know anything about her or Emily.'
It was Mason's turn to be surprised. 'David Evans didn't tell you?'
'Not David. The man is a vault. He doesn't talk about business. He never mentioned Emily. Not once. He wouldn't even talk about Max Coyle's case when I brought it up. You're the only one he talked about.'
'Me? What did he have to say? I don't suppose I'm on his Christmas list.'
'He says you're tough, that you beat him, but the world is round.'
'That's what the losing lawyer always says about the winning lawyer,' Mason explained. 'There's a lot of wait-until-next-time in the practice of law.'
'Not for David,' Paula said. 'He hates you, says you ruined him. He told me that the bad publicity from Max's case chased away the rest of his clients except for Gina and Sanctuary.'
Mason took a deep breath. 'So David wanted to get even with me. Did he tell you how?'
'No. He just kept saying the world is round like it was his mantra,' Paula said.
Mason had an idea what Evans may have meant, but doubted that a man who was a vault would confess attempted murder to his girlfriend. He chose another tack. 'Gina was David's client. Did you tell him what you were doing?'
'Not a chance. He would have exploded.'
Mason asked, 'Has a bad temper, does he?'
'Trust me,' Paula said, punctuating the air with a dying ember of tobacco. 'He's one man I wouldn't want mad at me.'
'I'll keep that in mind,' Mason said. 'What did Arthur Hackett want last night?'
'He was in a panic. He was afraid you'd find out about Jordan's cell phone. I told him that you already knew; that you showed up at David's house with the phone. Arthur said that wasn't possible since he had thrown it down the trash chute in his office.'
'If the only thing he's guilty of is unethical negotiating tactics, why the panic? Unless he killed Gina and is willing to let his daughter take the blame?' Mason asked.
Paula ran her fingers through her hair, pulling more than combing. 'All I know is that he offered me a three- year contract extension with a hundred-thousanddollar signing bonus to keep my mouth shut.'
'I guess he didn't offer you enough,' Mason said.
'It was enough last night,' she said. 'But not when I saw you standing outside my door. The only thing I could think to do was run. I'm not going to do that for the rest of my life.'
Blues reappeared, the dog's stubby tail pointed skyward, its tongue dangling over its teeth in a half smile.
Crouching next to the animal's ear, Blues whispered something, patted the dog on the rump, and handed Paula the leash.
'Nice dog,' Blues told her.
Chapter 37
'I'm a no-show for dinner,' Mason told Abby, calling from his car. 'I probably won't make it until late tonight.'
'It's okay,' Abby said, her hollow cheerfulness telling him that it wasn't. 'I don't feel like going out anyway. Looks like the weather is turning nasty. It's a good night for curling up.'
'I'll call you,' he promised.
'Just come,' she said, her request slicing Mason with its quiet urgency.
Rain began spitting against Mason's windshield, moisture and dropping temperature painting the glass with fog. Mason turned on the defroster, the blast of dry warm air clearing his view, if not his thinking.
Arthur Hackett was acting like a man guilty of more than hardball negotiating, Mason wasn't willing to believe he would risk his daughter's life just to avoid his own embarrassment. Killing Gina could have been Hackett's final negotiating position. As for Trent, the father was the son's alibi for the evening Gina was murdered. More accurately, the three Hacketts-Arthur, Carol, and Trent-were each other's alibis.
A father who would sacrifice his daughter to hide one murder wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice the son who could betray him. If he was right, Carol Hackett was Arthur's last loose end. Maybe, Mason thought, she had gone to David Evans for protection. Mason flashed back to the image of Arthur Hackett silently pleading with him as he left the courtroom, Mason believing the plea was for Jordan, wondering now if Hackett was pleading for himself.
Mason called Harry Ryman. 'Are you still on Carol Hackett?' he asked, wanting only one answer.
'The way you ask that, makes me nervous,' Harry said. 'Yeah, I'm on her. Been on her all day and I'm ready to get off her.'
'Where is she?' Mason asked.
'At home,' Harry snapped. 'She went shopping on the Plaza this afternoon. I kept my distance. The house was quiet when she got back, but I figured people would start showing up, same as last night. So I picked up Chinese and I'm having a feast in the front seat of my car.'
'Do they have company yet?'
'Nope,' Harry answered. 'Still quiet. Just a couple of lights on.'
Mason looked at his watch. It was past eight o'clock. If people were going to visit the Hacketts on a Saturday night, they would have been there by now.
'Go knock on the door, find out if Carol is home,' Mason said, explaining why he was worried about her.
'You really think it's Arthur Hackett?' Harry asked.
'He's on my short list. Call me back. I'm on my cell.'
Mason couldn't plug the hole in the Arthur Hackett scenario left by the attempts on his life. Mason had never met Arthur Hackett before Gina Davenport was murdered. The only debt Hackett owed Mason was for legal fees Mason had refused to let him pay. Nonetheless, he felt better sending Harry to check on her. While it was possible that there was more than one killer-one for Gina, one for Trent, and yet a third trying to kill him — his gut told him there was only one. He liked the single-killer theory because it was simpler than the alternative, though he had yet to see a simple murder.
David Evans was his other choice because Evans was the only one carrying Mason as a big payable on his books. Paula described Evans's temper as explosive, his intent to get even with Mason a near obsession. Mason wouldn't allow himself the luxury of questioning whether Evans was the kind of man who could kill two people and try to kill a third, having learned long ago that such surface appraisals often miss the capacity for violence that percolates inside. No one would look at Mason or Abby and guess they were capable of killing, though Mason knew there was a gulf between self-defense and premeditation even if the outcome was the same.
While Evans was the leading candidate in the who-wants-to-kill-Mason sweepstakes, Mason couldn't put the tag on him for killing Gina. If, as Paula said, Mason had driven away all of Evans's clients except for Gina and Sanctuary, Evans would guard Gina with his life, since he was finished without her. Unless, Mason realized with a start, Gina was finished with Evans. If that were true, Evans would lose more than Gina. He would lose his connection with Sanctuary, the last of his clients, putting him in the deadly zone of nothing left to lose.
