Free Death By Drowning by Abigail Keam

half hour going over details before calling it quits. I was drained and so were Matt and Shaneika. Before she left though, I called Shaneika into my bedroom on the pretense of seeing my new Haitian paintings, which I had switched for the Bell landscapes. She loved them.
    “Do I have any money left in my account from the Ellis Wilson painting?”
    “Just about five thousand left. Everything has been spent on the lawsuit, of which I’m not taking a percentage; yes, thank you very much, Miss Shaneika.”
    “I do appreciate that you’re not making any money off my pain and suffering.”
    “Next time you sue someone, I won’t be so generous.”
    “Still paying off that favor you owe my daughter, huh?”
    My fussy lawyer pretended she didn’t hear me.
    “I would love to know what she’s got on you. Enough of that. Shaneika, do you know that Irene Meckler came to visit me in Key West?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you know that her nephew drowned last month?”
    “Where is this going I’m not going to get involved this time,” she protested.
    I gave her an exaggerated, sad face. “She’s asked me to look into it. The boy was only fifteen. A baby.”
    Shaneika took a pen from her breast pocket and began writing on her arm. “Good golly almighty! What do you want?”
    “A look at the police and coroner’s reports. Also any insurance reports. Things like that.”
    “Oh, you mean easy things to get,” she sputtered sarcastically.
    “I’m sure you have contacts in Jessamine County.”
    “I’ll see what I can do.” She pointed a finger at me. “No promises though. I’ll call tomorrow and get the details from you.”
    “I just happened to have made a list of his name, address, Social Security number, school, you know, stuff like that,” I said, pulling paper from out from my cleavage. The paper was warm.
    “Can you please not store documents between your bosoms? It’s a filthy habit.” She held the paper by her fingertips and sniffed it. “At least it smells like Chanel No. 5 . . . and mint?”
    “Vicks VaporRub.”
    “Of course, Vicks always goes well with a French perfume.” Shaneika made for the door. “I’m going to see my baby, give him a good rubdown, feed him some grain and then flee back to the city where things are normal.” Her heels made a clicking noise down the tiled hallway.
    “Call me when you’ve got something,” I called after her.
    “Like I got time to snoop around about a dead boy,” I heard her grouse under her breath.
    Alone now, I looked around the room. Feeling uneasy, I checked the closet area, looked behind the door in the bathroom, opened the patio door and called for Baby, locked same door once he was inside, closed the drapes, locked the steel bedroom door, caressed the panic button installed by my bed, made sure the baby monitor was on and repositioned the stun gun under my pillow.
    Matt softly knocked on my door. “Babe, we need to talk about the farm,” he said in his low husky voice, which used to thrill me.
    “Later, Matt. I’m drained. Gonna take a nap.”
    “Okay. What about dinner?”
    “Not hungry. Just need some time by myself.”
    After hearing Matt reluctantly plod away, I got out a little tub of ice cream from my miniature freezer, and sitting on the bed with my trusty legal pad, began making notes about Jamie Dunne. I needed something constructive to take my mind off my own problems, and to do something positive for someone else. Like most independent people, I felt guilty about relying on other people, but I had no choice at the moment. I could only do what I could. But I could help put Sarah Dunne’s mind at ease about her baby boy. Yes, that I could do.
    *
    It must have been 11 p.m. when the phone woke me up. I had fallen asleep on a pile of yellow sheets of paper.
    “Hello?” I answered groggily.
    “I’m sorry about O’nan,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.
    “Don’t worry about it. It’s out of your hands.”
    “We looked for