Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  But I remembered what Angus and Miguel had told me—there were millions of gallons of the stuff behind those earthen dams and no way to get rid of it.

  “Rayford said Boogie Bog tried to sell it off to be mixed into concrete block or road materials, but the nuclear-waste folks had that market cornered. So, maybe, stupid as it sounds to us, M. David was experimenting to see if he could use the gyp as fertilizer.”

  “Actually,” Philip said, slipping into college-professor mode once again, “I’ve read that phosphate companies are beginning to experiment with that. I think perhaps they’ve even sold some to third-world countries for fertilizer.”

  “Nice, real nice.”

  “This was two years ago, according to those documents, that M. David was dumping the gyp on his groves. That’s strange timing for the lawsuit, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. That was the strange thing about the orange-defamation suits. All the protests took place a couple of seasons ago.” Then I sipped and sipped and finally felt up to the long explanation about the SLAPP suit by proxy, and I told it, though Philip’s expression suggested he would really rather nibble my ear again.

  When I finished the tale, I gave Philip a serious look. He gave me a serious look back.

  “What you are telling me is that M. David experiments with the gyp in his own groves, and when Miguel and Angus found out and started protesting, he stopped using the gyp at Delilah. Or maybe it was killing the trees. Who knows? But M. David quit using Boogie Bog’s gyp in the groves and resigned as its CEO, and then nearly two years later, when Angus and Miguel start rallying the troops to stop his plans at Antheus, he files suit against them with the orange-defamation case.”

  “Yep, that’s what I figured.”

  “How does that lead to M. David’s murder? Or to Angus’s murder?”

  Well, there he had it—now that it no longer mattered, I’d proved my SLAPP suit by proxy theory, but still didn’t have a solid clue as to who killed anybody.

  “And how does that lead to Miguel chasing you last night?”

  Oh, yeah, that. I’d started to explain to Philip after he had hidden my Honda and safely returned via his garage door, but then he’d looked at me with those Dean Martin eyes, and said soothing things in that Dean Martin voice, and the next thing I knew I was naked under a hot flow of water while he ran his soapy hands all over me, and then we were in bed, and then and then and then, and finally here we were, back to Miguel.

  With a bit of careful editing, I explained to Philip about the receipts in the glove compartment that I had salvaged and how Miguel knew I had taken them, and that he might want to silence me in case I decided to turn over evidence of his crime to the police.

  “Where are the receipts?” Philip asked, just as calmly as if I had told him I’d bought a new briefcase, not that I possessed evidence of a murder that I had myself stolen after fleeing the scene of that murder. So I answered the question like I was explaining where the new briefcase was.

  “In my desk, at home.”

  A quick flicker of how-dumb-can-you-get passed over Philip’s face before he restored his expression to a cross between Dean Martin sexy and criminal-defense attorney on guard. “You should—”

  Then, in the middle of Philip’s alpha-male order, and before I could bristle into my “don’t boss me around” spiel, the man paused.

  I watched his face as he reformulated his budding directive.

  In a moment that challenged my grandmother’s sage advice that a woman could never retrain a grown man and should therefore never expect to, Philip asked, “Lilly, would you like me to hide them for you? We could go get the receipts, and I could put them in my safe.”

  Suspiciously, I studied him for a minute. Suspicious, that is, that he seemed willing to let me make up my own mind about something important. But before I pondered too deeply on that, I thought about the risk of roping him into what was increasingly a big, frigging mess.

  “Maybe we don’t want them in your office. I don’t want you implicated if this goes bad.”

  “My safe isn’t in my office. It is at a secret and undisclosed location. My clients sometimes ask me to provide secure storage for them. Because of that, I have a location that is search-warrant proof because of its hidden location. If you will provide me with the receipts, I will take them there for proper safekeeping.”

  I noticed he didn’t say I could go with him.

  So the Golden Boy had a secret safe that he was going to keep secret even from me, and where he kept illegal things for his clients.

  Yeah, okay, I was definitely warming to this guy. Especially since he gave me that Dean Martin look again.

  “How about another shower?” I asked, not at all in the mood for a coy suggestion or an engaging game of sly hands on thighs.

  So, we didn’t end up solving any murders, but we were very, very clean and very, very satisfied when Philip followed me to my house, where I gave him the salvaged receipts. Before he left, Philip had to search my house for fugitives and unlocked windows, give me fifty kinds of instructions on staying safe, and make me promise all kinds of self-preservation things. Before Philip would leave me, I had to give him fifty kinds of reassurances that Miguel wouldn’t gun me down in my own office in front of witnesses.

  Thus reassured, but anxious, Philip left me to hide evidence that my client might well be a man whose passions had put him on a trail of murder. And who might have penciled me down on a list as “next.”

  Chapter 23

  My brother Dan, the normal one, likes to say that if a door shuts, a window opens.

  Me, I find that it isn’t so much doors shutting and windows opening. Rather, I find that if you solve one crisis, another pops up.

  Farmer Dave says it’s all about attitude. Mine apparently sucks. But then he’s the one living with a broken heart and an escaped burro from the Grand Canyon.

  Opening and shutting things aside, I was fixing to solve one problem and gird the doors and windows in preparation for the next.

  That is, I was going to finally get this stupid car case of Jimmie’s settled. Then I could go back to solving M. David’s and Angus’s murders, armed as I now was with all but two of Rayford’s M. David files. Since Josey didn’t seem to be wrapping up M. David’s case, and the police were focused on Miguel, and not even looking for anybody else in Angus’s death, I had the deluded feeling that it was up to me to figure out those murders.

  I owed that much to Angus.

  I owed it to Miguel. Miguel might be off the list as potential lover, because with all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I didn’t feel any remnant of lust for the boy, but he was still my client. And, as his attorney, I had a duty to either exonerate him from Angus’s death or help collect information for his defense.

  And I owed myself an answer too—had I really lusted after a killer while Philip paid court to me? If so, I might have to consider whether I’d dismissed that last psychologist too soon.

  Thus with my mind in overload, zipping into my office in overdrive the next morning, I barely greeted Bonita before I phoned Jason the baby lawyer. The first thing I said was, “I officially withdraw the offer of settlement in the Jimmie Rodgers case.”

  “That’s cool,” he said, cluelessly. “I wasn’t going to take it anyway.”

  “Fine, then,” I said, and tried to put charm back in my voice. “Might you come over to my office this morning? There’s something we need to discuss.”

  After a minimum of false pleasantries, Jason agreed to scamper right over.

  How easy was this going to be? I thought, and, despite the fact that I had had no sleep to speak of, I actually hummed as I took the video of the faker plaintiff doing things proving that he was not remotely injured back to our audio room, where in no time at all I made a duplicate. Then, for good measure, I made another duplicate of the tape. I went back to my office and put one copy of the tape in the Jimmie Rodgers file, then went upstairs and locked the original in the f
irm’s safe. By then our receptionist had buzzed me to tell me that Jason was waiting for me, and I flounced out front, greeted him as briefly as possible, and led him into one of our firm’s conference rooms, where, without further ado, I popped a copy of the video into the player and turned on the TV.

  Together Jason and I watched the faker plaintiff going through a morning’s worth of yard chores that made my good back ache. Like an athletic and un-ailing young man, the faker plaintiff was lifting and toting and pulling and bending and scraping and mowing. Any judge or juror watching this tape could conclude only one thing: Nothing was wrong with this man’s back.

  “Jason, as soon as I play this videotape before the judge, your lawsuit against Jimmie Rodgers will be dismissed. Not only that, but I’ll file a motion for sanctions for fraud upon the court. Under section 57.105, you’ll have to pay my attorney’s fees.” And you can jolly well guess, I thought, without having to say, that I will document substantial attorney’s fees on this case.

  “Did you have a…I mean, a…a warrant?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t need a warrant to videotape someone who’s doing something outside, in plain view.”

  Jason huffed and puffed and stammered and turned red and lost his cool and carried on and acted very much like the baby lawyer he was. When he finally began to recoup some of his dignity, he turned to me and said, “This isn’t over yet. I’ll, I’ll…you’ll see. You haven’t won yet.” And then he marched out.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I had won. It was all over but the paperwork. I danced all the way back to my office, where Bonita handed me five pink phone-message slips. “Philip. Worried. Call him.” I did, not even bothering to tell him young Mr. Quartermine had been ever so vaguely threatening.

  After all, possibly a trained Rolfer client who knew how to make bombs was trying to secretly do me in. So what was a kid lawyer on the scale of worry?

  Chapter 24

  A diamondback will rattle before it bites you.

  A dog will growl before it bites you.

  A cat will hiss before it bites you.

  But Mrs. Sherilyn Moody, new widow and prospective murder suspect, determinedly thin and expensively dressed, followed Olivia right in through the back door and into the space outside my own office with a great pretense of graciousness, not a hint of a rattle, growl, or hiss about her. Despite the rain, she was neither damp nor fuzzy haired.

  “Olivia,” Sherilyn said, “thank you for escorting me inside.”

  “No, you can’t—” I tried to say.

  “Oh, it’s all right, Lilly,” Olivia said. “I ran into Sherilyn just a while ago and she wants to explain in person why she and that other guy decided to drop the orange-defamation cases.”

  Nope, sorry, but I didn’t think that was the reason at all, and I sputtered, “I can’t talk to you now.”

  I had the feeling I was standing naked in a snowstorm and fate had just dumped a bucket of ice cubes on me.

  “Oh, Miss Cleary, I am sorry I invited myself here today. But this will only take a second. I want to discuss hiring you. As cocounsel in my—”

  Part of my brain said to turn around and run from Sherilyn. But the part of my brain that controls my feet told me to stand pat and hold my ground. And the part of my brain that was heavily influenced by lawyer training told me I could talk my way out of this.

  “No,” I said, with great force and conviction in my voice. “I will not discuss anything with you.”

  Bonita and Olivia moved toward me, little worried looks on their faces at my apparent rudeness.

  Sherilyn said something I couldn’t hear over the sound of my own heartbeat hammering behind my eyeballs.

  “Shut up and get out,” I shouted.

  The cute blond girl who worked in the mail room across the hallway from my office came out of her cubbyhole and peered around the wall at me.

  “As I was saying, Miss Cleary, why I came here today is to discuss my malpractice case, and your role in it, that is, hiring you as cocounsel. My preliminary medical expert is quite certain that the plastic surgeon went too deep with his laser,” Sherilyn said, with just as much force and conviction as I had shouted at her.

  “Don’t tell me anything—”

  “Of course, Newly Moneta, my current attorney, I believe he is one of your ex-boyfriends, says—”

  “Stop, no, NO.”

  “Oh, my dear, I didn’t realize you still cared so about the man. Why, just wait until I tell him. If it’s any comfort, he speaks well of you too. Anyway, Newly’s theory is that I can—”

  At that, I had flat out had enough of the Moody family, and I launched myself at the surviving Moody, my right fist formed and my arm raised. Only the combination of Bonita literally jumping in front of me and a quick back step on Sherilyn’s part kept her from getting her face smashed in.

  But Sherilyn didn’t quit. “Newly’s got an expert all lined up, a Dr. Standfield Morgan, don’t you just love how that name sounds, and here’s a summary of Newly’s trial strategy and his opening statement—”

  I took another swing at Sherilyn, but my blow had only glanced off her helmet of hair when Bonita, who is quick on her feet, shoved me back a step even as I swung at Sherilyn. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cute blond mail-room girl make a run for it, presumably down the hall. Bonita grabbed my arm and held on, tugging on me to make me back up.

  Sherilyn turned to Bonita and Olivia, and said, “I’m explaining to Lilly all the sordid details of what that horrid doctor did to me in ruining my face, and what my attorney has planned for trial, as you will surely note.”

  Bonita made shushing noises toward Sherilyn, but continued to hold my arms with her own strong hands. I struggled to get out of Bonita’s grip, though I was reluctant to fight with my own secretary, and settled for shouting back at Sherilyn, the devil’s own mistress, “I am not your attorney. I will never be your attorney. Shut up.”

  Sherilyn daintily dusted off her linen sheath as if I had thrown mud at her and said, “As I was telling you pursuant to hiring you as cocounsel in my case, what I did after the surgery was—”

  I spun toward Sherilyn again, so fiercely that Bonita lost her hold on me, and my fist was ready and aimed when Jackson stepped between Sherilyn and me, and my punch bounced off his stomach, hurting my hand, but apparently not much bothering him.

  As I struck the founding and controlling partner of the law firm in his iron gut, a chorus of gasps rose from the hallway.

  But I didn’t look at the rubberneckers. I looked at Jackson, standing as tall and strong and fierce as his namesake at First Bull Run, when General Bee’s next-to-last words were, “There stands General Jackson, like a stone wall.”

  I dropped my fist. I inhaled. He had a stomach like a damn stone wall. I rubbed my sore hand against the soft cotton of my shirt, but that did nothing to take the sting out of it.

  “You need to leave now, Mrs. Moody,” Jackson said, in a voice that invited neither rebuttal nor refusal. So saying, he put both hands on her shoulders, forcibly turned her around, and pointed her at the exit. “Here, I’ll let you out the back door. Much closer to the parking lot.”

  Mrs. Sherilyn Moody, plaintiff-designate from hell, gathered her poise around her and left.

  The cute blond mail clerk hovered within touching distance of Jackson, and I saw her as an angel for fetching him, and made a mental note to see that she got a big Christmas bonus. Even if her interference had meant I’d hit my own mentor.

  “I think everybody can leave now,” Jackson said.

  Only then did I peer out and see the faces in the small crowd of Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley regulars clustering in the hallway. But at Jackson’s words, they quickly broke and scampered back to their offices.

  Except for Olivia, who didn’t actually work here anymore, but might as well have.

  She slipped past Jackson in his commanding-general persona and put her hand on my other arm.

  “All in all, doll, you sh
ouldn’t hit people in the office,” Jackson said. “And you shouldn’t ever try to punch a woman.” Then he gave me a quizzical kind of grin, and added, “Even her.” With that, he stomped off down the hallway.

  Suddenly I could see the value of knowing voodoo and made a mental note to return to New Orleans soon and learn the basic curses, as much defensive as offensive, against the Moody virus. For the time being, I shook off both the protective hand of Bonita and the comforting hand of Olivia.

  “That bitch was just about to do me out of defending a physician in what will probably be a very lucrative case,” I said.

  Bonita renewed her grip and pulled me back into my office. Olivia followed us inside and shut the door.

  “Do you need a kava?” Olivia asked me.

  No, I needed voodoo or Valium, or both, and quickly. Or an ice bag for my hand. So just how many crunches did Jackson do at the Y to make hitting his stomach like hitting stone?

  Instead, I breathed. I closed my eyes. I visualized my peaceful waterfall. Then I opened my eyes and said, “Two, please.”

  Olivia riffled in her purse until she found the herbs, and Bonita poured me a glass of water from my triple-filtered water carafe, and I gulped the capsules.

  And there, while I waited for Mother Nature’s own weedy little roots to soothe me, I told them what had happened to Mrs. Moody’s face. Then, I explained to Olivia that Henry had promised he would refer the defense of the plastic surgeon to me when Mrs. Moody filed her medical-malpractice suit.

  If Sherilyn Moody had succeeded in telling me any of Newly’s trial strategy or her own admissions in the guise of hiring me as her attorney, however fake her attempt to hire me really was, such information would have created a conflict of interest. No matter if I had tried to shout it out, had Sherilyn managed to tell me any of the “secrets” about her case, the rules of ethics would have precluded me from defending the surgeon she would sue. Because I could have used the private and privileged information that she had told me against her in her lawsuit.