The Hot Ladies Murder Club

DIANE MARIECHILD

One

Campbell never forgot a face. Never.

Joe Campbell’s posh law offices with their sweeping views of the high bridge, port and bay were meant to impress and intimidate. The tall ceilings, the starkly modern ebony furniture, the blond hardwood floors and the Oriental rugs reeked of money and power and social prestige—all of which were vital to a man with Campbell’s ambitions. Not that he was thinking about anything other than the exquisite woman he was supposed to be deposing.

The case had been dull, routine; until she’d walked in. She was beautiful and sweet and warm—and scared witless of him.

This should be good. He rapped his fingers on his desk and tightened them into a fist that made his knuckles ache.

The minx had him running around in circles like a bloodhound that had lost a hot scent. His ears were dragging the ground, his wet nose snuffling dirt.

Minutes before the deposition, Bob Africa, one of the partners and a former classmate at UT Law School, had strutted through his door as if he owned the place—which he practically did. Bob specialized in class-action lawsuits and had just won big, having collected more than two million dollars in legal fees from a cereal company for a food additive.

There hadn’t been a shred of evidence any consumer had been injured. Africa’s fee had come to $2,000 an hour. Consumers had received a coupon for a free box of cereal.

Campbell was jealous as hell.

All smiles as usual this afternoon, a triumphant Bob had slapped him on the back and ordered him to win this one—or else. Salt in the wound—after the Crocker loss.

“I went out on a limb for you, buddy. I told the other partners you just had a run of bad luck in Houston and got a rotten hand here with that medical case.”

“Thanks.” Campbell hadn’t reminded Africa that he’d been the man who’d rammed that loser Crocker down his “buddy’s” throat and then he’d kept the more promising cases for himself.

Bob had smiled his wolverine smile and slapped his back again. “You’re the best, buddy. But, we don’t pay you to lose—”

Lose. Campbell had felt the blood rising in his face. Hell, at least Africa hadn’t reminded him about the death threats all the partners had been receiving ever since Campbell had lost the case. Hell, the incompetent quack had won. What was he so mad about? Crocker’s wife, Kay, maybe? She’d made a play for Campbell, a helluva play.

Today a letter from some crackpot, who said he was praying for Campbell, had arrived. The letter was in the same loopy handwriting as the death threats. Strangely, somehow it was even scarier. Mrs. Crocker had called three times this week, too.

But it was the woman across from Campbell who had him rigid with tension. He had to beat her—or else.

Her face was damnably familiar. Her husky voice was so exquisite and raw, it tugged at Campbell on some deep, man-woman level.

He hated her for her easy power over him even as his cold lawyer’s mind told him she was a fake. This was a staged performance. There was definitely something too deliberate and practiced about her lazy, luscious drawl.

To buy time he played with his shirt cuff. He’d asked dozens of questions and had gotten nowhere. She was a liar, and if it was the last thing he did, he would expose her.

“I—I swear I knew nothing, absolutely nothing about mo-o-old in the O’Connors’ house,” she repeated for the tenth time.

I think the lady doth protest too much.

When he shot her his most engaging smile and leaned toward her as if the deposition were over, she jumped. Her lovely, long fingers and unpolished nails twisted in her lap so violently, she almost dropped the damning photographs he’d jammed into her hands a few seconds earlier.

“I—I swear…no mold,” she pleaded.

Then why won’t you look me in the eye?

“Toxic mo-o-old,” Campbell drawled, pleased his o lasted even longer than hers. His mocking gaze drilled her.

She shook her dark head like a true innocent and began flipping through the photographs he’d made of the black muck growing inside the walls of the O’Connors’ mansion.

“There has to be a mistake,” she whispered.

No, you little liar. No mistake.

Campbell’s long, lean form remained sprawled negligently behind his sleek ebony desk. His beige silk suit was expensive. So was his vivid yellow tie.

Hannah Smith, her knees together beneath her full white skirt, sat on the edge of the black leather chair opposite him. Flanking her was the attorney from her insurance company, a mediocre, colorless little stick of a man. Hunkered low in his chair in an ill-fitting undertaker’s suit wearing smudged, gold-rimmed glasses Tom Davis looked about as dangerous as a terrified rabbit.

“No mistake,” Campbell said. “The O’Connors had to abandon their home. It’ll cost more to remediate it than they paid for it, which was a substantial sum—”

“More than a mill…But it’s not my fault!” she protested. “I was only the Realtor. I thought smart lawyers like you only sued rich people.…”

Didn’t she get it? The deep pocket here was her insurance company. Not her. So, why was she working herself into a sweat?

“Mold was not in your clients’ disclosure statement,” he said.

“There was no mold!” Her voice shaking, she began a boring repeat of her defense.

“Maybe you didn’t realize mold is a very serious issue on the Texas Gulf.”

“Because lawyers like you have made it into a billion-dollar industry?”

“I’m supposed to be asking the questions. And you are liable—”

She opened her pretty mouth and gulped for a breath.

Hannah Smith was lying. And she wasn’t all that damn good at it, either.

And yet he liked her.

This was bad.

Joe Campbell, or rather just plain Campbell, as he was known to most people, at least to those with whom he was on speaking terms, and there were fewer and fewer of those in this town since his line of work tended to alienate a lot of people, had been a trial lawyer too long not to be able to smell a liar a mile away.

He’d been screwed, glued and tattooed by the best liars in the universe—his ex-wife and his former best friend and boss had taken him to the cleaners.

Here we go again. The pretty little con artist across from him smelled warm and sweet. And thanks to his air-conditioning register that wafted her light fragrance Campbell’s way, he was too aware of that fact.

Chanel. He frowned, shifting his long legs under his desk as another unwelcome buzz of man-woman excitement rushed through him. By now he should have boxed her in. She was scared and pretty, and he should have had her on the run. And yet…she had him oddly off balance.

Her nervous fingers shuffled and reshuffled the photographs of the O’Connors’ estate. He caught glimpses of the abandoned pool, the empty hot tub, and the red brick path that wound through the strawlike remnants of formerly showy flower beds. Her slim, graceful hands trembled so badly when she came to his damning shots of the mold, she nearly dropped the whole bunch.

“Think how those images will affect a sympathetic jury, Mrs. Smith.”

“That’s not a question,” her lawyer said. “You don’t have to answer.”