My client beams as if she has been introduced to a member of the royal family. She offers Sarah her free hand.
“Do you want to be a famous lawyer like your dad?”
Sarah, realizing fast that Mona may not be a candidate for the world’s most well-adjusted person, extricates her hand after it has been given a vigorous pump, and says dryly, “One’s enough in the family. Dad, we’ve got to hurry.”
Turning to leave at last, Mona gives me a wink.
“Jealous of her daddy’s time. I don’t blame her one bit.”
Sarah looks at me as if I have invited a whore over for breakfast, but Mona, either happily oblivious or unconcerned, is bouncing out the door, her small breasts rolling around underneath the skimpy material covering her chest.
“Gideon, I’ll call you later.”
After she is gone, Sarah begins to take a muffin.
“God, she was weird! You’re beginning to drool!”
Swallowing hard, I snatch the muffins from her, shaking my head.
“You can’t eat these!”
Sarah herself is dressed for her second day of her senior year in a well-worn pair of Levi’s and a University of New Mexico T-shirt. (She contends, with logic on her side but little else, that students should be allowed to wear shorts if they are made to start school in August.) She stares at the offending muffins in my hand.
“Why? They look okay.”
Holding the bowl at arm’s length as if it were a container of nuclear waste, I carry it into the kitchen and force six muffins down the garbage disposal. I sit at the kitchen table and tell Sarah about the rat roast in my client’s oven. Sarah, who has inherited a low vomit threshold from me, places her hand over her mouth. Her eyes begin to tear, and she pushes away the bowl of Froot Loops she has poured for herself.
“Poor Daddy,” she says between her fingers.
“Are all your clients this bad?”
I look out the window, halfway expecting to see Mona turning cartwheels in the yard.
“People wouldn’t need lawyers if they didn’t have problems.”
Sarah carries her bowl to the sink and rinses it out.
“Please swear to me she’s not a new girlfriend!” she says.
“Thanks a lot,” I say archly, bending down to scratch Woogie, who also seems in need of reassurance.
“I don’t date my clients.” That’s crap, of course. I probably would if I liked one enough.
“What’s wrong with us?” Sarah asks dramatically over the dishwasher.
“Our love lives are the pits!”
I try not to smile. Sarah has gone perhaps only two weeks straight without a date since the dam broke over a year ago when she had her first boyfriend. At least she’s not dating anybody steady. That’s when I get nervous. I watch Woogie lick where his testicles used to be. Maybe that’s my solution.
“Nobody wants you when you’re old and gray.”
Sarah nods in agreement as she puts the bowl in the rack to dry.
“These little sophomore girls think they’re so cute.
They act like they’ve never seen boys before.”
I think of all the lawyers in Blackwell County. We seem to breed faster than rabbits.
“Competition is an overrated virtue in this country,” I say, glad that Sarah’s mind is back on her own business, and not mine. She was genuinely distressed when I showed her the paper earlier. I suppose I have talked more to Sarah about Andy than I have intended. I look down at the Democrat-Gazette. The headline looks like reading material for the blind: PSYCHOLOGIST AT STATE CENTER CHARGED WITH CAPITAL MURDER. Only the media love trouble more than the legal profession. Suddenly depressed, I stare unseeing out the window into my backyard. Maybe Andy thought of it as a mercy killing. “I hope Dr. Chapman’s not guilty of murder,” Sarah says, coming over to hug me.
“I know you like him.”
Absently, I pat my daughter’s back. How can I like somebody who has murdered a child?
Later, in my office after Andy’s bond hearing, I have occasion to ponder his defense. Clan, sprawled over two chairs across from me, growls, “You should have brought the muffins to work. I wouldn’t have sued you if I had gotten sick.”
Andy’s bond has risen from five thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars, but he arranged for a ten-thousand-dollar certified check as if he were a billionaire donating to his favorite tax write-off. I think back to the first bond hearing only a few weeks ago.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” I muse, now able to nurse a cup of coffee without my stomach heaving, “Bruton, who almost held me in contempt, accepted a bond worth peanuts, and Judge Tamower, who has the best reputation in the county, almost went through the roof when I tried to argue that Andy’s bond should stay at five thousand.”
“Jesus, Gideon,” Clan wheezes, “your guy’s probably a child murderer. She could have gone a lot higher. I think she’s got the hots for you. You should have seen the way she stared at you when you sat down.”
It’s hard not to laugh at Clan. He thinks that if a woman even blinks twice at a man she wants to go to bed with him.
“She was pissed,” I say, but the truth is I’m still delighted with our luck of the draw. I wouldn’t have kept on going so long about the bond if I didn’t think there was some chance I could push some guilt buttons. Before she took the bench, Harriet Tamower had the reputation, rare among our judges, as a liberal in Arkansas politics. At least she’ll give Andy a fair trial if she doesn’t bend over too far the other way, thinking she has to prove something.
The phone rings, and fearing it is my rat burner, I hand the phone to Clan. “If it’s Mona Moneyhart,” I say, my hand over the mouthpiece, “tell her I’m at St. Thomas having my stomach pumped.”
He snickers, but says in a surprisingly professional tone, “This is Clan Bailey.” A moment later, Dan’s eyes widen in anticipation. He hands me the phone, saying, “Olivia Le Master.”
I wait for Clan to get up and leave, but he is all ears. What the hell. He knows everything anyway. I push down the button on the speaker phone to allow him to hear.
“Olivia, this is Gideon.”
“I just want you to know,” she says in a firm voice, “that despite everything, Pam’s death really was an accident. You have to believe that.”
I put my finger to my lips as Clan rolls his eyes.
“There’s a lot you didn’t tell me.”
“We didn’t think you needed to know,” Olivia says, her voice sounding hollow and unconvincing through the speaker.
“Obviously,” Clan mouths, shaking his head. Suddenly, I realize that if Olivia were suddenly to implicate Andy, Clan would be a witness and could testify. How stupid can I be?
Of course he would never do that. Still, I am made nervous by his presence and say, “Olivia, why don’t you come to my office this afternoon? We need to talk face to face.”
Clan, leaning forward on his haunches, is on the edge of his two seats.
“Do you want to represent me?” she asks.
“Obviously, I’m a suspect.”
If I did, I might get the truth out of her. Clan nods vigorously, but I reply, “I’m sorry, Olivia. There’s a potential conflict of interest between you and Andy. I suggest you get your own attorney.” Clan jabs his finger repeatedly against his stiff shirt, which contains so much starch I can hear it. I shake my head. He knows too much about Andy already.
“Oh,” she says after a long silence.
“Well, let me call you back about this afternoon.”
“Fine,” I say and hang up.
Clan is about to have a fit. Rocking backward, his shirttail coming out of his pants, he reminds me of our days together in the Public Defender’s Office when he was a skinny slob instead of a fat one. “First you don’t bring
