“What, George?” Lindy laughed. “Yeah, I guess he does come off that way sometimes, but you don’t have to worry about him. He’s devoted to me. George is really just a lovable lunk. He’s helping me move a few boxes over to Alice’s house today.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Lindy handed her a towel and a white robe. Nina dried off. “Lindy, thanks for the demonstration. This is a fantastic product.”
“Only one of many. Our centerpiece. Now, let me show you how we market our spas. It’ll just take a minute and it’s warm in the showroom.” Located down a winding stairway, the showroom turned out not to be the display of pools Nina expected, but an intimate, plushly carpeted space with armchairs for ten, and a five-foot screen.
“This is a quickie selection reel,” Lindy said. “The workout videos last longer.”
They watched as a series of swimsuited bodies in all shapes and sizes and colors, old and young, took to the pool, running through exercises as light-footed as astronauts at zero gravity, moving rhythmically to jaunty music.
“We used to use only young, pretty girls. It was my idea to get all kinds of people on tape. Real people always come off clunky and fake when you try to use them in advertising, so these are all actors. They look great don’t they? Just like real people only just enough better-looking to make you happy to identify with them.”
Nina didn’t answer. The actors did look great, but businesspeople made Nina nervous when they talked so blithely about the subtle forces they wielded to coerce and manipulate her.
After the tape ended, Nina put her clothes on and gathered up her briefcase.
“Thanks for taking the time,” Lindy said. “Before I moved out I wanted to show you a little bit about our business, so you could see that I haven’t spent twenty years living off Mike and just twiddling my thumbs.”
“You have worked hard,” Nina said, “and you obviously know your business.”
A tall woman with streaked hair, wearing a short aquamarine sweater dress appeared in the doorway with a gun in her hand. Amused gray eyes peeked out between uneven bangs that swept the curves of her cheeks.
“Oh, Alice,” Lindy said. “Have you met my attorney, Nina Reilly? Nina, my best friend, Alice Boyd.”
Alice set the gun casually down on a chair and strode rapidly up to Nina, her high heels clicking on the oak floor. She shook her hand. “So Lindy has subjected you to the ritual baptism,” she said, gesturing toward Nina’s wet hair.
Nina touched her head. “I guess that’s true,” she said.
“Now you belong to us.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Lindy said comfortably. “She’s never been the same since that time she spent in the loony bin.”
“That’s such a lie. I’m the same, only much more devious about expressing my feelings,” Alice said.
“Excuse me,” Nina said, “but didn’t you just set a gun down over there on that cushion?”
“Almost forgot,” Alice said. She walked back and picked up the gun. “This is for you, doll,” she said, handing a silver snub-nosed gun to Lindy.
“What for?” Lindy said.
“Meet your new best friend.” She held it up for them to admire. “Isn’t it something? You can kill someone with this adorable, polished-nickel designer special from thirty feet away. No need to get blood all over yourself. You see someone coming to do you harm, and
Lindy looked a little embarrassed. “Alice, I don’t know what Nina will think. Put the gun away.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alice said. “No, really. Here you are in these gorgeous surroundings for what is probably the last time.” She nodded toward the room. “If I were you, I’d grab the moment. Why leave all these nice things for the king of shit and his sleazy little consort to play with? Know how to operate one of these?” She flicked the safety off.
Lindy took the gun away, and pushed the safety back in place. “I don’t want it.”
“For twenty years you’ve lived in your fortress. Now you’re going to be rubbing shoulders with the peasants. That would be us,” Alice said to Nina. “Lindy, you don’t know how bad us peasants can be. You ought to protect yourself.”
“Take it back, Alice. I mean it.” Lindy handed the gun carefully to her friend.
Alice shrugged and stuck the gun into her handbag. “Suit yourself.” Saying she needed to freshen up, she excused herself.
“Now here we go again. You’re going to get the wrong impression of Alice, too,” said Lindy. “She’s the best person, but I’m afraid this stuff with Mike has reminded her of some bad things in her past. She’ll settle down.”
Nina wondered if Lindy was one of those rare people who could read souls, or if she was simply a blind fool when it came to picking friends and family.
As they approached the foyer, she became aware again of the rain eddying down gutters, drowning the view from the windows. At the sight of the boxes stacked high by the door, Lindy stopped short. Then she composed herself and said good-bye.
Nina was so late leaving Lindy’s that she headed straight to court for the morning criminal calendar without stopping at the office, the Bronco leaking transmission fluid all the way. Her mechanic had already advised her to replace the carburetor. She would need a new truck soon. These thoughts occupied her as she negotiated the puddles at every corner.
Back at the office by lunchtime, she saw that Genevieve Suchat was already waiting.
“Hi,” Genevieve said brightly, springing up from a chair across from Sandy’s to shake Nina’s hand. A Southern lilt made it sound like “Hah.”
Sandy’s son, Wish, sat in the chair next to Genevieve’s. A very tall, gangly nineteen-year-old, he thumbed through his latest fixation, a magazine full of surveillance tricks for spies. He had recently announced his plan to become a detective like Paul, and to that end was taking courses in criminology and photography over at the community college.
Wish was their odd-job man. From the sparkling looks of the place, Sandy must have had him doing some cleanup. He glanced up and nodded hello to Nina, then returned to his apparently absorbing read.
Nina shook Genevieve’s hand. Her light, breathy voice reminded Nina of one of the scantily dressed girls sending out suggestive invitations from an on-line website she had recently forbidden her son access to, but her curly, sprayed wheat-colored hair and the tailored black jacket trimmed in burgundy over a long burgundy skirt were quite demure, if fashionably cut.
In one ear, Nina glimpsed the silver hearing aid Winston had mentioned, catching the light behind a pair of small silver earrings. Genevieve looked more like a Genny than a Genevieve-a modern working girl who had just stepped out of a big-city highrise and into the mountains without changing her style a bit-but Winston had warned Nina that she preferred the more formal sound of Genevieve in her work relationships.
Genevieve already knew Sandy, she told Nina, sounding as confident as if she felt she’d been eating at Sandy’s dinner table for years. “Sandy and Wish were telling me all about the Washoe Nation,” she said. “And they have quite the extended family.”
Sandy rarely got personal with visitors. Genevieve must have a way about her.
Because Genevieve requested it, they went to Planet Hollywood, the restaurant at Caesar’s, for lunch.
“Casinos aren’t known for their fine dining,” Nina apologized. The babbling patrons and clamorous kitchen must be hard on someone with a hearing problem. “We do have some nice places.”
“But I love it here,” said Genevieve, eyeing the movie relics that lined the walls surrounding the faux palm trees. Apparently the din would not be a problem for her. “Is that Darth Vader over there?” she said, getting up from her seat to study the cases.
She returned a moment later. “His suit looks littler than in the movies.” The waiter appeared, asking for their orders. She studied her menu. “The blackened shrimp is probably great, but I’ll just have a salad. You a gambler?” she asked Nina.
“Um. I confess to a taste for the slots,” Nina said, a little put out by the question. They were on what really amounted to an interview, after all.
“Me, too,” Genevieve said, handing the waiter her menu. “Also poker, blackjack, roulette… I’m a real slut for a quick buck. Maybe we’ll have a little time to hit the tables before you have to go back to work.”
The waiter turned to Nina. “Pomodoro,” Nina told him, glad for the distraction. She was amused by Genevieve’s inappropriate candor but not interested in spelling out her own proclivities on that front. Studying the menu, she realized she had worked up an appetite in the spa. “Can you bring extra Parmesan for the table?”
“How wonderful for you to be able to eat like that and stay skinny,” said Genevieve when the waiter left. “I could never eat a big, heavy pasta meal in the middle of the day, although during trials I stick to comfort food. Peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, whole milk.”
“I order fancy when I eat out because I’m a lazy cook,” said Nina. “My son and I live on canned tomato soup.”
“Then you both ought to take supplements,” Genevieve said disapprovingly. “I take a multivitamin plus extra vitamin E and folic acid and ginseng every day.”
“And I suppose you like high doses of vitamin C for colds.”
“Yes, I do,” said Genevieve.
“And you think I should, too.”
“You are under a lot of stress,” said Genevieve in a supportive tone, “aren’t you?” And the little voice in Nina’s head started up, saying, uh-oh, better straighten up, you’re being assessed.
Genevieve had a Master’s degree in statistics from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. in psychology from Duke. She told Nina she had considered law school. Then, with a decidedly wicked smile, she said she had eventually settled for being the brains behind the brawn.
By overnight courier, along with Genevieve’s impressive resume, Winston had sent Nina a copy of her thesis on “crowd psychology,” with its special emphasis on the decision-making process of jurors in the American legal system. The whole thing looked mathematical, filled with charts and formulae and statistical gobbledygook that she couldn’t follow.
Taking a leaf of lettuce onto her fork and tasting it, Genevieve said, “This morning on the plane I read all the pleadings you sent down to Winston, and I talked to Winston late last night. If he wins his hospital malpractice case, I’m predicting one point seven to one point nine.”
“How can you make a guess like that?”
“Went for a split-the-difference jury, then had Winston ask for three point six.”
“But the standard jury instruction is that you can’t have a compromise verdict. Juries aren’t supposed to-”
“You know they do it all the time,” Genevieve said. “They just get cagey to avoid trouble. See, they’ll go one point seven because one point eight-exactly half of what we asked for-would be too obvious. Problem for him in this case is the judge, plus he got saddled with a couple of wild cards on the jury he couldn’t keep off,” she said, shrugging, but obviously more than irritated by the thought. “No matter how good you are, there’s still some risk.”
“Will he take time off after this is over?”
“Not Winston. He’s got trials back-to-back. The next one’s in San Diego, nonjury.” With the discipline of a drill instructor she ate another lettuce leaf, detouring around a nearby crouton. “He said to tell you Sandy faxed him the minute order with the trial date, and he’s freed up the two weeks after that. I like May twenty-first, too. I’ve got a double murder case coming up next July.”
“I hope we can go with that date. Both sides want to get this over with. Mike Markov is furious that we’ve interfered in the business by getting a receiver and an accounting. Lindy Markov is broke for the first time in years. I’m fronting a lot of the costs myself…” including two hundred an hour for you, Nina thought. “I can’t afford to let it drag on.”
“From what I’ve read and what Winston tells me, this is your big one, Nina,” Genevieve said, smiling. “You could hit the jackpot with what I reckon your fee agreement must be. None of my
