Defense for the Devil (10 page)

“Send him on an errand,” Barbara said. “Let him go buy the chairs and love seats and things.”

Maggie looked surprised, then she nodded. “All I could think of was that it took me two years to find the furniture I wanted; you saw, oak in one room, wicker in another, cherry…. He could do that.” Suddenly she grinned. “He could do that.”

“Okay,” Barbara said brusquely. “Do you know when the funeral will be, and will you bring your daughters home for it?”

“We don’t know yet when they’ll release Mitch’s body. I talked to Mama and Papa Arno, and we agreed not to drag the kids home now. I’m not even sure where they are, Mom and Dad had a lot of things planned. The Arnos will have a very small private service, and later on I’ll take the girls to the cemetery.”

“Good. I’ll need a copy of the divorce decree, and do you have anything with Mitch’s fingerprints? Bailey needs to eliminate him, the way he did with the rest of the family.”

“Mama Arno gave me his birth certificate and the prints they made in the hospital when he was born.”

“Next, about that money. You could just keep it and burn the contents of the briefcase. You’d have to destroy the papers in the briefcase if you decided to go that route. Keeping them would be dangerous. They are very valuable, and there are powerful people who want them.” Maggie started to say something, but Barbara said, “Let me lay it all out first. The next option is to turn everything over to the police and tell them what happened. The downside is that you’ll give yourself a motive for killing Mitch, and you’d never see
a penny of the money again. You would put not only Ray in danger but yourself as well. Or you could deal with either Trassi or another man who may have a legitimate claim; Trassi’s upped the offer, and he will again, and the other one has no interest in the cash. You’d end up with a lot of money, perhaps all of it.” Maggie gasped. Barbara continued. “The downside is how you would then handle the cash. If you put it in your bank, the bank would inform the IRS; it’s the law. And then you’d have to account for it, and there would be an investigation. Word would leak, and there’s a motive for murder again. You could stash the money in a safe-deposit box and spend it little by little without ever saying a word about it. It’s risky, and the chance that your sudden affluence would be noticed is very high.”

“What you’re telling me is heads I lose, tails I lose,” Maggie said. “Where did that money come from? How did Mitch get it? What are the valuable papers? Who are those powerful people? I can’t make choices in the dark.”

Barbara was always grateful when her client was intelligent, but sometimes, she would also admit, it complicated her life. Slowly, picking her words with care, she said, “I can’t tell you a lot because we are still checking out various stories, and I’m stalling everyone until we have hard facts. It could be a case of industrial espionage. Two competing companies, one stole a product from the other one, using Mitch as the delivery man who was to have paid off the thief and receive the product. He double-crossed them all and ended up with everything.”

“Then
they
killed him,” Maggie exclaimed. “The police would understand that much.”

“Neither company would admit a thing,” Barbara said patiently. “We don’t have a shred of proof. We don’t even know for sure the names of either company. I’m afraid the police might decide that Mitch had acted on his own and was involved in something yet to be determined; meanwhile, a quarter of a million dollars in cash would be irresistible as cause for murder.”

They became silent, walking slowly in the packed sand. The fog had thickened; it was like a misty rain defying gravity. Laurence and John had turned, were coming their way.

“Barbara,” Maggie said tiredly, “you’ve told me the things I can’t do, but what’s left? What can I do?”

“Let’s wait until they get past and let them lead the way back,” Barbara said. She looked at the sea; only a hundred feet away the fog eclipsed it wholly and hushed the sound of invisible waves breaking over invisible stacks out in the water.

“Hey,” Laurence said, still dozens of feet from them, “can we stop being pariahs yet?”

Barbara shook her head. “Nope. Girl-talk time.” She could see water droplets sparkling in John’s hair.

The men walked past them, and after giving them a good lead, they followed. Then Barbara said, still speaking carefully, “You remember our agreement, what I agreed to do?” Maggie nodded. “That’s what I want to do, Maggie. I want to get you all the back child-support payments that are owed you. I want to do it in a way that won’t compromise the money or you, and won’t jeopardize either Ray or you. But to do that, I need your confidence, your trust. I need to know that you won’t decide that you have to go to the police until I say so, and then we’ll go together. I promise, we will go. Further, I have to know that you won’t talk to Trassi or anyone else, including the family. I need to have the same kind of trust in you that I’m asking from you. Also, to do that, the expenses might run up more than you anticipated.”

Maggie put her hand on Barbara’s arm and stopped her. “What kind of money are you talking about? And expenses? I have to know before I can agree.”

“I’m talking about two hundred and ten thousand dollars, and expenses will go to several thousand, at a minimum.”

Incredulity swept over Maggie’s features. She laughed, a bitter, choked sound. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s what I’m going after, if I have your permission and cooperation.”

“Did you tell me all the things I can’t do so I’d jump at this?” Maggie asked, her voice subtly different now; she spoke as a businesswoman who had learned some things along the way.

“I told you why you shouldn’t do the various things you’ve been contemplating, and the one thing you didn’t contemplate.”

“That’s for sure,” Maggie said. They started to walk again. After a moment Maggie said, “I won’t talk to anyone and I’ll do what you advise me to do.” She looked at Barbara. “Shake?” They shook hands solemnly. Then Maggie said, “The police came here to ask questions. They already knew about the party and the vandalism. It was like you said, they just asked about Friday and afterward. They’ve been all over town asking questions. They know all our past history by now.” She paused, then asked, “If they arrest Ray, will you defend him?”

“I can’t. It would be a conflict of interest.”

Maggie kicked a clump of seaweed. Then she said, “If they arrest him, his trial won’t be for months. Could you take him later?”

“Maggie, you’ll be my client for months. Ray needs an attorney now, before he talks to the police again. I have several names for you to give him, if you choose. All people my father and I would recommend.

“What if I decide I don’t want you to represent me anymore, then could you take Ray?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Maggie demanded.

“Because if I were defending him, you’d be at risk.”

“You’d use what you know about me?” Maggie stopped again.

“Yes,” Barbara said. “Nothing that was confided when we had an attorney-client relationship, but anything that developed afterward. If I had to use it, I would.”

Maggie stared silently at her, then abruptly started to walk. Neither spoke again until they were back at the inn.

They dried themselves while Maggie went to get Mitch’s birth certificate, the fingerprints, and the divorce decree. She handed Barbara an envelope, without comment, and Barbara gave her the paper with attorneys’ names. She said she would keep in touch, and she and John left and drove to Newport.

At Mo’s Seafood Restaurant, eating clam chowder, she asked John what he had made of Laurence.

“He’s thirty, going on twenty,” John said judiciously. “He complained that Maggie treats him like a kid much of the time.” They both laughed. Then John said, “He thinks he wants to get married; she doesn’t. He wishes there were dragons around so he could kill one for her. I know the feeling,” he added.

For a time they sat holding hands, not eating, not talking, but when the waiter came to remove the soup bowls, Barbara said, “Not yet.” She pulled loose from John and picked up her spoon. “Not another word about me or my client’s problem child. What’s happening with the Staley mine?” He had not brought it up for many days, she realized with a twinge of guilt.

“The usual bullshit,” he said. “The miners lodged a complaint, unsafe working conditions. The commission hired me. The company hired its own experts, and now we snap and snarl at each other.”

He was being too flippant; the little twinge of conscience was replaced with a stab of fear. “You’ll go back, won’t you?”

“Finish your chowder,” he said. “I’m ready for halibut and the works.” He looked around the restaurant. “I like this place.”

The tables were picnic tables, with plastic tablecloths, and benches that were to be shared with whoever wanted to sit down and eat. The food was delicious, perfectly cooked seafood; the house specialty was clam chowder for which people traveled many miles. Outside the windows was a dock on Newport Bay, where people were fishing, children playing, seagulls swooping. Fishing boats were returning, riding the incoming tide, racing the fog.

By the time they left the restaurant, fog had shrouded all of Newport, turned lights into multicolored glowing clouds, made distances unpredictable, and played optical-illusion tricks with moving vehicles. “We could check into a motel,” Barbara said doubtfully; she knew they would not find a room so late in the evening during the season.

“Let’s go home,” John said. They went to the car and he drove.

She could feel John’s relief when the fog cleared and he picked up speed. She well knew that for many miles this road wound its way up and down, around and around, and each time it went down, it would be smothered by fog again, probably all the way through the Coast Range, possibly all the way home. They started down the hill they had just climbed, and before them lay a white lake of fog. John eased up on the gas and crept ahead cautiously.

And so it went, up into clear air, down into fog, mile after mile after mile. Neither spoke. Other cars were on the road; approaching they appeared to be formless glowing clouds that became defined slowly, then vanished. Now and then someone passed them in a suicidal rush, and their taillights were clouds on fire.