Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (33 page)

I nodded.

Ken hesitated a moment, then stood, offering me a lightning quick smile. It came and went almost in the same instant

Out front, we passed by the BMW. True to his word, George had had someone out already that morning. The guy must have come and gone while I was still asleep, like the shoemaker’s elf. But he’d done his job. The tires had been replaced, the broken window neatly covered with plastic, and the exterior cleaned. I was, however, able to detect a few new scratches.

As we climbed into Ken’s car, which had not so much as a single nick or smudge anywhere, I tried to remember that in the great scheme of things, material possessions didn’t count for much.

I directed Ken to Betty’s Cafe, the only local spot I knew. When we pulled up in front Ken frowned.

I shrugged. “This is Silver Creek. We don’t have a Ritz Carlton.”

The Sunday morning crowd had begun to thin out. Here and there stragglers dawdled over the morning paper, but we had no trouble finding an empty booth. I ordered ham and eggs, and a side dish of French toast having suddenly discovered that I was ravenous. Ken had an English muffin and black coffee.

“It was nice of you to drive up here,” I said, smiling at the thought of it I was still having trouble believing he’d actually come. Ken’s life is tightly scheduled. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for spontaneity.

He reached across the table for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I squeezed back.

I’d been waiting for that fluttery feeling I usually got around Ken, a feeling like butterflies beating their wings against my chest. It hadn’t happened, but it was good to see him all the same.

“You want to go on a picnic this afternoon?” I asked. “The countryside is beautiful this time of year.”

For a minute, Ken didn’t say anything. He simply looked at me, glassy-eyed. Then he withdrew his hand and lowered his eyes. “I’m taking a job in D.C.,” he said.

I heard the words, but it took a moment for them to register. “You’re leaving the firm?”

“The firm is breaking apart.” He looked up. “Wallace and Betts are going off on their own, Latham is retiring, Fisher and I are joining other firms. Turns out Goldman has been dipping into firm accounts, playing fast and loose with the funds. When our receivables went way up, it all came home to roost. He’s taking full responsibility.”

“What about the associates?”

Ken rubbed his thumbs against the side of his coffee mug. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what they can work out.”

“They don’t know?”

“We’re going to make the announcement tomorrow.” I thought of my mortgage, my car payments, my student debt. I thought of the long hours I’d put into building my reputation, working my way toward partnership. I remembered the horror stories from friends who’d suddenly found themselves jobless in a tight market. I felt sick — truly, physically, nauseous.

“Latham will give you a good recommendation,” Ken said.
 
“And I’ll help in any way I can. You could probably even go with Wallace and Betts. They’re talking about taking one or two associates with them.”

Wallace and Betts were the sort of attorneys people had in mind when they told lawyer jokes. Besides that, they were arrogant chauvinists. I’d wait tables before I’d go with them.

“When are you leaving?”

“I start officially in D.C. a week from tomorrow, but I’ll be back and forth quite a bit initially. It’s hard leaving on a moment’s notice. I’ve got to sell the house, tie up a few loose ends. You know how it is.”

I nodded mutely. I hadn’t expected him to ask me to go along. I wouldn’t have gone anyway. But it hurt that he hadn’t acknowledged leaving anything more than a house and a few loose ends.

“It’s a good opportunity,” he said, looking enthusiastic for the first time all day. “The firm has good clients and solid political connections. It’s the kind of work I’ve always wanted to do.”

Across the room a young family was packing up after their meal. The mother piled stuffed animals and baby bottles into a cloth bag, while the father jiggled an infant in one of those plastic rockers. I pushed away my uneaten food. I noticed Ken hadn’t touched his English muffin either.

“I’m sorry it had to happen like this, Kali. None of us had any idea how bad things really were. Not until this last partners’ retreat. That’s when it all started to unravel.”

I nodded again. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“I wanted to tell you in person, and before you heard it from someone else.”

“Thanks.” I meant that honestly. A round-trip drive of six hours must have weighed heavily against a simple phone call.

Ken paid the bill. We drove back to my father’s house and sat around awkwardly for another forty-five minutes. We talked about other, more pleasant subjects, but there were still long periods of silence.

I was reminded of the first time we met, a recruitment lunch in which we’d struggled to find enough in common to get us through dessert. Ken had been engaged then, to the daughter of one of the firm’s major clients. After the engagement was broken I never did get the full story about that he’d shown up at every firm function with a different woman. Slender, usually blonde, always attractive in that blue-blood sort of way. I never gave him much thought during any of that time; he was a different breed than the sort of man I usually dated, as well as a partner in the firm. But when he invited me to attend a black-tie dinner at the Stanford Court, I did exactly what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do — I fell for the guy. Except that it had always been an uneasy infatuation.

Finally, Ken looked at his watch and announced that he had to be getting back. He put his arms around my neck and pulled me close. I could smell the familiar scents of aftershave and laundry starch. Pressing my cheek against the nubby fabric of his shirt, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the other, better, times.

After a moment, he held me at arm’s length and looked me in the eye. “You’re a good attorney, Kali. You’ll do fine. This may even be a blessing in disguise. You never did fit the Goldman and Latham mold. And what’s more important, you’re a good person. They’re even scarcer than good attorneys.”

The words were nice, but they sounded too much like a eulogy to do much for my spirits.

“Maybe you can visit me in D.C.,” he said.

“Maybe.”

Silence.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway, you know.”

I nodded. I did know. I’d probably known all along.

The doorbell rang just then. Ken went to get a drink of water, and I went to answer the door.

Tom leaned against the frame, grinning. He was coated in dust and smelled of wood smoke and pork fat. In an instant, the grin dropped. “What happened to your face?”

“It’s a long story.”

Before I could begin explaining, Ken returned from the kitchen. The two men scrutinized each other, poker face to poker face.

I cleared my throat. “Ken, Tom.” No sooner had I made the introductions, than the phone rang.

I recognized Jannine’s voice immediately.

“Kali, I need your help. I’ve been arrested.”

Chapter 26

I left Tom and Ken to work out the “how-do-you-know-Kali” connections on their own, and headed for the county jail. I’d taken time to put in a brief call to a bail bondsman I’d worked with in the city. He was standing by, but I knew we’d never be able to get a hearing on Sunday. Even Monday might be iffy.

It made me wonder. Had Silver Creek’s finest deliberately timed Jannine’s arrest for a weekend, ensuring her added time to think about “cooperating”? Or had the arrest come on the tail of some fresh bit of damning evidence? While the first explanation rankled my sense of fair play, the second was by far more worrisome.

The street fronting the Hall of Justice was practically deserted. I parked, and out of habit locked the car. With the driver side window protected only by a flimsy sheet of plastic, it was a meaningless exercise.

The building was relatively new. A three-story structure which looked, from the outside, like the cookie-cutter office buildings which had been springing up throughout suburban areas of the state. The inside wasn’t too bad. Austere and colorless, but not dreary. A definite step above its counterparts in San Francisco and Oakland.

I gave my name to the guard, and he had someone usher me to an upstairs room. It was sparsely furnished, with a bare table and four vinyl chairs. Though window-less and stuffy, it was at least clean. A strong disinfectant odor permeated the air.

Moments later, a police matron brought Jannine to the room and sat her at the table. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” the matron said to me. Apparently, Jannine’s needs didn’t count for much.

When the matron left, Jannine looked at me and burst into tears. “Get me out of here, Kali.”

I sat next to her and hugged her hard. “I will, I promise. But I’m afraid it might not be right away.”

“When
will
it be?” Jannine’s shapeless prison-issue dress looked to be several sizes too large. Her face was shiny and scrubbed raw, her hair flew out in odd directions.

I took her hand. “Tomorrow maybe. Or it might be a lot longer.”

“Tomorrow?” Her voice broke somewhere in the middle of the word. “You mean I have to spend the
night
 
here?”

“Probably. It might be Tuesday before we can even get a hearing. It all depends.”

“On what?”

“The court calendar, the DA.’s schedule, that sort of thing. They’ve got forty-eight hours to set a hearing, and weekends don’t count.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t think I can stand it that long.”

“I’ll push for something as soon as possible, but I can’t promise.”

Jannine slumped down in her chair and drew a hand across her cheek, wiping at the tears.

“Have they been treating you okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s not that, it’s just . . . just that everything is so
awful
here. I want to get out. Please, Kali. I need to get out of here.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“The kids were so upset. They’re frightened and worried, and I can’t even
talk
to them.”

“Where are they now?”

“With Mom. The police were nice about that at least. They let me call her from home.”

“Do you need anything?”

She bit her lower lip, then shook her head.

“Tell me what happened when the police came.”

“Not much. They said they had a warrant for my arrest, and they were going to take me in. Like I said, though, they were nice about it. We waited until Mom got there.”

“You didn’t let them question you, did you?”

“No, when they said that stuff about the right to an attorney, I told them I wanted to talk to you. I don’t think they were particularly interested in asking questions anyway. They seem to think they already have all the answers.” She pulled herself up straight, and sighed. “So what happens now?”

“There’ll be a hearing where you are formally charged and you enter your plea. That’s also when we deal with the question of bail and getting you out of here. Later, there will be another hearing where the DA will show that he has a case. Unless the judge throws it out at that point, there will be a trial.”