Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  Judge Hammerman nodded unenthusiastically. If Ash-ford weren't Cabot's flesh and blood, Charlotte had no doubt he'd be looking at a contempt-of-court citation by now. Instead the judge asked Brent to produce his witnesses.

  Brent's smile was nothing if not chilling. "Prosecution offers the sworn testimony of Moss Johnson," he said, feeling around for his glasses, which Charlotte supposed Cabot had somehow moved when he'd wheeled himself around to face the judge. When he finally located them, Brent handed over several papers to the clerk. "And calls Selma Mollenoff to the stand."

  Think about what you ate for breakfast, Charlotte, she could hear Cabot coaching.

  Folding her hands on the table, she watched Selma make her way to the stand, and pretended it didn't come as a shock that the prosecution would call to the stand Selma Mollenoff, the sister of Dr. Eli Mollenoff, a man Charlotte considered her dearest friend.

  Selma, the same woman for whom she'd secured a position as bookkeeper in her brother-in-law's company, the same woman with whom she'd attended Miss Tracy's Secondary School for the Education of Women, the same woman to whom she'd lent her watch at the last meeting of the Ebell Society for the Advancement of Art, Science, and Literature for Women, so that Selma could time Charlotte Perkins Gilman's speech. Selma was Charlotte's most ardent, if not her most vocal, supporter in the case for Virginia Halton's right to disseminate scientific information to women regarding the functioning of their own bodies.

  Of course, Selma took her oath defiantly, shooting needles at Brent with her eyes.

  "Did you see Mr. Ashford Whittier yesterday, Miss Mollenoff?" Brent asked.

  "Yes, but—" she began, her eyes connecting with Charlotte's apologetically.

  "Where?"

  "At the warehouse. That's the G and W Warehouse. But—"

  "Just answer the questions, Miss Mollenoff," Judge Hammerman said. "This isn't a trial—here all we want is the truth."

  Charlotte covered her smirk with her hand. If whether or not Ash went to trial didn't rest squarely on Selma Mollenoff's shoulders, Charlotte would have laughed out loud at the judge's comment. As it was, several spectators behind her did.

  "So, Miss Mollenoff, Ashford Whittier was at the G and W warehouse on the afternoon of February eighth?"

  Selma's shoulders sagged under the weight of her answer. She sighed, making it appear she had already convicted her employer. "Yes, as I said, but—"

  "Seeing to the unloading of...?"

  "The Cuervo, but—"

  "Excuse me?" Brent waited for Selma to explain.

  "Jose Cuervo," she said with a heavy sigh. "Tequila."

  "What is that?"

  "Alcohol. From Mexico, but—"

  "Alcohol." He let the enormity of the sin sink in before continuing. "And when the shipment of... hard liquor... was unloaded, you saw Mr. Whittier leave the building?" Brent asked, his eyebrows reaching for the ceiling.

  "No." She had given up adding her qualifiers.

  Brent whirled around as if there were actually a jury to which he could pander. "No? You mean he was still there when you left the premises at four-thirty on the eighth?"

  "He was there when I left," she agreed. Then she added quickly, running all the words together to prevent Brent from stopping her, "But he always stayed late when he came home from a buying trip."

  Brent nodded. The statement hadn't done his case any harm. It also hadn't exactly put Ash at the scene at one-thirty in the morning.

  "That's all."

  Charlotte looked at Cabot, hoping he would signal for her to question Selma, disappointed when he shook his head slightly and wheeled himself within a few feet of the witness box. She could have handled the cross-exam herself. She squeezed the fingers of her left hand within the confines of her right. Harder, and harder still, until all of the anger flowed out her fingertips. And then she sat forward and tried to learn from the master.

  "Hello, Selma," Cabot said warmly, letting the judge know that they went way back, which wasn't so true, but was Cabot's style. "This is obviously very difficult for you, isn't it?"

  Selma nodded, grimacing, and threw her shoulders back. "It's ludicrous. Mr. Whittier wouldn't hurt a—"

  Cabot didn't allow her to finish. Lord knew what Selma might say, given the opportunity. "Well, I'll be very brief. You saw Mr. Whittier at the warehouse in the afternoon. Is that unusual when he came back from a trip?"

  "No. He always came just as soon as he got into port." She smiled, apparently grateful to be able to say something helpful. "And he always brought a little gift for everyone in the office, something you can't get here, or something for their children, and—"

  "Thank you, Selma," Cabot said, cutting her off. "And you say that Mr. Whittier was still there when you left. That unusual?"

  She shook her head, twisting a handkerchief with her hands. "He always remains as long as the men will work. But they only stay until dark, and so sometimes he stays on with Moss and they finish after the others have gone."

  "Well, this is February. It gets dark early, doesn't it?" He didn't wait for her to respond. "I noticed you referred to the Mexican liquor as Cuervo. Are you a big drinker, Miss Mollenoff?"

  She rolled her eyes at Cabot's foolishness. "We've been importing tequila from the Cuervo Company as long as I've been with G and W. And it was on the books when I started."

  Cabot wheeled back to the defense table. "So, all in all, it was a pretty normal day down at the warehouse. That right?"

  Selma agreed, neither of them mentioning the fistfight between the partners.

  "Thank you, Selma. No further questions, Your Honor."

  "The clerk will read the statement of Moss Johnson into the record," Judge Hammerman said, apparently not much more impressed than Charlotte with the evidence.

  The clerk cleared his phlegmy throat. "I, Moss Johnson, do swear that I am the foreman at the G and W Warehouse and that on February eighth, 1888, I saw Mr. Ashford Whittier have words with Mr. Greenbough, which came to blows. And I heard Mr. Whittier say that he'd be best off if he just burned down the place and walked away with the insurance money."

  There was dust in Charlotte's mouth. There had to be. What else would explain the fact that she couldn't swallow?

  "I didn't mean—" Ashford started to say, but a hand on his arm quieted him. "It's something you say," he whispered to her, and she nodded understandingly as she watched Brent come to his feet.

  "Motive, Your Honor," he said, putting his hands up as if everything was self-evident. "Tequila—means. At the premises—opportunity. I don't know what more you could want to hold the man over for trial."

  The judge, biting the inside of his cheek, nodded his agreement, and thumbed through some papers on his desk. "On the weight of the evidence here presented, the court has no choice but to insist that the defendant be bound over for trial. The matter will be heard in this court on March twenty-second, 1888." He banged his gavel.

  March 22. The dust in Charlotte's mouth turned to boulders around which she couldn't even speak.

  Cabot ran his fingers up and down the spokes of his wheels until the tips turned white.

  "Your Honor, as Ashford Whittier's attorney, I ask that bail be set in the amount of five hundred dollars and that he be released on his own recognizance until such time as his presence is required in this Court."

  "Ha!" Brent choked out, looking at the judge as if Cabot had clearly lost his mind. "Three people murdered, Your Honor."

  "You agreed to manslaughter," the judge reminded him. "Offense isn't punishable by death. The man's entitled to bail."

  "And five hundred dollars is supposed to keep a man whose home is on a boat from sailing off into the sunset to spend his days sipping milk from coconuts?" Brent demanded, throwing his glasses off again, and then reaching out to keep one hand on them.

  "The Whittier honor and integrity is what will keep him here," Cabot answered somewhat smugly. Unfortunately it was rather widely known that it was Cabot Whittier wh
o had cornered that particular market in the Whittier family, so Brent just crossed his arms and stared at the judge as if daring him to set foot in that pile of horse manure.

  "Five thousand and into your custody, Whittier," Judge Hammerman said, banging his gavel and rising before Cabot could argue further—which the judge, and Charlotte, and probably the DA, as well, knew full well he wouldn't, since they were luckier than ladybugs to have gotten away with all they had.

  "God bless the prejudices of the Californians," Cabot said quietly, brushing a speck of lint from his thighs. "And the preponderance of Chinese vagrants."

  "I can't believe you did that," Ash said, crumpling up the piece of paper he had been scribbling on and throwing it to the floor. "Just like that. Three nonpeople. Someone killed them, Cabot—"

  "Not one word," Cabot told him, pointing for Charlotte to retrieve the paper for him and then smoothing it out. On it were a woman and two children, coffins drawn awkwardly around each of them. Cabot handed the paper back to Charlotte, who held on to it, rather than open her satchel and place it in there, which was clearly Cabot's expectation.

  "Can we go?" Ash asked, rising and stretching out a body that seemed all the taller next to his brother's sitting form.

  "When they're all gone," Charlotte told him. Cabot didn't like impeding anyone's exit with his chair maneuvers. She placed her hat onto her head, adjusting the angle until it could accommodate her bun beneath it.

  "It's nicer than I thought," Ash said, obviously trying to take his mind off his troubles as he tilted his head to look at her. "At least it doesn't compete with that pretty face of yours."

  Charlotte felt herself blush. Crying and blushing in one day. What would she stoop to next?

  Good glory! The last time anyone had called her pretty, well... she couldn't remember the last time! Cheeks positively on fire now, Charlotte busied herself with opening her briefcase and carefully laying the scrap paper inside it. Any reporter would have made an editorial out of Ash's doodle, and one of Cabot's first lessons had been never to leave in a courtroom anything she didn't want splashed on the front page of the Oakland Enquirer.

  "I do believe the brim on that hat is too wide, Charlotte," Cabot said, assessing her hat and shaking his head. "Have it cropped before you wear it to court again. It wouldn't do to have you looking frivolous, featherbrained."

  Ashford stifled the laugh, settling for tapping gently on her briefcase.

  Inside it the little black-capped chickadee strained up toward her and let out the loudest cheep he could. "As soon as we get home," she whispered. Fortunately, Cabot had made his way over to the prosecution's table, where he was busy exchanging pleasantries as though the fact that Brent had charged his brother with murder had nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Which, when one thought about the circumstances and the supposed motive for the fire, was more to the point than anything else might have been.

  Did Ash, in fact, import tea? She shrugged. In five years of marriage to Cabot she didn't think that Ash had been to Whittier Court more than half a dozen times or so. While they'd have the occasional Sunday dinner at the Tubb's Hotel with him when he was in town, the meetings were what Cabot would call short and sweet. Or maybe simply short. And though Kathryn received occasional letters from him, she never shared their contents.

  "Much as I hate to admit it, he is pretty amazing," Ash said, pointing to his brother. Cabot sat with one hand raised, gesturing toward the ceiling fans and explaining something about how a reversal of their direction was bringing the warm air down into the room.

  Charlotte agreed. It seemed to her there wasn't a subject about which Cabot wasn't well versed, or one about which he didn't have an opinion worth hearing. "Was he always so smart?"

  Ashford Whittier closed his eyes and swallowed hard, his features softening with the pain of remembrance. How stupid she was, how unkind! She should have known better than to bring up those awful memories—she was careful enough with Cabot, after all.

  "Cabot was already twelve when I was born," Ash said, his easy smile pasted back in place once again. "He was a man in even the earliest of my memories—and brilliant, even then. Of course, to a four-year-old anyone who can figure out how to peel a banana seems smart."

  "What about bananas?" Cabot asked, having shaken hands with the opposition and shooed them from the room. "You still like them?" he asked his brother.

  A look passed between the two men, years melting away until they both were boys again. And then it was gone.

  Ash studied the marquetry floor, his hands pushed down deep into the pockets of his pants.

  "It'll be all right," Cabot said softly, in that same smooth voice with which he'd comforted Charlotte when her grandmother had died and left her all alone in the world at seventeen. The voice he used for pitiful clients facing death sentences, and reluctant witnesses who had information he needed them to reveal. "It only looks so bleak because we haven't had a chance to present our defense yet."

  Ash nodded soberly. "Right. And what's the worst I could get, after all?"

  Charlotte and Cabot exchanged looks, Cabot leaving it for her to say. If she complained about it later he'd no doubt tell her it was part of a lawyer's job, informing his client about the risks and options. And so it was. Still, she couldn't bring herself to be quite honest and truthful with her husband's brother, and so she answered, "With Cabot defending you?" and tried to leave it at that.

  Ash's clear brown eyes met hers. "That bad?" he asked.

  She nodded. "Arson alone can be as much as fourteen years. Brent'll go for the maximum on each count, I'm sure."

  The air rushed out of him and he sat heavily in the wooden chair at the defense table, his hands hanging limply at his sides. "All together?" he asked, summoning up resources she was forced to admire. "How much all together?"

  Cabot rolled up close to his brother, pushing at a chair in his way, signaling Arthur to back off just a bit. "Have I ever let you down?" he asked. "I haven't saved your hide over and over again to let it rot in some jail now."

  Charlotte stood where she was, not sure Cabot was even aware of her presence and not wanting to be noticed. Emotion was a stranger to her husband's way of life, and she felt him fighting now to rid himself of it.

  "I'm the best damn lawyer in the East Bay," Cabot said, his voice filling the empty chamber. "No matter what Alfred Cohen thinks. The best. Maybe even in San Francisco too. I'll get you off, Ashford, without serving a day."

  "You got some kind of magic wand tucked back there somewhere?" Ash asked, his hand on Cabot's shoulder as he tried to peer behind him.

  "I'll take care of it," Cabot answered. "You know I will. There's just one thing I'd like to know—as your brother, not your lawyer. For curiosity's sake."

  Ash nodded, his tall body leaning forward as if he was poised and ready to tell him anything.

  Cabot looked around the courtroom, making sure they were alone. He seemed surprised to see Charlotte there, but made no move to exclude her. "Well," he said, one eyebrow raised in question, "did you do it?"

  CHAPTER 2

  They could still hear the peacock squawking even after they'd all rushed into the front hall and Cabot's brother had slammed the door behind them. Somehow the bird, intended to show the Stanfords and the Lathams that the Whittiers had as much money and taste as their neighbors, had gotten his function confused with that of a guard dog. And as if his awful catlike calls and charges against pure strangers weren't bad enough, he had developed a distinct dislike for Cabot and was bent on biting the hand that fed him.

  "Incogitant bird," Cabot said. "He's lucky I don't roast him and serve him in his own feathers!"

  "Cabot!" Charlotte wasn't any fonder of the peacock than her husband. Still, she did understand the difference between a pet and a meal. "Maybe he was just trying to protect the house from a stranger." She gestured at Ashford, who came around so rarely that Charlotte didn't think even the staff would recognize him.

  Cabot
examined his sleeve. "That gormless pile of feathers ate another button! Arthur, I want that bird confined to a pen when I'm out and about. I want—"

  "Can we just forget the ridiculous bird?" Ashford asked, pulling at the tie around his neck as though it were a noose.

  "Bother you to think of something being confined?" Cabot asked callously while he handed his hat to Arthur and told him to let Maria know they would be in his office awaiting tea.

  "Of course it bothers me," Ash said, removing the tie and shoving it into his pocket. "But not as much as your little question did. That you could even think I would set a building on fire, our building, no less. I willingly admit I've been stupid, maybe even reckless from time to time, but you must know I've never willfully, knowingly, gone out and—"

  "Of course you haven't." Kathryn Whittier's smooth, even voice welcomed them home as warmly as open arms. She came into the dark wood-paneled front hall slowly, leaning heavily on her ivory cane. On the far side of sixty now, the years had clearly taken their toll on Kathryn's body, but had been kind to her face. A thick mass of silvery hair done up in the latest style surrounded fine features and soft gray eyes. She eased herself down into the softly cushioned chair that Charlotte had suggested be left in the hall for her. "How did it go in court?"

  Cabot's tight little shake of his head warned Charlotte not to reveal too much. Before she could carefully frame her words, Kathryn waved the question away and looked beyond them for her younger son.

  "Mother." Ash said the word with reverence, coming out from the shadows of the dark hall to kneel by Kathryn, taking both her hands in his as he looked her over from head to toe. "Why, you haven't changed a bit! As beautiful and young as ever," he said while a slight grimace touched the corner of his mouth.

  "Don't put him on the stand if he's got to lie about anything," Kathryn said to Cabot. "It's not his forte."