Perri O'Shaughnessy - Case of Lies

At the end of the street she arrived at a large stucco hacienda with a green-tiled roof surrounded by walls with fir-tree borders. The house was built on a promontory of the mountain. Nina slowed down to take in the view, but then Betty Jo Puckett appeared in the flagged driveway and the Bronco plowed toward her.

Betty Jo practically dragged Nina out of her seat. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” she said. A tall, rugged, gray-haired woman in her fifties; her jeans and white shirt encased a rangy body. Her face, sawed into a hundred lines and angles, exhibited every second of wear, and she had let dark eyebrows grow in thick. She looked a little like Judge Milne, in fact.

“Let’s go inside.” They passed through a tall entry with saltillo tiles underfoot and a lot of plants into a high-ceilinged living room with a flagstone fireplace next to a bar at the far end.

A little old man stood behind the bar, pouring from a bottle of vodka. “Heh,” he said.

“That’s Hector, my husband. He doesn’t talk too well these days, but he loves company. What would you like to drink? Here, set down.”

Nina chose a leather chair near the fire. “Tea?”

“Tea?” Hector growled almost incoherently, obviously peeved.

“Tea,” Nina said firmly.

He took a flowered teapot from below the bar and flicked the lever of a spigot over the sink. Steaming water filled the pot. He measured quantities of tea from a silver tin, dunked a big silver tea ball into the pot, and set a timer. He said something Nina couldn’t catch.

“Four minutes,” Betty Jo translated.

They chatted while they waited and Nina looked around. Picture windows, French doors, whitewashed beams, a lot of expensive furniture. Precisely four minutes later, Hector removed the tea ball, poured liquid into a mug for Nina, and shuffled over to her.

“Thanks.” Close up, she saw he wore a silk ascot. His teeth were blindingly white and perfectly regular. The tea sloshed dangerously as he handed it to her.

“Heh.” Back behind the bar he began sipping something of his own. Betty Jo sat on the long white leather couch opposite Nina’s chair, picked up a beer mug from the Noguchi coffee table, and said, “ Salud !”

“Heh!”

“ Salud .”

They all drank. Nina took a sniff, then a taste. The tea tasted delicate, perfumed with flowers and something like popcorn, quite a change from the supermarket stuff she was used to drinking. “What is this? It’s great.”

“Is that the stuff from China we got last year, doll?”

Hector nodded his hoary head. He was very old, in his eighties, Nina decided.

“Shoot. I forget the name. Hector, what’s it called?”

He examined an ornately decorated canister and answered her.

“Right,” Betty Jo said, nodding. “How’d I forget that?”

Nina, who had not understood him, sipped some more, wanting to know but not enough to ask again.

“Oh, here’s Jimmy.” Betty Jo got up to greet a man who had entered the room. She took him by the hand and brought him in for a hug, then led him toward Nina. “Jimmy Bova, Nina Reilly.”

Bova shook Nina’s hand.

“I’m the owner of the Ace High,” he said. “You know-the motel.” Bova wore a red sweater, which clung like silk to his well-defined upper body. He had fleshy lips, a long Roman nose, the kind that drops straight from the forehead, and unusual, light-colored eyes set off nicely by the even tan a tanning booth provides. He looked like a man who took his exercise inside a gym, wearing really nice sweats, rather than the typical Tahoe man, who got it outside at the woodchopping block.

“Glad to meet you,” Nina said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” Betty Jo had sprung a surprise, inviting her client along. Bova smiled. It was a warm smile, and Nina gave him one back, always ready to give the benefit of a doubt. If he hadn’t been on the opposite side, she might not have described him to herself quite so harshly. He actually had a dash of Sylvester Stallone when he smiled.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Betty Jo said innocently. “I always reckon people should talk, get to know each other. Didn’t figure Mr. Hanna was ready to join us, though. He’s hell to talk to. I’m glad you’re in the case, Nina.”

Nina set her cup down and decided to play along with Betty Jo. They were all friends here, with no sticky clients like Nina’s around to mess the place up. “Your house is superb. Spanish style isn’t common up here.”

“Hector and I couldn’t resist when we saw it. We’re from Modesto. Only been up here a couple of years.”

“Happy practicing law at Tahoe?” Nina asked her.

“Oh, yeah. Love it.”

Bova, roving the room as if searching for a comfortable landing site, made no attempt to enter the conversation. Walking over to the fireplace, he picked up a poker, which he used to make a perfect pyramid of the burning logs. Then he turned to look at her, and Nina felt a shiver in spite of the warmth from the fire. She had been a little startled by how attractive Betty Jo’s client was. He did not resemble the mean-spirited innkeeper of her imagination. His amber eyes glowed in the dimly lit room like the fire behind him.

Betty Jo launched into a story about meeting Sandy at the grocery store. “She walked by me and I noticed one of the buttons on her blouse had popped. It happens to us big gals, so I kind of whispered as I passed, ‘Look down in front. Your button.’ So she looked down and she fixed it. Our carts passed and she never said a word. Then at the checkout she came up behind me and she whispered, ‘Look behind you. Your butt.’ ”

And at that, illustrating for them, Betty Jo turned her back on them, bent over, rolled her neck so that she could see her backside, and jiggled it.

When nobody said anything, she jiggled again. She was not to be denied.

Nina and Bova, equally astonished at this display, looked at each other and broke out laughing.

“ Sandy doesn’t take kindly to being corrected,” Nina said when she recovered herself.

“Well, I’m sure she’s a fine legal secretary in spite of that big honking mouth of hers,” Betty Jo said, sitting down again on the couch. “And she’s observant. I do have a big ass, which Hector considers a major asset, don’t you, Hector?”

Studying Betty Jo there on the couch, taking it all in-the invitation, the fire, the down-home way of talking, the drinks, the little old husband, the alert eyes-Nina suddenly realized what this foolishness was all about. Betty Jo wanted Nina unguarded. She wanted her friendly. She wanted Nina to underestimate her enemy. A little joke at her own expense was far cheaper in the long run than a big settlement. Legal strategy, country-style.

“Now, I also hear that you recently came back to Tahoe and set up again. That right?” Betty Jo was saying.

“I tried something else out for a few months, but I’m back for good now.”

“Glad to hear it. The more women we get up here, the less cussin’ and fightin’ there’ll be in court.” A Chihuahua skidded into the room, followed by a large gray cat. They both jumped into Betty Jo’s lap. Her strong hand settled the sudden squabble as they vied for position.

Nina said, “How about you?”

“Oh, I was living in the same little place I’d had for thirty years down there in the Central Valley, doing a little divorce work here and some personal-injury there. And what should pop up one fine morning but a great big injury case with a deep-pockets insurer. I had to litigate it. By the start of trial I was in hock to my kids, my friends, plus the devil. Three weeks we went to court every day, me palpitating and my poor old client on his last legs. Then the jury came in and gave us fifteen million bucks.” She laughed. “You believe it? Like winning at Lotto. Impossible odds.”