Читать книгу Falling Grace - Melissa Shirley - Страница 8

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 red. “You took the case of a baby killer?”

“What if she didn’t do it?”

“What if she did? Do you know anything about it? Do you have any idea what happened to that little girl in that house?” Her voice reached a shrill that would have had a dog barking if one stood anywhere within earshot. “Someone killed her. Stabbed her over and over again. They didn’t go after anyone else in the house. Whoever did this picked the most defenseless person they could. Random intruders don’t do that, and they don’t do it with that kind of rage. Fifty something stab wounds. Someone in that house did it.” She stared at me, though the glassiness in her eyes said she saw more than my skirt and cardigan. “She was three, Grace. Three.”

Fifty? Okay. I didn’t have all the facts yet, and I didn’t care much for learning them this way. “Rory, he came in and said his wife needed a lawyer.” I shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. You were gone, so I went.”

“Is that how you work? You snatch up any case off the street? Maybe we can dig up a few methheads and dealers you can put back out there so they can continue poisoning kids.” She shook her head. “This isn’t the law I want to practice anymore, Grace.”

My own anger forged a path from my stomach heading north. “Then you should have told me that before you asked me to come here, because I’m not going to sit in an office all day and write wills and lease agreements. I want to practice law that matters. I didn’t spend thousands of hours studying and working my ass off to sit behind a desk when I should be in a courtroom. I couldn’t care less if old Billy Ray gets Granddad Bobby Joe’s farmland.” I spit the last words in the worst southern accent I could muster. “I came here to work, and if you don’t want to do that, then I’ll stop unpacking and head back to Illinois. Just say the damn word.”

She turned, silent except for the stomp of her heels, and slammed her way out the front door.