Read Online The Zen Man by Colleen Collins - Free Book Online Page B

there you have my testimony for trial next week.”
    “Right.” He ran his forefinger down the page, stopped. “In your autopsy report, you also noted he had…”
    Mike finished counseling her on her testimony, they made small talk about their plans for Christmas, then she stood and picked up her bag. Mike had gotten the message she wasn’t interested, they’d made nice, time to split.
    She was almost to the door when he spoke.
    “I suppose you heard about the murder at Rick Levine’s place.”
    Her breath froze in her lungs. “Rick’s…dead?”
    “No!” Mike laughed uncomfortably. “His ex-wife is, and he’s been charged.”
    She frowned, slowly turned. “Deborah Levine was
murdered
?” She remembered her—a loud woman with brassy blond hair who seemed to think squeezing her fleshy body into designer suits gave her class. When she wasn’t bragging about herself, she engaged in vicious repartee about others. All mouth, no substance. She’d never understood how Rick the Deadhead had hooked up with someone like that.
    “Stabbed to death in a hot spring pool at Rick’s new place.”
    “What new place?”
    “Some bed and breakfast in Morrison. Seems he and his girlfriend were throwing a grand opening for the criminal defense attorneys association, lots of boozing, and Deborah was murdered in the midst of the partying.”
    She was silent for a moment. “I thought Rick had cleaned up—what was he doing throwing such a party?”
    “Don’t know. A lot of the attorneys at the party witnessed him holding a knife on Deborah earlier in the evening. Same knife was used to kill Deborah, or so the scuttlebutt goes. You know, it’s always someone the victim knows.”
    “So…he was charged?”
    “First degree. I have the crime scene photos.”
    Their eyes locked. Lots of people knew she and Rick had been an item after his divorce from Deborah, and that Brianna eventually dumped him for Joe. One of those ugly, messy breakups that had fed the gossip machine for months.
    Mike knew she’d stay longer to see those pictures. She hated that he knew that. Hated that he could use it to rein her back in. Hated it almost as much as she hated her reaction to the mention of Rick’s name.
    She forced a small smile.
    “Let’s see them.”

Eleven
     
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
—Zen proverb
     
    T he next day I was sitting in my armchair—only because Mavis was preoccupied elsewhere, jotting witness questions on a yellow writing pad when I heard a familiar male voice.
    “My man, good to see you back!”
    In the open kitchen door stood Garrett, wearing a dirt-colored T decorated with Bob Marley strumming a guitar. Some of Marley’s kinky locks stretched into the cursive words “Is This Love That I’m Feelin.” How Garrett had made a success of his one-man business, We Rock, where he created rock designs for pools, waterfalls, and gardens escaped Rick as the twenty-something guy had taken months designing—or
planning
the design—of a currently empty hot spring pool on their property.
    “Come on in,” Laura said from her chair, the laptop precariously balanced on her lap, “and close the door. It’s chilly this afternoon.”
    She kept tapping away, researching backgrounds for the CrimDefs who’d been here the night of the murder. She was checking social networking sites, blogs, news articles, anything that might reveal a CrimDef’s reason to dislike Wicked.
    Garrett’s boots clumped heavily as he stepped back and shut the door.
    “I thought it was gonna snow last night,” he said turning around.
    “Yeah,” I agreed, “so did the TV weatherman.”
    He strolled across the kitchen floor. “Yeah. Ridiculous. So when you’d get out of the slammer?”
    As he approached, I saw his eyes where a color of pink some people liked their steak cooked.
    “Noon yesterday, in time to make my advisement hearing.”
    He stopped at the butcher