toward the trees, not turning to see if Seeley was following, but speaking to the void in front of him. “You're thinking, it's been five, ten years since this property was developed, why does he keep the construction stakes?”
Seeley had worked for self-absorbed men like this before, but never comfortably.
“If you don't mark your boundaries,” Warshaw said, “before you know it, you've lost your property lines and your neighbors are parking on your front lawn. Until the town fathers change the zoning and let me put up a fence, I have the gardener tie on new ribbons every spring.” He prodded a stake with a toe to straighten it. “Leonard tells me you think my patent claims are too broad.”
His claims, Seeley thought, not Vaxtek's or even Steinhardt's.
Warshaw said, “The claims are fine. St. Gall copied our invention. What's your assessment of the case?”
“Do you want my opinion, or are you going to tell me what it is?”
“I thought a lot about those claims.” They had arrived at the wooded edge of the property and Warshaw walked along it, checking the stakes. “Everyone thought I made a big jump, going from electronics to biotech. What they don't understand is, it's all the same: you build a company and you sell it. The AV/AS patent is what makes this company valuable, and the broader that patent is, the more I can sell the company for.”
The air was still, but there was a rustling in the shrubbery beneath the trees. Black eyes looked out and Seeley sensed, more than he saw, the presence of deer.
“You mean you want a monopoly.”
Warshaw turned and looked at Seeley.
“Call it whatever you want. It's my property. It's why I made the investment.”
“Broad claims are risky,” Seeley said. “Juries don't like monopolies.”
“Risk never bothered me. It's competition I don't like. If I wanted to compete, I'd be over there in the tent.”
A gust of air blew past them and a pair of arch-backed dogs, anorexically thin, flew into the trees. The deer scattered. When the dogs returned, they went to Warshaw's side.
“Your brother's a better listener than you are.” Warshaw bent to pet the dogs.
“Leonard's a fine salesman,” Seeley said.
“Let me show you my sculptures. Leonard tells me you represent artists.” Warshaw didn't wait for an answer but, as they walked in the direction of the house, lectured Seeley on each of the half-dozen pieces they passed. By the time they reached the terrace, guests were streaming out of the tent.
Renata was waiting for Seeley on the terrace, a full wineglass in her hand. “Asperger's syndrome,” she said when Warshaw was gone. “High-functioning autism. People like Joel are usually brilliant at one particular thing, but they don't have what the psychiatrists call social pragmatics. It's the only disease known to medicine whose symptoms are being rich and powerful.”
“And amoral.”
Renata thought for a moment. “I suppose that, too.”
“He seems to get on with his dogs.”
Renata laughed. “I'm ready to go. How about you?”
“Where's Leonard?”
“He'll be the last one to leave. I have to be in the OR at seven-thirty.”
Seeley remembered that she'd also been in surgery early today. “How many days a week do you do that?”
“Four, five. Leonard says I went into orthopedics as an excuse for not having kids.”
“Did you?”
“I never wanted children and, whatever he says, Leonard doesn't either. He wants only one child in the house, and it has to be him.”
“Why'd you pick surgery?”
“When I was a nurse, I knew that if I got through med school, it's what I'd do. All the parties I went to, the surgeons were always the ones having a good time.”
“Are you having a good time?” Out on the street, the fragrance of grasses and lavender mixed with the familiar eucalyptus, like a magician's potion.
Renata said, “Even the best jobs get tedious. Doesn't yours?”
Seeley laughed. “I relieve the boredom by taking on cases that I shouldn't.”
“For me it's being an on-field doc for the Stanford football team. I only work home games, but it's something to look forward to. Leonard said you played in college.”
“It was a small Jesuit college in Buffalo. Strictly division three.”
“Why don't you come to the Washington game next week? I'll get you a field pass.”
“I'll be in the middle of trial.”
He had said the same to Lily, but then agreed to dinner with her. At odd moments, driving back to the office from their lunch in Princeton-by-the-Sea and again driving down to Atherton this evening, fragments of his conversation with Lily drifted pleasantly through his thoughts. What had changed his mind about dinner-the need to discover what Lily was hiding, or the simple desire to see her again?
“It's just three hours on a Saturday afternoon. You'll need a break.”
Seeley said he'd think about it.
They turned into Renata's street, where the sidewalks disappeared and the canopy of treetops became so dense that it obscured the night sky.
“Do you remember, at your wedding, when I was leaving, you whispered something to me?”
Renata gave him a blank look, then shook her head. “What did I say?”
“I don't know,” Seeley said. “That's why I asked. But I had the feeling it was important to you.”
Renata smiled and slid her arm through his. “I was probably just flirting with you.”
“Did you do that a lot?”
They were at the front door. When Seeley turned to her, she was looking directly at him. “I still do.”
Renata opened the door. “Do you want to come in?”
“You have surgery tomorrow,” he said. “And I have an early meeting with my trial team.” Until that moment, he had forgotten the meeting that Tina had scheduled for him.
She frowned. “You're afraid Leonard will come back.”
“Maybe I'm afraid he won't.” Seeley meant it to be light, but she didn't smile.
Renata said, “Let me know what you decide about the Washington game.”
Before Seeley could answer, her lips brushed his cheek, leaving a scent of wine, and then she was gone, the door closed behind her.
EIGHT
At 7:30 in the morning when Seeley came into the office, Steinhardt's lab notebooks were in a neat pile centered on his desk. The two on top, marked “University of California,” were clothbound, and the four volumes beneath them were unmarked and bound in black leather. Next to the notebooks was a message from Tina that Nicolas Cordier, Seeley's expert witness from South Africa, had arrived in New York and wanted to speak to him.
Seeley took the UC notebook from the top of the pile. The pages, lined horizontally and vertically like graph paper, were consecutively numbered and sewn into the binding to prevent an unscrupulous researcher from removing any that later turned out to be embarrassing. Paragraph after handwritten paragraph filled the pages, interrupted only by charts with numbers, symbols, and crisscrossing curves. At the end of each entry was the dated signature of the writer and, beneath that, of a witness. Most of the entries were in Steinhardt's small, meticulous hand, but some, in a loose, elegant script, were signed by Lily. The leather-bound books farther down in the pile were from Steinhardt's time at Vaxtek and, as Palmieri had said, were perfect, without an erasure or a cross out. All of the entries were signed by Steinhardt.
Remembering his promise to Judy to look into the police work on her husband's death, Seeley dialed the
