Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  So, there I was, having no doubt, in the eyes of Patti Lea, played hooky all afternoon, imagining how I might explain that in spite of not accomplishing anything worthwhile, I had nonetheless spent a more meaningful afternoon than shoveling garbage and looking for the proverbial needle in all the haystack of used tissues.

  Thus, fresh from failure with the nurses, I eased into Dan’s house in the dragging hours of the afternoon. Like a sentinel, there sat a weary Patti Lea at her kitchen table, sipping iced tea, her hair wet, no doubt from showering away Willette’s house. Demetrious was sitting across from her, sipping tea and eating a slice of pound cake.

  “Hello, and hello,” I said, looking at each one in turn, and hoping whatever this was wouldn’t take too long. After all, I still had to get gorgeous for my sort-of date with Simon.

  We traded the usual greetings, and then Demetrious said he had actually come to see me. Patti Lea stood up, announcing she had better check on her laundry, graciously leaving us to her kitchen.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Maybe you can help me, you being an outsider…I mean, a visitor.”

  An outsider in my own hometown? Well, if the shoe fits, I reckon I’d stomp around in it awhile. What I said was, “Maybe.”

  “You know anything about the illegal importation and sale of exotic meats?”

  “That it’s illegal?”

  “Meat from endangered species, usually from Africa, but a lot from the Caribbean too.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, my mind beginning to wander toward wardrobe. What was the best dress to induce Simon to tell me his secrets? It couldn’t be too obvious, and it couldn’t be too staid. Well, damn, I suddenly remembered I was at Patti and Dan’s and my wardrobe for dates was limited to a black rayon dress I had wadded up and thrown in my suitcase at the last minute. Nice enough for church and funerals, but hardly the stuff to seduce secrets with.

  “Ma’am?” Demetrious asked.

  “Hm?” I wondered if Patti had anything that might fit and further the goal of the evening.

  “Here, look at these.” With that, Demetrious spread before me on the kitchen table some PETA publications on the importation and sale of exotic meats. The pictures were of skinned and gory animals and a large sea turtle with its head cut off, its stumpy neck still oozing.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” I said. “You don’t have to convince me.”

  “That’s why I figured you’d want to help me.”

  “Help you?”

  “Stop this.”

  Oh yeah, stop an international trade based upon greed and poachers and stupid people who would buy and eat endangered animals because it was some kind of trendy, sick thing to do? Wasn’t that a tall order, even for me?

  As if reading my skepticism, Demetrious said, “I mean, help stop it locally.”

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded.

  “There’s a restaurant called the Deer Den, out in an old country house, halfway between Bugfest and Thomasville, people from three or four counties eat there. Lots of folks come up from Florida to dine there. It’s under new ownership and it’s rumored to sell illegal beluga caviar, turtle eggs, and occasionally some illegal exotic meats.”

  “Turtle eggs?” My interest level suddenly jumped. Turtle eggs, like little eggs, like maybe a mentally ill woman could see as voodoo eggs?

  “Thought that might catch your attention. What with what Willette said.”

  “Voodoo eggs. But what—”

  “I don’t know what the connection is, but I’m trying to find out.”

  Yeah, between mule-rodeo rehearsals, I thought, but then leaned forward toward him, thinking about Ray Glenn and those trips to the great port crime-centers of Dixie. “You called in the feds?” I didn’t mean to imply incompetence on Demetrious’s part, but he was a small-town police officer with lots of other things on his mind, like winning a showcase of blue ribbons with Big Beauty come Saturday.

  “Tried to. They want more than rumors. Besides, despite federal, even international laws,” Demetrious said, “the local federal authorities aren’t too interested.”

  “Well, from what I read, the feds don’t mind spying on PETA and Greenpeace and vegan groups, why can’t they at least enforce some laws along the way?”

  “After 9/11, asking a federal law enforcement officer to sink time in investigating someone for selling turtle eggs or endangered monkey meat is a waste of time unless I can present them with a pretty tight case.”

  “People eat monkeys?” I asked, disgusted at the thought. But then eating a dead cow is pretty disgusting too, if you think about it.

  “Yeah. I can show you the literature on that. You wouldn’t believe the price monkey meat brings in places like New York and Chicago. But around here, I think turtle eggs and caviar from the endangered sturgeons are probably what we’d be dealing with.”

  I nodded, still not past the image of someone eating a monkey.

  “Will you help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I don’t have jurisdiction—the Deer Den is outside the city limits. I’m just looking to get some evidence. Everybody knows how I feel, so nobody at the Deer Den is going to offer me anything off the menu.”

  I was thinking about Willette’s voodoo eggs again. Turtle eggs in that damn deep freeze could be at the heart of this, after all, and not the elusive stocky little New York doctor.

  “Must’ve been a monumental screwup on somebody’s part if they put a deep freeze of smuggled turtle eggs on Willette’s porch,” I said. “You ever find those two deliverymen that oh-so-conveniently quit their jobs and moved?”

  “No, but I’ve got the police in surrounding counties looking for them.”

  Yeah, that’d be a high priority, wouldn’t it, right up there with turtle eggs?

  “You know about Ray Glenn going down to the ports in Miami and picking up so-called appliances right off the ships, right? So don’t you think—”

  “I think you better be careful who you ask what,” Demetrious said. “Smuggling isn’t—”

  “So you agree with me, somebody tried to kill Willette? With the red ants?”

  “Could be. I told you, I’m taking it seriously. She’s well protected.”

  “What do you want me to do? I mean, at the Deer Den. I’m going out tonight with Simon, I can get him to take me there.”

  Demetrious pulled out a little tape recorder, the kind I sometimes used for dictation. “Can’t put a traditional wire on you—we just don’t have that kind of equipment—but if you could carry this, and get a recording of someone there offering you the caviar or the turtle eggs. Also, I’ve got a little camera you can put in your purse. I doubt you’ll get a chance to use it, but just in case. The recording is the main thing. Of course, they won’t put the illegal stuff on the menu and you’ll have to be subtle about it. You can be subtle, can’t you?”

  I let a slow grin spread over my face. “Yes, I can be subtle.” After all, isn’t subtle just a nice word for sneaky?

  “Be careful, and take this seriously. You’ll be safe so long as you are in the restaurant with other folks, and you don’t get anyone suspicious about you.”

  “Hey, just because I’m a trial attorney doesn’t mean I’m into life-threatening behavior.”

  “Good. The Lacy Act provides up to twenty years in jail and a half million in fines for these kinds of violations, so these folks have something at risk. But the plain truth is there is a lack of enforcement, and lax prosecution. The harshest sentence I’ve heard about is a man who got forty-one months and a fine for smuggling in beluga caviar from the endangered sturgeon.”

  Sturgeon suddenly made me think of surgeon, which made me think of Dr. Weinstein. “Does Dr. Weinstein have anything to do with that Deer Den place? Is he one of the owners by chance?”

  “Not an owner of record, I’ve looked. It’s owned by a corporation, run by a couple of guys they sent down from up North. Either the corporation is banking on a population boom onc
e the resort is put in, or it’s just cleaning up some money. The place does a good business, all right, but not so good a big up North corporation would want to buy it. So I’m figuring it for a money-laundering operation from the smuggling. Or, could be, they’re just selling the stuff they can’t move quickly up North.”

  “Money laundering?” That sounded like something Ray Glenn and his trips to Miami might have been part of, and I nodded.

  “Why did you ask about Dr. Weinstein?”

  Why did I ask, exactly? Because the strange, spiky-haired, stocky Dr. Weinstein was overdosing my mother, ran off Dan and Patti the night someone tried to kill her, and wouldn’t let Dr. Hodo intervene until Dan got a court order as Willette’s guardian.

  How much did I want to tell Demetrious?

  “Sturgeons, you say,” I said, deciding for now to keep my suspicions to myself.

  “Fascinating fish,” Demetrious said, taking the bait.

  Fascinating and fish were not two words I would have joined, but I nodded politely.

  “Sturgeons are actually prehistoric, and they can live up to a hundred years.”

  Wow, old fish, really old fish, I thought, and nodded again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Patti flit by and pause, no doubt doubled over with curiosity as to why, in the midst of the great Willette crisis, the police chief and I were discussing historic fish.

  “It’s because they live so long that taking their eggs—their roe—is so deadly to them. The black market trade in sturgeon caviar is about to wipe them out—imagine, deliberately killing off a species that’s been around since prehistoric times.”

  Yeah, sometimes people suck, I thought.

  “Despite all this, enforcement remains lax,” Demetrious said as Patti sat down at the table with us.

  “Simon is picking me up at seven,” I said, eyeing the wall clock and then my sister-in-law, who appeared poised for questions. “If you give me the recorder…”

  “A recorder?” Patti said, in a hearty tone of curious. “On your date with Simon?”

  Demetrious glanced at the clock, then back at me in my grubby jeans. Yeah, I was going to be late or a bit under-groomed if we didn’t get the show on the road.

  “I’m going to help Demetrious out with a little, er, undercover work,” I explained to Patti.

  “Wow, really?”

  “Now, Miz Cleary, don’t you be telling anyone,” Demetrious said. And Patti Lea, who’d been known to keep a few secrets, nodded vigorously.

  “Let me show you how to use this,” Demetrious said, as if somehow I’d managed to have been an adult for all this time, and an attorney to boot, and had never used a tape recorder.

  While Demetrious explained the complexity of the on-and-off button, I thought: Life in small towns isn’t boring after all. I mean, here I was, a woman with a steady beau going off on a date with a prominent local man so I could spy for the chief of police and maybe help figure out why my mother had to shoot a man over some possibly improperly delivered illegal turtle eggs. Surely all of this somehow would explain why a soulless person had tried to kill her with fire ants.

  Tacky dress or not, it should be an interesting evening, I thought.

  chapter 26

  Smugglers.

  Smugglers who had screwed up.

  A smuggler who tried to kill Willette.

  And I’m going to help catch them.

  In truth, for being so tired, I was actually pretty buzzed over the prospects as I sailed back in to Dan and Patti’s kitchen, all showered, spiffed, puffed, and made up, wearing that little black rayon dress. Yeah, it wasn’t great, but Patti’s collection of what she called her “Sunday-school dresses” had all been one size too big. She did have a pair of spike-heeled black shoes that dressed up my look considerably, and she generously offered them to me. “Dan gave them to me, but they pinched my toes something awful,” she explained.

  Well, they pinched my toes too, but they were sexy, so I went with them. And a little artful stitchery on the neckline of the rayon dress and basting in a shorter hemline made it less funeral or church, and more like a spying-for-a-good cause dress. Thank goodness my grandmother had taught me to sew.

  Still, I was insecure about the overall impact until I sauntered into the kitchen, caught the look Patti gave me, and glanced at my reflection in the mirrored tile above the countertops.

  Okay, okay, it was a bit short. Maybe I overdid the hemming. But hey, I didn’t spend all that time at the gym fighting the inevitability of gravity and time just to wear a baggy, borrowed dress with a hemline around my ankles. And I wanted Simon to tell me things that he might not want to tell me, and wine and short black dresses generally worked better than cross examination, where men I could not subpoena were concerned.

  Patti wasn’t alone in her disapproval. Jubal was standing at the kitchen sink, staring out into the backyard, and Dan was boiling something on the stove, which smelled like black-eyed peas. They both turned to greet me, and I saw Jubal take a long look.

  “You ought to be going out with Hank, not that Simon man,” Jubal said.

  I made a mental note to ask Dan and Patti next time we were alone exactly when Jubal had become their new best friend. Just then, the phone on the wall rang.

  “Bonita, for you,” Patti announced to the kitchen crowd. As I took the phone, Patti Lea and Dan backed out of the room to give me some privacy, but Jubal hung around at the kitchen sink until Patti came back in and led him out.

  “Your cell phone is turned off,” she said, “and you haven’t checked your messages. Are you all right?”

  “Fine, fine, just busy. What’s up?”

  “Your client filed a response opposing your motion to withdraw as his attorney of record.”

  “Why?”

  “He says the usual stuff about prejudice and delay. I’ve already e-mailed his response to you by attachment. You haven’t checked your e-mail either, have you?”

  Ignoring the hint of chiding, I focused on the fact that Idiot Client was objecting to letting me go peacefully, as his attorney. Vainly, I figured that he knew my reputation as a great defense attorney, and didn’t want to let go of me. Whatever his real reasons were, I had to convince the judge to let me off the case. So, how hard could that be? But I needed to get back to Sarasota and hit the law books for a Lilly Cleary special legal memorandum of law.

  While I was thinking all this, I realized Bonita wasn’t talking. Her pause suddenly made those damn trapezius muscles clinch into a painful spasm. “What else?”

  “He’s also filed a suit against Henry and his company for breach of contract and about four other causes of action, and he’s asking for punitive damages. He’s hired Newly Moneta to represent him in the suit. Henry is in quite a state of mind.”

  “He doesn’t have anything to worry about. Fraud is a clear contractual reason for denying coverage. And I can testi—”

  Oops. Suddenly I got it. If I was still Idiot Client’s attorney of record, I couldn’t very well testify against him under the basic ethical rules of attorney-client privilege. Then it was just Henry’s word against Idiot Client’s that he had, in fact, changed the relevant medical records. Bonita had not seen the altered records, and, since the attorney-client privilege doctrine extended beyond the attorney to secretaries, she could not testify as long I could not. My guess was that Idiot Client still had enough sense to have completely destroyed those original records and had made a whole new batch, all with no evidence of any fraudulent misdeeds. And poor Henry, with his tendency to all but stutter under stress, would not make a good witness. And the insurance company, though wholly right in this instance, would look to a jury like the corporate Antichrist trying to renege on its contract. And everybody hates an insurance company.

  So, my testimony about those altered records was the best—maybe only—chance Henry and his company had of ever winning. If Idiot Client took me out of the picture, he could probably win his suit against his insurer, get his coverage reinstated
, and pick up some pocket change in damages along the way.

  And Henry’s company wouldn’t be too happy with Henry.

  Or me.

  Further, as long as I was technically Idiot Client’s attorney of record, I couldn’t defend Henry, or even offer him any advice. I’d love to help Henry, and I’d love to take on Newly again in court, Newly having been not once but twice my lover before he left me for my associate, petite Angela, whom he married, somewhat to my public embarrassment.

  I had to get out from under Idiot Client. I had to help Henry. I had to beat Newly again.

  Right after I solved the case of the attempted murder of my mother.

  “I want to see those papers right now, all of them,” I said. Damn, and me without a fax. “Scan them in, and e-mail them to me by attachment.”

  “I already have. And yes, I updated the firewall right before I sent them.”

  Good for Bonita. She thinks like a lawyer. That being paranoid.

  After we said our good-byes, I was nearly overwhelmed with the urge to get out of Bugfest. I needed to get back to my life and my house and my profession.

  And to top it off, my date was late and I was damn hungry.

  But then the doorbell rang, and while Dan answered it, I went to the bathroom to stuff the mini–tape recorder in my bra.

  chapter 27

  Blue.

  Simon was wearing blue. Blue shirt, pants, tie, jacket, socks, and shoes. At least the shoes were navy, unlike the various shades of bright to royal blue he was otherwise decked out in.

  Even his eyeglass frames were blue.

  That the man apparently had different-colored glasses to go with his outfits did not endear him to me.

  At least he hadn’t dyed his gold hair blue.

  And then there was the car.

  Little. Red. Sporty. Expensive.

  A car that shouted out to the world: I’m an insecure middle-aged man in denial.

  Whew, I sure hope nobody who knows me sees me with this man, I thought as I crawled into the front seat of the beacon-red car.