CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
eight o'clock, I heard Alma come in and begin her morning routine. I didn't get up, because one thing I'd learned about Alma was that she did not like her morning routine interrupted and that she'd come talk to me when she was good and ready. I continued reading Dax's file until I heard a knock on my door.
"Come in," I called as I looked up and saw our office secretary standing at the door with a worried look on her face. "Good morning, Alma. How can I help you?"
"Good morning, Ms. Raines," she said. Alma was holding a sheet of paper in her hand. "This is not good, not good at all."
"What isn't good?" I asked as I looked at the sheet she was holding.
"This," she said as she crossed the room and held it out to me. "It came on the fax machine a little while ago. This is not good, Ms. Raines."
I gave her a confused look as I took the paper and scanned it. It was a standard fax sheet with my name and our law firm's name clearly printed in the recipient boxes. What was disturbing was the drawing below the information. It was set up in triptych form with a hand drawn picture of a woman kneeling, then a second with a gun held by a hand without a body pointed at the back of her head, and the third panel was the same woman with a dark spot in the center of for forehead floating in a body of water. Her eyes were two large X’s, and in all of the drawings, the woman was nude.
Underneath the drawings was a note that said: You're next.
I looked up at Alma and then back down at the fax. "When did this come in?" I asked.
"Just a few minutes ago while I was making coffee," she said as she stood in front of me with a miserable look on her face. "This is not good, Ms. Raines. This is not good at all."
"So I've heard," I said, immediately feeling guilty for feeling frustrated with the woman. "Alma, are you alright?"
"Ms. Raines, I've never worked in an office where there have been death threats made," she said. "I'm not comfortable with this level of violence in a law firm."
"Well, don't worry. We're going to get to the bottom of this and no one is going to be harmed," I said trying to reassure her. My mind was spinning as I tried to think calmly about why someone would send a threatening fax to our firm and why they would threaten me specifically. "Have Jordie and Roger come in yet?"
"Mr. Lee called to say he was on his way and Mr. Lewis came in when I did," Alma replied as she twisted her hands and plucked at her sweater.
"Alma, I don't want you to worry about this, okay?"
"Okay, Ms. Raines, I'll do my best to carry on and not worry," she nodded. I knew she was lying, but I needed her to keep the front desk together while I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
As soon as Alma went back to her desk, I walked down the hall to Roger's office and tapped on his door. "Roger, you got a minute to talk about something weird?" I called as I cracked the door.
He was on the phone and hadn't heard me knocking. I cracked the door a little wider and was about to call his name, when I overheard him talking to someone on the other end of his phone.
"No, she has no idea," he said. "Yeah, I think I can get what I need from her. No, I don't think she has any idea that we're onto her. Uh huh, I'll take care of that this afternoon. Okay, now stop calling me, you're gonna get us both in trouble. Okay, bye."
I stepped back out into the hall and pulled the door partially shut before I tapped on it again and called Roger's name.
"Hey Brooke, c'mon in and have a seat," he said in his surfer dude tone. There was something unsettling about having heard him talking in such straightforward terms to the person on the phone and then switching back to his laid back voice to talk with me. Somehow, it felt like it should have been the other way around.
"Got anything on the Malone case, Roger?" I asked as I watched him closely.
"Yeah, actually. I'm going to head out to the marina this afternoon and check out the boat," he said as he shuffled papers around on his desk. "I think one of the dock managers saw Lydia out there alive a few days before she turned up in the water, so I want to get his statement before he forgets everything."
"Good thinking," I said nodding. I wanted to ask Roger about the fax, but my intuition told me that I should wait until Jordie arrived and then discuss it with him first. "Anything else?"
"No, why? Should I have something else?" he asked as he looked up from his desk and smiled.
"Nope, I guess not," I said and turned to go. "Hey, how's the girlfriend? I forgot to ask in all the excitement."
"Eh, she's yesterday's news," he said waving me off. "You were right. It was another false hope."
"I'm sorry, Roger," I said, feeling genuinely sad for him. "Hey, you know that wanting to be in love isn't a false hope. It's just thinking that you can be in love with everyone that is."
"Yeah, I'm starting to realize that," he said with a wry grin. "But thanks."
"No problem," I said as I turned and left his office. I walked back to mine wondering what on earth was going on with Roger and why he was hiding information about the case. I looked at the stack of legal documents from Banks and Associates on my desk and vowed to get the truth out of Jordie when he finally arrived.