The Partner by John Grisham Read Free Book Online Page A

touch.”
    They didn’t say a word for a long time after he left. There were so many questions, so much to say. The room spun with possibilities and scenarios.

    The victim of a fiery one-car collision, on a rural road with no witnesses, Patrick was laid to rest by his lovely wife Trudy on February 11, 1992. She was a striking widow, dressed in black Armani, and as they shoveled dirt onto his casket she was already spending the money.
    His will left everything to her. It was simple and had been recently updated. Hours before the funeral mass, Trudy and Doug Vitrano had carefully opened the lockbox in Patrick’s office and inventoried the contents. They found the will, two car tides, the deed to the Lanigan home, a life insurance policy in the amount of half a million dollars that Trudy knew about, and another policy for two million that she’d never heard of.
    Vitrano had quickly scanned the unexpected policy. It had been purchased by Patrick eight months earlier. Trudy was the sole beneficiary. The same company had sold both policies, and it was huge and solvent.
    She swore she knew nothing about it, and the smile on her face convinced Vitrano she was genuinely shocked. Funeral or no funeral, Trudy was quite thrilled about her good fortune. With her pain eased considerably, she somehow managed to suffer through the funeral service and burial without a serious breakdown.
    The life insurance company balked, as they all do initially, but Vitrano made sufficient threats to force payment. Four weeks after the burial, Trudy got her two and a half million.
    A week later, she was driving a red Rolls-Roycearound Biloxi, and people began to hate her. Then the ninety million vanished in thin air, and the rumors got started.
    Perhaps she wasn’t a widow.
    Patrick was the first suspect, and eventually the only one. The gossip grew vicious, so Trudy loaded her small daughter and her boyfriend, Lance, a holdover from high school, into the red Rolls and fled to Mobile, an hour east of Biloxi. She found a slick lawyer who gave her lots of advice on how to protect the money. She bought a beautiful old home in Point Clear, overlooking Mobile Bay, and put it in Lance’s name.
    Lance was a strong, handsome loser she’d first slept with at the age of fourteen. He’d been convicted of smuggling pot at nineteen, and spent three years in prison while she was having a wonderful time at college, playing cheerleader and seducing football players, a legendary party girl who also managed to graduate with honors. She married a wealthy fraternity boy, and divorced him after two years. Then she enjoyed the single life for a few years until she met and married Patrick, a promising young lawyer who was new to the Coast. Their courtship had been long on passion and short on planning.
    Through college, both marriages, and various short careers, Trudy had always kept Lance nearby. He was an addiction, a strapping, lusty boy she could never get enough of. She knew when she was fourteen that she would never be without Lance.

    Lance opened the door, bare-chested, black hair pulled back tightly into the obligatory ponytail, a large diamond earring in the left lobe. He sneered at Cutter as he sneered at the world, and didn’t say a word.
    “Is Trudy in?” Cutter asked.
    “Maybe.”
    The badge flashed, and for a second the sneer vanished. “Agent Cutter, FBI. I’ve talked to her before.”
    Lance imported marijuana from Mexico with a large, fast boat Trudy had purchased for him. He sold the pot to a gang in Mobile. Business was slow because the DEA was asking questions.
    “She’s in the gym,” Lance said, nodding past Cutter. “What do you want?”
    Cutter ignored him and walked across the drive to a converted garage where the music was booming. Lance followed.
    Trudy was in the midst of a high-level aerobics challenge being dictated to her by a supermodel on a large-screen TV at one end of the room. She bounced and gyrated and mouthed the words to a