It was a rhetorical question, and Lisa knew the answer even before he told her. Knowing he was looking at her, she had to suppress the urge to grimace.
"Loverboy in his red Porsche, dropping pampered Princess off at the door. Oh, and let's not forget the five-minute-long good-bye smooch. Pretty steamy, especially when you're a fricking hour and twenty minutes late. What, did the morning quickie run long?"
He let go of her arm. Head high, she moved away from him, walking back around his unbelievably messy desk to stand facing him across it.
"Go to hell." Her voice was perfectly pleasant.
"You're fucking fired." His wasn't.
"I'm sorry, okay? My car really did break down." She desperately needed the job, or she wouldn't have said it. "I had to call Joel"--the man she was currently dating, Joel Peyton, aka Loverboy--"to come and pick me up."
"How about calling in to the office at the same time? Just to say, oh, I don't know, you might be running late." His voice dripped sarcasm.
In point of fact, she had called in and spoken to one of her fellow research assistants, Emily Jantzen, who had promised to grab the needed material from her desk and hurry over to courtroom twelve to cover for her. She wondered what had happened to Jantzen. Something clearly had.
Whatever, there was no way she was getting Jantzen into trouble on her behalf.
"I'm sorry," she said again.
Scott snorted. "You missed court. We don't do that here in the DA's office. That's a big no-no with us." He said it as if he were talking to a slightly stupid two-year-old. "Judges don't like it when we look unprepared. I don't like it. It's un-
pro
-fessional. You ever heard that word before?"
God, she hated to grovel to him. "It won't happen again."
He gave her a level look, and she knew she was safe. From being fired, at least. Well, she hadn't really thought he meant it.
"It better not. You probably don't know it, having just come down from Mount Olympus like you have, but this here is called a job because we work. From eight a.m. on the dot until whatever time the work is finished. Pretty much six days a week. No excuses accepted. Got that?"
"Yes."
"We have to have this talk again, and you'll be out on your ass before the first wheedling little apology gets all the way out of your mouth. Am I making myself clear?"
It was all she could do not to shoot him the bird and turn on her heel. "Yes."
"Great." The phone on his desk began to ring. He picked it up, said, "Yeah. On my way," into it, and hung up again, all without taking his eyes off her. "I don't have the time or the patience to follow you around and make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing when you're supposed to be doing it, and I can't spare anyone else to babysit you, either. Until further notice, you're down in the basement sorting through the cold cases. When you get down there, you can send Gemmel up here to take your place. She at least has some kind of work ethic."
That stung. "Scott . . ."
He was already shrugging into his light gray jacket and coming around his desk, heading for the door. Since everyone in the office called one another by their last names, that slip of the tongue had his eyes colliding with hers and holding them for a pregnant instant.
"Baby, you're that close"--he pinched together his thumb and forefinger so that there was maybe half an inch of air between them--"to being out of a job, so I'd watch myself if I were you. I didn't want to hire you in the first place. The only reason I did was because of your mom."
The thought of mentioning that she probably liked being called
baby,
especially at work, even less than he enjoyed hearing her say
Scott
occurred, only to be instantly dismissed. To begin with, the first time he'd called her that had been roughly a dozen years ago, so despite the fact that he was a male DA speaking to a newly hired female attorney currently working for him as a research assistant, it wasn't as demeaning as it might seem. Second, ticking him off any more probably wasn't something she wanted to do right now. No, correction, something she
should
do. Because she wanted to. She definitely wanted to.
"She loves you, too." As annoying as it was to admit, it was the truth. Her beautiful, kindhearted, gentle-souled mother, the owner of Grayson Springs, the storied, thousand-acre horse farm she had inherited from her wealthy parents, had taken an interest in the young son of a loser neighbor from the time he'd first started doing odd jobs for them for a couple of dollars when he was about twelve years old. From that time on, as he grew up, he had pretty much spent his summers and after-school hours working on their farm. Martha Grant had invited him into the kitchen to eat (the meals were prepared by Elsa, the cook, but a teenage farm worker wouldn't even have been allowed inside the house without Miss Martha's say-so) and seen to it that there was always work for him when he came looking for it, and had done countless other things on his behalf, most of which Lisa knew nothing about but suspected included making calls that got him the scholarship money he'd needed to swing college and beyond. That was why a month before, when the prestigious law firm she had worked for had gone belly-up in the bad economy and there had been no other jobs in the area to be had, she had swallowed her pride and come to him, the hunky former farmhand made good that she and her girlfriends from Lexington Country Day School, the priciest private school in Lexington, Kentucky, had once upon a long time ago wiled away many a summer afternoon ogling and teasing as he went about his chores. He hadn't exactly been gracious, but he'd given her a job. As a research assistant, at just a little more than half her previous pay. It was, he'd said, the only position available. Take it or leave it.
She'd taken it. And she'd been doing a damned good job at it, too. The material that had been needed in court this morning--background information on the defendant, priors, forensic results, the impact statement on the victim--had been compiled in plenty of time, ready and waiting in a file on her desk for her to take with her to court.
Only fate in the form of the six-year-old Jaguar's transmission had intervened, and she'd been stuck by the side of a narrow, leafy country lane in Woodford County until first the tow truck and then Joel had arrived.
"I've been meaning to get out there to see her. How's she doing?" he asked as he walked past her.
"About the same. She doesn't complain."
"No, she wouldn't. She's a fine lady. Shame you take after your dad, isn't it?"
Reaching the door, he opened it, then held it with ironic courtesy for her to precede him through it. Seething at the low blow--her parents were divorced, and her relationship with her federal-judge father was frosty at best--she barely managed not to stalk past him and out into the room where his administrative assistant, Sally Adams, sat at her desk. Silver-haired, plump, and good-natured, a twenty-year veteran of the prosecutor's office, Sally instantly averted her eyes, pretending to be busy doing something on her computer.
"Hey," Scott greeted two deputy DAs, David Pratchett and Sandra Ellis, who were waiting for him. Beyond them, in the big room with the cubicles, where a host of associates labored and her own desk was located, there was a collective rush as a dozen chairs rolled out of the aisle where they had been, Lisa was sure, congregated as those who occupied them watched the closed door and speculated on what was going on behind it, to disappear back into their assigned spaces. Everybody knew she'd been the DA's morning whipping boy, of course, and they were dying to see how she'd taken it. But nobody wanted to be caught looking, or gossiping, by the boss.
"Chandler in Homicide sent word that Gaylin is ready to confess." Ellis was breathless with excitement. An attractive, fortyish brunette, she was wearing a pale green summery skirt suit and carrying a briefcase. Gaylin, Lisa knew, was the crack-addled suspect who'd been taken into custody the day before, charged with murdering his own grandmother with a hammer when she wouldn't give him any money for dope. The whole office was taking an interest in that one, herself included.
"Let's go." Joining them, Scott strode away without a backward glance. Sally dared to look up then, and gave Lisa a commiserating look.
"You okay? Whatever he said, don't take it personal. He's been in a really bad mood lately." The fact that Sally was almost whispering said volumes, in Lisa's opinion.
"I'm fine."
"A little shaky" would have been a truer answer, but she wasn't about to let it show. Returning Sally's sympathetic smile with a quick, resolute one of her own, Lisa headed for the ladies' room to give them time to get clear. The last thing she wanted to do right now was ride down in the elevator with Scott Buchanan.
It proved to be a mistake. Instead of riding down in the elevator with Scott, she was standing there in front of the elevator bank when a car going up arrived and opened to disgorge, along with half a dozen others, Kane and Jantzen. Assistant DA Amanda Kane, a hard-charging, pretty platinum blonde of maybe thirty who was wearing a sleeveless navy dress and carrying her jacket along with her briefcase and purse, looked tense. Research assistant Jantzen, an equally pretty but much softer sandy blonde just a couple of years out of college, who was clad in a bright print skirt and pink tee, looked miserable. Both of them spotted Lisa at the same time.
Jantzen's eyes widened. Kane's narrowed.
"Oversleep, Grant?" Kane glared at her. "I guess eight a.m.
is
a little early."
"I'm sorry." Lisa knew the apology was owed, and Kane's annoyance was justified. It didn't make her feel any better about it. Her stomach was still tight from her meeting with Scott, and this was just rubbing salt in the wound. "My car broke down."
"Tell it to Buchanan."
With that she swept on by. Trying not to let her chagrin show on her face, Lisa looked a question at Jantzen.
"As soon as you called, I rushed the folder over there just as fast as I could." Jantzen spoke in a hurried, hushed voice. "I got there maybe ten minutes after court started. She wouldn't take it! Said she'd already told the judge she was unprepared. If you ask me, I think she was just being as difficult as possible to get you in trouble. She is such a
bitch.
"
"You've got to be kidding me." Lisa looked after Kane. She'd thought before that the other woman didn't like her, but this was the first overt indication that she was right. Laying the whole sequence of events out before Scott in an attempt to point out that she was not the only one at fault here instantly occurred to her, only to be as quickly dismissed. It might get Kane yelled at, but it wouldn't make her any friends, or even change Scott's feelings about the screwup, which was, in the final analysis, still her fault. Besides, she wasn't one to carry tales out of school. Her attention shifted back to Jantzen. "Thanks for trying, anyway. I owe you."
An elevator
ping
ed. This one, she saw at a glance, was heading down.
"No problem." Jantzen smiled at her. The doors opened, revealing a couple of people already inside. Jantzen looked a little puzzled as Lisa moved to join them. "Where are you going?"
"The basement. To sort through the cold-case files." Having stepped into the elevator, Lisa turned and made a wry face at Jantzen.
"Oh my God, he's sending you to Siberia!" She gave a nervous giggle. "He does that when he's really--"
Whatever Jantzen had been going to say was lost as the elevator door closed and Lisa was carried ten floors below to the basement, where, in one of the rooms, boxes upon boxes of old files waited to be sorted through. Originally housed in the basement of the venerable county courthouse, the files had been transferred when the prosecutor's office had moved into this building, which was new. Instead of just putting them in storage and forgetting about them, which, among the staff, was felt to be pretty much the consensus of the best thing to do, the files were being reread, checked for any forensic evidence that had been collected at the time for which tests that had not been available then were now available, quickly evaluated to see if anything in them seemed in any way to be linked to any case the county was currently working on, and entered into the computer system for possible future reference.
It was a thankless, seemingly endless job that nobody wanted to do. The basement was a windowless warren of storage rooms that seemed airless and already felt a little dank, despite the building's newness. The lighting was of the overhead fluorescent variety, and dim. The walls were yellow, the floor a shiny, hard gray. Realizing that she was still on edge from her recent unpleasant encounters, Lisa took a deep breath as she reached the room where the files were stored, then opened the door. When she did, the musty smell of decades-old paper made her nose wrinkle. Brown cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, rising almost to ceiling height against the walls, piled layers deep so that the only clear space in the room was a path leading from the door to an area around a table near the far wall.
At the sound of the opening door, both Alan Rinko and Tamara Gemmel looked up in surprise. In his early twenties, pale and plump, with short, frizzy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, wearing rumpled khakis and a short-sleeved white shirt and red tie, Rinko was a rising 2L spending the summer before his second year of law school interning in the prosecutor's office. A research assistant, Gemmel was maybe thirty-five, tall and wiry, with shoulder-length black hair and a predilection for the color red, which she was wearing today in the form of a short-sleeved blouse with a pair of black pants. In the brief time Lisa had been in the prosecutor's office, she'd developed a liking for Gemmel, who'd done her best to try to make the newcomer feel at home.
"Yo, Grant. What are you doing down here?" Rinko asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with an open box next to him and manila folders piled in his lap. The top folder was open.
"I've been banished." Closing the door behind her, Lisa made a comical face as she advanced toward the table where Gemmel sat behind a computer. With Rinko on the floor to her right and a stack of folders on the table beside her, Gemmel clearly had the job of entering the information into the system after Rinko had first gone through the files.