The Mortal Groove (2 page)

J
ane Lawless stood under the arch in her dad's living room, holding a tray of champagne flutes. Everyone was waiting for her, the bearer of the booze, but she couldn't bring herself to move because she was staring at a piece of magic. The firelight had collected itself around her family just like the glow in a Rembrandt painting. Maybe she was seeing things, or maybe she'd had one too many, but she could sense her mind taking a snapshot of the scene, knowing it would live inside her for the rest of her life. This was the center of her world—these six people.

“Get in here, Janey,” called her father. “We're all dying of thirst.”

“Coming,” she said, stepping down into the sunken living room and passing out the glasses.

Jane was in her early forties, a successful restaurateur. For the past couple of years, she'd been working night and day developing
a second restaurant in the Twin Cities. The Xanadu Club was located in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. In the year it had been open, it had already established itself as the premier nightclub in town. She was proud of her accomplishments, not that she intended to dwell on any of that tonight. All she wanted from this New Year's Eve was to enjoy the flow, have a few too many glasses of champagne, and then take a cab home with her partner, Kenzie Mullroy.

Jane's oldest and best friend, Cordelia Thorn, stood across the room, directly under one of the track lights near the fireplace. If there was a spotlight anywhere in the vicinity, Cordelia usually found it. She would, no doubt, have appreciated the fact that her red sequined evening gown glittered like rubies. Cordelia enjoyed glittering. In fact, she insisted on it. She was the creative director of the Allen Grimby Repertory Theater in St. Paul.

Adjusting the feather boa around her plunging neckline, Cordelia draped an arm around the shoulders of a tall, attractive woman standing next to her. Kenzie didn't have Hollywood looks, but she had the kind of presence that made people turn and stare when she entered a room. It seemed amazing to Jane that they'd already been together for over two years. Kenzie lived in Chadwick, Nebraska, where she taught cultural anthropology at Chadwick State College. She'd come up for the holidays. Long-distance relationships were hard, but Jane and Kenzie were trying their best to make it work. Still, the time apart weighed heavily on them both.

Kenzie and Cordelia were listening to Peter, Jane's brother. They appeared to be laughing and grimacing as he told a joke. Peter was a cameraman at “WTWN-TV” in Minneapolis. He was eight years younger than Jane, bearded, handsome, with the same thick chestnut hair and the same blue-violet eyes.

Sigrid, Peter's wife, sat on the sofa between Jane's dad and Elizabeth Piper, her father's girlfriend. Thanks to Cordelia's weird taste, a Roy Rogers CD crooned inanely from the stereo speakers on the bookcase. Roy had just finished singing “Don't Fence Me In” and had moved on to Cordelia's favorite, “The Gay Ranchero,” when Cordelia turned, looking as if she'd just swallowed ground glass, and bolted from the room. As she rushed past Jane, her boa drifted to the floor.

“Cordelia? Hey?” Jane picked up the boa and followed her “upstairs”. She found her in the bathroom, the door closed and locked.

“Cordelia, open up.”

Her crying became one long wail.

“Let me in.” She banged on the door. “Cordelia?”

Several seconds passed. Finally, the door opened and Cordelia fell into Jane's arms, weeping. “I can't go on.”

“Why?”

“Didn't you hear Roy singing about ‘little chicos'?”

“I was doing my best to ignore him.”

Cordelia backed up and sank down on the edge of the tub, pulled the toilet paper up to her nose, and blew hard.

Jane sat down next to her. “It's Hattie, isn't it. You're thinking about her.”

“Of course it's Hattie!”

Hattie Thorn Lester was Cordelia's four-year-old niece—her sister Octavia's child. Hattie had lived with Cordelia for the last two years. From the start, it had been an odd pairing—a precocious kid bonding with a woman who generally referred to children, when she referred to them at all, as rug rats and carpet creepers. But Octavia, a graduate of the Joan Crawford school of mothering, was an actress with a hard-on, as it were, to make
it big in movies. With little time for a child, she'd allowed Cordelia to shoulder the responsibility. Cordelia had, against her will, fallen in love with Hattie. Everything was going swimmingly until Octavia had swooped in and whisked Hattie off to England. Octavia's first pronouncement stated that Cordelia could write or call as much as she wanted, but by Thanksgiving, that olive branch had been withdrawn.

Cordelia hit bottom so hard she didn't even bounce. She hired a lawyer to sue for custody, but she was told that as long as Hattie lived in England, there wasn't much she could do. And so began the long travail.

In early December, Cordelia suffered a total meltdown. She couldn't work, wouldn't eat—which, for her, was behavior worthy of a locked psych ward. She moved from her downtown loft into Jane's house because she couldn't stand to be alone. Not that she had to be. At least six women, all pursuing her romantically, came to the house at various intervals to rub her back, cook her meals, bring her boxes of candy, videos, books, and enough glitzy bargain-basement bling to fill a treasure chest.

It was a well-known fact that Cordelia adored cheap bling.

By late December, she seemed to have pulled herself together. As she and Jane were trimming the tree one evening, a few days before Christmas, Cordelia announced that if she continued with her funk, it would be like letting Octavia win—something she refused to do. She went back to work. She'd already gone back to eating. And she began talking about moving back to her loft. Thus far, however, she was still comfortably ensconced in Jane's guest bedroom.

Cordelia's biggest move was to change lawyers. The new one encouraged her to hire a British PI to watch the house in Northumberland where Hattie was now living. If Cordelia could
prove negligence—or worse—she might have a shot at getting Hattie back.

“It was the ‘little chicos' thing that got to me,” said Cordelia, sniffing. She hiccuped a couple of times. “Hattie's my little chico.”

“Chica.”

“Whatever.”

“Maybe you shouldn't play that song right now.”

“But Roy is all I listen to these days! He's on my iPod. On a C D in my car. The music is . . . totally hot. It gets me going, makes me want to get up in the morning.”

Jane gave her a sideways glance. “Are we talking about the same music that's playing downstairs? Roy
Rogers?”

“Yes, Roy rocks, Jane. He kicks ass!”

“Let me ask you a question. Did Hattie like Roy Rogers?”

“Adored him. We have the same tastes, Hattie and me.”

“You and a four-year-old?”

“What's your point?”

Jane was uncomfortable sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Cordelia, being as megasized as two Mae Wests, made her feel as if she was being squeezed against the wall.

“We're all down there laughing and enjoying ourselves,” said Cordelia, sniffing some more, “while Hattie is probably standing in some cold, dark, drafty kitchen, asking some evil nanny if she can have another cup of gruel.”

“That's Oliver Twist.”

“What.
Ever!
If that PI I hired is any good at his job, I'll have the report soon. All the proof I need.” A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye.

“I know it hurts,” said Jane, patting Cordelia's knee.

“If it hurts, how can I be enjoying myself? Laughing at your brother's stupid jokes?”

“Laughter doesn't deny pain.”

“Just what I need. A philosophy lesson.”

“You know, Cordelia, it's almost midnight.”

“So?”

“Don't you want to go downstairs and drink a toast with the rest of the family?”

“Say what you really mean. You want to be with Kenzie when the clock strikes twelve, not with me. You're afraid I'll turn into a pumpkin.”

“I can't leave you, not when you're feeling so low.”

Cordelia blew her nose again, then yanked the boa back from Jane and wrapped it around her neck. “It was just a momentary crash. You go down. I'll be there in a second.”

Jane stood and held out her hand. “Come on. I can't ring in the new year without you. And besides, Hattie wouldn't want you to be up here all by yourself.”

Cordelia thought about it. “She does love a good party.” “We'll drink a toast to her. To the two of you—that you'll be together soon.”

“And one to Octavia,” said Cordelia, following Jane back down the stairs. “May her inflated ego finally rupture and take the rest of her body with it.”

 

At the stroke of midnight, everyone cried, “Happy New Year!”

Jane tugged Kenzie into the rear hallway. “Happy New Year,” she whispered, an ache in her voice. She backed Kenzie up against the wall and kissed her.

When they finally came up for air, Kenzie rested her hands on Jane's shoulders. “How long we gonna stick around here?”

“Maybe another hour. That okay with you?”

“Fine.” Kenzie stifled a yawn.

“You tired?”

“Dead on my feet.”

“Liar,” said Jane, grinning.

As they returned to the living room, the doorbell rang.

Jane's dad was just coming in from the kitchen with a fresh bottle of champagne. “Who the hell—,” he grumbled, pulling a U-turn and stepping back up into the front foyer.

Silence descended as half a dozen men in heavy topcoats and two women in long formal wraps moved into the house like an ominous storm front. Jane recognized Randy Turk's curly blond head. He was a lawyer and an old friend of her father's. Everyone else was a stranger.

Ray conferred quietly with Randy for a few seconds, then turned and faced the group. “Well, everybody, it appears these people need to talk to me. Privately.”

“Now?” said Jane.

“We're sorry to burst in on your celebration,” said Randy, unbuttoning his coat. “But this can't wait. It won't take long. When we're done, we'll let your dad explain why we've come.”

 

 

R
ay Lawless was about to turn sixty-six. He'd been a criminal defense lawyer in St. Paul for most of his adult life. Last year, however, he'd pulled back. He'd called it semiretirement, and in terms of his caseload, that was accurate. And yet he'd been busier than ever.

Ray had finally allowed himself to nurture certain interests he'd put on the back burner for years—interests such as accepting invitations to speak at colleges and universities around the country on the topic of ending the death penalty in the United States; agreeing to chair local committees on senior housing and health care. New doors were opening to him all the time. If only someone had impressed upon him the fact that not every new goddamn door was one he needed to walk through.

Ray led the group upstairs to his study. He was curious why they'd come, but also annoyed at having his party interrupted. He'd always been ridiculously superstitious about ringing in the
new year—so goes New Year's Eve, so goes the year. As he turned on the overhead light in his study, he tried to imagine why a mixed group of friends and strangers had burst in unannounced.

After sitting down behind his desk, Ray felt a little more convivial because he'd assumed the power position in the room. He couldn't offer them all chairs, so he just let it go.

Glancing at the faces, he recognized only one of the two women—Dorthea Land, a retired Episcopal bishop. Ray had known Dorthea for years, loved to argue ethics and politics with her over one of her famous homemade dinners. The man over by the window was Andrew Youngquist, CEO of AmTec, one of Minnesota's largest homegrown corporations. The fellow closing the door behind the group was Ted Azel, chairman of Azel, Lund, Malton, Feld and Snyder, the largest and most powerful corporate law firm in the state. Ray assumed the rest were equally well connected.

Randy Turk stood at the front of the pack. He'd started out as a corporate lawyer, discovered he had a gift for litigation, and made a small fortune by the time he was in his midforties. A few years ago he'd moved into civil rights and poverty law, and he was currently the chairman of Minnesota's new VoteFair Task Force. Randy was a good ten years younger than Ray. In court, he was a tiger, full of passion and conviction. Out of the spotlight, he was a quiet guy, a man with a profoundly good heart.

Randy took the lead. He briefly introduced the five men and two women, then turned back to Ray with a serious look on his face. “We're here to ask you an important question. I know this may seem a little melodramatic—”

“Just a tad,” said Ray, easing back in his chair. “Why don't you cut to the chase.”