Page 11 of Sunset Beach
“I do now,” she said.
“Where’d you grow up?” Jonah asked.
“I was born here in St. Pete, but I guess you’d say I grew up in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Cool,” Ben said. “I still haven’t even been over to the east coast yet.”
“So, what, you’re taking Stephanie’s old job?” Jonah asked.
“That’s what they tell me.”
His hazel eyes lazily flicked up and down, checking her out.
She returned his gaze, thinking, Dude, I’ve been checked out by way better than you.
“That’s awesome,” Ben said. “You’ll be in our pod.”
“Pod?” She turned toward him.
“Yeah, that’s what they call our group. We do phone intake, speak to potential clients, assess their situation, and if it seems they have a likely case, we work up their info and forward them on to Brice, his paralegal, or sometimes, refer them to one of the firms we partner with. I also do some of the firm’s basic IT work.”
“Okay,” Drue said.
“It’s not rocket science,” Jonah said. “But you’ll need a working knowledge of Florida law. You ever done this kind of work before? I mean, you did grow up with Brice as your dad, right?”
Drue took a long gulp of the margarita, enjoying the momentary brain freeze.
“No,” she said succinctly. “My mom and I moved to Fort Lauderdale after they split up. So there hasn’t been a lot of ‘contact’ until just recently.”
Wanting to short-circuit this line of intrusive questioning, Drue raised her cup in the direction of the hovering waitress. “I’ll have another of these,” she called.
While she waited for her drink she watched Brice at the other end of the table. He seemed to know everybody in the place, as a string of people stopped by to greet and talk to him.
“Your old man never met a stranger,” she remembered Sherri telling her when she was a teenager. “It’s the secret to his success. People meet him once and leave convinced he’s their new best friend. Especially the women, and the younger and prettier the better,” she’d added bitterly.
An older man approached the table. Brice stood, slapped him on the back and pulled a chair from a vacant nearby table so he could join the group. He wore baggy black dad jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt whose buttons gapped over his considerable paunch. The remaining strands of his hair had been carefully arrayed and sprayed over his head, and his sagging jowls and dewlaps reminded Drue of the NestléQuik bloodhound.
“Jimmy Zee’s in the house,” Jonah drawled.
“Who’s he?” Drue asked.
“He’s our investigator,” Ben said.
“You mean, like a detective?”
“You catch on fast,” Jonah said. “Jimmy Zee and your dad go back a long ways. He’s a retired St. Pete police detective. Zee and Brice used to be partners, back in the day, before Brice started law school at Stetson.”
“Oh yeah,” she said slowly. “I remember him. Jimmy Zee. He and his wife used to hang out at our house, when I was little.”
“Hard to believe the old man was ever a cop,” Ben said. “I’d have guessed he was born a lawyer.”
Unbidden images tugged at Drue’s memory. Of her father, arriving home at the end of his shift, carefully unbuckling his holster, stashing his service weapon in a box kept on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. She remembered Sherri, every Sunday night, with the ironing board set up in the living room, starching and ironing a week’s worth of her father’s white uniform shirts, while smoking and watching the soap operas she’d taped. Some days, if he was in a good mood, Brice would prop Drue up on a phone book in the driver’s seat of his green-and-white cruiser, turn on the blue flashers and siren, and she would laugh and clap her hands, because those were the days she was Daddy’s girl.
She watched as the two men bent their heads together, deep in conversation.
“Where’d you go to school?” Jonah asked.
“On the east coast,” she said, annoyed. She’d already noticed his flashy gold UF college ring.
