BooksBarbecue
Back M Is for Malice
Chapters (23)
  1. "M" is for MALICE
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Chapter 14
  16. Chapter 15
  17. Chapter 16
  18. Chapter 17
  19. Chapter 18
  20. Chapter 19
  21. Chapter 20
  22. Chapter 21
  23. Epilogue

"I don't know any attorneys, except Tasha!" she shrieked. "What am I supposed to do, pick a name out of a hat?"

"Wait a minute, Christie. Just calm down."

"I don't want to calm down. I'm scared. I want help."

"I know that. I know. Just wait a minute," I said. "I have a suggestion. Lonnie Kingman's office is right next door to mine. You want me to go see if he's in? You can't do better than Lonnie. He's a champ."

She was silent for an instant. "All right, yes. I've heard of him. That sounds good."

"Give me a few minutes and we'll see what we can do.

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I caught Lonnie's secretary, Ida Ruth, on her way back from the kitchen with a coffeepot in hand. I hooked a thumb in the direction of Lonnie's door. "Is he in there?"

"He's eating breakfast. Help yourself."

I tapped on the door and then opened it, peering in. Lonnie was sitting at his desk with an oversized plastic container of some kind of-chalky-looking protein drink. I could see bubbles of dried powder floating on the surface and the barest suggestion of a milky mustache on Lonnie's upper lip. From assorted bottles, he'd emptied out a pile of vitamins and nutritional supplements, and he was popping down pills between sips of a shake so thick it might have been melted ice cream. One of the gel caps was the size and the color of a stone in a topaz dinner ring. He swallowed it as though he were doing a magic trick.

Lonnie more nearly resembles a bouncer than an attorney. He's short and stocky – five feet four, two hundred four pounds – bulging with muscles from his twenty years of power lifting. He's got one of those revved-up metabolisms that burns calories like crazy and he radiates high energy along with body heat. His speech is staccato and he's generally amped up on coffee, anxiety, or lack of sleep. I've heard people claim he's on the sauce-shooting anabolic steroids in concert with all the iron he pumps. Personally, I doubt it. He's been manic for the whole nine years of our acquaintance and I've never seen him exhibit any of the rage, or aggression allegedly generated by extended steroid use. He's married to a woman with a black belt in karate and she's never once complained about testicles shriveled to the size of raisins, another unhappy side effect of steroid abuse.