[Barbara Holloway 02] - The Best Defense

by Kate Wilhelm

  “Are you going back there today?”

  “I don’t think so. I just came by here to pick up the stuff, but I’m not surprised by Jack. Bastard. He’s a real bastard.”

  “Could you take a little extra time and see her again? I have something for you to ask her, if you can do it today.”

  “Sure,” Lucille said. “I mean, whatever you want.” She leaned forward with an intent expression on her pretty, plump face. She was very pink today, as if she had spent a good deal of time in the sun over the weekend.

  “It’s fairly simple,” Barbara said. “Will you ask her if she knows Royce Gallead, or if she heard any of the women at the ranch talk about him?”

  “H ow do you spell that? I never heard of him.”

  Barbara wrote the name for her. “And then I want you to remind her that I said she is to tell her new lawyer everything, about her clothes and books, every item on that list, and that I brought up the name Royce Gallead. And she should ask him if it’s okay for her to answer my questions.”

  Lucille looked bewildered but dutiful. She repeated the instructions, using the written name as a guide. “Do you want me to come back here after? I mean, it’s no bother or anything.”

  “No,” Barbara said, smiling at her eagerness. “Just wait until after she talks to Mr. Fairchild again and then give me a call. Okay?”

  After Lucille left, Barbara shut down her computer, closed her briefcase, and then said to Martin, “I’d like to bring Dad around for dinner tonight, about seven. Can you hold a table for us?”

  His grin was answer enough. “Don’t you want to know what’s on the menu first?”

  “Nope. But about wine, what do you have hidden away?” That really didn’t matter much, either. What did matter was that they eat someplace close enough for her to walk home if she had to.

  They discussed wines, and he asked if the old man would want any special booze. He wouldn’t. Her father was off hard liquor these days, wine and beer only. She told him firmly that she had to pay for the dinner, a celebration couldn’t be on the house, and he agreed with some reluctance.

  “But, Barbara,” he said seriously. “I would be highly offended if you added a tip.”

  “Fine,” she said. “No problem. Oh, one more thing. We might want to sit around and talk a bit. Is that okay?” She knew he usually closed by nine-thirty or ten. His clientele was not into late dinners.

  “Just until dawn,” he said grandly.

  She laughed. “I always suspected that what you really are is a poet. Right?”

  His laughter boomed. “You, go on now, scat. I got things to do in the kitchen. See you at seven.”

  Frank had been very pleased with her message, he told her several times over dinner. He had been dubious at first about her choice of restaurants, but his doubts vanished with the first taste of avocado in cream with Stilton cheese melted through it. He followed that with fruit-stuffed pork loin while Barbara had a lamb dish that Martin had described with a blissful smile. “Lots of garlic,” he had warned, and there was, but it was wonderful. The wine was excellent. Barbara suspected that Martin had gone on a quick wine-purchasing jaunt, but she didn’t ask, merely was grateful.

  Her father talked about the house with such pleasure that she had to glow along with him. “As far as suitability,” he said thoughtfully, “on a scale from one to ten, it’s about eleven or twelve.”

  The restaurant filled and Martin scurried around taking care of everyone himself. Frank studied each new group that entered with interest, but did not comment. They were a mixed bunch here, Barbara thought, surprised that she had not considered it before. Blacks, Latinos, whites, most of them in jeans, or even shorts, and most of them greeted by name by Martin. She turned her attention back to what her father was saying.

  “We have a pretty interesting case on hand. It will go to the Supreme Court eventually. You never argued a case before the Supreme Court, did you?”

  “Dad, come on. You know perfectly well that I haven’t.”

  “Oh, it’s an experience, I can tell you. A real thrill, especially if you win. But even if you don’t win, just being there, knowing you’re appealing to the highest court, knowing that every damn lawyer in the country will be following what you’re doing, the possibility that you’ll make history, be in the textbooks, it’s a rare privilege, Bobby.”

  He dropped it there and began talking about redecorating the house, and how much he was relying on her for colors and such. A while later Martin came by to tell them about the desserts his wife, Binnie, had made. They both chose strawberry tart, and Martin said, “Good choice” and cleared the table.

  When Martin left again, Barbara told her father about Binnie, who was as gangly as a colt and made the best desserts to be found in the city. Binnie was mute, she said, and very shy. Few people even knew Martin was married, but they adored each other.

  Frank was gazing at her with an appraising look. “Honey, I wish I knew what all you know.”

  “Well, you don’t.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  He purposely had not asked her about Paula Kennerman, about Lucille and her sweater, about anything, she was thinking, when Martin brought their desserts and coffee.

  “Could we just have a pot on the table?” she asked.

  An almost conspiratorial look crossed his face, and he smiled and said absolutely. She hoped he wouldn’t linger by the door the way he did when neither of them was certain a new client was to be trusted. It was a little after nine; the restaurant was emptying out, exactly as she had known it would do.

  She waited until they had finished off the tarts. She poured more coffee for herself when Frank waved it away, looking very contented.

  “Dad, you’ve done all the talking. My turn,” she said then. Some of his contentment vanished, but she plunged in and started to tell him about her last two days, her long talk with Paula, getting the documents signed, meeting Fairchild.

  “He’s a good man,” Frank said. “Good lawyer. His wife has cancer, you know. Makes it rough on him these days, of course, but he’s hanging in there. Good man.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that about his wife,” she said, remembering the brief conversation. Fairchild had assumed she knew. “After all that,” she went on, “I drove out to the Canby Ranch.”

  Her father took off his glasses and began to polish them; his expression was grim. “And?” he muttered.

  She described her circuitous route, and then her own movements at the ranch and her encounter with Royce Gallead.

  “For God’s sake, Barbara, leave all this alone. That’s a dumb-shit dangerous thing to be doing, out there, no one knowing where you went, what you’re up to. Leave it alone!”

  “Wait,” she said. “Let me finish.” She told him about Jack Kennerman.

  “And what’s the point?” Frank demanded. “Unpleasant people, nasty people, doing rotten things? So?”

  “Listen to me, Dad. You’ve missed the point. Someone told Dodgson you call me Bobby. Who? Spassero didn’t know that. Someone told Dodgson all about our meeting in Judge Paltz’s chambers. Who? And why? Someone told Jack Kennerman that I’d be coming around. Who? No one knew except Paula, her sister, her attorney, and me. Royce Gallead just appeared out of nowhere out at the ranch. I was looking around pretty thoroughly, and suddenly he was there on the driveway. If the house had been standing, if I hadn’t been in front where I was, he could have walked right in, yet the papers have made a case that no one could have approached without being seen.”

  “You’re accusing Royce Gallead of killing that child, burning down that house? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I didn’t say that. What I said is that someone could have entered that house without being seen, no matter what the papers are reporting.” She added softly, “But it’s an interesting point, Dad. Why is Royce Gallead looking out for that burned-down house?”

  Frank took off his glasses and put them down hard on the table. He grabbed the car
afe and poured coffee into his cup so fast that some splashed out. “I don’t know why Gallead is doing anything,” he said coldly, ignoring the pool of coffee. “And the fact is, neither do you. And it’s none of your business.” He stirred his coffee furiously and in an even colder tone said, “I think you’re sore because Dodgson implied that you’re gay, and you’re striking out blindly. Getting mad puts curtains in front of your eyes and all you can see is red.”

  “What you taught me, Dad, is that getting hot and fighting cool wins. I’m cool, Dad. Real cool.”

  “What have you done?” he demanded, suddenly stilled.

  “I passed a message to Paula that no one on earth knows, except her sister and Paula and me. Let’s see who finds out and how soon.” She watched him for a moment and then said, “If there’s a leak, there’s no way she can present a decent case. Not if everyone in sight knows ahead of time what’s going on. They keep stacking the cards against her. I don’t know who killed that child. Paula says her husband did.” Frank snorted, and she ignored him. “What I do know is that the Dodgsons seem prepared to do whatever it takes to get her convicted. Why did Craig Dodgson come forward after I got through to Paula? Why not a month ago? And who told him I got through to her?” She lifted her cup but continued to gaze at him over the top of it. “There are too many people who seem joined in one cause: to get Paula Kennerman convicted of murder and sent up. And there’s something that stinks to high heavens about the whole affair.”

  “Stir up shit and you raise an odor,” Frank said coldly. “So you’re mad, and you’re poking around. Why? What can you do? Go talk to Fairchild. I tell you, Barbara, he’s a good man.”

  “Spassero got permission to supervise the case.”

  “Christ! So what are you thinking of?”

  “I have a proposition for you, Dad. You aren’t going to like it, I warn you. If my bait is taken, if it’s leaked, I’ll know Paula can’t trust anyone in the public defender’s office, and I want her myself.”

  Frank was staring aghast now. He shook his head. “How? On the pennies and dimes you make in your ‘office’ here?” He waved at the restaurant, which was empty except for them.

  “I want the firm to back me.”

  “You are out of your mind!”

  “No, I’m not. I’ll come back, on no salary to repay whatever the bill comes to, for as long as it takes, if I can keep on holding court here two afternoons a week.”

  “God in heaven,” he said in soft-voiced wonder. “You’re trying to bribe me.”

  “That’s about the size of it, I’m afraid,” she agreed. “But cheer up, maybe the bait will lie there and evaporate. And you’ll be off the hook.”

  “I’m off the hook right now,” he snapped. “Let’s get out of here. Where’s Martin? Where’s the check?” He glared at the empty restaurant.

  “It’s already taken care of. Why don’t you go on ahead. I’ll walk home in a few minutes.”

  “You’ll do no such thing! When I take a lady out to dinner, I take her home afterward.”

  “Okay. And, Dad, as I said, maybe nothing will come of this, but be thinking about it, will you?”

  “What I’m thinking,” he said, standing up, “is that you got your back up and you’re making wild accusations.”

  “And what I’m thinking,” she said in a low voice, “is that something is going on here that is beyond simple corruption. Something truly evil is going on, and Paula Kennerman has found herself in the middle of it.”

  SIX

  Wednesday. Something was eating her potted geranium, not the same thing that was eating the rhododendron; they left different bite patterns. Yellow, rather pretty dandelions were in riotous bloom. If she had a hoe and gloves, she would weed; if she had some spray, she would use it; if she had a hose, she would water a hydrangea that was wilting. She started a list.

  She made three house calls and earned forty-five dollars. The garden center bill came to twenty-seven, a few groceries cost eight, laundry three-fifty, gas twelve. A boy offered to cut her front lawn for five dollars, and she accepted his offer. Otherwise, she had to buy a lawn mower, she had decided, or a goat. She considered a goat for a long time. The boy took fifteen minutes. On an hourly basis, he was earning more than she was, and he didn’t pay taxes. She paid him and gazed at the lawn in dissatisfaction; he did not rake, did not trim. He cut. The clippings were three times as long as the grass they would surely smother. She regarded the geranium sourly; she had thought that being in a pot brought protection.

  Each time the phone rang, willing it to be her father on the line, she ran to her office to listen to her own message, and the caller’s message. Nothing.

  Thursday. She considered answering a few letters, and put them aside. She filed her fingernails; if she was going to do weeding, it seemed best to start with them short. The dandelions out back had turned into ephemeral, glistening puffs. The phone rang twice; one time the caller hung up as soon as her machine came on, the next time it was Sears wanting to know if she could use a credit card. She took out the garbage, and at one-fifteen she left for Martin’s restaurant.

  Again, there were only two drop-in clients, whom she dispatched quickly. She had wondered if business would slow down in the summer. Then Lucille came in to report. Paula never heard of that guy, Royce whatever, and her lawyer said she could talk with anyone she wanted to, but probably she shouldn’t discuss her case with them. She seemed disappointed when Barbara said there was nothing else for her to do.

  She was chatting with Martin at three-thirty, thinking of going on home since it appeared that no one else was coming by. She had to transfer money from savings to checking, she thought distantly, half-listening to Martin talk about a new dish he was experimenting with. He left to answer the telephone and she gathered her things together.

  “For you,” he said from a little table that held a cash register, the telephone, and a calculator. He put the receiver down, waved, and vanished into the kitchen.

  She crossed the room, picked up the telephone, and said hello.

  “Gallead. Listen, bitch, and listen good because I don’t intend to repeat myself. You try to connect me with that Kennerman case and I’ll come after you.” The phone clicked.

  Well, she thought almost absently, that’s how he pronounced it: Gul-lee-ed. Although her movements were slow, somewhat dreamlike, as she returned to her table and finished packing up, her heart was hammering.

  She walked home slowly, deep in thought. That call was not what she had expected, she admitted. Royce Gallead had been far from her mind. What she had thought might happen was another diatribe in the Monday edition of Dodgson’s paper, with enough said to let her know he had been informed of her continuing prying. But not this. And Gallead had called her at Martin’s; he had known where to reach her, when. Possibly he had been the caller earlier who had hung up without speaking, taking no chances of having his call taped.

  At home, she stood with her hand above the telephone. More than anything right now, she wanted to talk to her father, but he had to call her. What if he had been really wounded? Offended? What if he had his stubborn mode in full gear? He might never call. He could well have gone back out to the country house intending to stay there for a week, a month. She bit her lip and turned away from the phone. He had to call her.

  Then she picked up her purse and left again, this time heading for the courthouse records room. Forty minutes later she knew a little more about Royce Gallead, knew that he had a gun shop on Coburg Road, and that he had the range out on Spring Bay Road, and that he had acquired the land nine years ago from Richard Dodgson. She looked up Richard Dodgson and found that he had bought the acreage from Grace Canby thirteen years earlier, and that the deed had a covenant attached, a stipulation that he not develop, sell, or fence the lower meadow.

  She was forced to leave then because the courthouse was closing shop for the day. More thoughtfully than ever, she got in her car and sat for several minutes trying to make se
nse of it.

  Canby, Dodgson, Gallead. An unlikely trio. A more-than-benevolent benefactress who had turned over a valuable piece of property for the use of women who were hiding from a world they no longer could cope with. Dodgson, a bigot, a zealot, a misogynist, a liar, a man who claimed to be a born-again Christian and exuded hatred with every stroke of the pen. And Gallead? All she knew about him was that he was menacing, arrogant, and apparently fancied himself a Lothario. An unlikely trio, she repeated as she started to drive.

  That evening she made herself a sandwich for dinner, and then, feeling guilty about the diet she was too lazy to correct, she boiled an egg to go with it. The egg overcooked and was leathery. She ate it anyway.

  All through the scratch meal, off and on until she went to bed, she mulled over her next move. She had few options. She had about two hundred in her checking account and twenty-one thousand in the savings account her father claimed she was spending down to nothing on purpose. She had not denied it, or admitted it either, but she was going through it. And so little came in that she figured in two years she would have exactly zilch. “You act like it’s dirty money!” Frank had stormed at her. “It’s not. You earned it, every penny. And you saved a life.”

  And lost two, she had added silently.

  Her father could be altogether too perceptive, she thought as she wandered aimlessly about her small house. Dirty money. So why was she working like the devil on a case that wasn’t even hers? Again, Frank had been partly right: Dodgson had got her back up, had made her as furious as she had been in years. But it wasn’t only that. She thought of Paula Kennerman driven to a suicide attempt by her grief, or possibly her guilt. Whatever she had done, or had not done, she deserved a fair trial, and would not get it from any public defender as long as Bill Spassero was around.

  And finally, she had been discredited in the eyes of Judge Paltz; what integrity she possessed had been destroyed as far as he was concerned. For years she had claimed, and believed, that she didn’t care what people thought about her. What most people thought about her, she now amended. She cared what Judge Paltz thought because to her he represented what was decent in the system: He was a good judge; he cared about the law, about the rights of the people brought before him, about the people themselves. It mattered more than she had known until now that he not consider her to be dishonorable. And she couldn’t go to him with the yes he did, no I didn't bickering of children.