3
Sasha slept poorly and woke up tired. Friends who’d had children delighted in telling her that the discomfort and exhaustion that had set in toward the end of her third trimester was nature’s way of preparing her for motherhood. The closer she got to her due date, the more ill-equipped she felt for what was to come. She padded to the bathroom to start what promised to be another hot and hazy summer day.
After a hot shower and a large mug of steamed milk with just the tiniest drop of coffee added—barely enough to tint the drink a pale tan and nowhere near enough to be useful—she felt sufficiently human to face her day. She fed Mocha and Java and was letting herself out of the condo as quietly as she could when Connelly poked his head over the half-wall of the loft bedroom.
“Hey, have a good day at work.” He yawned and stretched then raked his fingers through his thick hair in an effort to tame the dark spikes that had sprung up from his scalp overnight.
“Thanks. I guess I’ll meet you at the new place tonight?” she said. The thought that this was finally, really, truly their moving day struck her with an almost physical force.
He smiled groggily. “You mean you forgot our appointment this afternoon? With Katrina?”
She tilted her neck back and searched his face. “Well, no. But I assumed you wouldn’t be able to make it, you know, with the movers and all. Besides all she’s going to do is measure my belly and then gasp in shock at how much it’s grown since last time.”
“Maybe. But, this is our baby, and I want to be there. Besides, who’s going to hold you back if she tells you your weight is off the charts again?” He laughed.
“We agreed no more weigh-ins,” she said in a serious-as-death tone. She didn’t understand why her body had deemed it necessary to pack on fifty pounds—almost half her starting weight—to grow one measly little seven-, eight-, or even nine-pound baby, but it had. And after scouring Sasha’s daily food diet for a hidden explanation and ruling out gestational diabetes, the midwife had shrugged and told her not to worry about it. Sasha had pointed out that it would be easier not to worry about if she didn’t have to climb on the scale every time she had an appointment. And that had been the end of that.
“Still. I want to be there.” His voice had lost any hint of sleepiness. He bounded down the short set of stairs and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sure the movers will be done long before four o’clock.”
He smiled at her, and she felt her own lips curve up in response. “Okay. Then I’ll try to finish up early today, so I can go back to the house with you after the appointment.” She stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed him back. “See you later.”
She paused on her way out the door and opened her mouth to remind him about the gun, then she thought better of it and clamped her lips shut. She’d said her piece the night before.
She gave him a small wave and pulled the condo door closed behind her.
* * *
By the time she walked the five long blocks to her office, she thoroughly regretted her decision to wear high heels. She flopped into her desk chair and eased her feet out of the stilettos. She wiggled each cramped toe as she powered up her laptop with one hand and flipped through the pile of mail on her desk with the other.
She had just begun to scroll through her email in-box when someone coughed delicately. Without glancing at her doorway, she said, “Give me a second, Caroline.” She tapped out a few sentences consenting to plaintiff’s counsel request for an extension of time to serve discovery in a commercial lease dispute and hit send. Then she smiled up at Will’s secretary, “What’s up?”
“How’d you know it was me?” Caroline asked.
“Naya would have barged in; Will would have called me from his office; and I passed the new receptionist on the stairs—headed for Jake’s, I imagine. That leaves you.”
Caroline pursed her perfectly lipsticked mouth. “Oh, of course.” She twisted her left earring between her index finger and her thumb.
Uh-oh. That gesture was one of Caroline’s little tells—rubbing her earring like that meant that whatever she was about to say, Sasha wasn’t going to like it. She steeled herself and waited.
“Could you do a favor for Will?” she asked, wincing as she formed the words.
“Depends. What’s the favor?”
“It’s a big one. The owner of the hair salon his wife goes to was arrested last night for financial structuring.”
Sasha looked at the secretary blankly. “Okay?”
“She was making bank deposits that were just under the reportable amount. You can’t do that. The IRS gets testy.”
“Gotcha. So, how does this involve me?”
“Will called in a favor and managed to finagle a lunch meeting with the lead investigator for the IRS’s Criminal Investigations unit.”
“That’s great for Will’s client.” Sasha tried to tamp down her impatience, but she really wished Caroline would just get to the point.
“He’s also scheduled to speak at a lunch and learn. He’s on a panel.” Caroline lapsed into silence.
Sasha blinked. “He wants me to fill in at a CLE seminar? Today? You can’t be serious.”
“He said to stress that it’s just an ethics panel. You won’t have to do much besides weigh in now and then, tell a few war stories … he said to tell you he’ll owe you one.” Caroline was clearly putting as much emotion as she could muster into her pitch on her boss’s behalf. She gave Sasha a pleading look.
Sasha didn’t have any war stories. At least, not the kind of war stories that would appeal to bored attorneys grudgingly suffering through a continuing legal education program to fulfill their annual requirements. But it wasn’t as if Will wanted her to fill in so he could play eighteen holes at Oakmont or spend the day on a sailboat. He had a client sitting in a cell.
She sighed. “Fine. Does he have any handouts or a PowerPoint or anything I can use?”
Caroline beamed at her and fished a thumb drive out of the pocket of her linen dress. “He does indeed.” She crossed the room and dropped the drive into Sasha’s open palm. “There’s a copy of his slides on there. The hard copy materials have already been printed and are waiting for you at The Rivers Club. But if you want to take a peek at them before you head over, the file’s on that drive, too.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you. Will was very hesitant to have me ask you. He knows you’re trying to wrap things up before the baby comes.”
4
“It was good of you to pinch hit for Will. Very interesting point of view you added,” the panelist seated next to Sasha said, as the audience members streamed out of the ballroom in a rush—they were glad to have checked off the box beside ‘attend mind-numbing ethics CLE’ and eager to race back to their offices and make up the two hours of billable time before they vanished into the ether forever.
She smiled at her neighbor and discreetly scanned the program for his name to remind herself which one he was. Her four fellow panelists were a matched set—and Will would have fit right in—distinguished, white men, nearing the ends of their careers; tanned and fit from years of golfing and sailing; and wearing suits that whispered ‘money’ and highly polished shoes that echoed the phrase.
“It was my pleasure … Colin,” she said, raising her eyes from the pamphlet and nodding. She waited, but he made no move to leave. Their fellow panelists bobbed their heads goodbye and hurried off the stage.
She gathered her papers slowly then made a show of checking her emails and voicemails, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Still there.
The banquet staff swept into the room and began clearing water glasses and half-eaten salads from the tables. Her new friend Colin packed up his briefcase, straightened his tie, and stood at attention at the end of the table. He very clearly planned to walk out with her. There was really no way around it.
She pushed back her chair and used the edge of the table as leverage to rise from her seat. Then she slung her bag over
her shoulder and joined Colin at the end of the stage.
As she approached, his smile wavered almost imperceptibly. One silver eyebrow arched toward his hairline.
“You’ll have to excuse my footwear,” she said, addressing the bare-toed elephant in the room.
To her horror, when she’d gone to slip her heels back on before leaving her office, her swollen feet simply would not go into the shoes. She’d shoved and squeezed like one of Cinderella’s desperate stepsisters trying to jam a foot into a too-small glass slipper with equally unsatisfying results. Finally, red-faced and panting, she’d unearthed a pair of black plastic flip-flops from the depths of her filing cabinet and padded off to the seminar, trying to ignore the slap, slap, slap sound of her footsteps. She’d managed to take her seat on stage before any of the other panelists had arrived, but the jig, as they say, was now up.
Colin smiled uncertainly but fell into step beside her as she headed for the exit. “What’s it like?” he asked, leaning close to her. His voice took on a conspiratorial tone.
“What’s what like?”
“You know, all the excitement and danger. You downplayed your exploits during the presentation, but I read the papers. You’re quite an adventurer. Or, you were.” He punctuated his sentence with a meaningful glance at her swollen belly.
“Oh, don’t be misled by the media. My day-to-day life involves interrogatories, not intrigue,” she said, laughing off the question. It was even mostly true, she thought. She hadn’t wrestled with a murderous felon in months.
He seemed dissatisfied with her response. “Come, now, Ms. McCandless. You were stabbed by that forensic pathologist—nearly died, as I recall. And you’ve killed a man. A rogue FBI agent, if memory serves.”
Sasha was no etiquette maven, but she was fairly certain it was rude to point out someone’s body count. She shot him a blank look.
He seemed oblivious to her reaction as he prattled on. “Weren’t you there when that sheriff’s deputy was shot in the face? And—”
“Colin, let me stop you right there. Those incidents aren’t something I care to talk about. I’m sure you can understand.”
Unperturbed, he said, “Of course, that’s all in your past, now, I’d imagine.”
“I certainly hope so.” She laughed.
“Well you had a good run. Is Will going to bring over a junior partner from Prescott & Talbott to take your place or is he going to run a one-man shop?”
“Pardon me?”
“After you leave—what are Will’s plans for the firm?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Of course you are. You’re about to have a child.”
They stared at each other in mutual confusion for a few seconds, then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Oh, let me guess. You’re planning a short maternity leave and then you think you’ll be right back in the office with fire in your belly. Is that it?”
“That’s right.” She clenched her free hand into a fist and released, telling herself to stay calm.
“Of course you think that now. Let me give you a little unsolicited advice—resign yourself to reality. You’re going to lose your edge, your drive. A year from now, you’ll be more concerned with finding just the right birthday cake for your little one than with eviscerating an opponent in open court. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.”
“With all due respect, Colin, you don’t know me.”
“True. But I do know that it’s extremely hard to be a lawyer and a mommy. It’s really not doable,” he said.
She stopped near the stairwell and turned slowly. She met his eyes and held his gaze for a long moment. “I guess it’s easy to be a lawyer and a jag-off, though,” she shot back. She pushed open the fire door and swept through the doorway, leaving him standing, slightly open-mouthed, in the hallway.
* * *
Naya was tsking in disbelief at the tale of Colin’s nerve when Caroline materialized in the doorway to Sasha’s office holding a bag from Footloose, the shoe boutique around the corner from the office.
“You’re a goddess—thank you!” she said as Caroline handed over the bag and returned Sasha’s credit card.
“Don’t thank me yet. I was hoping to find something on sale, but no such luck.”
Sasha tore open the box and smiled down at the strappy heels. She removed the shoes and inhaled the new leathery smell before easing her feet into them. “Ah, these fit perfectly. And they’re gorgeous. Too bad I won’t be able to wear them after my swollen tootsie go back to normal.”
Caroline cleared her throat and cut her eyes toward Naya, who gave her head a small, almost imperceptible, shake.
“What?” Sasha demanded.
Naya shook her head again, more emphatically this time.
“She needs to know,” Caroline said. Then she turned to Sasha with a pained smile frozen on her face. “Your feet, um, aren’t going to go back to normal.”
Sasha cocked her head. “Sure they are. I mean, look at me. I’m retaining water. That’s all.”
“No, that’s part of it. But surely your midwife mentioned that some of the changes to your body are permanent, didn’t she?”
“She said my hips would spread. Nobody ever said anything about my feet.” Sasha could hear the desperation in her voice. She thought of the dozens upon dozens of pairs of beautiful shoes lined up in her closet. “Are you sure about this?”
“Sadly, I’m positive. On average, a woman goes up a half a shoe size for each pregnancy.”
Naya must have sensed the brewing storm because she jumped in quickly. “On average, Mac. On average. You’re an outlier in everything else. You could be the one whose feet don’t grow.”
“Yeah,” Sasha said, unconvinced but hopeful. She stared down at the shoes balefully now. Suddenly they seemed huge, like clown shoes. “Well, at least this day can’t get any worse.”
Then her phone rang.
* * *
Detective Burton Gilbert’s baritone rumbled in her ear. “How’re you feeling, little mama?”
“Ready to pop,” she answered. She and the homicide detective had crossed paths in the course of his investigation of a handful of murders and attempted murders in the past several years and had formed an unlikely friendship. But she wasn’t in the mood to answer honestly. How she was feeling was inadequate. Between Connelly’s crack about her inability to protect herself and some random attorney’s insistence that her lawyering days were numbered, she felt frustrated and impotent.
He chuckled. “You ought to be due any day now, no?”
“Yep. How’s the crime-fighting business?”
“Steady as always, unfortunately,” he answered.
“Please tell me this is a social call.”
“Not exactly,” he admitted.
“Great.”
“It’s nothing terrible,” he assured her. “No death threats or anything like that.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose. Lay it on me, detective.”
“It seems Nick Costopolous has found religion in the joint.”
“Which one?” Her curiosity overrode the visceral reaction she had to hearing Costopolous’s name.
“Which religion, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“All of them, as it happens. He’s taking some DVD course on the great religions of the world.”
“How nice for him,” she deadpanned.
“Isn’t it? Anyhow, the warden reached out to me. Seems that Mr. Costopolous is currently reading about the life of Daku Angulimala.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s a Buddhist monk. The story is he was a vicious serial killer. He must’ve been a real psycho. He strung his victims’ fingers onto a necklace and wore it around.”
Her stomach roiled. “Sounds like a lovely guy. I can see how Costopolous is drawn to him.”
The detective barked out a bitter laugh at that. “No joke, huh? But no, the religious part comes in where
this dude starts following the Buddha’s teachings and turns into this devout monk. It’s a redemption story.”
“Huh. Okay, so this involves me how?” She turned in her chair and stared out the window at the street below. It was one of those hot, hazy late August days where the humidity promised to just keep climbing. By the time she left for her appointment with Katrina, the day would be positively soupy.
“I’m getting to that. So this sicko turned monk is some kind of patron saint of pregnant women.”
“What the—?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a new beginnings thing? You should ask your buddy Bodhi, if you’re really curious.”
“If I can find him.” Dr. Bodhi King, one-time forensic pathologist for the City of Pittsburgh, had left the coroner’s office and was either volunteering at a sustainable banana plantation on a tropical island or on retreat at a monastery somewhere. It was hard to keep tabs on him.
“Anyway, Costopolous saw your picture in the Post-Gazette at Charlotte Cashion’s swearing-in ceremony as judge. You were, uh, visibly pregnant.”
“You don’t say.” The photographer had caught her in profile.
“So, now he’s obsessed with making amends with you.”
A frisson of shock ran up her spine and she shot straight up in her chair. “Excuse me?” As if he or she shared her surprise, the baby thumped a foot against her womb in a flurry of kicks. Jeez, was she carrying a human or an octopus?
“He asked the warden for permission to contact you. Given the circumstances, the warden thought he’d check with me before he asked you.”
“No.” Her answer came instantly and with a force that surprised even her. She’d worked hard to put Nick Costopolous out of her mind. She had no intention of suffering through his planned apology or speech or whatever it was, even on the off-chance that it was sincere.
“I completely understand. And for the record, I think he’s pulled a snow job on the warden. A scumbag like Costopolous doesn’t change his spots. He’s just trying to manipulate you. I’ll make sure he gets the message that you don’t want to be contacted loud and clear.”
A Mingled Yarn Page 2