Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

allow graduates of foreign law schools to sit for the bar exam until 2010, he attended Marquette Law School and finished in record time—two years. In the fall of 1994, he became a U.S. citizen, Americanized his surname and opened a solo practice in the far northeast side of Milwaukee. There was no indication of political involvement, nor any information about charities or organizations that he supported. He never married, but Adriana called him “Uncle Herman” and said he was a friend of her parents.

I had other database inquiries pending, but guessed his age to be anywhere from forty-five, if her parents married young and he was their contemporary, to seventy-five, if he was much older than they were. When we spoke yesterday on the phone, he didn’t have the reedy voice of a man in his seventies, but he did strike me as a bit pedantic. I guessed he would be about sixty and imagined him as exuding a courtly formality from his Middle European years.

People open up more to others when there is a sense of shared values, so I wore a simple double-breasted coatdress in a deep eggplant color, with nude stockings and black pumps, and small gold Celtic knot earrings as an accent. Very staid, very professional. Of course, the black-lace-and-purple-satin lingerie underneath told another story. Wukowski loved to guess what bra and panties I was wearing under my oh-so-proper business attire.

Petrovitch’s office was in a two-story building, no security or reception desk, with ten separate mailboxes in the unlocked lobby. “Law Offices of Herman Petrovitch, S.C.” was listed in Suite 203. The adjoining suites, 201 and 205, were either empty or not listed. There was an accountant in 200, an optometrist in 202 and a dentist in 204. I noticed a small elevator, but decided to walk up.

The building was oddly quiet. The hairs on the back of my neck started to prickle. I adjusted the shoulder strap on my purse, so that the bag sat squarely in the middle of my abdomen, eased my briefcase open and reassured myself that my 9mm was in place in its carry holster. No sense ignoring intuition—or “gut,” as Wukowski prefers to call it.

I knocked on the door to Suite 203 and entered the small outer office. Empty. Shades drawn. No lights on. The nameplate on the desk said “Dragana Zupan.” The phone handset lay on the desk, one light blinking on the console. I pulled my gun and checked the safety. “Attorney Petrovitch? Ms. Zupan?” I called, and quickly ducked and moved to the side of the desk. Better to feel foolish than to make oneself a target. There was no response.

The door to what I assumed was the lawyer’s office stood slightly open. I edged my way along and pushed it hard from the hinge side, slamming it into the wall to let me know that no one was hiding behind the door. The lights were on in the inner office.

A woman’s body lay on the floor in front of a massive mahogany desk. The back of her head was blown off. Blood and pieces of what I assumed were skull and brains were splattered across the large front panel of the desk. The copper smell of blood and the acrid smell of gunpowder hit me in the back of the throat. I wanted to retch, but I also wanted out of there. I backed out as quietly as I could in pumps on a wooden floor, moved out into the hallway, and ran downstairs for the street and my car. The 9-1-1 dispatcher instructed me to stay on the line and wait for the police.

It was two minutes before I heard the sirens, two minutes that I spent scanning the street, slumped in the front seat of my little convertible, sure that someone had a gun trained on my head. The black-and-white squad car came to a quick stop and two officers emerged. I holstered the 9mm. It’s legal to carry concealed in Wisconsin, but at the scene of an apparent homicide with police approaching, it’s only prudent to appear harmless.

“You Ms. Bonaparte?” the male asked. He pronounced it wrong, but I just nodded. His partner, a female who appeared to be in her early thirties, stood behind him, scanning the area.

It took me a couple of minutes to explain why I was there and what I’d seen. I assured them that I was in the outer office, but had not set foot into the inner office, where the body was, nor had I seen or heard anything to indicate who might be responsible. A second squad car pulled up with two more officers, followed by an unmarked sedan. Wukowski got out of the sedan and spoke briefly to the two new patrol officers, who disappeared around the back of the building. Then he came up to my car and bent down to my eye level.

“Angie, you okay?” When I nodded, he turned to the two patrol officers who’d been talking with me. “You two secure the lobby and the second floor. The other team has the back of the building. No one goes in or out. Keep them all in their offices. No one enters the lawyer’s suite. Got it?” They nodded and loped off. Wukowski turned back to me. “When I got the call from the dispatcher and she gave me your name, I was the only detective in the bullpen, so I had to respond. We need to keep this professional, Angie.”

“Of course. I understand.”

He pulled a small digital recorder from his pocket. “Okay if I tape this?”

I nodded.

“Tell me what happened. Nice and slow. No hurry.”

By that point, my nerves were under better control. It helped that I wasn’t alone and it helped even more that, with Wukowski there, I didn’t feel a sense of threat. While I repeated my story yet again, a plain van pulled up. A woman with a medical bag, another carrying photographic equipment, and a man