Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

“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.”