“Of course, Judge Spencer. After lunch?”
“No, right now. Just let me say good-bye to my friends.” Holly reentered the restaurant. As she approached the table, Dennis stood up and pulled out her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t stay.”
“What? Why?” Marilyn’s tone had a demanding edge.
Dennis said, “You haven’t even eaten.”
“Someone’s waiting for me in chambers. I need to get back right away.”
“I’ll drive you.”
She placed her hand on Dennis’s arm. “The policewomen are giving me a ride. Stay and enjoy your lunch.”
“Will I see you later?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what would be the point. Instead, she smiled up at him. “I appreciate your coming all this way to check on me. Truly. It was sweet of you. But, as you can see, I’m fine. You have other things to do, and so do I.”
He caught the underlying message of the statement and smiled back, actually looking a bit relieved.
She kissed him on the cheek, then said to Marilyn, “I’ll see you at my house later.”
“Not too much later. We’ve got a lot of planning still to do.”
Holly shouldered her handbag, smiled at Dennis for what would most likely be the final time, and joined the policewomen who were waiting for her at the hostess stand. She rode in the backseat of their squad car. They saw her into the courthouse and up to the door of her chambers.
In the anteroom, Mrs. Briggs was seated behind her desk. Joe Gilroy was sitting in an armchair with a briefcase on his lap. He stood up when she walked in. They shook hands, and he thanked her for seeing him without an appointment. She motioned him to follow her into her private office and closed the door.
Once they were seated and she was facing him across her desk, he opened the briefcase and took out several paper-clipped sheets. “I filed all the necessary documents with the county clerk.”
He slid the documents across the desk toward her. “She informed me that I need your signature. That’s why I asked to meet with you as soon as possible. This needs to be served without delay.”
Holly had recognized the documents immediately. Unfortunately, in a family dispute they were too often necessary to protect one party from another. Which is why she could only gape at Joe Gilroy with incredulity.
He had filed for a temporary restraining order against Crawford Hunt.
Crawford went looking for Smitty and found him in the second topless club he checked. This one was a bit more upscale than the others. Between eleven and three o’clock each weekday, it served free lunch to anyone who bought a minimum of two drinks.
When Crawford asked the bouncer if the boss was in, he demanded to know what business Crawford had with him. With his badge and unflinching stare serving as incentives, the bouncer told him that he would find Smitty in his office at the back of the building.
Crawford entered the club through a maroon velvet curtain and moved along the buffet, noting that the chicken wings looked dry and the pizza slices had begun to curl up at the edges. However, the few patrons sitting at the edge of the stage weren’t there for the food, but rather to ogle the two dancers, whose performance was uninspired at best. One of them even yawned as she swayed.
On the far side of the club, he entered a dimly lit hallway, followed it past the restrooms, and went through a door forbidding entrance to anyone except employees. He passed two storerooms where cases of liquor were stacked chest high. A dressing room door stood open, revealing a woman in a bathrobe, seated in front of a lighted mirror, admiring her image as she talked on her cell phone. Finally Crawford came to a closed door with “Manager” stenciled on it.
Through it he heard Smitty shouting, “Look at you, for crissake! Who wants to pay to see a black eye?”
Then a woman’s voice. “When I’m on stage, you think they’re looking at my eyes?”
“Who did it? A customer or a boyfriend?”
“What’s it to you? You don’t own me.”
Crawford knocked once, then pushed the door open. Smitty was standing behind his desk, hands on hips. A young woman was slouched in the chair facing the desk, a landscape of litter.
Smitty groaned when Crawford strolled in. “Oh, perfect. Fucking perfect. Just what I need today.” With disgust, he looked down at the girl and waved her away. “Get out of here. Go buy some makeup that’ll cover that. You can’t control men and their urges, you got no business in this line of work. It happens again, you’re out on your ass.”
“Oh, I’m so sure,” she drawled. “My ass is a crowd pleaser.”
She sauntered toward the door, pausing as she came alongside Crawford. Cheekily she winked the eye that had been blackened. “Who are you, cutie?”
“I’m a bootlegger.”
“Seriously?”
“Out!” Smitty bellowed.