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talk
passing secrets.” In the past, Chip had given her inside
information he thought she should know about, if he had no conflict
of interest. “We’ll just have to keep that part of our lives
separate from one another. Margo Larena deserves a defense even if
guilty, and I certainly deserve my first client.”
    “You can’t do it, Sandy.”
    Why did he say it like that? She stepped back
from him. “It’s not as though I need your permission.” Her voice
was rising and her face turning red. “Even if I lived under your
roof, you don’t forbid me anything.”
    “Of course, I’m sorry I phrased it like that.
I don’t mean I forbid you to do it. I meant I don’t want you to do
it. I met your client, Margo Larena. Around three years ago.”
    “So you’ve met my oddball client. Did you
know her husband, John?”
    “No, I met her before they were married.”
    A wild thought struck her. “You mean you
dated her?” If he’d been attracted to someone frumpy like Margo,
she didn’t know this guy at all. Her voice was tense. “She isn’t
the one who gave you that book of poems?”
    “Oh no, but I went out with her
sister-in-law, John’s sister.”
    Now she could breathe again. “So what? I
certainly don’t care who you dated. It’s old news.” She gave him
her most accepting smile.
    She knew about one former girlfriend, the
legal secretary, now called an administrative assistant, who still
worked in the County Clerk’s office. In fact, Sandy saw her
occasionally around the courthouse and had spoken with her.
Everyone in Park Beach seemed to know that the attractive redhead
had lived in this house with him for a couple of years. Thankfully,
she was now married, which took her out of the game. They remained
friends and Sandy liked her as well. No secrets there.
    The ones with secrets would be the writer of
the scorching diary, and the guy who had been swinging from the
bedroom chandelier with her.
    She could handle all this old girlfriend
stuff. Chip was almost forty; of course, he had a past. She didn’t
care about previous girlfriends. Just so he didn’t call out their
names during lovemaking. The past was past. And that’s where old
girlfriends should be buried. They shouldn’t keep popping back up
like some desperate ghoul who won’t stay dead.
    “Geez, that’s wild. You once dated the
victim’s sister. Interesting since you’ll be investigating the
murder. Yet I don’t see why I can’t defend the victim’s wife.”
    “It would be too confusing around here, not
to mention causing multiple raised eyebrows around the courthouse.
The victim’s sister is the one I met with for coffee the other day,
the one who I guess wanted to reconcile. You know that poetry book
I threw in the trash? She’s the one who gave it to me.”
     

Chapter Five

    S andy and Chip had
spent the night quietly together with each not venturing across the
centerline of the bed for at least that night. To avoid reopening
the discussion the next morning, she pretended to be groggily
half-asleep while listening to him fussing around preparing to go
in early. Between thoughts of Chip’s former girlfriend eager to
seduce him with the aid of her sexy diary, and his not wanting
Sandy to represent Margo, who might not even want her as her
attorney, she had plenty to disturb last night’s sleep. He gave her
a forehead kiss and touched her hair before leaving. That helped
her mood immensely.
    At the office that morning, Martin appeared
to have his head deep in a pile of bankruptcy papers, so she just
waved on the way to her desk. The question on her mind was, should
she go ahead and represent Margo Larena in spite of Chip’s
objection? She would wait to ask Martin. Meanwhile, she would run
her dilemma passed her old friend Jerry Kagan.
    Before he retired, Kagan was one of the few
gutsy defense lawyers willing to go up against the scheming State
Attorney Lawrence Moran. When she first stormed in from
Philadelphia to rescue her