Charlotte closed the front door. “So Jamie is going to kill us?”
Declan sighed. “Not if I can help it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Snookie took a moment to review the thumb drive at her desk and then, her box of work-related memories and a stapler she liked already packed, said her goodbyes and went home to change. Her apartment was already stuffed into the trunk and the back seat of her fifteen-year-old BMW.
She lived light.
In front of the mirror included with her furnished apartment, she’d worked on a character developed to get close to Stephanie Moriarty. Then, satisfied she’d nailed it, drove an hour and a half south to Charity.
It felt good to be in the field again, even if it was her last hurrah. She’d been confined to desk duty the month before her retirement, wearing a dark suit every day in Tampa, Florida like some sort of masochist.
She’d been reprimanded there. It seemed the FBI didn’t like it when an agent voluntarily went undercover as a waitress to stop a robbery ring. Then it was all, that’s not one of our cases, and you can’t use federal resources and isn’t that guy your boyfriend, did you really do this to catch him cheating on you?
Ridiculous.
Though sending her cheating boyfriend to jail for robbery made it all worth it.
For her meeting with Stephanie, she’d decided to dress down. Her costume included polyester shorts with an elastic waistband she found disturbingly comfortable, a simple white t-shirt featuring a painting of a cat in the moonlight and flip-flops so old and cheap the noise they made when she walked was more like flip flerp. She’d picked the name Tammy Whynot as her cover, though she’d have to change that on the fly if Stephanie actually asked for a last name.
Snookie pulled into the law office’s gravel parking lot and looked around. Stephanie’s office nestled in the corner of a small shopping center containing the usual strip mall shops—a nail salon and a dry cleaner’s. According to the information Macha had given her, Jamie’s daughter spent most of her time getting bad guys out of prison time. No shocker there. Probably some deep-seated need to forgive her mother for her crimes. Absolution by proxy.
Cracking her neck, Snookie flip-flerped to the door and walked into a cube of air-conditioning masquerading as Stephanie’s tasteful waiting room. A pile of People and Popular Mechanics sat on the sofa’s side table, all of them over six months old. Snookie peered down the hall where a door remained half-opened and scowled at what looked like a cot with a pillow on it.
Who sleeps back there?
“How can I help you?” asked Stephanie, appearing at the door of an office adjacent to the lobby. Snookie recognized her from her photos on the thumb drive. Good-looking girl, tall and blonde and thin as a rail. Snookie already hated her.
“Hi there,” she said, thrusting out a hand. “I’m Tammy. You’re Stephanie Moriarty like the sign says out front?”
“I am.” Stephanie kept a smile plastered to her face, but Snookie could see she wasn’t impressed with the sixty-year-old trailer-trash who’d walked through her door. Still, in Stephanie’s business as a defense lawyer, Snookie wasn’t the sort of character she could afford to blow off, which is why she’d created Tammy Whynot.
“I came to talk to you about my son.”
Of course you did, said Stephanie with the beginning of an eyeroll she nipped before it became too obvious.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. Did I need one? You got a shop here so I just figgered...”
Stephanie looked at her watch. “No. It’s fine. I’ll make some time. Come inside.” She motioned for Snookie to follow her into the office.
They both took seats, Stephanie behind the desk and Snookie in a chair clearly designed to make her feel ill at ease. Snookie shifted the chair around to the side of the desk to sit closer to Stephanie, who frowned and rolled her chair back a few inches.
Snookie took Stephanie’s fidgeting as a chance to look around. Three-fourths of Stephanie’s office felt normal. All the usual lawyer books sat stacked in a dark wooden bookshelf, a file cabinet occupied one corner. She saw everything she’d expect to see if someone were building a television film set for a lawyer’s office.
Then she looked to her right.
On the right wall hung various types of weapons; a katana, an old pistol, a bowie knife mounted on a piece of polished wood, and some sort of medieval torture device made out of pocked metal. That wall was an odd choice. Maybe it impressed her probably mostly male clientele? Maybe it symbolized her strength? Represented a willingness to fight for her clients?
Snookie looked at Stephanie through new eyes.
This one is interesting.
“I knew a Stephanie, but we all called her Staphanie,” said Snookie, giving herself more time to study the office.
“Mm hm,” mumbled Stephanie, looking at her laptop screen as if she wanted to finish something before engaging.
“You want to know why we called her Staphanie?”
The blonde looked up and closed the laptop. “Sure.”
“Because she gave Rick a staph infection.”
Stephanie offered a humorless smile. “Ah. I should have guessed. Very funny. Is Rick your son?”
“Rick? Naw. Rick’s a guy in our park. Honestly, the staph infection was probably good for him. Probably killed whatever else he had at the time.”
She barked a crude laugh and Stephanie’s lip curled a bit. Snookie watched her try and hide it by continuing.
“We should probably get to why you’re here. You said your son needs a lawyer?”
“Yeah. Well, we got a complicated relationship. He don’t listen to me and he gets himself in trouble. I
