She gives me a look of disdain. “My father made a science of walking the line between what’s legal and what’s not. So have a lot of other businessmen. That’s the way you get rich.”

“Like those adoptions?” I say softly. “Let’s not forget why we’re here.”

“You’re so damned self-righteous. You must have cut a few corners in a decade of practicing law.”

“I was a prosecutor, Livy. I stayed on the right side of that line you’re talking about.”

“You never conveniently misplaced a piece of exculpatory evidence to keep it from the defense?”

“Never.”

“I suppose you never cheated on your wife either.”

“Sorry. Why don’t we look at those files?”

She studies me a moment more, then drops her hand and pulls the club chair off the Bokara. I roll up the rug and prop it against Leo’s desk.

Where the rug had lain, discolored floorboards outline a trapdoor three feet square. Livy goes to the desk and brings back a small metal handle with a hook on one end. Kneeling, she slips the hook into an aperture I cannot see and folds back the trapdoor, exposing the steel door of a floor safe.

She bends over the combination lock, thinks for a moment, then spins it left, right, and left again. “He hasn’t changed the combination in years,” she says, getting to her feet.

I crouch to turn the heavy handle of the safe, but the butt of Ike’s gun digs into my stomach. After setting it on the desk beside Livy’s purse, I get down on my knees, turn the handle, and pull open the heavy door.

Inside is a hoard of velvet-covered jewelry boxes, stock certificates, cash, gold coins, manila envelopes, and computer disks. Nine square feet of paydirt.

“How much time do we have?” I ask, reaching for the manila envelopes.

“Maybe five minutes. Maybe all night.”

“Maybe you should go upstairs and talk to your parents. Then I could be sure—”

“I’m staying here.”

The envelopes are thick and marked with handwritten labels. The handwriting is Leo’s. After wading through the mountain of discovery material, I recognize it as easily as my own. One label reads: FEDTAX ’94/NOT TO BE SHOWN AT AUDIT. Another: THIRD-PARTY HOLDINGS (LAND). A third reads: GRAND CAYMAN TRUST ACCOUNT.

“That’s got nothing to do with Del Payton,” Livy says over my shoulder.

Maybe not. But it could probably put Leo Marston in jail for a few years, and cost him a considerable portion of his fortune. Reluctantly I set these envelopes aside and continue searching. There are more offshore accounts, records of hidden shares in oil fields, a dozen other ventures. I am about to abandon the files for the computer disks when a label jumps out at me as though written in neon. It says only: EDGAR.