John Lescroart - The Hunt Club

"For example," Farrell said, pointing at Tombo, "if you, Rich, or Andrea, or both of you, actually do go large with Trial TV, that would make some sense."

"I'd make an appointment with your barber now, then," Tombo said. "Andrea's a lock for national anchor." He looked to his location man. "Isn't she, Spence?"

Fairchild tried not to wince. "As I believe I've mentioned, my friends, I just do local. This current Donolan circus ends in a couple of weeks, and I'm off to Colorado or Arkansas for the next hot trial. The big decisions are made in New York, not in the field."

But Brandt, always up to talk legal cases, got Fairchild off the hook. "You think Donolan's going two more weeks? I'm thinking after what he did on the stand today…"

Andrea Parisi finishedapplying her lipstick and looked at herself in the mirror in the women's room. She'd been trying not to think about yesterday and felt that she'd needed a couple of glasses of wine at lunch to keep her spirits up for the daily wrap-up broadcast. She and her producer and her male counterpart had had a little champagne in the limo on the way over here. In the past ninety minutes since they'd arrived, she'd had a vodka martini ("Belvedere, a little dirty, up") at the bar before they'd all sat down, then a glass of pinot grigio with her half-shell littlenecks, some Jordan cab (two glasses? three?) with the sweetbreads. She weighed 122 pounds and knew that she was probably legally drunk, although she felt fine.

She checked to make sure that the bathroom door was locked. Then, closing her eyes, she lifted her right foot slightly off the ground, touched the tip of her nose, and counted to five. Opening her eyes, she put her foot back down, and forced a bright smile at her reflection. "She sells seashells by the seashore," she whispered. She repeated it three times perfectly.

She would have bet that she'd be rock steady, and she was, but it never hurt to do a little inventory. Now she had verified for herself that she would easily be able to handle having some Amaretto or maybe, depending on her dinner partners, some Grand Marnier or a snifter of cognac with dessert. Then at least some of them would go around the corner to the cigar bar and have another round or two with their smokes, and she intended to be among them if that was the way the night went.

She took a last look, and something in her gaze held her for another moment. Oh, she supposed she was glamorous enough, to be sure. Her dark hair, a little below her shoulders, gleamed with red highlights-natural, thank you, since she was only thirty-one years old. A bridge of pale freckles rose off each smooth cheek and crossed a nose Modigliani might have painted. Perhaps in a technical sense her chin was too small, her lips too full, but for television, they were if anything a plus. Still, the mirror caught the trace of doubt, of what might be a flash of insecurity. At the corners of the startling green eyes, she saw a tiny web of worry lines form and then dissipate like an apparition. Leaning forward, she tried to see what was in those eyes that stared back at her. But there was no ready answer, and she couldn't stay in here any longer, not if she didn't want to call attention to herself as less than one of the guys, and she wouldn't do that. She would never let herself do that.

She pulled back, ran her tongue over her lips, over the bright red lipstick, and smiled at herself. A small sigh escaped, but she was unaware of it. "It's all good," she said aloud to her image. "Be cool. Don't push it." Now drawing a deeper breath, she steeled her shoulders, reached for the doorknob, and walked back out into the main dining room.

Hunt reached for his cabernet,brought the glass to his mouth, and a vision stopped him before he sipped. With the ongoing discussion into the fate of Randy Donolan playing in the background, he watched the sublime Andrea Parisi weave her graceful way back through the packed restaurant to their table. Because of his lucky seat against the front wall, she was going to be in his line of vision all the way.

The sound around him faded.

Dessert,and back with Trial TV. "Spence isn't leaving, anyway," Hunt said. "Not after the Palmer thing this morning hits. A federal judge gets shot, it goes national."

"But not right away," Farrell said. "Even if they find somebody and charge him, it won't get to trial for years."

"I'll bet a million dollars it's the prison guards' union," Brandt said. "He was going to shut 'em down; they took him out."

Farrell was shaking his locks. "Too obvious."

Wu agreed. "And the girl just happened to be there? I don't think so, Jason."

Tombo slugged back the rest of his wine. "Amy's right. We don't have to cherchez la femme here. She's already in it, the wife. She's going to be what it's about, guaranteed."

"Definitely the wife," Sam said. "She found out, confronted them, adios."

"Except I hear she wasn't home," Tombo said.

Sam shook an index finger. "You wait. It'll come out that she was."

"I'm with Sam," Fairchild said. "Either the wife did it, or she paid somebody."

"Any word on who the other victim is yet?" Wu asked.

Hunt realized that he probably had the latest news. "Devin says no. And even if he did know, he wouldn't tell me."

"Not even you, his close personal friend?" Brandt asked.

A nod. "I told him it didn't seem right and then cried a little, but it didn't work."

"Hunt breaks down," Wu said. "That I would like to see."

"Hey, now! That is so cruel." Hunt put a hand to his heart. "I cry. I feel things. I cry at Hallmark commercials, weddings. Sometimes I cry just for fun. Crying is the new laughing."

"I'll try it sometime," Wu said. "So how old was she? The girl?"

"Devin did know that," Hunt said. "Low twenties." Pause. "Palmer was sixty-three."

"Okay," Fairchild said, "now we're talking. That trial opens, every camera in America comes back to San Francisco. Especially if it's the wife."

"It's going to be the wife," Sam said again. "It's always the wife, except when it's the husband." She patted Farrell's hand next to hers. "That's the main reason Wes and I aren't married, in fact. So we don't kill each other."

Wu looked down at her engagement ring, then over to her fiancé. "I still want to get married," she said. "I promise not to kill you."

Brandt planted a peck on her cheek. "Me, too."

Tombo said, "You ought to put that in your vows."

Everybody had a laugh, and in the middle of it, Hunt glanced at Andrea Parisi, who seemed to be somewhere else until she caught him looking and put on a smile that was no less appealing for being so obviously forced.

Sam and Wes went homeafter dinner, while the rest of the party decamped to the Occidental Cigar Club, a short walk around the corner from Sam's, on Pine. The Occidental had a sign on its front door, THIS IS NOT A HEALTH

CLUB, for those oblivious to the clouds of cigar smoke who might otherwise have wandered in to work out, wearing their Lycra and sweatbands.

The Occidental's owners had figured a way to beat the city's stringent antismoking ordinances. No purveyor of alcohol, quoth the city fathers, could permit smoking in enclosed premises since secondhand smoke was unhealthy for the people who worked inside. The exception was where the owner of a small bar was the only employee of that bar. So at the Occidental, all the employees had a share of the business.

Hunt, sitting with Jason and Amy in the front window-they all had to work the next day-had backed way off on the alcohol during dinner and drank decaf coffee. Wu smoked a small Sancho Panza, and Hunt and Brandt smoked Monte Cristos.