with an unlimited allowance, but it cost him the love of his life and the mother of his son.
He didn’t notice the newspaper and I didn’t call his attention to it. Instead, I followed him into the air- conditioned coolness, past a pullout couch in the living room where he had slept last night and into the kitchen, the source of those entrancing aromas. Except for the unmade sofa bed, the house was tidy enough, but it had the temporary air of a bachelor’s place—mismatched furniture, odd lamps, clashing colors.
Reid may have been a member of Hasselberger’s wedding party, but evidently that marriage had gone the way of Reid’s. Clearly no woman lived here. Had ever lived here. Not with these furnishings anyhow. The severely tailored couch was cranberry verging toward plum, the overstuffed recliner next to it was a gold-and-brown plaid, while the three floor lamps were modern chrome-and-steel rods and were more suited to an architect’s office. It looked to me like the leavings of a bad divorce settlement.
Not that I was there to criticize any man who would immediately hand me a mug of strong fragrant coffee. Not when I could see the frittata that had my name on a wedge of it almost ready to emerge from the broiler of his electric oven.
“Glad you could come,” he said, wiping his bony hands on a pink dishtowel before shaking mine. Once again, his smile split his face from ear to ear. The warmth of that smile lit up his long thin face and brown puppy-dog eyes.
“Thanks for asking me,” I said. “Y’all got away last night before I could tell Reid to meet me at a pancake house this morning somewhere between here and Sunset Beach. This is much nicer.”
“Is something up?” my cousin asked. “We see each other almost every day back home. Why down here?”
“Does there have to be a reason? We haven’t really talked in ages. And then you left early without coming over last night. One minute you were there, the next minute you were gone.”
He shook his head at me. “I’m surprised you noticed. You looked well on your way to getting smashed.”
“I was just tired,” I said defensively.
His lifted eyebrow showed me just how much he believed
“Everybody pretends that the new name better describes what we do,” Bill said, “but we all know that it’s because ‘trial lawyers’ has become a dirty word.”
True. They’re constantly being slimed by certain probusiness elements who oppose big judgments against corporations and their insurance companies, never mind whether said corporations are grossly negligent or merely indifferent to the possible harm their protocols might cause.
I waited until the frittata was out of the oven and we were seated at the table with heaped plates to say, “So, Bill, how come we never met when you were on the bench?”
Reid kicked me under the table, but Bill flashed another one of those warm smiles, this time with a hint of mischief. “Actually, we did meet. Fall conference one year and here last summer a couple of years ago.”
“Really?”
“Reid had told me all about you, so I knew who you were, but I guess I was just part of the crowd. Hard to get your attention with Chuck Teach there, and then the next summer—”
Reid’s fork, laden with cheese and tomatoes, paused in midair. “You and Judge Teach hooked up?”
“It was nothing more than a few drinks and dinner,” I said.
“Yeah? Does Dwight know?”
“Who’s Dwight?” Bill asked, proffering the coffeepot.
Reid held out his cup for a refill. “Dwight Bryant. Her husband.”
“You’re married now?”
I wiggled my left hand to show him my rings. “Going on seven months.”
“Well, damn!” he said with a laugh. “I finally get a chance to register on your radar and it’s half a year too late. Is he with you this week?”
I shook my head. “No, he had a seminar up in Virginia.” I took another bite of that delicious mixture of eggs and herbs and cheese. “I don’t mean to be tactless, but was it hard leaving the bench?”
Reid rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Deborah.”
“It’s okay, pal,” Bill said. “I’m pretty much over it. Yeah, I liked being a judge, so I was sorry to leave, but it wasn’t leaving the bench itself that I minded so much as the way I was pushed off.”
“Pete Jeffreys?”
“You got it. It was a bad time all around and he played into it. My wife and I were going through an ugly divorce, so he started a rumor that she kicked me out because I was gay and that I made a couple of DWIs go away for some gay friends. You know how hard those things are to stop once enough people believe it. You don’t need any fire if there’s enough smoke. And I did dismiss a DWI for a friend who happens to be gay, but it was for cause and thoroughly justified. My dismissal rate for DWIs was a lot lower than his is.”
“He doesn’t just dismiss the cases in open court either,” said Reid. “It’s an open secret that one of his big- donor attorney friends has a drawerful of blank dismissal forms that Jeffreys signed for him.”
I wasn’t as shocked as I should have been.
Like it or not, I doubt if there’s a courthouse in the state where that hasn’t happened.
“The worst of it is that he’s lazy,” Bill said. “Sitting on a bench is a damn sight easier than maintaining an office, chasing down cases, and working actively for a client who may or may not pay you for your services. I’m absolutely convinced that the main reason he ran for judge wasn’t the prestige and certainly not because he could
