by Reason of Sanity (33 page)

must have had too much to drink at the club. This can’t be happening. Maybe the plane crashed and I’m actually dead right now. This must be the

afterlife, because there’s no way that this can be a real dog. I turn on the light. I am not dead. Maybe I wish I was, but I’m not. This is Bernie, Suzi’s dog, and he’s got a message in his collar.

M ore than two thousand miles away and the kid still manages to send me dog-mail. It’s a note from Myra.

P eter Darling:
Suzi saw your travel brochures, and when I
learned how much she’d like to see the island, I arranged for her and Bernie to fly over with me. They wouldn’t let Bernie stay with us here at the Kapalua Ritz-Carlton, so we thought that you wouldn’t mind him staying with you. We’ve hired a limo for the next few days, so we’ll pick you up tomorrow morning for breakfast.

Just North of Lahaina is the very nice resort area Kaanapali, where most of the Island’s beachfront condos are. If you go another few miles to the Northern tip of the Island, you reach the superrich Kapalua area where the golf courses, million dollar estates and expensive hotels are. I’m sure that Myra’s spending about four hundred a night for the room she and Suzi are staying in, and that doesn’t count the greens fees she’ll have to lay out to play on the hotel’s fifty-four champion-ship hole golf course.

Maybe that’s the way it should be. The millionairesses are staying at the Ritz Carlton and I’m staying here with the dog.

Our vacation in Maui was a lot more fun than I thought that any period of celibacy could be. I rented an electric cart for Suzi that’s identical to the one she has at the Marina. She took the huge dog, put on her ‘Bubba Gump Shrimp’ tee shirt and drove that thing all over the Island, becoming an instant icon. Every tourist and shop-owner wanted to meet her, and after the second day, she was forced to drive with only one hand so that the other was free to wave at her fans. She probably had enough conversations to last her until we return here next year, so she won’t have to have any with me until then. Her annual quota of Peter talk has already been used up. She liked Maui so much that I think she’s considering buying some property there. I hope she’ll let me stay with her once in a while.

Of course as expected, Myra won the election in a landslide. Her only remaining opponent didn’t have the courtesy to concede and congratulate her, so Myra probably won’t return any courtesy by giving that candidate’s drug-legalization demands much thought. When I stopped by the office to say hello one day, I noticed that Seymour’s old lunch-date law student wasn’t there any more. He’ll probably be on the Governor’s staff in another year or so.

Myra offered to bring me in as a consultant o n an occasional insurance fraud case, but I told her we’d probably be better off not associating. There are too many people out there waiting to take pot shots at her and giving a consulting contract to her exhusband would be just too damn convenient for them.

The new love of my life is now sitting in our slip. A fifty-foot Grand Banks Trawler Yacht. Stuart, Vinnie and Olive all helped the Asian boys move our stuff. When we returned from the Island, we boarded our new home and had a grand first night dinner. Suzi hired Sally the sign painter to put the name on the back of the boat. Like the last one, this is the ‘Suzi B,’ which is probably much better than our second choice of ‘the Peter S.’

Now that we’ve got this beautiful new yacht, I decide to show it off a little. I owe that female reporter Hedy a dinner, so using my brand new pasta recipe I entertained her on the boat. She enjoyed the service so much that she stayed for breakfast too. I think I’ve given new meaning to the phrase ‘manipulating the press.’ She’ll be a good contact to have every time I decide to give one of my ‘outside the courthouse’ performances. Nothing helps a bad case more than good press - there’s a famous dream team that will attest to that adage.

Charles Indovine and I are on the ‘do not invite to the same party list,’ but he still assigns a case to me every once in a while, just to keep Uniman Insurance happy.

The only interesting new thing going o n in my life now is a client that came in the other day. He was referred by Stuart and told me the most amazing things about a situation he’s involved in. If I decide to take his case, it will no doubt be the most interesting adventure I’ve ever been involved with… but that’s another story. I see that a message is coming in by dog-mail, so it must be time for me to go back to work.

Yesterday the kid told me that a man walked by and said hello to her, on his way to that big boat on the end tie. I asked her if it was George Clooney, but she didn’t know. When I inquired about his appearance, her answer was “he was old… like you.”

Attorney Peter Sharp has been wrongfully suspended from the practice of law and thrown out of the house by his soon-to-be ex-wife, a newly appointed deputy district attorney. As a result of the eviction, he’s forced to live in their back yard on an old, poorly wired, 40-foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser he’s restoring, that is in danger of burning up at any time.

To make matters worse, as the result of tryi ng to help someone fill out some claim forms, he gets arrested for conspiracy to defraud an insurance company. His alleged co-conspirator, a man charged with murdering his own wife to be with a beautiful flight attendant, is about to discover that Peter is also sleeping with her while the man is out of town.

As Peter fights to get his law license reinstated, he discovers the secrets behind two murders, a fatal plane crash, and who framed him with the State Bar - all with the help of his legal ward Suzi, an adorable, quiet (at least to Peter) twelveyear-old Chinese girl and her huge Saint Bernard.

Peter also gets involved in matters concerning sexual harassment, vexatious litigation, double jeopardy, and a groundbreaking case of
Negligent Nymphomania.

In his second Adventure, Attorney Peter Sharp gets retained to defend a man accused of capital murder. The only things making this case a little harder to defend than most others are that the client’s acts were captured on videotape, he confessed to the police, and he wants to plead guilty. To make matters worse, the District Attorney’s office has brought in a special prosecutor for the trial: Peter’s ex-wife Myra.

While he’s preparing for trial on the murder case, Peter is also hired to represent an insurance company, to defend it against a man who slipped and fell while inside a bank that was coincidentally robbed later that same day. Peter thinks the case would have died when the claimant was murdered, but at usual, he’s wrong.

In this adventure, while Peter is involved
representing Vinnie, the prolific, peeing
pornographer, he also helps solve several bank robberies by catching the entire gang, and makes the acquaintance of a new friend who runs an autopsy store - all with the help of his legal ward, the adorable twelve-year-old Suzi and her huge Saint Bernard.