Get Stuffed

“That’s not the whole story, though,” I say, watching his face for clues as I call him out. “You’ve risen too quickly at Grayson & Wates for that to be all of it.”

“Richard Wates was the one who hired me as an associate. He liked me, decided to mentor me. I learned a lot from him, and he promoted me when he felt I had learned enough. Making me a senior partner was one of the last things he did before he retired. I’m surprised you know about that, though.”

“My uncle has talked about you.”

“Probably not good things.”

I shake my head. “No. Not good things.”

“All right, your turn.”

I shake my head. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Fine. My parents died in a car crash when I was sixteen. I didn’t have any other family, so my uncle took me in. It was either him or the foster system. He and my father were not on good terms, so it wasn’t exactly a thing he did out of love. I moved out as soon as I turned eighteen, and went to Los Angeles. I wanted to be a singer. I worked as background singer and a songwriter, but I could never really get anywhere with my own stuff. Finally it got to the point where I couldn’t pay the rent, so I had to ask my uncle if I could come back and live with him while I got my feet under me.” I gloss over exactly how bad it got, and how much I didn’t want to ask him for help.

“How’d that go?” Andrew asks.

“About as well as you’d expect. My uncle didn’t think much of a career in music, so he wasn’t exactly surprised. He stipulated that when I moved back in with him I was going to make an attempt at a serious career. He paid for a paralegal course and told me he’d hire me at the firm if I passed. As part of the agreement, I had to keep the job for at least a year. I actually don’t think he expected me to do it.”

“But you did.”

“Yes. So now I’m stuck in Florida for a year.” I fidget with my hands. “Though it hasn’t been all bad.” I look over at him and flash a small smile.

Andrew is quiet for a little while, and it looks like he’s thinking. Finally, he asks, “Do you have your music with you?”

“At the guest house?”

“Yeah.”

I shrug. “Some of it.”

“I’d like to hear it sometime.”

The thought of that turns my stomach in knots. It would be like him seeing me naked. I mean, he’s already seen me without clothes…but it’s a different kind of naked. “Maybe…” is what I say out loud.

A while later, Andrew chuckles. “I understand now why you were so panicked about Roger finding us together.”

“Yeah. I’d like to avoid that.”

He glances over at me and says, “I think that can be arranged. Your uncle only sees what he wants to see.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say. “He’s watching you pretty carefully.”

“For business. He’s not watching my personal life.”

I know that’s not true, but I don’t say anything. We’re pulling up to the gates of the Sterling Estate, and the size of it still blows me away. Instead of continuing to the guest house, Andrew pulls up to the main mansion. I forgot that the meeting would be in there, and suddenly I’m nervous all over again. He parks the car in the massive driveway and turns to me. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I say. “Oh, and let’s not mention the car if we can avoid it. I don’t need another failure for him to add to the list.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughs. “But won’t he notice that your car is missing?”

“Believe it or not, he’s paying more attention to you right now than to me. He barely notices that I’m there, he won’t notice the car.”

Andrew gives me a look that I can’t quite puzzle out, but it doesn’t matter because now we’re at the doors and going into the mansion, and…whoa.

8

The inside of the Sterling mansion is just as impressive as the outside. A little chime sounds as we pass through the doorway into a spotless white entryway. My first impression is of soaring ceilings, open space, and clean lines. While the guest house feels somewhat homey, this feels modern and palatial. Even if it is impressive, I could never imagine living here. I feel like I would always be afraid of breaking something in my own house. Besides, I can’t believe I’d ever need this much space—though having my own recording studio would be nice.

One of Mr. Sterling’s staff guides us through several hallways to a dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the back of the house and the gardens. A huge table dominates the space, and my uncle and Mr. Sterling are already seated. Even though I’ve seen pictures, he’s not what I expected. He looks younger than his photographs, and an air of sadness hovers around him, I assume because of his recent loss.

“Ah, there you are,” my uncle says. “Timothy, you’ve already met my colleague Andrew Finch, and his is my niece and paralegal Naomi Grayson.”

“Hello,” Mr. Sterling says while shaking my hand. “Thank you for coming to help.”

“My pleasure,” I say, wondering if that phrase is too formal. I’m not exactly sure how to interact with a millionaire on trial for his wife’s murder.

He shakes Andrew’s hand as well, and we all sit down. Andrew sits next to me, and suddenly it feels too close and too intimate despite the fact that we just spent an hour in his car together. Here it’s different. My uncle could see the smallest gesture, and then everything would fall apart.

“We won’t meet for overly long today,” Uncle Roger says, “but I thought it might be a good idea for Andrew to hear your version of events, and we just received discovery from the prosecutor. I’ll glance at them and see if there’s anything we need to take notice of. Naomi?”

I grab the file out of my bag and hand it to him. I’m glad I remembered to take it out of my car when Andrew found me. “Take notes,” my uncle says to me, “So you can familiarize yourself with the issues and catch anything we miss.”

“I’m ready whenever you are, Mr. Sterling,” Andrew says.

“Sure.” Sterling clears his throat and begins. “I know that a lot of people speculated otherwise, but the truth is that my wife and I were happy. We were trying to have a child, though that’s not public knowledge. The night…the night she died we had a fight about whether or not we should continue trying to conceive. I wanted to move on to other options—IVF, adoption, surrogacy. I wanted a kid, and I didn’t care if the kid was biologically mine or not. But Amber always dreamed of having her own children, and the argument just got out of hand. We both said some hurtful things, and I left so we could cool down. I drove around, just on the property, for a couple of hours. When I came back, the bedroom was destroyed and she was…lying there.”

"And then what did you do?" Andrew asks gently.

Mr. Sterling's face goes gray. "I checked to see if she was breathing, and then I called the police."

I can't imagine what it would be like to find someone you love that much dead on the floor. With my parents it was a phone call. I didn't have to see their bodies after the accident, didn't have to keep it together until the police arrived.

Sterling continues, "When the police got there, they took my statement. They took her body, and I think I answered questions from the detectives for a couple of hours before they left. I couldn't sleep in a crime scene, so I went to the guest house for the night. A couple of days later, the police came back and arrested me. They hadn't found evidence that linked to anyone but me. I was the only witness, no one could prove my alibi, and we had fought just before she died. In their minds I was the only choice. But I didn't kill her. I loved...I love my wife."

Mr. Sterling looks away, and I can see he's trying to mask the fact that he's tearing up.

Andrew nods. "I read in the report that your security system didn't show you leaving the house. Do you know why that is?"

"I have no idea. I can't explain it."

I hate to say it, but I can understand why

the police thought he was guilty. Not from his story, but from the fact that there's just no evidence that makes him look innocent. If he didn't do it, someone worked really hard to make it look like he did. This is going to be a hard case to win, even for lawyers as good as my uncle and Andrew.

"They've included your blood alcohol test in discovery."

"I wasn't drunk," says Mr. Sterling. "Yes, I'd had a drink, but I was well below the legal limit."