“I like to work in my office in the mornings.” I hand her a business card. “But I think we should meet here again, walk through it all a few times and go into a little more detail. I’ll plan to be here at noon both days if that’s all right with you.”

“It’s fine,” she says.

“And I’d like to bring my associate along. If this thing heats up at all, or drags on longer than we expect, I might need an extra pair of hands.”

“Whatever you think.” Louisa stands and walks to the window. “I should tell you,” she says, her back to me, “that I was planning to leave Herb.”

My stomach tightens and I lower into the chair again. “Did he know?”

She turns and walks back across the room toward me. “I hadn’t told him yet,” she says, her eyes lowered, “but I think he knew.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Yes,” she says, and she sits too. “My lawyer, Fred Watkins.”

No problem there; it’s privileged. And I know Fred Watkins. He’ll take every one of his clients’ secrets to his grave.

“And my financial advisor.”

Problem. I make a check next to Steven Collier’s name on my legal pad.

“I’m glad you told me, Louisa. It may turn out to be important. Let me give it some thought. One more question before I go, though.”

She nods.

“Was Herb having any difficulties other than what you’ve already told me?”

She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “No, just his…”

“Function,” I finish for her. I grab my briefcase and stand yet again.

Louisa stands too. “So how is Harry Madigan?”

If there was a segue in her mind, I don’t want to know about it. “He’s well,” I tell her.

“We went to law school together, you know.”

“He mentioned that.”

“I was quite fond of him.”

Not as fond as he’d hoped, though. I bite my tongue.

She laughs. “He used to call me Mona Louisa.”

Too much information. I head for the double doors. It’s time to get out of here.

“You’re his law partner?” Louisa follows me.

“That’s right.”

“Such a dear boy,” she says to my back.

Of course. Harry’s still twenty-five in her mind’s eye. A boy.

“I’ll never understand it,” she says. “He’s brilliant, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

She falls into step beside me and shakes her head. “Graduated near the top of our class. Could have had any job he wanted. Chose that awful criminal work.”

Louisa doesn’t seem to remember that just yesterday she asked him to do some of that awful criminal work on her behalf.

“I was so pleased,” she continues, “when I saw he’d opened a private office, gotten away from that public defender business. But I understand he’s handling the same dreadful cases, just doing it under his own roof.”

Perhaps I should mention that one of the dreadful cases under his roof is hers.

“And what about you, darlin’? Where did you go to law school?”

I pause at the front door, but not for long. I’ve had enough darlin’s for one day. “Same as you and Harry,” I tell her. “I was two classes behind you.”

“Really? You and I were on the same campus for a year and I didn’t notice you? I can’t imagine that.”

I can. “Are you from Georgia, Louisa?” I’m surprised to hear myself ask the question.

“Good heavens, no,” she says. “I’m a North Carolina girl, a Tarheel through and through.”

Of course. Carolina Girl.

Louisa’s expression suggests North Carolina and Georgia are in different galaxies. “Why do you ask, darlin’?”

I shrug. I don’t know why the hell I asked. So she could call me darlin’ one more time, maybe. I wanted this conversation over five minutes ago. “Our associate is from Atlanta,” I tell her. “I thought your accent sounded a bit like his.”

Louisa arches her perfect eyebrows at me. “I can see we’re gonna have to teach you a thing or two about the South, honey chil’.”

Maybe darlin’ wasn’t so bad.

I turn back toward the front door and notice what looks like the face of a touch-tone telephone on one side of it. “A security system?” I ask.

She nods.

“Was it activated on Sunday?”

She shakes her head. “We had it installed when we renovated,” she says, “but neither one of us was very good about making use of it. We were never even good about locking the doors, for that matter. I’m not sure I’d be able to find a key.”

I stop on the front step and face her. “I don’t lock mine either,” I confess. “Most people in this town don’t.”

She laughs. “It’s not as if we live in a high-crime neighborhood.”

Her smile fades at once. It’s pretty clear she regretted her last sentence before she finished it. “Herb kept saying we should,” she adds. “Especially at night, he said, we should lock the doors and activate the alarm. He kept telling me that he, at least, was going to start.”

“But he never got around to it,” I finish for her.

“That’s right,” she says. “He never did.”

CHAPTER 6

“You didn’t tell me she was Southern.”

A dangerousness hearing and a motion to suppress kept me tied up in the courthouse all afternoon. It’s after six by the time I get back to the office, but Harry and the Kydd are still seated on opposite sides of our conference room table, their noses buried in casebooks, both of them deep in thought. They bolt upright—startled—when I appear in the doorway, drop my briefcase, and make my announcement. It’s directed, of course, at Harry. “She’s Southern,” I repeat. “You didn’t mention that.”

He blinks at me. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. It matters.”

Harry stares across the table at the Kydd, as if in need of a translation.

The Kydd shrugs. “Don’t look at me, Kimosabe,” he says, then buries his nose in his casebook again.

Tonto has good instincts.

Harry sets his own book down, takes his glasses off, and looks back up at me, shaking his head. “Why?”

“Because Southern women are so damned…Southern.”

I wish I hadn’t put it quite that way.

“Can’t argue with that,” he says.

“They are, aren’t they?” the Kydd drawls. He looks up from his book and it’s his turn to take off his glasses. Everyone in this business has bad eyes. His grow wistful. “They really are.”

“Don’t get weepy on me, Kydd. I’m going to need some help with this case. And you’re it.”

He grins. “I love being it,” he says. “That’s why I work here.”

Harry and I both laugh out loud. It’s true. Between the two of us, we heap enough work on the Kydd to keep four associates busy. He’s always it.

I turn back to Harry and point at the Kydd. “He’s mine for the next three days. You got me into this mess; your work can wait.”

Harry gives in at once, raising his hands above his head, as if I might shoot him otherwise. He started these melodramatic surrenders back when I was a prosecutor, as soon as he learned that I have a permit to carry and I make use of it. “He’s yours,” he tells me. “Take him, for God’s sake. He’s all yours.”

The Kydd stretches in his chair and yawns, looking up at me warily. “The next three days,” he says. “Would that be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?”

“No,” I tell him. “I’m sorry, Kydd, but it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday.”

“You’ll never dance at my wedding.” He sighs, then turns in the chair and opens the cabinet behind him, grabs a pen and a legal pad.

“Sure we will,” Harry counters, returning to his reading. “Say the word when you’re ready, Kydd. We’ll find you a good-looking inmate.”

The Kydd feigns a ha-ha at Harry, then turns to me, pen in hand, awaiting his marching orders.

“Life insurance,” I tell him. “You need to become an expert on it by noon tomorrow.”

Harry laughs into his book. “Another cushy assignment for the Kydd.”

The Kydd isn’t laughing, though. He glares at Harry before turning back to me, his expression suggesting I’ve asked him to master Sanskrit by dawn. “Life insurance? I don’t know anything about life insurance. I don’t know anything about any insurance.”