Free The Last Plea Bargain by Randy Singer Page B

paying their respects to a defense attorney who had generally been a thorn in their sides.
    By the time the funeral ended, I was drained from the pain and protocol and just wanted to be alone. But that wasn’t possible, because I lived in my parents’ house, where we held the reception. My aunts and uncles all came, along with my closest friends from law school and work. Justice made the rounds, working the crowd for scraps of food and scarfing down anything left on plates that had been abandoned on coffee tables.
    When the crowd thinned out, Chris and I started telling stories about our dad, and everyone had a few good laughs.
    My friends and relatives cleaned the place before they left, and finally, at eight that evening, I hugged Chris and his family, assured them again that I would be fine by myself, and waved at them from the front porch as they pulled away. When I went back inside, the house was deathly quiet. I felt the loneliness begin to descend and knew I needed a distraction. We had done a wonderful job of honoring my dad at the funeral, and putting that ceremony behind me seemed to alleviate some of the pressure that had been building in my chest. I didn’t believe for a minute that my dad would want me to sit around and wallow in self-pity. His solution to pretty much everything was to work a little harder. And even though Masterson had told me that I should take at least a week off, I was anxious to get back to the office and start wreaking havoc on the bad guys again.
    I spent the evening organizing the Rikki Tate materials that I had. I took the burgundy tablecloth and silver candlesticks off our dining room table and spread the case file on it, converting the dining room into my Rikki Tate war room. As I’d hoped it would, the task temporarily took my mind off my loss. I needed to get back into a routine, and I was more determined than ever to see that Caleb Tate got what he deserved.
    Justice responded to the uptick in my mood, and we played a game of tug-of-war before we went to bed. That night, for the first time since my dad’s death, I kicked Justice off the bed and made him sleep in his traditional spot on a blanket on the floor.
    Jamie Brock was back. And it was time to restore a little discipline.

14
    Our house sat on a small hill at the end of a cul-de-sac. When I looked out the picture windows of my dad’s study, I could see a good portion of the Seven Oaks neighborhood, and I felt like a queen in her medieval castle.
    After my dad’s first stroke, he would spend several hours a day in there, acting busy, though he could no longer practice law. Many times, when I walked by the study on my way out the front door, he would just be sitting at his desk, staring out the windows, deep in thought. There would be a half-full cup of coffee next to his computer, getting cold. When I got home that night, I would dump it down the sink and put the cup in the dishwasher. Sometimes there would be two or three half-full cups scattered around the study, all apparently forgotten and abandoned.
    On the morning after my dad’s funeral, I took his spot and drank coffee at his desk, gazing out the windows. Neighborhood kids were waiting for the school bus at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, their parents standing with them, chatting and enjoying the beautiful spring day. I yearned for a life of normalcy like that. And I wished my father were still sitting in this chair, even with the weakened mind and altered personality that had followed his first stroke. I struggled to grasp the finality of everything—the hard fact that I would never see him in this house again, never be able to gain courage and strength from just knowing he was here.
    After I finished my coffee, I shook off the melancholy and moved to the Rikki Tate war room. I removed the pictures from the walls and set up an easel in the corner. There were some decorative tables lining the walls, and I cleared the tops of those as