Sunset Beach(16)

“Nobody said nothin’ about a shattered pelvis,” Marty said. “And I can see pretty good. My head does still hurt, though. Like I said, I really think some Oxy would help a lot. I mighta thrown the emergency room paper away. They treated me like I was some kinda drug addict or something.”

“Very disturbing,” Drue said, clicking all the yes boxes on the intake form. “And you’ve been out of work for how long?”

“Well, I’m actually not working right at the moment. See, my tools got stolen outta my truck a couple months ago…”

Wendy, finally sensing that Drue had a live one on the line, sighed loudly.

“Come see me when you’re done with this call,” she hissed, turning and walking rapidly toward her office, her hips, encased in a short, ultra-tight skirt, swaying gently.

Drue glanced over and saw Ben appreciatively following the office manager’s retreat.

Marty was still talking. “So, that television commercial I seen, it says Brice can get me a check. Like, when can he come see me?”

“See you?” Drue’s mind was already racing toward her inevitable confrontation with Wendy.

“That’s what I said,” he said, sounding peeved. “That cab come out of nowhere, right when I was leaving the club. I coulda been killed.”

Drue sighed. “Which club was that?”

Marty coughed delicately. “It was one of those clubs in Tampa, over there on Dale Mabry. I can’t think of the name of it right now. Kinda over near McDill?”

“A strip club? You were leaving a strip club?”

“Gentleman’s club,” he corrected.

“I see,” Drue said. “And the police were called at the time you were hit by the cab, is that correct?”

“Huh? No way. I mean, we didn’t think the cops needed to get involved.” He lowered his voice. “My friend, he mighta had some weed on him. Strictly for medical reasons. He gets seizures sometimes, you understand.”

Drue looked at the big whiteboard at the front of the room. It had a hand-scrawled scoreboard, listing each of the cube rats, calls taken and cases signed for the week and month to date. She was already dead last.

“I do understand,” she told Marty. “You don’t know the date of your accident. Don’t have any kind of hospital records, and the police were not called at the time because you and your friend were holding. You’re not currently employed, and the only thing that’s broken is your iPhone. Is that about the size of it?”

“Hey now,” Marty said. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m gonna need you to go get Brice on the line now.”

“Hold please,” Drue said, as she terminated the call.

She sat back in her chair and let out a strangled-sounding sigh. Ben looked over. “Bad morning?”

“The worst. My car wouldn’t start. Again.”

“You should have called me,” Ben said. “I could have given you a ride in.”

“All the way from Sunset Beach? That’s, like, twenty minutes out of your way. And I was already running late as it was. But thanks anyway.”

She pushed back from her desk and stood up. “Enough stalling. Wendy needs to yell at me.”

Ben stood too. “But first, coffee.”

“Good thinking,” Drue said.



* * *



She really should have called Ben Fentress for a ride this morning, she thought, following him toward the break room.

But she had a long-standing aversion to asking anybody, especially a man, for favors. Raised by a single mom, she’d had it drummed into her head from an early age that the only person she could count on was herself.

Ben Fentress was skinny, with long arms and legs that never seemed to move in any kind of coordinated fashion. He owned an impressive array of concert T-shirts for obscure eighties grunge bands, and from the first day she’d shown up at work at the law firm, Ben had gone out of his way to be kind to her. He was a true Boy Scout. No, an Eagle Scout, probably.

He was younger than Drue, only twenty-nine. Over sandwiches at the coffee shop across the street from the law office, on her second day of work, he’d told her all about himself.

“I’m your typical data bro,” he’d said, munching on the potato chips he’d filched from her plate. “Undergrad degree from Colorado State. I started work on my master’s, but then I ran out of money. And motivation too, if you want the truth.”

“St. Pete’s a long way from Colorado,” Drue said. “How did you end up here?”

A bright pink flush crept over his freckled face. “Followed my girlfriend. She had a job with Honeywell. Three weeks after I got here, she dumped me for some dude she met at her gym.”

“You didn’t want to go back to Colorado after that?”

“No,” he said succinctly. “It took moving to Florida before I figured out I don’t really like winter. I don’t ski. Don’t snowboard either.”

“I loved snowboarding,” Drue said dreamily. Then, she asked, “Are you interested in the law?”

“I’m not un-interested in it. And besides, Brice Campbell isn’t just a good lawyer, he’s a genius at business. I can learn a lot from him. And I’m getting paid at the same time. It’s not a bad gig.”