Free Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) by Julie Smith Page A

a record,” she said dryly. “Who’s the DA assigned to the case?”
    “Todd Greenberg. Why?”
    “What did he think of your case?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?”
    “I will. But as long as I’m here, why don’t you let me see the autopsy report?”
    “Sorry.” She gave me a pitying look and went back to her paperwork.
    I kind of liked what I heard. She was a little more defensive than she’d had to be. I wondered if Greenberg wasn’t as thrilled with her airtight case as she and Tillman were.
    Perhaps fifteen feet away from the pleasant office with the view of a lemon grove, just around the comer, was as nasty a jail as—well, frankly, as jail always is. This one was painted a deep turquoise instead of black or gray, but bars are bars. It seemed ten degrees colder after Tillman turned the oversize key in the lock and led me inside. His feet—mine were in noiseless tennis shoes—echoed in the corridor. Three steps in, I was deeply depressed, and Marty’s cellblock was at the other end of the place.
    She was standing, waiting for me, in the business suit I’d left her in, the same one she’d worn to work the day before.
    Her cell nearly made me cry, and would have, I suspect, if I’d been younger and less experienced and not so angry with her. That horrible chestnut. “She’s made her bed—” popped up, but it was hard to be too punitive when the bed in question was a concrete bunk built into the wall. It had on it only a mattress, a pillow, and a folded-up blanket.
    The only other furniture, if you could call it that, was a no-frills metal toilet.
    She spoke first. “What time is it? They took my watch.”
    “Around two, I think. Have they fed you?”
    “Two TV dinners already today, but of course I didn’t eat them. Do you know what the sodium content of those things is?”
    “Didn’t eat them? You were expecting radicchio with a little warm chèvre?”
    We both sat on the bunk.
    “It’s no big deal. I needed to lose weight anyway. It’s inconceivably boring in here, though. I wish I’d taken a meditation class, but there never seemed to be time. Did you know you’re not allowed any reading material? Or pantyhose—how about that one?” She held out a bare foot, shod in a neat black pump. “You might strangle yourself with them.”
    “But they let you take a shower, of course.”
    Of course they hadn’t. I was rubbing it in. I was getting madder by the moment, and not only at her—at myself for wasting sympathy on her. “Marty Whitehead, you lied to me.”
    Her face lit up. “You’ve been to my office? Did you bring the stuff?”
    “No, I did not bring the stuff. I had to impersonate a member of the staff to get in, and then I was caught in the act, so I didn’t get anything out of the building—except this.” I produced the calendar leaf for the night before. “You couldn’t have killed her, damn you! You were somewhere screwing your brains out.”
    I admit I made this speech partly in case the cell was bugged—a ridiculous idea for a quiet town like Monterey.
    “You sound mad that I didn’t kill her. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
    “I’m mad because only a born victim would spend a night in jail to protect a man. A born victim is a dead loser in court, and I don’t want one for a client.”
    “Okay, okay. I’ll get another lawyer.”
    “That won’t solve your problem. Another lawyer’s going to feel exactly the same way—like doing anything in the world besides stand around watching you cut your own throat. Tell me the guy’s name, Marty. Tell Jacobson and Tillman and walk away from this. He got himself into this mess, you didn’t. Who cares about him? Think of Libby and Keil, dammit!”
    Her refusal to think of her kids seemed so heartless,I wanted to bang her head against the bars. Recent encounters with ten-year-olds had left me feeling protective and righteous.
    “Rebecca, I don’t have an alibi. He stood me up.”
    “He stood you up. Sure he stood