I checked my mascara one last time, spritzed on some Michael Kors perfume, ruffled the fur on Lucy’s head, and headed out the door and down to the police station. Look out, Jensen Nash! Here I come!
CHAPTER 2
The local police station consisted of one plain red brick building surrounded by a host of mobile trailers. Rather than buy or build a new building as the department expanded, the city just kept dropping in trailers and setting up offices in those. I found Jensen Nash in his office in one of the trailers. His name appeared in neat white block letters on a black sign attached to his door. I opened the door and walked in without knocking.
He barely bothered to glance up at me. It was hard to tell by the look on his face what he thought of me or my skimpy ensemble. That was not encouraging.
“You’re off for the evening, I take it,” he said.
“Um, yes, actually, but—“
“Chloe Taylor, right?” he asked without looking up.
“Yes, but—“
“I thought I told your paralegal I was busy.”
Crap. So much for my “I’m not a lawyer” ruse. “You did, but—“
“You thought you’d come down here anyway and charm me with your feminine wiles.”
Wow. I hadn’t felt this out of control of a conversation since I was a zitty teenager trying to get up the courage to talk to my first crush. To make matters worse, Detective Nash was, in fact, the sexiest man I had seen in a 200 mile radius. He was even sexier than Dorian. He had Rob Lowe good looks. Even through his black suit jacket, I could see that he was incredibly fit. If he possessed even an ounce of personal charm, I might have fallen instantly in love. Instead, I found myself stammering and irritated.
“How do you know who I am?”
“I’m a detective,” he said. “I know things.”
“Would you care to share?”
“Nope,” he said.
I bent over his desk, resting my weight on my elbows, chin in my hands, desperately trying to think of a way to get him to engage.
“Your victim was my expert witness,” I said. “I knew him pretty well. We should talk.”
Nash steadily refused to look at me. “I don’t think so.”
“I can help you,” I said.
“I doubt it.”
“Then maybe you can help me,” I said.
“I doubt that, too.”
Okay. Now he was starting to piss me off. “Well if you won’t help yourself, and if you won’t help me, how about helping Gracie Miller? Or are you just a heartless sonofabitch who doesn’t care about old lady widows and their kittens?”
Nash looked up in surprise. “Kittens? What do old lady widows and kittens have to do with anything?”
I took advantage of the opening. “My client Gracie Miller used to be married to a guy named Derrick. He worked for PetroPlex in the benzene unit for forty years, starting right out of high school. When opposing counsel deposed him a year ago, his wife Gracie, who he married when he was nineteen, had to push him through the doors and into my office in a wheelchair. I had to wheel in his oxygen tank. He had no hair, not even eyebrows or eyelashes because of chemotherapy. He had radiation burns on his face and chest. He had to take off his oxygen mask and gasp for breath just to answer questions for the jackass PetroPlex attorney who spent the entire day trying to prove that even though Petroplex never warned Derrick that benzene causes cancer, that even though PetroPlex was too cheap to install the safety devices that would prevent benzene leaks, and even though PetroPlex never supplied respiratory masks or safety equipment, they were not to blame for my client’s cancer and subsequent death.”
I had finally succeeded in gaining Detective Nash’s attention. I still couldn’t quite read his face, though.
“Derrick,” I said, “slaved away for years to save up for a down payment on a tiny farm. He took Gracie out to dinner at Olive Garden once a year for their anniversary because that was the best he could afford. And on my birthday last year, Gracie baked me a cake. From scratch. With homemade chocolate icing and real butter. And incidentally, my birthday was the day before Derrick’s funeral, which was also the day after he died, at home, gasping for breath in his wheeled-in hospital bed. Gracie is thoughtful like that.”
Nash’s eye twitched almost imperceptibly. What did that mean? “And the kittens?”