wasn’t anywhere near the truth, but I’d take it, at least for the moment.
The three of us stayed in the break room until there was a knock at the door three minutes after I’d hung up with Kelly. She must have run a stop sign or two herself to get here that fast.
“Have you said anything to anyone?” she asked Diana.
“No,” she answered briefly.
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” She looked hard at Diana as she asked, “Do you have any problem with me representing you in this matter?”
“I suppose not,” Diana said curtly.
“Good.” Ignoring me completely, Kelly turned to Molly and said, “I want my client examined by a physician before you question her further. I’m concerned she may be suffering from some type of physical trauma.”
Molly said, “I don’t know about her, but I have a woman in the other room with her head bashed in. All I’m trying to do is figure out who did it.”
Molly was embellishing the truth a little, but she did have a point. If it had been someone I didn’t know under her intense scrutiny, I would have been the first person to cheer her on. I didn’t want a murderer running loose in Harper’s Landing any more than the rest of the community did. But I wouldn’t believe Diana capable of it, no matter what the impetus. Still, Molly had once told me that anybody, and she meant absolutely anybody, could be a killer, given the right circumstances. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but she’d made her point then, and her words drifted back to haunt me now.
Kelly must have sympathized with Molly’s directive, too, if only a little bit. “Let me get her examined, and then we’ll come by your office for an interview. Is that fair enough?”
“No, but I don’t have much choice, do I? Just don’t take too long, counselor. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kelly said.
Molly stared at me a second longer than she had to, then she walked out of the break room. It appeared that it took every ounce of her restraint not to slam the door behind her.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” I said to Kelly.
She gave me much the same look Molly had, and I was getting tired of being treated like I was the one who was guilty. “We need some time to talk, Ben.”
“I don’t see how we could manage that right now,” I said. “There’s a lot going on here.”
“I don’t mean you, I’m talking about Diana.”
This dismissal was clear enough. I was being invited to leave my family’s break room entirely more than I liked, but I knew I had to go.
Before I left, though, I asked Diana, “Is that all right with you?”
She nodded, so I took off. One of a man’s worst night-mares is to have his ex-girlfriend in the same room with his current one, and I was not only living it, I’d been the one to set it up. I just hoped they were too busy talking about Connie Brown to compare notes on me.
After ten minutes—time I spent hovering nearby—Kelly and Diana came out of the break room together.
“That was quick,” I said.
“We’re not finished. We’re just moving our conversation to the hospital.”
Diana protested, “I keep telling you, I’m fine. All I got was a knot on my head when I fell. It’s nothing.”
Kelly whispered, “We don’t know that until you’re examined by an accredited physician, now do we? So, are we going to the hospital, or do you want to head straight to police headquarters?”
Diana didn’t even need to think about it. “Let’s go get a checkup.” As she started to leave, she called out to me, “I’ll call you later, Ben.”
Kelly didn’t miss a beat as she added, “And you’d better believe I will, too.”
After they were gone, my mother came over to me. “Is it finally over?”
Our customers were all gone, and as I’d feared, none of them had come back in after the police had questioned them. I shrugged. “Our part of it is for now,” I said. “Mom, I’m sorry about all
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