Grace shook her head. “I was going to trademark it, but I just never got around to it. I guess I assumed Ben would take care of that.”
“Unfortunate,” Mitzi said. She scribbled a note to herself. “All right, the good news is, at least we know what we’re dealing with.”
“If that’s the good news, I don’t want to hear the bad stuff,” Grace said. She gathered her papers and went home to figure out her next move.
6
They’d gotten there early. The courtroom was half-full, and another hearing was still under way. Mitzi Stillwell led her up the right-side aisle and gestured at a vacant seat toward the front third of the room.
Grace studied the judge, who sat erect in his high-backed chair, listening intently. He looked to be in his late forties, with receding strawberry-blond hair combed straight back from a high forehead, steel-rimmed glasses, and a long, narrow, unsmiling face. “Is that our judge?”
“That’s Stackpole, in the flesh,” Mitzi said.
“I thought he’d be older,” Grace said.
“He was two years behind me in law school at UF,” Mitzi said. “And he was a pain in the ass, even then. But a politically connected pain. He was appointed to the bench at forty.”
A uniformed bailiff, a young black woman with startling platinum marcelled hair who was standing at the side door to the courtroom, caught Mitzi’s eye and gave her a very slight shake of the head.
“We gotta keep quiet,” Mitzi murmured. “Or he’ll have that bailiff toss us out.”
* * *
A lawyer standing at the table on the left front side of the room stood and spoke into a microphone. “Judge, we’d like the court to view this video my client shot of her husband, while he was terrorizing my client.” Grace couldn’t see the lawyer’s face, just the back of his balding head, and his neat, dark suit.
An older woman sitting at the opposite table stood. “Your honor, we have not seen that video, so we’re going to oppose that being introduced into evidence.”
The judge gave her a mirthless smile. “We’ll all see it together right now, shall we, Ms. Entwhistle?”
“My client was deliberately goaded into an altercation by Mrs. Keeler’s boyfriend. For months now, she and Luke Grigsby have repeatedly violated the terms of their custody agreement by either delivering Bo hours late, or not at all, at times when my client was scheduled to have Bo.”
“Well, Ms. Entwhistle, I don’t see where you’ve notified the court about that,” Stackpole said evenly.
“No sir,” Ms. Entwhistle said. “My client was trying to keep things amicable and civil, for the sake of the child. On the day that video was shot, Bo was to have been dropped off at his father’s house before lunch. Mrs. Keeler was aware that Bo had a T-ball game at four that afternoon. My client even sent her a text message reminding her of that fact. But she was a no-show. She never notified my client of Bo’s whereabouts, instead dropping him off at the park half an hour after the start of the game, and without his team uniform or his glove. The child was distraught, in fact, in tears, because he thought he’d let his team down.”
The opposing lawyer stood up. “Judge, if you watch our video, you’ll see that if there were indeed any tears, which my client states there weren’t, it was probably only because Bo was afraid that Wyatt Keeler, who also happens to be his coach, and who obviously has a volatile temper, might be angry at him.”
The man who’d been sitting at the table beside the female lawyer shot to his feet. He was coatless, but dressed in a pale yellow long-sleeved dress shirt and a blue necktie. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. His clean-shaven head was deeply tanned and gleamed in the glow of the courtroom lights. “That’s not true,” Wyatt Keeler called out, his voice cracking with emotion. “My son has never been afraid of me. He was crying because it was a big game, and Callie and Luke couldn’t be bothered to get him there in time to play.”
“That’s enough, Mr. Keeler,” the judge snapped. “Anything else, and I’ll have the bailiff remove you from this courtroom.” He closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he said, gesturing to the same bailiff who’d already shushed Grace and Mitzi. “We’re about to be running late. I want to see this video right now.”
A moment later, a projection screen had been set up at the front of the room and the overhead lights dimmed. The video, grainy and depicting jerky movements, obviously shot from a cell phone.
As Grace and the other observers in the court watched, they saw Wyatt Keeler, dressed in a bright turquoise T-shirt with MARASOTA MAULERS in script lettering across the front, come storming toward the camera, his eyes narrowed, jaw set angrily, fists clenched.
“Hey, man,” he called. “I’m not done with you.”
Now the camera showed a second man, with dark, slicked-back hair, wearing khaki slacks and a red polo shirt, walking hurriedly toward the camera. He wore dark sunglasses. “Make sure you get all this, Callie,” he called, glancing over his shoulder. An unseen female voice said. “I got it.”
Now Wyatt Keeler charged toward the other man, grabbing him from behind by the shoulders and spinning him around. It looked like he was saying something, but their voices were muffled.
The woman’s voice rang out. “Get your hands off him, Wyatt.”
Sunglasses man easily shook himself free of Wyatt Keeler’s grasp and went jogging away with Wyatt Keeler following at a steady clip.
“Back away, Wyatt,” the woman’s voice called. “If you put your hands on Luke one more time, I am calling the cops. I mean it, too.”
Wyatt Keeler looked right at the
