“Right. I couldn’t handle walking through there anyhow.” I hung my head. “Thanks for this. You didn’t have to—”
“I did, and I’m sorry you had to experience that out there. Judge Wannamaker deserves more respect than they’re giving her. She was a decent person. We started here at about the same time, and she never questioned my ability to do a man’s job.” Grace clapped me on the back so hard I had to shift the weight of my shoulder bag to accommodate the force. “I miss her too. Keep your head up. Maybe we’ll all learn something from this tragedy.”
CHAPTER 8
No trials meant my day started at 9:00. Despite a trip to the polls and a run-in with the press, I swiped into the office with six minutes to spare.
“I didn’t expect to see you today.” Candace Fontaine, my supervisor and the courthouse’s chief court reporter, rummaged through the filing cabinets near the window.
Candace was fiftyish and plump with strawberry blonde hair, flat features, and wire-rimmed glasses. She was the annoyingly perky kind of person who signed her name with a smiley face and loved the color pink, but Candace’s enthusiasm was sincere.
“You must have had a difficult night.” She gave me a dour look with drawn brows, which I assumed was her version of sympathy. “I waited for you after work, but those detectives kept you forever. How are you making out?”
“Not great, but being here is better than stewing at home. Work will help. Thanks for asking, though.” I lifted my chin and moved farther into the cramped space. “Morning, James.”
My coworker replied with a preoccupied nod. James Brandenkamp was busy scoping—changing untranslated steno into English when the computer failed to do so—the constant pastime of the busy court reporter. Candi once considered hiring a dedicated scopist so we could outsource the work, but nobody wanted to give up part of his or her earnings.
I flopped into the swivel chair behind my desk, slid off my coat, dropped my messenger bag on the floor, and pulled out my laptop from the bottom drawer as was my normal routine. I wasn’t crazy about preparing the transcript from Langley Mulligan’s trial, but it was the only project on my to-do pile, and the requests were mounting. Aside from the moot one from Ms. Freddie, I already had interest from Harriston and Detective Daniels. Plus, Candi had placed a transcript request from Stevenson on my desk, along with an order from The Bickerton Bugle. Dang it. A press copy would surely add more fuel to the fire already brewing outside.
“Eyes up, everyone.” We both turned an ear toward Candi, although James never stopped typing. “Before you get too busy, let’s divvy up the work on today’s calendar. We only have two proceedings today. Victoria, you were in that—that, uh—trial yesterday, so you take your pick.”
This was why I loved Candi. Because of everything that happened, she wanted me to choose first, which allowed me to decline without ticking off James. Well played, Candi.
“Do you mind if I pass on this one? One of the things Detective Daniels asked for last night was a copy of the transcript from the Mulligan trial. I’d like to work on it so I can get copies out today, if possible. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine,” Candi chirped before James could open his mouth to protest. “That leaves case review with Judge Radnor or the 11:00 a.m. office conference with Maddox. Pick your poison, James.”
I grabbed the papers Candi had piled on my desk the night before and shuffled through them while James worked out the math. On the heels of Candi’s gung-ho attitude, James would look lazy selecting the office conference, which wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. But if he chose case review, he’d be in court all afternoon and wouldn’t be able to whittle away the hours on Instagram.
Candi drummed her magenta fingernails on the desk when James failed to reply. He was about to miss his window of opportunity.
“I’ll take case review?” James said with a note of uncertainty in his voice.
Staying in Candi’s good graces had won out. A fine choice.
I sat around for the next two hours and scoped my transcript while the others waited for their call to court.
At 10:55 a.m., Grace swung open the door and stuck her head inside. “We need a court reporter for the office conference in chambers.”
“That’s me.” Candi collapsed the tripod of her fuchsia steno machine and hurried out.
Ten seconds after the door closed, Maggie buzzed her way into the room. She promptly positioned herself behind Candi’s desk so she sat across the aisle from James. I don’t know how Maggie managed to arrive the exact moment Candi departed, but it happened every day with the same precision. Best I could figure, James was texting Maggie for scheduled visits with the hope of hiding his slackerly indulgence from Candi.
However, I wasn’t given the same courtesy. The right side of my L-shaped desk abutted James’s. No matter where I chose to work, I’d always have a front row seat to their flirtation flybys. I busied myself with the task of printing and collating pages for the Mulligan transcript. I needed an original and four copies for distribution.
“Can you believe those reporters outside? It’s insane,” Maggie said to James in her thick drawl that hung in the air long after she stopped speaking.
She leaned over the desk, letting the mounds of her bosom bulge out of the tight V-neck T-shirt she wore underneath her bolero jacket. Maggie should have been ashamed. James was spitting distance from the legal drinking age. She had at least a decade on him.
“I know, right?” James said. “Grace was telling me Capitol Police are in the process of rethinking the entire security system to make sure nothing like this happens again. I told her they should close down the courthouse while they do it.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I mean, first, I have to stand by and watch the State Police rummage through our evidence closet and seize half its contents. Then I spend all night answering a bunch of questions from some pushy detective. I could definitely use a few days off to recover. I’m traumatized.”
Maggie was always prone to theatrics, but this last bit of overstatement piqued my interest. Time to join the conversation.
“They questioned you, too?” I asked. “Who’d you talk to?”
“A real crotchety fella named Dan—Danny—Daniels?” Maggie struggled.
I couldn’t tell if her attempts were real or manufactured.
“Detective Daniels?” James asked. “Hey, isn’t that the same guy you had, Victoria?”
“Sure was. He seemed pretty reasonable to me.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to answer a slew of silly questions about the trial evidence or where you went during the recess. Everybody knows you were sitting in a corner somewhere fiddling on that funny little machine of yours.” Maggie giggled and winked at James.
I ignored their love fest and shoved pages into the three-pronged report covers that would bind my transcripts. “Couldn’t have been too traumatizing, Maggs, or you wouldn’t be falling all over yourself trying to tell us everything.”
“I’m getting there, darlin’, but I’m having trouble concentrating.” She gave James a coquettish smile and toyed with a strand of hair that had fallen from her bouffant. “You know, the odd thing is he kept asking me over and over whether or not I’d seen anyone walking around in the kitchen—which is a dumb question because everybody goes to the kitchen during recess to get coffee and snacks and whatnot. I even saw that