Free A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries) by A.W. Hartoin Page A

case?”
    “That’s my client’s private information. I’m sure you understand,” I said.
    “I do, I do, and I can’t give you any personal information either.”
    “I understand completely. I just need to know why you were called in the first place.”
    “OK. I can ask personnel who came up.” She was so excited she could hardly breathe.
    “That would be great.” I gave her my name and cell number. Angela said she’d find out what she could.
    I pushed my feet off the desk and let myself spin in Dad’s big chair. What did I know? Not much. For details, I’d have to rely on Dixie. She might know where Gavin was before he returned in such a lather, but, then again, she might not. Dixie wasn’t like my mother. She had nothing to do with the business, to the point that she didn’t answer the business line.
    I wrote down my sad little list and doodled on it, drawing a pattern of paisley around the words and sentences. Gavin liked paisley. He wore paisley ties when he wore ties, which wasn’t often. He gave Dixie a paisley scarf for Christmas two years ago. I’d seen it knotted around her throat a hundred times. She’d had it on at our Easter brunch a few weeks before and Gavin unknotted it several times causing her to go to the bathroom and reassemble herself. He loved to pester her.
    I couldn’t remember who said what or who ate what at Mom’s brunch, but we had a good time. Gavin smiled a lot. Dixie too. They held hands when they walked out the door. I watched them from the bay window, as they walked down the steps and through the gate. They turned left, got in their car and drove away. I would never see him alive again. I wished I’d known it at the time. I would’ve told him some things. How I liked his magic tricks and his barbecued ribs. I’d thank him for remembering that I only like dark chocolate with nuts. No one else ever did. Just little things, things that don’t matter much when people are alive, but become important when they’re not. I missed him, and I didn’t know if it would go away. Time heals all wounds they say, but I’d seen plenty of evidence that it didn’t. I didn’t think Dixie would heal. Hers wasn’t a flesh wound, and I hoped to God it wasn’t a mortal one either.
    I dug out my cell phone and checked my messages. Sixty-eight. I hadn’t had sixty-eight messages in the last month. Heck. The last six months. On the upside, the first one was from Pete, the invisible doctor.
    I called him and he actually answered. It might be a first.
    “Hey. Where are you?” asked Pete.
    “Mom and Dad’s. Where are you?” Like I needed to ask.
    “Your apartment.”
    “Wow. I thought you’d be at the hospital. I’m starting to think they have you on a choke chain.” I didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
    “It’s not that bad,” he said.
    “Right.”
    “Don’t be like that. I can take an hour at six. Let’s get some dinner.”
    “Ooh, a whole hour.”
    “What’s wrong?” Pete asked.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “Don’t give me that. What’s wrong? And don’t say it’s my schedule because I know you don’t care.”
    That wasn’t exactly true. I wanted to see him more, but I understood. Being a cop’s daughter taught me the value of independence. I lived my own life much as my mother had and fit Pete in whenever I could.
    “It’s been a bad day.”
    “The Siamese piss on the sofa again?”
    “Not yet.” I hadn’t seen the cats. They were snots and had issues with being left in my care. They’d been known to pee on Mom’s favorite sofa to show their displeasure. Invisible cats weren’t a problem for me; as long as food disappeared from their bowls, I was happy.
    “Well…”
    “Gavin died.”
    “MI?” Pete didn’t sound surprised. He was training to be a surgeon and people dropped dead around him all the time. I was the same way, but I knew Gavin and he didn’t.
    “Sort of.”
    “How do you have a sort of MI?”
    “It wasn’t