All Fall Down Read Free Page B

don’t have the time for one of his lectures about why I need to quit my job and how my being a cop is bad for Casey.”
    â€œHe’s full of crap. But, yes, I’d love to get Casey from school. And since I’ll be in the neighborhood, I suppose you’d like me to head around the corner and pick up your uniforms at that dry cleaners?”
    â€œYou’re a lifesaver. On both accounts.”
    From the corners of her eyes, she saw that Bobby was ready and waiting at the door. “Look, when you pick him up this time, don’t pretend to be me. It really freaks his teachers out.”
    â€œLightweights.” Mia cackled, sounding absolutelywicked. “What’s the good of being an identical twin if I can’t have a little fun with it? Besides, Casey likes it. It’s our little game.”
    Melanie shook her head. Actually, she and Mia were both identical twins and triplets. When Melanie told people so, they always laughed, thinking she was making a joke. But it was true. She and Mia were identical twins but they also had a fraternal triplet sister, Ashley.
    What made it even more fun was Ashley’s striking resemblance to her sisters. When together, the three fair-haired, blue-eyed look-alikes drew the startled gazes of passersby. Even their friends had been known to do double takes.
    â€œRemember how we used to trick our teachers?” Mia murmured, her tone amused.
    â€œI’m thirty-two, not ninety-two. Of course, I remember. You were always the instigator. And I was the one who always got blamed.”
    â€œTry reversing that, sister dear.”
    Bobby cleared his throat, tapped his watch and pointed at the chief’s office. She nodded in acknowledgment. “I would if I had the time, Mia. Right now I’ve got to go solve a murder.”
    Her sister’s wish of “Go for it, Sherlock” ringing in her ears, Melanie hung up the phone and hurried to meet her partner.

4
    T he Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s office was located in Uptown Charlotte, in the old county courthouse building. Built in the days before the advent of the office high-rise—those unadorned rectangles filled with low-ceiling rooms jammed with vanilla cubicles, each no bigger or smaller than the other—the courthouse was now a part of Government Plaza, residing with modern-day, state-of-the-art wonders like the Law Enforcement Center.
    Rabbit warrens, Assistant District Attorney Veronica Ford called such buildings. Monuments to the de-personalization of modern life. In contrast, the old courthouse possessed an aura of faded grandeur. To Veronica, it fit her image of a place where the wheels of justice turned slowly but surely, a place where, though sometimes mired in a flawed, old-fashioned system, justice had its way.
    Just as it fit her image of Charlotte, a city of both the old South and the new, a city of blooming trees and skyscrapers, of southern gentility and frenzied commerce. A city she had felt at home in from the moment she’d arrived, nine months before.
    Even though running late for a team meeting, Veronica eschewed the rickety but reliable elevator andtook the wide, curving central staircase to the second floor, trailing her hand along its ornate wrought-iron handrail. Veronica loved the law. She loved her part in it, relished the fact that without her the world would not be quite as good a place to live. She believed that—perhaps naively, perhaps with conceit.
    But if she didn’t, what would be the point of working for the D.A.? She could make a helluva lot more money with a lot less stress practicing corporate law.
    â€œAfternoon, Jen,” she called to the receptionist as she stepped onto the top landing.
    Pregnant with her first child, the young woman was positively glowing with happiness. She smiled at Veronica. “Morning to you, too.”
    â€œAny messages?”
    â€œSeveral.” The woman indicated a stack of pink