Conclusive Evidence
Page 21
“Where did you get this?” Stevens demanded.
“My sister overheard it.” I put bunny quotes around the word “overheard.”
“I don’t understand—ah. Lipreading.”
“Exactly.”
That was the last I saw of the beautiful and evil Sibyl Finn. The notes in her termination statement would follow her wherever she went. If she switched to criminal defense, the episode would help her: Crooks love a sneaky lawyer who bends the rules.
There was no point in bringing up the fact that she’d seduced me and drugged me with alcohol, taking advantage of my susceptibility to devastating hangovers. That was all on me.
At least one good thing came out of the whole episode: Carly and I were close again. We made plans to go surfing on Tuesdays and have dinner together every Sunday with Toby and, on holidays, Nicole. A real family.
I took Jen to the Sunset Restaurant, timing it perfectly with the setting of the sun. We got a pleasant surprise while waiting for our table.
“Look who’s here.” I gestured with my head, smiling.
In a sunken part of the dining area, a young family had just been served their main course. Their cute, pigtailed pixie of a daughter sat in a high chair, fussing about something.
“Isn’t that …? Wow, what a surprise.”
I shrugged.
“Don’t tell me you foresaw that?”
“If you’d seen Hortense in her dad’s lap at the settlement meeting, you’d have foreseen it, too. Molly loved Horace’s identical twin, so why wouldn’t she fall in love with Horace?”
I decided to leave the family alone since they might have been embarrassed by the commotion their daughter was causing, but later, after Jen and I had ordered, Molly came to our table.
“No, don’t get up.” She squatted down next to me, her hand on my forearm. “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner, but I wanted to thank you for the way you handled our dispute.”
“I’m glad it turned out the way it did.”
“Yes, thanks to you.” She glanced over at Jen. “Horace and I are going to be married this June. We’d be honored if you and your beautiful wife would come to the wedding.”
“Thank you. We’d enjoy that.”
After she left, Jen laughed. “Did you forget the part that goes, ‘That’s not my wife, that’s my law partner’?”
I put my napkin in my lap. “I figured she was already embarrassed because she was interrupting us. Why complicate things?”
Jen and I had the prime rib and lingered over a second bottle of red wine.
“Boss, I have a question about when the trial started, when you came in late.”
“Okay.”
“You seemed really … I don’t know, down.”
“Depressed.”
“Yeah. Are you doing okay?”
“No problem. I’m good.”
She squinted and looked at me sideways. “C’mon, boss. Be straight with me.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and watched the glow disappearing from the western horizon. “Jen, it’s still a struggle, but I’m okay, really. I guess it’s like being an alcoholic.” I held up my wineglass. “One day at a time.”
“But don’t think about it too much.”
“Don’t what?”
Jen described Louella’s philosophy of life: Don’t spend too much time examining whether you’re happy or not.
I chuckled. “Did she quote George Carlin? Just get up, go to work, go to bed, then do it all over again?”
“Yeah, okay, I guess she’s told you that, too. But promise me you won’t hide it. From me, anyway. Deal?”
“Ach. I don’t want to do that. After a while it would be like, ‘Are you okay today, boss? What about now?’”
A flash of anger crossed her face. “I would never be like that. You know me. Just promise that you won’t hide it, okay?”
I said nothing.
“Do you remember one day when I came into your office and you had your forehead on your desk. You pretended that you’d dropped something.”
“I didn’t fool you?”
“I knew you were in trouble, but I ignored it. I told myself I was too busy, and you were my boss and you could handle it yourself. I’ve felt bad about that for years.”
“I did handle it,” I said.
“But I might have done something, and I didn’t. Help me feel better by promising you’ll let me know when I can help.”
I nodded. “Deal.”
“Good. Did you and Finn do it?”
Bang. Abrupt change of subject. I’d seen Jen do that to catch a witness off guard. “You mean—” I smiled and made the ASL sign for “sex,” two peace signs—or bunny rabbits—bumping one another.
“Whatever that means,” she said. “Did you two have sex or not?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Objection. Unresponsive.”
“It wasn’t unresponsive. I really don’t remember. Yeah, I woke up in her bed, naked. But maybe she just took off my clothes to slow me down in the morning.”
“C’mon, boss.”
“No, really.”
“Can’t you tell, the next morning, if you’ve …” She made vague gestures toward my nether regions.
I laughed. “I had other things on my mind. I was naked, looking for my clothes, and my twin sister was on trial for murder starting in half an hour. I wasn’t concerned with analyzing …” I made my own vague gestures toward my lap.
She looked out the window, apparently unsatisfied.
After a while I took her hand. “Jen, remember when you mentioned that you thought a lot of women were interested in me in … ‘that way’?”
She didn’t reply.
“And I said something like, ‘You too?’ and you blushed?”
She was blushing again. “I don’t really recall.”
I stammered a bit, even though we’d been partners for years. “Jen, I’ve realized that I have feelings for you that I didn’t, uh, realize.” Garrett Goodlove, the silver-tongued attorney. “I’d, uh, I think I’d like to pursue that. A romantic relationship. What do you think?”
Her eyes met mine.
Aargh! I hate it when she gives me that inscrutable look.
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Acknowledgments
I’m so grateful for the help I’ve had with this book.
Many thanks to Margaret Klaw, author of the delightful book, Keeping It Civil: The Case of the Pre-nup and the Porsche & Other True Accounts from the Files of a Family Lawyer, for both inspiring the donor insemination subplot and allowing me to appropriate some text from a contract described in her book. The first sentence of Conclusive Evidence also comes from her book. Special thanks to attorneys Candace Elliott Person and James P. Frederick for uncovering and helping me correct some legal errors.
My buddies at Early-Retirement.org helped me hash out some plot ideas. Special thanks to BestWifeEver and Robert M. Ring.
Allison Maruska, author of The Fourth Descendant, provided her usual insightful tips.
I had a great beta-reader crew, as usual. Thanks to my wonderful wife, Lena, who is always the first reader for my books.
Thanks as well to Navtej Nandra, Steven Lord, Gail Summerville, Manie Kilian, Linda Johnson and others.
My copy editor, Julie MacKenzie from FreeRangeEditorial.com always does a consistently wonderful job. She’s a pleasure to work with, and I’m getting tired of looking for new ways to praise her.
Also by Al Macy
Becoming a Great Sight-Reader—or Not! Learn from my Quest for Piano Sight-Reading Nirvana
Drive, Ride, Repeat: The Mostly True Account of a Cross-Country Car and Bicycle Adventure
Contact Us: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller
The Antiterrorist: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller
The Universe Next Door: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller
The Christmas Planet and Other Stories
Yesterday’s Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller
Sanity’s Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Thriller
Democracy’s Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Thriller
A Mind Reader’s Christmas: An Eric Beckman Mystery
The Day Before Yesterday’s Thief: A Prequel to the Eric Beckman Series
The Protected Witness: An Alex Booker Thriller
The Abducted Heiress: An Alex Booker Thriller
About the Author
Al Macy writes because he has stories to tell. In school, he was the class clown and always the first to volunteer for show and tell. His teachers would say, “Al has a lot of imagination.” Then they'd roll their eyes.
But he put his storytelling on the back burner until he retired and wrote a blog about his efforts to improve his piano sight-reading. That's when his love of storytelling burbled up to the surface, along with quirky words like “burble.”
He had even more fun writing his second book, Drive, Ride, Repeat, but was bummed by nonfiction's need to stick to “the truth” (yucko). From then on it was fiction all the way, with a good dose of his science background burbling to the surface.
Macy's top priority is compelling storylines with satisfying plot twists, but he never neglects character development. No, wait … his top priority is quirkiness, then compelling storylines, then character development. No, wait …