Death on a High Floor Read Free Page B

house in a canyon is a nice place to do that kind of thing, even if the house is really only faux old.
    She handed me a rather large glass. “Here’s some Jack Daniels . Bourbon will do you good.”
    “Jack Daniels isn’t a bourbon, Jenna. It’s a sour mash.”
    “Hey, that’s more like your old self. Full of snotty information.”
    I drank the whole thing down in a swallow. “Leave me alone, Jenna.”
    “After you left Starbucks, the cops came in. I heard them talking some more.”
    “And?”
    “They are sure you did it. Blood on your shirt cuff, like you said. For some reason, they don’t buy that you got it from touching him. Plus they kept talking about “the other thing.” The thing that nails you. But they never said what it is. I overheard one of them say something about a vator. But I don’t know what a vator is. Some kind of test maybe? Do you know?”
    The warm bourbon going down had been helping but suddenly it wasn’t helping anymore. I wanted to answer her, but I couldn’t. I had no clue what kind of test a vator was. More important, I couldn’t really even think.
    Jenna came over and sat on the arm of the chair. She put her hand on my shoulder. Yesterday, I would have thought it was a come-on. Today it just felt nice. And needed. “Robert, you need a lawyer.”
    “I am a lawyer.”
    “Very funny. You know what I mean. You need a criminal defense lawyer. You are not one of those.” She paused. “You’re shaking. I’m going to call your doctor.”
    “Doctors don’t make house calls.”
    The rest is a blur for me. John Donald, M.D., actually came to my house, for the first time ever. I recall him injecting something into my arm, and I recall wondering if it would put me to sleep. That’s it.
     
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    When I woke up, it was morning, early. I was in my bed, under the white duvet, naked. The smell of bacon and coffee was coming from the kitchen. I felt good. A bit groggy, but good. Then I remembered. Simon was dead. I was a suspect. And, oh yeah, Jenna was Simon’s lover. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
    Jenna stuck her head in the bedroom door. She was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt that said LAWYER in red letters. “Good morning. You look much better.”
    “Is it the next day?”
    “It is. You slept more than eighteen hours. Some of it drug induced, I might add. Dr. Donald thought it would improve things. You know, ‘Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care’ and all that.”
    I was feeling word-grounded again. “Shakespeare didn’t have drugs in mind when he wrote that.”
    She laughed. “Only because he didn’t know about drugs. Well, other than alcohol. Anyway, you taught me those lines.”
    “I did?”
    “Yes. You don’t remember?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “It was when you interviewed me at Harvard. I had been up all night, studying. I must have looked sleep deprived. I said something about needing a good night’s sleep. You quoted that to me.”
    “Jenna, you hadn’t been up all night studying. You had been up all night fucking, to use your term for it.”
    “The morning seems to have brought your old self back. Which is good, Robert. You’re going to need your old, snotty self to get through this.”
    “I didn’t do it.”
    “I’m sure you didn’t. There are dozens of people at M&M with better motives than you.”
    “I don’t have any motive.”
    She just smiled. “Robert, some people might think you did. But we can talk about that after you formally ask me to be your lawyer in this.”
    “You?”
    “Yes, me.”
    “You don’t know shit about criminal law.”
    “I don’t. But I’m a very fast study. And I do know a lot about you, sir. Maybe more than you realize. We’ve never been sexually intimate, but we’ve been intimate on a lot of other levels. I know you well enough to help you a lot. Help you to . . . what’s that old phrase? Oh, yeah, ‘Keep your head about you.’ We can hire some crim-head to front the