Falling Grace. Melissa Shirley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ killed my baby.” Her voice cracked, then shattered on a sob.

      I ran a hand over hers, gave it a squeeze. I needed five more minutes of coherency. “Who could have stabbed your daughter?”

      The withering continued. Mrs. Quinn slunk farther into her chair and fat, sloppy tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t know.” She mumbled the phrase three more times.

      I covered her hand with mine. I didn’t usually coddle my clients, but she needed contact, a sympathetic touch. “Okay. We’re going to figure this out, but you have to listen to me. They’re going to put you in a cell. Whatever you do, don’t speak to them, at all. If anyone asks you anything, or tries to start a conversation, you ask for me. Do not say anything to them.” I couldn’t stress that enough. “To anyone. Especially if they put you in a cell with someone else.” She continued to sob. “Do you understand?” Her body shook as she ignored my question. “Do you understand?”

      “Yes.”

      “What’s your first name?”

      “Gabrielle. My husband calls me Gabby.”

      “Okay, Gabby, listen. Because of what they’re charging you with, I probably can’t get you out on bail, but I will do everything I can to make your stay here as short as possible.”

      A bubble of something I hoped was only gas formed in my stomach. In law school, it was drilled into us that asking the wrong questions limited our ability to defend our clients, but in this case, I had to know. Even if the answer meant I could never put her on the stand, a fire burned in me to get the answer. “Did you kill your daughter?”

      She looked around the room, at the floor, the paint peeling from a far wall, the doorknob, a mirror that doubled as a window. Everywhere but at me.

      “Gabby, did you kill your daughter?”

      “No. Nathan didn’t do it either. He’s a wonderful father.”

      Oh, for him she was willing to spearhead a defense? In the words of William Shakespeare, the lady doth protest too much. I made a mental note to launch a little investigation into wonder daddy. I had a tingling feeling her case would live or die by whatever I discovered about him. Her shoulders slumped forward as she lifted her gaze to slide over me and finally land on a spot in the center of the table. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, wouldn’t look up again. That bubble in the pit of my stomach expanded.

      “Okay.” For the moment, I couldn’t care about her husband or whether the world believed he did it. He wasn’t the one holding down a chair in the interrogation room. I cared about this broken woman, thin and aged beyond her years. “Then let’s figure out how to make sure a jury knows you didn’t do it.”

      Chapter 2

      Two hours later, she’d been charged and booked, then shoved into a cell to await an arraignment that wouldn’t happen until the weekend passed. I hurried back across the street, my steps far more energized since I’d jogged behind her husband. In the far corner of my mind, I wondered where Mr. Quinn disappeared to. I’d walked out of the interrogation room to find him gone. A moment later, I stepped through the office door to find Rory Allden in high heels and a short skirt atop a metal receptionist desk. She strained, twisting and stretching, to change a light bulb in a fluorescent fixture. Her husband, Jack, ogled her from the ground, arms out as though prepared to catch a parachuter whose string wouldn’t pull.

      “Hey, Grace.” She looked down at me, then went back to maneuvering the stubborn bulb into the fixture.

      “What are you doing?” Seriously, no maintenance person in any building I’d ever worked in dressed quite like that. Even in college, she paraded around like a fashion model while the rest of us looked like we shopped in dollar stores.

      Jack never took his eyes off her ass as he answered, “She’s proving it only takes one lawyer to change a light bulb.”

      I tilted my head and shot Jack a squinty-eyed glare. “Lawyer joke. Original.”

      He chuckled and resumed gawking at his wife’s exposed legs.

      “He is totally looking up your skirt.”

      Rory gazed down at him and winked. “What a waste of perfectly good underwear.” Her wide grin showed a set of straight, chemically whitened teeth. She pushed the plastic panel back into place with the flourish of a woman who’d implemented a plan for world peace, then reached a hand down and laid it on her husband’s shoulder. He circled her waist with long, gentle fingers and lifted her down to the floor. “Where did you go? I thought you were going to unpack.”

      Miss OCD turned and motioned to the ten or so boxes stacked in the corner of the room. That morning, I’d promised to haul them into my office. In my world, cases came before good housekeeping. “A client came in.”

      One eyebrow shot up her forehead almost to her scalp. “A client? We aren’t open yet.”

      At her curious stare, I realized Rory might not be nearly as eager about the case as I’d been. My excitement died, and my lips twisted toward my left ear. “Yeah, just a guy, um, he, uh”--oh crap--“came over while I was unpacking.” I walked to the box on the highest pile and flipped open the lid.

      In one smooth move, she stepped into her husband’s arms. “I’ll see you at home, hon.” After an almost pornographic display of making out, he gave me a little wave and walked out the door.

      “Grace.”

      I lifted my head out of the box I’d all but crawled into and quickly looked back down.

      “What guy came in here looking for a lawyer?” The deadly calm of her voice said she had a guess, and her slightly opened mouth and flared nostrils said she didn’t like it.

      “He actually came looking for you, but you’d gone to the store…for whatever it is you went to the store for.”

      After what Rory had been through--ex-husband killing her son, former law firm selling her out on another case, almost being disbarred--maybe I should have known she would be angry if I took this case. But in our massive number of calls over the last weeks, she’d assured me she’d taken steps to deal with her residual depression, paranoia, and overall feelings of guilt.

      She cocked her hip and leaned against the desk.

      I twisted my hands in front of me, smoothed my skirt, then picked an imaginary piece of lint from the front. The words squeaked out as though something gripped the bass in my vocal chords. “Nathan Quinn.”

      Her eyes flashed and her cheeks turned a fiery shade of red. “Nathan Quinn?” Oh, hell. The ice in her tone chilled every bone in my body and I shivered.

      “Yes.” My voice lacked any sort of conviction, more squeaked from between my lips. “Nathan Quinn.” I closed the box and walked around it, arms outstretched in surrender. “Rory, listen.” I could do this without her, defend this client, and she could take her own cases.

      Her blue eyes flashed fire. “No, you listen.” She actually stamped her foot against the floor. “Do you have any idea what I went through? What these kinds of cases do to me?” All five-feet-two-inches of her blazed with rage bubbling below her surface, turning her skin a fiery shade of СКАЧАТЬ