Read Online London Harmony: The Pike by Erik Schubach - Free Book Online

hurried out the door.  I giggled. “Too slow old man.”  I loved to tease him that he was a year older than me.  I looked back to see him grinning and growling as he closed the door to our house.
    I looked at my car in the drive, then to my empty shoulder where a purse with my keys should be.  I rolled my eyes, spun on a heel and marched up to the door.  It opened a crack and Harrison's arm stuck out of it holding the strap of my purse.  I chuckled. “Smart ass.”
    He opened the door a crack more so I could see his handsome grinning face with his five o clock shadow.  I swear he took the day off just so he didn't have to shave, and it looked gooood.  He said in a mock wounded voice, “The children dear, their innocent ears.”
    I snagged my purse and blew him a kiss then said with a voice full of sarcasm, “Yes, the two innocent ones who hang with June, Mandy, and Eve?  They've never heard a bad word in their lives.”  I was rewarded by the children giggling as Harry shut the door.
    I turned back to the car as I dug out my keys then my smile left me as I exhaled and prepared for another reminder that I had lost someone I cared about.  I punched in the address for the lawyer.  I had never had an occasion to meet Mrs. Z's lawyer.  She had switched from Gilbert and Jameson after McKenzie's father had passed.
    I looked at the map on the screen on my dashboard as it picked up my destination from my iPhone.  I nodded and headed out to meet with Kincade L. Stenson, Esquire.  It only took a few minutes to arrive, and I parked in the parking lot and looked at the address again as I looked around for a professional building.  This couldn't be right.
    I figured I had just written the address down wrong when McKenzie gave it to me.  So I did a quick internet search for Stenson, it showed the same address.  I got out of the car and just stared at the little strip mall.  What kind of lawyer works out of a  strip mall?
    I paused a moment then exhaled and started toward the building.  I grinned when I saw a woman in a wheelchair, and another woman who's hair was dyed a brilliant red, enter a plain, unassuming door that was sandwiched between a dry cleaners and a tobacco shop.  If Reese and Sarah were here, then this was indeed the right place.
    I hustled over to the door and looked at the letters stenciled on it, that read Kincade L. Stenson, Esquire.  I had to grin and shake my head, Mrs. Z's lawyer was indeed in a strip mall.  I took a cleansing breath, steeled myself, opened the door and stepped in.
    I still wasn't sure why I was here, I wasn't family, and we had never finalized our partnership agreement.  I assumed that McKenzie was going to liquidate the business since she already ran a successful business that took up all her time and she wouldn't be able to run the Pike as well.
    She was never a person to hide from anything, so I believed I was here so that she could tell me face to face that the Pike would be closing.  Heartbreak after heartbreak, first I lose Mrs. Zatta, now the Pike.
    I passed a restroom in the bland entry hall which had cheap linoleum tiles on the floor and white walls  There were people crowded into a relatively large one room office that looked like it belonged in the back of a seedy gambling house.  There were rows of mismatched chairs in front of the little Formica-covered desk, which was almost totally surrounded by overstuffed filing cabinets.
    There were stacks of papers and files on every possible horizontal surface.  You couldn't have made an office look more disorganized if you tried.  I had to pause at that thought and looked again.  It was too much of a caricature, and it looked a little staged now that I looked closely.  I nudged a folder on top of the stack at a small knee-high table by the door, and it slid aside to reveal blank papers and menus from various restaurants.  What the heck was going on here?
    I looked at all the people in the room.  I thought