Acts of Malice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  In the next room, Botelho sang,

  Joy is green like a forest

  It burns and turns to ash, then grows again

  ‘‘I don’t know what to do. I love Heidi,’’ Jim said to the window. ‘‘She’s—everything, you know? Who put this insane idea into her head?’’

  ‘‘The idea that—’’

  ‘‘I don’t even want to say it. It’s too bizarre for words. I keep thinking I’m gonna lose her for good. I couldn’t stand that. I have to find her.’’

  He came back to her desk, on her side, and leaned over it, putting his hands flat on the desk. ‘‘One of our employees, a woman named Jessica Sweet, told me to come and see you. She said you did a great job in an invasion of privacy case. She said you were unusual. That I could trust you.’’

  ‘‘I remember Mrs. Sweet.’’ Nina shifted in her seat. He was too close to her but seemed oblivious to the encroachment into her space. He had the nonchalance of an attractive man who was very comfortable with women. She caught the scent of the lotion on his skin again. Something tropical and warm smelling. Almonds?

  With his head slightly cocked, he scrutinized her. ‘‘That’s what I need. Someone I can relate to. Someone on my side.’’

  ‘‘I agree that you need help. I’d like to try to help you.’’

  ‘‘I like it that you’re a woman. I feel good with you.’’ Seeming satisfied for the moment, he went back to his chair.

  ‘‘So Heidi blames you for your brother’s death,’’ Nina said. Might as well be blunt about it.

  The twist of the mouth again. ‘‘So it seems.’’ ‘‘You have no idea why?’’

  ‘‘No idea.’’

  ‘‘You’ve had some marital problems?’’

  ‘‘Just the usual.’’

  Now she was sure he was evading her questions. ‘‘What happened at home the night before she left you?’’

  ‘‘We came home from the hospital. I was exhausted. She wouldn’t talk. Not a word. I thought she was in shock. She’s known Alex as long as she’s known me. She went upstairs. I drank some tequila—a lot. I crawled into bed. She was there, sleeping. I woke her up. We talked and . . .’’ He cleared his throat, let her fill in the blanks. ‘‘Then it was morning, and she was gone.’’

  Tenderly my love

  Returns my caresses

  ‘‘Brazilian music. Marianne plays that stuff all the time.’’ He thumped the desk with one finger to the beat. ‘‘How can you hear yourself think?’’ Before Nina could answer, Sandy had turned off the CD. In the silence that followed, he pulled out his checkbook.

  ‘‘Please. Find Heidi,’’ he said. ‘‘And I also want you to get this mess about Alex straightened out. Can you do that?’’

  He clamped his lips shut before the question degraded into a plea, although she thought she could see the urgency of his need behind the hot eyes.

  She pushed her chair slightly away from her desk and from Strong. Did she want him as her client? She could tell him she had to think about it.

  Once she was in, she would be all the way in.

  She spent a moment mentally reviewing her other obligations and wondering where Strong might take her. He could have gone to anyone in town, to the loathsome Jeff Riesner, for instance. But he’d come to her. He could afford it, and his problems, ambiguous though they were right now, seemed comfortably within her zone of competence.

  ‘‘Okay,’’ she said after a moment. ‘‘I’ll see if I can get a copy of Heidi’s statement, and find out if the police really are continuing an investigation into Alex’s death. Maybe they know where Heidi is. If they do, I’ll try to put you in touch with her.’’

  ‘‘Primo,’’ he said. ‘‘Excellent,’’ looking relieved and nodding his head. ‘‘How much do you want up front?’’

  ‘‘Ten thousand. I charge a hundred fifty an hour. If this gets resolved fast, you get the rest back.’’

  He wrote out the check and handed it to her, saying, ‘‘You’re cheap. Our business lawyer charges two fifty an hour.’’

  ‘‘Yep. I’ve been called cheap. And a few other things.’’

  ‘‘Gorgeous. I bet you’ve been called that, too.’’ He smiled at her.

  There was no heat in the smile. The heat was probably reserved for Heidi. Nina liked that. She smiled back and stood up. ‘‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow. At Paradise?’’

  ‘‘If you find out where Heidi is, sure, call me at the resort. Otherwise—I’d prefer you called my home. I don’t trust my reactions. You know?’’

  He got up too, and she noticed again that he was much taller than she was, long and lean with a trim waist. She could picture him turning gracefully between the tall trees, the even line of teeth as white as the snow all around him. . . .

  ‘‘Jim,’’ she said.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘I’d better keep Heidi’s note.’’

  ‘‘Why?’’

  ‘‘So it doesn’t get lost.’’

  He hesitated. ‘‘Sure,’’ he said. ‘‘I just want to hang on to it until tomorrow.’’ Before she could protest, he gave her a half wave and she heard the door in the outer office slam.

  Sandy came in, tapping her finger on her full lower lip. She sat down in a client chair, a sign that she wanted to say something.

  After two years with Sandy, Nina had learned to interpret her signs. Sandy seldom smiled, almost never laughed. Her face remained composed whatever the crisis. But her crossed arms, or cocked eyebrows, or sudden studious attention to a speck of dirt on the floor spoke volumes.

  A full-blood member of the Washoe Tribe, Sandy was a descendant of the people who had settled Tahoe and the Carson Valley long before the gold rush which had led California willy-nilly into statehood. She kept Nina’s law practice operating.

  Sometimes, she was the only thing propping Nina up.

  Now she was giving her lower lip quite a workout, tapping it, massaging it, pulling it this way and that. She was really thinking hard.

  Nina had long ago given up trying to outwait her. ‘‘I read about Alex Strong in the Mirror. Did you see it? The paper reported his death as an accident,’’ she said. She put her stockinged feet up on the desk and her hands behind her head, stretching. ‘‘I have to stop eating quesadillas for lunch. I’m getting a stomachache hunching over the desk.’’

  Sandy’s lower lip released itself. It met the upper lip. The lips went in and out. Mesmerized, Nina watched words form. ‘‘A client that pays up front. That’s already a change. We need more like him. After that last debacle . . .’’

  ‘‘That’s all you have on your mind?’’

  Sandy found something to study on the ceiling. ‘‘That resort’s pulling down big bucks. It’s not as big as Squaw or Heavenly, but it brings in a lot of packages from out of the country. French, Germans, Japanese— all I’m saying is, he can pay his legal fees for the case.’’

  ‘‘I hate to ruin your afternoon, but I don’t think there will be a case,’’ Nina said. ‘‘He’s had a nasty week and he’s lost all perspective and he’s panicking.’’

  ‘‘Hey! Wait a minute. We got a mountain. Don’t go making a molehill out of it.’’

  ‘‘Oh, I’ll check this out for him,’’ Nina said. ‘‘The cops, the autopsy—it was a violent death, Sandy. They have to be careful.’’

  Now Sandy was all warmed up. ‘‘And why do people want to leave a warm house and go out and freeze and slide down a mountain of snow? It costs a fortune and then you break your leg or end up with a metal plate in your head.’’ She was referring to another client, a tourist who had hit another skier and been badly injured the year before. ‘‘Like that Kennedy back East. And Sonny Bono hitting a tree. Where’s the fun in that?’’

  ‘‘It’s exciting, Sandy. At Jim Strong’s skiing level, it’s thrilling. The danger is part of it. It appeals to intense people.’’

  ‘‘I get my kicks just trying to pay the mortgage.’’

  �
��‘None of this romantic nonsense for you. Is that what you’re saying?’’

  ‘‘You’ve got that right.’’

  In the outer office, the CD had started up again. ‘‘So what’s with the love songs you’ve been playing all week?’’ Nina said. ‘‘I mean, talk about romantic. Makes me feel lonely. I’m starting to want to string up a hammock in the office and get in there with a boy or two and a bottle of rum.’’

  What was this? Sandy was coloring, ever so slightly. Nina watched as the color mounted up her neck and bloomed into her smooth brown cheeks.

  Sandy went into a full-blown blush.

  ‘‘Why, Sandy,’’ Nina said. ‘‘Something going on I should know about?’’

  Sandy heaved her substantial self out of the chair. ‘‘You’ve got that special setting in the Superior Court at three,’’ she said over her shoulder, shutting the door decisively behind her.

  Nina filled out her deposit slip to put Strong’s check into the depleted trust account, looked at her watch, grabbed a file, and headed down the hall of the Starlake Building, toward her Bronco and the snowy outdoors.

  The music followed her:

  Snow falls upon this dream of mine

  This dream we had together

  Oh why can’t happiness endure

  As she warmed up the truck she thought about Jim Strong. His brother was dead and his wife was missing. He had turned to her for help.

  As simply as that, she had taken on his burden. They were lawyer and client, a relationship that sometimes becomes closer than wife and husband or sister and brother.

  Had she jumped in too quickly? His problems had such blurry edges. . . .

  Out here, clarity everywhere, the mountains sharp above the town, pines dripping, clouds in battalions marching across the new blue sky . . .

  And back at the office, a brand-new file. ‘‘I know what you did to Alex,’’ Nina repeated under her breath as the Bronco bumped out onto the boulevard.

  2

  AT THE COURTHOUSE, Nina put Jim Strong out of her mind.

  Love the one you’re with. It’s a lesson lawyers learn early.

  Her client was waiting with her husband, Mr. Geiger, in the hall outside the Superior Court main courtroom. Mrs. Geiger had hurt her back eighteen months before in a car accident caused by the other driver, but his insurance company didn’t like the amount Nina requested as damages.

  The problem was that Mrs. Geiger, a tiny lady who wasn’t supposed to lift more than ten pounds due to her injury, had been videotaped by an insurance company investigator soon after the accident, carrying in groceries from the car, hauling trash bags out to the can, and lugging her toddler grandson around her modest yard out in King’s Beach, all in a single disastrous afternoon.

  This video had aroused such righteous indignation in the insurance company camp that not only was Nina’s settlement offer rejected without a counteroffer, but the District Attorney’s office was called in. Nina had arrived at her client’s deposition a few months before to find Barbara Banning, the new deputy D.A. assigned to the Tahoe office, sitting in a chair next to the insurance lawyer, one perfect calf crossed above the other, on patrol for fraud.

  For a few months, it had looked like Mrs. Geiger not only would lose her case, but might lose her liberty as well. This reflected badly on Nina, who had made the big damages claim, and it also seemed unfair to Mrs. Geiger, who really did have a bad back, although they all had to admit the video seemed to indicate otherwise.

  Nina needed some new ammo. So, shortly before the time when all doctors’ reports had to be completed, she visited the treating doctor again, bearing a copy of the video.

  He hadn’t liked having his professional judgment questioned or his patient ridiculed. He went through the video in slow motion, stopping now and then to look at Mrs. Geiger’s movements frame by frame. He pointed at various frames and snapped things like, ‘‘Don’t you see how she’s grimacing in pain there? And there? See how she’s compensating? She’ll never be pain free again. She needs another MRI. I think I missed something. She’s worse off than I thought.’’

  So Nina called a last-minute follow-up deposition of this doc, and he muttered darkly about hip replacements and chronic pain syndrome down the road, which would probably necessitate expensive surgery. By the time he finished, opposing counsel was on the phone to his boss in some fifty-story building somewhere, whining for a bigger reserve.

  On the third day before the trial was to begin, this lawyer made a reasonable offer, which Nina, biting her fingernails even as she spoke on the phone, rejected. An endless afternoon later, the lawyer called again and made a more than reasonable offer. Nina wrote the figure on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk to Mrs. Geiger, who wrote, ‘‘Take it! Take it!’’

  But now, just at that tricky moment when the settlement offer was about to be confirmed in court, Mrs. Geiger’s husband, who previously hadn’t shown any interest in the proceedings, had decided to butt in.

  ‘‘I don’t think it’s enough,’’ Mr. Geiger said. ‘‘I could do better than this with these people.’’ He worked in the Personnel Department at Harvey’s, so he probably did know a lot about human nature, but what he didn’t know was that insurance claims adjustors don’t have human natures. They have Pentium processors.

  ‘‘Then it’s a good thing I’m the lawyer, because if it were up to you, we’d be going to trial tomorrow. And that wouldn’t be smart. No offense,’’ Nina added.

  ‘‘Why not go for another fifty grand? These damn insurance companies are sitting on all the money in America.’’

  ‘‘Mr. Geiger, you’ve seen the film. Now imagine what the insurance company would have to say about that at trial. Mrs. Geiger might lose. Then she would get nothing. I don’t think you should take that chance.’’ To make sure he understood, Nina went over the whole thing again, but he brushed her counsel aside.

  She thought she knew Mr. Geiger’s real problem. The door was closing; an amount certain must sound paltry compared to the rank speculation in his mind. The settlement amount must seem to Mr. Geiger to be plucked from the air, as indeed it was, since damages for pain and suffering in such cases were only loosely related to the actual medical bills. If the company would give this much, why not a fortune?

  And he might also be thinking, as other clients sometimes thought, that his guess was as good as that of this young woman with the long brown hair and expensive navy-blue blazer talking rapidly in front of him.

  What he was brushing aside was the fact that Nina had fought dollar by dollar through this particular battle, and she knew from experience that there was no more money, not a quarter, not a plugged nickel.

  Mr. Geiger began talking over her, his lecture segueing into a rant. He was going to have his say and her job was to listen like a good girl and then carry through with the deal.

  Mrs. Geiger said not a word. She seemed remote from them, small, ineffectual.

  Nina noticed a hot feeling incubating in her chest. He was another obstacle in the way of doing what was best for her client. She ought to soothe him, flatter him, placate him. It was her duty, for Mrs. Geiger’s sake. Poor, meek Mrs. Geiger. What a home life she must have.

  Lawyers, clients, and witnesses were walking back and forth down the hall, looking curiously at the small group of three huddled against the wall. Mr. Geiger continued to bluster. All he wanted was to bust her ass for a while longer, but they were plumb out of time.

  To hell with him.

  ‘‘It’s not enough,’’ he barked again.

  Someone brushed by her and she looked up to see a face she hadn’t seen for a long time.

  ‘‘Collier!’’

  ‘‘Hey, Nina.’’

  He was walking into the courtroom with Barbara Banning, who continued on her way without a glance. He stopped, taking in her situation.

  ‘‘I’ll give you a call,’’ he said, and disappeared inside. Nina watched the door, her mouth slightly open.
>
  ‘‘Well?’’ Mr. Geiger said. ‘‘Have I made my point?’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’

  ‘‘Okay?’’

  ‘‘You win, Mr. Geiger. We’ll reject the offer in open court. We’ll go to trial tomorrow. Let’s go on in and tell the judge.’’

  A silence.

  Nina turned around and pulled open the door. ‘‘After you,’’ she said.

  ‘‘B-But I thought—my wife had you accept the offer. I was just explaining how I thought—’’

  ‘‘You don’t like my work; you want to overrule your wife’s thinking on this; you think we’ll do better at trial. Let’s go to trial. Coming?’’

  ‘‘Ed?’’ Mrs. Geiger said in her tiny voice.

  ‘‘Wait a minute! I’m not done yet—’’

  Mrs. Geiger reared up like a pony and banged her husband sharply with her wee purse.

  ‘‘Shut up, Ed,’’ she snarled. She turned to Nina. ‘‘Ignore him. You get in there and cancel that trial.’’

  So to Mr. Geiger’s secret relief they did that, and Nina filed some papers across the hall at the clerk’s office, and by the time she had finished her errands the D.A.’s office was closed and it was getting dark. Bob would be waiting at home. She hauled herself up into the Bronco, slung the briefcase into the back seat, and drove down Pioneer Trail toward Kulow Street.

  Winter was closing in so early! How high would the snow go this year? She looked at the snow wands lining the road, about eight feet high. On the other side of the lake, at the Donner Party memorial, there were trees the pioneers had sawed to make their huts in the snow—and the stumps were thirteen feet above the ground.

  Well, she’d chosen to live in the Sierra. This winter she would get a really cool-looking pair of boots.

  The day had been long and jumbled, like most of her days, a result of billing her work time in tenths of hours. She was really looking forward to the peace of home. Bits sloshed around in her brain—Jim Strong’s weary blue eyes and restless body, Heidi Strong’s note—she’d have to get on that autopsy report first thing tomorrow —and Mr. Geiger’s face when Mrs. Geiger walloped him—she’d misjudged the Geiger marriage; Mrs. Geiger could take care of herself—and what was in the fridge to cook for supper and boy oh boy a glass of chilled Clos du Bois would really hit the spot as soon as she got the pantyhose off—if only Bob didn’t have algebra homework . . .