If I’d known then that I would nearly get blown up later that night, I would have made nice and gone to dinner with Philip instead.
Chapter 5
Not sure whether I had just broken off my alleged engagement or not, I jolted down Shade Avenue over the five hundred speed bumps the city had installed to keep commuters like me from using the road—I mean, okay, why put a road there in the first place if people aren’t supposed to actually use it? After that less than soothing commute to my office, I pulled into my named parking spot, right next to Jackson Smith’s car, right as Jackson, the firm’s founding partner and the living, breathing reincarnation of Stonewall Jackson, was getting out.
Jackson slammed his car door, then opened mine for me, stepping back like a perfect gentleman, but drawing the line at offering me his hand. I eased out of my car and flashed him a grin—if I’d been in a dress, I’d have flashed him some leg too, but pants have that drawback.
“Heard you’re a suspect in the M. David Moody murder,” Jackson thundered. He didn’t sound so loud outside.
“I’m not a suspect,” I said. “Hello. How are you?”
“Didn’t think you’d wait that long to kill him.”
“I’m not a suspect and I didn’t kill him.” I noticed Jackson was wearing his golfing clothes, and made a mental note to add to my grooming school curriculum a list of things men over fifty and under a hundred should not wear, i.e., bright green golf pants. “Golfing with the judges this afternoon?” I asked.
“Why did the homicide detective want to question you if you’re not a suspect?”
“Just general stuff. Nice day for a golf game. Why don’t you take me with you sometime?”
“Uh-huh. So, the detective just randomly chose you from a phone book to interview about why M. David ended up facedown in a gyp stack?” As he said this, Jackson took giant Jackson steps toward the back door, punched in the code on the lock with his big, long finger, and opened the door, standing back so I could ease in by him.
“He had my firm bio and had told his secretary to make an appointment with me, so naturally, the detective wanted to find out what that was about.” So saying, I walked past Jackson to the inside of our law firm, where the overly air-conditioned frigid atmosphere engulfed me.
“What was that about?”
“Beats me.” I shivered from the cold and cursed our office-manager jackal for locking up the air-conditioning controls so that only she could adjust them.
“You sure?” Jackson’s voice reverberated down the hallway and bounced back to me.
“I’m sure I don’t have any idea why he wanted to see me.” And I was equally sure the real Stonewall Jackson would never have worn green pants, I thought, but was wise enough not to say so.
“You get questioned any more, doll, you let me know, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wouldn’t hold it against you if you had killed that son of a bitch. Crossed my mind a time or two to kill him myself.” With that, Jackson stormed away and left me to my own counsel.
So people were thinking I was a suspect in M. David’s murder, eh? I wondered if a reputation for having killed someone would balance out the parrot-and-bikini and orange-defamation cases in terms of restoring my image as a tough litigator among the community’s lawyers.
Once inside my own office, I reread the Florida Food Disparagement Act, hoping, I guess, that I’d failed to find the tiny print yesterday that said, “April Fools’, just kidding.” So, okay, where were the free-speech lobbyists when that bill was passed?
I sighed, made more coffee, and then studied the two separate orange-defamation complaints against Angus and Miguel. Both lawsuits pled the same allegations against the two men, both were brought by the same plaintiff—Delilah Groves, Inc.—and both were signed by the same lawyer. Both complaints claimed that Miguel and Angus had economically damaged the groves by claiming the oranges grown by Delilah were fertilized with a radioactive waste by-product of phosphate processing—phosphogypsum, or gyp, in phosphate-speak—and that as a result, the oranges were toxic. The lawsuit sought a monetary judgment because of past, lost profits, as well as an injunction that would forbid Angus and Miguel from speaking out in the future about the groves’ agricultural practices.
I got out my phone book and looked up Delilah Groves. On a whim, I called the number in the book and asked to speak to the owner. A moment later, a gruff voice came over the line and said, “Yeah.”
Oh, management from the suave school of MBAs, I thought, and said, “Yes, I’m interested in buying some oranges to ship and—”
“Season’s over, lady.”
“Oh. Could you tell me your name, please?”
“Why?”
“So I can be sure to ask for you next winter when I order some oranges. I’m talking a big buy. I’d like to talk discounts for volume. We can start talking now if you’d like.”
“Big volume?”
“Yes, very big. I represent a new food cooperative that’s franchising in New England and—”
“I’d need payment in advance. A down payment now to guarantee the availability.”
Yeah, right, I thought. “Please, sir, tell me your name?”
“Rayford Clothier. And who are you?”
“Sunny McDemis. Now, sir, do you own Delilah Groves?”
“Yeah. You want to come by the groves today, leave me a deposit, and we can do the paperwork on next winter’s crop. Take the State Road 72 exit off I-75 and turn north on Sugar Bowl Road, can’t miss it.”
“Oh lovely. Now my buyers are fussy. They don’t require organic, but I’ll need a list of the chemicals you use on the oranges before I contract.”
“And I’ll need a down payment on the order. After all, we ship most of our oranges up north, and we have standing contracts already. If you want to reserve a portion of the crop, you need to act quickly.”
“Fine, you get that list of chemicals and I’ll bring my checkbook.”
With that exchange of lies and fraud-in-the-making, we hung up the phone. I debated the wisdom of sweet-talking Olivia into running out to Sugar Bowl Road and leaving a bad check in exchange for a list of chemicals, but a list obtained that way wouldn’t be admissible into evidence at the trial, and, anyway, already I could tell Rayford Clothier was the sort who’d lie. So for half a second, I wondered how long he’d wait for me and my checkbook, then I went back to work.
Being the List Queen of the law firm, I listed the things I wanted to know: all about Delilah Groves, Rayford the suave owner, phosphogypsum as fertilizer, and other such things, and then I listed the legal issues, which all pretty much turned out to be First Amendment questions. Because I hadn’t been a star student in constitutional law in law school, I was going to need help—especially since this was either a reduced-fee or a pro bono case. One of the unwritten rules of the successful maintenance of a partnership in a law firm is this: delegate any project that doesn’t earn big bucks. That meant law clerks. And law clerks, those entry-level peons who toiled in the library hoping to be noticed and promoted, meant a chance for error.
To cut that distinct possibility for mistakes, I decided I’d put two of them on the case, and pit them against each other.
With that plan in mind, I marched into the library, where, despite the bright, sunny Saturday, all the law clerks at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, were shoulder deep in fine print.
Everybody looked up when I came into the library.
“Anybody in here make an A in constitutional law?”
Everybody looked down.
Okay, next round. “Anybody make a B in constitutional law?”
Two heads popped up, the rest looked farther down. One of the heads belonged to a young woman, who quickly asked, “Do you mean both semesters? Or would one B do?”
The popped-up head that belonged to a young man retorted, “I got a B one semester also.”
Oh, good, competition already.
“Fine. If you tw
o would come with me to my office.”
They both hopped up, and I stood back and gestured that they should go in front of me. As they walked past me, I studied them for telltale hints of character traits that might suggest some competency.
The woman, who was elegant to the point of irritation, looked like a young Whitney Houston. The man, with his sharp, pointed face and manic gestures, reminded me of a Jack Russell terrier.
Once seated in my office, they introduced themselves and then both listened as I explained my basic queries—whether I could successfully defend Miguel and Angus against orange-defamation charges by claiming they had a First Amendment right to speak on what was surely considered a public issue? Would the New York Times v. Sullivan standard of willful malice apply? Was the veggie-defamation statute unconstitutional on the face of it, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, the real query was, could I win quickly (read: cheaply) with a motion to dismiss on First Amendment grounds, but I had to throw out a lot of big words in the process of asking that question to indicate that I might know what I was talking about. I shoved a copy of the complaint at Jack Russell and a copy of my list of legal issues at Whitney Houston and told them to make copies, return the originals, and get cracking.
“You want us both working on the same issues?” Jack asked, a hint of a yippy quality to his voice.
“Yes, this is very important, very important, big clients, and we need to know absolutely everything we can—state law and federal law. Very big project. The kind of project that can make or break you, show whether you are associate material or not.” Tantalize a law clerk with the promise of a promotion to associate and he or she will do just about anything.
They looked a little unsure, but I shooed them out of my office anyway. I was counting on their natural competitive streaks to guarantee an adequate job.
Alone in my office, I looked at my remaining active cases. Piddling. All of them. And while it’s true an attorney can make a nice living on piddling cases if the cases are milked hard enough, what I wanted was a big-ass, page-one, above-the-fold medical malpractice case to defend. I punched in Henry Platt’s number, though I knew he wouldn’t be in the office today because he was busy courting Bonita and her five children. Henry is the claims adjuster at a Big Medical Malpractice Liability Insurance Company and his main job is to assign cases to me so that I can defend doctors, bill heavily, and make good press in the local newspaper.
Well, okay, he’d probably describe his job differently.
When his answering machine came on, I said, “Henry, Lilly here. I need a med-mal case. A big case. The biggest case you’ve got. Now.”
Having accomplished little thus far, and nothing I could bill for, I attacked my piddling files with all the determination of a small terrier and churned my paperwork till lunch.
By noon my coffeepot was empty, Jack Russell had popped his head in my office five times to ask irritating First Amendment questions of the sort I thought he understood he was supposed to be answering, and I’d billed enough time to take a break. I stretched and stood and went out the back door, where I got into my little Honda and drove home.
My couscous was steaming in the pot while I cut up some beet greens and toasted some walnuts to make a hot salad, and, damn, Jimmie popped in. Opened the door, and shouted out, “Hey, Lady, you home?” and came right into the kitchen before I could say boo. He held up a greasy sack. “Want some?”
“No, thank you. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Well, suit yourself.” With that, Jimmie sat down at my kitchen table, opened his sack, and started eating. “Bacon cheeseburger,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some? I’ll cut you off half.”
Apparently there wasn’t much point in explaining the vegetarian thing to Jimmie, and, after all, he must be close to eighty and he looked pretty healthy, and then, like my grandmother was overly fond of explaining, you just can’t teach a pig to sing or a cow to waltz. So instead of proselytizing about the moral and health benefits of being a vegetarian, I simply asked, “Get much grass cut?”
“Oh, yeah, the back half.”
I tossed my greens, nuts, and grains together, dribbled toasted sesame seed oil over my dish of healthy goodies, put it on the table next to Jimmie, and then pointedly walked into the den and looked out at the backyard. “Doesn’t look cut to me.”
“Well, I only got to the half of it. Behind the oak tree. You can’t see it good from in here.”
Oh, in other words, he hadn’t done anything.
“Listen to this, I done got more of this here poem memorized.” With that, he put down his hamburger, stood up, spread his arms, and recited: “‘We were, er, er, a ménage à trois of lightning bugs in a jar with no air holes. Busted, William crashed. I danced through the shards with no visible wound.’”
While he recited, I peeked into my trash can under the sink and, sure enough, saw an empty bottle of wine. Mine. The expensive organic stuff. I pulled the bottle out, and said, “Recycle glass, okay?”
So, I didn’t need to wonder what he’d been up to all morning instead of cutting the grass.
“It’s some more of that poem I told you ’bout yesterday. I done been studying them poems in that book between cutting your grass.”
“But you gave me that book,” I said, even though I’d promptly tossed it in the trash.
“Oh, Bonita done give it back to me. Says you was too busy hep’ing them wild boys to read poetry right now. I’ll get it back to you, but after I got it all in my memory.”
“No hurry.” I washed my hands and sat down to eat.
As we ate, Jimmie prattled about stuff around my house that needed his special handyman touch, soffits and eaves and trims and door hinges and such, and I calculated that at his current speed, he’d managed to find about two years’ worth of work. Before I could dodge his pitch, the doorbell rang.
“Might could be that Dolly woman agin. She done been over bitchin’ ’bout my car, twiced now. Says I can’t leave it out in the open like that.”
“We do have neighborhood covenants,” I said, hoping to imply that Dolly was correct. But when Jimmie didn’t respond, I went to answer the door.
Miguel and Angus stood there, Miguel with a come-home-with-me grin and Angus with a scowl. I matched Miguel’s grin and hoped I didn’t have beet greens stuck in my teeth.
“How’d you find out where I lived?” I asked.
“Olivia,” Miguel said.
If it had been just Angus, I’d have sent him on his way and fussed later at Olivia. But Miguel made it a different matter, and I stepped back and invited them in, curious as to what they might want.
“We’re going for a hike on the Antheus property, thought you might want to come with us. So you can see what it is we do,” Miguel said.
“It’s a pretty warm afternoon for hiking,” Angus said. “I’d understand, you didn’t want to go.”
Jimmie came out of the kitchen with a handful of French fries. “What you boys doing here?” he asked, sounding a little fatherly for my tastes.
“Where’s Antheus?” I asked.
“It’s out in the Four Corners area of east Manatee County, where Manatee, Hillsborough, Desoto, and Hardee Counties all touch. Acres of prime woodlands, wetlands, and Florida hammocks,” Miguel said.
“What is it, a new park?” I asked, innocently enough, not knowing what a can of worms that was going to be.
“Don’t you read the newspaper?” Angus asked.
“It’s the proposed site for a new phosphate mine, first phase of mining is planned for Hardee County. Eventually, if the company gets its way, it will mine in Manatee.”
“Oh, that. Yes, Olivia has”—ranted, cursed, and yelled were the appropriate words, but I was in sociable mode and wordsmithed this a bit—“mentioned that to me. By Horse Creek. And, yes, Angus, I do read the newspaper.”
Headlines count as reading, right? “So, y’all are going hiking on the Antheus property?” I flipped my hair, widened my eye
s, and smiled at Miguel so he would pay attention to me, not my lack of radical environmental politics. “Hiking? By invitation?”
Angus and Miguel both laughed.
Oh, okay, a trespassing hike was at hand. Oddly enough that made it more enticing. Not as enticing as Miguel made it, of course, but there’s nothing like a little breaking of the law in the courtship ritual to get my blood going. Someday I might pay a psychiatrist to explain that, but for now I was just going to go with it.
I aimed a slow, sensual smile at Miguel, bypassing entirely both Angus and Jimmie. Then I thought about all the bugs, plus my piddling but still necessary work back at the office, and I started an internal debate.
“If you’re gonna go, I reckon I’ll go too,” Jimmie said. “You needs somebody to look out fer you.”
“Oh, we’ll look out for her,” Miguel said, matching my smile and making my sap rise.
“Besides, Jimmie, you promised to cut the grass. Remember?” I added.
“Maybe you best not run off with these two,” Jimmie said. “I don’t reckon you should go.”
Okay, that settled it. When a man tells me to do something, I usually don’t—obedience to the male voice not being one of my character traits—oh, except for Jackson. Everyone obeys him. I bet he could tell God what to do.
“So, this will be fun,” I said, and winked at Miguel. “Five minutes to get ready, and I’ll be right with you.”
While Jimmie sputtered, I dashed into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash up, dabbed tinted sunscreen on my face, fluffed my hair, dotted citronella, a natural bug-repellent alternative to DEET that usually works, at my pulse points, reddened my lips with something from the health food store that used berry juice and beeswax instead of chemicals, and then dashed into the bedroom. Hiking, let’s see, I thought, aiming for practical, yet alluring. Skip the shorts and sandals, as hiking in wild Florida involves a lot of things that bite, cut, snarl, snag, and itch. Even though it was a warm spring, I went for jeans, a man’s long-sleeved, white cotton shirt, hiking boots, swept my hair back in a ponytail, and squinted into the mirror. Okay, a good look for a sixteen-year-old, but I wasn’t sure about me. But my five minutes were over and I still had to clean up from lunch, and I sprinted out to the kitchen.
Bone Valley Page 4
