Page 61 of Velvet Vaughn

Curtis’s phone buzzed against the desk where he’d set it. He glanced at the screen. “Sorry, son, let me grab this. It’s one of my golf buddies. He’s probably calling to bail on our weekly game.”

He took it standing. “Walt, what’s up?” A pause, and then the color drained out of Curtis’s face. “Wait. Slow down. Say that again. When?”

Leo set his coffee down and watched the older man’s free hand find the edge of the desk and hold it.

“My God.” Curtis lowered himself back into the chair as though his legs had stopped being entirely reliable. “No, of course. Of course. Have they told Deb? Is somebody with her?” He listened, nodding to no one. “All right. Wednesday? I’ll make the notifications on this end. You stay with the family. Thank you for calling.” He lowered the phone slowly and sat staring at nothing before he remembered Leo was in the room.

“Curtis, what is it?”

“That was Walt Stuart, Tim Hargrove’s father-in-law.” Curtis pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Tim died yesterday.”

Leo’s mouth gaped. Tim Hargrove was a senior partner going on thirty years with the firm. He’d argued contract structure with Leo over bad scotch at three different holiday parties and won every time. “He’s barely sixty.”

“Sixty-one.” Curtis’s voice had gone rough. “His wife found him in the garage last night. They think his heart, or God, I don’t know what they think yet. He’d been complaining about chest pains for a week and wouldn’t see anyone about it. You know how he was. Stubborn as a fence post.” He shook his head slowly. “I just had lunch with him on Thursday. We talked about his daughter’s wedding.”

Leo came around the desk without thinking about it and placed a hand on Curtis’s shoulder. The surveillance, the files, and the circled photograph all fell away, and it was just two people absorbing the fact that one of their colleagues was gone. “I’m so sorry, Curtis.”

“Two in a week.” He seemed to be speaking to himself more than to Leo. He gave a hollow, disbelieving laugh. “Vic, and now Tim. I’m getting to the age where the phone only rings with news like this.” He patted Leo’s hand on his shoulder, then squeezed it, gathering himself with visible effort. “The wake’s Wednesday. They’re doing it quickly with no fuss. It’s what Tim would’ve wanted. It’ll be held at Bremen’s on Lindell.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. Tim thought the world of you.”

Curtis stood again, steadier this time, though the morning had aged him five years in as many minutes.

“Be good to yourself, son. Bring Anja around properly sometime for dinner that’s not in a ballroom. Lydia’s already planning the menu, which means it’s no longer optional.” He paused at the threshold, and the wink he managed was a tired ghost of the usual one. “Resistance is futile. Ask anyone who’s married into this firm.”

Then he was gone. Leo sat alone with a cooling cup of genuinely excellent coffee and the deeply unwelcome awareness that the warmest, kindest segment of his morning had also been the one he’d spent the hardest scanning for a lie.

He hadn’t found one.

That should have been a comfort. Somehow it wasn’t. And the news about Tim sat beside it, heavy and sad and entirely separate. A thing that belonged to ordinary mortality, to failing hearts and stubborn men who wouldn’t see a doctor.