Sunset Beach(32)

“You’d think so,” Ben said. “But the very best cases are severe, catastrophic injuries, especially if our client loses a body part, like an eye or a hand.”

“Or a leg,” Jonah chimed in. “There are actuarial tables that tell you just how much lost limbs are worth.”

“Botched circumcision cases are the real gold standard,” Ben added.

“Don’t tell me any more,” Drue pleaded. “It’s too depressing.”

“Like three years ago, Brice had a case where a utility truck hit our client’s car, and she was almost decapitated,” Ben said cheerfully.

“Oh my God!” Drue pressed her hands over her ears. “No more!”

“No, it’s okay. She lived. It took three years of investigating and negotiating, but I think that was like an eight-million-dollar settlement,” Ben said.

“It was six million,” Jonah corrected.

“Whatever, all I know is when the dust settled, he and Wendy got brand-new his-and-hers S-class Mercedes,” Ben said.

Drue’s food arrived but her appetite had, not surprisingly, departed. She picked at her grouper sandwich and chewed slowly.

“Speaking of cases,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’m interested in the Jazmin Mayes case.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because a young mom was murdered. Strangled and beaten, at a hotel less than a mile from where I live. I pass the Gulf Vista every day. I can’t believe that even happened. It’s been two years, and still no arrest? It bugs me that my dad settled that case for next to nothing.”

“Yeah, it’s sad, but Brice can only try the case he’s been given,” Ben said.

“Like I told you before, it’s a worker’s comp case,” Jonah said, sounding annoyed.

Drue shook her head. “Have you ever met her mother? I have. I was working the reception desk when she came in last week. And Ms. Howington, that’s the mother, was adamant that Jazmin was killed after she clocked out. Not during. She didn’t work the overnight shift, because she needed to take care of her daughter so her mom could get to work early in the morning. You guys, she was only six when her mom was murdered. Her grandmother is raising her and working as a nurse’s aide at some hospital, and they can’t even afford to get the kid decent eyeglasses because the settlement will be in a trust for Aliyah until she’s eighteen.”

She took a deep breath and stabbed at her salad. “It’s not right. It isn’t.”

Jonah and Ben exchanged a knowing look.

“You can’t get caught up in this stuff, Drue,” Ben said, his face earnest. “Everybody who calls, everybody who walks in the door, they all have a sob story.”

“Or they think they do,” Jonah agreed.





13


After two weeks of camping out in her sleeping bag in the living room of the cottage, Drue was ready to start feathering her nest.

By seven o’clock Saturday morning, she was unlocking her father’s storage unit. The hinges on the sheet metal door groaned as she pulled it open and flipped the light switch.

“Score,” she whispered as she waded inside. The first things she hauled out to the Bronco were a queen-size mattress, box spring and bed frame. Sweating and cursing, she managed to shove them into the cargo area of the SUV. She returned to the unit and dug out a nightstand and two drawers from a dresser that she recognized as being Nonni’s, which completed her first load.

Drue dragged the furniture, piece by piece, into the cottage, dumping everything in the bedroom, before returning to the storage facility for her next load.

Three loads later, she’d barely made a dent in the contents of her father’s storage shed. She’d easily passed up the heavier, more opulent pieces in the shed, a black leather U-shaped sectional, an Asian-inspired teak entertainment center that took up six feet of wall space, and a commanding onyx-lacquered four-poster king-size bedroom suite. She reluctantly gave Wendy credit for banishing Brice’s fugly man cave furnishings to storage.

Instead she’d settled for whatever could be dragged and shoved into the obliging OJ: a three-piece rattan settee and matching armchair that had been Nonni’s pride and joy, along with a boomerang-shaped Formica-topped coffee and matching end table. She’d found a pair of lamps, with their kitschy bullfighter-ceramic bases, and strapped them into the front seat, along with the settee cushions.

For the last load she took a rickety card table and folding chairs. She remembered how Papi would set the furniture up in the living room for his Saturday-night poker games, and how Nonni would fuss about all the cigar smoke and beer bottles, but still spend the entire day before the game fixing sandwiches and cookies for the big event.

In the years after her parents’ divorce, as she and her mother had moved to and from crappy apartments and rental houses in her youth, Drue had been mostly indifferent to her surroundings. Sherri wasn’t a nester, and neither was she. As long as their home had beds, a sofa and a television—and later on, a place to store her kiteboarding gear—she’d been, if not exactly content, not exactly unhappy either.

Now, though, Drue felt an absurd sense of satisfaction in “setting up housekeeping,” as Nonni would have put it.

In a far corner of the storage unit she’d found some dusty cardboard cartons labeled KITCHEN STUFF in Sherri’s handwriting, and upon lifting the box flaps had been delighted to discover an assortment of battered pots and pans, silverware, utensils, and odds and ends of glass and china.