Going Too Far

“Nope,” Jena said, closing her notepad. “I think that about covers it.”

“For me, too,” Dulcy said.

Marie sat forward and leaned her forearms against the table. “Actually, I have something.”

Three pairs of eyes focused on her, making her wish she hadn’t said anything.

“Well, it’s not something in the traditional sense of having something. It’s not a new case or anything…”

Jena elbowed her. “Get to the point, Bertelli.”

Marie grimaced at her and sighed. “I just thought that you all should know that the Treasury Department is questioning my father in connection with a racketeering charge.”

Dead silence. Marie could virtually hear her own heart beating as she waited for some sort of verbal response. And waited. And waited.

She cleared her throat. “The details are a little sketchy yet,” she said. “But I’m in contact with his attorney. Basically, all I know is that two days ago my father was pulled in for preliminary questioning at which time he contacted an attorney.”

“Not you,” Jena said quietly.

Marie looked down at the table where she was worrying her hands. She put her hands in her lap. “No.”

At the end of the table, Dulcy shifted in her chair, not an easy move given her ever widening girth. “Who did he retain?”

“Ian Kilborn.”

“Who?” Jena asked, leaning closer.

Marie stared at her. “Ian Kilborn.”

Jena stared at her as if she’d gone soft in the head, then looked at Dulcy who gave an odd sort of smile before averting her gaze and pretending an interest in the files in front of her.

“Who’s Ian Kilborn?” Barry asked.

Jena waved her hand. “We all grew up together in the same neighborhood. You wouldn’t know him from there, of course, but you might be familiar with him by the cases he’s represented lately.”

Dulcy nodded. “There’s Raphael Mendoza…”

“Serial robber who steals women’s intimate apparel,” Jena added.

Marie sank lower in her chair.

“That guy who killed his priest after he confessed to killing his wife,” Dulcy counted off on her fingers.

“Jamieson.”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Jena lifted a finger. “Then there’s the Britney Hiawatha case.”

This lifted Barry’s snow-white brows, making him look more like James Brolin than Sean Connery. “The prostitute who…”

He didn’t need to finish, because the story made news due to the sheer gruesomeness of the details. Hiawatha had basically turned any johns who didn’t pay her into modern-day eunuchs.

And if Ian hadn’t gotten his clients off altogether, he’d gotten the prosecutors to cop to lesser charges after pulling a few courtroom stunts that had nearly gotten him disbarred.

“Oh, he’s good,” Barry said, shaking his head. “Very good. I’m surprised I didn’t recognize the name. Kilborn, right? Kill ’em Kilborn.”

Marie rubbed her forehead. It was bad enough that this was the man her father had hired. This was also the guy she fantasized about sleeping with while…well, while she was sleeping and had no control over where her thoughts ventured.

Good Lord.

“You and Kilborn grew up together?” Barry asked.

“In the same neighborhood,” Marie said. “We weren’t exactly…friends.”

She caught Jena giving Dulcy one of those “really?” faces she hated and felt the urge to elbow her friend so hard she’d fall backward in her chair.

“Oh,” Dulcy said.

But she hadn’t said it in the way Marie might have expected. Instead, she seemed surprised by something that didn’t have anything to do with the present conversation.

Marie looked at her. Dulcy’s face had gone white and she was clutching her stomach.

“Are you all right?” Marie asked, getting up from her chair and hurrying toward her friend.

Then Dulcy smiled, so brightly it nearly hurt to look at her. “I’m…fine. I just felt the baby kick.” She laughed. “I mean, at five months, I’ve felt him kick before, but not this insistently.” She rubbed her palms over her stomach. “Ezzie jokes that I’m going to have a horse. I’m beginning to think she may be right.”

Ezzie was Esmeralda, Dulcy and Quinn’s housekeeper, although she was more family than hired help, especially since she didn’t get paid. Marie got the heebies whenever she was around the old Indian woman because Ezzie looked at her as if trying to figure something out. Marie never stuck around long enough to find out what.

“That’s why I’m never having children,” Jena said, closing her notepad again. “I don’t want any little hellion kicking around inside of me for nine months.”

“They don’t kick until after the first trimester,” Dulcy corrected her.

Jena shrugged. “Six months, nine. Both too long.”

Dulcy took Marie’s hand and rested it against her round belly. As she always did when she touched her friend’s stomach, Marie wondered at how hard and solid the mass was. “Do you feel him?”

Marie did. She gasped and nearly drew her hand away at the force of the kick.

Barry chuckled as he got up and headed for the door. “I think that’s my cue to leave the room.”

Dulcy looked at him. “Don’t you dare, Bartholomew. You get over here and feel your honorary grandchild along with everyone else.”

Marie drew back from the group, watching as if from a distance. Her brother Frankie Jr.’s wife had had their two children while Marie was in L.A. Though she’d flown in for the births and the baptisms, she hadn’t actually experienced the pregnancies with her sister-in-law. To watch one of her best friends go through the experience…well, she felt humbled and awed. And maybe, just maybe, a little envious.

“It’s a girl,” Jena said confidently after shaking her hand as if she’d just touched a bagful of goo instead of her friend’s stomach. “I don’t know why you don’t want to find out what sex it is, Dulc. You keep calling it a ‘he.’ What if it is a girl?”

Dulcy gave a long, happy sigh. “I use ‘he’ just to keep things simple. Quinn and I would be very happy if it were a girl.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and went through the maneuvers required for her to stand. “But Ezzie’s adamant about my having a boy.”