shrugged, looking for all the world as if he couldn’t care less that the commissioner and mayor had basically just sold him down the river. “I don’t have an angle.”
“So just like that you’re going to give me everything I want?” Careful, Erin. Those eyes had flared, even if only a tiny fraction. At any other time she’d have jumped on that zap of electrical energy that had just shot between them. She would have worked it right up to the edge of professional acceptability. Meaning just enough to reduce her opponent to a quivering mass of hormones, but far shy of allowing him to believe it would ever lead to anything. Much less anything serious.
Now, fun and casual? That she might be up for. Just not with Brady. There was nothing fun or casual about Brady O’Keefe. Dangerous and unpredictable, that was Brady. She’d never encountered electricity of the type that seemed to flare up every time she came within ten feet of him.
But she didn’t lean back now. Because her job demanded she didn’t. And as long as she remembered she was here on a job, one that could push her small firm into the spotlight, she’d be fine.
When Brady didn’t respond to her challenge, she opted to take control of the meeting. Something she should have done last night. She cleared her throat and got to work. “I want to present this as a homicide. The brutal slaying of a well-known member of Philadelphia’s upper crust. We will focus on Sanderson’s numerous philanthropic contributions and what a loss his death will be to the underprivileged. We want to stir up outrage that such a worthy member of society has been taken from us. We want people demanding this obviously deranged killer be caught.”
“Erin—”
She talked over him. “I’m well aware that the media’s focus is going to be on the kinky sexual elements present at the scene of the murder.” She stopped and looked at him. “You have ruled this a homicide, am I correct?”
Brady stared at her for such a prolonged moment, she was certain he was going to balk, or get up and walk out. In the end, he did neither. But there was no electricity now. She wasn’t exactly relieved. Not a good sign.
“We’ll have the full report from the medical examiner later today,” he said finally. “But preliminary findings are edging toward heart attack.” He leaned back, but didn’t go so far as to smile smugly. Though she sensed he wanted to. “Not exactly the brutal slaying you are so anxious to depict.”
“So, he what then? Died of an overdose of sex? I mean, this is a murder investigation, isn’t it?”
“Right now we’re waiting to hear the final postmortem from Theo. Until then we treat it as a homicide. Once the results are in, we’ll rule whether there was foul play.” He looked her in the eye. “Or whether ol’ Morty preached hard-line morality to the people, while privately practicing something fairly…well, amoral, certainly by his own standards anyway.” He folded his arms. “You have an angle on how to play that possibility to the media?”
She swallowed a curse word and didn’t much like the taste. “Brady, if Sanderson is portrayed as some kind of sex pervert, there will be total chaos in the mayor’s political party while everyone tries to run and distance themselves from the guy. I’ve already got Henley’s campaign manager breathing down my neck over this.”
Brady shrugged. “Not really my problem. My problem is to determine if Morty died getting his satin-covered rocks off, or if someone helped him along a bit. But I’m here to tell you, your job isn’t going to be easy either way. Morty was not well liked. There are people who will come out of the woodwork to crucify him when they get wind of this.”
“Exactly,” Erin retorted. “Chaos. And with the mayor being a close friend of Morton’s, this could blow up in everyone’s face. It would destroy his campaign. The mudslinging will make everyone look bad.”
“So basically you don’t care what really happened. You just want the mayor to come out looking good for reelection. That is what he’s paying you the big bucks for, right?”
She didn’t take offense. This was part of the job, too. Though not her favorite part. “What I care about is successfully getting my client through a rough personal spot with the least amount of personal and professional damage I can manage. That is why he hired me. And honestly, I didn’t think taking on a job for the mayor was exactly something to be ashamed of.”
“You don’t care about the truth then? Just the most positive spin you can put on it.”
Erin blew out a breath and tried to clamp down on her rapidly growing frustration. Why she cared what Brady thought of her was beyond her. He was supposed to be a means to an end. But his words had stung, there was no denying that. “Look at it this way. I’m like an attorney who has to occasionally represent a guilty person and still do her utmost to get him the best deal within the bounds of the law. I occasionally work for someone who is caught in a less than ideal position and do my darnedest to lessen the negative impact.”
“For the record, I think most attorneys are slimeballs, no matter who they are representing.”
Now she smiled. It was that or throw something at him. “So I’m a slimeball?”
“No, you’re a professional spin doctor who just might have jumped in over her head into shark-infested political waters where people play for keeps. This isn’t about prettying up some businessman’s brush with a drug bust.”
She smacked the table. “Okay, now you’re really ticking me off. I don’t really give a flying hot damn what you think of me, the mayor, or even Mort Sanderson. Finding out how Sanderson died and who might have killed him is not my job. Someone else has to worry about that, namely you. My only interest is seeing that this whole thing doesn’t drag my client through the sewage Ol’ Morty might have been wallowing in. How I present things to the media is strictly meant to help him, not hinder you. So there is absolutely no reason why you can’t continue your fight for truth and justice, while I protect the people who are getting caught in the crossfire.”
“So, if what I discover ends up painting the mayor in a less than positive light, you’ll just spin that the right way too, whether or not he might be a slimeball as well?”
Righteous indignation fled as a frown instantly creased her forehead. “Do you have any indication Henley is in any way involved in this? Personally?”
Brady laughed. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? But I can see why you’re doing so well. You do keep your eye on the end goal, no matter what blows across your path.” He pushed back his chair. “Your thirty minutes are up.”
“I want you to let me know the instant you get the report back. I’m going to push the press conference back to four-thirty.”
“Wouldn’t want to miss that five o’clock newscast.”
“No,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “We wouldn’t. But if this isn’t a murder, I need to know. Otherwise I’m going with what I told you earlier. We need to steer this thing away from how he was found and toward catching the psycho that killed him. I would think you’d want that, too.”
“If there is a psycho killer.”
She stood and blocked his path. “Last I heard, the press only knew that he’d been found in the Dew Lily Inn and that there was supposition that his reason for being there was sexual.”
“No one is at the Dew Lily Inn unless it’s sexual.”
