“You sure?” Mrs. Prescott, who was sixty-five if she was a day, shot her gaze to Malika.
“Positive. And thanks for all your hard work today.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Come in late. You aren’t scheduled for court tomorrow, and you need some sleep,” she ordered.
That was the truth. “Yes ma’am.”
Once she was gone, Malika shut the door. “I heard about you and Corinne.”
Tucker leaned back in his chair. “Are you here to deliver retribution of some kind? Because if she actually told you what it was I did wrong, you’re more in the know than I am.”
“No. Not retribution. But I think I may know what went wrong. Some of it anyway.”
He hadn’t actually expected that. Rising, he circled around his desk and gestured to one of the chairs. “Please, have a seat. I’d actually been hoping to talk with you, but I didn’t know your last name and hadn’t quite had time to track you down.” Not the full truth, but admitting he’d been drunk off his ass or hungover for much of the last three days didn’t seem the right move.
She sat, tucking her purse neatly in her lap. “How well did you know Corinne in high school?”
Not the tack he’d expected. “Better than she probably realizes. I’ve known her since elementary school.”
“Was she really the mean girl she says she was?”
“Sometimes. Her parents put her under a lot of pressure and that led to some...less than noble behavior. But everybody grows up. She’s not like that anymore, and she’s worked really hard to prove it.”
“Seems like memories here are pretty long.”
“You’re not wrong. What happened when she went off with you Friday night?”
“We were out in the lobby talking, catching up. Talking about you. She was happy.” Those big dark eyes drilled into his, bringing home the point. “You make her happy.”
He’d certainly thought so. “Go on.”
“She saw somebody she knew, got this real concerned look on her face, so we ended up following this couple down the hall toward the bathrooms. The guy was being rough with her and Corinne intervened.”
“Intervened how?”
“Asked the woman if she was okay. The guy hid it fast, but I could see he was really angry she’d said something.”
Tucker leaned forward. “Did he do something to Corinne? Say something?”
“No, but after he left—without his wife, I might add—she said something. She was in total denial there was a problem and Corinne kept pushing her to let her help, to trust her. I guess they must’ve had bad history because the other woman—Whitney, I think, was her name—she got all snappy and ugly with Corinne.”
Of course it would be Whitney Harrington. Because, for whatever reason, Corinne would never fight back against her. “What did Whitney say?”
“That she’d trusted Corinne once and Corinne had turned on her, acted just like her mama.”
If there was a bigger insult to Corinne, Tucker didn’t know what it was. His hands clenched to helpless fists. “What else?”
“That nobody believed Corinne had changed and she was still the same hateful person she was back in high school. And...”
“And?”
Malika winced. “And that one of these days you’d figure it out and drop her because she wasn’t worth your time.”
Tucker swore. “What did Corinne say?”
“Nothing. She just told Whitney to get some help, if not from her then from somebody else. And then Whitney left. I knew Corinne was upset. She wanted to find you. I didn’t know she’d do something drastic. I thought when I left her with you that she’d wanted you because you make her feel better.”
He did make her feel better. And that was entirely the problem.