illustrated the twenty-five most common sharks off our coast, from hammerheads and bull sharks to the sand sharks we used to catch when we went pier fishing.
To my rueful amusement, the final poster was titled “Land Sharks” and cartoon drawings of various sharks had been rendered into courtroom scenes with each type of shark taking on lawyer-like aspects exaggerated for comic effect. As I bent for a closer look, Cynthia Blankenthorpe came out of the shop and paused beside me.
“Cute, huh?” She jiggled a well-filled tote bag, from which protruded a rolled-up poster. “I just bought my niece one as a gag gift for passing her bar exam. She always swore she was never going to be a land shark, yet here she is, following in her dad’s and my footsteps.”
Kyle the waiter had called her a dumpy little woman. She was indeed short, and yes, this was not a svelte figure. But although the tight black biking shorts she wore did nothing for her hips, she was built of solid muscle, not fat.
“You do one of those table charts for that detective this morning?” she asked, falling in beside me as I walked downstairs.
I nodded.
“Me, too, only he made me come back a second time because I left out one of the people Pete talked to. A man with two small children.”
“Allen Stancil,” I said without thinking.
She stopped in mid-step. “Yes! You know him?”
“We’ve met,” I admitted.
“He contribute to your campaign?”
“No. Yours?”
“Not yet. Maybe not ever now that Pete’s dead.” She gestured to a nearby soda shop that was decorated like an old-fashioned ice cream parlor with little round three-legged tables and black wire chairs. The signs were all in that fat curlicue lettering that reminds me of the early 1900s. “Could I buy you a drink? Talk to you a minute?”
“Okay,” I said, curious as to where this was leading.
We went inside, ordered diet colas, and took them over to a wobbly back table. She put her tote on one of the dainty chairs and sat down across from me. As she unwrapped her straw and stuck it in the icy beverage, I noticed again the wicked red scratches on her right hand that I had seen last night in the party suite, four of them, each about an inch apart.
She saw me looking and said, “I misjudged a yucca when I was out on my bike yesterday and those needles did a job on me. I’m lucky I didn’t get one in the eye.”
“Adam’s needle and thread,” I murmured, remembering Mother’s colloquial name for the vicious plant.
“Haven’t heard it called that since I was a kid.” Cynthia smiled and for a moment her broad plain face lost the frown lines between her eyes before she turned serious again. “So what’s the story on Allen Stancil?”
“Story?” I asked cautiously.
“Pete told me he was a blue-collar roughneck who’s become a successful businessman. I got the impression that he donated heavily to Pete’s upcoming campaign and Pete thought he might contribute to mine, too. Before I take anybody’s money though, I want to know if it’s clean.”
“And you didn’t think Pete was?”
“Oh, hell, no. I’ve heard how he operated when he was in private practice. Talk about your sharks. And once he hit the bench, there’ve been all kinds of rumors. One of my friends told me he even solicited campaign contributions from the lawyers in his courtroom while he was holding court. Wanted them to pledge specific amounts right then and there.”
For some reason, that shocked me even more than realizing that he’d taken money to give Allen custody of his children.
Most attorneys, as a matter of pragmatism, will contribute a token amount to a sitting judge’s campaign, but to to be bullied into naming a dollar amount in open court? As if it’s going to be a quid pro quo for whether that judge will listen to your argument with an open mind? That’s like watching acid eat away at the whole concept of judicial fairness that this country was founded on.
“Why wasn’t he reported to the ethics committee or to Justice Parker?” I asked.
Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe he was, but I haven’t heard anything about it. You?”
I hadn’t.
“If Peter Jeffreys was such bad news, though…”
“Why was I letting him lead me around?” The frown lines between her eyes deepened. “I’m the new kid on the block, remember? This is my first conference. For all I knew, important people were winking at his conduct. He came on strong. Said all the right things. I only realized yesterday that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”
“How was that?”
“He thought I was a Blankenthorpe heiress.”
“You’re not?”
She shook her head. “My dad’s uncle is the one who started the bank. Not my grandfather. We’re from the poor side of the family, relatively speaking.”
I smiled at the pun.
“I guess that’s why it ticked me off that he stuck me for his dinner. We stopped at an ATM on the way over so he had at least three hundred in his wallet, but then he went to the restroom and never came back.”
