The Dark of Day Read Online Free PDF

judge’s office. An inquiry from a potential client in Palm Beach. Two requests for interviews, but not about the Robinson case, unfortunately. C.J. stopped at the next slip of paper. She saw an area code from north Florida. And a name. Fran Willis.
    â€œOh, Christ, now what?”
    â€œShe called about five times today asking if you were in yet. She wanted your cell phone number. She said it was important. Should I have text-messaged you?”
    â€œNo. It’s always important with this woman, you know that.”
    She flipped through the rest of the messages. Request to speak at a bar association luncheon. A deposition rescheduled. Her suit was ready at the tailor’s. As Shirley wrote down instructions, C.J. took off her high heels. She knelt and reached under the sofa, feeling around until she found a well-worn pair of pink suede Chanel flats with black patent toe caps.
    â€œDo a letter to Judge Ritter at the Third DCA. Yes to the bar association. No to the women’s club, but say it’s a scheduling conflict.”
    With a quick glance at her watch, Shirley gasped, and her penciled copper brows shot up. “Yikes. It’s almost five o’clock.”
    C.J. smiled. “That’s right, you’re sneaking off to Orlando for a wild weekend with the girls. This can all wait till Monday. I’ll do the letter to Judge Ritter myself. Just one thing before you go. The Miami Herald? ”
    â€œBe right back.” Shirley rushed out in a flutter of tie-dyed Indian skirt and jangle of bracelets.
    The message from Fran Willis was still on C.J.’s desk. Urgent. Shirley had put the word in quotation marks.
    Frances Willis used to belong to the same church as C.J.’s mother in a small town thirty miles south of the Georgia border. Fran was living farther west now, in Pensacola, Florida. Several months ago, Fran’s teenage daughter and a friend had driven to a cheap hotel on Miami Beach, where the friend’s car had collapsed and died in the parking lot. They had decided, with the wisdom of youth, that they could blow off their final semester of
high school and make up the credits in summer school. Both sets of parents drove six hundred miles, one end of the state to the other, to bring them back, but Kylie refused to leave. She wanted to get a job and an apartment and take her GED. And then what? The ultimate goal was still fuzzy, but at seventeen, did she care?
    Since C.J. Dunn was the only person Fran knew in Miami, she had presumed upon an old connection. Fran was afraid something terrible would befall her daughter. Miami was a dark and dangerous city with drugs and illegal aliens everywhere. Drivers would run you over if you got in their way. You couldn’t go into a store and expect to get waited on in English.
    Not really wanting to get involved, because how do you ever escape once you’re pulled into this sort of thing, C.J. called Billy Medina for suggestions. On his way to Antigua or Aruba or wherever, he turned it over to one of his assistants, who made the arrangements. A room in the apartment of Rosalia Gomez, who used to keep house for Billy’s aunt in Puerto Rico. A job at the offices of Tropical Life, where Kylie would run errands for ten dollars an hour. Perfect.
    C.J. had gone to the hotel where Kylie was staying. She was a tiny thing, couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Long brown hair framed a delicate face, and gray eyes peered out from behind wire-rimmed glasses. The girl admitted to having less than fifty dollars in her wallet, so C.J. gave her fifty more and drove her and her backpack to the old lady’s apartment downtown. She handed her a bus schedule and directions to the magazine’s offices and told her she ought to be grateful.
    Surely it wouldn’t be long, C.J. had thought at the time, before the girl got tired of living like a pauper and slunk back to Pensacola. That hadn’t happened. Her mother would call