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I nodded. “Thank you.
He continued. “Josh has retained me to represent you and your cousin.”
I nodded again. “Both of us?”
“Unless your interests diverge, yes. If you’d like someone else, I can step back at this point.”
Josh stepped in. “Mike may look young, but he knows his shit, and I trust him implicitly.”
I nodded. “That’s good enough for me,” I told them.
“Okay then, this is the situation.”
I sat up, but didn’t release my grip on Josh.
“Nicole, they know Lara called you, and that within a minute, Josh called 9-1-1, alerting them to a situation here.”
Situationhad to be lawyer code for death.
“When they arrived, a truck was driving away that matches the description of what Lara owns.”
I nodded.
“The responding officers didn’t get any response from inside the house or find any sign of forced entry, and they were about to leave when Detective Beal radioed them to check the trees behind the house. Apparently, there had been an incident here recently.”
I put up a hand. “Lara found a threatening note, and we called them.”
“I was here for that,” Josh added. He pulled his arm out from around me and scrolled through his phone. “Here’s a picture of the note.” He passed the phone to Mike.
“Anyway,” Mike continued. “In that search, they found the body of your gardener, Mr. Tanaka. He’d been working among the trees.”
I didn’t bother correcting Mike that Maro wasn’t our gardener.
“When they called in the body, the detective told them to search the house. They found Lara’s cell phone with blood on it, which is how they know about the call.”
“So, what now?” Josh asked.
Mike looked at me. “Lara is a legitimate subject of interest, given the call alerting you, which proves she was here.”
“She couldn’t—she wouldn’t do something like this,” I objected.
Mike nodded. “I understand, but see it from his perspective. The detective is convinced Lara was involved in another death here five years ago. Now we have a second murder on the same property, with the same manner of attack, and Lara was present both times.”
I nodded with the pit in my stomach growing larger by the minute.
“He thinks the threatening note was just to throw off suspicion, and she planned this. What can you tell me about five years ago?” Mike asked.
“Her boyfriend was stabbed in the orchard,” I said.
“Personal feelings aside,” Mike said, as if taking emotion out of it when my cousin had been accused of murder was possible. “The detective is right. You need to tell him what you know about Lara’s whereabouts, and lying about it is the worst thing you could do right now, for both her and you.”
Josh squeezed my knee and nodded. “It’s okay.”
I took a deep breath. “But I don’t know where she is. She was hysterical when she called and didn’t say anything about going anywhere.”
Mike stood. “I’m going to bring him back, and you can tell him exactly that. You don’t owe him any more.”
A minute later Beal walked in, seeming more controlled than before. “What do you know about where Lara is, or where she might have gone?”
