Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) by Debra Trueman

this?”
    “For all four walls in a room this size?  Yeah.”
    “Shit.  Now I am impressed.”  I looked at the prep work
she had done so far from a whole new perspective.  It was tedious, time
consuming work and the prep work alone could take days.  I had no idea how long
the actual painting would take, but in truth, I’d rather the whole process take
twice as long if it meant not having to help.  “I’ll pay you the $2,000, just
don’t make me help you,” I whined.
    Landra laughed.  “How about we exchange your legal services for
my decorating services?” she proposed.
    “You’ve got a deal.  As long as you don’t make me paint.”
    Landra shoved my head to the side.  “You’re such a baby.”
    “Am not,” I told her, pushing her hand away.  She picked up her
tools and resumed her place at the wall and I went back to my files.  I ended
up falling asleep on the couch at some point, which made two nights in a row,
and when Landra woke me up it was 4:00 a.m.
    “What do you think?” she asked.
    I sat up and looked at the wall she had been taping when I had
fallen asleep, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn I was staring at a
150-year-old stone wall.  It was amazing.  She’d even painted a couple of areas
where it looked like the wall was actually crumbling.   The room was completely
transformed and that was with just the one wall finished.  I got up and gave it
a closer inspection.
    “I will pay you for this,” I said in all seriousness. 
“It’s incredible.”
    Landra smiled.  She looked tired but she was still so pretty. 
“I’m glad you like it.”
    I walked back over to where she was standing and picked her up
off her feet and squeezed her.  “Thank you,” I said, nuzzling into her neck and
breathing in deeply.  It seemed like a long time since I had touched her.  “You
must be exhausted.”
    “I am.”
    We walked back to my bedroom and when I came out of the
bathroom after brushing my teeth, Landra was sound asleep, curled up around my
pillow.  I went back out and looked at the wall one more time before getting in
bed, then I leaned over and kissed Landra on the cheek.   As soon as I did it,
I realized how far gone I was.  I’d seen my sister kiss her daughter when the
kid was asleep in bed one night and the fact that my niece never knew her
mother was there, made the expression of affection all the more meaningful.
    “Goodnight Landra,” I whispered, and I turned my back to her
and went to sleep.
    *    *    *    *
    I dragged myself to the door when Mrs. Howard came knocking the
next morning and left Landra sound asleep in my bed.  I think Mrs. Howard
guessed that Landra was still there, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of
knowing for sure.  She never came right out and asked, and I never volunteered
the information, but she kept trying to peek her nosy head in to see if she
could see anything.
    It was a chilly morning so I sat back in my new stone fortress
while I drank coffee, ate muffins and read the paper.  Enough catastrophes had
occurred the previous day to keep Drake Reeds’ accident out of the headlines,
but there was a blurb on the front page, Tragedy Strikes High Society Affair ,
directing readers to Page 1 of the Metro section for the story:
    Details are still sketchy as to what occurred in the
moments before San Antonio businessman Drake Reeds plummeted to his death late
Friday night during a black-tie affair celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary
of an affluent Terrell Hills couple.  Reeds was rushed by ambulance to the
emergency room of Southwest Texas Methodist Hospital, after falling from a
second-story window of the  mansion.  He was pronounced dead on arrival. 
Police spokespersons stated that there had been a struggle between Reeds and
his former fiancée, Landra Krally, in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the
mansion, and several sources stated that Krally had been physically and
possibly sexually assaulted