likely to land me in serious trouble if it didn’t come off right. On the other hand, Delmont really didn’t leave me any other choice.
I reached down to my briefcase and lifted out a manila envelope. Slid it slowly across his desk.
Delmont rested his cigar in his ash tray and pulled the envelope toward him. He cracked open the flap and pulled out a series of glossy eight by tens. As he looked at the photos, the lines in his face seemed to deepen.
“You really don’t look good naked,” I said. “And I wonder what your wife would think if she saw you with that blonde?” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “There’s no way those boobs are real, right?”
Delmont shoved the pictures back in the envelope.
My heart felt like a jackhammer inside me. I prayed Delmont couldn’t actually see it pumping. If I showed just one sign of weakness, this whole thing would backfire for sure.
Delmont put his hands on the desk and leaned over it, getting right in my face.
“You think this is a game, Chloe?” He spoke slowly, softly.
“I most certainly do not,” I said. “The question is, do you?”
“I could have you disbarred for this. Throw you in jail.”
“But you won’t.” I tried to put as much meaning behind those words as possible.
Delmont pulled back abruptly. “Where did you get those?”
I had gotten them from Miles, my fabulous paralegal. Where he’d gotten them I didn’t know. Frankly, I had been kind of afraid to ask.
“It doesn’t matter where they came from,” I said. “What matters is the continuance. I expect to see the order signed and filed by eight a.m. tomorrow morning.”
“Or what?” Delmont asked.
“I think you know what.”
Delmont got up from his desk and paced back and forth across his bearskin rug, his fat rolls jiggling with each heavy step. When he turned his back on me, I could almost see his life-sized portrait of Robert E. Lee reflecting off the fresh perspiration on his bald head.
I waited. The courthouse was quiet today. It seemed as though the loudest sound in the room was the sound of my own heartbeat.
“Fine,” he finally said.
Joy welled up inside me, but I didn’t allow it to show.
“But you only get a week.”
And just like that, the joy was gone. “A week! That is a joke! I need six months!”
“You get a week, or I will call your bluff and report you to the bar.”
“What makes you think I’m bluffing?”
“What makes you think I give two pig farts about keeping my wife?”
My jaw dropped open against my will. Seeing as how this was my first attempt at blackmail, I was kind of at a loss. I had never considered the fact that he might not even want to keep his wife.
“Get out,” Delmont said. “And pray to God the next time you stand in front of me you got a jury on your side.”
I gathered my things together and stood.
“A week,” Delmont said. “I don’t care what else you’ve got up that sleeve of yours, that’s all you get. That’s the extent of my patience. Got it?”
I tapped the photographs on the desk with my index finger. “I’ll just leave these here for you to think about. I’ve got my own set.”
I didn’t wait for Delmont to reply. I just walked out.
I was so distracted as I walked down the concrete stairs of the courthouse and into the town square that I stepped wrong and broke the heel off one of my Louboutin shoes. I tumbled down the steps, my briefcase popped open, and my papers scattered all over the town square.
I cursed at the shoe. The Louboutins were a relic of better times—the times when I’d actually had no trouble winning cases. The times when the deck wasn’t completely stacked against me.
Even if I could find a replacement expert in a week (which was highly unlikely), all of Dr. Schaeffer’s evidence and files were locked away in his house behind a whole lot of crime scene tape. We only had one set because my boss was too cheap to foot the Xerox bill.
If I couldn’t convince the police to let me in and get those files, I’d just blackmailed the judge and put myself in jeopardy for nothing.
***
It was only three blocks back to my office.
I parked and limped indoors. Mountains of boxes lined the hallways—all of which contained my boss’s files, not mine. Art hung on the wall, but you couldn’t see it behind the stacks of cardboard.