Murder, She Muttered

I could cross being in a bail bonds office off my bucket list. Of course, it had never been on my non-existent bucket list anyway, but those times I'd passed the seedy offices downtown, I'd wondered if they were as bad inside as they were out.

They are.

The girl behind the counter had purple hair, purple eye shadow and purple rings in her nose, brows and ears. She looked more interested in me than I looked at her. I looked relatively normal.

"Bail is a million dollars." She sounded awed. "I've never seen that before. She musta killed someone important."

"Our father," I said, "only important to those who loved him."

I could have corrected Purple to say my sister most likely didn't kill anyone, especially not our father. But since the district attorney thought she did, I wasn't going to try and convince random strangers anything different. I also didn't intend to sit back and let Carol get railroaded into jail. Her patients needed her back at work. I needed her.

This was all a nightmare.

"The bond is 10% of a million," Purple said. "That's..."

"One hundred thousand dollars." I held the envelope out. "There's a cashier's check. When will my sister be released?"

Purple didn't answer. She reverently pulled the check from the envelope and stared.

I sighed.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and already proving to be one of the longest days of my life.

Chapter One

I wanted to make a joke. Something about Mutt and Jeff times two or opposites attract or anything that might lighten the mood. After all, we were two pairs of complete opposites all gathered with one common cause: get my sister out of her murder pickle.

Carol no longer had the frightened look from turning herself in to the police or the haunted, exhaustion when I picked her up after posting bail. She was back to herself: put together, calm, professional. Tall and regal, that was my sister from the same mister.

Six years younger and a different mother left me eight inches shorter, dark haired to her auburn, hazel eyed instead of green eyed and per an old boyfriend, always looking like a part of me was ready to fly away.

Our masculine pair were taking up all the office space. Daniel Kang, quiet and intense. His words were spare but had serious thought behind them. Watching him watching us, he was like Carol in many ways. He carried quiet competency. He inspired an immediate trust.

J. D. McDaniel was Kang's opposite. He took up more physical space than any one human should. He was at least six foot five or six with a body that looked like any minute it would burst through the seams of his tailored suit and expose a hairy Hulk ready to defend the world from an interstellar threat. He had enough brown hair to be pulled tight into a ponytail but not enough that it was a long tail.

It was a room full of power players: my sister the doctor, the best criminal lawyer in the state and a private detective who had an actual fan club. And there was me. The hippie chick with no talent, no major brains but a big ass bankroll.

I was overwhelmed and stayed silent. Let the adults have the floor.

"There's two options," the lawyer said. He drummed his fingers on the desk. "I can get you off, probably get the charges dismissed because they're piss poor in the first place. Nobody will be able to prove you gave your father the Herceptin, unless of course you did and there was a witness. Don't tell me if you did. Guilt isn't an indicator of ability to win."

"Of course I didn't." She was matter of fact. "I had no reason to want my father dead. He was barely a part of my life. I held no animosity toward him nor any abiding emotions."

"He was filthy rich," the lawyer said. "Money is the greatest motivator of all."

"I'm an oncologist. I make damned good money myself."

"And Herceptin is a chemo drug." He stated it simply. The investigator. Daniel Kang, the man known for saving the life of the King of Denmark when he visited our fair city.

"Mr. Kang, I know all about Herceptin. Just as I know that my father had a heart condition. I was the one who referred him to Dr. Neil after his heart attack."

"So you would have known that Herceptin would make his heart weaker and could prove fatal."

I didn't like Daniel Kang. I knew he was saying exactly what the police said and what the DA said and what people were whispering but it wasn't true. Carol no more killed our father than I did. And I didn't do it either.

Carol sighed and in that moment her exhaustion was visible. She was holding herself together because that's what she did. But it was a huge toll on her.

"I didn't kill him." Her voice was soft. "I know my innocence doesn't matter to you," she looked at McDaniel squarely, "but it matters to me. I'm a doctor. The first rule is do no harm. I didn't, I wouldn't, I couldn't. And I might not have loved my father but I respected him. He was a flawed man but he was as good as he could be to my sister and myself and we respected that."

"Do you share the same emotion, Ms. Forrester?" Kang asked looking at me.

I glanced over at Carol who gave a slight shrug. Okay then.

I swallowed and looked straight at Daniel Kang. "No, I hated the son of a bitch and I'm not the least bit sorry that he's dead."

J.D. McDaniel chuckled. "Well there's a good place to start, Danny boy. Let's see if we can pin it on the sister."