A wonderful fact to reflect upon,
that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret
and mystery to every other.
– Charles Dickens
On November 12, a week and a half before Thanksgiving, Nina woke to a cold house. Bob was stirring downstairs. During the night, Hitchcock had evidently decided against the hooked rug on the frigid floor and joined her in bed. She was spooning with her dog! Was this the fate of a single woman?
Shoving the dog to one side, she jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, turned on the heater, then ran back up and pulled the feather bed around herself while the heater roared to life. While she lay there in delicious comfort she thought of Paul, missing him. Other than a few brief telephoned hellos, she hadn’t heard much from him since the Markov party.
She never seemed to find the time to call him. She needed him to help her come up with a detailed and impartial history of Markov Enterprises and to carry out preliminary interviews with anyone Lindy might suggest could be a favorable witness.
She needed him in her bed.
The house warmed up and soon she saw Bob’s head peeking around the bedroom door. Seeing that her eyes were open, he ran to the window and pulled the curtain, saying, “It’s snowing! Mom, you have to see this.”
Outside the air had turned white and wispy. The snow was so heavy she could barely see out, but the whiteness moved, drifting downward.
Pulling aside the covers, she threw on her robe and accompanied Bob downstairs. “Get your clothes on, Bob. I’ll drive you to school. We missed the bus.”
“Hey, maybe they’ll call a snow day!”
“I’ll find out.” While Bob started up their new CD of African ska music, she got the coffee going and laid out bowls for the oatmeal, then called the school to find out that, thank God, they hadn’t canceled the school day.
Bob sat down at the kitchen table to wolf down a couple of bowls of oatmeal, and Nina headed back upstairs to put on her warmest wool suit. To keep her hair dry under her hat, she knotted it, pinning it to the back of her head. “Bob! Don’t forget to put your lunch in the pack!”
Overnight, fall had given way to winter. Nina felt a rush of exhilaration bundling up in the parka and gloves and boots and pushing open the door to a foot of fresh snow. Transfigured overnight, the neighbors’ old junk car next door had become an ice sculpture, and the trees were festooned with white. Not a breath of wind blew to stir the airy, cool flakes melting on her cheeks.
They got into the Bronco and she put it into four-wheel-drive, hoping they wouldn’t have to get out again and shovel the hilly driveway, but it trundled up without a problem.
“What’s the big rush, Mom?” Bob asked as they skidded slightly on a curve.
She slowed down. “We’re trying to get going on the Markov depositions, but we’re having trouble with Mike Markov’s lawyer.”
“Deposition. That’s where you interview the people in the case and it’s all written down, right? And then later you trip them up when they say something different during the trial.”
“How did you know that?”
He shrugged. “I think from TV.”
At Bob’s school, trucks and SUVs and Subarus jammed the parking lot. She kissed him good-bye and watched him disappear into the white, running in spite of the slipperiness and his heavy backpack.
Through the rest of November and into December, Nina continued to fight with Riesner over what documents would be produced at the depositions, which had to be postponed twice so they could go before the Hearing Examiner and obtain rulings. Riesner refused all her calls and she had to fax every communication.
Professional courtesy in this case consisted of faxing motions at five o’clock on Friday so the other guy got them on Monday and lost three days of prep time, informal press conferences in which the object was to influence the entire jury pool, and stonewalling on each and every interrogatory.
She had known how it would go and she paid back each trick, even adding a few of her own. She became friendly with Barbet Schroeder of the Tahoe Mirror and fed her tasty tidbits once a week until Barbet was following her around with her tongue hanging out. The producer of a show on Court TV called and asked what she thought about televising the trial. This kept her up a few nights, until the producer finally called back and said it wasn’t going to happen as there was a juicy sex murder going at the same time in Indianapolis that they had chosen to televise instead.
Lindy called almost every day, demanding detailed progress reports.
“But this case is going very quickly,” Nina reminded her.
“Being broke sure got old fast. Whenever I come into town, Alice has to pay for everything. I hate it. I feel like I owe everyone something all of a sudden. I want this thing resolved. I want to see the look on Rachel’s face when Mike loses. I want my money.”
Nina knew how she felt.
Lindy was spending a fair amount of her time raising hell at the casinos with Alice. A few oblique references in the paper gave way to full-blown mentions on the gossip page of the San Francisco paper after one incident, when they were both thrown out of Prize’s Club.
During one of Lindy’s late night calls to Nina’s house, Nina asked Lindy about it.
“They blow every little thing I do out of proportion,” Lindy said. “Except for that one night. The night before going to Prize’s, I saw Mike. I’m not going to go into that. It was bad. Alice and I went out the next evening to play craps. I guess I had more than my share to drink. She hardly ever drinks but she kept me company. Then we got onto the topic of her divorce and that really set her off. Well, you saw how she gets. She pulled out that stupid gun. Took a few potshots at the craps table.”
“My God!” Nina said. “Did she hit anyone?”
“She hit the table,” Lindy said. By now, she was laughing. “She’s such a nut. I don’t know if she did it out of anger or just to cheer me up because I was losing. I doubt she could tell you, either.”
“Were you arrested?”
“She knew the pit boss so they didn’t call the police. They just tossed us out of there like sacks of rotten potatoes.”
“Lindy, this is serious. No matter how bad you feel, you need to keep a low profile. All of the jurors in your case will come from this area. You don’t want them reading about your wild, drunken exploits right before they decide whether to give you money for being such a hardworking businesswoman, now do you?”
“You’re right, Nina. I’m sorry.”
“And another thing. Your friend should not have a gun.”
“She doesn’t anymore. I took it away from her right then and there.”
“Where is the gun, now?”
“I hid it in my suitcase. She won’t find it there, because she’s a privacy freak.”
After calling Paul’s number in Carmel for weeks and not reaching him, she called his office ten days before Christmas and got a new number for him in Washington. “Run, run as fast as you can,” she teased when he answered. “I will still catch you.”
“I could swear I left my new number on your machine one lonely evening when you were out carousing with another man,” Paul said.
“More like having a late meeting.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, but he didn’t sound worried.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call more often. I’m really swamped. Why did you change hotels?”
“They moved me to an apartment at the Watergate. It’s more comfortable than a hotel room.”
“More of a long-term place,” she said.
“Well, yes. I couldn’t spend all my time in a hotel. That’s no life.”
“No,” she agreed, actually preferring to think he had no life there.
“Nina, you would love it out here,” he said, changing the subject. “Talk about being in the thick of it! Guess who I ran into in an elevator of an office building on K Street. Ralph Nader. Almost knocked him down. And then I saw Henry Kissinger in a corner grocery store in Georgetown one day. It’s so different from California. The history here-well, it’s out walking around the town, buying Twinkies.”
“Wow,” said Nina. “Sounds like you are enjoying yourself.”
He assured her he was not, that he missed her and all the other mountain folk, keeping it light, asking after Bob, and Andrea and Matt’s family. They talked for a while, catching up. Then Nina asked the question uppermost in her mind. “When can you come back?”
“Not until late January. I’m stuck here over Christmas,” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Nina. “You can take a few days, can’t you? I thought we might sneak in some skiing over the holidays. I don’t have much time, but I thought maybe we could swing a weekend up at the lodge at Squaw Valley.”
“There’s the alternative.”
“What’s that?”
“Wrap yourself up in a pretty bow, put yourself on a plane, and appear on my doorstep.”
“You want me to come to Washington?”
“ ’Want’ is weak. I long for it. I desire it.”
“Paul, I’m busy, too. Even though Bob and I will celebrate Christmas over at Matt’s, I still have to buy presents, decorate the tree, do the whole number. I just can’t take any time away.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” said Paul, sounding pissed.
“That’s just the way it is,” she said, “same for me as it is for you.”
Eventually, he cheered up. In the end, he agreed to call the minute he had some time to help with the Markov case.
He left her with the suggestion that he couldn’t wait to show her something new he had thought up, something involving the four tall bedposts of her new pine bed.
The holidays came and went in a blur of green and red and family visits. Bob seemed happy with the new software she’d scrimped and saved to buy him and did not ask again about seeing his father. She knew he hadn’t forgotten. He just didn’t want to hurt her.
In order to keep Winston informed about developments in the case, and therefore involved, Nina continued to send him copies of all the written battles and arguments. He called regularly with encouraging words and some excellent strategic advice, but he always seemed too tied up to come up to Tahoe. In this way, without it ever being plainly expressed, she learned that famous trial lawyers don’t sully their hands with the dirty little processes of pretrial discovery.
Genevieve stayed in Tahoe long enough to observe Nina a few times and to attend a short civil trial in another matter in which Riesner was the plaintiff’s attorney to, as she put it, “search for the soft underbelly.” Before she left, she and Nina set up a conference call with Winston, who agreed with Genevieve that Riesner would appeal to underdeveloped personalities who didn’t like to make their own decisions, and stronger conservative types looking to harden their positions.
They followed up with a discussion of Mike’s potential witnesses. Nina told them that, aside from Mike, his girlfriend would pose the biggest threat to them at trial if she could shake off her credibility issues with the jury. Rachel Pembroke had a long history at Markov Enterprises, a responsible position there and a personal view of the Markov relationship that would undoubtedly bolster Mike’s position.
Then at Genevieve’s suggestion, they brainstormed what she called the “mantra” for their case.
“Let’s get it all down to five words or less,” she insisted. “Look for an inspiration as we keep draggin’ our nets through the facts.”
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Nina said, “as Justice Potter Stewart said.”
“ ’It’s trophy-wife time,’ “ Winston said.
“Ooh, that’s good,” said Genevieve.
“She made him rich, then he dumped her,” Nina said.
“Too long,” said Genevieve. “We need something catchy like ’Where’s the beef?’ Or like Paula Jones and the President’s ’distinguishing marks.’ That was the mantra for that case.”
Winston laughed.
“We sound so cynical.” Nina soft-balled the criticism by including herself as a target. “There are important questions in this case. Things like, what is a marriage? What actually is a family? You know?”
“I like it,” Winston said, rolling happily over her objection with his enthusiasm. “ ’What is a family?’ Only it doesn’t cover the business aspect.”
They ended up with something Lindy had told Nina: the business was their child. That summed up Lindy’s position. Nina liked it because it seemed to reach for a deeper truth, an emotional truth she hoped a jury would embrace.
Outside, the snow deepened along the roads and in the woods. The landscape turned from dusty olive, tan, and blue to blinding white and blue, while Squaw Valley, Heavenly, Sierra Ski Ranch, and the other resorts hustled to get the maximum number of lifts operating. The town filled up again after its autumn lull. The winter season had begun.
Depositions began on the first Tuesday in January. Nina beat Sandy to the office and spent an hour going over notes before she arrived.
At ten o’clock, the parties assembled in Nina’s cramped conference room. After one memorable pitched battle the Hearing Examiner had decreed that Mike Markov would have the honor of being deposed first. Special rules had been devised to limit the number of hours per day, and Nina would have only two days with him. He sat across from her now.
After commenting on the lamentably disheveled state of Nina’s conference room and the generally inelegant surroundings, Riesner was suspiciously calm and quiet. He had the chair on the left. At the end of the table the stenographic reporter, Madeleine Smith, tried to lighten things up by chatting about the fantastic weather. Wearing beige pants tucked into boots and a knit sweater that covered her almost to the knees, Lindy fidgeted, appearing uncomfortable. In a week, it would be her turn.
“Swear the witness.” Mike raised his right hand and the reporter made him promise to tell it like it was. He wore a tweed sports coat over an open-throated golf shirt. His thin black hair was brushed neatly back, and his soft suntanned face shone slightly from soap and water. He had an odd expression on his face. Nina couldn’t quite identify it. Shame? Guilt?
Her goal for his deposition was quite simple. She would be trying to scare up anything she could use against him. She would listen for inconsistencies and she would gather details in enough bulk to trip him up during the trial.
From three feet away, he didn’t look like the evil despot Nina had tried to make him in her mind; but Riesner did. He wore the Stanford ring, his personal fetish, on the manicured hand resting on top of the pile of papers they would be going through. His lips curled, but she couldn’t say they formed a smile.
Nina placed her new leather attaché, a gift from her dad, directly in front of her, making sure Riesner noticed, feeling rather petty. When he had entered her offices for the first time months ago, she felt he had seen at a glance exactly what she was, a shoestring practitioner with shallow pockets. She couldn’t compete at this level, but by God, she would show off what she had.
“Okay,” she said. “Mr. Markov. On November first you were served with Requests for Production of Documents numbered one through thirty-five. It has been subsequently ordered that you bring all documents in response to this deposition at this time.”
“He has complied with the Requests except as modified in subsequent hearings,” Riesner said. “Here are the responses, numbered from one to thirty-five.”
“Thank you. Let’s get these marked as exhibits.” While stickers were placed on the exhibits, not a word was said. Lindy looked at Mike; Mike glared at her. Riesner sighed, sat back, crossed his legs. The room felt too hot. Nina sketched abstracts on her legal pad. Outside, cars mushed through the barely plowed street.
“All right. Cross-Complainant’s Exhibit One. All records, memoranda, notes, written memorializations, and any other document of any sort whatsoever tending to support Cross-Defendant’s claim that the parties agreed that the businesses and other property in issue were to be and remain the separate property of Mikhail Markov,” Nina read.
“For the record,” Riesner began, “Cross-Defendant continues to object to this Request on grounds that it is overbroad, calls for a conclusion, is vague, ambiguous, and unintelligible, and all the other grounds set forth in our opposition thereto last week.”
“Noted,” Nina said briefly. Riesner could object until he gave himself a sore throat, but he still had to turn the documents over. Mike still hadn’t opened his mouth. Riesner passed over a manila file stuffed with papers, and Nina began picking them up one by one, identifying them for the record, and having Mike authenticate them. Before the day was over, Sandy would copy them. There were originals of the corporate documents she had already seen, Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, registration documents, Profit-and-loss Statements, and so on. The next group included the deeds to the Markov homes, several titles to vehicles, and other titles to property, all in Mike’s name.
Then came the tax returns, both corporate and personal. After Mike had stated for the record what they were, Nina put these aside for copying. She would go over them with the accountant down the hall from her office this evening so she could ask intelligent questions about them tomorrow.
The next group seemed to be a series of interoffice memos and correspondence with suppliers and customers in which Mike made various policy and executive decisions. So what? She wasn’t impressed. Lindy had a similar pile of documents lying in wait for Mike. Each note and memo had to be identified for the record. Nina was very careful, very formal as she described the documents for the reporter.
Exhibit 1 was the most important of the lot. If Mike didn’t have some kind of smoking gun here, they’d be all right. They’d have a good chance.
Mike kept on, polite, unfaltering, answering each question after a short pause, sometimes consulting for a moment in a low voice with Riesner. As the morning wore on, the tediousness of the process settled them all down.
Unwritten rule of legal practice number 13: If you dread it, it will come. It came just before noon. Riesner had put it at the bottom of the stack just to raise a little more hell with her.
A sheet of lined notebook paper like the kind Bob used in school, the document in question was crumpled, stained, and had been drafted on a manual typewriter that needed a new ribbon. SEPARATE PROPERTY AGREEMENT was typed in capital letters at the top.
Mikhail Markov’s apparent signature at the bottom was followed by Lindy’s.
Lindy, who had her eyes on the document, too, scratched her arm, the only reaction she showed. Her silence at this moment was a worrisome omen.
“What’s this, Mr. Markov?” Nina said sharply.
“That is a separate property agreement between Lindy and me,” Mike answered, keeping his face impassive. But Riesner couldn’t resist. Victory flashed across his long face, and his false smile turned real before Nina’s eyes.
You son of a bitch, she thought, shaking her head, her mind boggled by this blow.
She began asking narrow questions about the exhibit, and Mike answered everything in an unhesitating, well-rehearsed voice.
He and Lindy had agreed that if they ever split up, they would keep each other’s property separate. The business was in his name and she understood that only he would continue to run it on that basis. They had sat down and talked about it the day they moved to California, thirteen years before, on October 12, and Lindy had typed their agreement up on their old Underwood. They had both signed it. Mike spoke in a flat voice, just spitting out the facts, keeping his eyes off Lindy.
“Let’s take the lunch break,” Nina said. “We’ll start again at one.”
“Oh, let’s,” Riesner said. He and Mike got up, two wealthy, successful men without a care in the world, and walked out, leaving the exhibits to fester on the table. Nina left, too, and went back into her office. Sandy laid out box lunches for both of them on Nina’s desk while Lindy visited the bathroom.
Nina hadn’t moved by the time Lindy returned. Lindy sat down heavily beside her. “Well?” Nina said.
“Well what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She let her anger show.
“There’s nothing to tell. I do remember, during the time he’s talking about, we were in the red. Mike was feeling very insecure. Things were rocky between us. We were arguing a lot. You argue a lot when money is low, it’s natural.”
“So you signed an agreement that you have never once mentioned to me.”
“I never saw that piece of paper before in my life,” Lindy said, shaking her head. “It’s a forgery. Or a joke.”
“Look at it again.”
Lindy picked it up and studied it. “Looks like our old Underwood,” she said. “That’s strange, because I gave that typewriter to Goodwill years ago. Maybe he took it out and hid it somewhere. Or I suppose it’s possible he typed the agreement way back before I donated the machine.” She said the right words but her tone was wrong, all wrong.
“Lindy?” Nina said. “You see this paper? If it sticks, it means we’ll probably lose. Both of us.” She got up and leaned her arms on the table, moving in close to extend the full force of her enraged gaze onto Lindy. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
Nina shook her head, incredulous.
“Anyone can forge a signature,” Lindy was saying. She held the paper at arm’s length, squinting at it. “I’d even swear it was mine if I didn’t know better.”
“You need reading glasses, Lindy,” Nina said, leaving the room.
Riesner and Mike came in a little late and took their places, the cool air and clean scents of the outdoors trailing behind them.
The load of wet concrete Riesner had dumped on Nina was drying now, tightening, weighing heavier and heavier, suffocating in its implications.
She didn’t believe Lindy. If real, that piece of paper might be worth a hundred million dollars to Mike. If a fraud… but it wasn’t. Riesner would never take a risk like that. He had to know Nina would discover a fraud, and that the jury would reward Lindy accordingly.
Could Mike be lying to Riesner? No. Riesner would already have had the thing looked at by professionals, because he never trusted his clients.
Why would Lindy keep the knowledge of this devastating evidence from her own lawyer?
Stupid question. Denial, fear that Nina would bow out, hope that Mike had lost it…
What now? Walk barefoot over a bed of burning coals all afternoon. The joy of law.
“Let the record show we are gathered here again and all parties are present,” Nina said to the grinning, smirking red devils behind the polite faces of the men across the table from her. Madeleine’s fingers began working her reporting machine.
Nina walked the hot coals all afternoon without even giving her opponents the pleasure of an ouch. Mike claimed he kept the agreement in his fishing tackle box, where he also kept his Social Security card. He insisted that Lindy signed the agreement of her own free will after a calm discussion. He said his divorce back in the sixties had cost him everything he had, and that at the time the agreement was signed he had feared that Lindy, too, would leave him and take the little that he had struggled to build. He readily admitted that he had initiated the discussion, but he said Lindy had typed it up. He kept looking at Lindy, who seemed to have zoned out.
At about three o’clock he said, “Can we please go off the record?” Nina nodded, and the reporter shut down her machine, stretching her hands.
“Lindy,” Mike said. He held up his big hands. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
“Leave me alone.”
“I’ll give you a million dollars to walk away from this.”
“Keep quiet, Mike,” Riesner said, raising his voice. He took hold of Mike’s arm. “Let’s go in the other room and talk.” Mike shook himself free, his eyes never wavering from Lindy.
“You can’t win. You’re wasting our time. You’re ruining the business.”
“Me?” Lindy was outraged. “I’m not even involved.”
“The longer you force me to screw around with this shit,” Mike said, “the quicker things fall apart at work. Hector, Rachel, they’re running the show, but nobody’s making the big decisions because of that receiver your lawyer put there. We’re not meeting the orders.”
“So get over there and make things right.”
He continued as Lindy spoke, as if deaf to her. “MarDel is suing us. Understand? We’ll go broke if I don’t get back to work, and as long as the receiver’s coming in and sitting in my office, I’m not setting foot in there.”
“I can’t do anything about that.”
“But you can. Use your head,” Mike said. “Let’s make a deal.”
“Don’t say anything,” Nina said to Lindy. “Mr. Riesner, please instruct your client that he is not to address my client directly, or the deposition is over, and I’ll ask for sanctions.”
“Come on, Mike. Other room.” Riesner jerked his head.
“Lindy, take the deal,” Mike said.
“Now you listen,” Lindy said. “You can’t buy me off with half a percent of what the company’s worth. You want me out? Offer me fifty percent or keep your big mouth shut.”
“A million. That’s my offer,” Mike said. “My only offer. I’ll see you in hell before I’ll ask again.” He let out a laugh. “You thought I’d forgotten it, or lost it, didn’t you?” He allowed himself to be stood up and marched into Nina’s office. The door slammed, and they could hear the voices next door, but not the words. Madeleine said, “I think I’ll go chat with Sandy for a minute.” She closed the conference room door behind her.
Nina turned to Lindy. “He didn’t forget it. He didn’t lose it. What do you say to that?”
“I say he’s sinking mighty low. He won’t get away with this.”
“Lindy, that paper changes everything.”
Lindy said nothing.
“I can try for two million, if you want, but at this point, it’s my opinion you won’t do any better. You can put it away, buy a house. You’ll have interest income.”
“No.”
“It may be the best I can do for you, considering.”
“Considering what? This crummy old thing?” Before Nina could prevent it, Lindy reached over, picked up the piece of paper, and tore it into jagged halves. Nina lunged at her, calling, “Sandy!” They struggled. Lindy’s fists had locked fast. Sandy came running in, followed by Riesner and Markov. And then Lindy stopped. Looking as if suddenly all the electricity had failed, leaving her in the dark, her grip loosened. Nina took the pieces out of her hands and gave them back to Riesner.
“How can you humiliate me like this, Mike?” Lindy said calmly. But the calm after the storm held more portent than the actual thunder that had preceded it. “Rachel put you up to this, didn’t she? She’s the one who’s pushing you until you’re like somebody I never met and wouldn’t want to know if I did. This has all gone too far.” She was raving but Nina couldn’t figure out how to stop her. She tried to break in, but was shoved aside and ignored. “I’m going to do what I should have done already and put all of us out of our misery right now. Kill her!”
“Sandy. Take Mrs. Markov out of here,” Nina commanded.
“Well, now,” Riesner said. “Death threats, destruction of evidence. Nice client control, Counselor. I think we’ll be going.”
“But…” Mike said. Lindy had begun to breathe in hiccuping gasps, one way of not crying, Nina suspected. For a moment, Nina thought Mike was going to take her hand.
“Yes, indeed. The deposition is over,” Riesner said. “I’m afraid I have to take this exhibit back with me to ensure it is not destroyed.” Firmly, he edged Mike into the outer office.
The outer door slammed.
“Did you get a copy of that thing, Sandy?” Nina said.
“Right after you broke for lunch,” Sandy answered.
Madeleine, who had been hovering in the doorway, said, “Are we adjourned?”
“Oh, yes,” Nina answered. They were as adjourned as they could be without being stone cold dead.
School started at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty, so the next morning when Nina let herself into the office after dropping Bob off, she knew she would have some time alone. Avoiding the answering machine with its winking light, she went into her office and pulled up the blinds. Snow everywhere, covering up all the dirty tricks and poverty and lies, making everything look so pretty. Turning on the lamp at her desk, she pulled out her checkbooks. Forced-air heating labored valiantly through the grate in the ceiling, the only sound.
She scratched quite a few numbers on her yellow pad and called a couple of credit card automated lines. Fifteen minutes later, she knew everything there was to know. Unlike Markov Enterprises, she didn’t need an expert to figure out which way the wind blew.
Assets: the house on Kulow, equity thirty thousand, mortgage payment fifteen hundred a month. She had sunk all the money left after the divorce into it.
The cottage on Pine Street in Pacific Grove her aunt had left her, value about two hundred thousand. She owned it free and clear. The two students renting it barely covered the property taxes and upkeep.
The Bronco. Value, maybe two thousand considering the rapidity of its disintegration. Her jewelry, clothes, and furniture, another couple of thousand. The office furnishings and equipment, the same.
Accounts receivable. Closely balanced to the accounts payable. Monthly operating expense, including Sandy, about ten thousand.
Credit card debt, for the washer-dryer and the new fridge, fifteen hundred. Not bad at all. That was it, Reilly Enterprises, both sides of the register.
Now she looked at the page on which she had estimated the costs of getting through the Markov trial. She had started out with twenty thousand from Lindy, and only a month later she was down to five thousand, thanks to signing up Paul, Genevieve, and especially Winston.
She had counted on Winston to put up half the costs of the litigation, not to take money out, but Winston had managed to come onboard without putting up anything. In fact, he had taken a ten thousand dollar retainer for himself. He had explained that the IRS was causing him a lot of grief right now, plus his current case had tapped him out. He had made vague promises to come through in the crunch.
Now Winston, her much-vaunted cocounsel, had just lost that major case and probably could not contribute a dime to the costs in advance of trial. And her client had probably lied to her about signing a separate property agreement, which left their case looking weaker than ever. And Lindy had very little more to give.
That left Nina to scrape up enough money to make a major motion picture out of an anemic plot with mediocre box-office potential.
She pushed aside the ominous feelings in her gut. You have to spend money to make money, she said to herself. She leaned back in her chair and put her stockinged feet up on the desk. The heat was making her drowsy. She’d get up and make some coffee… instead she drifted into a reverie.
On the last warm weekend in October, she and Bob had ridden their bikes down the pathways by the Baldwin Mansion. After wearing themselves out, they had stopped and climbed on a rocky pier to check out the lake. Not far away, off to their right she noticed a long white cabin cruiser with the name The Felony written in italics on its impeccable side. At the helm, in a white captain’s hat, the wind whipping his hair so that the bald spot showed, Jeffrey Riesner had stood. He noticed her at the same time and turned so that the wake of his cruiser practically drenched them.
Jeffrey Riesner owned a house on the water at the Keys. His wife stayed home with their toddler. Nina sometimes caught sight of her in her little red running shorts jogging by the office, pushing the stroller, so buff that nary a ripple jiggled even in the most sensitive places.
Riesner was the same age she was. Where did he get the money to live like that? And Winston had told her all about his Ferrari and the place in Bel Air he had managed to “scavenge,” as he put it, from his second wife. Even Genevieve’s studiously nonchalant wardrobe suggested she made more money than Nina did.
She would have a million dollars in the bank at least, post-taxes and debts, if she won the Markov case. Then she would live a whole different life. Move up in the world. Travel, first class all the way. She and Bob, at the Pyramids, cruising the Greek Isles… even Jeffrey Riesner would be forced to rethink his automatic contempt for her, wouldn’t he, impressed by the only thing that impressed anybody: money, money, almighty money…
Of which she needed a lot right now.
She called the bank. Requested the paperwork to arrange for an equity loan on the cottage and a second mortgage on the house on Kulow. Dictated a letter informing the students in Pacific Grove of a rent hike. Applied for another credit card with a fat credit line. Canceled her appointment to have the Bronco fixed. She’d limp around in it until the trial in May.
By the time she was done, she had hocked everything. You had to spend money to make money.
Several more days went by without communication on either side, but that didn’t mean Riesner wasn’t working behind the scenes. Nina, too, kept herself busy. Friday, she called Lindy at Alice Boyd’s house. She wanted Lindy to tell her the truth.
“Ms. Reilly!” Alice answered in a delighted voice. “I understand from Lindy that all is very hunky-dory on the lawsuit front.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear she thinks so,” said Nina.
“Don’t you? Is something wrong?”
“Ms. Boyd, may I speak with her?”
“Call me Alice and I’ll call you Nina, okay? When in Rome, or Tahoe for that matter…” she said with a laugh. “Anyway, she’s out. I don’t expect her for a couple of hours. She’s helping to pack food boxes for some holiday thing.”
“Could you ask her to call me?”
“Sure. Mind if I ask what this is about?”
“I just need to talk to her.”
“Don’t stonewall me, Nina. Lindy and I go way back. I loaned her the money to get this show on the road, you know!”
“Yes, she told me that. I know she’s very grateful for your help.”
“Well, to be honest, she’s been a good friend to me, and I’d sure love to see her get that gorilla Mike off her back permanently. Oh, and that’s something I want to ask you about.”
“Ask me?”
“Yes, you. Do you know much about me?”
“Very little.” She remembered Lindy’s laughing reference to the loony bin, though.
“Yeah, that’s Lindy. Weak on the gossip front, always has been. If you need the dirt on anyone, you give me a call, Nina. You just skip right over here. Will you do that?”
“Okay,” said Nina, melting into the surrealism of this conversation like one of Dali’s clocks.
“Now, let’s get back to me. Here’s the cheat sheet, abbreviated version of my saga: I had a world-class nervous breakdown when my husband dumped me four years ago. I did a few things… let’s save those details for the rumor mill. They come out a lot funnier that way. Then I spent a year locked up. Not in jail. In a place worse than jail. You may remember hearing about that.”
“Uh-huh,” said Nina, trying to sound only mildly interested, and curious to know what reaction Miss Manners recommended under similar circumstances.
“But that’s all in the past, okay? My life’s back on track. I haven’t had too much to do with the law-just my divorce and the commitment. But my experiences really got me hooked into the local resources, you might say. I know people from all walks of life, people who will jump through hoops for me and mine. And here’s something else you should know. I want Lindy to win this lawsuit. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. So we come back around to my question. What do you want me to do?”
Nina was silent.
“You heard me, didn’t you?”
“I heard you,” Nina said. “Alice, the most important thing you can do right now for Lindy is just… continue to be her friend.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Alice?”
“And to think I actually recommended you,” Alice said, and hung up the phone.
On Sunday afternoon, under a blanket on the back deck, looking out at the snowy forest, Nina curled up with a cell phone instead of the proverbial cat. Through the picture window she could see that Bob and his cousin Troy had abandoned the computer to lounge on the rug in front of the fire and eat popcorn.
“Winston?” Giving up on having her calls answered at his office, she had called his house in Bel Air.
“Nina! I’ve been trying to get back to you. Great ski weather up there, I hear. It’s almost beach weather here in L.A. The smog’s cleared so we get our yearly look at the mountains.”
“Yeah. I saw you on the news. Too bad about your case.”
“Yes, what a disappointment.”
“You seemed pretty sure you’d wipe the floor with them when we talked.”
“I would have, if the judge had let me and if I’d had a little more leeway with the jury selection. The clients are going to appeal, naturally,” Winston said. “The judge just shut us out. We couldn’t get half the good stuff into play. I turned them on to a good appellate lawyer, but meantime I’ve got a fortune tied up in costs I’ve advanced. But no problem. There’s still your case. Lose one, you gotta believe the next one’s going to be a win for sure and you’re gonna work twice as hard.”
“Really? You’ve read the pleadings, had dinner with me, haven’t even heard about the discovery, and you’re so sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Look at the talent we have onboard. It’s just another jury.” But he had heard the strain in her voice because he immediately added, “Right. What happened?”
“Riesner pulled out a written separate property agreement,” Nina said, “signed by our client. Our client claims she’s never seen it before, but she has said the signature bears a remarkable resemblance to hers.”
A deep sigh came from the other end of the phone.
“Yeah,” she said again. The slate-gray sky seemed to be darkening by the minute. A stray cinder from the chimney drifted down to the deck.
“She never even gave you a hint there might be something lying around?”
“I had no idea.”
“Tell me about it,” Winston said in his warm, reassuring voice, and she went over the day of Markov’s deposition with him, trying to be as precise as she could about Lindy’s reaction to the document.
“The way you tell it, she’s lying,” Winston said when she was done.
“Maybe she is. I’m not psychic. But then, some people look like terrible liars when they’re telling the truth. I know I want to believe her but she sure makes it hard.”
“Depressed, are you?”
“Deeply.”
“Hmmm. So what now?”
“I call you, the famous trial lawyer, for advice. Isn’t that why you’re on the case?”
“You want my advice? Here it is. First, find out whether there’s anything we can use to show duress. Press her for details about the scene on the day that she signed and I guarantee, there will be dirt for you to sift through. Second, assume the document is a fraud. Prove it by getting an expert to swear the signature is forged, or busting Markov’s chops during cross-examination. Third, stonewall. Don’t let Riesner get it admitted as evidence.”
“Piece of cake,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Did you think you were gonna bring down a few million in legal fees without having to sweat for it? You’re gonna sweat. Hear what I’m saying? You should have expected something like this. You don’t like surprises, you’re in the wrong business.”
“True enough,” said Nina, but she felt disappointed. Somewhere deep in her irrational heart, she had hoped Winston, her high-priced talent, might instantly solve all her problems.
“Now let’s get crackin’. I’m coming up to help you finish the depos. I’ll bring Genevieve. She’d like to see the witnesses and get started organizing a shadow jury. We just moved into the hardball phase. We’re going to bring it home, Nina. You hear?”
“I hear.”
“You hear and you believe?”
“Winston, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
He laughed. “I’ll be up Thursday. Let’s finish Markov that day. Then Friday, let’s get the little gal who caused all this trouble-Pembroke. On Monday, let’s do anybody else that’s important. Can you set that up?”
“I’ll do my best. I ought to be able to drag Riesner back before the Examiner by Tuesday. I know Markov doesn’t have any big obligations. He’s refusing to work at the company and he won’t let Lindy go back. I’d say he’s pouting, but I guess you’re not supposed to say that about CEO’s.”
“So who’s minding the store?”
“The second-tier executives, Rachel Pembroke and this Hector guy. Hector Galka, the Executive Vice President of Financial Strategies and Accounts, and an old friend of Mike Markov. I’ll try to line them up for Friday and Monday.”
“Okay. Help’s on the way. Now. What else are we going to do?”
“Get a forensic handwriting analyst,” Nina said. “Get the signature on the agreement analyzed. I suppose there’s a remote chance it is a forgery, though I can’t believe they’d be so idiotic.”
“Everybody’s idiotic around this much money. But here’s a thought. Let’s skip that step. Don’t get a handwriting analyst. Call Lindy and tell her you’re going to hire one, and tell her it’ll be expensive and a hassle and is she sure she can’t remember signing that thing. Get me?”
“You think that’ll smoke her out.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. She lies and I pull tricks on her. What a way to do business.”
“It’s for her own good.”
“Speaking of things being expensive, how much is this shadow jury of Genevieve’s going to cost?”
“You ought to check with her, but the last one she did for me-oh, between forty and fifty thousand. Hire the people, Genevieve’s time, all that.”
“What? That’s impossible! We just don’t have that kind of money, Winston.”
“Okay, look, I’ll talk with Genevieve. We’ll work with you on that, see how we can minimize our costs. And then you’ll have to find the money. Just keep thinking about your piece of the pie, and what a small investment it is against your return. I do wish I could help more with the finances,” Winston said. “This is an expensive business. It sure is. I’ll try to kick in something later on.”
“Lindy said something about being able to come up with some more money at some point…”
“See! You’re getting the hang of this business already. If you need money, you get money.”
“I’m still very-concerned.”
“Go ahead, sweat,” Winston said. “We’ll come up and sweat with you. We’re workin’ it, that’s why you’re sweating. That’s just how it goes. We’re getting started. We’re with you. You hear?”
“I hear.”
“Yes. You hear. But do you hear and believe?”
“I’m working on that,” she said, her heart a little lighter.
Lindy returned Nina’s call on Monday night. “Alice said you called me. I’m not sure why she waited so long to mention it except that she’s mad about something. Anyway, I wanted to tell you I’ve decided I’m not going to be attending the rest of the depositions. Is that a problem?”
“No, but why not?”
“I have to get out of this place,” she said. “This whole situation is making me crazy. Some days I know we’ll win and I’m going to walk away with my fair share, and other days, I see myself five years from now, spritzing flowers all day long, working for Alice at the shop I helped her buy. Or maybe even living with her, like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in a horror movie. I’d play the former hotshot, now faded and out of my mind, wallowing in a glorious past. Alice would be crippled, having shot that gun one too many times, and we’d live out our poverty-stricken lives in a ramshackle old place in black and white, all the color having left with Mike and my money.”
“Don’t worry so much. You’ll be all right.”
“I hope that’s true. But the big reason I’m not coming is I don’t think I can stand to hear Mike’s version of what went on between us until I have to, during the trial.”
“What will you do?” Nina envisioned some other friend’s house, or maybe Lindy would move to a suite at Caesar’s.
“I got a form in the mail from the Nevada Mining Commission. My dad used to go out to this canyon out in the Carson range and visit this claim we had,” Lindy said.
“A mining claim?”
“Yes, he thought he’d find a vein of pure silver the Comstock lode miners missed. He was always looking for a fast buck. A real dreamer. He never had the patience to work the mine properly, but I’d go out there with him and we’d dig around and stay in an old trailer he’d found somewhere. You have to work the claim every year and file some paperwork or you lose it, but if you do that, you can keep it indefinitely. The claim and the trailer were all he left me.”
Nina said, “You’re not thinking of doing what I’m thinking you’re thinking of doing, are you?”
“Well, the trailer’s got a radio and propane and a generator. There’s a water tank out back. Don’t worry, I’ll be back when it’s my turn to get on the grill.”
“But why? Why would you do that?”
“I’m broke,” Lindy said. “Now there’s a big difference between broke and poor. Broke is a temporary thing. Poor is different. I’ve been poor, and I know the difference. I’ve got prospects. I’ve got a place to live. By God, that’s one thing that’s not in Mike’s name. It’s warmer down there, only three thousand feet altitude, no snow. I can do some riding and some thinking.”
“Riding?”
“My horse, Comanche. Mike doesn’t own Comanche either. I looked at what I have right here and you know what? I’ve been worse off.”
“You don’t have to live like that,” Nina said.
“Look, Nina, this is temporary. I know you’re putting out a lot for me and I know you can’t do it all. I’ve been able to scrape together a few thousand, and that goes to you today. You get every penny I can find right now to win this case.”
Grateful she did not have to ask again for money, Nina wondered, not for the first time, why a woman who had worked for so long could have so little left. “But how will I reach you?”
“Don’t worry. It’s only a little more than an hour away by car. And there’s a gas station and a little store where the highway meets the dirt road into the mountains. There’s a phone there. I know the couple that run the place.”
“I don’t know, Lindy. I-”
“What business is it of yours?” Lindy said testily. “I’m a grown woman. I’ll take care of myself. I grew up like this, Nina. What’d you think, I’m just some soft society matron who can’t tie her own shoes?”
“It’s not right,” Nina said. “I don’t feel I’m taking good care of you. You shouldn’t have this kind of hardship.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Lindy,” Nina said. “I want to ask you again about that agreement.”
“I signed it.”
“You did sign it?”
“I was lying, and you knew it. Don’t pretend.”
“Why did you lie, Lindy?”
“I’d almost forgotten all about it until I saw his lawyer waving it around. To me, it meant nothing at the time, just a piece of paper talking about money we might never have. But you were so grim-looking when you saw it. I got scared.”
“Who prepared it?”
“I typed it up. Mike asked me to. He wanted me to sign it, so I did. So now we’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Did you mean to sign away any rights you might have in the company, Lindy?” Nina said, her voice shaking a little from the magnitude of the question.
“I was willing to do that, since it was the main obstacle to our getting married,” Lindy explained. “He told me-he promised-that if I signed the paper we’d get married. And that’s, I swear to God, exactly how it went.”
“And then?”
“And then, like I said before, he had to go out of town. When he came back, I said if we didn’t get married, I’d leave him. And he sweet-talked me. He didn’t want me to leave. In other words, live with it. And I stayed, because I loved him. That’s the whole story, Nina.”
Nina put aside the melange of thoughts Lindy stirred up, concentrating instead on writing as much as she could of the story on the legal pad in front of her.
“So, he didn’t hold a gun to my head,” Lindy went on, “or try to punch me out.”
“But he promised he’d marry you if you signed it.”
Lindy said bitterly, “That’s right. And I remember what you told me. I know there’s no legal help for somebody breaking their promise to marry you.”
“No, there are no breach-of-promise suits,” Nina said in a vague tone. “But a gift made on the assumption that a marriage will take place may be recovered.”
“What does that mean?” Lindy said.
“It refers to a seldom-used statute that harks back to the days of buggies and girls in crinolines you just reminded me about. But I think-I’ll get back to you about that.”
“How are we doing now, Nina? Have I wrecked everything?”
“This agreement isn’t good news, Lindy. You already know that. But I do have our two associates coming up to help us out soon.” She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to cheer Lindy up, since she was the one who really needed the cheering. “They are going to give our side a real boost.”
Lindy sounded subdued. “I’m sorry about lying. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that you have to remember, I’m used to being the boss. I’m used to making strategy decisions without consulting anyone, except maybe Mike. And he wasn’t exactly available to set me straight this time around.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Listen, I’ll call your office from the gas station and give Sandy the number. She can leave messages there. Meanwhile, gotta go.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“I’ve got to run some errands over the next couple days, then I’m packin’ up my saddlebags and strappin’ on my spurs, so to speak. Good luck. Keep me posted.”
“You be careful,” Nina said, and a vision sprang into her mind of Lindy on a big white horse wearing that gold Egyptian necklace she had worn to the party trotting up Highway 50 past the casinos, heading for the foothills of Nevada. “Please.”
On the following Thursday, Winston and Genevieve arrived. Genevieve looked animated and ready for action. Sporting fresh bags under his eyes, Winston had a strangely hangdog expression on his face.
While they waited in the conference room for Mike Markov to arrive so that they could finish deposing him, Nina took Winston aside.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I ended up working red at the roulette table on my way to bed last night. I swear, that wheel is the Jim Jones of gambling. It lures you with a few inspirational wins so you get cocky. You start betting numbers. You win some more. People are clapping and shouting, all riled up, watching the chips stack up in front of you. Then suddenly the room goes cold. The balls slips into a zero and then a double zero. The croupier rakes it all in.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Really? I lost ten-over two thousand dollars.”
Had she heard right? Nina felt steamed. She could have used some of that money. “Two hundred’s about my limit, even when I’m on a real bender.”
“Worst part is, I’d do it again.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t live up here.”
“Doesn’t matter where I am,” Winston said, “I’m having a ball and taking too damn many risks.”
Mike Markov walked in with Jeff Riesner, immediately making it clear his whole attitude had hardened. Nina explained that Lindy had decided not to attend any further depositions, and he said, “Good.” Then he said his prepared piece, that any offer of settlement was withdrawn.
These preliminaries settled, they hunkered down to the task of looking at the other thirty-four exhibits, the business records, and miscellaneous notes that came from a twenty-year relationship. After Winston greeted his old pal Riesner with a hearty show of chumminess that came close to making Nina feel uncomfortable, he settled down next to Nina, politely ignoring him. Genevieve lurked so inconspicuously in her corner Nina frequently forgot she was there.
As soon as she could, Nina got back to the agreement. “Okay. It says here that the parties hereby agree to keep their separate property separate.”
“Right.”
“So you would get the business, which was in your name. And all the other substantial assets like the mansion, which came later, went into your name.”
“Yes.”
“And what did she get? What was her side?”
“Her salary. Whatever she accumulated in her name, that was hers.”
“What was her salary at the time you signed Exhibit One?”
Mike thinned his lips. “I can’t remember.”
“Well, according to Exhibit Twenty, the business lost money thirteen years ago, the year this was signed. Does that refresh your recollection?”
“Probably wasn’t much of a salary that year. But it got a lot better,” Mike said.
“Yes, but that year she signed the agreement, Mr. Markov, what was she getting out of it? What did you exchange for her giving up her right to any ownership interest in the company?”
“The company wasn’t worth anything, either. Nothing for nothing. That’s about what we exchanged.”
“The company was in the red, but it wasn’t worthless. You still had the name and some equipment, and you opened a gym in Sacramento that year, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did Mrs. Markov get out of the deal?”
Winston leaned over and whispered, “You know what you’re doing?”
“Tell you later,” Nina whispered back. Riesner’s ears had pricked up, but he seemed as in the dark as Winston about where she was going.
“Whatever she had was hers,” Markov said.
“Isn’t it true that you promised that if she gave up her rights to the business, you would marry her?” Nina said.
Riesner stirred, but sat back, apparently unable to justify in his own mind any objection to this line of questioning.
“No,” Markov said. “She may have hoped I would, but it’s not the same thing as me saying the words like that.”
“So you never said the words?”
“Never did.” Markov looked very uncomfortable.
“You just led her to believe you would?”
“She believed what she wanted.”
“Do you consider yourself an honest man, Mr. Markov?”
“Wait a minute-” Riesner said, but Markov was already saying, “That I am.”
“Then I ask you to tell me this, after careful reflection if you need it: did you know that she believed that in exchange for signing this agreement you would marry her?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Read the question back,” Nina told the reporter.
The reporter repeated the question.
“She said, ’Now we can get married,’ “ Markov answered. “I never said it to her. She said it to me.”
“Before or after she signed?”
“I don’t know. Before, I think.”
“This line of questioning is going nowhere,” Riesner interrupted. “There’s no cause of action for breach of promise to marry. Even if he did promise to marry her, so what?”
“That’s true,” Nina said. She looked at the stenographer, who was doing her job, moved on with her questions, and left that interchange with Markov sitting in the deposition transcript like a charge of plastique in a Belfast trash can.
Alice begged Lindy to stay on and see things through from the comfort of her cantaloupe-colored guest room, and Lindy calmed her down with the promise of a return visit during the trial. She couldn’t wait to leave. Everywhere she looked she saw reminders of what she was losing. Even the lake lurking around every corner, running alongside the roads, a hidden presence, seemed tainted by her memories.
On Friday, she located a clothing store willing to sell her used designer clothes on consignment and a jewelry store that offered her two thousand for her twenty thousand dollar watch. She took it.
Back at Alice’s, she threw the dazzling array of fashion she had acquired for all the charity functions and fancy dress parties into four fluff-filled boxes.
Alice came into the room to watch her pack. She had her hands in her pockets, and her chin-length blond-streaked hair framed the tense expression on her face. She dressed as well as she could on a very limited income as a florist. Today she wore a plum-colored blouse with a shawl-length scarf thrown around her shoulders and looked like a million bucks.
“Where are you taking those boxes?” Alice asked. “Not out to the dump site?”
“It’s not a dump, it’s a trailer, a perfectly nice one. I’m storing these… in a shed on the property,” Lindy lied. She didn’t want to admit she was selling them. Alice would be too upset and might just go off into one of her tirades about Mike.
“Why don’t you stay with me? It’s the least I can do for you after all you’ve done for me.”
“Stop talking about that. I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, no. You didn’t do anything,” Alice said, crossing her arms and snorting. “That night I was lying in the bathtub with a razor at my wrist and a bad attitude, you didn’t break in the door and pour Ipecac down my throat until I threw up the pills. You never dragged me out of that party when I knocked out that Italian guy with a bottle of Bushmills, before he woke up enough to kill me. You didn’t pay my rent until I could get a job or help me buy my business. And you had nothing to do with the down payment on this house ’cause you’re just a parasite on society, a real rich bitch, aren’t you?”
“Quit it, Alice. You know I appreciate the offer but right now, I’m so angry and hurt I really need to get out of town before I do something awful. I have these fantasies…” Lindy’s thoughts weren’t good. She had been having nightmares. She thought that out there in the canyon, maybe all that earth and sky would leach the badness out of her like rain washing the dirt. “I’m afraid of myself, sometimes.”
“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” Alice asked. “Don’t go and hurt yourself.”
“No, not myself. Actually, that would be better than what I’m thinking.”
“Oh, you’re stuck in the murder and maim mode that comes right after he makes his announcement about the babe.”
“I guess I am.”
“I used to think of all the ways to kill him, lingering lovingly over the details. How I’d pluck his eyes out and squish them. What I’d do to his you-know-what. How I’d repair that undescended brain of his with a hammer. I’d be worried about you if you weren’t having those thoughts. Mike’s a bastard. My advice is, you go for it, sister. You take out that gun of mine from where you have it hidden and you blow his head off.”
“Alice…”
“Crime of passion. You might serve two, three years, and it’s so worth it. Maybe you’d get lucky like I did and end up in a hospital, supposedly correcting the error of your ways but instead medicated into a state of zombiedom.” She took a scarf off the bed and removed her shawl to try it on, looking at herself in the mirror. “That was pretty restful. No cooking, no cleaning. Hardly any sex.” Removing it, she tossed it into a box. “But you won’t because you are basically a civilized person.”
Lindy did not hate Mike. She hated Rachel. Alice wouldn’t understand that. Alice blamed everything on men. She had recently made friends with her ex-husband Stan’s girlfriend.
“Well, I’m glad you think I’m so civilized,” Lindy said. “And I’m going to work on maintaining that reputation in spite of the baseness of my instincts.”
She dropped the boxes at the cleaners, who agreed to deliver them to the consignment store in a few days. Then, dressed in her oldest, warmest parka, she drove her beautiful black Jag to the top of the Emerald Bay overlook, playing her favorite compact disc, driving slowly, enjoying the ride and wistful at the same time, knowing something beautiful in her life was over and it was too early to be thinking about new beginnings.
Once at the pull-out, she parked, got out, and stepped across the wet granite rocks to Tahoe’s most famous view.
She couldn’t see their house, which was located about a half mile south of the big green bay along the main body of the lake, but every boat that was willing to brave the cold that day she examined, as she had for the past months, looking for Mike. She climbed up the boulders for the highest perch, then stood in a cold wind, until her wet boots nearly froze to the rock.
Back in the car, she drove the Jaguar to a car dealer at the “Y” where the two local highways intersected. He offered twenty-five grand for her sixty thousand dollar car, and threw in an old Jeep in trade. She had very little to move from the Jag to the Jeep, just her battered leather suitcase.
She was close to the plant. Before she left town, she would take one more look at the place that had been her second home for the past dozen years. Turning on the noisy heater of the Jeep, and throwing it groaningly into gear, she drove up Tucker from the “Y” until their factory came into view. If he was telling the truth about abandoning the business, Mike wouldn’t be there today, so she didn’t have to steel herself for a chance encounter for a change.
She parked at the far end of the lot next to the building. Looking smaller than she remembered, their first factory stood on a low hill abutting a stand of fir trees. Its corrugated metal roof and red painted sides made it look more like a barn full of animals than a business, but the second story had windows on each end. The marketing group-three people-and the bookkeeper had offices up there. Mike and Lindy had worked up there occasionally.
Time sure got away from you, she thought, rolling her window down to examine the building for signs of neglect. But the place looked spiffy as ever, and she could hear the hum of a saw, probably doing up a redwood frame for a spa. Business as usual.
They had set the wheels efficiently in motion. She shouldn’t be surprised to see that these wheels continued to turn without them, but she was. All the machinery should halt, shouldn’t it, without her and Mike, the heart, soul, and guts of that business?
Dressed in slacks and a sweater, the petite figure of a woman appeared in the doorway. Rachel Pembroke. That’s right. Rachel and Hector were running things now, weren’t they? What a laugh. Rachel couldn’t count her change from a movie ticket purchase, and worse, had no interest in anything smaller than a hundred dollar bill. Hector was a nice guy who knew his numbers but had the imagination of a stuffed duck.
Wrapping herself up in a sealskin coat, Rachel jumped into her company car, a golden-brown Volvo sedan, and turned left, heading downhill toward town.
Strange how things turned out. Lindy hadn’t even thought about finding Rachel here. But here she was, dumped in Lindy’s lap, just as if Lindy had studied a timetable and plotted logistics. Why Lindy wasn’t even driving her usual car. Nobody would ever suspect Lindy Markov would be caught dead in this rattletrap. She was anonymous. And she couldn’t control the jealousy that rose up so powerfully in her she almost choked.
Lindy gunned the Jeep and followed.
Knowing she shouldn’t, Lindy continued to follow Rachel’s sedan, her stomach churning with emotion.
They had gone about a mile when the strangest thing happened. Rachel’s car started to weave across the center line.
Rachel must realize there was a car behind her, but she couldn’t possibly recognize Lindy behind the wheel in her wool scarf and sunglasses. Meandering down the road with the windows wide open to the cold, Rachel drove on, about two hundred feet ahead of Lindy, probably daydreaming about that day not long from now when she would have everything that belonged-that should still belong-to Lindy.
Lindy didn’t know and didn’t care why she was mindlessly following Rachel, but at a certain point it did occur to her to wonder what came next. She decided to make Rachel pull over. They would have a long-overdue talk. She would say, go back to Harry before it’s too late, before things get really ugly and you get hurt. Rachel might listen. And if she didn’t, Lindy didn’t know what she’d do then. Alice’s gun, tucked into her suitcase on the seat beside her, gave her little comfort. Pushing the case open, she took the gun out, just in case things got crazy.
But suddenly the roving that had appeared merely aberrant gave way to insanity as Rachel veered crazily back and forth along the frozen road. Her car, out of control, sped up, then slowed down, then made a sharp right over an embankment. Like a wasp zooming after a bit of meat, it flew purposefully through the air and vanished.
Lindy slammed her foot on the brake sending her own skidding car straight down the road toward the point where Rachel’s car had vanished over the edge. She knew enough to stop braking and steer into the skid. For a few moments she fought to slow and stop the Jeep. She then sat very still, stunned.
The lonely mountain road stretched ahead in the eerie silence, the snow piled high on both sides in some places. Rachel must have plowed right through a drift and over the side. Lindy, whose heart was pounding so hard she thought she could feel it beating through her sweater, spotted the other car in a ditch off the side of the road, its rear end sticking up into the air, the exhaust pipe spewing fumes.
Stupid, stupid girl! What was with her? She could have killed herself, and Lindy, too! Lindy pulled up about fifty feet from Rachel’s car and sat for a minute more, shaking, giving herself a second to restore her breathing to normal, then jumped out, her mind blank, just moving to keep ahead of the action that had almost overtaken them both.
She got out of the car, forgetting the gun, trying to figure out what to do next, when, out of the dim twilight of forest and trees, Rachel appeared. She was climbing quickly, clumsily up the snowy slope, heading straight for Lindy.
She must have seen Lindy following her, Lindy realized as she moved from one cold foot to the other. So here it came, the dreaded, hoped-for confrontation. And now, something strange. As the figure came closer, she got the distinct impression of a much larger person than Rachel. That must be her own fear blowing Rachel up. In the dimming light, Rachel looked immense, and so dark, dressed in bulky black clothes like a Ninja. And where was her face?
An instant later, Rachel, who had never slowed in her amazingly swift ascent uphill, knocked Lindy down. But Lindy had seen it coming, so she toppled softly into a snowbank. She leaped up, ready for a real round, if that was what Rachel wanted. And that was when another very strange thing happened. Rachel pushed right by her without stopping and ran down the road, faster than Lindy had ever seen the indolent Rachel do anything.
Nonplussed, covered with snow, Lindy stared after the girl until she disappeared around the bend. A few hundred more feet and the idiot would reach Highway 89. There she could flag someone down easily. Maybe she had a concussion or some other brain injury. Or… could she be afraid just at the sight of Lindy? Even though she knew it was disgraceful, Lindy enjoyed a delicious moment of pleasure at the thought.
What now? Get back in the Jeep and chase after her? But Lindy realized Rachel would blame her for the accident. The smart thing for her to do was to leave. Yes, time to go, pretend this had never happened. How humiliating it would be, having to admit she had been trailing Rachel, and she was sure Rachel would blow it up into a lot more. Maybe she just wouldn’t admit it. Truth had its limits.
A keening sound like the cry of an injured animal interrupted her thoughts. She ran over to see what could make a noise so terrible.
The front of the car appeared to be stuck in a snowbank. Rubbing away the snow on the window Lindy saw the strangest thing of all. There was a woman inside in the driver’s seat. Utterly confused at the sight, she stepped back. The woman stirred and she heard that awful sound again.
Lindy tried the handle. The door fell open, and Rachel tumbled out into the snow onto her back, still wearing her sealskin coat. She was semiconscious. Her eyes fluttered. Blood began to flow from somewhere.
Her eyes opened. When they landed on Lindy, she screamed and scrabbled at the snow, trying to use one arm to drag herself backward.
“Let me help you,” Lindy said, but Rachel’s eyes bulged out and she tried to shriek again and then her eyes closed and she stopped moving. Had she fainted? Was she dead? Lindy bent closer to find out.
A big black Ford Ranger came down the road from the direction of the plant, and Lindy recognized the driver as George Demetrios. Within seconds George came running. “What happened?” he asked, panting.
“I don’t know,” Lindy said. “Do you have a phone in the truck?” While George ran back to call an ambulance, Lindy sat in the snow beside Rachel. She wanted to do something, so she lifted Rachel’s head very gently off the snow and put it in her lap.
She had a dizzy, disoriented feeling. The sun shot bright ice picks through her sunglasses. Her scarf and one mitten had fallen off and the snow burned her hand. A few feet away, the forest turned dark and mysterious again. Rachel’s face seemed to shine in its ghostly sleep, so young and pretty, almost virginal-looking in its freshness.
A thought struck her. Here was Rachel in her arms. So who was the other one? The Rachel who ran?
Had Lindy run Rachel off the road? Maybe Rachel had recognized her car, felt Lindy’s fury behind her, and in her own fear had run her own car over the edge after all.
The figure running up the hill must have been a passerby, nothing more.
She heard a siren. George appeared on the side of the road. “Get the hell out of here, Lindy,” he shouted. “This doesn’t look so good. Let me take care of things from here.”
Propping Rachel’s head over a soft part of the sealskin coat, Lindy grabbed her scarf and mittens and ran all the way up the hill to her Jeep, pulling away just as the ambulance arrived.
At ten Monday morning, on a threatening day with clouds billowing day with clouds billowing over the western mountains, Rachel Pembroke entered Nina’s conference room looking as if she’d stepped off the runway at a New York fashion show. The dress was Isaac Mizrahi, the shoes Manolo Blahnik. The perfume made you want to lean in and breathe deep. Her long black hair gleamed like an oil strike, geysering down the front of her dress. A diamond on her left hand flashed prisms of expensive light. She was young, beautiful, and about to be very, very rich.
Everyone had heard about her trip to the emergency room on Friday afternoon, and that she had told the police she was convinced that Lindy was involved in some plot to harm her, but the only obvious sign of her troubles was a long scratch on one cheek. Apparently, Nina thought, Rachel was the kind of person who came out fighting.
Genevieve followed her to the conference table, looking understated in a sensible wool suit with a rose-colored blouse. She laid her notepads and pens out neatly on the table in front of her. Winston was a no-show. He and Genevieve must have decided to alternate on the depositions. Riesner had called to say he was running late.
“Oh, hi,” said Rachel to Genevieve, peering at herself in a silver-backed mirror, obviously mistaking the woman at her side for a secretary. “I’m dying for some coffee. Think you could get me some?”
Nina paused at the door to see how Genevieve would respond. Up came the curly head. “How do you take it?” Genevieve asked sweetly. “In your lap or on your head?”
Rachel snapped her compact shut. “Excuse me?”
Genevieve laughed lightly. She held out her hand, which Rachel shook, looking confused. “Forgive me for not introducing myself to you right away. I’m Genevieve Suchat, jury consultant for the other side.”
She held on, and apparently pressed a little hard, because Rachel gave out a teeny squeal and pulled sharply away. “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to offend you,” Rachel said, massaging her hand.
“Oh, God, no. I’m sure you didn’t,” Genevieve said, with a false smile.
Genevieve put her vexation with Rachel into one word during the lunch hour, as they walked down the snowy path that led from the office into the Truckee marsh now piling with snow. “Flaunting,” she said, her Southern accent very pronounced. She seemed most Southern when she was most upset. “Don’t you just hate flaunting?” She kicked at a loose clod of hardened snow. “Must drive Lindy Markov insane, seeing Rachel dolled up like that in clothes only Mike could afford.”
“She’s going to be tough for us,” Nina said. “I already told you I think she’s very convincing. According to her, Mike makes every major decision.”
“Naturally, she says that. She’s his girlfriend.”
“But she sounds so reasonable,” Nina said. “She’s full of facts and figures. She remembers specifics the rest of them have forgotten all about. She’s very personable and very professional, once she starts testifying. And she also comes across as being so understanding of Lindy’s situation. I hated the way she so magnanimously excused Lindy for attacking her the night of Mike’s party.”
“She ought to get that plane ticket early.”
“Plane ticket? For what?”
“The Oscars,” said Genevieve, and they both laughed. “She’s got a lock on Best Actress for next year.”
“Her believability makes our job harder.”
“I’m watchin’ her,” Genevieve said. “I’m studyin’ every eyelash on that gal. I’m going to help you prepare for her testimony at trial. And when we get done, Miss Rachel’s going to look like a ten dollar hooker at the Tailhook convention.”
“Well,” Nina said. “I don’t know. That kind of approach might backfire. I don’t feel comfortable with all these stereotypes. Like-Mike’s the man, so he ran the company and Lindy helped. Or Lindy’s the greedy, cast-off mistress. Let Riesner rely on those old stereotypes. I don’t want to sink to that.”
Genevieve rolled her eyes. “Nina, I know it’s a temptation. I’ve seen it a thousand times. The lawyer wants to state the logical, honest truth of the matter. But that’s all head stuff. You don’t win the heart of the jury appealing to their reason. And if you don’t win the heart of the jury, you go home with a hole in your pocket.”
This statement made Nina stop and turn to face Genevieve. “That’s all I know how to do, Genevieve. I don’t want the jury to decide based on sentiment. I want them to decide based on the-”
“Oh, honey, you have so much to learn. You want to make that big fee or not?”
“Of course I do. I just-”
“Well, I’m going to make sure you do. Now let’s go back to that primped-up thing and wipe the fifty dollar lipstick off that smart mouth of hers.”
Over the weekend, Lindy had holed up in her trailer, tying up personal business, paying bills, lying on the couch, and gazing out the window at the cloudless sky. She expected Rachel to accuse her. She expected to be arrested.
Tuesday afternoon, when no one had come, she broke down and rode Comanche to the little store. There, she changed a few bills for quarters and went to the phone to call George Demetrios at the plant. He wasn’t there anymore, a coworker told her, but she had a number at home which Lindy tried.
She hated having to call George. He had a crush on her, and she didn’t like to encourage him. Still, it was lucky George had come along when he did out there on the snowy hillside. Or had it been luck?
“Hey, Lindy. How are you?” George asked with real concern.
“Fine, George. But why aren’t you at work?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“I got canned.”
“What? You’ve been with us for five years! Mike has lost his marbles. How can they fire you?”
“Oh, he had nothing to do with it. It was Pembroke got me fired.”
“But… she doesn’t have a lot to do with manufacturing directly, does she?”
“I don’t know what she does. I just know she talked with my boss, and the next thing I knew I was out on my… fired.”
Picturing his thick lips and olive skin, she thought for a moment. “You think they did this because of what happened on the road?”
She could almost hear his brain chugging around the idea. “Maybe, so,” he said.
“How is Rachel?”
“She’s okay.”
“George, how is it you happened along when you did? Were you following me?”
“I guess I was,” he said.
“Why?”
There was a long silence. “I saw you at the plant,” he said. “I saw you take off after Rachel.”
“Oh.”
“I just didn’t want you to get into any stupid kind of trouble.”
Although the scene had been the cause of several sleepless nights, the idea of her following Rachel and George following her up the snowy road suddenly struck her as terribly comical. She stifled an urge to laugh. You just never knew what people were going to do, did you? “What happened after I left?”
“They hauled her off to the hospital. She had a few cuts and bruises, nothing big. Then the police came to interview me because she said you were stalking her.”
“She did? Wow.” Could just one time be called stalking?
“She starts in on this story that you were in the car with her and told her to pull over. That you pulled a knife on her.”
“In the car with her? But I wasn’t!”
“Yeah. Said she drove off the road because she was scared to death and hit her head on the steering wheel. But she looked okay.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I set them straight, told them I saw it happen and there wasn’t no one there but her.”
“Oh, George.”
“Everyone knows things aren’t so hot between you and her. I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I knew it wasn’t you. You left in that Jeep you were driving. How could you have been in the car with her?”
“You lied for me, George. You shouldn’t have done that. What do the police think?”
“They didn’t believe her. She’s got her picture in the newspaper all the time. They thought maybe she just wanted to get back in the paper and wanted to make you look bad. Anyhow, that’s how I got fired.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Lindy.
“The place is a mess without you and Mike running things, anyway. Maybe it was time for me to move on. But I should tell you… people’ve been saying things. You know how they are. They don’t mean you any harm.”
Lindy felt touched. You could never buy George’s kind of loyalty.
“But I did hear one guy swearing he saw you in the parking lot by the plant,” George went on, “just sitting there like you was waiting for someone to come out. So I fixed that.”
“You didn’t hurt him?”
“Lindy, I don’t do that anymore since you got me into that program,” he said, pained. “I just talk to people, like the counselor taught us to do. I told him he must be dreaming and made sure he believed me. You got better things to do than come round here harassing somebody.”
“George… thank you. I’m so sorry about your job.”
“Oh, I’m working with my brother at his cabinet shop, learning a few things, having a pretty good time.”
“I’m glad.”
“Say, maybe you and I could… I don’t know. Hit the slots one night? Go ice-skating? Would you like that?”
“You’re so nice, trying to buck me up. But, no, George.”
“I thought it might be that way,” he said. “Well, I hope somehow things work out with you and Mike. Meanwhile, you just let me know if you need anything, ’cause I’m your man.”
“Promise me you won’t follow me anymore, not even for my own good. I don’t need a protector.”
“If you say so.”
She could tell from the tone of his voice he didn’t believe her. What a sweetheart.
A mechanical voice came on the line, demanding more coins. Lindy searched her pockets, but before she could insert another quarter, she heard George hanging up.
As she climbed into the saddle and steered Comanche up the slushy road, she recalled meeting George. One windy day after he’d first been hired, he’d thrown a punch at the foreman, Bill Henderson. Henderson wanted him fired, and the resulting in-house investigation turned up a record on George. He had served two years for assaulting his sister’s husband.
When confronted, he admitted the conviction, but said that his sister’s husband had been beating her. “I tried talking to him,” George had said when she asked him about it. “He’s just not the type who listens so good.”
Lindy had involved him in a transition group for ex-offenders, calmed Henderson down with a little money under the table, and won George’s allegiance forever.
Easing off her horse, she walked Comanche to his quarters next to the trailer, breathing in the dry air and feeling invigorated from the exercise she was getting. Casting a pleased glance toward the palette of brown and purple in the distant mountains, she began brushing Comanche, starting with the front of his head and working her way across his velvety shoulders, wondering, who had attacked Rachel? That had been no publicity stunt.
At least the cops weren’t going to show up at the trailer. But George’s comments about the business had worried her, and that got her thinking about the trial.
As she brushed, she had a wild idea. Alice. That gave her a good laugh. Alice the avenger, dressed in black, minus the high heels. Hard to believe, she thought.
But if not Alice-who?
On a solid gray day in February, almost three months before their trial date, Nina convened the shadow jury of six women and six men in the extra-large conference room down the hall from the offices that she had rented especially for the event. This cross-section of the community would help them to determine who to look for in the jury selection for the real trial.
First went Winston, who launched into the opening statement that he and Nina had spent the past week drafting. This process alone had been valuable for Nina as they honed the enormous collection of facts and legal points in order to make the opening statement work. They wanted pith, or the jury would lose sight of the forest. They wanted to anticipate Riesner’s opening statement. They wanted to awaken sympathy and respect for Lindy.
They had finally decided that Winston would make two points and two points only: that Lindy had an equal part in building and running the business, and that the separate property agreement was invalid because Lindy had given property on the basis or assumption that a marriage would take place.
The witness parade for the shadow jury, which proceeded much more quickly than in a real trial, began midmorning. The mock Lindy and mock Mike performed admirably, trying to give the dry words on paper in front of them some kind of truth without hamming it up.
“It’s goin’ great, isn’t it Nina?” Genevieve asked during the lunch break, as they walked across the street to the deli.
“Mmm,” said Nina, who had watched the morning’s proceeding with a growing mixture of confusion, fascination, and abhorrence. Rehearsals and theater had never been her thing. Why couldn’t they just go for a conscientious jury and let the strength of the facts carry the day? Why all this showbiz?
Because she wanted to win.
Still, in her view, the name “shadow jury” was the closest thing to accurate so far this morning. These witnesses had no substance. The shadow trial bore only a remote resemblance to a real trial. Where was Lindy’s forlorn disappointment? Where was Mike’s anger? Where was the place where all their plans went awry because someone lied or changed his story and the lawyers scrambled madly to regain control of the uncontrollable?
“You’re not buying this yet,” Genevieve observed. “Fine. Just wait until you see my recommendations.”
“Maybe I’m just a little nervous about my performance in the summation this afternoon. I’m going through my usual freak-out at the thought of a trial, even a fake one.”
They found a place at the counter and Genevieve insisted on ordering strangely named rye sandwiches. While Nina looked over her script, Genevieve chatted with the waitress, who agreed to put on a fresh pot of coffee, and the two reminisced about growing up in New Orleans and eating beignet, with Genevieve sounding relaxed and happy.
“Eat.” Genevieve intruded suddenly on Nina’s thoughts, pushing a ruffled-lettuce-rimmed sandwich toward Nina. “You’re going to love this.”
Smoked turkey with pickles and mustard. Nina ate it anyway.
“I almost forgot,” Nina said as they paid and stepped across the street through a frigid breeze. “Lindy Markov wants to meet with you again.”
“Yes, I already heard. She’s been pesterin’ me. Wants to know all about the jury selection process. We’re meeting tonight for dinner. You come, too.”
“Sorry. She’s not an easy client. She gets too involved,” Nina said. “But I can’t make it. I’ve got plans. It’d be better if you don’t talk about specifics, okay, Genevieve?” Meanwhile Nina would be slipping into a bath, a meditation, a moment with Bob, and then over to a meeting with someone she hadn’t seen for far too long.
“You don’t want me to talk about the case with her?”
“I realize it’s probably protected by the attorney-client privilege even if I’m not there. But I don’t want to take a chance. I’ve had trouble with that kind of thing before.”
“You’re in charge.” Genevieve sounded slightly exasperated. It had to be hard for her, Nina thought, with her personality, to consult instead of lead. She had the same confidence in her abilities, the same close involvement in the case as Nina herself, but she wasn’t a lawyer. Genevieve drifted in and out of one of those tangential quasi-legal consultant positions that hadn’t existed a few years ago. Cutting-edge, yes, but not anchored by tradition or much experience, either.
When they reached the conference room door, dozens of curious eyes watched them enter. Genevieve fielded smiles all around. Nina caught a few nods of wary respect.
She needed to smile more, like Genevieve.
After dinner Nina helped Bob set up his school books on the kitchen table. Setting the sound on the disc player strictly to low volume, she drove back to the office to meet Paul. By now she felt beat and wished they had put it off until the next day, but she had promised. And she did want to see him.
A week before, Paul had called her. After rehashing his disappointment that she had not been able to join him in Washington over the holidays, he told her he was on hiatus from his work there while some unexpected construction glitches got resolved, and had tied up some Carmel business, so he could make himself available. He had driven up that afternoon in his van and checked into his second home at Caesar’s to look into Mike Markov’s business and background and locate witnesses who would testify that Mike had presented Lindy publicly and on numerous private occasions as his wife.
Nina had missed him, but didn’t like thinking about that. Did she love him? She asked herself now and then. She had been in love twice, with Bob’s father years ago, a feeling now over and only dimly resonant, and with Jack McIntyre, whom she had married. But five years later she and Jack had decided to call it quits. Her recent divorce from Jack still hurt a lot. She wanted to live quietly with Bob and build her practice here, until all emotional pain floated away down the Truckee River.
On the other hand, she was a young healthy female who got lonely at times. She wanted something, just not that crazy fool emotion that sends the rest of life spinning into outer space. Paul had his faults. He could be an overbearing jerk, actually, but then he could be a strong shoulder to lean on and a buoyant heart when things looked bleak.
The evenings spent in her four-poster bed or in Paul’s various hotel rooms always held the hint of adventure, an unpredictability, a romantic sheen. She imagined he could now see the advantages of their relationship, too. Even though he had his consulting work in Washington, D.C., he was still available to her and didn’t talk much about the future. He had quit pressing her on the point of marriage and settled into this trysting thing rather well, she thought.
In the small library-conference room next to her office, Paul was waiting, drinking a cup of coffee. “Hey, lovely lawyer-woman,” Paul said. He set his cup down and put his arms around her.
“Hi, Paul,” she said, allowing herself to disappear for just a moment into his chest and let his heat surround her. “How have things been in Washington?”
“Almost as cold as they have been up here,” he said, playing with her earring. “It’s been slow. Lots of delays because of the weather.”
“You know what? I’m really happy to see you!” she said.
“Ditto,” Paul said, smiling at her.
“I missed you.”
“Me, too.”
“You missed yourself?” she asked.
“Don’t be cute.”
She stepped back from him. “We need to get right down to it tonight.”
“Good idea!” he said. “Let’s entirely dispense with the preliminaries. Where will it be this time, the floor, this big wide chair, or hey, here’s this nice long, comfy table…” He patted it, pushing files over to one side. “A little scratchy. But you’ve got a tough little rear end…”
“Do me a favor.”
“Anything, as long as it involves those delectably painted toes of yours.”
“Can you please disperse that fog of lust you hang around in long enough to tell me what you’ve found out?”
“It’s more entertaining than you think in here.”
“Come on, now.”
He planted a final kiss on her nose and took a chair. Nina sat opposite.
“Oh, before we start, I forgot to ask.” Nina messed with the papers on the table in front of her and tried to keep her tone casual. “Have you made up your mind about the job yet? I mean, it sounds like a great opportunity.” She had spent more than a few long nights pondering the job he had been offered on the East Coast, finally deciding she should encourage him to do what was best for him. That was the right way to care for a good friend like Paul. “You’d probably be a fool to turn it down. You’re in the prime of life, at the height of your profession…”
“Wait a minute. Last time we talked, I’d be selling my soul to take that job.” He sounded more than a little annoyed.
“Well, you would be,” she said lightly. “I’m just trying to say the right thing here, Paul. I don’t want to be selfish and hold you back. On the other hand, I want you to make the decision that is right for you.”
“I see,” he said, looking at her with an expression she could not interpret. “Well, I’m playing it cool. I haven’t said one way or another.”
“You haven’t turned it down?”
“No.”
“I was just wondering,” Nina said.
“I’ll let you know when I decide,” he said.
“Oh, good.”
There was a short pause. Nina looked for something in her briefcase and Paul looked at her. “So how did the pseudo-trial go today?” he asked finally.
“Alarming. Provocative,” Nina said quickly, eager to move on in the conversation. “Not that our substitute Riesner looks or acts anything like Jeff Riesner at all. He’s an attorney friend of mine named Rufus who can talk the same talk, but has an entirely different effect on me. He sounds darned reasonable. I can’t speak for the pseudo-jury.”
Paul grinned. “That dirty rat Riesner. Just your luck to get him on the other side.”
“But who better to represent Mike Markov? In court, he’s pure, scorched-earth aggressiveness. He’s going to have the jury believing they have to strike down this evil, predatory female. ’She can’t let go.’ Something like that will be his pitch. Oh, if it was only someone besides him. Someone decent like Rufus. I win, I take him out to lunch. With Riesner, I win, I watch my back.”
“So who won the case today?”
“Well, you have to understand. First, this shadow trial is a pretty pale rendering of the real thing. It lacked several real elements. Drama. Passion. Tedium. Andrea was Lindy. She laughed a few times in the wrong places, and Winston had a handkerchief hanging out of his back pocket like a fluffy little tail for the longest time that nobody even noticed except the jury. I guarantee that won’t happen at trial.”
“Where was your notoriously clever jury consultant during this kinky event?”
“Quietly running the show from the sidelines. Generating these statistical models she likes so much. I reminded her she promised to protect me from that stuff, so now we skip to the generalizations. Anyway, we started by running through the testimony, at least the way they think the testimony will be presented at this point. As I figured, the stickiest mess was the one relating to that separate property agreement Lindy supposedly signed one fine evening, Rufus’s favorite toy and probably Riesner’s when the real time comes.”
“And?”
“In our first opening and closing arguments, we emphasized the promises made verbally, that unofficial wedding ceremony they went through years ago, the assumptions and expectations of the parties.”
“How’d your jury like that?”
“They didn’t. We lost. We ran through another version, where we stressed Lindy’s role at the company and kept up the attack on the agreement. That one seemed to ring the right bell. Our second approach proved more persuasive. We won, sort of. They awarded her twenty-five percent of the net worth of the stock.”
“Surprised?”
“Not really. I felt all along that Lindy’s work would make or break her case. That’s a visible thing. We can point to real evidence of her contributions, evidence of Mike’s reliance on her, evidence of her regular participation in big business decisions, evidence that directly links her efforts to the success of the corporation.”
Paul nodded.
“After it was all over, before collapsing into a heap, Winston, Genevieve, and I did a quickie analysis and discovered things were exactly as Genevieve had predicted based on her preliminary research, questionnaires, and statistical models. We had a sexual Armageddon on our hands. The men initially sided with Mike, the women with Lindy. Of course, that picture changed as we got into our arguments, and that’s another place Genevieve comes in. She needs some time now to go over the results along with some questionnaires and interviews she’ll be conducting over the next couple of days. Then she’ll write up specific recommendations.”
“So is any of this going to help you win?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Do you believe in this, Nina? Shouldn’t you just put your best case on, and hope the unpredictable crowd somehow fumbles its way to justice? People aren’t cattle. You can’t presume to predict which cereal they’ll choose on a given day.”
“Rice Krispies for Andrea, Raisin Bran for Matt, Lucky Charms for Bob, and Grape Nuts for me, pretty much every day except Sunday. So don’t be so sure, Paul.” Nina found a fresh piece of paper and poised a pen above it. “Now, let’s go over where you are.”
His notes neatly arrayed on the side opposite hers, Paul ran a hand through hair that looked blonder than ever and longer than Nina remembered. He had accumulated an extensive file on Mike Markov, which held a lot of detail about his long friendship with Galka and recent indiscretions with Rachel. He was also working with a woman in the marketing department at Markov Enterprises who thought she remembered a video from a sales show made a few years before that might help them nail Mike in a lie at trial.
“And here’s something you might not know. Rachel is still friendly with her ex-beau Harry Anderssen. Sees him once in a while for dinner, without Markov.”
“The male model?”
“That’s right. She lived with him for years and picked up most of the tab because his income has always been erratic, except during the time he worked at Markov. I’d say their financial involvement goes way back.”
“Harry Anderssen,” Nina said, nodding. She told him what she had witnessed between Harry and Mike outside of the courthouse the day of the hearing.
“Not a surprise that he’s pissed she’s leaving him for Mike.”
“We already figured he’d be on our side. My God, Paul. You think she’ll go back to him?”
“At the moment, she seems determined to stick it out with Markov. But apparently Harry’s no stranger to violence. Sounds like he restrained himself out there with Mike. Before he took up modeling and cleaned up his image, he was a bodybuilder who specialized in street fights. Maybe Harry’s putting on a show for Rachel, hoping he can tap into the gravy train even after she marries Markov. Was she there to see the argument?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
They spent almost another hour looking through what he had and discussing the list of chores Nina had put together for him.
When they were finally finished, it was past nine. They had drunk all the Cokes and it was snowing again. She needed to get back to Bob, who was alone at home. Paul also looked ready to call it a day. He had begun a tap-tap-tapping with his foot that suddenly sounded very loud.
“What’s the matter, Paul?” She pointed down.
“Huh?” Noticing, he stopped his foot. “It’s just-never mind.”
“No, come on. Tell me.”
“Okay,” he said, reluctantly. “Keep in mind, you asked. Now here we have a woman who has enjoyed the pampered existence for years because of this man’s success with his business. Pools, castles, servants, the whole bit.”
“She had a big hand in the business.”
“Yes, that’s right. And, according to you, she was paid a salary for her work. Now, let’s try to look at this objectively. They lived together without being married, in spite of her frequently expressed interest in marriage, ergo, she had to know he never wanted to marry her. She agreed to the deal.”
That last sentence sounded like an awfully good mantra for Jeff Riesner. Nina hoped he’d never think of it.
“But she claims that he held out marriage as bait several times, most crucially when he forced her to sign that paper,” Nina said.
“So your strategy is going to be that she’s a poor victim of this bully? I mean, this guy is obviously just trying to protect his assets. Maybe he gets a scent of what’s coming, and he wants to reassert the deal they had all along, that they would keep their assets separate. And she signs it. He doesn’t hold a whip on her, he asks her to do it and she does it. He puts it away in a drawer. Because he never intended to marry her, simple as that.”
Paul went on, his face reddening slightly. “Does she run to a lawyer to protest this forcible signing of a contract? No, she does not. Now, years later, she says she’s forgotten all about signing it but that if she did, he must have promised he’d marry her in return. It’s too convenient. If he said that, I’ll eat my shorts.”
“You have no idea what he said. The things that go on between two people are complicated,” Nina said. “How can you begin to know what the dynamics were that night?”
“Okay, let’s go even further back. From the start she knew damn good and well what she was getting in Mike Markov. A person who refused legal ties with her. A man who was very up-front about his feelings.”
Nina shook her head. “What she knew is not the issue. What she anticipated or hoped for isn’t either. The question is, what are her rights under the law? Did they have a contract? Did she agree to forfeit her rights to their business in return for a promise of marriage? These are fine legal points. She operated as his wife for many years, working with him, building up a company, sharing everything with him.”
“Except that for all those years they were together, the bottom line is that they never married. The man put his assets in his own name and she agreed to it.”
“That may be true, but…”
“Lady love, it is so true.”
Nina hadn’t even noticed how angry she was getting, but she knew it now. “I’d better make a note for Genevieve. You’re exactly the guy we don’t want on the jury. A man with two ex-wives and a gripe.”
“Hey, my sweet-faced petunia, my wives never took me to the cleaners.”
“If your prejudices and your professional attitude are clashing too much, let me know so I can hire less-troubled help. Oh, and please. Call me Nina. Even ’boss’ is beginning to sound good.”
“It’s obvious what’s happening here. She can’t have him anymore, so she wants plenty of the next best thing, hard cash,” said Paul with an obstinate look in his eye. “And so do you.”
Nina threw her files into a case and snapped it shut. “I’m damn tired. I’ve had a long day. I’m going home.”
“Hey, wait a minute. You’re not going to let a little disagreement ruin the evening? Come out and have a nightcap.” He tried to catch her by the arm, but she twisted away. “Look, I’m sorry. I had a long drive-”
“Paul,” she said, walking out the door, “quit attacking my motives. I’m an advocate for this woman in a legal case. She has every right to decent, thoughtful representation. She has every right to present her claim in court.”
“Decent and thoughtful, huh?” he said, stomping after her to the front door. He followed her all the way out to the parking lot. “If that’s the way you see yourself, why are you so touchy the instant I disagree with you? Huh? Tell me that. You’re usually so levelheaded.”
She climbed into the Bronco and turned on the headlights and wipers. Snow began to settle on his hair. “Okay, then I’ll tell you why,” he said. “There’s too much money here. It’s twisting you up. It’s coming between us. You’re being a hypocrite, and you’re letting all those dollar bills blow over your eyes and make you blind.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said. As she drove away, she watched him in her rearview mirror, standing with his hands in his pockets, letting the snow pile onto his shoulders, still as a snowman.
Later, buried in the warm nest of her down comforter, her anger dissipated and her humor returned. Why, I’ll be damned, she thought. She and Paul were no different than the shadow jurors. Their emotional loyalty lay with their own sex, and that was that. She didn’t like the thought that followed, that Genevieve could easily have predicted their argument, right down to Paul’s descent into name-calling there at the end.
“Lots of lawyers have intuitive theories about jury selection,” Genevieve said. She had organized a meeting to discuss the shadow jury’s recommendations. It was late Saturday morning, and after changing the timetable to suit him, even Winston agreed to attend. They had so much to do before May that they had begun keeping long hours at the office. He let everyone know that one thing he would not do was neglect his exercise. Here he was in Tahoe and he intended to enjoy it, get out there and run in the morning even in the dead of winter, and when the weather nicened up, do some boating and swimming.
Beyond the picture window in the office across from Nina’s where Winston and Genevieve had moved in, the winter sun glared off wet new snow. Icicles twinkled on treetops, melting.
Winston smothered a yawn, and looked at his watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but can we speed things up here? I’ve got a few things to do today.” He wore sweats, and his pet radio, a compact, enigmatic-looking black box the size of a thick wallet, lay on the table in front of him. His hair glistened, still dewy from the shower he had taken after his run.
“As I was saying. Clarence Darrow thought about culture and religions when he looked for friendly jurors. For example, he liked the Irish for the defense, and excused Scandinavians whenever he could. He thought they had altogether too much admiration for the law. The San Francisco attorney Mel Belli had a whole system worked out for himself. He divided people up by their occupations. For the defense, he’d pick a waiter over a salesperson, or a doctor over a secretary.”
“But not us,” Winston said. “We don’t do intuitive anymore.”
Genevieve went on as if he hadn’t spoken. Gone today was the country-fried humor and the ole girl persona. Though the Southern accent didn’t change, when she talked about her area of expertise, it toned down considerably. Genevieve even looked a little nervous. Today was her day to show she was worth the money Nina had been paying her. At two hundred an hour, her billings this month had been horrendous.
“Of course, everyone’s got funny ideas about race,” Genevieve went on. “Conventional wisdom has always held that African Americans will vote for the plaintiff if it’s a civil case, and vote for the defendant if it’s criminal. Asian Americans are said to be easily persuaded by the majority on a jury, and Hispanics tend to be passive.”
“Not everyone,” said Winston. “I know better.”
“Will you kindly let me finish?” asked Genevieve.
“C’mon, Winston, quit teasing. Give her a break,” Nina said. Winston folded his arms in front of him and leaned back in his chair.
“Males favor women, females favor handsome young men. Females tend not to look kindly upon other females,” Genevieve continued firmly. “Conventional wisdom.”
“Bosh,” said Winston. “Fairy tales. You know what Alexander Pope said about your precious jurors? ’Witches hang that jurymen may dine.’ Now that’s the truth. That’s the reality.”
“I agree,” said Genevieve.
“You agree?” asked Winston.
“We have to forget about conventional wisdom. People today are going to be influenced by culture, religion, TV, current events, and yes, even the state of their stomachs-our lives aren’t as narrow as they used to be. We’ll need to make our choices based on very pragmatic considerations. For example, here’s a simple recommendation for you from our panel, Nina. Lighten up.”
“You’re not the first to recommend it, but what exactly do you mean?” asked Nina.
“I’m talking about the color and style of your clothing. The big shoulders, the severe suits make you look authoritative, but they’d rather you persuaded them more softly. Go for something quite neutral with a hint of warmth. A taupey-peach. Pastels mixed with beiges. You need to emphasize the feminine in this trial. This is a case about a woman, don’t forget, and it’s classic in the sense that it’s a woman who’s getting shafted by a man.”
“Taupey-peach? You’ve got to be kidding,” Nina said.
“Other impressions were fairly uniform. They thought you seemed quite professional. They liked your manner, except that they find you too reserved.”
More smiling, Nina reminded herself, practicing.
Winston said, “What about me?”
“You know you’re good, Win. You started off well. They liked the simple statements of fact, and they liked it that you didn’t raise your voice or get emotional on them. But once you got past the essentials, I’m afraid you wandered too far afield and lost them.”
“Oh?”
“They didn’t want to hear in dollars and cents how much Lindy made, how much she should have made, how much they made when they started out, their current per annum income before taxes. What’s at stake is so ungodly huge, it doesn’t compute compared to ordinary experience. So we don’t talk about specific amounts. We just say, she ought to get half.”
“Don’t want them thinking about how much each one of the Markovs blows on car wax each month,” said Winston.
“That’s right,” said Genevieve, snapping open her briefcase. She handed out to each of them a report fastened inside transparent binding. “These are all my suggestions, based on telephone interviews, the demographics, the shadow jury comments, the focus groups, and so on.” At twenty-five pages long, it barely fit inside its binding. Winston picked it up and let his arm drop to his side heavily, pretending he couldn’t even hold it up.
“I’ve spoken with Lindy and told her to lose the beautiful clothes, let some of the gray show in her hair and not to be afraid to show her feelings on the stand,” Genevieve said. “This is no time for discretion.”
“She doesn’t strike me as someone who’s going to have a problem with discretion. The opposite, maybe,” said Winston.
“She needs to be warned about appearing bitter or vengeful. These are qualities our jurors derided. Andrea, playing Lindy, got a little too angry when she talked about Mike. The right mood seems to be wistful and sad for Lindy, whereas we need to be very matter-of-fact. We should be perceived as advocates who are just stating the bald facts, not too pushy, just cognizant of the weight of evidence we have that proves our case.
“Nina, when you talk with Lindy about her testimony, be sure you go over that with her. Make sure she knows how important it is to be consistent in the exact language about what was said, and make sure she uses the phrase ’expressly promised me,’ especially when it comes to that promise made in consideration stuff.
“Go over her deposition with her until she knows better than to contradict it. Our shadow felt that there were some contradictions in what Andrea said. I’ve made notes on those statements, and I know you’ll want to look them over with Lindy, so that we can be perfectly clear this time around.
“Oh, and I’m afraid the ’wedding vows’ they exchanged in lieu of a legal marriage made a poor impression. On the whole, our shadows didn’t feel it was important. We can’t ignore the fact that a religious juror might find it significant, but we should probably only touch on this event.
“Now, regarding the statement from Lindy that he repeatedly made her all those promises. The men found that humorous and pitiful, I’m sorry to say.”
“What about the women?” Nina asked.
“With the right approach, barring a hard-sell leader from the opposition, the women can be persuaded to stick with our side. One problem we’re left with is not to antagonize the men. We’ll talk more about that before the trial. Oh, and here’s another point suggested by one of the shadow jurors: We might hint that maybe Mike would have failed without Lindy. After all, before he met her, he wasn’t doing well at all.”
Nina said, “That’s good. I hadn’t thought of that. You’ve done a nice job, Genevieve. Let’s talk more after I get a chance to read the whole thing.”
“I second that motion. Hey, Genny,” Winston said. “We finished here for now? Want to see what’s lucky today at the craps table back at the hotel?” He said over his shoulder to Nina, “Can’t even get close on weekend nights. Too many people.”
Genevieve said, “Give me ten minutes. I have to find something I stuck away somewhere under all the garbage on my desk.”
“I’ll wait, then.”
“You brought me over this morning. You better wait.” She went to her desk in the corner and sifted through the disorder.
“Well, I’d better go now if I’m going to catch Bob’s basketball game over at the school,” Nina said, checking her watch. “Bye.” She went out to the parking lot of the empty building and started feeling around in her purse. No keys. She must have left them on her desk. She walked rapidly back and down the long dark hallway to her office and found them. Now that she was here, she decided she might as well pick up Lindy’s deposition to take with her, but after a cursory search, she couldn’t find it. Maybe Winston had a copy she could borrow.
Without knocking on the door to his office, she opened it and looked inside. Letting out a yelp, she jumped backward.
Winston had Genevieve on the ground, her body pressed down on the rug below him. Her arms looped around his neck, and her skirt had worked its way up to the top of her thighs.
It was some kiss.
Nina watched Bob’s basketball game without seeing much. Her mind’s eye was stuck on the image of Winston and Genevieve on the rug. They had jumped up when she came in, offering a weak apology that had done nothing to ease the jolt they had given her. She hadn’t realized they were involved with each other-in that way. They weren’t kids! They should have known not to carry on at the office.
Blanching at the the piercing sound of squeaking shoes, she sat in the bleachers beside the other parents in the gym, shouting, whistling, and stomping when the others did. She had brought the team snack, and after they won their third victory in a row, the boys ran for her and she slapped the fruit drinks and miniature bagels she had picked up on the way into their clammy hands.
At home, Bob showered and changed. Nina picked up a friend of his and dropped them at the movies, then headed for Caesar’s and the long elevator ride to Paul’s digs on the tenth floor.
She knocked three times before getting an answer.
“Well, look who’s here,” said Paul.
No smile. No embrace.
He opened the door wide. He wore gray athletic shorts and he was drying his hair with a towel. Humid air from the shower floated into the hall.
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside, beckoning. “Take a seat,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
“That would be straight whiskey, then.”
“Fine.”
He poured her a glass from the pint bottle on the table and handed it over, then sat down across from her, wrapping the towel around his shoulders so he looked like a model in a men’s wear ad, right down to his trendily surly expression. He must have been working out on the Nautilus machines in the health club several floors down.
“I’m sorry,” said Nina.
“Are you,” said Paul.
“I don’t know why I’ve been in such a mood. In my own defense, I can only say I was insane.”
“The insanity defense never works in California. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“You have a right to your opinion of the case. I know you’ll do a good job for me either way.”
Paul took a longer drink than usual. She took that to mean he needed fortifying. He hadn’t forgiven her yet. “What’s bothering you?”
“Right now, your shirtless self. The smell of soap wafting off of your body. The tan line where your socks usually stop.”
The shadow of a smile flickered on his face. “Don’t stop there.”
“Can we start over, please?”
Paul gave his hair a final thoughtful ruffling with the towel, and she thought she could see satisfaction in his eyes. He was enjoying this uncustomarily abject attitude of hers.
Well, fine. He had a right. “I need you,” she said. “Not just for the investigation, but to talk to, Paul.”
“I ought to tape this,” Paul said, throwing his towel on the floor, and she could see from the diminished tension in his body he had eased up. “Then I’ll play it back next time you get going on me. You get so self-righteous. Because you’re invested in a cause, everybody close to you has to rally around to your side. Well, that’s not always going to happen. Some of us prefer to maintain some detachment.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call you detached.”
“Ah ah ah,” Paul said, wagging his finger at her. “Don’t blow it now. Tell me some more about my tan line.” He looked down at his ankles and laid a dopey grin on her. She laughed.
“I’ve made my speech.”
“Okay, then,” Paul said. He got up and sat down beside her, on the bed. “Fill me in. How’s it going?”
“Well, I saw something this afternoon. Winston and Genevieve kissing in my offices.”
“Ah. You didn’t like that.”
“I have to question their judgment, that’s for sure.”
“Those kids.”
“Exactly. They aren’t kids. This isn’t hormones, it’s folly. Now, I know things get intense when you work closely with people. I don’t object to their fling. Just…”
“You’d prefer they play in their own backyard.”
“Exactly. And it doesn’t help that we had a meeting today where I finally saw the clashing between our styles clearly. Winston and Genevieve are only interested in tactics. Maybe they’re too big-city for me. They’re taking over, and I don’t like their-their cynicism. I feel ganged up on sometimes.”
“They’re not hard to understand. They’re in it for the money. Just like you, right?”
“No, I’m not,” she said. “It’s an important legal case with important issues.”
“And important money,” Paul said.
She kept her mouth shut to stave off any further talk on the matter. Kneeling down in front of her, he slipped her shoes off and began massaging her stockinged foot. “Listen, Nina. If you don’t like the way things are going, fire Romeo and Juliet. You’re the boss. Go it alone.”
“Not possible at this point. With the trial just around the corner, I need them. Besides, they do seem to know more than I do about this whole jury business. It makes me mistrust my own judgment…” His hands kneading her feet sent radiant heat coursing up her legs.
“Ah, who cares what they do on the rug after-hours,” she said. Her voice trailed off.
Paul got up and stood behind her. Taking a long strand of her hair, he curled it around his finger. His hands pulled gently at her jacket, and took it off. Immediately his thumbs pressed deeply into her shoulders as he began working the tight muscles around her neck. She sighed as her tension melted away at his touch. Her head drooped forward.
Paul took the drink from her hand and put it on the table.
“I find…” he said, continuing a mesmerizing circling motion at the center of her shoulder blades, “it’s always a good idea…” His fingers moved inside the top of her blouse. “When things look a little bleak…” They began a slow, gentle journey from the back of her neck. “I need to forget my troubles…” Settling in to explore the vicinity in front. “Lie down for a little while. Now, doesn’t that sound like a fine idea?” The hazy twilight had faded, and his hands appeared to ignite as they touched her skin, his tan against her pale.
“Excellent…” Nina said.
He turned her around, backing her onto the bed.
“… suggestion.” The light went off, but her eyes had closed anyway; there was only Paul’s clean-scented body beside her, burning.