Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) (16 page)

“Could you approach her discreetly?”

“Sure.  I’ll see if she can get together for lunch tomorrow.”

We left it at that and I went inside.  The damn Siamese was in
my house, which meant he’d been locked inside all day, which meant he’d
probably pissed all over something valuable and impossible to clean.  He got up
when I came in and went to the back door and meowed impatiently for me to let
him out.  I watched him go straight to one of the flower beds, dig a nice sized
hole, and turn around and squat, then he returned to the door and looked up at
me expectantly, like he belonged inside.   I opened the door.

“Don’t think you’re going be an inside cat,” I told him, as he
sauntered in without even looking up at me.

I opened the fridge to get a beer and the cat came racing into
the kitchen.  He was going so fast that he fishtailed when he tried to stop,
his hind legs sliding around in front of his body; but instead of looking
embarrassed, the pompous bastard acted like he’d done it on purpose.  The cat
was a snob, but I caught myself growing more fond of him every time he pulled
off a stunt like that.  I took out some leftover chicken and was putting some
in a bowl for him when the phone rang.  It was Landra and I forgot all about
the Siamese.

“I’m over at Sara’s house.  Do you want some company?”

“Hell yes.  Come over.” Landra laughed.  I hadn’t seen her in
way too long, and just hearing her voice made my heart beat faster.

“We’re getting ready to eat dinner, but there’s plenty for you
if you haven’t eaten.  You want to come over here?”  The Siamese meowed
loudly.  “Is that Siam I hear?” she asked, and I could hear amusement in her
voice.

“Yeah.  The prick has taken over my house.”  I put the bowl of
chicken on the ground and I could hear him purring as he gobbled it down. 
“I’ll be right over.”

“Okay.”  I could tell she was smiling and I caught her just
before she hung up.

“Landra  . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Meet me on the front porch.”

I hung up and raced out of my house, across my yard, and
bounded up Mrs. Howard’s steps and was waiting at the door when Landra opened
it.  I pulled her out onto the porch and around the corner to where a nosy Mrs.
Howard couldn’t see us if she came to the door.  Landra gave me that beautiful
smile and I took her face in my hands and kissed her on the lips first lightly,
then heavy-duty.  Damn I’d missed her.  I picked her up and squeezed her and
she wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck.  We were in
the midst of a heated kiss, when I realized that we weren’t alone.  Mrs. Howard
was standing there blatantly staring at us with her toothy grin plastered to
her face.  I decided to ignore her and see what she’d do, thinking she would
probably feel self-conscious and go away.  No such luck.  I cut the kiss short
and put Landra down.

“Hello, Mrs. Howard.  How are you doing today?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m fine, Sam.  I can see you’re doing well,” she said
still smiling.

“I was before you interrupted me,”  I told her.

Mrs. Howard laughed.  “Oh, you kids!” she said, waving her hand
in the air like I was kidding.

I hooked my arm around Landra’s neck and pulled her to me again
and gave her one more quick kiss, then I directed her towards the door.  Mrs.
Howard held the door open and she patted me on the arm as I walked past her. 
It was something my grandmother used to always do and I had a notion to hug the
old woman, but I decided not to act on the impulse.

We went in the kitchen and I systematically opened the lids on
each pot to see what was cooking.  Of course this irked Mrs. Howard. 
Apparently her cooking rules applied not only to baked goods, but to anything
that reposed in a skillet or pot, as well.  And for some reason that really
irked me.

“Why are you so possessive about your cooking?”

 “Why don’t you set the table?” she responded.

Busywork
.
 
She’d retaliated by giving me
busywork.  She took out three knives, forks and spoons and handed them to me,
then pointed vaguely across the kitchen and mumbled something about place mats
and napkins, then she actually bodily moved me away from the stove.  Landra
turned her back to me, but not before I caught the smirk of satisfaction on her
face.  I found the place mats and set the damn table, then I cornered Landra at
the refrigerator when Mrs. Howard had her back turned.  There was something
about Landra’s being unattainable at that moment that made her totally
irresistible to me.  I wanted to hold her and squeeze her and do things to her
that would shock Mrs. Howard.

“Eat fast so we can go to my house,” I whispered.

Landra laughed and Mrs. Howard turned around to see what she
was missing.  Landra pulled out a bottle of wine and closed the door with her
hip.  It was cool little movement that left me wanting her even more.  When I
looked up, Mrs. Howard was watching me and by the look on her face, I was
pretty sure she could read my mind.  I smiled, trying not to look guilty and I
got another toothy grin in return.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally finished
dinner.  I’m a firm believer in the eat-and-run concept, but as I inched my way
to the front door, Landra headed off toward the couch instead.  Apparently she
didn’t subscribe to the same philosophy.

I ended up falling asleep on Mrs. Howard’s couch and it was
after 10:00 o’clock when Landra woke me up.

“Why did you let me sleep so long?  The whole night’s been
wasted,” I said irritably.

“Not the whole night,” she said.  “I don’t have to be in bed
until midnight.  We still have two hours.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

We went to my house and spent the next two hours getting
reacquainted, and by the time midnight rolled around, Landra was tucked safely
into my bed, curled up next to me.  I silently cursed Mrs. Howard for
monopolizing Landra for the evening.  Two hours alone with her was definitely
not enough.

As matters turned out, Maddie’s co-worker, Kathleen, wouldn’t
even have lunch with Maddie, much less give her a statement.  I wasn’t
surprised.  In my experience, many employees are afraid to speak up against
their supervisors in the workplace because they fear retaliation.  And I don’t
necessarily blame them.  After all, I’m sure they need their job as much as I
do.

I wasn’t going to tell the EEOC Investigator about the tape I’d
taken possession of from the CEO’s office, so I notified him that we had
nothing further to add before he made his findings in Maddie’s discrimination
charge.  Several days later, I received a two-page Determination letter in the
mail.  Maddie brought the letter back to my office, clutching it to her
humongous chest.

“You open it,” she said, handing me the envelope.

I opened the letter and skimmed through the paragraphs until I
came to what I was looking for, then I read it out loud.

Based on the evidence obtained throughout the investigation,
I find there is reasonable cause to believe the Charging Party was subjected to
sexual harassment, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
as amended.  Upon finding that there is reason to believe that violations have
occurred, the Commission attempts to eliminate the alleged unlawful practices
by informal methods of conciliation.  Therefore, the Commission now invites the
parties to join with it in reaching a just resolution of this matter.  If the
Respondent declines to discuss settlement or when, for any other reason, a
settlement acceptable to the office Director is not obtained, the Director will
inform the parties and advise them of the court enforcement alternatives
available to aggrieved persons and the Commission.  A Commission representative
will contact each party in the near future to begin conciliation.

“We did it!” I exclaimed, waving the letter in the air.  I
picked up Maddie and swung her around, then I set her down and looked at the
letter again.  “This is so good,” I told her.  “If the EEOC had ruled against
us and we went to court, if Datacare prevailed in the suit, we could have been
forced to pay their attorney’s fees.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“We see what Datacare has to offer through the EEOC settlement
process, and if we’re not satisfied, then we sue them.”

She turned serious. “Thank you so much, Samuel.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“I
am
thanking you.  You’ve been my knight-in-shining-armor
in this thing.  If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be working there, putting
up with all of Larry’s disgusting comments and everything else.  I just don’t
know how to thank you.”

I could see her lip quivering and I pointed my finger at her. 
“Maddie, don’t you dare cry on me!”

“Oh shut up, Samuel!  I’ll cry if I damn well want to!  It’s
not every day that someone takes a personal interest in another person’s
welfare.  At least it’s not something that happens to me.  Nobody . . . except
for my husband . . . has ever helped me the way that you have.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m doing it out of the kindness of my
heart, Maddie.  It’s my job.  I’m planning on making a lot of money off of
helping you.”

“That may be true, but you’d do it even if you weren’t going to
get a dime,” she accused.

She was right, but I denied it anyway. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Liar.  I know that you would,” she said smugly.  She spun
around and headed out of the office but then she turned around and yelled back
at me, “And don’t you ever tell me not to cry again!” She was sexy when she got
worked up.

“I’ll say it whenever I see that pouting lip of yours start to
quiver!” I shot back.  I wasn’t sure if she was really pissed off, so I was
trying not to laugh out loud, but she turned back around and caught me with a
huge smile on my face.

She stuck out her tongue at me.  “How did your mother ever put
up with you?”

“Leave my mother out of this!”  I folded up the letter and
stuck in inside my coat pocket then I put my arm around Maddie’s shoulder and
escorted her out of my office.  “Let’s go celebrate.”

We left Maddie’s car at the office and went out to a restaurant
to celebrate with a margarita, then rather than go all the way back downtown, I
took Maddie home, the idea being that we’d ride together in the morning back to
the office.  Totally innocent; no ulterior motive; end of story. 
Wrong
.

When I mentioned to Landra on the phone that night that I’d had
a drink with Maddie, her reaction took me completely by surprise.  While she
never came right out and accused me of anything, I could tell by the tone of
her voice that she was jealous, and I caught myself enjoying the moment. 
Having a beautiful woman being jealous over you is great for the ego.

“You have nothing to be jealous about,” I assured her.  “Maddie
is my neighbor and my client, and that’s all.  Oh . . . and my secretary. 
Neighbor, client, secretary.  Yeah, I guess you should be jealous.  After all,
you’re just my girlfriend.”

“Oh, shut up Sam,” Landra said pouting.

I’m generally not prone to lengthy phone conversations, but
ever since Landra’s arrest, we had had marathon phone calls almost every night,
and we ended up talking for over an hour that night.  In trying to separate my
role as her attorney from my role as her boyfriend, which at some point I’d
come to think of myself as, I tried to discuss her case over the phone as much
as possible so that we wouldn’t have to get into it when we were together.  But
when I told her that I was meeting with the Assistant District Attorney on her
case the next morning, I wished that I’d told her in person. I had that
overwhelming urge to protect her again.

We made a firm date to get together the next evening but I hung
up feeling down.  I actually went looking for the Siamese, thinking that his
company might lift my spirits, but he was nowhere to be seen.  Typical.

*    *    *    *

I pulled into Maddie’s driveway the next morning and honked the
horn and Oliver came out to greet me.  He came over to my side of the Suburban
and I rolled down my window.

“Hi, Oliver.”

“Hi, Samuel.   Look what I have.”  He always had something. 
This time it was a little boat that looked like a replica of a pirate’s boat
with sails and ropes and a flag flying from the mast.   It was just a tiny
thing, but other than the size, it was almost identical to the one that had
sunk that Christmas morning when I was a kid.

“Can I see that?” I asked.

He handed it over, and memories came flooding back.  Too bad so
much time had passed since the incident; I could have sued the manufacturer for
emotional distress.

*    *    *    *

My meeting with the Assistant District Attorney didn’t go well
and I was reminded again what a bad idea it was for me to be representing
Landra.  It was impossible to be objective and I caught myself taking every
allegation lodged against Landra as a personal assault.  I finally got to a
point in the meeting where I had to excuse myself from the room to try to
compose myself.  It didn’t work.  As soon as we resumed I exploded at the ADA.  I called him incredibly unprofessional, and I asked him if he got his law degree from
Idiots R Us
.  It may not have been the smartest thing I’d done in my
relatively short career, but it made me feel a lot better.  Besides, I liked to
maintain an adversarial relationship with my opposing counsel.  It made the job
a lot more fun.

I left the meeting and called Landra and asked if she could
meet me at my office.  This was not a conversation that should be carried out
over the phone lines.  She came straight over and Maddie buzzed me to let me
know that Landra was there.

“The D.A.’s office is going to contend that Drake never
assaulted you – that you had the whole thing planned out before you even got to
the party.”

“That’s crazy,” Landra said.  “How can they say that?  Didn’t
they see the pictures that the police took that night?”

“They contend the bruises were self-inflicted,” I told her.

“They think I did that to myself?  How can they think that?”

“They’re bent on putting together a case that isn’t there. 
They say that you lured him up to the room, you shoved him out the window, then
you ripped your own dress and inflicted the bruises on yourself.”

She looked on the verge of panic and I felt sick at the thought
of Landra sitting through a trial on a trumped up murder charge.

“That’s insane.  I didn’t even know that Drake would be at the
party,” she said.  “How could I have planned it if I didn’t know he’d be
there?”

“We’ll certainly argue that,” I said.  I took a deep breath
before I went into the next subject.  “We’re going to have to hire a criminal
lawyer to represent you Landra.”  She started to butt in, but I raised my hand
to shut her up.  “You may need to call me as a witness and I can’t testify as a
witness if I’m your lawyer.”  It came out harsher than I’d planned but frankly,
I was fed up with her obstinacy.  “It’s something we should have done from the
very start, so quit arguing with me on this, Landra.”

She was quiet while she thought about it.  “Only if the grand
jury indicts me.  If that happens, then I’ll hire someone else.”

I felt somewhat appeased, but it wasn’t enough. Back in law
school, I’d considered going into criminal law for a while.   I figured it
would be right up my alley.  After all, the general public has a special
abhorrence for murderers, child molesters, arsonists, and the like.  Imagine
the loathing they carry for the attorney who represents them and who is
arrogant enough to stand up in court and argue their innocence when everyone
knows they’re guilty as hell.  It was precisely that loathing that almost moved
me to criminal law rather than civil, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself
to do it, no matter how attractive the image.  I didn’t want to spend the bulk
of my days with creeps, with the off chance that every once in a while I’d get
to represent someone like Landra who was actually innocent.

I was strategizing in my head how best to deal with my stubborn
client.  I knew Landra well enough to know that she liked to make her own
decisions and that if I was going to get her to hire another attorney I’d have
to make it seem like it was her idea.  If I could somehow get her to lose
confidence in me as her attorney . . .

“Hello?”  She was waving her hand in my face and I realized
she’d been saying something.

“What?”  I said more defensively than necessary.

“You were zoning.”

“Thinking.  I was thinking.  Maybe we should plead temporary
insanity,” I said.

“Oh, brother,” Landra said, rolling her eyes.

I pointed my pen at her.  “Don’t roll your eyes at me.  I hate
that,” I said.  “Niki Lautrec does the same thing and it always pisses me off.”

“Who the hell is Niki Lautrec and why are you comparing me to
her?  Don’t you know girls hate that?”

“I’m comparing you to
him
because of the reason I just told
you.  He rolls his eyes just like that.”

“Oh.”  Landra stood up and started towards me.  “Well, excuse
me Mr. Perfect,” she taunted.  “Had I known what kind of effect that particular
optical movement had on you, I’d have used it more often to torment you.”  She
came around the desk and swiveled my chair towards her then climbed onto my lap
and kissed me.  She leaned her weight against me and I ran my hands underneath
her shirt up her back and pulled her body close to mine.  The chair tilted
backwards, but instead of catching when it should have, when it got to the end
range there was a loud snap and crack. I realized too late what had happened. 
I cupped my hands over Landra’s head trying to shield her as the back of the
chair broke loose from its base.

We were propelled backwards and my head smacked the credenza
behind my desk on the way down, sending my calculator, a coffee mug, and a
stack of files skating across the floor.  It sounded like a truck had hit the
building.  The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with the cushion back
underneath me and Landra on top of me. The mailbox kiss flashed through my mind
as I lay looking up at the ceiling.

“I always thought that was bullshit when people said they saw
stars,” I said.

My office door slammed open and Maddie came racing into the
room with a worried look on her face, followed by Niki Lautrec who was openly
amused at what he was witnessing.

“Niki Lautrec is here,” Maddie announced, always the dutiful
secretary.  “You’re bleeding!” She knelt beside me and picked up my head and
started running her hand through my hair trying to find the source of the
bleeding.

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her hand away.  The last thing I
needed was to have Maddie making over me in front of Niki Lautrec.  He’d never
let me live it down. Landra dislodged herself and got up.  I sat up and the
room spun.  I grabbed on to the credenza leg to steady myself.

“Oh my gosh!” Maddie exclaimed.  “You’re really hurt.”  She
turned to Landra.  “Are you okay? What in the world happened here?”  She
resumed her search of my scalp.

“The stupid chair broke,” Landra said, standing up and
straightening her shirt.  “How bad is his head?”

“He’s going to need to have it stitched,” Maddie said.  She was
poking around the wound, making it hurt like hell.

“Ouch, Maddie!  Stop poking at it!”

“Don’t yell at her.  She’s just trying to help,” Landra said.

“I just want to see how bad it is,” Maddie said.  She turned to
Niki.  “Will you get the first aid kit from the top right kitchen cabinet for
me?   We’ve got to get a bandage on this.”  She brought her hands back from my
head and they were covered in blood.  I looked down and realized that there was
a pool of blood where my head had been and it made me woozy all over again.  
“We’re going to have to get you to the emergency room.”