"Unlucky in Law" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Shaughnessy Perri)

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Monday 9/1

NINA PARKED A BLOCK AWAY AND WALKED PAST THE FLOWERS AND art galleries of the quaint tourist mecca of Carmel to the offices of Pohlmann, Cunningham, Turk. She arrived at the white wood-frame office on the corner of Lincoln and Eighth by eleven-thirty, buoyed by her talk with Stefan Wyatt. The early morning fog had burned off and she had made good time from Salinas, consolidating her thoughts all the way.

Innocent or guilty, at least she liked the client. Some clients were so angry, so distant, or so disturbed that they were an ordeal to sit next to at all. Stefan was a cooperator. The jury wouldn’t dislike him on sight. She reminded herself to try to get some young women on it.

Walking up the white-brick stairway to the law offices, she remembered herself in her thick-soled athletic shoes bounding up these same stairs during her law clerk days. Somehow she had managed to take care of Bob as a single mom, work at the Pohlmann firm, and go to the Monterey College of Law at night. None of her subsequent incarnations, as an appellate lawyer in San Francisco and as a sole practitioner at Tahoe, had been as harried, yet she remembered those days, when she had been deeply immersed in learning new things and raising a little boy, as happy and rewarding.

Back then she had assumed that the financial need, her single life, and her direction in law would all be resolved by now. Well, marrying would be a resolution of sorts, but she had lived enough to know that a good life didn’t resolve. It offered satisfying moments, new beginnings, and more irresolution.

Nina wasn’t completely lacking in self-consciousness, but she found thinking about her own life confusing. Other people’s lives never bored her, though-their lies, their capitulations, their bad luck, their fates. Other people’s situations made her skin vibrate, her heart beat louder, her blood pump harder. She could do practical things, applying her intelligence and rationality to their lives in ways she never could for her own. She could make a difference, and what else was there to live for before you ended up moldering in a coffin, bones, like the poor man in this case?

Love? She held up her left hand and looked at the glittering diamond on her finger. It had a sharp, definite look about it.

Near the top of the stairs, hurrying too much, she paused by the window. One of the secretaries had kept a delicate flower garden going out there in the old days, and the white building that had started its life as a house had blue irises, red geraniums, and a hominess that didn’t seem present anymore in the practical juniper bushes and clumps of tall grass waving in the soft gray air.

Nodding at the receptionist, she walked down the short hall and opened the door to her new office.

Nina’s secretary from Tahoe, Sandy Whitefeather, filled the brown chair in the compact front office like a lion balancing four legs on a tiny stone. Today she wore a down vest over a black turtleneck over a long denim skirt and burgundy cowboy boots. Sandy ’s long black hair was pulled into a beaded band that fell down her back. Behind her, a mullioned picture window looked over a courtyard full of stalky weeds and wildflowers.

She hung up the phone, saying, “About time. I see you have new shoes again. You’re gonna break your neck one of these days, wearing those torture heels.”

“You have new shoes, too. Don’t tell me those narrow pointy toes are the shape of your foot. I’ve seen your feet. I bet they’re killing you.”

“Yeah, but I like what I see when I look down.”

Nina sat down and kicked off the high heels. “Okay, we’ll both get bunions. Peace pipe?”

“Hmph. The Washoe people don’t use peace pipes. Get your stereotypes straight.” She studied Nina. “New shoes,” she said, “and jewelry, too. A whole new you.”

Nina felt obscurely embarrassed, but she held out her finger for Sandy ’s scrutiny.

“Big,” Sandy said. She wasn’t looking at the ring. She was looking at Nina.

“It was his grandmother’s.”

“Tradition is good.”

“No need to fall out of your chair celebrating or anything.”

“Congratulations, of course.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s a big step.”

“Forward,” Nina said firmly.

“How did Bob take the news?”

Bob had spotted the ring the minute she picked him up from her father’s house. She tried to explain, but he put up a hand. “I know what a ring means, Mom.” His reaction had been mixed, not altogether positive, but not harsh, to her relief.

“He’ll need time to adjust to the idea,” she told Sandy, realizing she was using Paul’s words.

“So you’ll be staying here. With the golfers and the retirees.”

More assumptions. “We haven’t worked out the details.”

“Hmm.” Sandy turned back to the paperwork on her desk. “I made up the files and left a list of the D.A.’s office and other numbers on your desk. Mr. Pohlmann says the firm’s taking you to lunch. He dropped off some of his files for you.”

“Great.”

They had a month to work through everything, including the upcoming trial. Although Nina had succumbed to Klaus almost immediately, she hadn’t actually committed to Stefan Wyatt’s case until she had found out Sandy wasn’t just available, she was eager to take a break from Tahoe. Solid, matter-of-fact, and smart, Sandy was a friend too, for all her crankiness and obstinacy. With her along for the ride, Nina felt strong and supported.

After finishing up a job in Washington lobbying for more Washoe ancestral lands, Sandy had come down to Monterey County with her husband, Joseph, and established herself immediately with some old friends who ranched near Big Sur, where her son, Wish, was already staying. As she explained it, one of her daughters had shown up unexpectedly a month before at their ranch near Markleeville, kids in tow, husband glaring.

Sandy didn’t go into what had brought her daughter home, she just said the tepee up in Alpine County, actually a small horse ranch she and Joseph owned, was feeling mighty cramped these days. Joseph was recovering from surgery and needed fresh air, riding, and “no more of what that girl of ours has to give at the moment.” She had accepted Nina’s offer of a temporary position at the Pohlmann firm without bothering to ask a single question.

If Nina stayed here in Carmel with Paul, she would lose Sandy. Sandy was rooted to Tahoe deep as the white pines and ancient oaks on her property. The idea made Nina quake. She needed Sandy.

“How did it go with Wyatt this morning?” Sandy asked.

“It’s a long story.” Nina gave her an abbreviated version. “Could you get my interview notes into the computer today?”

“Sure. Guilty or not?”

“Don’t know.”

“Didn’t you form a first impression?”

“He looks harmless.”

“But then so did Jeffrey Dahmer. I heard Stefan Wyatt went to school at CSUMB for a while before he got arrested,” Sandy said. Her son, Wish, had also attended California State University at Monterey Bay that summer, picking up more credits toward a degree in criminal justice. “You know their thing, right?”

“No,” said Nina. She picked up the top file Klaus had left and scanned it.

“Holistic studies,” Sandy said, her voice passing stern judgment.

“Okay.”

“Good place for kids with bad attitudes who can’t cut it in the real world.”

“Wait a minute. Your own son goes there. Wish says he has terrific teachers.”

“He’s not doing that holistic stuff. He’s on the vocational side.”

“I think it sounds interesting. And it sure fits Wyatt’s style. He’s young, loose, in the tearing-down phase politically.”

Sandy, shifting in a borrowed chair, black eyes narrowed, expressed the mood of the displaced and dispossessed, saying, “Other people have to be practical about what they study so they can get along after college. Other people settle down, pay a mortgage, keep a business going…”

“Without gallivanting around the Monterey Peninsula, grabbing diamond rings, when they should be back practicing law at Tahoe with their long-suffering secretary. Is that what you’re saying?”

Sandy put on her poker face.

“I’m not sure I need a hard time from you this morning, Sandy.”

“You call this a hard time? Where’s the groom?”

“Paul’s due in a few minutes. I called him on my way in from Salinas and told him about my interview with the client.”

“That Dutchman’s a bad influence on you.”

“Yeah?” Nina said, putting one report aside and picking up another. “Seems like you always used to promote him as the solution to my problems.”

“Did not,” Sandy said.

“What are you working on there?”

“Paperwork, to do with your temporary employment here, health insurance forms, tax info. As usual, you generate more stuff to be assembled than a four-year-old at Christmas. Meanwhile, take a look at this.”

Nina took the file. “What have we here?”

“When Stefan Wyatt first retained the firm, Klaus hired a detective. This is his report. Read it and weep, while I finish copying the rest for you.”

Nina went into her temporary office. Yellowing oak bookshelves covered three walls, mostly full of California codes. The stately blue leather compendiums of yore were quickly becoming obsolete in law firms. She could rely on her computer for most of her research these days.

One wall held a big window to the courtyard with its beach fog, bees, and weeds. She sat down at the unfamiliar desk, into a chair molded to fit some other body. She opened a drawer in the desk she had been loaned for the duration. Inside, lint, dust, and moldy mints had accumulated. Not allowing herself to think of her bright and pleasant office at Tahoe, now in the hands of a young lawyer friend, she shut the drawer, picked up the file, and began to read with concentration this time.

“So?” Sandy asked from the doorway a few minutes later.

“Aside from its brevity,” Nina said, “what surprises me most about this report are Klaus’s notes about it.”

“What notes?”

“Exactly. There aren’t any notes. No follow-ups. No signed witness statements. The report itself-this investigator interviewed witnesses, but he gave Klaus a couple of no-content paragraphs on each interview. I question whether he talked to these people in person or just gave them a quick call. Why did Klaus hire this guy anyway? He’s known and used Paul for years. Why didn’t Klaus call Paul?”

Sandy wore an expression that looked exactly like the first and the last time she had eaten squid in Nina’s presence. “Sandy?”

“Mr. Pohlmann did call Paul.”

“Oh, no,” Nina said. She already knew: Klaus had called Paul, but Paul didn’t know; ergo, interception.

“If Bob was in jail, what would you do?”

Sandy’s son, Wish, had been charged with a serious crime earlier in the summer. Abandoning her temporary job in Washington, Sandy had come to make sure Nina and Paul were going to keep him out of jail.

“You’re telling me that while we were using Paul’s office this summer, at his kind invitation, you took a call for him from Klaus?”

“I did answer a few of his calls. Paul was really strapped for time.”

“Klaus said he needed Paul’s help on the Zhukovsky case but you never told Paul?”

“Triage is what they call it in an emergency,” Sandy said. “Caring for the sickest first. So when Klaus called, I told him Paul wasn’t available. He was busy.”

“That wasn’t right, Sandy.”

“Yep.” Sandy pulled at her lower lip, a sign of deep thought.

“Does Paul know?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. I don’t like this. We’re going to have to help Klaus get organized. Call this investigator and find out if you have all the reports. Find out who he actually interviewed. I’ll give you a list tomorrow of the people he should have spoken with. Call them and try to get some appointments for him. Coordinate schedules with Paul, so he’s free when we need him. We have to catch up, and there’s no time. Paul’s going to miss some sleep, and so are we.”

“Fair enough. Logical consequences. I’m paying the price.” She took the file and picked up the phone.

“If Sandy’s paying, I want to be invited,” said Paul, poking his head through the door. He wore the forest green cashmere sweater Nina had given him for his last birthday, and tan slacks. Gently, he touched Nina’s shoulder, nodding at Sandy.

“Congratulations, Paul,” Sandy said. “Such changes.”

He grinned. “Thanks. Taking me to lunch, are you?”

“Sure,” Sandy said.

He had been joking. Now he looked flabbergasted.

“A big, nice lunch,” Nina said. “Sandy was just saying how she’s looking forward to working with you again and really wants to treat you today. To one of Carmel’s finest restaurants, your choice.”

“Sounds great,” Paul said, exuding faint alarm. “What time?”

“One.”

“I get it. You have some friendly words of advice for me and Nina, huh?”

“Who said anything about being friendly?” Sandy turned back to her desk and got busy.

Paul followed Nina into her office, swept her into his arms, and gave her a delicious kiss on the mouth. “You look fantastic in navy blue,” he said. He squeezed her waist.

“That’s good, since it’s about all you’ll see me in for the next month.” Nina moved out of his arms and rustled through a steeple of files.

“Maybe I’ve misjudged Sandy,” Paul said, stepping toward the window to peer out. “I admit to occasional midnight doubts that she likes me at all. That’s a very generous offer.”

“She likes you, all right. And she respects your work more than you know. Take a look at this.”

Paul came over to her desk to take the main body of the investigative report. As he read, he scratched his head. “Feeble. I mean, ‘Subject said he didn’t know anything’? It’s like that all the way through. Somebody always knows something. You’ll find that on page one of Paul van Wagoner’s monograph for the novice investigator.”

“If somebody knows something, you’d never know it from this.” She tried to keep most of the concern she was feeling from her voice. So far, everything Klaus had given her had been sketchy at best. Where was the promised preparation? Not in this report.

“Why didn’t Klaus call me?” Paul asked. “First time to my knowledge he didn’t when he needed some real work done. He around?”

“Not yet.” She glanced at her watch. “Our firm meeting’s in a few minutes. He’s late, ferrying Anna somewhere in that car he loves so much.”

“Klaus and Anna are one of those couples where you can’t imagine half being left behind.” He knocked his hip against hers. “Kind of like us.”

“We are all alone. Togetherness is illusion,” she said. “All the poets say so.”

“Which is why my bedtime reading is John D. MacDonald.” Paul impatiently flipped the page he was holding and looked at both sides. “Who wrote this damn thing, anyway?”

Nina looked around. The front page had fallen under her desk. She picked it up and handed it over.

He read the sheet. He put it on top, then he took the few pages, inserted them into the blue file folder, straightened the edges carefully, tapping them on the desk. He tossed the folder into the trash.

“Deano.” The name came out as if forcing its way past rough terrain in his throat.

She reached down to extricate the file from the plastic canister and read the top sheet. “You know Dean Trumbo?”

“Yeah.” A peculiar half-smile lit Paul’s face. “You know, I’m surprised I didn’t recognize his special touch right away.”

“He’s done work for you?”

“He’s done work on me.”

“You don’t like him?”

“Actually-I kind of look forward to running into the guy again.”

Nina said, “Let’s make a list, then.” They outlined a sped-up course of action for the investigation.

“We seem to have some blood evidence,” Paul said. “Are you bringing Ginger in?”

“Sandy called her already. Ginger’s driving in from Sacramento. She’s due here at two-thirty.”

“Rush, rush, rush,” Paul said.

“Klaus hasn’t-I don’t see any independent defense analysis of the blood yet.” Nina put her hand on his arm. “Paul, Klaus doesn’t seem to have done much work at all.”

“You’ve worked with him in the past. Does he usually prepare more thoroughly?”

“I don’t know. I never worked this closely with him before.”

“Well, he did one thing right. He brought you in, honey,” Paul said. “Let’s start filling in the holes.”