I tried not to smirk. “I have.”
“She any good?”
“In my opinion, she’s the best criminal lawyer in New England.” That was true. I didn’t mention that Rita also happened to be dating my ex, Jesse Stone. At least she had been dating him the last time I’d asked around, which had been before my pre-engagement to Richie. Back then, I used to have other opinions on Rita Fiore that were purely personal, probably unfair, and definitely irrelevant. “You’re in excellent hands,” I said.
“That’s good to know,” she said. “I’m hoping this will all just go away soon and I won’t even have to make use of her services.”
I frowned. The way things were looking, I doubted that. “Melanie Joan?” I said.
“Yes?”
“I need you to be honest with me.”
“I’m always honest with you.”
Charles cleared his throat.
“In this instance,” I said, “I consider an omission to be a lie.”
“What did I omit?”
Charles cleared his throat again.
“Are you all right, Charles?” Melanie Joan said. “Do you need a lozenge?”
Charles kept his eyes on the road. “Ms. Randall can’t help us if you keep things from her,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
Melanie Joan removed her sunglasses and put her head down. She pulled off her baseball cap and ran her hands through her hair and replaced it. I had the feeling she wanted to come clean with me and that she was just trying to work up the nerve.
I decided to give her a little push. “Why did you go back to Leila Donnelly’s?”
“How do you know I—”
“Please,” Charles said. “Just tell her.”
Melanie Joan’s gaze flitted to the front seat, then back to me.
“You’re among friends,” I said. “You’re not in the interview room.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
I waited.
“Okay,” she said again. “After you dropped me back at the hotel, I told Harold I was going to sleep. And I wanted to. Truly. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Leila had said. Not the awful things she’d called me. I’ve got a thicker skin than that. It was more about how…dismissive she was of me. My books. My career. My life. It tore at me, just like Book Babe’s review. Which makes sense now, seeing as they were the same person.”
“If it wasn’t for Melanie Joan Hall,” Charles said, “there’d be no Leila Donnelly.”
“Thank you, Charles,” Melanie Joan said.
“It’s the truth,” he said.
“Anyway, I…I suppose I wanted to make her feel the way she’d made me feel.”
“Disrespected,” Charles said.
“Yes. And I knew Charles would understand, so I called him. I asked him to go back to my town house and bring me that copy ofMy Last First LoveI told you about. I looked through it again, and it was even worse than I remembered. I mean, the green highlighted parts alone…God, I should have brought that toGood Morning Boston.”
