Free The Bottom by Howard Owen Page A

full!”
    Nothing like a little bundle of joy to add some romance to young lovers’ lives. Kate was a lot of fun, and I still love her, in my half-ass fashion, but I’m wondering if she is going to find total fulfillment in motherhood.
    “He didn’t tell you where he is?”
    “We’re supposed to meet him. I can’t tell you where, but come here in the morning at seven and we’ll take you there.”
    I wonder out loud if she and Marcus Green aren’t skating on thin legal ice.
    She says she’s considered that. I know Marcus likes to blast right through those warning signs, the ones that say, “Caution: Disbarment Ahead.” He’s come close a couple of times. But Kate likes to play by the rules.
    “Marcus says we’re OK,” she tells me, lowering her voice as if she doesn’t want Mr. Ellis to hear. “He says we’re just going to have a meeting with our client, to try and get him to turn himself in.”
    Sounds a little dicey to me, but I tell her I’ll be there. After all, I’m only a journalist. We don’t have licenses. If we did, getting yours pulled would be about as devastating as being kicked out of AARP.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    X
    Tuesday
    I ’m at Marcus Green’s office at 6:55. Kate seems surprised, perhaps because she’s never seen me arrive early for anything, including our wedding. This is one appointment, though, that I don’t want to miss. I am fairly certain that I have information that Ronnie Sax’s potential legal team does not possess.
    Richmond can be a small place, especially if you’ve lived here your whole life and have had dealings with everyone from the governor to guys like Awesome Dude.
    LAST NIGHT I got another call from Cindy Peroni. My hope was that Cindy was calling to tell me she could not live a minute longer without me. That didn’t happen, but she did that thing the reporter in me always hopes people will do. She told me something I didn’t know already.
    “I saw your story in the paper, about the Tweety Bird Killer, and I thought something sounded familiar.”
    It turns out that one of Cindy’s friends in the between-husbands set is Mary Kate Kusack Brown. Mary Kate is two years younger than her brother and, unlike him, never saw fit to change her last name until she got married.
    “When I saw that he’d changed his name from Kusack, I knew that was the brother she’d mentioned. I called her. She says she’s sure Ronnie didn’t do it. She says he wouldn’t hurt a fly. She says her girls are crazy about him. She thinks you all ought to leave him alone.”
    I asked her if she thought Mary Kate might be a tad concerned that her brother has a history of porn-related activities, or that whatever the police found on his computer was enough to send them scurrying back to his apartment, a few hours too late, to arrest him.
    I offered the opinion that he wouldn’t have been the uncle I’d have sent the girls to for a sleepover.
    “Well, Mary Kate says he’s a good uncle, and a good brother. She says he’s sowed his wild oats, but he’s past all that.”
    I told Cindy that I hope her friend’s sisterly intuition is right. If I had been telling her the truth, though, I’d have said I hope he’s the one and that they catch him fast. I want to get the son of a bitch who’s doing this off the streets. My meeting this morning might be a step in the right direction, although I wonder if I did the right thing in suggesting that he employ Marcus Green. Even if he is guilty, Marcus might get him off. Marcus could have sprung Judas Iscariot.
    “There’s one other thing,” Cindy said, just as I was about to try and steer the conversation in a more romantic direction.
    “What?”
    “She says he was at her house that Thursday night. She said he didn’t leave until after eleven.”
    So I’m thinking Ronnie Sax at least has someone to back up his alibi, although I’ve seen more than enough relatives swear that their miscreant son/father/brother was having milk and cookies with