Tell No Lies (36 page)

Earl sat straighter. He seemed more receptive now to Jack's suggestion that Mendelsohn could be involved in Jenny's case. "What recent stuff?"

Jack explained first what Jenny had told him last spring about Maxine and her bad investment deals, and then he relayed everything she'd told him at the jail. Earl rose and paced the room as Jack talked. At times he almost wondered if Earl was even listening to him. At one point Earl hovered behind his desk; it looked to Jack as if he was reviewing his calendar.

"If we start pointing the finger at Newman," he muttered, "it's not going to be pretty."

It's not pretty now
, Jack wanted to say.
 

Earl moved to the window and gazed down at the river. He frowned in thought and then walked back to his desk and pulled a cigar out of the middle drawer. Jack watched him. He'd never known Earl to smoke.

"Little housewarming gift from my new partners," Earl said in response to Jack's gaze. He struck a match and took his time lighting the cigar. "You're not going to like this question, but don't you think it's a little odd that she went over there?"

"Not really."

"Not really?"

"No."

The room fell silent, and Jack heard an attorney in the hall hollering for his secretary to find a file.

"What's Claire think about all this?" Earl asked.

The question caught him by surprise. He still held his coffee cup and he noticed his hand begin to shake. He set down the cup. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. What's she think about all this?"

"I haven't talked to her since seeing Jenny. She doesn't know any of this stuff I've just told you."

"I'm not talking about Newman. I'm talking about the murder charge."

"I don't know. She was shocked, upset. She knows Jenny didn't do it."

"Because you told her that?"

"No." Jack scooted up a bit in his chair, as if to get closer to the table in front of him. But he knew he was just fidgeting. "Claire's a good judge of character."

Earl crossed the room and opened the door to his office. He asked her to get one of the judges on the phone.

When he returned, Jack braced for the inevitable, reminding himself of his promise to Jenny. The sweet smell of the cigar began to fill the room. Earl leaned up closer. "Look, Jack. I need you to be straight with me."

"I am being straight with you." But he heard a falsetto note creeping into his voice.

"Why are you so certain she didn't do it?" Earl narrowed his eyes.

"I told you. I just know." He had to give him more. "Look, I've known her for over nine years. When she finds a bug in her house, she doesn't kill it, she puts it outside, you know? She adopts every stray she finds. And I'm not just talking animals. She practically sponsors this homeless guy who she runs into on her way to work. She talks tough, but she's not. She's a pussycat. I know she doesn't have it in her to kill anyone."

But it was as if Earl hadn't heard a word he'd said. "Listen to me. Are you involved in this case at all, in any way? I need to know everything if you want me to defend her."

"Yeah, I'm involved in this case." He felt his anger rising, although he knew he had no right. Earl was doing his job—the job Jack was asking him to do. "I happen to be a close friend of the defendant. And the media won't let me forget it."

"From an evidentiary standpoint? I need to know."

"No."

"You're not trying to protect her in any way?"

Quite the contrary, Earl
.
She's protecting me
. "Why don't you just come out and ask me whatever it is you want to ask?" But even as he spoke, he prayed that Earl wouldn't press it.
 

"I'm not going to suggest anything. But don't keep me in the dark if there's something I need to know. Okay?"

Earl's secretary knocked and peeked in. "Judge Baxter is on line one, Earl."

Jack tried to relax as he listened to Earl's banter with the judge. He closed his eyes.
Get to the point
, he thought as Earl asked about the judge's wife and then talked about the last poker game they'd attended together.
 

"Listen, Judge, I need a favor." Earl's tone was still chatty. He laughed heartily, and Jack wondered how the judge had responded. "The Dodson girl, brought in for her client's murder? It looks like I'm going to be representing her." He laughed again at something the judge said, and Jack tensed. He didn't appreciate the light-hearted tone of their conversation. "Yeah, same girl." Earl looked at Jack, and Jack suddenly had the sense that his name had just been mentioned. "He'll be fine. Better to face the tough stuff at the start of a term, I think. Builds character." More laughter, and Earl winked at Jack. Jack finally stood and tried to calm himself by looking out the window again. "It's her I'm concerned about. She's been in since Sunday night, and I've been told that her arraignment isn't scheduled until next week. Do you have any time this afternoon so we can appear? I'd like to get her bail set and get her out of there."

Jack spotted a plane in the distance flying away from the city. He wondered where it was headed. He remembered his comment to Jenny about scheduling a trip to India. Get her out of there. And then what?

A change in Earl's tone brought him back to the phone conversation.

"No, Judge, I didn't know," Earl said, all hint of levity gone. "I haven't been in contact with Sterling yet." When he hung up, he said to Jack, "Two o'clock, as long as I can get Sterling to agree. Another inmate is coming over for a hearing, so the judge agreed to let her appear at the same time."

"Thank you."

"There's something you need to know."

At Earl's ominous tone, Jack turned around to face him.

"The judge said . . . well, he said he's been advised that this could be a capital case."

"What?" Jack shook his head. "What are you talking about?"

"Just what I said. Sterling thinks he's going to ask for the death penalty."

Jack slowly moved away from the window and fell into the closest chair. "The judge told you that?"

"Sterling was courteous enough to advise him of his decision before going to the press."

Courteous enough? This man from Franklin County, who knew nothing about Jenny, about her life, was somehow entitled to be the sole arbiter of whether a jury could be given the choice to take that life away, to put her to death for a crime she didn't commit? He hadn't even allowed the ink on the arrest warrant to dry, and here he was already talking about the punishment.

"Jack?"

Jack lifted his head slowly to meet Earl's eye.

"Now would you like to tell me about your involvement in this case?"

When he shook his head again, Earl said, "You need to tell me. I suspect she'll be a better liar than you."
 

Yes, she was a good liar, wasn't she? The way she'd turned on him that morning, so believable that he'd had trouble remembering the events of the night before. So convincing in her coldness that he had forgotten how just hours before she'd warmed to him and let him in. And even at the jail she had lied to him, persuading him that everything would be okay, that they could never come up with anything to convict her, that the two of them would be able to keep their secret. All to protect him. She was willing to sacrifice herself to protect him.

"I'm her alibi," he whispered.

Earl stood and went to Jack's chair. He sat on the arm and leaned in. "
What
did you just say?"
 

"I'm her alibi." He stared at the edge of the desk in front of him. If he blinked, he was unaware of it. "I spent that night with her, at her place. That's why I'm so sure of her innocence."  

"Oh, Jesus." Earl dropped his head into the palm of his hand and rubbed the leathery skin of his face. "Does Claire know?"

Jack laughed bitterly. "Oh yeah. Sure. You know, the minister forgot to include the part about forsaking all others, so it's no problem."

Earl was silent. The silence didn't seem calculated; it lacked the manipulative tension that usually accompanied Earl's failure to speak. He walked to the credenza behind his desk and carefully lifted a picture. Jack hadn't noticed it before, but now, as he watched Earl, he knew it was a framed snapshot Claire had given to Earl and Helen. Jack knew the picture without looking at it. It was of the four of them, from a Bench & Bar conference years before—before Jamie was born. Jack had stared into the camera lens, but Claire had been looking at Jack. Claire had always laughed about it and said they'd snapped the picture just as she was reminding him to smile.
 

Earl turned to Jack and a slight, nostalgic smile lit his face. "I don't think I've ever met a woman who revered her husband quite like Claire reveres you."

At that moment, Jack knew Earl wasn't talking just about Claire. Like the instant when a foggy dream from the night before becomes crystal clear, he suddenly realized that Earl thought of him as the son he'd never had. What Jack had done dishonored not only Claire, but Earl, too.

He was about to attempt an apology, however feeble and useless it would be, but Earl's voice came to life first.

"I don't get it. She's willing to go to jail to prevent you from being exposed?"

Jack shrank with shame at Earl's question. How had he ever agreed to Jenny's crazy gag order? She'd made it sound so reasonable.

"Well, sort of. But not really." The words came out hoarsely. "Since she didn't do it, she thinks it's a given that she can beat it without my alibi."

"Unbelievable. And the two of you agreed that I didn't need to know this, even though you asked me to represent her? She's a naïve bankruptcy attorney, but you know better, Jack."

"Yeah, well, I've learned that I don't think straight in her presence." He looked down at the floor, embarrassed that he'd finally admitted what Earl had been accusing him of all along. Earl had seen it coming and tried to head it off at the pass, but Jack had plowed on by.

"Do you love her?" Earl's voice was barely audible. He seemed afraid both to ask the question and to hear the answer.

How to respond? He'd told her he loved her, hadn't he? Was it possible to love two women at the same time? Despite his confusion about Jenny, he was certain that he loved Claire, had always loved Claire. It was Claire, not Jenny, whom he couldn't bear to lose. He thought of Jenny's statement,
I'm not interested in being someone's mistress
, and knew she'd understood this all along.
 

"Jack?" Earl's voice was gentler than Jack had ever heard it. "I need to get over to the jail and see her. We can talk about this later."

Jack nodded. Earl grabbed his coat from the back of the door and motioned for Jack to follow him. He put his arm around Jack's shoulders as they stepped into the elevator. The unexpected physical contact was almost more than he could bear.

"I'll take care of her," Earl said. "We'll figure this thing out. You just do your job; don't get sidetracked. I'll take care of her for you."

Jack knew then that if he went down and brought the Office of the District Attorney with him, Earl—like Claire—would never forgive him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AFTER FEEDING JENNY'S cats and trying to straighten the mess made by the cops in their search, Jack arrived at the courthouse with only twenty minutes to spare. He was so focused on getting to Judge Baxter's courtroom on time that he didn't see Claire sitting on the granite wall that lined the steps to the entrance.

"Jack!" she called to him.

He stopped.

"Jack," she repeated when she reached him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Where have you been? Are you okay? Everyone's worried about you."

"What?" Everyone was worried about him? What was she talking about? She touched his arm and led him the rest of the way up the stairs.

"I called to see if you ever got in to see Jenny, and Beverly said you had, but she hadn't heard from you since. So I asked her to call the jail, and they told her you'd come and gone already, but Earl was there. We found out about the arraignment from Earl. We both tried to call you on your cell phone, but it was shut off."
 

She paused in front of the metal detector, waiting for a response, but he merely pulled out his phone and looked to see if he'd turned it off. He had, though he didn't remember doing it.

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Where have you been?"

He dropped his keys and phone in a small plastic basket and walked through the detector with Claire following him. He wondered if the cops had already come through the rear door with Jenny. Once they reached the elevators, he finally looked at Claire again.

"I went over to her house. She asked me to feed her cats."

Claire's face went blank. Jack knew what she was thinking: How long does it take to feed cats?

"They'd searched her place," he said. And then, in an effort to explain the time gap, he added, "I tried to put it back together a little for her."

They stood on opposite sides of the elevator. When the doors closed, he asked, "Why are you here?"

"I came here to support her. Why do you think?"

He nodded, bit his bottom lip. Of course.

They stepped off the elevator to a small crowd trying to work its way into the courtroom. He saw Jim Wolfe and knew there had to be more reporters. He wondered how they'd gotten wind of the arraignment so quickly and if Earl and Jenny were already inside.

"Hang back a bit," he instructed Claire. He didn't want any reporters to see him until the last possible minute, when it would be too late to question him.

When the hallway was all but empty, Jack grabbed her hand and led her in. Everyone was standing, milling about in the narrow aisles between the benches, but Jack could see well enough past the crowd to know that Jenny had not been brought in yet. He pushed past spectators to get to the front, keenly aware of the fact that, after Jenny, he was the next most-gossiped-about person in the room. He was suddenly grateful for Claire's presence; he gripped her hand more tightly and pulled her through.