Father of Two

by Judith Arnold

  “He’s got a phenomenal ego,” she conceded. How could this man, an immigrant still struggling with the nuances of American lingo, be so cocky that he would leave town two steps ahead of the law while charging that a newspaper had libeled him by claiming he was a criminal? Gail wished she had so much confidence, so much daring.

  Saturday night she’d had daring, she reminded herself. Saturday night she’d overcome her past. Saturday night she’d been fearless and free.

  Just remembering dampened her anger. “Maybe his grasp of reality is a bit tenuous,” she conceded. “John, just give me the baby-sitters’ names. A friend of mine had a weird experience with a baby-sitter. I want to know if there could be a connection.” John’s refusal prompted her to add, “Leo says he’s going to be calling me again.”

  “Can we put a tracer on your calls?”

  “Absolutely not!” Gail would never betray her clients that way—not even Leo, who was probably right that minute betraying her. “But I can try to find out where he is.”

  “You’d turn him over to us?”

  “The way I feel right now, I’d turn him over to the devil.”

  “He and the devil are already making whoopee.” John thought for a moment, then said, “Cassandra Bennett and Betty Grover. You didn’t hear it from me.”

  “You have them in custody now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks.” John really was a good guy, even if he was a cop. “I’ll let you know the instant I hear from Leo.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Take care.” She hung up, then scribbled “Cassandra Bennett” and “Betty Grover” on the inside cover of the manila folder that held the sordid legal history of Odell Josephson.

  She stared at the two names for a minute. Her brain ached from thinking too hard. Had she sold out her client, or was her client already lost to her? If she mentioned the arrested nannies’ names to Murphy, would she jeopardize John?

  John had given her the names knowing she would go to her friend with them. He’d asked her to protect him, and she would. The women had been arrested, so their names would be in the public record soon enough.

  She lifted her receiver again, promising herself she’d spend all afternoon and evening on Josephson’s case if she had to. A flip through her Rolodex located the phone number for Schenk, Murphy, Lopes. She dialed it and plowed her way through the secretarial intermediaries until she reached Murphy.

  “Gail,” he murmured. She could hear the smile in his voice. She stared at the names she’d jotted on the folder, clinging visually to them as a way to keep from floating back into lush memories. Just hearing him speak her name made her shiver with yearning. “What can I do for you?”

  He’d already done plenty, she thought with a wicked grin. She hauled herself back to the present by focusing on the names. “This call is strictly business,” she said.

  “Uh-oh. Are you filing that idiotic suit?”

  “No. I need to know the name of your nanny,” she said.

  “My nanny?”

  “Not the one you have now. The one who disappeared.”

  “Betty Grover,” he said. She found it touching that he didn’t question her reason for asking—but she was too dismayed to revel in his trust. Betty Grover was one of the names she’d written on the folder.

  “And after she left, some items turned up missing?”

  “The kids’ iPods and an Xbox.” Still he didn’t ask why she was asking.

  She sighed. “Leo’s left town,” she told him. “I think he’s up to his eyeballs in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Murphy asked carefully. “What does he have to do with Betty Grover?”

  “Leo was named as a fence by a couple of baby-sitters who’ve been arrested for stealing small electronics items from the families that hired them. Betty Grover is one of the baby-sitters the police brought in.”

  “She robbed us?” Murphy’s voice trembled with outrage. He spat out a pungent curse. “I trusted that woman with my children! I let a criminal into my house to take care of my kids! I can’t believe—”

  “At least she didn’t induce them to rob an ATM,” Gail pointed out, recalling Sean and Erin’s adventure with a baby-sitter their mother had hired last fall.

  Murphy ignored her comment. “That nanny was supposed to be screened by the agency. Jesus! A criminal! She could have hurt my kids. She was in this house, she was taking care of them and—Christ. I’m so mad, I...” He let out a long breath. “I’m really mad.”

  “I don’t think these nannies are violent. They’re just thieves.”

  “And your buddy Kopoluski was behind the whole thing?”

  “He isn’t my buddy,” she argued, refusing to let Murphy make her feel worse than she already did. “He was my client. I was his lawyer, doing the best I could to represent him. That’s my job.”

  “My nanny was working for him. He was the brains behind her crimes. He was the power, and she answered to him. Jesus.” He issued an anguished groan. “What about my kids? What if one of them had gotten hurt after she walked out on them and they were all alone? That would have been Kopoluski’s fault.”

  “No it wouldn’t. She didn’t have to leave. She could have robbed you and remained at your house until you got home. One thing had nothing to do with another.”

  “Like hell it didn’t. She didn’t need to stick around and earn her nanny salary because she was getting good money from Kopoluski and his criminal friends. And she couldn’t have slipped the Xbox past me. I would have noticed, and she knew it. So she left while I was at work. My kids could have gotten hurt, they could have gotten electrocuted, or fallen and banged their heads, or they could have cut themselves, or—”

  “Your kids are smart,” Gail pointed out. “They have common sense. What did they do when the sitter left? They called you. That showed real intelligence.”

  “They were in danger, Gail. They could have died.” She heard Murphy inhale deeply, then swear again. “What happens now?” he asked in a tight voice.

  “The police are interrogating the nannies. I’m trying to find out where Leo’s run off to. As far as the libel suit, it’s closed.”

  Murphy snorted. “Kopoluski ought to pay the Gazette for all the trouble he’s caused. A million dollars would barely cover it.”

  She smiled. Murphy was like the proverbial mother lion—or father lion, she supposed—lashing out at anyone who might have inadvertently threatened his children. It didn’t matter that he was blaming the wrong person for his former nanny’s irresponsibility. She still considered his protectiveness touching.

  “Well, you might as well inform the Gazette that we’re not pursuing the suit,” she told him.

  “Yeah. Right.” He swore again. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  Her smile waned. “There’s nothing to be so angry about,” she reminded him. “Your client is off the hook and your old nanny is in police custody. You ought to be feeling good about the way things sorted themselves out.”

  “I’m feeling terrific,” he grumbled. “My kids got ripped off thanks to that jerk you represented. I’d feel a hell of a lot better if the police had him in custody.” He sighed. “I’ve got to go.”

  “All right,” she said, but she didn’t feel all right. She had thought he would have been happy to learn what had happened to his children’s iPods—and their erstwhile nanny. Why was he so angry—and why did he sound so angry at her?

  She didn’t know how to ask. So she did her best to provide her own answers: he was upset about the safety of his children. And this discussion—about Leo Kopoluski and the Gazette—was a professional issue. Perhaps he could compartmentalize himself, treating her as an opposing attorney and forgetting all about their personal relationship when they were discussing business.

  Those rationalizations didn’t comfort her much. But just because Murphy was acting a bit emotional didn’t mean she had to succumb to emotion, too. Let him
stew and simmer, let him rage about Leo and Betty Grover and whoever else might have rubbed him the wrong way. Let him get it out of his system. Then he would be warm and affectionate with her again.

  “So,” she said when his silence began to grate on her, “I’ll talk to you later, then.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, then hung up the phone.

  ***

  OBJECTIVELY, DENNIS KNEW that lawyers shouldn’t be judged by their clients. He knew that sometimes you got stuck representing a bastard, and your job as an advocate was to represent him to the best of your ability. He himself had litigated on behalf of creeps, folks he thought might not be telling him everything they knew, people who might be despicable. Objectively, Dennis knew that this was part of the job.

  But he wasn’t feeling objective right now. How could he, when his kids were at stake?

  Gail had represented that scum-bag, whose illegal activities had led to a nanny’s placing Sean and Erin in jeopardy. It wasn’t Gail’s fault. Objectively, Dennis knew it wasn’t.

  Objectively.

  He wished he had a punching bag in his office. Lacking one, he crossed to the sofa and punched one of the cushions. That didn’t help much.

  He ordered himself to calm down. He had to clear his mind; in less than an hour, he and the owner of a chain of stir-fry fast-food emporiums were scheduled to play hardball with some clown who’d fudged financial records in an effort to buy the chain at a grossly deflated price. Before the feds were brought in, Dennis was going to try to reach a quiet, very expensive settlement with the record-fudger. But the fudger was importing a heavy-hitting legal team from New York City. This negotiation was not going to be a stroll in the park.

  Ordinarily, Dennis would look forward to taking on a sleazy character and his out-of-town lawyers. He would relish the opportunity. He loved a good fight.

  But he was too agitated about Kopoluski. He wasn’t sure what bugged him more: the fact that Kopoluski was slime, or the fact that Gail had believed in and trusted Kopoluski.

  Damn. He knew what bugged him more.

  Sighing, he returned to his desk, hit a few buttons on his computer and called up his file on the Gazette libel case. He reviewed the hours he’d put into the case, hit the “print” button, and pulled the hard copy out of the printer on the credenza behind his desk. Then he gathered up his briefcase and keys and left the office, stopping at Velda’s desk on his way out. “I’m scheduled to meet with the Kwik-Wok people,” he told her. “Give Bob Hammond a call for me, tell him Kopoluski’s dropping his claim, and then process this accounting and send it along to the Gazette.”

  Velda peered up at him, her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed. Even though she was just a few years older than him, her attitude sometimes made him feel as if she was his mother, revving up to scold him about going out in the rain without his rubbers.

  “Don’t you want to call Bob Hammond yourself?” she asked. “He’s your friend.”

  “No time,” Dennis explained vaguely. The truth was, he was too upset to talk to Bob. He was afraid that if he got on the horn with his old squash partner, he’d start ranting about the case, and Gail’s name would enter the discussion, and he’d say things he’d be better off not saying. It wasn’t her fault, he reminded himself. She’d bet on the wrong horse, that was all. He ought to feel sorry for her.

  If only her wrong horse hadn’t galloped off with his kids’ nanny in the saddle...

  “No time,” he repeated when Velda continued her critical scrutiny of him. He wasn’t going to explain to his secretary that he’d lost all objectivity when it came to Gail and Kopoluski. “Just deal with this. Fax a bill to Bob Hammond. I’m on my way.”

  “Any special instructions?” she called after him.

  “However Bob wants to handle it is fine with me. Work it out with him.”

  He strode swiftly down the hall, outracing any more questions Velda might have. Outracing his own sheer indignation. Outracing his appalling lack of objectivity.

  ***

  GAIL HAD HAD A LONG, wretched day. First the Leo thing. Then a migraine-level session before the most obnoxious judge in Arlington, during which she tried to argue a suppression-of-evidence motion for a client whose car had been searched when the search warrant had been clearly limited to her apartment. Gail kept pointing out salient passages in the warrant, and the judge kept grilling her on the most arcane precedents and constitutional trivia. She’d answered every one of his picayune questions, but her meticulous preparation only seemed to annoy him.

  From the court house, she’d gone to county lock-up and inhaled Odell Josephson’s fumes for two hours while she reviewed every step Nola had taken in his defense so far. That interview had taken away her appetite, so she’d bought a can of apple juice and returned to her office, where she’d tried vainly to erode the mountain of files.

  By the time she’d gotten home, she had only one positive thought to cling to: Murphy. He would call her. They would talk about things that had no bearing on their work. They would talk about last weekend—about next weekend. They would make plans. Just thinking about the sound of his voice, not taut with anger but husky with sex appeal, gave her the momentum to cross the kitchen to her answering machine, which sat idle on the counter.

  No messages.

  She could call him, she supposed. But it was awfully late. The kids would be in bed by now, and the ringing telephone might rouse them. And then Murphy would have his hands full trying to get them back to sleep. It was a school night. She couldn’t do it.

  All right, so he hadn’t called her. He might have had just as exhausting a day as she’d had. Just because his clients were higher-class than hers didn’t mean they all practiced personal hygiene. He might have had to breathe in someone’s rancid fragrance all afternoon, too.

  She would call him tomorrow, she decided. She would dream of him tonight and call him tomorrow, and they could talk about happy things then.

  She dreamed of him. She dreamed he was in her bed with her, kissing her. She dreamed that he moved his hands slowly over her body, sensually, alluringly. She dreamed he slid his tongue over the tip of her ear, making her sigh...and then he whispered, “Kopoluski tried to kill my children.”

  She bolted upright, blinking in the darkness and gasping for breath. Of course Leo hadn’t tried to kill Murphy’s kids. Just because Murphy’s old nanny had named Leo didn’t mean he was responsible for her having abandoned the twins. In fact, no one had any proof that he’d fenced the nannies’ stolen goods. People in police interrogations lied all the time. She ought to know—she represented those liars.

  Perhaps the arrested nannies had seen the article in the Gazette and were giving the police Leo’s name to save their own necks. But then, why had he run away?

  She sighed. Maybe he was guilty of conveying goods stolen by baby-sitters to his contacts in New York City. That didn’t mean he’d tried to kill Murphy’s children.

  Despite her fatigue, she couldn’t fall back to sleep for hours. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard Murphy’s voice, frantic over the safety of his children: What if one of them had gotten hurt? That would have been Kopoluski’s fault.

  No. It wouldn’t have been Leo’s fault. Or hers. She was only his lawyer, for God’s sake. Murphy couldn’t blame her.

  She rose from bed poorly rested the next morning. A hot shower and two cups of strong black coffee didn’t do much to perk her up, but even if she could go back to bed, she doubted she’d be able to sleep. Hoping she’d get up to speed by the time she reached her office, she drove to work, squinting in the dim morning sunlight. The stairway to her office seemed steeper than usual, the hall lights more glaring.

  The receptionist was offensively alert when Gail greeted her with a wan smile. “‘Morning,” Gail mumbled.

  “For some of us, maybe,” the receptionist said ominously, then folded a stick of chewing gum into her mouth.

  Oh, God. What now? Had someone else resigned? Was Gail’s case
load going to double again?

  The receptionist handed her a sheet of paper. “This was waiting in the fax this morning. I didn’t think you’d want the boss to see you were working a civil case on the side, so I stashed it for you. Say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Gail complied, taking the fax with a twinge of dread. She refused to look at it until she was in the safety of her own office. Sinking into her chair and ignoring the waiting files on her desk, she switched on her desk lamp and turned her gaze to the two-page fax.

  The top page was a letter written on Arlington Gazette letterhead, addressed to her. “Ms. Saunders,” it said, “In light of your client Leo Kopoluski’s decision to drop his nuisance suit against the Gazette, we are hereby requesting full reimbursement for legal fees the Gazette incurred in the course of fighting this litigation. Payment is due upon receipt.” The second page was a copy of a bill for $4500 payable to Dennis Murphy, Esquire, along with a breakdown of his hours of labor. He’d billed for a total of seven and a half hours. At the bottom of the invoice, apparently scribbled on the original and copied onto the fax, was a note: “Dennis says however you want to settle this is fine with him.”

  That note had obviously been intended not for Gail but for Robert Hammond at the newspaper. Perhaps hitting Gail up for legal fees was fine with him.

  It sure as hell wasn’t fine with her.

  She punched in his office number and ordered the receptionist who answered to connect her with Murphy. His personal secretary got on the line.

  “I want to speak to Dennis Murphy,” Gail said none to politely.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Gail Saunders.”

  “He’s not in,” the secretary said.

  Gail wondered whether he would have been in if she’d identified herself as Jane Doe. It was an appalling thought, but right now she was so angry she wouldn’t put it past him. “I’m calling about a billing situation,” she said. “His bill to the Arlington Gazette has been forwarded to me for payment.”

  “Yes,” the secretary said blandly.

  “You know about this?”

  “The Gazette shouldn’t have to pay the fees for that suit,” the secretary lectured. “You can pass the bill along to your client if you wish.”