Sunset Beach(60)

“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m going to take what’s mine. All of it. Allen and I have been saving up for a house for five years. Since even before we got married. He’s such a cheapskate, he keeps me on an allowance, makes me take my lunch to work, sew my own clothes. He’s got this little black notebook, and I have to account for every dime I spend. From my own paycheck!”

He shook his head. “If you’ve got that much money in the bank, why don’t you just use it to get a divorce?”

“You don’t get it,” Colleen said, her voice shrill. “Allen’s dad is friends with every lawyer and every judge in this town. A judge is going to say that money is his, not mine.”

“How much money is there?” Brice asked.

“A little over seven thousand dollars.” Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “I’ll have enough to make a new start in a new town.”

“What happens if Allen comes after you? Calls the cops and reports that you and his money went missing? Won’t he try and track you down?”

“That’s where you come in. I need your help.”

He exhaled slowly. “What? What do you need?”

She kissed him impulsively. “See? That’s why I adore you.”

“Nothing illegal, right? I’m a cop, remember?”

“It’s nothing, really. Just a fake ID.”

He ran his hands through his close-cropped hair. “Just?”

“It can’t be that big a deal,” she said hurriedly. “All the girls had fake IDs in high school. You know, so we could get into the bars.”

“I had a fake ID when I got back from Vietnam, but I don’t even think I’d know where to get one now.”

She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get to work. When can we meet again?”

“Maybe next week? I’ll call you at your office.”

“Bring the ID then, okay? I don’t know how much more I can take.”

After she was gone, he sat in his cruiser for a long time, wondering how he’d gotten himself in so deep, so fast. As he sat, a blue heron emerged from the swampy woods, picking its way delicately through the underbrush. The radio in his unit crackled again, and he started the cruiser and drove away.





29


A huge cardboard file box greeted Drue when she arrived at work on Monday. A yellow sticky note from her father bore the words she dreaded most. “SEE ME.” Was she being sent to the woodshed as a result of the previous evening’s snarky phone call?

Drue trudged toward Wendy’s office, where she found a merry gathering consisting of Brice, Wendy and Jimmy Zee.

She took a half-step backward to beat a retreat, but it was too late.

“Come on in,” Brice said, waving her forward.

“You left a file box on my desk?” she said.

“Actually, I left it,” Wendy said. She was seated in the wing chair across from Brice, dressed in head-to-toe pastel-print Lily Pulitzer. “We’ve got a big med mal case heating up and I need you to go through the client’s receipts for the past six years and get everything reconciled. The girls in records are super busy, so while you’re off the Justice Line…”

“I’m off the Justice Line? Since when?”

“Since I determined generating leads isn’t really your strong suit,” Wendy said, looking to her husband for backup.

Brice fidgeted with a chain of paper clips on his desktop but said nothing.

“This is bullshit,” Drue said angrily. “Why don’t you just stick me in the corner of the office and give me a big dunce cap to wear?”

“See what I’m dealing with?” Wendy said, one eyebrow raised.

Zee coughed discreetly. “Ya know, if the kid’s got some spare time, I could really use her for this slip-and-fall I’m working on.”

Drue shot him a grateful look. Today, like every time she’d glimpsed him, he was dressed all in black—baggy black jeans, black polo shirt with the CCK logo and black motorcycle boots, a pair of mirrored Ray-Bans dangling from a cord around his neck.

Wendy rolled her eyes. “The 7-Eleven case? I thought that was dead. The store has our client and her boyfriend, on video, trying to shoplift a fifth of malt liquor. When the clerk chased him, he dropped the bottle, it smashed and she slipped on that. So her injury arose out of her own criminal act, right?” She glanced at her husband for confirmation.

“Wait a minute,” Drue interjected. “That was my case. And it wasn’t malt liquor, it was Smirnoff Ice. I talked to that woman two weeks ago, but when I asked her if either she or the boyfriend were arrested, she hung up on me!”

“I guess she called back and spoke to somebody else,” Wendy said. She looked over at Brice. “Whose lead was that?”

“Hmm. I think it was Jonah’s,” Brice said.

“Not that it matters,” Wendy said. “I really think—”

“Actually,” Brice said, “I kicked it over to Zee. He got a copy of the video from the store which shows that it’s the boyfriend doing the theft. The guy’s got a long record, but our prospective client is clean. And it now appears she’s suffered a traumatic brain injury, not just the broken tailbone she was initially treated for.”