Montana Standoff

by Nadia Nichols

  “How is that possible?” Dani said, indignant. “You weren’t responsible for the citizens blocking the road, or the truckers wigging out on them.”

  “No, but the firm was responsible for giving the green light to begin building the access road before all the permits were approved. I wasn’t aware of it, but apparently this sort of juggling happens a lot.”

  The server approached the table and Dani gave her drink order and accepted the menu. “Only this time someone found out,” she said wryly.

  “Steven.”

  “Of course. That’s easy beans for him to dig up that information, and damned good ammunition for his fight.”

  Molly nodded as she dabbed her eyes. “Great ammunition, what with that spectacular media coverage showing him being beaten to a pulp by a mob of redneck truckers. And now Skelton needs a scapegoat to thwart any liability by the firm, so he’s throwing Brad and I to the wolves.”

  “Did Brad know about the permitting?”

  “Yes, but when I asked him about it he acted like it was no big deal. He was trained by Skelton, don’t forget. Ken Manning was aware, as well. The way they look at it, everything was going to be approved any day, so why wait? Any fines that might be levied if they get caught jumping the gun are automatically built into the cost of doing business. They wanted to get the majority of the roadwork completed before winter and were willing to take the risks. According to Brad, this kind of stuff goes on all the time.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “Dani, I spoke with Dehaviland himself this morning.”

  Dani’s eyes widened. “The big cheese at Condor International? Wow.”

  “I honestly believe he had no idea all this was happening.”

  “Not surprising. Think about all the stuff that man must have on his plate. He counts on his upper-management teams to keep things running smoothly, and obviously New Millennium fell on its face.”

  “As did my law firm,” Molly added miserably, reaching for her glass of wine again. “I should have been paying more attention. I should have known about the permitting glitch.”

  “This is your first year out of law school and you’re still apprenticing. I highly doubt that’s the sort of information that’s handed out freely. You assumed everything was by the book and aboveboard, and why shouldn’t you?” The server returned with Dani’s drink and raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Could you give us a few more minutes?” Dani said, and he bowed away politely. “Okay, so Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein, with Manning’s wholehearted cooperation, screwed up and Steven drew the nation’s attention to the situation, which resulted in a violent confrontation, and an embarrassed Dehaviland is now asking for an accounting. Skelton’s blaming the incident on you and Brad, and he’s going to make the two of you his official scapegoats. Have I got this straight?”

  Molly nodded.

  “There’s only one thing you can do,” Dani said flatly. “Tell them sayonara and thanks for the memories.”

  “Resign?” Molly stared, glass of wine in hand. She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need this job to further my career, I need the money to pay my bills, and I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “No, you haven’t, but I think your precious law firm is about to be dragged through the mud by Young Bear. Resign before that happens, and before they can sacrifice you.”

  Molly set her glass down. “And then what would I do? Apply for a job as a supermarket cashier?”

  Dani shrugged. “You’re a survivor. There are other positions in other law firms. You could sell your fancy car, get a cheaper apartment, and cut your cost of living in half. You’ll be fine.”

  Molly dropped her eyes to her empty glass of wine. “Brad says if we can somehow smooth this over with the media and with Dehaviland, we’ll be okay.”

  “Brad says? Molly, you told me not that long ago you thought Brad was a dweeb.”

  “He is, but he’s fairly smart.” Molly rubbed at the crushing band of tension gathering between her eyes. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday, but I don’t feel as if I should be blamed for it, and I don’t feel like resigning. Resigning would only make me look guilty. I feel like fighting back tooth and nail.”

  “That’s your Irish ancestry speaking, Molly.” The server reappeared, tall, thin and solemn. Dani glanced up at him and then back down at her menu. “Oh, dear God,” she murmured. “The entire menu’s in French.”

  Molly sighed. “You’re French, Dani Jardine. Your own ancestry should be speaking to you right about now. As for me,” she said to the waiter, raising her empty wineglass, “Muchas more vino, por favor, mon ami.”

  THE SECOND MORNING was much easier than the first. Steven took a very long, very hot shower and was drinking his second cup of coffee when Amy Littlefield knocked at his door. He invited her in.

  “Coffee?”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks.” She was agitated and paced around the living room, hands shoved in her jeans pockets while Steven patiently waited for her to reveal the reason for her visit. At length she stopped and pulled out an envelope, handing it to him. “I brought you some money. Not much, I’m afraid, but it’s all we could scrape together. We’re still planning on the bake sale and raffle but we’re hoping you’ll stand with us in spite of what happened, and in spite of the fact that most of us have low-paying seasonal jobs and next to nothing in our savings accounts.”

  Steven took the envelope and set it on the counter. “Orange juice?”

  Amy shook her head. “We’re holding a special town meeting Monday night to discuss implementing the emergency zoning plan that you suggested. It’s at the town office at seven. We thought we’d better talk about the plan before the public meeting on Tuesday.”

  Steven nodded. “All right. I’ll be there.”

  “Sheriff Walker’s being released from the hospital this morning.”

  He nodded again. “I saw him yesterday.”

  “I’m picking him up,” Amy said, her cheeks coloring faintly. “I visited him yesterday, too, and it turns out that he has no immediate family in the area, so I offered to give him a ride home.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Well, after what happened…” She paced to the window and looked out. “I still can’t believe they let those men out of jail when they so brutally attacked an officer of the law,” she said. “And you, too,” she added quickly. “I mean, they might have killed you both.”

  “But they didn’t, and Condor International pulls some powerful strings,” Steven said. “They posted the bail. They’re responsible for their employees’ behavior and whereabouts until their court appearance. Tea?”

  “No, thanks. I have to be going. I told Sheriff Walker I’d pick him up at 8:00 a.m. sharp. He said he didn’t want to spend one minute more than he had to in that place, and I don’t blame him. Oh, and by the way, the public meeting on Tuesday’s been relocated to Bozeman’s town hall. There’s not enough room in all of Moose Horn for the crowd that’s expected to attend.”

  After she had left, Steven finished his coffee and on the way to put his cup in the sink, the envelope he’d left on the counter caught his eye. He opened it, counting the money within. One hundred and eighty-six dollars wasn’t exactly what a campaign like theirs needed in order to do proper battle with New Millennium Mining, but what the hell. It was a start.

  FRIDAY MORNING, Molly dressed very conservatively and with a sense of impending doom. She left her apartment after another sleepless night pondering her limited options and drove down the familiar streets. She tried to meditate and deep breathe her way to calmness, but by the time she reached the venerable brick building that housed the law firm of Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein, she was a nervous wreck. She hadn’t been in her office for more than thirty minutes when Brad knocked and entered, looking as haggard as she felt.

  “You have to somehow convince Young Bear to back down from this fight,” he sai
d without preamble. “I think that’s the only way for us to save our jobs.”

  Molly shook her head. “There’s no way I could ever do such a thing.”

  Brad leaned his palms on her desk and stared her aggressively in the eye. “Think about it. You saw what happened to him just two days ago. There’s a lot riding on the success of this mining proposal. A lot of jobs, a lot of money. If Young Bear spearheads the fight to stop the project, he stands to gain a lot of enemies. Things could get even worse for him.”

  Molly felt her heart skip a beat. “Is that a threat?”

  “That’s a reality check. You like the guy, right, or am I way off base here?”

  “My personal feelings are my private business, and they have nothing to do with my job performance,” Molly replied stiffly.

  “You’re wrong about that,” Brad said. “They have everything to do with it. I’m warning you, Molly. This could get really ugly, really fast, but you could stop it. You could keep a lot of people from getting hurt. Tell Young Bear that if he keeps pushing, and if he grandstands at that public hearing on Tuesday and drags this firm through the mud, you’ll lose your job.”

  “Is that a threat, too?”

  “Another reality check. Things are kind of shaky for you right now, if you get my drift.”

  “Even if I could convince him to quit, the people of Moose Horn would find help somewhere else,” Molly said. “They won’t give up.”

  Brad shook his head. “Maybe not, but Young Bear’s the only lawyer they’ll ever find who gives his time and expertise away and expects nothing in return. Nobody else will represent their interests without a big retainer, and without legal representation, no one will pay the slightest attention to them. Talk to him, Molly, or we both stand to lose our jobs. Skelton will kick our sorry asses right out the door, and we’ll be standing in the unemployment line, make no mistake about that.”

  He spun on his heel and left before she could reply, and she sank back into her chair. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. She thought about Dani’s advice and dropped her head in her hands with a soft moan. Should she resign? The public hearing was only four days away. In four days time she might already be fired, her name and reputation permanently ruined in the most important legal circles. Dani was right. She should spend the morning working on her resignation. But she’d done nothing wrong.

  She looked around her office, her own private space in a prestigious law firm with its cherry desk and matching chair, the plush Berber carpet and tall cherry bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes. Her pictures hung on the walls along with her framed diploma, and family photos lined her desktop. It was all so pleasantly personalized and comfortably professional. If her parents could see where she worked, they’d be proud of their only daughter—wouldn’t they? She gazed at a picture of her parents, her mother’s stern, matriarchal face showing the faintest trace of a smile, as if she were trying to appear solemn for the photograph but someone, her father perhaps, had just whispered something outrageous in her ear. Her father, mustached and solemn, with that ever-present glint of mischievous humor in his eyes.

  What would her mother and father think about this awful mess she’d gotten herself into? Molly chewed on a fingernail and frowned. A lump formed in her throat as a wave of homesickness overwhelmed her. How she missed the wise counsel of her parents! But as much as she wanted to pick up the phone, she knew her mother would tell her to quit her job and come home, her father would tell her he was on his way to help her move back East…and she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t run back home at the first sign of trouble she encountered. No, somehow she was going to have to work through this dilemma on her own.

  Instead of calling home, Molly returned several phone calls she’d missed and worked halfheartedly on the papers she’d begun earlier, but the restlessness inside of her increased by the moment until finally she pushed away from her desk and paced the room. There was something she didn’t understand about Skelton’s reticence to discuss the Soldier Mountain mine and the lawsuit Steven had brought against it for polluting the river and ground water that provided the Rocky Ridge Reservation with most of its water supply. There was something she didn’t understand about why they felt it was so important to discourage Steven from representing the opposition to the New Millennium mine. Surely if they were doing everything aboveboard and by the book, nothing Steven could do would be enough to stop the Madison Mountain project.

  It was so puzzling. On the one hand, Skelton pegged Steven as a two-bit podunk attorney, yet on the other, he clearly felt Steven was a big threat. Why? How could one attorney representing a handful of people with no financial backing possibly pose a threat to a powerful law firm like Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein representing a huge corporation like Condor International? She couldn’t help but feel that if she could access the sealed files at the federal courthouse, she would find the answers. Perhaps she could convince Steven to tell her, but how? He was as reluctant to discuss the Soldier Mountain lawsuit as Skelton had been.

  Molly paced and brooded and glanced at the clock on her desk. Somehow lunchtime had come and gone, but no matter. She wasn’t hungry. She had tons of work to do before the weekend and hadn’t even made a dent in it. She thought about Dani’s advice. She thought about Brad’s warning and Steven’s safety and the accidental drowning death of Steven’s legal assistant, Mary Pretty Shield, during the Soldier Mountain lawsuit.

  “What to do…” she murmured aloud, and a tap on her door made her jump. “Yes?”

  Mr. Skelton entered. He looked more somber and self-important than usual. “Would you join us for a late lunch, Molly? Ken Manning’s here to speak with Brad, and we thought the four of us should talk before we give our statement to the press.”

  “What statement?”

  “We’ve had so many calls from the media that we decided to hold a brief press conference right here in our boardroom at 4:00 p.m., and it would be most advantageous for all those who will be present to discuss the New Millennium permitting procedures in advance. That’s what they’ll be asking us about.”

  Molly drew a deep breath. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was have lunch with Ken Manning, but Mr. Skelton was right. The press and the public needed and deserved some answers, and the firm needed to get to the bottom of what went wrong with the permitting process. There had to be some perfectly logical explanation to this awful mess. Brad was experienced. He knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t have deliberately jeopardized the project by ignoring important legal protocol. Could she be fired for Brad’s indiscretions? She had a feeling she was about to find out.

  “Of course, Mr. Skelton,” she nodded. “I’d be glad to.”

  IT WASN’T OVERLY LATE when Steven’s phone rang, but he was already in bed, trying an ice pack on his ribs to see if it eased the pain of breathing and brought sleep to him any easier. So far nothing he’d tried had worked. “Young Bear,” he said.

  “Ferguson,” came the voice he’d grown so hopelessly addicted to.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said.

  “The day I’ve been waiting for all week,” she said, sounding both distracted and exhausted.

  “If you meet me here, we can go together in my Jeep,” he said, shifting the ice pack.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be there by noon or a little after. Are you okay?”

  “Better and better, but if you want to ride wild horses up into the mountains tomorrow, you’re on your own.”

  “I’ve never aspired to ride wild horses. All I want tomorrow is to be with you.”

  There was a forlorn drift to her words that clutched at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just called to find out how you were feeling, and make sure we were still on for tomorrow.”

  “You sound kind of down.”

  “Oh, Steven,” she said, her voice changing, breaking.

  He lay on his bed, ice pack held to his aching ribs, and felt a pain far worse th
an anything the truckers had bestowed upon him. “Did something happen at work?”

  “Politics happened at work,” she said. Did he imagine the tremor in her voice? He said nothing, waiting for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “I guess I’ll see you around noon, then,” she said softly. “Good night, Steven.”

  Even if the ice pack had worked, he wouldn’t have slept. He lay awake staring into the darkness and wondering what abyss Molly had stared into that day to have cast such a pall on that indomitable spirit of hers. He could only hope it had nothing to do with the New Millennium mine proposal and Wednesday’s confrontation on the access road, but he had a strong hunch that it did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  STEVEN’S HUNCH was verified the next morning when he walked out to his mailbox to retrieve the newspaper. There it was, plastered on the front page of the Bozeman Sentinel. Law Firm Representing New Millennium Mine Admits to Jumping Gun on Road Permitting. He scanned the article as he walked back down the gravel drive and read it a second time more carefully while drinking his second cup of coffee. He read it a third time because he really couldn’t believe what he was reading, couldn’t believe that Molly Ferguson was being named as the inexperienced attorney whose misinterpretation of the permitting process had led to the ugly confrontation on the access road. Couldn’t believe she was actually quoted as saying, “I want to stress that in no way did my actions represent the law firm of Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein. I accept full responsibility, and want to apologize to everyone involved.”

  The article then went on to quote Skelton describing Molly as a good attorney but “young and impulsive, and obviously needing much closer supervision until she fully understands the complex and critical process of mine permitting.” And Ken Manning: “It’s extremely unfortunate that Ms. Ferguson’s lack of judgment caused such a major conflict, but I’m sure she’s learned a valuable lesson. Needless to say, she’s been removed from the legal staff representing the interests of my company until all the permits are properly in place.”