Case of Lies

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Just barely over the Nevada state line, extending for a few blocks along Highway 50 on the South Shore, the gaming industry reigned supreme. “Gaming” had a much nicer ring than “gambling.” “Gaming” implied ingenuity, and Nina did admit poker and blackjack to a realm where gambling could ascend into skill. Most people played the slots, though, and everyone knew that slots were the main source of casino revenue.

  The casino district’s face-lift was almost complete, down to a new gondola gliding up the slopes of the Heavenly ski resort. Old Cecil’s Liquors with its narrow aisles and products piled to the ceiling had been replaced by the new Cecil’s, twice as expensive, a neon sign advertising its new location, too brightly lit, too neatly stocked.

  Cecil’s also had new, twenty-first-century neighbors: a bookstore, a Starbucks. The Village Center -brand-new, built with a heavy hand from fieldstone-held a hotel and expensive shops. On her left, the unregenerate originals, the T-shirt shops and tchotchke vendors, stuck it out behind shabby storefronts, still fielding plenty of customers. Raley’s Supermarket had been gussied up into chalet style. As she passed that corner, Nina searched for the lone tree in the parking lot, which had once figured in a murder case she had handled.

  No tree. Progress had leveled trees, crime scenes, and favorite haunts with the same dispassion.

  At Prize’s, with its house-sized treasure-chest logo looming overhead, she saw that Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina had started up. Caesars, the class act of the district, had the Reno Philharmonic playing Carmina Burana, but for the regulars, DJ Jazzy Jeff was spinning CDs at Club Nero. X-An Erotic Adventure would be getting playful on Friday night at Harveys. Tall, forest-green Harrah’s looked down its nose across the boulevard from humble Bill’s, which didn’t monkey with erotica, magic, or expensive music acts, but got right to the point. Its neon marquee simply promised “Loose Slots.”

  She hit another light at the end of the row, near the Lakeside Inn, the locals’ casino, the last casino before the forest crept back in. To her left now was Kahle Drive, where the casino workers lived in mobile homes and cottages facing an undeveloped meadow. A young woman with long bleached hair, a leopard-print blouse, and jeans walked her big, wild-looking mastiff, fitting symbols of the transition from civilization back to the wooded mountains.

  The forest closed in, olive and brown, the sky blindingly clear and the lake on her left filtering its blue-grays now and then through the firs. With air so dry and at an altitude of over six thousand feet, everything was high-focus, almost too clear.

  Off Cave Rock, a white cabin cruiser trailed dark blue waterlines. The lake looked as enormous as an inland sea. Sometimes waterlines appeared by themselves out there, sinuous ridges that had given rise to the Tahoe Tessie legend.

  Just after the Carson City turnoff, the road wound up high above the lake and the Bronco passed an unmarked gated trail to the left. Nina knew from Sandy that this led down to Skunk Harbor, where the Washoe Indians had been granted an exclusive right to camp, hunt, and fish. The cove was invisible, but she could see from her high seat the untouched meadows and forests below. A couple of hikers toiled up the trail.

  Fifteen minutes later she came to the North Shore, the water suddenly close and sparkling on her left, down a hundred feet of steady-sloping granite and dirt to the nude beaches. Nina could see a few plumes of smoke on the distant West Shore -prescribed burning even this late in the year. The mountains over there were a deeper blue frosted with white from early snowfall.

  She was alone on the road, Sand Harbor ’s shallow, bright water just ahead. Swinging the wheel, she continued around the curve past the old Ponderosa Ranch and took a right at Country Club Drive, the street name that told her, in several ways, that she had entered Incline Village.

  The Bronco labored up the mountain. Just off Mount Rose Highway she came to Champagne Way and turned down the long, winding street, marveling at the chateaus with their mile-high views of the lake basin. She had heard of this street. Local gossip said that a very well-known singer, songwriter, and record producer had a home here. The neighbors didn’t exactly look poverty-stricken, either.

  At the end of the street she arrived at a large stucco hacienda with a green-tiled roof surrounded by walls with fir-tree borders. The house was built on a promontory of the mountain. Nina slowed down to take in the view, but then Betty Jo Puckett appeared in the flagged driveway and the Bronco plowed toward her.

  Betty Jo practically dragged Nina out of her seat. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” she said. A tall, rugged, gray-haired woman in her fifties; her jeans and white shirt encased a rangy body. Her face, sawed into a hundred lines and angles, exhibited every second of wear, and she had let dark eyebrows grow in thick. She looked a little like Judge Milne, in fact.

  “Let’s go inside.” They passed through a tall entry with saltillo tiles underfoot and a lot of plants into a high-ceilinged living room with a flagstone fireplace next to a bar at the far end.

  A little old man stood behind the bar, pouring from a bottle of vodka. “Heh,” he said.

  “That’s Hector, my husband. He doesn’t talk too well these days, but he loves company. What would you like to drink? Here, set down.”

  Nina chose a leather chair near the fire. “Tea?”

  “Tea?” Hector growled almost incoherently, obviously peeved.

  “Tea,” Nina said firmly.

  He took a flowered teapot from below the bar and flicked the lever of a spigot over the sink. Steaming water filled the pot. He measured quantities of tea from a silver tin, dunked a big silver tea ball into the pot, and set a timer. He said something Nina couldn’t catch.

  “Four minutes,” Betty Jo translated.

  They chatted while they waited and Nina looked around. Picture windows, French doors, whitewashed beams, a lot of expensive furniture. Precisely four minutes later, Hector removed the tea ball, poured liquid into a mug for Nina, and shuffled over to her.

  “Thanks.” Close up, she saw he wore a silk ascot. His teeth were blindingly white and perfectly regular. The tea sloshed dangerously as he handed it to her.

  “Heh.” Back behind the bar he began sipping something of his own. Betty Jo sat on the long white leather couch opposite Nina’s chair, picked up a beer mug from the Noguchi coffee table, and said, “Salud!”

  “Heh!”

  “Salud.”

  They all drank. Nina took a sniff, then a taste. The tea tasted delicate, perfumed with flowers and something like popcorn, quite a change from the supermarket stuff she was used to drinking. “What is this? It’s great.”

  “Is that the stuff from China we got last year, doll?”

  Hector nodded his hoary head. He was very old, in his eighties, Nina decided.

  “Shoot. I forget the name. Hector, what’s it called?”

  He examined an ornately decorated canister and answered her.

  “Right,” Betty Jo said, nodding. “How’d I forget that?”

  Nina, who had not understood him, sipped some more, wanting to know but not enough to ask again.

  “Oh, here’s Jimmy.” Betty Jo got up to greet a man who had entered the room. She took him by the hand and brought him in for a hug, then led him toward Nina. “Jimmy Bova, Nina Reilly.”

  Bova shook Nina’s hand.

  “I’m the owner of the Ace High,” he said. “You know-the motel.” Bova wore a red sweater, which clung like silk to his well-defined upper body. He had fleshy lips, a long Roman nose, the kind that drops straight from the forehead, and unusual, light-colored eyes set off nicely by the even tan a tanning booth provides. He looked like a man who took his exercise inside a gym, wearing really nice sweats, rather than the typical Tahoe man, who got it outside at the woodchopping block.

  “Glad to meet you,” Nina said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” Betty Jo had sprung a surprise, inviting her client along. Bova smiled. It was a warm smile, and Nina gave him one back, always ready to give the benefit of a doubt. If he had
n’t been on the opposite side, she might not have described him to herself quite so harshly. He actually had a dash of Sylvester Stallone when he smiled.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Betty Jo said innocently. “I always reckon people should talk, get to know each other. Didn’t figure Mr. Hanna was ready to join us, though. He’s hell to talk to. I’m glad you’re in the case, Nina.”

  Nina set her cup down and decided to play along with Betty Jo. They were all friends here, with no sticky clients like Nina’s around to mess the place up. “Your house is superb. Spanish style isn’t common up here.”

  “Hector and I couldn’t resist when we saw it. We’re from Modesto. Only been up here a couple of years.”

  “Happy practicing law at Tahoe?” Nina asked her.

  “Oh, yeah. Love it.”

  Bova, roving the room as if searching for a comfortable landing site, made no attempt to enter the conversation. Walking over to the fireplace, he picked up a poker, which he used to make a perfect pyramid of the burning logs. Then he turned to look at her, and Nina felt a shiver in spite of the warmth from the fire. She had been a little startled by how attractive Betty Jo’s client was. He did not resemble the mean-spirited innkeeper of her imagination. His amber eyes glowed in the dimly lit room like the fire behind him.

  Betty Jo launched into a story about meeting Sandy at the grocery store. “She walked by me and I noticed one of the buttons on her blouse had popped. It happens to us big gals, so I kind of whispered as I passed, ‘Look down in front. Your button.’ So she looked down and she fixed it. Our carts passed and she never said a word. Then at the checkout she came up behind me and she whispered, ‘Look behind you. Your butt.’ ”

  And at that, illustrating for them, Betty Jo turned her back on them, bent over, rolled her neck so that she could see her backside, and jiggled it.

  When nobody said anything, she jiggled again. She was not to be denied.

  Nina and Bova, equally astonished at this display, looked at each other and broke out laughing.

  “ Sandy doesn’t take kindly to being corrected,” Nina said when she recovered herself.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s a fine legal secretary in spite of that big honking mouth of hers,” Betty Jo said, sitting down again on the couch. “And she’s observant. I do have a big ass, which Hector considers a major asset, don’t you, Hector?”

  Studying Betty Jo there on the couch, taking it all in-the invitation, the fire, the down-home way of talking, the drinks, the little old husband, the alert eyes-Nina suddenly realized what this foolishness was all about. Betty Jo wanted Nina unguarded. She wanted her friendly. She wanted Nina to underestimate her enemy. A little joke at her own expense was far cheaper in the long run than a big settlement. Legal strategy, country-style.

  “Now, I also hear that you recently came back to Tahoe and set up again. That right?” Betty Jo was saying.

  “I tried something else out for a few months, but I’m back for good now.”

  “Glad to hear it. The more women we get up here, the less cussin’ and fightin’ there’ll be in court.” A Chihuahua skidded into the room, followed by a large gray cat. They both jumped into Betty Jo’s lap. Her strong hand settled the sudden squabble as they vied for position.

  Nina said, “How about you?”

  “Oh, I was living in the same little place I’d had for thirty years down there in the Central Valley, doing a little divorce work here and some personal-injury there. And what should pop up one fine morning but a great big injury case with a deep-pockets insurer. I had to litigate it. By the start of trial I was in hock to my kids, my friends, plus the devil. Three weeks we went to court every day, me palpitating and my poor old client on his last legs. Then the jury came in and gave us fifteen million bucks.” She laughed. “You believe it? Like winning at Lotto. Impossible odds.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I always thought I would hit a big one. Thirty years was a long time to wait, though. Anyway, Hector and I fell in love and got married and decided to spend our best years someplace beautiful. So we came here. You married?”

  “No.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Divorced and widowed.” Nina felt rather than saw Bova absorbing the information. He cruised over, close to her chair, shifted on his feet, and leaned in.

  “And still so young,” he said.

  She couldn’t believe it. He was flirting with her. And this wasn’t the first time since she had returned to Tahoe she had been hit on in ridiculous circumstances. Could it be some kind of single-female pheromone she put out now that she was no longer with Paul?

  If so, she didn’t mind too much, because she liked male attention, always had. Lately, maybe, she had started to wonder if she had come to rely on it a little too much. That didn’t mean she trusted Bova. She drew away from him, attempting to use body language to send him an unmistakable friendly nonverbal signal to get lost. Businesslike, aloof, and polite: She went for that effect, and it worked. Bova stepped away and resumed his examination of the objects in the room as if nothing had happened. Nina picked a few grapes from a bowl on the immaculate glass coffee table and ate them, giving herself a moment to slip back into lawyer mode. “Shall we talk about the Hanna case? I’m afraid I’ll have to get back soon.”

  Betty Jo said, “I know you’re busy. Yet you came to see me right away and didn’t put us off. I like that.”

  “I consider this situation urgent. You’re fighting to have David Hanna’s case thrown out and I can’t let you do that.”

  “In a nutshell. Yes, in a nutshell. Here Jimmy and I thought we were in the home stretch and then you galloped up from behind. Your responsive papers are good, and that worries me. Understand, Jimmy didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t put up an electrified fence around a motel with a guard gate to prevent robberies, especially right around the corner from a casino district. You could just as well have sued the cops for not showing up and preventing the incident.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you the law,” Nina said, “so I know I don’t have to remind you that places of public accommodation have duties to their customers that are completely different from the duties of the police.”

  “Jimmy’s a nice guy.” Betty Jo continued to talk as if Bova weren’t there, ears cocked to take in every word. “The motel’s all he’s got.”

  Nina took a long sip of tea. “No offense, but Mr. Hanna lost everything he held dear when he lost his wife.”

  “He’s only suing me because he can’t find the guy who killed his wife,” Bova interrupted. “I’m sorry about that woman. I heard she was pregnant. Is that true?”

  Nina nodded, watching him touch the smooth brown skin on his forehead.

  “It’s a shame. You think I don’t wish every day this hadn’t happened? But I’m not responsible.”

  “You have a proposal?” Nina said, on firm ground with him at last. “Do you want to settle this case and have peace of mind? Because I’m sure Betty Jo has told you, we can do that. We can settle with you and keep looking for the killer.”

  “We can come up with something,” Betty Jo said before he could respond, “but I’m afraid your client won’t want to take what’s on offer, because we’re the only money around, and he thinks we should pay for everything.”

  “Surely the motel’s liability insurance covers this situation,” Nina said.

  “The company said no for a long time. But in the last two days they offered to make a payout.”

  “What is the policy limit?”

  “They offered twenty-five thousand. And we’ll drop our claim for attorney’s fees.”

  “I see,” Nina said.

  Hector brought over another bottle of beer for his wife. She gave him a pat. She had not touched the first beer after the initial toast. Her mug now stood on the coffee table like warnings to Nina not to relax too much. “It’s all standard stuff,” Betty Jo said to Nina.

  “Standard? One, you won’t tell me their l
imit, and two, the offer’s a pittance.” Ah, she loved this tea. What in the world was in it to create an effect so relaxing yet so exciting? She felt a sneaky sympathy for Betty Jo, who was doing her damnedest to settle the case for a miserly amount of money, and who would not succeed unless she found more. For a moment, she wondered if Hector would go so far as to spike her tea somehow.

  No. It was just wonderful tea.

  Betty Jo looked at Jimmy Bova, now sitting beside her on the sofa. He shrugged. Then he turned his yellow eyes toward Nina. They now held nothing personal.

  “Jimmy’s just getting by. But he can put a little in too, from his personal account. Now, let me explain something about the way I practice law. I really think the way the men do it, with all the dicking-excuse me, I mean dickering, around, and the hee-hawing and trying to score points, is a waste of energy. What I do is this. I make my last and final offer the first time around. And I stick to it. It never goes up, because I’ve already put out everything I can.

  “A good attorney on the other side, she’s going to appreciate how efficient that is. It takes a little trust to work. I know I haven’t got my reputation established up here in the mountains. All I can tell you is, I’m about to make you a last and final offer from the Ace High Lodge, and your client has two days to decide whether to accept it. After that, we incur a bunch of expenses getting ready for trial, and we withdraw the offer.”

  This practiced-sounding speech had a lot of appeal. Implicit in the offer was an assumption that the motel would lose its motion to dismiss. If Nina heard right, then Betty Jo was making a concession lawyers weren’t supposed to make, in addition to offering an authentic settlement.

  “I don’t know how much you’re offering yet, but I appreciate your frankness,” she answered.

  “Jimmy can scrape together another twenty-five thousand. That’s absolutely all he can spare and keep going. He feels terrible about what happened at his motel and he’s willing to dig deep. But these fringe places are strung out on the profit end, Nina. He’s not a rich man. We’re prepared to show you his income-tax returns to reassure you that he’s not hiding money and that this constitutes a real sacrifice. So, fifty thousand dollars to the bereaved husband, and you can still go after the killer.”