Motion for Murder Read Online Free PDF

of papers. Not exactly a storm, more of a mournful breeze. "I'm awfully sorry," she said to none of us in particular, "but could someone tell me where the Biederman file is? I can't find it anywhere, and Mr. Biederman wants a status report."
    Paige lifted her head. Her eyes were still a little glazed over, but at least she'd stopped twitching. "What?"
    Donna hugged her papers harder. "Biederman. I can't find it."
    "I don't know where it is," Missy said without looking at her. "It's not one of my files."
    "It's Doug's case," Donna said.
    Missy narrowed her eyes. "I don't know where it is."
    I made it a point never to be caught playing computer games during work hours, so I closed my game of Solitaire before I stood up. "I'll help you find it."
    Donna's little squirrel face brightened.
    "We'll go look in Dougie's office," I said, slipping Missy a sideways glance. Missy was engrossed in the effort of looking engrossed in her work. All afternoon her teeth gnashing had been distracting me, and now she was playing it like she was expecting a gold watch on Secretary's Day. I still thought her issue with Dougie was between them, but I wasn't liking my idea of what the issue was. It smelled like an affair to me. Missy's anger, the paper she'd taken from Dougie's desk, it all fit. Of course, I'd been wrong before. Accepting this job was one example that sprang to mind.
    "I hope he isn't coming back today," Donna said as we climbed the stairs. "He makes me kind of uncomfortable."
     "He's a teddy bear compared to his wife," I said, trying to ease her anxiety.
    But to my surprise, she said, "Oh, I don't mind Hilary. She's not so bad."
    Which just went to prove how wrong I could be.
    "I've been working on a brief in support of his Motion for Trial De Novo for a solid week," Donna said, standing aside so I could enter Dougie's office ahead of her. In case there were booby traps or something. "It went through four rewrites. I was researching citations until midnight last Friday. And today I heard him tell Ken he whipped the thing up in one day."
    I made a laser line for the desk. Maybe there was more of whatever Missy had confiscated tucked away in there. "Isn't that just like a man?" I said, wondering why she was telling me this. "He was probably trying to earn brownie points with Ken."
    "I could see Wally doing something like that," she said. "He could use all the help he can get. But Doug?" She shook her head. "I expected better from him."
    "For God's sake, why?" I watched her thumb through the files on the floor beside Dougie's sitting area. Plain and breakable, Donna made me look positively voluptuous, so I sat beside her whenever possible at office meetings, but beyond that, she was the brains behind Dougie's operation. I'd always thought she preferred to remain behind the scenes, churning out erudite legal documents in contented anonymity twenty hours a day. Who knew she wanted to jump from scriptwriter to starring role.
    "Where do you think Doug was on Friday night?" she asked me. "Not here, I can tell you that."
    Probably not with his wife, either. "You know the partners don't work those kinds of hours anymore," I said. "That's why they hire people like you and me. And Wally."
    She squinted up at me. "You don't understand."
    Not the first time.
    "He takes credit for everything I do," she said. "He didn't even tell Ken I had written the brief. Don't you think that's wrong?"
    "Why don't you tell Ken yourself?" I said. "You know, work it into the conversation casually."
    "Conversation?" She pushed her glasses up her nose. "I don't have conversations with Ken. I don't have conversations with Howard, either. He just leaves notes on my desk, what he wants me to do."
    "But you work for all three of them," I said. "You must talk to them at some point."
    She shrugged and clambered to her feet, taking a second to smooth out her dress. "That's what e-mail is for."
    It seemed to me e-mail was for the rampant proliferation of ads for erectile