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all worked out. Sanders was supposed to slip ashore and tie up the guard. Nash had never confronted anyone mano a mano, so he was happy to let someone else handle it. Sanders was armed, a military .45, a big-ass handgun, but it was mainly for show. But when Sanders got there, there was no old guy with a can of Mace. There was Grisby. With a shotgun.
    “I don’t understand Sanders getting shot,” Nash said. “We’d already gotten the dolphins out of the channel. Passion was in the Bay. I was almost there, too, when you jumped me. I mean, the whole thing was
over.
”
    “Grisby claims he had Sanders covered with a shotgun and they were just waiting for the police, when Sanders suddenly went for his gun.”
    “Doesn’t make sense,” Nash said.
    “Neither does Grisby shooting him twice. Sort of like bombing Nagasaki after hitting Hiroshima.”
    The pieces weren’t fitting together. The key to the case was finding out what actually happened between Sanders and Grisby just before the shooting. But Nash couldn’t have seen anything from the channel. Neither could Bobby from the seawall. So far, it was Grisby’s word against a dead man’s.
    “Anything else, Gerald? Anything else I need to know?”
    Nash glanced around uneasily, as if someone might be eavesdropping. “There’s one thing I haven’t told you. It wasn’t just the three of us. We had a boat, a big-ass Bertram with a saltwater tank. It was anchored a half mile outside the gate. A two-man crew. They were supposed to bring the dolphins on board in canvas nets.”
    Steve didn’t get it. “Once the dolphins were through the gate, why not just let them swim free in the Bay?”
    “Because they might go back up the channel to the park.”
    Meaning the dolphins liked it there, Steve thought. Spunky and Misty probably figured they’d been comped at the Four Seasons, and then along come these yahoos who want to force them to work for their supper. “Who the hell are the two guys? And where are they now?”
    Nash shrugged. “Sanders hired them. I never knew their names.”
    Nash finished his sorry story. When the cop cars came screaming from Virginia Key toward the park, the two guys panicked and took off in the Bertram. The dolphins swam God knows where. Passion must have headed to Crandon Park Marina, where she ditched her Jet Ski. And no word from her since.
    Steve mulled it over.
    Passion missing.
    Sanders dead.
    Two nameless guys from the boat running loose somewhere.
    And Gerald Nash left alone, facing life in prison.
    Steve didn’t know if his client was guilty of murder, but he surely could cop a plea to stupidity in the first degree.

Ten
    NO MORE WAYWARD BREASTS
    Driving south on Dixie Highway, Victoria couldn’t wait to tell Steve the news.
    She’d been deputized and had a badge and gun to prove it.
    Specially appointed Assistant State Attorney for the 11th Judicial Circuit, in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida.
    There’d be a story in tomorrow’s paper. With more to come.
    It was just what Solomon & Lord needed. A high-profile trial. And a winner. Felony murder was a piece of cake for the prosecution. In most murder trials, the state must prove the defendant intended the harm. Not so in felony murder, where “strict liability” was the rule. If Gerald Nash committed a felony and Sanders died as a result, Nash is guilty even if he didn’t intend to cause an injury, much less death, and even if he did not, as a matter of fact, cause the death.
    Draconian, maybe. But hey, that’s the law.
    They’d have new cases rolling in. Big cases. They could drop some of Steve’s old clients. When Steve had first told her he defended personal injury cases, he never mentioned the lap dancers at The Beav. His arguments on motion calendars could be so embarrassing.
    “A man who buys a lap dance assumes the risk that he’ll suffer whiplash from an enhanced and wayward breast.”
    No more wayward breasts, she decided.
    State v. Nash
could solve multiple