Read Online 1 Motor City Shakedown by Jonathan Watkins - Free Book Online Page B

never really left hers for more than a moment or two, and the things he was doing with his hands seemed nearly unconscious.
    ‘He’s a high processor,’ she decided. ‘One of those people whose minds are running in three different directions. All this fidgeting is probably to keep him focused on what he’s talking about. Or he’s got some crazy drug habit. Please don’t let it be a crazy drug habit.’
    “And, be lieve it or not,” he was saying, “Vernon owns a couple crematoriums.”
    “He’s a business owner?”
    “Yep. Has one here in Wayne County and another up in the U.P. somewhere. Loaded, is what his brother told me. I met him this morning. Eugene. Nice guy. No mullet or anything, and quite a bit older than Vernon. Has a contract with the county.”
    “The brother?”
    “Hmm? No. Vernon. I guess his crematorium burns the John Does and all the unclaimed bodies for the county. Not a bad business I guess. I mean, you know, it’s ghoulish and all that. But people are always dying, so I guess it’s recession-proof.”
    “Darren.”
    “Hmm?”
    “Why did you want me on this case?”
    And there it was. She had gotten past her original exasperation with the animated, self-confident Darren Fletcher. She had gotten past the embarrassment of the previous day. But Issabella still couldn ’t understand why he had gotten her assigned to the case as a partner. She had no reputation in the community of local lawyers. She’d been practicing for a handful of months and, with the exception of a few misdemeanor cases, hadn’t been in court at all.
    Darren smiled at her slyly, and his eyes lit with mirth. He stood and buttoned his suit jacket.
    “You’re right,” he said. “We should get moving and start working. Let’s take my car.”
    “That’s not what I said,” she protested, standing and following Darren toward the door. Theresa nodded at her briefly from within a cloud of cigarette smoke.
    “I know,” he said. “But I’m not answering any more questions until you answer one for me.”
    He held the door open for her, and then they were out on the sidewalk among the boarded-up windows, graffiti tags and iron security-grates.
    Darren stopped next to a black Lexus sedan parked on the curb. He spun on his heel and Issabella had to come up short to avoid running into him.
    “So are you going to come on board? Or am I going to drive you back home and tell Chelsea to take you off it?”
    She felt herself freeze there on the sidewalk, under his steady gaze.
    “Wait. You still haven’t told me—“
    “Yes or no,” he said, a playful smile appearing on his lips. “ Take the unbelievably good assignment. Or don’t. But it’s time we hit the bricks and started thinking about getting Vernon ready for a vigorous defense. Unless ‘we’ is really just ‘me’. So, out with it, fair Issabella.”
    She took a deep breath, shut off all the ‘but’s’ and ‘what if’s’ that tried to crop up and push her back to her office and the mountain of farmed-out documents waiting for her there.
    “Yes,” she said firmly. “I accept . But I still have question.”
    He put a hand in the air, stalling her, and his other arm reached into his jacket. While he fished around inside it, his grin widened. He looked like a curly-mopped, mischievous boy about to spring some gag or trick he’d been preparing all day.
    W hen his hand reappeared, it was only holding a check, which he placed in Issabella’s hands. It was a check made out to her, for “legal representation, retainer”, and signed by Vernon’s brother, Eugene Pullins.
    Her mouth went dry and she couldn’t do anything but stare down at the little fortune in her hands. She counted the zeroes, then recounted them. It was more money than she had ever made at one time, on anything. It was more than she had reasonably expected to make all year doing document review.
    At length, she managed to look up again at Darren. He was standing there with a triumphant