LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d been there for twenty-five years, Margaret considers it part of her job description to rat me out at every opportunity. My guess is that she had Vain Dane’s home number on speed dial by now. Or maybe she’d gotten so excited that she’d driven to his posh Palm Beach waterfront digs to deliver the news in person.

      Vain Dane had been furious over my actions during the Hall investigation, so I knew for a fact he wasn’t going to be thrilled with the news that I was again on the wrong side of the law. Particularly if he was being spoon-fed selective and unflattering facts by Margaret.

      Bitch.

      The passive-aggressive relationship I shared with Margaret started about ten minutes after I was hired. She didn’t like that my salary exceeded hers. Forget that I actually have a degree and she doesn’t. In Margaretland, all that matters is seniority.

      Margaret and the Mediocre Maidens—her posse from the file room—call me FAT behind my back. Sometimes she doesn’t even bother waiting until my back’s turned. It has nothing to do with my size, either. I’m a respectable size 4. The nickname comes from my initials—F-inley A-nderson T-anner. May sound like a classic DAR name, but in truth, it’s a family name. Names, actually.

      Forever ago, my mother had an incredible voice and was at the beginning of a promising career with the Metropolitan Opera. Her career was derailed when nodules were found on her throat and the resulting surgery weakened her voice. Apparently, during her brief career at the Met, she’d been sleeping her way through the tech guys when she discovered she was pregnant. I should fault her for not practicing birth control, but that would mean I wouldn’t exist, so I can’t really go there. Based on simple math, she narrowed the potential fathers down to two, Steven Finley or Jeff Anderson.

      But by the time I came along, both men were long gone—and as far as I know, neither of them knows about me to this day. Maybe I should suffer some sort of identity crisis or daddy abandonment issues, but I’m relatively normal—thanks to Jonathan Tanner. I was eighteen months old when he married my mother. Thirteen when I found out he wasn’t my biological father. Mom does enjoy keeping her dramatic little secrets. By then it didn’t matter. Jonathan was my father in every way even though we didn’t share DNA. He loved me, which is more than I can say for my mother.

      He died when I was seventeen. Since then, my mother has devoted her life to serial marriage. It’s worked out pretty well for her too. Between divorce settlements and death benefits, she’s got enough money to support her search to find hubby number six in fine style. Though she never admitted it—especially to me—I’m not sure she can really love another man after Jonathan.

      No doubt she’d already seen the morning news. It wouldn’t dawn on her to come to my aid. Hell, she’ll personalize it so that by the time we actually do talk, she’ll have found a way to make the horrifying ordeal of finding my friend soaked in blood and hours in police custody some intentional and diabolical choice on my part to humiliate her. She’s probably already on the phone to her travel agent and/or shrink.

      I checked the clock on the wall behind the desk sergeant. Who, by the way, was sipping coffee from a foam cup. The last time I’d been awake for almost five hours without a hit of caffeine, I was in the womb.

      While I was sympathetic to Jane’s predicament, I knew she hadn’t maimed and killed Paolo or anyone else. “What the hell is taking so long?” I grumbled. Again.

      He/she patted my leg, saying, “What’sa matter, honey? Got someplace to be?”

      “Logged in to eBay,” I replied benignly as I inched my leg away from his/hers.

      He/she looked at me as if I’d just uttered the atomic number for barium. “Is that your outcall service?” He/she lowered her voice. “What percentage do they take?”

      “Outcall? No. EBay is an auction site. There’s a Betsey Johnson dress in my size—worn once—and I was hoping to get in at the last second.” Was I really sharing my clandestine shopping habits with a transvestite-for-hire? Apparently I was. Talk about a Fellini moment.

      “Ooh. You’re pretty enough. If you ever want a job, you just head on down to Riveria Beach and ask for Raylene.”

      Mouth dry, I nodded and stared at the floor. The good part was I doubted the he/she would out my bidding on a used dress thing to my friends. It wasn’t as if I was frugal—far from it. That’s the problem. Well, part of the problem.

      My mother, in what she liked to call a character-building exercise, stopped subsidizing the very free shopping habits I had learned at her feet. It was her control-freak countermove to my decision not to go to law school. So, for the last seven years, I’ve been forced underground, into the scary but affordable world of knockoffs and online auctions. I’m pretty good at it now. By finding a decent dry cleaner that can remove almost anything and learning the archaic skill of sewing, I’ve beaten the master at her own game.

      And believe me, Cassidy Presley Tanner Halpern Rossi Browning Johnstone is a formidable foe. If you’re me. If you happen to be my perfect sister Lisa, the pediatric oncologist engaged to the blue-blood surgeon, planning the fall wedding of the century, you’re golden. Truth be told, I do like my sister, even if we have drifted apart over the years. We just don’t have anything in common.

      Right now, I actually feel sorry for her. Between the iron-willed snobbery of David Huntington St. John IV’s family and the society-pleasing whims of my mother, Lisa is having the wedding she never dreamed of.

      She’ll be wearing a custom Vera Wang and a St. John diamond-encrusted tiara that some descendant of the family brought over on the Nina, the Pinta, or the Who-Gives-a-Shit. Or maybe it was the Mayflower. Me? I’d be in diamond-encrusted heaven. Lisa? She’s more the hospital scrubs and Jesus sandals type. She doesn’t just wear Birkenstocks, she actually likes them. At any rate, seven hundred guests will be gathering in three short months at the St. John estate in Buckhead for the event of the season.

      It’ll be the first time Lisa’s worn heels since she abandoned stilettos for a stethoscope.

      Like I had any room to mock my sister’s footwear. I’d just been offered a job by a ho.

      “Miss Tanner?”

      I was well past the point of preserving dignity. Leaping off the bench, I hurried past the come-hither scent of coffee to where Detective Steadman waited on the opposite side of a swinging gate.

      The hinges squeaked loudly as she held it open and jerked her head in the direction of Interrogation Room One. The slap of my flip-flops echoed, drowning out the various telephone conversations and clicks of fingers entering information into computers. Even with the smell of too-strong, hours-old coffee, the place stunk of sweat and desperation.

      She pushed open the interrogation room door and motioned me inside. The quiet click of the door shutting us in was unnerving. I was a little surprised, and a lot nervous, because Becky wasn’t in the room. “Where’s my attorney?” I asked as I scraped the metal chair away from the table and took a seat.

      “She’s with Miss Spencer.”

      “Doing?”

      “Miss Spencer is being processed. I need your statement,” she said in a no-nonsense tone as she pressed the Record button on a small tape recorder set on the table between us.

      I reminded myself that I was an innocent bystander, but my heart was racing, and my clasped palms started getting clammy. “Shouldn’t I wait for Becky?”

      “Your call, but she could be a while.”

      “If you’re going to arrest me—”

      “I don’t have grounds to arrest you at this point, Miss Tanner. I simply need you to tell me what happened, beginning with Miss Spencer arriving at your apartment. The statement will be typed, and you’ll have an opportunity to read it and make any corrections before signing it. However, for your protection, I need to read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an

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