Cold City Streets Read Online Free Page A

time, Jessie wondered if her mother had ever fully grown up, eventually accepting that she probably never would.
    She hung her coat up on the hook by her office door, then carried her legal briefcase over to the desk, setting it down beside her office chair. The case was wide, bulky, and she needed it close at hand. Her mother’s last line bothered her, so Jessie retrieved her compact from her purse and checked her makeup. As suggested, it was near non-existent. “I can’t have forgotten…” she began to say to no one in particular.
    Rhonda leaned around the corner of the door.
    “Those messages waiting for you … a couple of them are from David Nygaard.”
    Jessie’s head slumped. What a morning…
    “Mom…” she said in her least patient tone.
    Rhonda held up both hands in mock surrender. “Anyway, he called.”
    “I broke up with him four months ago. It’s practically stalking at this point.”
    “Stalking?!? Because he calls you every so often to see how you’re doing? He’s a police officer. He’s concerned about you. It’s sweet.”
    “No matter where I am in the city, he seems to pop up out of nowhere every other week. It’s getting creepy.”
    “Creepy? David Nygaard!?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “I know he’s a big slab of a man, that’s what I know.” Rhonda had a dreamy look, the same look she’d get on the day they drew the Dream Home lottery. “He’s rugged, and handsome, and he’s crazy about you. Creepy?” She had no problem exaggerating her level of disappointment, transparent as Jessie found it. “In my day, a guy who pursued a woman was romantic and charming.”
    “In your day? Mom, you were fifteen when you had me. I remember your day; I was in junior high school. And they had restraining orders back then, too.”
    “Don’t bring your father into this,” Rhonda protested. “We worked that out a long time ago.”
    “You still have that rolling pin in the kitchen drawer.”
    “And he still has a dent in his forehead. Probably did him some good, shook out some of the stupid. Anyway, you should just remember that I deserve grandkids, for all you put me through growing up, and give David another chance.”
    Jessie made a shooing motion with both hands. “Bye-bye, Mom.”
    She waited until her mother had gone, then took a seat back behind her desk. Then she realized she hadn’t asked about the client, and wondered who was unfortunate enough to need her help on a Monday morning in February.
     

4
    “Ms. Harper?”
    The woman in the office doorway was tiny, perhaps four-feet-eleven inches tall, insulated in a polyester padded winter coat, the kind you found at Wal-Mart or the SAAN store for less than should be possible, in a shade of green that seemed to glow slightly. It contrasted with her ginger hair and pale blue eyes. She took off a pair of white wool mittens and put them into the pockets.
    Jessie rose from behind her desk and offered the woman a seat. “Please, Miz…”
    “It’s Andrea, Andrea Sidney.” She sat down and undid her coat, putting her purse on the ground beside the chair, then glanced around the small office, studying Jessie’s law degrees, looking over the horizontal bookshelf full of reference volumes. The dark wood unit was topped by a solitary white vase with a very lifelike-but-artificial yellow daffodil in it.
    “Sidney? As in…”
    “Paul’s my husband, yes.” She said it nervously, quickly adding, “We have a daughter who’s three, but she’s with her grandma back home in Antigonish.”
    “I heard on the radio this morning that he’d lost his representation, but I didn’t catch the details.”
    Andrea crossed her legs, then leaned forward and hugged her knee, looking downward toward her lap, her hands clasped self-consciously. She looked even more undersized in the big office chair. “Anthony Croce was our… was Paul’s lawyer. Well… mine, too, until they dropped my assault charge.”
    “Tony C. Big-time