Eddie claimed one of the club chairs, circling around and scratching at the seat cushion a few times before dropping with a grunt into an alert state of repose.
“Make yourself at home,” said Jackie, swiveling around in her chair after a finalizing tap on her keyboard.
The office door had been unlocked, so I’d let myself in, juggling a pair of large Viennese cinnamon coffees.
“That one’s yours. Light on the cream, half a pack of chemical sugar.”
Jackie dove into the other club chair and snatched up the coffee.
“What a gallant,” she said.
“You told me to bring you some.”
“I know. I’m just pretending you did it all on your own. Delusion goes good with coffee.”
She was wearing a freshly pressed, white Oxford-cloth shirt under a vest made of synthetic fleece and khaki shorts, rushing the season. After reaching over to scrunch around with Eddie’s head, she kicked off her flip-flops and, wriggling deeper into the chair, popped the plastic lid off the coffee cup. Her face looked scrubbed, slightly flushed under the freckles, her blue eyes salubrious and radiant.
She’d woken me up that morning with a phone call. It wasn’t that early, but I was out cold. I don’t set an alarm because I normally wake up on my own, usually an hour or two before I want to, so I can lie there and pretend that being supine with your eyes closed had the same restorative benefits as heavy REM sleep. I was startled by the sound of the phone in the kitchen, and when I got there I couldn’t remember what to say when you pick up a receiver.
“Huh?”
“Christ, Sam, it’s the middle of the week.”
“Jackie.”
“Doing anything at the moment?”
“Regaining consciousness. What the hell time is it?”
“Nine something. I think you’re drinking too much.”
“Or not enough.”
“I need you to come over here. There’s some stuff we have to talk about.”
Eddie walked stiffly into the kitchen, head and tail down. He nosed at his bowl, then looked up at me as he stretched, his forepaws extended and his ass in the air. Then he yawned.
“I know who’s got the hangover,” I said to him.
“Not me, straight as a judge,” said Jackie.
“I’m talking to the dog.”
“Oh, great.”
“Anyway, judges are sober. They may or may not be straight.”
“Speaking of which, I talked to Burton last night. There’re things we need to discuss.”
“Like what?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t know. College basketball, lawn care, your murder trial.”
“Okay.”
“Bring coffee.”
“Okay.”
Jackie’s law practice was a fair reflection of Jackie’s personality. Idiosyncratic. Though based principally on real estate, the largest local industry and the center of most legal disputes, public and domestic. Through a series of unconventional circumstances, some my fault, Jackie had found herself working both civil and criminal sides of the real-estate dodge, which put her among a rare breed of attorney, an exemplar of which was my friend Burton Lewis.
“Okay,” said Jackie from the club chair in her new office. She took a manila folder off the coffee table and opened it on her lap. On top of the papers inside was a yellow legal pad. She clicked open a ballpoint pen and looked over at me.
“Burton wants me to talk about your alibi. Let’s do that, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” She wormed down further into the leather club chair. “Milhouser was killed between eight and nine o’clock that night. His crew discovered him at the site the next morning.”
“I was eating dinner at the Pequot from about six to seven-thirty. Then I went home and mixed up a tall boy in my aluminum tumbler and went out on the porch where I read a hunk of Freud’s
“Of course you did. What the hell else would you be reading?
“Not as tough sledding as Kant, I’ll tell you that.”
“Did you go out of the house after that?”
“Nope. Me and Eddie were on the porch all evening.”
“Reading?”
“Just me. Eddie doesn’t think much of Freud.”
“You read the whole time?” she asked.
“Till I went to bed. Could have been as early as nine-thirty. I was working hard that week. Needed the sleep.”
“What about the woman on Bay Edge Drive who said she saw you jogging by at around nine o’clock?”
“What about her? She’s got it wrong. I haven’t run on that road for weeks. With the cold weather there’s been a lot of ice and snow, especially along that rutty part. I’m afraid of twisting my ankle.”
“But you told me you were at the job site a week before Robbie was killed.”
“Didn’t jog. I just walked over there.”
“That’s not what you told me.”
“I usually jog, but the road was too slippery. So I walked.”
“Remember to change your story like that a few times for the jury. They love that.”
“Not a change. A refinement.”
“Not a helpful one.”
“Why?” I asked her.
“Why take the trouble to walk all the way over to that site if you weren’t jogging? You say you were too tired, that it was cold, that the road surface was unsafe. And yet, you somehow forced yourself to walk all the way over there, almost a half mile, just to look at a construction site?”
“I was going to jog, but I changed my mind.”
“Super. Any more refinements?” she asked.
“That’s it.”
“So nobody saw you that night, or called you on the phone? Amanda?”
“Not likely around that time. We’d been a little on-and-offish.”
“I’m getting your phone records from the ADA. In case there’re any refinements hiding in there.”
“Nobody remembers everything perfectly.”
“No. Some people only appear to. People who successfully defend themselves from murder charges.”
“Nobody called me. That I remember.”
“And what’s the deal with Amanda? You were fighting?”
“Not then. Just taking one of our occasional time-outs. No particular reason.”
“Because of that altercation at the restaurant?”
I fought back a surge of frustration.
“It wasn’t an altercation on my part. All I did was save the poor jerk from getting hurt or embarrassing himself any more than he already had. Assuming you could embarrass him in the first place.”
“Not defending your lady’s honor?” she asked.
“Her honor was supposed to stay in the car and out of the way. She’s not big on taking direction. So, yeah. I was concerned for her safety. Three big threatening drunks, on a poorly lit sidewalk. Easy to get caught up in the action.”
“So that’s why you pushed Milhouser into the grille of an SUV”
