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nails. Shekeya was the only secretary who ever lasted more than a week with Bernadette, and she prided herself on the accomplishment. She had elaborate braids bleached orangey-red, a big heart tattooed on her arm that said KWAME, and a poisonous tongue. Shekeya didn’t hesitate to give back to Bernadette as good as she got. She raised her eyebrows at Melanie dubiously.
    “You want an audience with Her Majesty?”
    “Uh-huh. She on the phone?”
    “What else? You on your own, honey, because the way she acting, I’m not buzzing her. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    As Melanie moved toward the door to the interior office, Bernadette screamed, “Who the fuck is on line three? Why is line three still blinking?
Shekeya
?”
    “She can answer her own goddamn calls, see how she like that,” Shekeya said, turning back to her card game, a bored look on her face.
    Bernadette sat with her back to the door, facing her computer and a bank of telephones, but turned as she heard the clicking of Melanie’s high heels.
    “Oh. Hold on. You, I wanna talk to,” she said, picking up the telephone and pointing at a guest chair. Melanie sat down and listened. Might as well learn something. Bernadette was stroking the guy on the other end of the line. He was a boss at DEA, and Bernadette was trying to get some business out of him.
    “Larry, don’t worry for a minute, we can jam the thing through Washington in no time. I’ll put my best people on it. You’ll get a nice seizure, we’ll get a few bodies to prosecute. Everybody walks away happy.”
    She was smooth, no question, yet the cracks were showing. It wasn’t her looks, exactly, because Bernadette was still beautiful. But she was in her mid-forties now and overcompensating, fighting too hard. Her shoulder-length hair, once a rich dark brown, was colored an unnatural red. She wore too much makeup. And her clothes…well, tight clothes suited some people—take Melanie’s sister Linda, a Latina diva if ever there was one. But on Bernadette they looked cheesy, desperate. Bernadette had never married, had no kids. A career spent sleeping with cops wasn’t likely to pan out into anything permanent, but no other type of guy seemed to do it for her.
    Bernadette hung up and focused on Melanie. It was scary, because she did
not
look happy.
    “How did you know Jed Benson was murdered?” Bernadette demanded. Melanie knew from that tone she would never deliver the speech she’d been planning.
    “I was there last night, at the scene.”
    “Yes, I know that, miss. I had to hear it from Lieutenant Ramirez instead of your sneaky little mouth. How did you know to go there?”
    Melanie had guessed Ramirez would tattle to Bernadette, but still it infuriated her.
    “It was an accident. I mean, it was a coincidence,” she sputtered as Bernadette fixed her with a cold stare. “I live right near there. I was out for a walk, and I happened to go by and see the fire trucks.”
    “You just happened to be out for a walk?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why were you out walking at ten o’clock at night?”
    “My baby couldn’t sleep. I thought a stroll would help.”
    Bernadette leaned back in her chair, seeming to accept her answer, but then sat up suddenly, jabbing her finger at Melanie. “Lieutenant Ramirez claims you said I sent you!”
    “I never said that! I was careful to avoid saying that, in fact. It looked like an important case, so I wanted to grab it for us, Bern, before the state got it. Be aggressive, take a page from your book. So I bluffed him. Pretended I was supposed to be there. If he thought I was just passing by with my baby stroller, he never would’ve given me the time of day.”
    “So you felt that justified going outside the chain of command? Doing this without consulting me?”
    “I thought it was what you would want me to do.”
    “Hmmmph. Well. You put me in a difficult position, girlfriend. Two of my favorite management principles are in conflict here. Do you know what