First degree

seems to believe that if she can't make lettuce rise from the ground, then we'll have to go lettuce-deprived. She's even growing basil, and in a pathetic attempt to curry favor with her, I've forever sworn off store-bought basil.

We're having pasta tonight, some kind of red sauce with things in it. I don't ask what those things are for fear that they'll sound so healthful I won't want to eat them. It's delicious, and with the music and candles and Laurie as company, it should be perfect. It isn't, because I'm still thinking about Geoffrey Stynes and his chilling confession this afternoon.

I move it partially out of my mind, until Laurie mentions that she stopped into the office after I had left. 'Edna told me somebody tried to hire you today, but you fought him off.'

I try to smile and shrug it off. 'You know Edna.'

She does know Edna, but somehow that isn't enough to get her to drop it. 'She said you seemed upset.'

I decide to try honesty. Who knows? Maybe it'll work. 'I didn't like him. I didn't like the case.'

'Why?'

I shake my head. 'It's privileged.'

She nods, fully understanding and respecting the meaning of that. It bothers me, not being able to tell her something she would so desperately want to know, but I have no ethical choice.

There are few, if any, things more vital to a defendant's protection in our justice system than the attorney- client privilege. If an accused individual were unable to be honest with his attorney out of fear that his words would be revealed, it would cripple his chances of being adequately defended. I have never breached attorney-client privilege in my life, and I never will.

Ironically, had I accepted Stynes as a client, I could have assigned Laurie to the case as my investigator and told her everything Stynes said. Once I turned him down, I clearly lost the ethical justification to assign an investigator.

Besides, there really is no absolute guarantee that Stynes killed Dorsey. False confessions are amazingly commonplace. Of course, they're usually made to the police, not to lawyers. And the confessors are most often losers and/or lunatics. On the surface at least, Stynes doesn't fit the bill. Even more significant, the fact that he knew the composition of the flammable solution pretty much says it all.

The guy did it.

Laurie drops the issue, though she can tell that something is bothering me. Wild and crazy couple that we are, we decide to do what we often do after dinner: play Scrabble.

Playing Scrabble against Laurie is very difficult for me. We take our glasses of wine and sit on the floor, and I almost instantly find that I can't take my eyes off of her. She is beautiful in a casual, unassuming way, as if it takes no effort. And in her case it doesn't. I have seen her after an exhausting run, after a shower, after making love, after a night's sleep, after a tearful conversation, after a long day in the office, and even after a physical confrontation with a violent suspect. These observations have convinced me that they haven't invented the 'after' that could make Laurie look anything but wonderful.

But if I'm looking at Laurie, then I can't be looking at my tiles. This is an effective part of her plan, but it's not nearly the most daunting part of her game. She is a woman with no Scrabble morals whatsoever; she'll do anything it takes to win, and the rules are for her opponents to worry about.

I usually lose by about fifty points, but tonight I'm actually ahead by seventeen. We're about three-quarters of the way into the game, which means she simply will not take her turn unless and until she comes up with a great word. She will ponder and agonize over her decision until August if necessary, but will under no circumstances make anything other than the perfect move.

About ten minutes have gone by, and I'm about to doze off, when she finally puts down her word. It lands on a triple word score, totals forty-eight points, and, if left unchallenged, will put her well into the lead.

The word is … 'klept.'

Now, there is no reason I should let her get away with this. Well, there's one. She gets really aggressive when I put up any resistance at all.

'Klept?' I say very gently. 'I'm not sure that's a word, Laurie dear.'

'Of course it's a word. Klept. It's what kleptomaniacs do.'

'A kleptomaniac steals, sweetheart,' I say.

Laurie sits up a little straighter, poised and ready to pounce. 'No, the run-of-the-mill losers that you represent steal. The real sickos klept.'

I look around for the dictionary that we keep in the box with the game. It's nowhere to be found.

'Do you know where the dictionary is, my little honeybunch?' I ask.

'I looked for it before, but it's gone,' she says, a razor-sharp edge in her voice. 'I guess somebody must have klepted it.'

The game rapidly heads downhill after that. I start to make moves too quickly, she slows down even more, and she beats me by sixty-seven points.

That's the bad news. The good news is it means we can go to bed, and bed with Laurie is much better than Scrabble with Laurie. Bed with Laurie is better than Scrabble with anybody. Though I'm speaking from a rather limited database, I think it's very likely that bed with Laurie is better than bed with anybody.

I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and turn on the television to the local news. Laurie is still sleeping, but the sound doesn't wake her. The sound of an enormous asteroid hitting Hackensack wouldn't wake her.

There is almost nothing of consequence on the local news. It's traffic, weather, boring banter, light features, and then back to the traffic and weather. Today is no exception. It's raining, so they have the poor weather-man out on a street corner, giving his report from under an umbrella. He's predicting that it's going to rain. All that money spent on meteorology school obviously paid off.

Laurie wakes up at seven and says something that sends a bolt of agony through me. 'Weren't you going to the gym this morning?'

I've gained a few pounds lately and noticed a slight gut. Even worse, Laurie has noticed it. I announced that I was going to start going to a gym, and she made no effort to talk me out of it. Today was to be the first day. I had genuinely forgotten about it, though I would certainly have faked forgetting about it if I thought I could get away with it.

I get up, walk Tara, then throw some things in a bag, and go. I'm not yet a member of a gym myself, so for this initial foray into future fitness, I've chosen to be a guest of Vince Sanders. If I can't keep up with Vince, I'm going to stop off at the embalmer on the way home and turn myself in.

Vince is the city desk editor of the Bergen Record; it was a young reporter working for him that Willie Miller was accused of murdering. He helped me on that case, and we've become pretty friendly since. Vince is the single largest consumer of jelly donuts in New Jersey, with the gut to prove it.

I'm ten minutes late getting to the gym; it would have been longer if not for the fact that there's valet parking. Vince is a little grouchy about my late arrival.

'You here to work out or you here to be late?' he snarls.

It's not the most coherent of questions, so I just shrug my apology, and he flashes his guest pass and gets me in. The place is a spectacular modern facility, with state-of-the-art exercise machines, a fashionable workout clothing boutique, a fancy hair salon, and a restaurant/snack bar area that could host a debutante ball.

It's the restaurant that's our first stop. Vince orders a large fruit smoothie, banana nut muffin, and fruit salad. I get an orange juice, and by the time I'm finished drinking it, he's already eaten his tray clean. He orders a raisin scone and another smoothie and takes it with him as we head for our workout.

'Where are we going?' I ask.

'The treadmills. Best workout you can have.'

'How come?'

He sighs, as if he can't believe he's been saddled with this fitness novice. 'Because it's the closest to everyday life. I walk in life, so I walk on the treadmill.'

I nod. 'If the trick is to imitate life, how come you don't go to the jelly-donut-eating machine?'

He begins a snarl, but it turns into a laugh. 'Believe me, if they had one, I would.'

We get to the treadmill, where I soon find that preparation is the key. Vince prepares by attaching his stereo headphones to outlets allowing him to hear sound from the large-screen TVs. Then he adjusts those headphones so they won't fall off his head should he ever decide to actually exercise. Then he adjusts the treadmill to the proper speed and elevation, which can best be described as slow and none. Then he hangs his towel neatly on the side