My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Tenant Desk

The chief clerk opened the glass door himself.

"Ms. Kimball. My office."

"Here's fine," I said.

The hallway was full. Seven-thirty is when everybody comes in.

The other clerks stopped with their coffees and their lanyards and watched.

Malphas stood behind me on the steps outside, just inside the hundred feet.

The chief clerk held up a letter on Greaves Holdings paper.

"We've had a complaint," he said. "Practicing law without a license. Interfering with a case. Destroying evidence in open court."

"I read a lease to a tenant who asked me to," I said. "The judge allowed it."

"You set it on fire," said Greaves's lawyer.

"With what? My voice?"

A couple of the clerks laughed.

The lawyer's face went pink.

"You called in sick," the chief clerk said, "and then you showed up in courtroom two on a Greaves case. That's a conflict. You're suspended without pay, pending review."

"Review by who?"

He didn't answer. He looked at the lawyer.

That was the answer.

Lacey came down the hall with her two coffees and stopped dead.

"Are you kidding me?" she said. Loud. Lacey loud.

"Ms. Tillman, this isn't your business."

"She's my business. She's the best clerk in this building, and you know it. She catches every bad filing this court gets."

"Ms. Tillman."

"Greaves's own tenant died at our window ten days ago," Lacey said. "Thirty-four years old. Did you read that complaint, or did his lawyer read it to you?"

Nobody in the hallway was pretending not to listen anymore.

The chief clerk held out his hand.

"Badge, Ms. Kimball."

I looked at my badge.

Five years of seven-thirty mornings. Five years of the worst days of other people's lives, stamped and filed.

I'd wanted to be on the other side of that window since I was eighteen.

I took the lanyard off over my head and put it in his hand.

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