States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

“That’s not what I meant. But this woman just buried her husband. She may not want to talk, especially to you. What are you gonna say? ‘Hello, maybe you can help me. I’d like to know why your husband was caught with his pants down. Maybe you had something to do with it? And by the way, I represent the person accused of ruining your life’.”

I flinch.

“I didn’t mean, I know you and…never mind.”

I survey the graveyard of half-finished homes. “Look, I have no clue where this is going, but I have to follow the evidence, and it’s telling me there was more to Sinclair than meets the eye.” I pull back and look Jake up and down as if I’m seeing him for the first time. “Hey, handsome. I bet a guy like you’d be able to get the widow talking.”

He sticks a finger in his chest while raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you.”

“Handsome?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I say, trying my hardest not to grin like a schoolgirl. “What do you say?”

He gives me a time-out sign. “No way. I agreed to drive you. And that’s it. Nothing else. Come on. Nothing’s happening here. Let’s go.”

“Calm down, cowboy. Please. A little assistance here,” I say, thumb and forefinger no more than an inch apart.

He bumps his head on the steering wheel. “If you want to talk to her, you go.”

“Or we could do it together?”

He gives me a crooked grin.

“Like I said—men!” I clear my throat. “We can say we’re investigating and that we’d like to ask her a couple of questions. Maybe not say exactly who we’re working for?”

“We?”

All conversation stopped as we saw a man leaving the house, carrying a couple of boxes stacked one on top of the other.

“You got any binoculars?” I flip open the glove box.

“Do I look like a perv to you?”

“Don’t play all innocent with me. You deep-sixed a few of my cases with your surveillance skills.”

He pulls a pair of binoculars from under the driver’s seat, exhaling hard through clenched teeth.

I grab the binoculars. “I knew it!”

I blow a layer of dust from the eyepieces and hone in on the man, bull-necked, with white skin tinged pink like an albino. His muscular bulk is stuffed into his jacket, an odd fashion choice for the Florida heat, until I see why. A bulge at his waist. “He’s carrying.”

Jake scoots farther down in his seat. “Another good reason to get out of here.”

The man deactivates the Corvette’s alarm with a key fob as he pans up and down the street.

“Duck!” I shove Jake’s head down low and tuck in beside him, but keep the binoculars rested on the dashboard like some cartoon detective.

“What the— What are you doing?”

“He might spot us! Whoever he is.”

“Maybe Sinclair was his buddy? Maybe he’s here to pay his respects. Maybe he’s a plumber. Damned if I know, Grace, but can I please take the gear shift out of my right nostril now?”

Boxes deposited on the passenger seat, the man slides into the driver’s seat and drives away. “All clear,” I say, pulling Jake out of his crouch by his collar.

“What does he have to do with any of this?”

“No idea.”

Jake flips the driver’s seat back. “Let me know when the next brilliant idea pops into that pretty little head of yours, why don’t you?”

I shove the binoculars into his chest. “Let’s go. I think I’ll cut the grieving widow a break. Maybe come back another day.”

“Why? Things seem to be getting interesting.”

“Maybe I want to know a little bit more about the Sinclairs before I go busting in like a bull in a china shop—like why some meathead with a gun’s taking stuff out of the widow’s house, and like what Sinclair might have been up to in his free time.”

“And like why there’s an unmarked cop car following the ’Vette?” Jake says.

Chapter 19

A colleague of mine once referred to Everglades State Hospital by its nickname, the Alligator Farm, and earned himself a night in jail courtesy of the judge for causing a mistrial. The name is squarely on point, however, given ESH sits on a verdant hundred-acre campus, a stone’s throw from the Everglades.

The buildings, like the name of the place, are benign looking enough, bland government architecture circa 1970, but ESH gives me the creeps. I’ve been out here before on a tour led by administrators bent on extolling the humanity of the place, despite the barbed wire fences, padded rooms, and orderlies armed with stun guns. As we walked through the facility, I stepped over one man curled up on the floor of a common room in plain view of staff and other patients watching The Weather Channel. I left that day wondering what life was like at ESH if what I saw was the sanitized version.

Lauderdale West is only a receiving facility, a term more suited for the post office than a psych hospital. Once the patient’s crisis has passed, she gets warehoused here if she’s still a danger, like Zoe. When the Slims found out Zoe was being shipped off to a state psychiatric hospital, and not some private Club Loony, they were appalled, in the presumptuous way rich people get appalled when they find out money can’t buy everything.

“We will spare no resources to make sure Zoe gets whatever help she needs,” Anton said during our confab in the stairwell. And he better have meant it, because Dr. Michaels doesn’t come cheap. I hired him to do a private competency evaluation, “private” being the operative word. If the results are bad, meaning Zoe’s looking very much like the cunning criminal the State says she is, I’ll bury them, and the State will be none the wiser. If the results are favorable to Zoe’s case, I’ll milk every last mitigating diagnosis and rationale as to why Zoe isn’t in any shape to go to trial, let alone prison.

I hesitate to call Michaels a defense