Albany put her hand on my neck and smiled as she drove on. “I’m only looking out for you. I wish you would have chosen a different profession. Any profession.”
“I appreciate your concern. I do.” I put my hand on her neck affectionately.
“You get too into your cases,” Albany said. “I’ve always worried about that. I’m sorry to say it, but in your position, you can’t afford to get emotionally involved. Most of your clients end up behind bars.” She paused. “Except John Robinson. I’ve worried about that one for a long time. I know that it eats you alive.”
“It does. I have Gina’s kids with me, but that will never undo what I did in that case. Nothing ever will.” I sighed. “And listen – I need to get passionately involved with my cases. At least the cases that I believe in. I can’t go into any of it half-assed, because if I do, I’ll lose every time. Being an attorney isn’t a job for me. It’s a passion. I need to keep it that way, or else I might as well get a job at McDonald’s.”
Albany chuckled. “Well, not McDonald’s. You can do better than that. Hardee’s maybe, or Burger King. But not McDonald’s.”
“What you got against McDonald’s?” I asked with a smile. “Ever since they started serving breakfast all day, they’ve been at the top of my list.”
“I’ll give you that. Well, apply for a job at McDonald’s online today, and see what happens. I’ll bet they’ll take you. That could be your new life’s calling.”
“Nothing wrong with that. It’s honest work.”
We were now at my house, and I gingerly stepped out of the car. “Well, I thank you for the ride.”
“Do you need me to take you back to your car tomorrow?”
“Nah. You need to go to work. I’ll just call Uber.”
Albany nodded. “See you Sunday? For dinner?”
“Of course.” Sunday dinner with the fam was something that I rarely missed. It was something that kept me sane, even through all the turmoil that routinely happens in my life. “Love you.”
“Love you too. See you Sunday.”
At that, she drove off.
Seven
I felt weird the next day after I got out of the hospital. My thoughts started to race, like I had never before experienced. I felt distracted and anxious. Like I wanted to jump out of my skin. I was also irritable. I knew that my job was, once again, getting me down. It always did, really. But having Michael as a client, combined with the fact that I was attacked not once, but twice, by that crazy bastard Elmer, was doing a number on me, mentally.
I went down the stairs and saw that Rina and Abby weren’t there at the breakfast table. I counted to ten, not wanting to deal with their bullshit. I mean, Rina pulled this stuff all the time. She was slow to get out of bed, slow to get ready for school and really slow in eating her breakfast. But Abby was always there, right on time.
“Girls,” I called. “Where are you? We gotta get a move on.”
Abby peeked her head out of her bedroom door. “Aunt Harper, we don’t have school today. Remember?”
“What do you mean, you don’t have school today?”
“Don’t you remember? It’s a teacher’s sabbatical day. They’re all going to someplace in the Ozarks to learn stuff about teaching us better. We don’t have school today.”
I groaned. I totally forgot about that. “I see. Well, I guess I better call Sophia to come and watch you guys.” For some odd reason, I felt angry about that. Why didn’t the girls remind me last night? We had our usual dinner and the twins never said one word about not having school today.
“Thanks, Aunt Harper.”
“You’re welcome. And Abby…I guess this is something that I need to talk to you and Rina about tonight. But there’s going to come a time, sometime soon, when hopefully you won’t have to call me Aunt Harper anymore.”
Her eyes got wide. “Why? Why don’t you like to be called that anymore?”
“You’ll see.” I smiled. I was finally granted a hearing to adopt the two girls. I wanted them to call me “mom” as soon as the adoption went through. I was dying to hear them call me “mom,” as a matter of fact.
Abby went back into her room, and I called Sophia. “Sophia, can you please watch the girls?” I asked her. “I’m so sorry, I totally forgot that the girls don’t have school today.”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
“Thanks.” Sophia lived only a couple of blocks away, so I knew that she would be at the house shortly. “I appreciate that.”
She arrived within 15 minutes. “Thanks Sophia,” I said. “For coming on such short notice.”
“Of course. I love watching the girls.”
“I know you do.”
When I got in the car, I realized that I was having a lot of problems focusing. My brain was too jumbled, my thoughts were coming way to quickly. One thought came into my brain, and then another and another and then another. None of my thoughts seemed to connect with any of my other thoughts, either.
I sighed. I was going to have to hunker down on Michael’s case. He had emailed me his enemies list, and he was right about one thing – it was a long, long list. He apparently had screwed over quite a few people on his way to the top. Just like I had suspected.
Michael was currently a partner at VML, which was the largest advertising agency in Kansas City. He was responsible for millions of dollars of accounts from some of the largest accounts in the city. According to the form he filled out for me, he was making $550,000 per year. The list of people he gave to me who hated him were mainly people who he worked with. They were people whose ideas he stole – there were three different people who were angry with him because he took the ideas that they had and pawned them off as his own. There was one co-worker who was angry with Michael because Michael was running around with his wife. That guy was also one of the ones whose ideas Michael stole, so he had double reason to hate Michael.
None of these people, however, seemed to have cause to want to bump the judge off. I didn’t want to dismiss them, but, at the same time, I needed something stronger to go on. These were creative types at the agency – copywriters and artists and people like that. They wouldn’t have cause to kill a federal judge. If they wanted to get revenge on Michael, I imagined that they would find some other way of doing that.
The first thing that I wanted to do was to ask for an order to have Judge Sanders’ body exhumed. I just couldn’t believe that he was buried without an autopsy. That was ridiculous.
“Pearl,” I said, calling my office. “I need a motion ASAP. I need to have a body exhumed.”
“I’m on it,” she said. “Who do you want to have exhumed and why?”
“Judge Sanders,” I said. “He had signs that he was poisoned before he died. Yet there wasn’t an autopsy performed on him. I need to find out if there was poisoning.”
“I’ll get right on that,” she said. “Who would be the judge who would rule on this?”
“Judge Graham,” I said. “She’s the trial judge for this murder case. She would be the one who would rule on it.”
“I’ll draw that up.”
“Thanks.” I closed my eyes. “Listen, I was going to come into the office, but I don’t feel like it right now. I don’t know, I feel weird. Antsy. Anxious. My thoughts are racing a mile a minute. I don’t think that I’ll be good right now. I think that I need to go to the federal courthouse and see Judge Sanders’ chambers. I hope that they haven’t cleaned it out yet.”
“That’s okay, Harper. I’ll see you when you get here, whenever that will be. You don’t have any new client intakes today, and you don’t have court, so do what you need to do.”
“Thanks, I will.” I hung up and shook my head. I have to see the judge’s chambers. Damn that Elmer, hurting me like that. Damn Michael doing what he did to me. I wonder what Axel is doing today? Maybe he can meet me downtown for lunch. I don’t get downtown all the time, except for court, so I hope that he can come and meet with me. God, I’m hungry. Wh
at’s up with those girls not having to go to school anymore? I think that I need to work on a legal brief for that appeal I got going. I need to find somebody who can do the research for me.
I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Stop, Harper. Just stop. You have to focus. Focus. Focus.
I saw the Federal Courthouse coming up ahead. It was a beautiful, stately building that was shaped like a giant horseshoe. It was fairly new, and it didn’t look at all like a traditional courthouse. There weren’t Roman columns or Roman architecture, but, rather, it was thoroughly modern. There were walls of glass in the back of the structure, and, in the front, it was all made of stone. I loved this courthouse and I missed coming to it. I sometimes got the chance to come down here when I had a federal criminal case, but, other than that, I never really got to see this place so much.
I walked into the enormous lobby of the courthouse and went up to the clerk who was behind the glass. “Hello,” I said. “I need to go to the chambers of Judge Sanders.”
The clerk looked at me and smiled. “Harper, I know that you’re on this case, but you can’t go back there. It’s been cordoned off by the police. They’ve been investigating in there all morning.”
I sighed. “Well, is there any of his colleagues around? I need to ask them some questions about Judge Sanders.”
“You’re going to have to make an appointment, of course. Which judge would you most like to speak with?”
I didn’t know who Judge Sanders was closest with. I really needed to find out if there was a liquor cabinet in his chambers somewhere - that would be the best place to put poison into. Considering that Michael told me that he thought that his father-in-law was a teetotaler, it would seem that, if Judge Sanders was a drinker, he wasn’t an obvious one. Therefore, it seemed that I was going to have to figure out who was his closest friend on the bench. Only his close friend would know if he drank on the job or not.
“Do you know who Judge Sanders hung out with the most? I mean, if he were to meet a colleague after work, who would he call first to go out?” I hoped that the clerk might know that. They were always up on all the gossip.
“You probably want to speak with Judge Johnson,” she said. “He and Judge Sanders were golfing and tennis buddies. He probably would have any answer you need to know.”
“Thanks. Can you contact his clerk and get something set up? I really need to speak with him. Also, I would like a list of pending cases that he had in front of him.” That was something that was going to be important – if he had a case in front of him that was something that he was going to rule on and the ruling was going to be adverse, I would imagine that somebody might want to bump him off for that reason alone.
“I can get that for you,” she said. “Just let me print it out for you.”
“Thanks.”
I looked around as I waited for the clerk to print out the list of cases. There were people everywhere heading to the elevators and talking on phones. Talking to each other. And, somehow, everything just became a giant jumble. It seemed like there was only a morass of people. I couldn’t hear individual conversations or even see individual people. They were only a conglomerate. I put my hands on my ears and squeezed my eyes shut tight.
“Here, Harper,” she said. “Here’s a printout of Judge Sanders pending cases.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get in touch with Judge Johnson’s clerk and let you know when would be a good time for you to meet with him,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She looked concerned. “Harper, are you okay?”
“I am. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You seem a little off. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”
“I don’t feel well. Thank you for that printout, though.”
I walked out onto the street and the first thing I saw was a bar. A bar. I couldn’t possibly go to that bar, though. Yet I wanted to. I needed to.
I got into my car and decided to do something else.
I drove down to the Country Club Plaza, which was the high-end shopping area of Kansas City. It was a crisp day in November, and I knew that, on Thanksgiving night, there would be untold thousands of people who would head down here for the Plaza Lighting Ceremony. That was the biggest annual event for the Kansas City area. Where some cities attracted zillions of people to see the lighting of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree, in Kansas City, the masses of people came to the Plaza. It was an amazing thing to see the darkness of the beautiful buildings suddenly light up. Celebrities showed up to do the honors of pulling the lever that lit up the Plaza - real celebrities like Paul Rudd did the honors on occasion.
I parked the car. I always loved this shopping area. Kansas City was the sister city to Seville, Spain, and the buildings on the Plaza were designed in the Spanish style. Stucco facades, Spanish tile roofs and towers were the hallmarks of these buildings.
I walked into Talbot’s, which was the department store that was the most prominent in the area. I was itching to spend some money, which was weird for me. I was always so thrifty with my money, watching every penny. I knew that I needed to be thrifty, even though I made really good money, because I had so many expenses. I had a mortgage, I had to save for retirement, I had all my usual expenses, I had a nanny, and I also had to save up money for the girls to go to college. I also had to pay for their private school – I had to send them to private schools because the Kansas City school district was so terrible. I had to save as much money as I could, so I tended not to spend very much money on things like clothing and jewelry and things like that.
Yet, when I went into Talbot’s, I looked around and had the urge to spend a lot of money on things that I never thought about before.
I started at the Chanel makeup counter, and I got a makeover. I ended up buying all the products that the girl put on my face, including the skin care products, which was something that I never spent money on. I pretty much bought Noxema from Wal-Mart and put that on my face to take off my makeup. Yet, I bought everything that she put on me.
“You look beautiful,” she said. “This eyeshadow really makes your green eyes pop. You have such peaches and cream skin, and these colors are beautiful on you.”
I never thought of my complexion as being “peaches and cream.” I was pale and I knew it. Out of everyone in my family, I was the one who most resembled our distant Scottish ancestors. The curly red hair, the green eyes, the pale skin – I looked like my great-grandmother who was right off the boat from Scotland. “Thanks,” I said, looking in the mirror. The makeup artist certainly did a great job of subtly bringing out the color of my eyes while toning down any redness in my face.
“I’ll take it,” I said. “All of it.”
After I moved through the makeup counter, I tried on clothes. Sweaters, pants, shoes, suits, hats, coats…Everything I tried on, I wanted, and I bought. I told myself that I earned this. I worked hard for this. I had to put up with people like Elmer and Michael and people like that. I had to have something for myself. I couldn’t continue to deny myself the things that I really wanted.
The only problem was, I never wanted these things before. I never cared about clothes and makeup and jewelry and things like that. Yet, the second I walked through this door, I knew that I had to have everything I got my hands on.
Next thing, I went in to get my hair worked on. It had been way too long since my last haircut, and it was time to finally get that done. I ended up with a big, curly bob, which was quite a bit shorter than the long curly mop I had on my head before. I liked it, though.
Nails were after that. A spa pedicure and gel manicure, both in dark red, the color of blood.
I ended up looking in a full-length mirror and, for the first time in a long time, I actually liked what I saw. I turned around and admired my butt, which I worked hard on with squats and spinning. I liked the way that my legs looked in the flared trousers that I changed into after my shopping spree at Talbot’s. I even liked the floppy brown hat on my
head and my brand-new bright green peacoat, which was perfect for the chilly November evening that was falling.
“Axel,” I said, calling my boyfriend. He was my boyfriend finally. We decided that we were going to be exclusive. I was falling in love with him, and he told me the same. “Let’s meet for dinner. Here on the Plaza. Plaza III. My treat. I feel like splurging.”
Axel laughed. “You certainly are a spontaneous one. I was hoping that I could come over to your house and fix dinner for you and the girls. But if you would like to go to the Plaza III, that’s fine, too. But I can’t let you buy.”
“You have to let me buy. I just got a good murder case and I’m flush with cash.” That wasn’t actually true. I had a lot of murder cases and a lot of criminal cases, and I was never that flush with cash. I mean, I made a good living, but I was never one to blow any of it.
“I’ll meet you, but I can’t let you buy, lass. Sorry about that.”
“Lass.” I smiled. That was one of the things that I loved the most about Axel – he was from Australia and I loved his accent and his use of Aussie colloquialisms. “I’ll see you in about a half hour, huh?” Axel lived in the downtown area in a loft, so I knew that he could be down at the Plaza in a short period of time.
“I’ll see you.”
I went over to the restaurant and found a hostess. “I’m meeting somebody here,” I said. “Can I go ahead and wait at the bar?”
“This way,” she said, leading me into the bar area. She put a napkin in front of me. “The bartender will be right with you.”
I took a deep breath, wondering if I could resist the urge to drink. I was constantly white-knuckling it. Every day, every second, was another day, another second, that I had to make a choice. Either keep on my sobriety or go off the wagon yet again.
But, somehow, the spending spree that I just did at Talbot’s and the hair place and the nail salon took the edge off for me. I didn’t have the need to have a drink. I smiled as I realized that I didn’t want a shot of bourbon or whiskey or anything else on the alcohol menu. I put one of my packages on the bar and looked at the receipt. It was the bill from Talbot’s, and I added everything up and was shocked that it all came to around $5,000.
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 5
