LITMIR.BIZ

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EMS guys checked Jane for injuries, flashed penlights in her eyes, and then declared her injury-free.

      “Like hell,” I yelled loud enough so the group in the other room could hear me. “Look at her, she’s obviously in shock.”

      “This will be a lot easier on everyone if you calm down, Ms. Tanner,” the officer insisted.

      “Why the hell should I?” I asked emphatically, standing up and tugging at the edges of my robe.

      The officer opened his mouth to say something just as Detectives Steadman and Graves slapped handcuffs on Jane.

      “Have you all lost your minds?” I demanded as I pushed past my official babysitter. “Why are you handcuffing her? At best she’s a witness and at worst, an almost-victim.”

      “Stand back,” Graves warned in a very official tone.

      “But!” I started to argue, then realized I had nothing convincing to say beyond “Vacant-expression Jane is my friend and I know for a fact she would never de-penis a guy.”

      My phone rang then and I was torn between answering it and a strong urge to muscle my way through the throng of cops to save my glassy-eyed friend as she was being led toward the door. Counting paramedics, there were six of them and only one of me, so I went for the phone.

      “Yes?” I snapped into the receiver.

      “The whole parking lot is cordoned off. They won’t let me past the police line.”

      I added this bit of information to my growing list of irritations. “Hey, Kojak,” I called to Graves, who had one hand on Jane’s bound wrists and a brown paper sack in the other. He glanced in my direction as his latex-gloved minion was depositing my pashmina into an evidence bag. “We’re being denied our right to counsel.”

      “You and Ms. Spencer will be afforded an opportunity to make a call from the station,” he replied blandly.

      Me? What had I done? What had Jane done? Shit. “Our attorney is right outside. Her name is Rebecca Jameson and I happen to know she has every right to be present during arrest and questioning.”

      Both he and his partner gave me that “you’re a real pain in the ass” look. Not that I cared. I just wanted Becky here to put an end to the idiotic notion that Jane was in any way responsible for Paolo’s death.

      Graves made a call on his radio and within a matter of seconds, Becky was rushing through the door. In the forty-seven minutes since I’d made the frantic call to her, Becky had obviously been busy.

      I was a scrunchie and a bad shoulder tattoo away from looking like a skanky warehouse shopper. Jane was a zombie, a barely conscious, bloody, La Perla–clad mess. Becky, however, looked polished and professional.

      Her red hair was twirled into a loose knot, secured by a couple of lacquered chopsticks in the same shade of coral as her blouse and wedge sandals. With her cream jersey skirt, she had the perfect casual business look of a no-nonsense attorney. I’d berate her later for taking the time to accessorize and applying a full complement of makeup, but for right now, I was just glad she was here.

      I’d known Becky since our freshman year of college, so I recognized the look of horror that flashed briefly across her face when she saw bloody Jane cuffed and surrounded by sheriff’s deputies.

      She introduced herself, conveniently leaving out the part about being a contracts attorney who hadn’t seen the inside of a courtroom since her moot court assignment when she was a third-year law student. “Who is in charge here?”

      “That would be me,” Detective Steadman said, stepping out of the small group. She didn’t offer Becky her hand. “I’m the lead on the case and this is my partner, Detective Graves.”

      Graves nodded, then walked out on my patio when his cell phone rang. His part of the conversation consisted of a series of grunts—lots of “umms” and “uh-huhs” and “reallys?”

      “Do something,” I mouthed to Becky.

      “Unless you have cause to hold Miss Spencer, I want the handcuffs removed now.”

      “That isn’t an option,” Steadman said without inflection.

      “Why not?”

      “Miss Spencer is under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

      Suddenly my babysitter twisted my hands behind my back and slapped handcuffs tightly around my wrists. “Ow!”

      Steadman’s expression didn’t so much as flicker. “And I’m taking Miss Tanner in as well.”

      “For what?” I practically screamed.

      “Accomplice, material witness, assaulting a witness after she was told to stay in the bedroom. Take your pick,” Graves said, his dark eyes flashing something that looked annoyingly like pleasure.

      Steadman turned to Becky and added, “You have thirty seconds to vacate these premises. Based on evidence found at Miss Spencer’s home and the blood trail here, I’m designating this apartment a secondary crime scene.”

      A good lawyer seeks justice; a great lawyer gets you the hell out of jail.

      Two

      On the plus side, even in boxer shorts, a matching cami with demi robe, and my pink rubber beach flip-flops, I was better dressed than the half dozen prostitutes chained to the railing along the front edge of the bench. Most of the pros looked pretty haggard, except for the statuesque brunette seated next to me.

      I thought about offering some free advice concerning a career change, but figured it wasn’t my place. Looking down at her gigantic, scuffed leather Kate Spade shoes, I wondered if I was the one in the wrong line of work.

      She noticed that I wasn’t handcuffed to the bench at the same time I noticed she had an Adam’s apple. I almost blurted out “You’re a man” but then I figured he/she already knew that.

      What the hell was talking them so long? It was well after nine o’clock. I’d been sitting on the hard bench for what felt like hours. My butt was numb. My temper was not.

      The desk sergeant, after some serious threatening of a civil suit on Becky’s part, agreed to remove the handcuffs. It was progress. Jane’s plight trumped mine, so I hadn’t seen Becky or Jane since they’d been sucked into the “Authorized Personnel” area.

      Across from the booking bench—a term I’d learned about twenty minutes ago—was a long wall. It was scuffed and desperately in need of a fresh coat of paint. There were large plate-glass windows that allowed me to see out into the public waiting area. Though I couldn’t hear it, I could see a grainy picture flickering from the television mounted high up on corner brackets.

      I winced when footage of Jane and me doing the perp walk out of my apartment played for the umpteenth time. Hopefully no one I knew was up this early on a Sunday morning to see the humiliating images. The way my luck was running, that didn’t seem like a realistic expectation.

      I was sure Margaret Ford, the office receptionist and self-appointed thorn in my side, was probably gleeful seeing me on the early morning news. She’d be doing a happy dance between the traffic update from Captain Jodi, hottie helicopter pilot, and pet picks (viewer-supplied photos of everything from snakes to schnauzers), as the local station had aired the footage of Jane and me in handcuffs.

      It caused an instant knot to form in the pit of my stomach. I was still on moderately shaky ground with the ultraconservative law firm of Dane, Lieberman and Zarnowski, my employers and the providers of that great thing called my paycheck. As an estates and trusts paralegal, I was expendable. Especially to Maudlin Margaret and her band of jealous secretaries—um, administrative assistants.

      A few months back, I’d almost been killed trying to solve a series of murders

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