Free Heat Wave by Judith Arnold Page B

media
attention.”
    “You’re getting media attention, too,”
Blanche noted. “I saw that press conference you held at Town Hall
Tuesday afternoon on the local news. You’re a TV star.”
    “Unlike the DA, I don’t want to be a TV
star,” he said. “I just want to clear my client’s name.”
    “You’re so noble,” Blanche muttered. She was
sixty. She was an accountant. She was allowed to be sarcastic. “Get
me the financials as soon as possible.”
    “Will do.” After saying good-bye, he hung up
the phone, leaned back in his chair and gazed out his office
window, which overlooked the street. A maple dense with foliage
cast a shadow across the building’s façade. When a breeze danced
down the street, the leaves threw mottled, undulating silhouettes
against the window pane.
    Staring at the shifting leaves relaxed him.
He’d been poring over documents for most of the day, reviewing the
past five years of Brogan’s Point treasury reports filed by Sheila
Valenti and her predecessor. His eyes swam from all the print, all
the numbers. He didn’t know how Blanche could stand to analyze
spread sheets day in and day out.
    He usually had no trouble
concentrating. He loved picking through records and documents. He
loved searching for evidence. He especially loved that aha! moment when he found
exactly what he needed to cement his defense.
    But he hadn’t been able to throw himself
into Jerry Felton’s case as thoroughly as he ought to. One
significant wedge of his brain was fixated on another case, a
non-case. An almost client.
    He should just call Meredith and ask her
out. He should tell her he owed her dinner because she’d treated
last time. He should tell her he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He should tell her how tempted he’d been to kiss her the other
night, when they’d stood together on the wharf by the Lobster
Shack, gazing out at the ocean. He should tell her she was like a
heat wave burning in his heart.
    Why not? She wasn’t really his client, after
all. He hadn’t billed her.
    Then again, she’d given no
indication that he was like a heat wave burning in her heart. What he’d
sensed from her was gratitude, nothing more. Whatever he was
feeling was craziness inside himself.
    Maybe he should give Ellen a call. If she
was between boyfriends, she might want to see him. He and Ellen had
been a happy enough couple for more than a year, after he’d
finished law school and taken a job with the Boston firm where he’d
done his internship the previous summer. When Niall had invited
Caleb to join him and Heather in forming a private law firm up on
the North Shore, Caleb had jumped at the opportunity. As a junior
associate in Boston, he’d been boring himself to tears doing
document reviews and stressing out over his billable hours, when
all he’d wanted was to defend clients in court—something he’d be
able to do from the get-go if he, Niall and Heather founded their
own firm. And Brogan’s Point was a beach town, right on the
ocean.
    He’d told Ellen he was going not just to
enter into a partnership with Niall and Heather but also to move to
Brogan’s Point. He’d thought she would be excited for him, maybe
even consider moving to the North Shore with him. Instead, she’d
wished him good luck and kissed him good-bye. She was an urban
creature, she’d insisted, and she liked the security big firms
offered. If Caleb wanted to risk his career on a small start-up,
that was his business. But she didn’t wish to come along for the
ride.
    It was an amicable, affectionate parting. No
hard feelings. She started seeing other men, and Caleb—when he
wasn’t working his ass off—saw other women. Sometimes, when he and
Ellen were both free, they saw each other, for old time’s sake.
    Yeah, he should call her and spend a night
down in the city with her. That would delete Meredith Benoit from
his mind.
    He shook his head. He couldn’t use Ellen to
help him forget another woman. That wouldn’t