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She handed the baby to Melton, took out her phone, punched up her contacts list, found Burston’s office number and tapped it. Two minutes later, she was talking to him: a hundred and fifty million dollars, liquid, will do that for you.
“I wanted to touch base with you,” she said. “I’m still... pretty messed up...”
“You gotta be,” Burston said. “I’m having trouble with it myself.”
“I know I’ve got to deal with things,” Cooper said. “I need to schedule a meeting with you and the staff, see where we are. My attorney is looking at the estate documents, Alex’s will. There are some bequests that will come out of the account. Not too many, and not too much.”
“I understand. I didn’t want to press you on that until you were ready,” Burston said.
They made arrangements to meet the next week, and he asked her to bring copies of the estate documents. “You know Alex was thinking of giving some money to Home Streets? And that I opposed it?”
“Yes. That’s another thing we need to talk about. I don’t know those men very well. Heath and Dahl.”
“You know,” he said, “I was interviewed by two more law enforcement officers today, a U.S. marshal and a BCA agent...”
“Flowers and Davenport... we’ve met them.”
“They were interested in what I had to say about Noah Heath and Bob Dahl. I think they’re going to look at them. Maybe we’ll get an actual, you know, law enforcement perspective,” Burston said.
“That could be helpful,” Cooper said. “Davenport and Flowers. What was their reaction to you... and yours to them?”
“They wondered if the stress between me and Alex, over Home Streets, might have made Alex think about pulling your account out of Barnes and Blue. I assured them there wasn’t that kind of stress.”
“I told them the same thing,” Cooper said.
“I appreciate that, Maggie. They knew I was gay, did you...?”
“Yes. I told them that we were doubles partners,” Cooper said. “They wondered if you and I had an affair—and if one of us might have killed Alex so we could run off together with his money.”
“Ah, jeez. Lucky I’m gay, huh?”
“We’ve had that discussion, we don’t need to have it again,” Cooper said. “What was your impression? You think they’ve got something going on?”
“They were smoother than the other cops. Especially Davenport,” Burston said. “Flowers has this shitkicker thing going on, he was wearing some kind of lizard-skin cowboy boots. But he’s no shitkicker and he won’t miss much.”
“Good. I’ve got some hope, then.”
“Listen, one more thing,” Burston said. “This might sound really awful to you. Crass, or something.”
“Go ahead, I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”
“Uh... What kind of shape are you in to hit some balls?” Burstonasked. “I don’t, you know, expect to make this season, but January... Maybe it’d help take your mind off everything. God knows we both could use that.”
Cooper laughed, and Melton looked up at her. She hadn’t really laughed for weeks. “Actually...” She looked over at Melton. “We’ve got some babysitting arrangements to make, but I’d like that, Tom, a lot.”
“We’ll talk about it next week.”
—
She clicked offand asked Melton, “Where’d we put Davenport’s card?”
“Over by the spoons pot.”
Cooper found the card under the ceramic pot, called Lucas. Lucas came up: “Ms. Cooper.”
“Maggie,” Cooper said. “Have a minute to talk?”
“Of course. Something come up?”
