Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

“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.”

Monday 9/1

BECAUSE HE COULD NEVER SIT STILL, BEAR CUNNINGHAM SPRANG UP and shook hands with Nina at the door. He hadn’t changed at all over the years. He would be a thousand times happier jumping up and down in a hallway than being in a meeting. This was a real problem for an attorney who spent much of every day impaled in a chair dealing with people and their troubles, taking meetings, attending hearings. She could almost see his muscles fighting to escape his skin.

If you wanted to talk to Bear, you walked with him, or you ran with him at noon, or you biked ten miles home with him. You caught him on the fly. He handled the personal injury cases and the business matters. Bear was a smart, cheerful, happily married man, the backbone of the firm by now, she guessed, with Klaus getting older.

The meeting must have started without her, maybe because she wasn’t a full-fledged member of the firm and didn’t need to know about other cases. Seated in the leather chair by the fireplace which had never, to Nina’s knowledge, held a fire, was Sean Eubanks. Nina shook hands with him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Delighted.” Sean had been with the firm only a year and had the harried look of the one who usually gets the last-minute court appearances. Klaus had told Nina that he was a Yale Law grad who shared Klaus’s passion for the underdog. The youngest lawyer in the office, he was barely thirty and often said he would rather be surfing. His style was classic California lawyer-casual chic, windblown and tanned, friendly on the surface, with the requisite killer instinct lurking below like that big mean fish all lawyers got tired of hearing about. With a special interest in fathers’ rights and gay rights in custody cases, he handled family law cases for the firm.

Nina found a spot on the ancient couch along the window. Adjusting his specs from behind his desk, Klaus said, “I realize that I have not reported on the status of this case for some time, so I am kicking two dogs with one foot. The trial date is September fifteenth.”

“That’s only two weeks away,” Alan Turk said. “Even if you’re fully prepared, Klaus, Nina will have a hard time catching up.” Alan sat next to Nina on the couch, holding his coffee, one leg hooked over the other, slightly cross-eyed behind his glasses and blue tie. His hair had thinned badly, and his back seemed to have bowed as he moved through his fifties. He had given her his usual nod, as if she hadn’t been away eight years, and Nina had nodded back.

During her time as a law clerk, she had enjoyed working with Alan. He was methodical, organized, and never lost his temper. “Anal Alan,” Bear had once called him in a conversation with Nina, showing the litigator’s distaste for the lawyer who sits back at the office generating and responding to the details of law practice.

But as the trusts, wills, and estates man, with a certification in tax law, Alan had always brought in a steady high flow of income to the firm. Without it, Bear couldn’t fly his more risky PI’s and Klaus couldn’t pursue his endless appeals. Alan was currently a bachelor who owned a 2001 metallic blue Ferrari, which, word had it, had cost almost two hundred thousand dollars. The firm building, in line with the rustic ambience of Carmel, had only a one-car garage on the street. Alan kept the Ferrari there under security far superior to the systems for the rest of the building. He also owned two other rare automobiles. Nina didn’t keep track of what kind.