Murder, She Muttered

Chapter 5

"I'm not going to help you if you're trying to put my sister in jail."

"I didn't think you would."

J.D. McDaniel didn't have to leave his office to see clients. People came to him. But here he was sitting in a hospital cafeteria with a lukewarm cup of coffee in front of him because he wanted to talk to a client who was too busy to come see him.

It was because he was curious, he told himself.

It was because the case was interesting, he decided.

It had nothing to do with the woman wearing the white coat with the straight red hair who was nursing her own cup of coffee.

He was all about the case.

He sighed. "Dr. Forrester, I want to keep you both out of jail. But your sister has been estranged from your father for years and admits to hostile feelings for him. Then she inherits the bulk of his estate. He was killed by a drug that you have access to and most people wouldn't. My instinct tells me that neither of you are killers but then your sister is upstairs in a private room having a nervous breakdown so I wonder."

Color suffused her face and her fingers drummed on the table. This is what her anger looks like, he thought.

"She is upstairs because she had a panic attack which led to uncontrolled migraines." Carol's words were clipped. "She does not have nervous breakdowns. She is not hysterical, crazy or out of control. Whatever insults are ready to bounce from your brain can stay there. My sister has a physical condition that is brought on by stress. And if there was any chance, which there isn't, that she performed a criminal act, she would probably be hospitalized for a month from the panic that would have happened. You can check hospital records to see she was not admitted when our father died."

"Brilliant." He wanted to clasp a hand over his mouth. What a stupid thing to say.

He was not a man given to saying stupid things.

She was making him stupid.

"What exactly is brilliant Mr. McDaniel?"

"Call me J.D. please."

"And you can call me Dr. Forrester." Ah, there was some humor in that. At least he didn't fist pump or do something else that was stupid.

"Doctor Forrester," he pronounced each syllable carefully, "how about we play a simple game? You ask me something and I'll answer it, then I'll ask you something and you answer it. We can start easy."

Se sighed and glanced at her watch. "I don't have a lot of time to play games, Mister... J.D. So can we please get through this?"

"Ask me something."

"Okay. What does J.D. stand for?"

"Jess Devon." Her eyes widened. He held up his hands. "I know, right? Everyone thinks it's John David, the most popular J.D. names of all times. But my mother names me Jess Devon, thinking it sounded like a poet's name. She was determined to see me grow up with long hair, dreamy eyes and writing sonnets to female beauty and maternal nurturing. It broke her heart once I shot past six feet, proved to be gifted athletically and liked to argue."

She smiled. "Okay. Ask your question."

"When David Beers kidnapped your sister, why didn't he kill her?"

She gagged, slapped a hand over her mouth and ran from the table.

**

"We called him Uncle Dave."