JULIA QUINN
ALEXIS DIDN’T MOVE. THE DISCMAN clicked off, and she didn’t move. She just sat there, trying to digest what she’d just heard.
LJ had killed her dad. Not on purpose, but still. And the crazy thing was, she wasn’t even mad at him. How could you not be mad at someone who killed your father?
Maybe because that person had spent years trying to be a father to her. It all made sense now. Well, maybe not sense. Nothing LJ did made sense. It was kind of what made him LJ. But he had always been there for her. Even just the other night, when he’d helped her to find clothes to wear to see her uncle at the Sorrento. He’d been there for her.
Alexis pulled the headphones off and rubbed her ears. She looked up at the tree. There was a tree in the middle of the chapel. What was up with that? It was totally in the wrong place. She supposed some thoughtful New Age yoga-type person thought it would be cool to stick a tree in the middle of a chapel, but to Alexis it was just wrong. It should be outside. How was a tree supposed to live on its own?
She stood up, making her way slowly back outside. She was just like that tree. She needed help.
Linda’s stepdad. He hated her. No, he more than hated her, but she had nowhere else to turn. He was the only lawyer she knew, and she had a pretty good feeling she needed a lawyer.
She started walking toward the bus stop, then stopped. The papers. The ones she’d found in her mom’s room about the hotel. She needed to go get them. If Linda’s stepdad was going to help her save the hotel (and that was a big if) she was going to need those papers.
When she got back to the hotel, everyone was still up in the hallway. Ursula was waving a plunger at Mr. Kenji, and Otto was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, with Habib on his head.
No one seemed to find any of this the least bit odd. Alexis had to stop and smile, because she didn’t either.
“What are you doing back?” Donald yelled. He was trying to wrestle the plunger from Ursula before she accidentally took out Mr. Kenji’s eye.
“I forgot something,” Alexis said. “Forget you saw me.”
“Forgotten!” Otto said with a salute. “I can keep secrets, you know.”
Alexis gave him a thumbs-up and ran to her room, where she’d stashed the papers. She took one look at them, as if she needed reminding that lawyers did not write in English, and shoved them in her bag.
Then she ran back out, barely pausing to say good-bye. She needed to get to Linda’s apartment. Fast.
“Alexis?” Linda gasped. “What are you doing here?”
Alexis tried to smile. Well, maybe not smile, but some kind of expression that conveyed something other than panic. Linda did not look happy to see her. Alexis once again gave silent thanks to the random person who’d held the front door open for her when she’d arrived at Linda’s apartment building. She had a feeling that if she’d buzzed up, Linda would not have let her in.
“I need to talk to your stepdad,” Alexis said.
“Are you crazy? He hates you.”
“I know that. But I need a lawyer.”
Linda just stared at her.
“What about your mom? She likes me, kind of.”
“She’s out of town.”
Alexis lost it. “I witnessed an explosion, I just found out that my dad was run over by a duck, someone broke into LJ’s room, and my uncle is trying to steal the hotel. Oh, and I un-faked my mom’s death and enlisted your help to hide the body.”
“You un—”
“Whatever the hell you call the opposite of faking your death. Please, Linda, I need help.”
“OK.” Linda swallowed and slowly opened the door to Alexis. She looked younger all of a sudden, and Alexis wondered how much of her tough-guy personality was an act. Linda looked furtively over her shoulder. “Just don’t tell him—”
“Don’t worry,” Alexis assured her impatiently. “I won’t say a word.”
Linda gave a jerky nod and finally opened the door all the way. “Kenneth!” she called out, then cleared her throat. She said it louder. “Kenneth!”
“I’m in the living room! What is it?”
“Uhh . . . you know my friend Alexis?”
There was a long silence. “Yes?”
Linda grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down the hall to the living room. When they could see the back of Kenneth’s head, she said, “She’s here.”
Still Kenneth didn’t turn around. He just stared at the TV, which was flickering some cop show Alexis didn’t know. “Why?” he finally asked.
Alexis thought maybe it was time she spoke for herself. “I need help.”
Slowly, Kenneth twisted around. Alexis could see that he was holding a drink in his hand. “What do you need?” he asked, but he didn’t really sound like he cared.
Alexis took a deep breath. People like Kenneth Whatever-the-Hell-His-Last-Name-Was-Because-It-Wasn’t-the-Same-As-Linda’s always made her nervous. Maybe it was the suit. Or the way his dark hair was so neatly trimmed and combed. He was too polished. He was the Man.
Alexis fought an extremely ill-timed giggle. What would LJ say?
“Alexis,” Kenneth said in that über-calm voice of his. “Why are you here?”
“I . . . uh . . .” Where the hell was she supposed to begin? She didn’t know how to talk to lawyers. Hell, she didn’t know how to talk to any adult who wasn’t at least a little bit insane.
“Her mom is dead,” Linda blurted out.
Alexis choked against the grief lumping in throat. She knew it was true, but it was so much harder when someone said it out loud. “My uncle . . . he uh . . .” She opened her messenger bag and dug around for the legal papers, grateful for the excuse to look away. She didn’t want him to see her face, not if she was going to cry.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the documents at him. “I found these in my mom’s stuff. I think my uncle is trying to steal the hotel.”
Kenneth took the papers and looked down at them. After a few seconds he flicked off the TV and asked Linda to turn on the light for him. Alexis waited nervously as he slowly made his way through the document, licking his finger before using it to flip each page. When he was about halfway through, he looked up and used his head to motion to a chair across the room. “Sit down,” he said.
Alexis moved awkwardly across the room. The furniture was modern and spotless, and the chair Kenneth had directed her to looked ruthlessly uncomfortable. She perched at the edge, watching him as he reached the final page of the papers.
“Can you help me?” she asked.
Kenneth set the papers down on the coffee table in front of him. “Did you read these?” he asked.
“I tried. I couldn’t understand them.”
Kenneth gave her a wry smile. “I’m afraid lawyers aren’t known for their clarity.”
“Well, what does it say?”
“Your uncle wasn’t trying to steal the hotel,” he said gently.
“Well, no,” Alexis said, starting to feel a little more at ease now that he was actually being nice to her. “But he was going to force my mom to sell it. They own it together, and I know that one of them can’t sell it unless the other agrees.”
“That’s true,” Kenneth said, “but your uncle wasn’t the one who wanted to sell the hotel. It was your mother.”
Alexis shook her head. “No. No, you’ve got it wrong. She would never do that. She loved the hotel.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Kenneth said carefully, “but for whatever reason, she was suing your uncle to force a sale.”
“No,” Alexis said again. Awkwardly, she came to her feet, bumping her thigh against the arm of the chair as she rose. “You’re wrong.” She looked over at Linda, desperate for someone to back her up. “Linda,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice. “Tell him.”
Linda looked back and forth between Alexis and her stepfather. “I . . . uh . . . um, I don’t think Edith would have sold the hotel. She really seemed to like it.”
“A building that size takes a lot of money to maintain,” Kenneth said.
“But we were doing OK,” Alexis said belligerently. It was two steps to the coffee table and then she snatched up the papers. “Forget I said anything. Forget I asked for your help.” She turned to Linda. “I’ll go.”
“No,” Kenneth said. He stood and put his hand on Alexis’s arm. “We can help you.”
Alexis looked down at his hand suspiciously.
“Who is staying with you?” he asked. “You’re a minor. You can’t stay in the hotel by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself.”
“Your tenants don’t count.”
Alexis thought about Ursula and Mr. Kenji, Deaf Donald and Otto. And LJ. She especially thought of LJ. Maybe they weren’t the kind of people Kenneth would ever deign to talk to, but they counted. They all counted.
“I’m leaving,” she muttered, yanking her arm free. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Alexis, you can’t go back and live at the hotel,” Linda said. “Maybe if LJ was still there, but he’s dead, too, and—”
“Wait a minute,” Kenneth said, his head snapping back and forth between the two girls. “Who the hell is LJ?”
Alexis glared at Linda. This was not about LJ, and she should have known better than to bring him up.
“Linda, who is LJ?” Kenneth demanded, when it became apparent that Alexis was not going to answer.
“He lived over at the hotel. He was—”
“Linda!” Alexis practically snarled the word. The little traitor. She couldn’t believe it.
“I’m sorry, Alexis,” Linda said, “but this is too big. You can’t handle it yourself.”
“Who is LJ?” Kenneth demanded again.
“He lived at the hotel,” Linda said quickly, before Alexis could interrupt again. “He died in that explosion last night.”
“What?” Kenneth swore under his breath. “Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Of course not,” Alexis snapped. “But—”
“But what?”
“Nothing.” She hugged her messenger bag closer to her body. There was no way she was going to let him listen to the disc. He would think LJ was completely whacked out. He’d use it to—OK, she had no idea what Kenneth would do with the disc. But she didn’t want him to hear it. She owed LJ that much.
Kenneth let out a long breath. “OK, this is what we’re going to do. Alexis, you’ll stay here tonight.”
“No,” Alexis said automatically. She wasn’t staying anywhere with this guy.
“Look,” Kenneth said sharply, “I ought to call Child Protective Services right this minute.”
“Oh my God.” Panicked, Alexis shot a glance toward the door, trying to gauge how long it would take to get there.
“Listen to me,” Kenneth said, grabbing her arm again.
“No!” Alexis yelled. “I knew I shouldn’t have come over here. You’re just going to put me in some foster care so you never have to see me again, and—”
“Just stay here until I can figure out what to do,” he said. “What I was trying to say is that I should call CPS on you, but I won’t. Not yet. Let me look into this first. There might be some other solution.”
Alexis eyed him warily.
“I’m trying to help you, Alexis,” he said.
Maybe he thought he was. But what he thought was right and good would never be what was right for Alexis. Still, she knew that if she left right now, he’d call the police in a heartbeat. Better to let him think she had given up.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll stay here for now.”
“Good,” he said, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“I know.” She nodded, trying to look like a good girl, whatever that was.
He seemed to buy it. “I’m going to go look into this.” He turned to Linda. “I’ll be in my office. Why don’t you two get something to eat?”
“Sure,” Linda said. Alexis nodded again. More of that good-girl thing.
But she wasn’t a good girl. She never had been. And there was no way she was spending the night there.