Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) by Debra Trueman Read Free Book Online Page B

last item and turned it in my hand.  It was a little
white tube with a black man’s face on it, and all you could see were the whites
of his eyes and his teeth. I turned the tube over.  “ Darkie Toothpaste .” 
    “No way!” I laughed.  “Where’d you get this?”
    “My boss brought it back from Africa.  Gave me some hair cream
too.  All oily and nasty.  Same Darkie stuff as that there,” he said,
pointing a huge finger at the toothpaste.
    I opened the lid and smelled the toothpaste. Spearmint. “Let
me ask you something, Earl.  Why do you continue to work there?”
    “I need the job.”
    “Why that job?  Why don’t you just quit and go out and get
another job?”
    Earl looked down at his monstrous feet.  “I ain’t got no
college education.  I can’t walk into an office like yours and them give me a
job.  It don’t work like that.  I got a job that makes me pretty good money. 
Ya see, I got a little girl that I need to take care of.  Her mama don’t want
nothin to do with me, but I take care of my little girl.  So I need to keep
that job.”
    I smiled inside.  The jury would love him.  “Did you ever
consider doing anything about your teeth?” I asked. 
    He looked puzzled.  “Wussamatter with my teeth?”
    “Never mind.”

Chapter 5
    It was just over a week when I heard back from Niki, and rather
than picking up the phone and calling me, he graced me with his presence by
showing up at my office unannounced.  By that, I mean that he strolled right
past Russ and straight into my office with my secretary on his heels.  Russ
stuck his head around Niki in the doorway. 
    “This gentleman is here to see you,” he announced, clearly
perturbed. 
    Niki laughed.  “Oh, sorry.  I didn’t know you worked here.”  He
held out his hand.  “Niki Lautrec.”
    The two shook hands and Russ made his exit, closing the door as
he left.
    “New attorney?” Niki asked.
    “Secretary.”
    “Really?  You have a male secretary?”
    “Yes, I have a male secretary,” I said, sounding as bored as I
possibly could.
    “Well, that’s very progressive of you, Collins,” Niki laughed.
“I didn’t know you had it in you.”
    “Didn’t know I had what in me?” I said irritably.
    “Oh, you know.  I’m sure everyone thinks the guy’s probably
gay.  Guilt by association and all that,” he said with a wave of his hand.
    He plopped down in the chair in front of my desk and leveled
his creepy eyes on me.  Even a red-blooded heterosexual male couldn’t help
notice the guy’s good looks.  His hair was a mass of wavy curls that he was
wearing almost to his shoulders and his eyes were the most unique shade of
green I’d ever seen.  He was as rugged and ruthless as they come, but there was
this almost angelic quality to him.  I considered him one of my best friends;
someone I could rely on 110 percent.  He could also piss me off faster than
anyone else I knew, except maybe Felicia.
    “So what are you saying?  That people think I’m gay because I
have a male secretary?”
    “Not the ones who know you.  They’ll think you’re bi.”
    “Fuck off, Lautrec.”
    He laughed out loud.  “Actually, I think men make better
secretaries than women. We’ve had male secretaries at Lautrec Investigations
for years.”
    “Bully for you.”
    “Oh, quit pouting.  Let’s go get some lunch and I’ll tell you
what I found out about your cousin’s brother.”
    “Maddie’s cousin,” I clarified.  Not for a minute was I going
to let that one slide.
    We drove to Shilo’s, an old German restaurant that has been on Commerce Street for about 100 years. I ate sausage and sauerkraut washed down with a mug of
root beer while Niki filled me in on his investigation.   
    It turned out that Felicia’s brother had been placed in a
private institution called Serenity several years after a football injury left
him paralyzed from the neck down.  He was 18 at the time of the accident.  The
institution