Beverly Bird - Playing By The Rules

“You were married?” she asked quickly. “I never knew that.”

Sam cast me a wounded look. “I left McAllen, Texas, after my divorce and came here. It was too painful to stay.”

Jenny’s gaze went kind and misty. In a moment, I thought, she would begin stroking his hair and cooing things like poor baby.

“Mandy decided that I was the one who ended the marriage, and I’ve never disabused her of the notion,” he went on.

It stung a little because I had assumed that.

“Why?” Jenny asked, looking between us. “Why wouldn’t you tell her the truth?”

“Because there’s something emasculating about being tossed over for another man and—worse—being slow to recover from it.”

“You told me that,” Tammy said suddenly. “You told me you were divorced.” The rest of us looked at her. I think we’d forgotten she was there.

“Which just goes to show,” Grace murmured, “that Sam doesn’t mind appearing emasculated in your eyes.”

Ouch, I thought. Like I said, Grace can be brutally honest.

I pulled the subject back to what I figured was safe territory. “About the Woodsens,” I said quickly. “I don’t think Lisa has hooked up with anyone new yet.”

“Lyle hasn’t, either,” Sam replied.

I thought about his suggestion. “He’d be the hardest to convince. He was the one who filed for divorce in the first place.”

“She’s a paranoid schizophrenic. She woke up one morning and decided he was an extraterrestrial. It was making his life hell.”

“She didn’t mention that.” There was a lot Lisa hadn’t bothered to tell me. Then it hit me. “An extraterrestrial?”

“From Pluto. No mundane Martians for our girl.”

“Excuse me,” Tammy tried to interrupt.

I laughed aloud. “She told me that when he got drunk he would chase her around the house. Maybe that was what tipped her over into planetary delusions.”

Sam perked up. “Were they wearing clothes, do you think?”

I had just sipped more wine and it backfired up my nasal passages. I coughed and he clapped me on the back.

“If Lisa stays on her medication and Lyle forgoes a six-pack now and again, it could work,” he insisted.

“Between the two of them, one might be sane and sober for the kids at any given time,” I agreed when I could finally talk again. “The supervisor idea has some merit, but we’d need to have random blood tests for the children’s sake, too. You know, test him for blood-alcohol content, and her to make sure she’s still on her medication.”

“I’ll sound him out on it in the morning,” Sam said.

“I’ll do the same with Lisa. But I’m not going to my partners about kicking in my fee.”

“Excuse me,” Tammy said again.

“We’ve got trouble,” Grace murmured and eased her chair back from the table a little. I barely glanced at her.

“Are you going to be in court tomorrow?” Sam asked me.

“In the afternoon. I’m arguing a motion at one-thirty.”

“So am I. Get there early and I’ll buy you a hot dog from our favorite vendor.”

“The one with the spider monkey?” His name was Julio, and he was the only one who had fried onions on his cart.

“It’s a chimpanzee,” Sam corrected me.

“No, it’s not—” Then I broke off because it happened.

I caught a quick movement out of the corner of my eye, a flick of Tammy’s wrist. Then something pale and pink floated over the table in a pretty arc. I reared back in my seat just in time to avoid it. Then her drink was in Sam’s face, dripping from his chin. He didn’t look good in pink.

He came to his feet, sputtering. “What the hell was that for?”

“You don’t love me!” Tammy’s voice went to screech volume. “You can’t even remember that I’m sitting here at the same table with you!”

Grace rose to her feet. “Okay, that’s my cue. I’m going somewhere else.”

Jenny just looked stupefied.

“Who said I loved you?” Sam looked at me a little wildly. For help, I knew.

Tammy’s face contorted until she managed to squeeze tears from her eyes. She was so young—I really hadn’t caught that before. I actually felt a little sorry for her. She’d need a lot more seasoning before she was ready for the Sam Cases of the world.

I stood and reached for her. I was thinking that I should guide her away from the table, maybe to the ladies’ room, where she could calm down. Then I spotted Frank Ethan over her shoulder.

The evening was going to hell in a handbasket, I thought. I should have just listened to Sylvie Casamento and gone straight home to my daughter after court. I hadn’t seen Frank since the night six weeks ago when I’d discovered that he kissed like a fish. He didn’t frequent McGlinchey’s—but he knew that I did. Which more or less equated to the certainty that he was here hoping to find me.

Sam recognized him. “Hey,” he said. “Isn’t that the corporate dude who used to stand outside our building and check his watch so he’d knock on your door at the exact time he said he’d pick you up?”

“Shut up.” I spat the words just as Frank started toward me, his arms spread wide and his mouth puckered up fish-style. I caught Sam’s sleeve and backpedaled. “Time to go.”

He was trying to dry his face with a bar napkin. He threw it back onto the table. “Sounds good to me.”

We turned together and headed for the door. Or rather, Sam headed for the door. I walked into a wall of blue chambray and a snarl of chest hair at its opened collar.

“Ms. Hillman?” chest-hair asked.

Sometimes you just know something and there’s no getting around it, even when you’d prefer ignorance. Blue chambray or not, this guy was a sheriff’s officer. I’d met enough of them in ten years of practicing law to recognize one when I ran into his chest.

I tried to step around him. I knew he wasn’t allowed to detain me, not for what he wanted to do. But he didn’t have to. He slid the papers he was holding into the open side flap of my purse.

Service acquired.

Sam tried. He’d only been in Philadelphia for six months, but he’d passed our Commonwealth’s bar exam with flying colors and he knew the ropes. He tried to knock the papers out of the guy’s hand before they landed. Sam was quick, but the deputy was quicker.

Sam swore once the damage was done and more or less dragged me out of the bar by my arm. I stopped on the sidewalk, pulling back against his grip, and I drew in a steadying breath.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m all right now.”

“How can you be after that?” he demanded.

“If it makes you feel any better, then I’m a puddle of Jell-O.”

“Jell-O is solid,” he pointed out. “It can’t be a puddle.”

“It’s not so solid that it doesn’t jiggle.”

He thought about that and finally gave me the point. “What did he serve on you, anyway? Are you getting disbarred?”

I choked at the mere thought. “No.”

“How do you know without looking at the damned papers?” He was more upset about this than I was, I realized.

“Because the bar association sends their axes by certified mail in this state,” I explained. At his startled look—one that asked how I knew that—I added, “It happened to a guy in my office once.”

Besides, I didn’t have to look at the papers because I already knew what they were. Now that they’d finally turned up, I realized that I had pretty much been expecting them ever since Millson Kramer III had tossed his hat into the political arena a while ago. I’d guessed then that Chloe and I would become his official campaign skeletons-in-the-closet.

To appreciate this, you’d have to know Mill. He’s the proving ground for the fact that too much IQ is not necessarily a good thing. He’s clinically a genius and my daughter is a shining testament to that. Chloe grasps it all—math, science, concrete concepts and those of an airier, more abstract variety. She’s dazzling. Mill, on the other hand, tends to be so captivated by his own calculating thoughts that he has the charm and disposition of a wet dishrag. He is, however, very exacting, orderly and methodical. So I’d known that Chloe and I were probably on his to-do list of things to clear up so he would become highly electable.