Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken (35 page)

“Sure.”

“Well, that store is just totally confusing. So, I wandered around and finally ended up at the tool area in the middle. I was just gonna ask someone. The guy was busy with a customer. It was your guy. The cute one. Anyway, this Home Depot guy was trying to help him pick out a hammer, going on and on about, um, DeWalt, I think it was, and how it was such a great brand, but cute guy did
not
want any help. So, finally he grabbed a hammer off the pegboard then stalked away. Creepy,” Ocean finished with a dramatic eye roll.

Sasha’s stomach roiled.

“You okay?” Kathryn asked. “You look ... green.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Ocean, can you remember what day it was? It’s really important,” Sasha said. She put down her coffee and gripped the edge of the counter with both hands, willing herself not to vomit.

“Uhm,” Ocean thought, “it had to be Tuesday.”

“You’re sure?” Sasha said.

“Positive sure.”

On Tuesday, two days before his wife’s murder, Nick had purchased a DeWalt hammer, the same brand that had been used to kill his wife, even though he claimed to have not needed a hammer that day and to have not known his had gone missing.

“Do me a favor,” Sasha said.

“Sure,” they said in unison.

“A woman named Maisy Farley is going to come in looking for me. She’s a very pretty blonde with a Southern accent. Please tell her an urgent personal matter come up and I had to leave. Will you do that?”

“Uh-huh,” Ocean said.

“Got it,” Kathryn added.

Sasha could barely hear them over the blood rushing in her ears. She smiled a weak thank you and left. In the hallway, she took deep, gulping breaths, but it felt as if her throat were blocked. She tripped up the stairs and locked up the office. She put her head down and walked out to her car as quickly as she could on shaking legs. She had to get home.

Rich Moravian might have stolen Nick’s hammer, but Nick had dealt the blows that had stolen Clarissa’s life.

EPILOGUE

On the twelfth day after Sasha learned that Nick Costopolous had played her for a fool, she came home from work and changed out of her suit. She pulled on her yoga pants, and they promptly puddled into a heap around her ankles.

A quick inspection in the bathroom mirror revealed that her rib cage was visible in both her chest and her back. Although her appetite had disappeared twelve days earlier, replaced by a persistent nausea and low-level panic, she decided it was time to eat a meal.

Sasha wondered if the recipes Connelly had left for her included his white chicken chili or the country-style mushroom and lentil stew that made her think she was at a chateau in Bordeaux every time she smelled it. She wasn’t certain he’d deem either dish appropriate for her skill level, but if she had to eat, she wanted homemade comfort food—something warm and filling—and she had no desire to visit her parents.

So, the only option was to make it herself. Preferably with ingredients she already had on hand, which was going to add to the difficulty level, considering she hadn’t been to Trader Joe’s since she realized that she’d freed a murderer. Buying groceries had seemed frivolous and somehow indulgent, despite Larry’s daily call to remind her that she had simply being doing her job.

She fired up her laptop and queued her music play list. Train filled her kitchen, singing soulfully but soothingly, while she dug out her striped apron and twisted the cap off a beer. Tackling a meal was exactly what she needed to take her mind off the mess she’d created.

She pulled the recipe box down from its spot on the pot rack. The box, with its country kitchen motif, was wildly out of place in her sleek kitchen of polished bronze and recycled glass. But, it had earned its prominent spot: back in the spring, the secretary to a murdered judge had used the box to conceal a mini-cassette that the judge’s killer had desperately wanted to get her hands on. So, the recipe box had stayed, and Connelly had gradually filled it with detailed recipes he’d written specifically to be Sasha-proof.

She carried the cardboard box and her Yuengling over to the island. Something rattled around inside the box. She leaned against the island and, as Train sang to her about that one night and promised it wasn’t a drive by, she put down her beer and opened the box.

In the front was a recipe card with a hole punched in the top left corner. She removed the card. A piece of kitchen twine was threaded through the hole and the dazzling ruby ring Connelly had tried to give her their last night together dangled from the twine.

She stared at the deep red stone for a few seconds before she took a pull on her beer and read the card. In his messy scrawl, Connelly had written “
A Starter. Serves Two. Ingredients: You. Me. Telephone. Directions: Pick up the phone. Call me.
”

NOTE TO THE READER

Thank you for reading
Irretrievably Broken
; I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you liked it, please consider lending your copy to a friend or posting a short review on Amazon at
http://amzn.to/KIje33
.

ALSO BY MELISSA F. MILLER

Irreparable Harm
(Sasha McCandless No. 1)

available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XDACV2

Inadvertent Disclosure
(Sasha McCandless No. 2)

available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0075ZWQ3M

Dark Blooms: Two Crime Fiction Shorts

available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004O6N198

Partnership Material: A Crime Fiction Short

available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RYJPZ8

COMING SOON

The fourth book in the Sasha McCandless legal thriller series

available Fall/Winter 2012

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa F. Miller is a commercial litigator and has practiced in the offices of international law firms in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. She and her husband now practice law together in South Central Pennsylvania, where they live with their three young children. When not in court or on the playground, Melissa writes crime fiction.

For more information about Melissa or the Sasha McCandless series, please visit
http://www.melissafmiller.com/
and sign up for Melissa’s newsletter.

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