It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good To The Last Death #1) - Robyn Peterman Page 0,71
to. I’d also never met anyone in her family. Heather didn’t talk about them much.
“Because work is honest,” she said. “Laziness is a boring trait.”
I’d heard the same line from Gideon the first day I met him. I almost told Heather, but I was afraid if I brought his name up, I’d blush. Heather didn’t miss a beat, and I wasn’t prepared to tell her I’d kissed him. It was a non-issue. Although, I’d love to see her reaction if I told her he was the Grim Reaper. I never would. She’d never believe me anyway.
Plus, I couldn’t use up her willingness to believe the unbelievable about Gideon. I needed to save all of that for John’s case.
“What kind of law will you be practicing?” I asked, wondering how Clarence Smith would feel about Heather poaching all of his paralegals.
“Criminal prosecution,” Heather said, watching for my reaction. “I’m in the mood to send bad guys to jail.”
I almost screamed again, but I held myself in check. It was all working out too easily. The other shoe was about to drop—probably when I told her the story about John with a bunch of holes in it.
“Wow,” was all I could come up with.
“And I was hoping you were about to give me my first case,” Heather said casually. “Would you like to explain what you started last night?”
“Umm… are you ready to hear just part of the story?” I asked, closing my eyes and waiting for her to laugh.
She didn’t. “I’m ready to hear whatever you can tell me.”
“Promise you’ll still be my friend in an hour?”
“Daisy, I’ll be your friend forever. Nothing can change that. I promise,” Heather told me.
God, I hoped she didn’t change her mind. Her friendship meant the world to me.
Chapter Eighteen
The video on John’s phone was over and we sat in silence. I hadn’t watched it. I’d already seen it in John’s mind. I couldn’t watch my dead friend die a second time. I’d gone to Heather’s kitchen and ran the water so I couldn’t hear it. When it was done, I came back in and sat next to her. Heather was crying.
“You can’t tell me where you got this?” she asked quietly.
I sighed and decided to tell her as much as I could so she would know if she could do anything about it.
“I stole it from his house,” I admitted, staring at the bruise on the back of my hand. “I pretended I was part of a widow’s support group and found it while John’s piece-of-shit wife got me a glass of water.”
“That’s pretty brilliant,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied. “I was scared out of my mind.”
“Why did you do it?”
I answered without thinking. “I had to. It was the only way.”
Shit. I should have made notes and read from a piece of paper. Winging it wasn’t working—at all.
Heather stared at me and waited for more. There wasn’t much more I could tell her without her thinking I needed to be institutionalized. I was backed into a corner with no realistic way out. I just hoped she could do something with the video and the small amount of information I could provide.
“Did you know John Dunn when he was alive?” she asked.
I glanced up in surprise. “No, I didn’t. How do you know his last name?”
My friend sighed and wiped a tear away. “He was my banker. He was a really nice man.”
“I know,” I told her.
“Wait. I thought you said you didn’t know him.”
Damn it, Heather didn’t miss a beat. She was going to be a kick-ass lawyer and I was going to be a kick-ass patient at the mental institution.
“Umm… I don’t. I just heard he was.”
Heather inhaled slowly and exhaled just as slow. “Did you go to his funeral?”
Heather knew about my morbid habit just like Missy did. I didn’t know exactly what she thought of it since she was nice enough to never tell me. I hoped she didn’t feel the need to discuss it now.
“I did,” I answered. “It was bizarre. Only three people were there.”
“That’s because his wife didn’t put the announcement in the paper until after the funeral,” Heather said with a grunt of disgust. “I’ve run across her as well. I was never able to wrap my mind around why John married her. She’s nothing but a gold-digging bitch.”
“She dropped his dog off at the pound after he died,” I said before slapping my hand over my mouth so hard it stung.