“David Hanna.”
“Please come in.” After ushering Chelsi in, too, Nina glanced toward Sandy, who, resplendent this morning in a heavy turquoise necklace and a denim jumper, seemed to be writing something in the appointment book. Sandy gave Nina a swift look back, one eyebrow cocked.
Look out.
Now, that was an interesting take, since Uncle Dave looked harmless, but Sandy ’s first impressions had to be taken seriously. Sandy knew where clients hid their guns and buck knives; she knew if the Rolex was real or faux; a few words to her in the reception area revealed if a new client was resentful, desperate, or suicidal. Recently they had installed an emergency button hooked up to the local police under her desk, and the golf club propped behind her desk only doubled as a decoration.
Such is solo law office life in a gambling town. Prepare for Uzis, Sandy frequently said.
Nina closed the door and Hanna pulled an orange chair away from the wide desk. He sat, crossing one leg at the ankle, stroking his beard, looking out the window behind her desk toward the steel gray lake, but not focusing, just gazing. Chelsi sat in the chair next to his, back straight.
Nina took her time getting comfortable, arranging a few papers on her desk, adjusting her chair. Let them get used to her.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” David Hanna said finally.
“Because you need to be,” Chelsi said.
“I’m not working much. Money’s tight. Chelsi and her dad, they’ve offered to pay for your services, but I just don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. I hear Chelsi’s already told you about the case.”
“A little,” Nina said.
“Rog was Sarah’s brother. I know he can’t help wanting to do something. What I can’t figure out, what I haven’t been able to get my head around all along, is what good it does, suing someone. My wife is gone.”
“What’s your brother-in-law’s name again?”
“Roger Freeman.” While Nina made a note on her yellow pad, Hanna watched, squinting. The tops of his ears were red and his nose looked sunburned, too. Either he spent a lot of time outside, or, as Chelsi had suggested, less healthy indoor pursuits heightened his natural color. “What’s your usual line of work, Mr. Hanna?”
“I’m a carpenter. Used to be a firefighter.”
Nina looked at her client-interview sheet. “ Placerville ’s a great town.”
“It’s a long drive up Fifty to get here. I don’t come up the Hill much anymore since it happened. Chelsi said this conversation right now isn’t going to cost us anything?”
“Free consultation,” Nina said. “We have half an hour and you came a long way, so how can I help you?”
Hanna shrugged and said, “That’s the point. I haven’t got a fucking clue.”
When Nina didn’t bridle at that, he added, “Like I said, talk won’t bring her back.”
“But you’re already involved in a lawsuit. Isn’t that right?”
“I had a lawyer in Placerville named Bruce Bennett. Two years ago, after Sarah died, Roger contacted him and had this lawyer file a civil suit against the motel where it all happened. I wasn’t sure about the whole thing, but Bennett got us in his office and oh, he talked it up, how much money we were going to hit them up for, how they were negligent. They let the bastard onto the property. No video camera and the clerk off somewhere. The lawyer talked us into suing the motel. Why, he practically had us convinced that the motel owner, who by the way wasn’t even around that night, did the shooting.”
“Sounds like he was trying to put on a very aggressive case on your behalf.”
“I guess.” He shook his head. “It never sat right with me, blaming the motel, but Roger was so gung ho. We used up some of Sarah’s life insurance to pay Bennett, but when the money ran out he filed a substitution-of-attorney form and left us flat.”
“I guess that didn’t leave you with a very high opinion of lawyers. I know Bruce. The lawsuit stayed active?”
He shook his head. “I really don’t know where things stand with it.”
“You couldn’t pay Bruce Bennett, so he quit?”
“Basically.”
“I would think carpenters were in big demand around here. I can never get anyone to come out and fix my porch,” Nina said.
“I don’t work much lately.” He sighed. “I have problems.”
“Problems?”
He chewed on a thumb, as if the question demanded arduous consideration that was beyond him. Scanning the room as if he might locate a swift escape route that wouldn’t require him to pass Sandy, his eyes landed on Chelsi.
“Uncle Dave’s been sick,” Chelsi said, taking her cue.
“Hmm,” Nina said. “Well, I understand you were going to bring me the court papers to look at,” she went on neutrally.
“Right.” He reached inside his wool shirt and pulled out a battered envelope. He set it on the desk, the hand revealing a slight tremor. Nina looked at him carefully, noting the thin burst of broken capillaries in his ruddy cheeks, the tangle of red veins around the edges of his eyes.
He hasn’t had the hair of the dog this morning, she thought, and he misses it. No wonder Sandy had given her a warning eyebrow. Sandy didn’t like drinkers.
On the other hand, wasn’t it a positive sign that he had held off to talk with her? Maybe there was still hope for him.
She opened the envelope and pulled out several legal documents in the Wrongful Death and Negligence case of
The complaint Bruce Bennett had drafted was on top, followed by some unserved summonses, an answer filed by the Ace High Lodge, and a set of pleadings filed recently by the Lodge’s attorney, Betty Jo Puckett of South Lake Tahoe. While Nina skimmed through the pleadings, Dave Hanna slumped in his chair, never taking his eyes off her.
Chelsi had displayed a good grasp of her uncle’s legal situation. He was about to have his case dismissed on the motion of the Ace High Lodge, because he had done nothing to bring the matter to trial for almost two years.
Bennett had done a workmanlike job laying out the facts in the complaint. The Hannas had been celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary by spending the weekend at Lake Tahoe at the Ace High Lodge, one block from Harveys and the other Stateline casinos. They had gone to a show at Prize’s and walked back, then stepped out to the second-floor balcony of their room.
There, according to the dry legalese of the complaint, “they observed an armed robbery in progress.” And, in what seemed to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, at thirty- eight, third-grade teacher Sarah Hanna had been shot once through the heart. She was three months pregnant.
There were few traces of the gunman or other witnesses. The motel clerk, Meredith Assawaroj, had heard the shots from an adjoining property. She had missed seeing the killer but had provided the South Lake Tahoe police with a fair description of the three motel guests who had been held up, young people who had packed up and left before the police arrived.
The clerk’s descriptions of these three led nowhere. The gun hadn’t been left at the scene. The witnesses had paid in cash and the description provided had been inadequate to find them. Nina made a note to find out more about that.
Now the Ace High Lodge wanted out of Hanna’s lawsuit, which alleged that its clerk should have been in the office, that the motel security should have been better, and so on and so on. Hanna might have had some sort of case on the merits if he had pursued it, but leaving it to languish for so long had exposed him to Betty Jo Puckett’s Motion to Dismiss.
Puckett’s work looked good. Her law was solid. Statutory limits restricted the ability of plaintiffs to file a lawsuit and then do nothing, as Dave Hanna had done.
Puckett had apparently advised the motel owner well-to lay low for as long as possible and then attack Hanna for failure to prosecute. Nina hadn’t met the lawyer, but the courtroom grapevine said she had an effective style.
She looked up. Hanna’s cheeks flamed, but his eyes were sunken into the sockets. He looked like a big, healthy man who had developed some wasting disease that was ruining him. Nina wondered how long he had been drinking way too much. At least he was sober at eight in the morning. She found it painful to imagine what he’d gone through, how bitter he must feel now.
She cleared her throat. Setting down the motion to dismiss, she said, “Your wife seems to have been the classic innocent bystander.”
“Did you know she was expecting?”
“Yes.”
He shifted in his chair, like the seat hurt him.
“What do you plan to do now?” Nina asked him.
“Slink away, I guess.”
“The Lodge wants attorney’s fees.”
“I might get socked with their lawyer fees?”
“Perhaps.”
Dave Hanna put his hand on his heart and said, “Let me get this straight. They want
“I don’t know. I could guess, from the amount of work I see here, possibly several thousand dollars.”
“If I do nothing, what will happen?”
“You’ll probably have to pay their fees.”
During a long silence Hanna deliberated about whether to-what? Confide in her? Walk out on her?
“Well?” he asked finally.
Nina raised her eyebrows.
“What do you think?”
“It isn’t hopeless,” Nina said.
“There isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop them, is there?”
“You can fight the motion. The Code of Civil Procedure does require that a suit like yours be dismissed two years after service on the defendant with no action. But it hasn’t been quite two years. It’s still in the discretion of the court.”
Hanna blurted, “Look, lady. I understand you need to drum up business. Maybe you hope we’ve got a stash of dough hidden away. I hate to say this, but we don’t. Bennett demanded a hundred fifty dollars an hour and five thousand up front, and called himself cheap. I don’t want to bankrupt Roger and Chelsi. And I’m broke, like I keep telling you.”
“We’ll take care of the money, Uncle Dave,” Chelsi said.
“I will need a retainer,” Nina said, thinking of Sandy, who would hold her accountable. She came up with the lowest amount she could manage. “Two thousand, billed against my hours. I also charge a hundred fifty an hour. There may be expenses. If we manage to keep the case going, those expenses could mount up fast.”
“Done,” Chelsi said, whipping out her checkbook. Hanna bowed his head, looked at the rug. “It’s not for revenge,” Chelsi said. “It’s not for money. It’s for my aunt. You know?”
Nina nodded. She pushed the button as though Sandy hadn’t left the door open a crack and been listening the whole time.
After Hanna had signed an agreement and left with Chelsi, Nina adjusted her suit coat and hung her new briefcase over her shoulder.
