Better Off Dead : A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer Novel (Book One)

  Chapter 4

  LUCY’S HAIR was still wet, and though she was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and a pair of sweats, she felt like a million bucks. She’d washed and scrubbed herself until not a trace of McDonald’s—or its special sauce—was on her. Also the hot water finally ran cold.

  She’d gone into her mother’s room and rifled through her drawers until she found what she was looking for: a business card.

  Gram was at church, but she’d left her presents neatly stacked on the kitchen table, right next to her birthday cake. A spotless glass dome sat atop the pedestal holding the cake.

  A piece of paper had her grandmother’s handwriting on it.

  Lucybean,

  Called you off from work today.

  Rest!

  Love, Gram

  Cool… I can QUIT tomorrow.

  She was suddenly starved. Her stomach growled as memories of her grandmother’s divine cake floated through her mind. So she fetched a plate, a knife and a fork, then hacked herself off a very large piece of cake. Even the next day the thing smelled like heaven, and as she took a bite it tasted just as good... no, better than it had the night before. Now it tasted like freedom. Now it tasted like having her old life back, and getting back her dreams.

  Having money again. Regaining her dimmed yet still abundant beauty. And going to a good university, and from there having the life she’d always envisioned for herself. To own her own multimillion dollar cosmetics line. Maybe even branch out to movies, music and TV. She, Lucy Hart, would be queen of her own, huge, fabulous world.

  The image of her in a gorgeous Dior gown, on the arm of some handsome A-List movie-stud, gliding across the red carpet of the Grammys, the Oscars, and fashion week in Paris, glowed and sparkled in her head.

  It’s going to be... spectacular. She licked the last of the miraculous lemon cream icing from the tines of her fork.

  But do I know what I’m doing?

  She glanced down at the business card she’d filched from her mother’s room. Frank C Luvici. “The C stands for Crook,” her father used to say about his lawyer.

  Lucy remembered that when he’d come to the house, he always wore expensive though tacky suits, and smelled of Brut cologne. His hair was always slicked straight back, and when he smiled at her it always seemed he was undressing her with his eyes.

  He had really rancid breath too.

  He was scum. And she hadn’t seen him since her father’s sentencing hearing. He’d gotten her father a cushy stint in a minimal security prison—practically a holiday resort with armed guards. So scum or not, he had to be good. And a good attorney, especially a dirty, greasy weasel like Luvici, would’ve not only gotten a sweetheart of a deal for his client, but he would’ve hidden some of his client’s assets, so he would at least get paid while his client rotted in jail.

  Lucy had watched a Law & Order or two, and since her father had been a high class lawyer, the five hundred dollars an hour kind, she’d picked up a thing or two just being around him.

  She grasped the business card in her hand and flicked it around with her fingers, noting the “Home Phone” scrawled on the back. Sure, if Daddy—she cringed just thinking the word. If Daddy has any money at all hidden—for like when he gets out and starts his new life without us!—then his snake of a lawyer would know what rock—or Cayman Island, or Swiss bank account—it would be hidden under.

  “But why would he help me?” Lucy mumbled as she sifted through everything she could remember about one Frank C. Luvici. A dirty piece-of-crap lawyer like that... well, any lawyer, crooked or respectable, would only help you for three reasons. If you can pay, if it’ll make great PR for him (which equals more clients and billable hours), or...

  Lucy pinned the card down to her grandmother’s weathered kitchen table with her index finger, digging her uneven, dull nail into the C as her mind snapped on the little nugget of memory she was looking for.

  They only help for money, good press... or blackmail. Lucy smiled as her plan formed in her head.

  She wouldn’t be calling him at home. No. She remembered her father used to say that Luvici was so greedy he went into the office even on Sundays. That, and he liked to bang his weekend secretary—the one his wife had never seen—after putting in his billable hours, and before trekking out to the golf course for a quick nine holes.

  Lucy knew something very interesting about Frank C. Luvici. A couple very interesting “somethings.”

  Leverage over your opponent can be as easy as the element of surprise, her father had told her often, and Lucy had used that strategy against upstart wannabees, teachers who were trying to take her down a peg—which never worked out well for them—and against embittered ex-boyfriends. So Lucy knew it worked, and she’d already practiced it in a real life setting.

  He’d also said, Always have a back-up plan for negotiations. A nice, fat killer of a second surprise.

  Lucy tapped her finger against the business card until there was a notch under that stupid C.

  She knew what her first piece of leverage would be. And she knew the schtupping your secretary thing would make a pretty good plan B. But this was a lawyer. He breathed, ate, and slept slippery, weasely moves. She needed something that would knock him flat. Something that would put him in the way of not only legal detriment, but bodily harm.

  Something candy-apple red shimmered in her mind, a memory that she’d all but forgotten. And she smiled as she ran upstairs to get dressed. She’d have to get moving if she was going to get the jump on her prey.