Reilly 11 - Case of Lies (3 page)

“Uncle Dave’s been sick,” Chelsi said, taking her cue.

“Hmm,” Nina said. “Well, I understand you were going to bring me the court papers to look at,” she went on neutrally.

“Right.” He reached inside his wool shirt and pulled out a battered envelope. He set it on the desk, the hand revealing a slight tremor. Nina looked at him carefully, noting the thin burst of broken capillaries in his ruddy cheeks, the tangle of red veins around the edges of his eyes.

He hasn’t had the hair of the dog this morning, she thought, and he misses it. No wonder Sandy had given her a warning eyebrow. Sandy didn’t like drinkers.

On the other hand, wasn’t it a positive sign that he had held off to talk with her? Maybe there was still hope for him.

She opened the envelope and pulled out several legal documents in the Wrongful Death and Negligence case of
Hanna v. Ace High Lodge and Does I-X
.

The complaint Bruce Bennett had drafted was on top, followed by some unserved summonses, an answer filed by the Ace High Lodge, and a set of pleadings filed recently by the Lodge’s attorney, Betty Jo Puckett of South Lake Tahoe. While Nina skimmed through the pleadings, Dave Hanna slumped in his chair, never taking his eyes off her.

Chelsi had displayed a good grasp of her uncle’s legal situation. He was about to have his case dismissed on the motion of the Ace High Lodge, because he had done nothing to bring the matter to trial for almost two years.

Bennett had done a workmanlike job laying out the facts in the complaint. The Hannas had been celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary by spending the weekend at Lake Tahoe at the Ace High Lodge, one block from Harveys and the other Stateline casinos. They had gone to a show at Prize’s and walked back, then stepped out to the second-floor balcony of their room.

There, according to the dry legalese of the complaint, “they observed an armed robbery in progress.” And, in what seemed to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, at thirty-eight, third-grade teacher Sarah Hanna had been shot once through the heart. She was three months pregnant.

There were few traces of the gunman or other witnesses. The motel clerk, Meredith Assawaroj, had heard the shots from an adjoining property. She had missed seeing the killer but had provided the South Lake Tahoe police with a fair description of the three motel guests who had been held up, young people who had packed up and left before the police arrived.

The clerk’s descriptions of these three led nowhere. The gun hadn’t been left at the scene. The witnesses had paid in cash and the description provided had been inadequate to find them. Nina made a note to find out more about that.

Now the Ace High Lodge wanted out of Hanna’s lawsuit, which alleged that its clerk should have been in the office, that the motel security should have been better, and so on and so on. Hanna might have had some sort of case on the merits if he had pursued it, but leaving it to languish for so long had exposed him to Betty Jo Puckett’s Motion to Dismiss.

Puckett’s work looked good. Her law was solid. Statutory limits restricted the ability of plaintiffs to file a lawsuit and then do nothing, as Dave Hanna had done.

Puckett had apparently advised the motel owner well-to lay low for as long as possible and then attack Hanna for failure to prosecute. Nina hadn’t met the lawyer, but the courtroom grapevine said she had an effective style.

She looked up. Hanna’s cheeks flamed, but his eyes were sunken into the sockets. He looked like a big, healthy man who had developed some wasting disease that was ruining him. Nina wondered how long he had been drinking way too much. At least he was sober at eight in the morning. She found it painful to imagine what he’d gone through, how bitter he must feel now.

She cleared her throat. Setting down the motion to dismiss, she said, “Your wife seems to have been the classic innocent bystander.”

“Did you know she was expecting?”

“Yes.”

He shifted in his chair, like the seat hurt him.

“What do you plan to do now?” Nina asked him.

“Slink away, I guess.”

“The Lodge wants attorney’s fees.”

“I might get socked with their lawyer fees?”

“Perhaps.”

Dave Hanna put his hand on his heart and said, “Let me get this straight. They want
me
to pay them? How much money are we talking about?”

“I don’t know. I could guess, from the amount of work I see here, possibly several thousand dollars.”

“If I do nothing, what will happen?”

“You’ll probably have to pay their fees.”

During a long silence Hanna deliberated about whether to-what? Confide in her? Walk out on her?

“Well?” he asked finally.

Nina raised her eyebrows.

“What do you think?”

“It isn’t hopeless,” Nina said.

“There isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop them, is there?”

“You can fight the motion. The Code of Civil Procedure does require that a suit like yours be dismissed two years after service on the defendant with no action. But it hasn’t been quite two years. It’s still in the discretion of the court.”

Hanna blurted, “Look, lady. I understand you need to drum up business. Maybe you hope we’ve got a stash of dough hidden away. I hate to say this, but we don’t. Bennett demanded a hundred fifty dollars an hour and five thousand up front, and called himself cheap. I don’t want to bankrupt Roger and Chelsi. And I’m broke, like I keep telling you.”

“We’ll take care of the money, Uncle Dave,” Chelsi said.

“I will need a retainer,” Nina said, thinking of Sandy, who would hold her accountable. She came up with the lowest amount she could manage. “Two thousand, billed against my hours. I also charge a hundred fifty an hour. There may be expenses. If we manage to keep the case going, those expenses could mount up fast.”

“Done,” Chelsi said, whipping out her checkbook. Hanna bowed his head, looked at the rug. “It’s not for revenge,” Chelsi said. “It’s not for money. It’s for my aunt. You know?”

Nina nodded. She pushed the button as though Sandy hadn’t left the door open a crack and been listening the whole time.

After Hanna had signed an agreement and left with Chelsi, Nina adjusted her suit coat and hung her new briefcase over her shoulder.

“You think we can make money on this?” Sandy said. She reposed like a Buddha in her Aeron chair, detached, hands folded calmly on the desk over Nina’s notes.

“I do. Fast money. That’s if we can get past this motion to dismiss. The motel clerk should have been in the office. The area should have been less of an ambush invitation. There may have been other incidents-this kind of crime occurs in clusters. Maybe the motel should have been on notice.”

“The client’s unreliable.”

“Yes. But his relatives seem to have him in line. I think some money might help him, Sandy. Rehab. Grief counseling. Whatever. I trust Chelsi to steer him right.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“Let’s get the police reports and check to see if there were similar crimes reported in the area over the past ten years. File a notice that I’m in as Hanna’s attorney and send a copy of the notice to Betty Jo Puckett. She represents the Ace High Lodge.”

“Betty Jo Puckett?”

“You know her?”

“I met her. She has a problem in the tact department.”

Nina smiled, saying, “Report anything else you hear.”

“Before you go, what else do you need?”

“Get the file made up. I’ll get going on drafting the Response to the Motion to Dismiss after court. There is a long line of precedents regarding innkeeper liability for inadequate security. Sandy, remember Connie Francis?”

“The singer? Nineteen-sixties. ‘Lipstick on Your Collar.’ That wasn’t even her biggest hit. But even now it strikes a chord with me.” Sandy ’s husband, Joe, and she had broken up for many years and only recently remarried.

“She won an early motel-security case. The damages award was in the seven figures. I don’t think it was in California, though. The trial took place in the mid-seventies. See if you can locate the case on Lexis.”

“She was robbed?”

“She was raped. While staying in a hotel room. It was brutal. I think it almost ended her career.”

Neither woman spoke for a moment. Nina was thinking that people don’t get over violence like that. They may carry on, but they are changed forever. Finally Sandy said, her voice tight, “So some turkey fired off a wild one during a stickup and killed a pregnant third-grade teacher. Do we go looking for him, or just nick the motel?”

“We go looking.”

“Good.”

“We get started, at least.”

“Shall I call Paul?”

“He’s tied up.”

“You’ll need an investigator, and he’s the best.”

But for many reasons, Nina did not want Paul van Wagoner involved. She did not wish to see his confident face, his flirty manner, his sexual vibrations. She was over him, at least for the moment. Someday, Paul could reenter her life neutered into a professional associate. Until then, he needed to stay filed in the Great Memory file.

She said with emphasis, “Do not call Paul.”

“Okay, okay. I heard about another good investigator who might be available.”

“Good. See what you can do.” Nina trotted down the hall and climbed into her old Bronco. Five minutes until court. She bumped off the curb into the street.

There’s an advantage to small-town law. She would make it to court right on time.

3

TWO DAYS LATER, JUST AFTER FIVE, Nina drove north on the Nevada side of the road that circled Lake Tahoe.

Her response had been filed with the court that morning, and opposing attorney Betty Jo Puckett was nothing if not decisive. She had called Nina within an hour of the faxed service to her office and invited Nina to have a drink with her at her home in Incline Village, on the North Shore.

In all her time practicing law at Tahoe, Nina had never been invited to the home of another lawyer. A talk like this would ordinarily occur in a paneled office where computers clicked and whirred just outside the door. The reason, she had long ago decided, was that she was one of the few women lawyers in town. Men could meet after work, but a meeting with a woman lawyer caused gossip and trouble at home.

She hoped Ms. Puckett would be reasonable. Maybe she’d even be a congenial person, a new friend. Nina snorted at herself as she waited at the Stateline light. A new friend! The woman was a lawyer on the other side of a case, for Pete’s sake!

At least she’d enjoy the forty-five-minute drive.

Rush hour does not exactly exist on the twenty-five-mile stretch between the south and north shores of Lake Tahoe. Traffic may be slowed by gawkers, by people pulling over to park at the nude beaches, by the construction projects that last all summer, but the population for a real traffic jam just isn’t there.

Just barely over the Nevada state line, extending for a few blocks along Highway 50 on the South Shore, the gaming industry reigned supreme. “Gaming” had a much nicer ring than “gambling.” “Gaming” implied ingenuity, and Nina did admit poker and blackjack to a realm where gambling could ascend into skill. Most people played the slots, though, and everyone knew that slots were the main source of casino revenue.

The casino district’s face-lift was almost complete, down to a new gondola gliding up the slopes of the Heavenly ski resort. Old Cecil’s Liquors with its narrow aisles and products piled to the ceiling had been replaced by the new Cecil’s, twice as expensive, a neon sign advertising its new location, too brightly lit, too neatly stocked.

Cecil’s also had new, twenty-first-century neighbors: a bookstore, a Starbucks. The Village Center -brand-new, built with a heavy hand from fieldstone-held a hotel and expensive shops. On her left, the unregenerate originals, the T-shirt shops and tchotchke vendors, stuck it out behind shabby storefronts, still fielding plenty of customers. Raley’s Supermarket had been gussied up into chalet style. As she passed that corner, Nina searched for the lone tree in the parking lot, which had once figured in a murder case she had handled.

No tree. Progress had leveled trees, crime scenes, and favorite haunts with the same dispassion.

At Prize’s, with its house-sized treasure-chest logo looming overhead, she saw that Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina had started up. Caesars, the class act of the district, had the Reno Philharmonic playing
Carmina Burana,
but for the regulars, DJ Jazzy Jeff was spinning CDs at Club Nero.
X
-
An
Erotic Adventure
would be getting playful on Friday night at Harveys. Tall, forest-green Harrah’s looked down its nose across the boulevard from humble Bill’s, which didn’t monkey with erotica, magic, or expensive music acts, but got right to the point. Its neon marquee simply promised “Loose Slots.”

She hit another light at the end of the row, near the Lakeside Inn, the locals’ casino, the last casino before the forest crept back in. To her left now was Kahle Drive, where the casino workers lived in mobile homes and cottages facing an undeveloped meadow. A young woman with long bleached hair, a leopard-print blouse, and jeans walked her big, wild-looking mastiff, fitting symbols of the transition from civilization back to the wooded mountains.

The forest closed in, olive and brown, the sky blindingly clear and the lake on her left filtering its blue-grays now and then through the firs. With air so dry and at an altitude of over six thousand feet, everything was high-focus, almost too clear.

Off Cave Rock, a white cabin cruiser trailed dark blue waterlines. The lake looked as enormous as an inland sea. Sometimes waterlines appeared by themselves out there, sinuous ridges that had given rise to the Tahoe Tessie legend.

Just after the Carson City turnoff, the road wound up high above the lake and the Bronco passed an unmarked gated trail to the left. Nina knew from Sandy that this led down to Skunk Harbor, where the Washoe Indians had been granted an exclusive right to camp, hunt, and fish. The cove was invisible, but she could see from her high seat the untouched meadows and forests below. A couple of hikers toiled up the trail.