Blindsided (6 page)

“That's very interesting,” Nellie said. “The first word that comes to mind is
collusion
. Do you all agree?”

The ladies nodded as one.

“Charles, how far did you get when you checked the land records?” Maggie asked.

A snort of sound escaped Charles's lips. “I ran into all kinds of problems with the state's Web site. I managed to get to the Baywater site, then it shut down. I was pulling my hair out in frustration because a virus warning kept popping up and wouldn't let me advance any of my searches. I immediately knew something was wrong. I turned it over to Avery and his experts. So, to answer your question, Maggie, I can't tell you anything.”

Maggie's fist shot in the air. “I knew it! I knew it! This is what I think. Like I told you before, I think the twin judges lease out their land to some kind of organization, possibly themselves, that built camps for sentenced offenders and the state picks up the bill. If the jails and prisons are full, what do they do with offenders on an ongoing basis? If you can get arrested and sent away for jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk, it sure makes sense to me.”

Marti sucked in a deep breath. “How many such places do you think there are, Maggie?”

Maggie shrugged. “I have no clue, but I have to think this is not a small operation. I think it's on a much grander scale than the case in Pennsylvania. It's just my gut and my reporter's instinct that tells me that if we're right, the twins went for the max. That's not to say they didn't start out small, got a feel for things, then they went at it full bore. Again, it's just my opinion.”

“Maggie, dear, your opinions carry weight with all of us. You're the professional, and we respect your opinions,” Myra said.

“Has Abner been in touch, Maggie?” Annie asked.

Charles bristled at the mention of the hacker's name. No one but Myra seemed to notice.

“He just sent a text saying he was out of cell-phone range and is on his way back to the city and would call me in the morning. If Charles is right, Abner will know how to get past that virus thing he ran into. Since land records are available to the public, anyone can go to the hall of records in Baywater and search them out. If we do that, we'll see firsthand if we're being stonewalled. But we would also be tipping our hand.”

“Before we do that, we need to create a legend that will bear intense scrutiny. I can get started on that right now. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of a wealthy European industrialist. I'll leave you ladies to your planning,” Charles said. He clicked the remote, and Lady Justice once again reigned supreme over the room.

Myra took the floor. “Okay, ladies, it does look, at least from my perspective, that we are indeed onto something. Let's bat it around and see how you all feel, and if you have any ideas, no matter how bizarre they might seem, we want to hear them. I don't mind telling all of you that I like the challenge I'm seeing here.”

“I agree; I'm tingling all over,” Annie quipped. “Let's hunker down and get to work.”

“Wait a minute. Are you all saying that Ted, Espinosa, and I shouldn't leave for Baywater tomorrow?”

“Not just yet, dear. I think we need to give Charles and his people a few days to get us the real skinny on the twin judges. As well as Mr. Tookus. We certainly don't want to tip our hand ahead of time. Let's take a vote,” Myra said.

The near-unanimous vote was six to one to wait.

Maggie, the only dissenting voice, sulked.

J
udge Celeste Ciprani looked around her chambers the way she did every day she was in the courthouse presiding over her courtroom. She had furnished and paid for the suite herself because she was addicted to fine things. In her opinion, being a judge made her worthy of fine things. Rich mahogany paneling, the Louis IV desk that had belonged to her great-granddaddy and was worth a fortune. The chairs were Chippendale. She had two, and her twin sister, Judge Eunice Ciprani, had the other two, left to them by their grandfather. A Windsor love seat that was worth more than the two chairs together just went to prove Celeste didn't care if the furnishings matched or not. What she cared about was showing off what she had. Celeste was all about her image. Just like her sister, Eunice, whose offices were just three doors away and furnished almost exactly the way hers were. Eunice insisted that her plants and ficus trees were more luxurious, something Celeste didn't dispute. Both sisters admitted that they considered their suites as havens away from home.

Celeste and Eunice were the only two judges in the Baywater courthouse who had suites. The other judges, and there were nine, had small, cramped offices with furnishings liberated from some dank, dark place in the bowels of the ancient building. The reason they were small was because the Ciprani sisters demanded the extra room to create suites, and the only way they could be accommodated was to make the other offices smaller. Since the twin judges ruled the courthouse, they had only to ask to have their wishes granted. It was a wise person who kept quiet and sucked up the discomfort because that same person didn't want to feel the wrath of the Ciprani twins.

Celeste hung her pure silk robe on a scented padded hanger. She smoothed the sleeves, fastened the top snap, then ran her hands over the expensive material. Her robes were custom-made, and she had six of them, as did her sister. One for every day of the workweek and one extra, just in case of a spill or something equally disastrous. The robe defined who she was—Judge Celeste Ciprani. The stand that held the one-of-a-kind robe was an antique and could only hold one item, Celeste told anyone who cared to ask why she had two racks. A judge's robe, she explained, was sacred and deserved its own place. The robe stand was the first thing a person saw upon entering the sacred domain. Well, not exactly the first thing; the solid gold nameplate on the door, appropriately engraved, was the first thing a person saw. The other antique stand had two hooks, one for her coat or jacket, the other for her designer purse and umbrella.

Celeste took a last look around her office. Satisfied that everything was the way she wanted it, she walked over to her desk and pressed a button on the console. “Are you ready, Nessie?” Her twin said she was and would meet her in the hall. They would walk through the courthouse and out to the parking lot to Eunice's car.

Celeste checked the locked drawers on her desk and turned off the light. She checked the door twice—not that she was obsessive-compulsive; it was just something she did every night. Now she was good to go.

The courthouse was quiet, with only the evening workers around. The lawyers and their clients were usually gone by four o'clock, four-thirty at the latest. The other judges were usually out of the building by four-thirty, never later than five, along with the stragglers. The clerks and bailiffs followed on their heels. It was a well-known fact that the Ciprani twins were always the last to leave the building and usually the first to arrive in the morning.

The twins met in the hall, smiled at one another, touched each other on the arm in a sisterly way. “Good day?” Eunice asked.

“Every day's a good day except when it's a bad day, Nessie,” Celeste said, calling her twin by her childhood nickname. “I guess I should say, uneventful. How was yours?”

“Same as yours, Cee. I can't wait to get home and have a drink. I called home a little while ago to see what Thelma prepared for dinner. It's warming in the oven. Your favorite, Cee. Rare roast beef, creamed peas and onions, garlic-mashed potatoes, and pickled beets. Oh, yes, yeast rolls and peach cobbler for dessert.”

“Thelma is a gem. I'd hate to lose her.”

“Why would we lose her? She's been with us forever. We pay her well. She starts at nine and leaves at four-thirty. Did she look at you crossways or something? No one cooks like Thelma, and she minds her own business. If you're thinking of firing her, perhaps you should rethink it. There aren't that many good cooks around these parts.”

“Did you forget that I sentenced her nephew to eighteen months at the farm? After that, her attitude toward me changed. I know this may sound bizarre, but I like to think ahead. What if she puts something in our food? The boy is her favorite nephew. She made a point of telling me that. Favorite nephew or not, it's not her concern; it's the concern of the parents who allowed the boy to drink and drive. Think in terms of the boy's sentence as a new Chanel purse, Nessie, and forget about it. Just because Thelma is our housekeeper she has no right to question what we do in court. She needs to remember her place. Regardless of what you say, cooks are a dime a dozen, and there's always takeout.”

Nessie shrugged off her sister's comments except for the part about a new Chanel purse. “You're paranoid, Cee.”

“Like you aren't!” Cee snapped. “Listen, I need you to cover for me tomorrow morning for two motion hearings. I saw on the roster that the case you were to hear settled at four o'clock this afternoon. I found a wrinkle, and I need to go for some Botox.”

Nessie stopped in her tracks and looked up at her twin in the dim light. “Sure. Let me see! Oh, my God! Yes, you do have a new wrinkle. Are you sure Ethan can take you on such short notice? And the next question is, Can you get Botox on top of other Botox? Won't it lump up on you?”

“I'm just going to show up. Trust me, Ethan won't turn me away. He won't even fuss; he'll just have his girls reschedule everyone else. He wouldn't be
the man
to go to for cosmetic fixes if it wasn't for you and me. We put him where he is. I'm not worried about it. I'll be back in time for my ten o'clock hearing. No, it won't lump up on me, at least I don't think it will,” Celeste said, but her tone betrayed uncertainty.

Eunice skipped ahead as she pressed a button on her key chain and unlocked the doors to a sleek, black Porsche.

The short ride to their luxurious condo was made in what the twins considered comfortable silence. They were so in tune with each other that words weren't necessary. It had always been that way since early childhood. It amused both women that people couldn't figure out which twin was the alpha. In their minds, they were equal in all things, so there was no reason to speculate even though, if one wanted to get technical, Celeste was born seven minutes earlier than Eunice.

If a private behind-the-scenes-poll were to be taken among the citizens of Baywater, the results would be that the Ciprani twins were rich, vain, manipulative, corrupt, selfish, hateful, man-haters, and
evil.

“I don't know if this is important or not, Cee, but yesterday I sent my clerk to Eva's for lunch. She told me this morning that there was a stranger having lunch at the café and she was asking questions about the town and about us. And she was Googling Baywater. My clerk could see her laptop. Not that she was trying to hide it or anything. She said she looked familiar but couldn't place her. I had ordered the ravioli, and she had to wait for it, so with nothing else to do, she was doing what she calls people watching. The woman paid in cash when she left and asked for directions to the courthouse. It might not mean anything, and it might mean something.”

“Hmm. You're right, Nessie. I don't like strangers coming to town and asking questions, especially when they ask questions about us even though we are famous in certain circles. We'll stay alert, but right now my main concern is this damn wrinkle.
That's
important.”

Nessie laughed. She loved how vain Cee was and how she herself had no need of Botox. She would, however, admit to consulting Ethan for several small injections of Restylane, but she had no need of Botox, and that irritated her sister to no end. It also irritated Cee that she was a diabetic and Nessie wasn't. Cee had her father's genes and Nessie her mama's. It was the only point of contention between the twins.

When they reached their destination, both women exited the racy sports car and walked across the underground garage to the elevator. Both women did what they always did—reached for the cans of Mace they carried in their purses. Even though the residents of the condominium were wealthy, Social Register types, that didn't mean some lowlife couldn't find the way into the parking garage, topnotch security or not.

Once, and only once, after one too many glasses of wine, Cee had confided in her twin that she knew they were not liked or even respected in Baywater. Even though Cee knew she should not drink wine to excess because of her diabetic condition, she did so when she was very stressed. She'd gone on to say they were hated in the courthouse by their peers. Even the janitors hated them. To which Nessie had responded, What difference does it make as long as those same people
fear
us? Cee said she couldn't argue with that and had gone to sleep.

 

 

It was Cee's turn to make the weekend drive up to the Chesapeake Bay mansion. While the drive wasn't that long in miles, it seemed to take an eternity for the twin judges to reach their old home. The moment Cee stopped the car on the circular shale driveway, both women heaved a sigh of relief. They were
home.

“I just love this time of year,” Nessie gushed as she climbed out of her sister's Mercedes, her eyes on the cobbled road that led to a dead end. She heard rather than saw the small rusty-looking car with the bad muffler chugging on by. She shrugged. She opened the back door of the car for her designer briefcase, stuffed to overflowing with files, records, and the newspapers she hadn't had the time to read. Her pricey handbag, just as full, was almost as big as the briefcase but cost twice as much.

Cee joined her sister, carrying an identical briefcase and handbag, equally filled. They walked around to the rear door and entered the mansion by way of the kitchen. Nessie ran to the thermostat and turned up the heat. Cee headed for the huge fieldstone fireplace, turned on the gas starter, and added wood. By the time they changed their clothes, the house would be warm, and they could eat the takeout food they'd bought in town.

In this beloved family home, there were no servants, no household help, and for good reason. Neither sister wanted the house tainted in any way by other footsteps, and to that end they had an expensive state-of-the-art security system. They considered this house sacrosanct. Once a month, the twins took one extra day and drove up to the shore house to clean it from top to bottom and lay in staples and frozen food. There was, however, a gardener, but in more than twenty years, the twins had set eyes on him perhaps five times. His routine was Monday through Friday, and the rule was he was to be gone by six o'clock Friday evening. He never worked weekends. He never called his employers; nor did they call him. It was a situation that worked for everyone.

No one ever
dropped
in for visits on weekends. To do so meant they were invading the Ciprani twins' privacy and ignoring the posted privacy and no trespassing signs. That, too, worked for everyone.

The Ciprani twins were not loved and adored on the Eastern Shore any more than they were loved and adored in Baywater. They were hated and feared by their neighbors and the local citizenry.

Nessie tossed the empty Chinese food container into the fireplace. The grease and little bits of food left in the container sizzled and spit upward. She snuggled deeper into the nest of pillows and pulled out the newspapers she'd brought with her. She looked over at her sister, who was reading a brief. Her concentration was total. She decided not to interrupt her sister's concentration.

A long time later, Nessie asked, “Cee, did you read the article in the
Baywater Weekly
written by someone named Daniel West?”

“Hmm,” Cee murmured, so deep was her concentration.

“The thing is, there's nothing damaging or anything to us, it's just who is Daniel West and why did he select us for his article? Normally, the papers give us a heads-up before printing anything. This time they didn't. It makes me wonder why. Are you listening to me, Cee?”

“Hmm.”

“Cee, on the drive here, I thought someone was following us. Did you notice anything?”

This time, Cee's head jerked upright. “What did you say?”

Nessie sighed. “I said I had the feeling someone was following us on the drive here. That's why I asked if you noticed anything. I realize it was dark, but there was that one car that stayed with us right until we pulled into our driveway. I'm not trying to be melodramatic or anything. Once we hit the turnoff, rarely has there even been a car following us. I pay attention to things like that. Only residents take that turnoff. I turned around to see if I could make out what kind of car it was when you pulled into the driveway. It looked like a clunker of some kind with a bad muffler. No one around here drives cars like that. I don't care if that makes me sound paranoid or not.”

“I wasn't going to say that at all, Nessie. I commend you on being so alert. I guess my mind was on other things. In the morning, we'll drive around and see if we can see the kind of car you described. It could be something as innocent as a friend visiting some kid. It is Friday night, and kids gather early for weekend activities.”

Nessie sighed. “Cee, the only people who live on the lane beyond us are old, and the Matthews house is empty. That leaves the Donaldsons, and they're in their late eighties. Their chauffeur is almost as old, and they have a Bentley. Their nurse or attendant, whatever she is, lives on the premises and drives a Mustang. I've seen her in it, and it's bright red. I wish now I'd had the presence of mind to watch to see if the car turned around and came back.”