“It’ll get better in time.”
“I suppose so. You’ve dealt with that kind of thing a lot, I imagine. Maddie told me you were a cop before you became a private detective.”
“That’s right. Undercover work mostly.”
“Why’d you quit?”
He usually dodged the question. For reasons he didn’t quite get, he found himself answering instead. “I got my partner killed.”
“Oh, Jonah, I’m sorry. What happened?”
He didn’t like to think about it, wished he could erase the whole episode from his mind. It didn’t work that way and it never would.
“She was young, still green. We were working a drug bust. I shouldn’t have let her go in with me, but she was gung-ho, eager to bust some chops, and having been there when I was a rookie, I gave in. I let her come along and Jenny took a bullet. Shot just missed her vest. She died on the way to the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He took a drink of the thick black coffee. “I was exonerated, but it didn’t matter. If I hadn’t let her go, she’d still be alive today.” He released a slow breath. “After that, I needed a break so I took a leave of absence. Three months later, instead of going back, I started working for myself. No more green kids to worry about.”
“No, just your clients.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Some he worried about more than others. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Except for my clients.”
April sipped her coffee. “Why did you ask me to come today?”
Jonah leaned against the back of the booth. “I talked to Temple about the investigation. He says you turned down a chance to make this end, which would have been the easy way out.”
“That’s right. I’m not going to plead guilty to something I didn’t do—even if it was supposedly in self-defense. Would you?”
“Probably not. So what we need to find out is, besides you, who wanted David Dean dead?”
She bristled. “I didn’t want David dead. He could be a royal pain in the ass, but I didn’t want him dead.”
His mouth edged up. April was a beautiful woman, particularly when she unleashed that redheaded temper. “I’ll buy that. So who did?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to think of anyone he might have had as an enemy, but so far I’ve come up with zilch. David was dedicated to the mayor. He didn’t date much. Gave to local charities. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill him.”
“You make him sound like a paragon.”
“He was a jerk. If he didn’t get his way, he got pissy. He could go days barely speaking.”
“Until you agreed to do what he wanted?”
“Sometimes I agreed, but not always. Which is why he’d pressed Mark to fire me. As far as I know, Mark had no intention of letting me go and David had accepted that.”
“I talked to the campaign volunteers who were with you that night at the Derby, Susan Buchanan and Timothy Mahoney. They confirmed that Dean drank too much and that you offered to drive him the few blocks back to his condo.”
“That’s right.”
“Susan said you seemed okay when you left. That supports the theory that Dean drugged you at his house.”
“I started feeling dizzy when I got to my car. I don’t even remember driving him home. In fact, I don’t believe I did.”
“According to your attorney, they released your car this morning. The only prints they found were yours and Dean’s.”
“I don’t think I could have driven that car out of the parking lot, let alone all the way to David’s condo.”
“There aren’t any cameras in the lot so there’s no way to know for sure.”
