'Why should I?' she said. 'He's my husband, he's a brilliant lawyer. You'll have to talk with him.'
'Does he know?' I said.
'About me and Brad?'
'Yes.
'No.'
'Does he know that the lawsuit is a fraud?'
'Fraud?'
'Fraud.'
'I don't know what you are talking about. I admit to a brief period of foolish sexual intimacy. But that doesn't mean he has the right to harass me.'
'May I call you Jeanette?' I said.
'Of course.'
She smiled when she said it. The response and the smile were automatic. Neither was appropriate to the situation.
'Jeanette,' I said, 'you're in a mess. And the only way out of the mess is for me to help you. But if I'm going to help you, you really have to stop trying to outwit me. I don't mean to be unkind, but you're ill equipped.'
She flushed again and her eyes blurred a little as if she were going to cry.
'Here's the mess you're in,' I said. 'I may have a few details wrong, but I'm pretty sure about the, ah, broad outlines of it. You meet Brad Sterling while he's running Galapalooza and you're volunteering. Maybe you were interested in doing something charitable. Maybe you and your girlfriends just thought it would be fun, maybe meet some celebrities. Brad's an attractive guy, and you get involved. Then one way or another your husband gets wind of it. Maybe you love your husband, maybe you like the life he gives you, whatever, you want to save your marriage. So you say it's not what it looks like: It's a case of sexual harassment.'
She was sitting very still, her coffee still undisturbed in front of her. She was trying to hold my gaze but not doing it very well. Her eyes were definitely teary.
'It's not a bad ploy. But you know who and what your husband is. And you should have guessed that he'd sue the bastard.'
The tears that had blurred her eyes were beginning to spill. She picked up her napkin and blotted them, carefully, so as not to spoil the eye makeup.
'So,' I said, 'you got your girlfriends to help join in, make it more credible, take some of the heat off you. And your husband sues on behalf of all of you.'
'He flirted with all of us,' Jeanette said.
'I'm sure he did.'
'So there really was some harassment,' she said.
'I'm not sure flirtation's harassment,' I said. 'But that's not my issue.'
'Well, it's an important issue,' she said.
'Sure,' I said. 'What I don't get is why Sterling is so passive about it.'
'Maybe he felt guilty,' she said.
'About what?'
'Well, he was having an affair with a married woman,' she said.
'Sure,' I said. 'That's probably it.'
We were quiet. She dabbed again at her eyes. They looked fine.
'That about how it went?' I said.
She nodded.
'You wouldn't have any thoughts on where Brad might be now, would you?'
'No.'
'You know he's a suspect in a murder case?' I said.
She nodded.
'See any connection between your lawsuit and the murder?' I said.
'My… good God no,' she said. 'What could that have to do with murder?'
I shrugged.
'Ripples in a pond,' I said.
'Ripples?'
'Know anybody named Richard Gavin?'
'No.'
'Know why your husband would hire a couple of sluggers to scare me off the case?'
