Skinny-dipping (10 page)

Chapter 14

There was great consternation
about my bodily safety among the Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley firm and my small but devoted personal circle.

Jackson called our insurer and doubled the amount on my life insurance key man policy, the proceeds of which went to the firm to help them survive the loss of me, a key man, in the event of any untimely and tacky demise on my part. Newly had his secretary cancel all his appointments and sent his harried partner to his hearings so he could personally escort me everywhere. Bonita had her priest come and pray over me, and she herself pressed a silver saint of somebody on a chain—the saint of endangered lawyers, I guessed—into my hands. Ashton and Jennifer invited me to stay with them at Ashton's house. Fred and Olivia invited me to stay at their house, where a wall of Rottweilers would surely protect me from anything short of the Antichrist or a meltdown at the Crystal River nuclear power plant just upwind from Sarasota.

Sam Santuri did not invite me to stay with him, though I saw him checking out Newly again and looking at me in a sort of “What do you see in him?” way while he finished up the investigating police thing with me. He did, however, offer to assign a patrol car to watch my house. I resisted the urge to point out the obvious—that no one was shooting at my house—as I've learned the hard way that men don't usually like a smart-alecky retort at their own expense.

The night after the shooting, Fred and Olivia brought over one of their big male Rottweilers, Jack the Bear. Olivia had him sniff me and gave him explicit instructions on protecting me, and Fred and Olivia eyed Newly but didn't say anything. We all had a round of Absolut vodka, and I furtively popped a kava capsule in the bathroom. Only after Fred and Olivia left did we discover that Jack wouldn't let Newly get within five feet of me.

Jack the Bear slept that night on the floor by my bed and didn't, I might add, snore at all. Newly complained, but he slept on the futon in the guest room, his door open in case I called out in peril.

Despite all this outpouring of concern over the days that followed and the constant companionship of Jack the Bear, there was, as Sam Santuri pointed out during a follow-up visit, still some question as to who was the target of the shooting spree.

“The sniper didn't have good aim,” Sam said.

“Thank goodness,” I said.

“The whole thing doesn't make much sense.”

“And I was hoping you could explain it to me,” I said, forcing my face into a girl simper.

“From the damage to your car and your clothing and the broken glass, we can account for the four shots you heard. We were lucky and recovered a projectile in your car. It's a twenty-two-caliber bullet, but it's badly deformed and I doubt the lab will be able to match it to a particular firearm. If you don't already know, a twenty-two can be fired from a revolver, a semiautomatic pistol, or a rifle. We didn't find any ejected cartridges. This suggests a twenty-two-caliber revolver. There used to be about eight million of them floating around. Some pretty good, the rest just junk like the ones that were put together in Miami. Nowadays, since all the gun-control stuff, cops'll get shot at with a MacTen or an Uzi instead of a Saturday-night special. But that's what the evidence at the scene suggests. That you and the doctor were shot at with a Saturday-night special. They're notoriously inaccurate.”

Wow, I thought, that was the most Sam had ever said at one time. I let the meaning sift in. “So somebody shot at us with a notoriously inaccurate gun?”

“Maybe,” Sam queried, “somebody just wanted to scare Dr. Randolph? Or you?”

Worked pretty darn well, I thought, noting privately that my herbal kava quota was getting up there into liver-damage-alert territory.

But somebody needed to e-mail or call or fax and tell me exactly what I was being warned off of because, as I repeatedly explained to Sam, I personally did not have a clue.

In the meantime, I had filed another motion for a continuance in the veggie baby case, even though a new trial date had not yet been set. Getting shot at along with the defendant ought to be worth at least another couple of months' delay before the trial date was reset.

Continuances aside, and as if I didn't have enough crap to cope with, Dr. Randolph was campaigning to have me fired as his attorney, despite the provision in his liability insurance contract that says the insurance company—that is, Henry, as the claims adjuster—picks the defense attorney. Dr. Randolph had it in his head that everything that sucked in his life was my fault, and he didn't want a girl lawyer even if she didn't get shot at. Naturally, he bitched to Henry and Jackson both about replacing me as his trial attorney. Jackson, fed up with the many mutual bitching phone sessions between Henry, himself, and the irritatingly snide doctor about kicking me off the case, scheduled a lunch meeting at his favorite eating place, the Ivy Club. “We're going to settle this, once and for all,” he barked.

Naturally, the Ivy Club, which charged a monthly fee so its members wouldn't have to eat with riffraff—as if the prices at most Sarasota lunch spots didn't take care of that on their own—took a dim view of Jack the Bear, my guard dog.

Jackson and Henry took a dim view of Newly, my guard man.

So there I was, totally unprotected, the only woman, sitting at a table in a swank and over-air-conditioned private eating establishment, surrounded by Jackson, who I feared was still mad at me for raising my voice at him in front of Ashton; Dr. Randolph, who for inexplicable reasons thought I was responsible for his being shot at; and Henry, sweet, affable, malleable Henry.

Henry was my only ally, I thought. A man I could outtalk, outmaneuver, terrorize, and probably physically beat up even on a day when I was wearing a pink sweater and feeling demure.

In other words, I was strictly on my own.

While the waiter tried to coax us into committing to the daily special (allegedly fresh trout with new potatoes and a salad of mixed greens), Dr. Randolph made clear for the hundredth time that he personally couldn't stand me, and that Henry, as the claims handler for his malpractice liability policy, must hire him another attorney and another law firm, as apparently his distaste for me now flowed over toward Jackson.

Henry bleated and peeped a bit in the early rounds, signifying nothing.

“By God, I trained that girl myself,” Jackson thundered.

At thirty-four, I thought I qualified as a woman, but I had better sense than to interrupt Jackson on a tear.

“And don't give me that girls-can't-try-cases crap.” Jackson pounded his water glass into the table. “Lilly's as tough as either of you.”

Okay, damning by faint praise on the “tough” issue.

Unswayed, Dr. Randolph threatened Henry with a bad-faith suit if he didn't authorize replacing me with a “real attorney.” I decided not to explain to Dr. Randolph that what he meant was a breach of contract case, that bad faith technically referred to a liability insurer's failure to negotiate a settlement in good faith, but I was going to take him on over the “real attorney” phrase.

But then, before I could swallow my coffee and speak, Henry, my alleged ally, surprised me by saying that perhaps, maybe, possibly, since Dr. Randolph and I obviously had a personality conflict, I should withdraw and that the insurance company could hire Dr. Randolph another attorney and another law firm.

Jackson slapped Henry across the hand with his napkin, and the waiter, apparently at a loss for getting any of us to order anything, simply brought a round of bread to go with our coffee and left us to our bickering.

Henry, rather forcibly for him, again said to the table at large that the company should hire another attorney and, given my “obvious inability to work well with Dr. Randolph,” I should surrender the file. This, he said, would be cheaper than defending a bad-faith suit, a misnomer that Henry knew better than to repeat, but I was too indignant that Henry wanted to paint me as the one with the “obvious inability” to point this mistake out. Weren't Henry and I friends? Buddies from way back. What in the world was troubling Henry that he wanted to pry the Randolph file out of my hands and give it to a perfect stranger?

Jackson, slitting his eyes into that had-enough look, suddenly jumped up from his chair. “Lilly Cleary's the best damn trial attorney in Sarasota. If I'd had a company of men in 'Nam who could think and move as fast as Lilly can, I'd've taken the whole damn country. She's the only lawyer I know who can pull your sorry butt out of the fire. You want to set the record for the biggest judgment in Florida against a doctor, you go get somebody else. Otherwise, you'd better get on your knees and give thanks she's agreed to take your case.”

Nobody said a word.

Everybody in the Ivy Club was looking at Jackson.

The waiter ran over, and Jackson sat down, looked at me, and roared, “Now, Lilly, order something normal.”

I ordered the daily special for all of us and felt a blush of pleasure glowing across my face.

Jackson thought I was a good trial attorney.

He believed in me.

Henry and Dr. Randolph became deeply intrigued by their butter and rolls and didn't speak or make eye contact with Jackson, or me. Fine, I thought, you little worms. Eat your cow fat and white bread. But I wanted to get up and dance around the table. And here I'd thought Jackson was still mad at me.

While he surely understood that he'd won, as he usually did, by the force of his own conviction, Jackson iced his cake by explaining his own girl-factor theory to Dr. Randolph. As a woman of child-bearing age, with the ability to look and act sweet and sympathetic, I would be a gentle touch for cross-examining the plaintiff good-mother (which would have to be done with white kid gloves, Jackson explained, to avoid looking as if we were picking on her and pissing off the jury) and conducting the direct examination of Dr. Randolph on the stand, and my obviously sympathetic, sweet, feminine, demure, ladylike, maternal, trusting, even charming girl factor would, thus, convey to the jury that Dr. Randolph was a man a woman could absolutely trust; that is, he didn't screw up in delivering the baby. Quite a burden to lay on my estrogen.

The nervous waiter was hovering again, placing plates of the main course more or less in front of us, and Jackson shooed him away as soon as the plates touched the table.

As I pretended to eat my food, I realized that Jackson had sucked me in deeper. Before his stand-up routine on my behalf, I hadn't cared two whits whether Dr. Randolph got a new attorney or not. I didn't particularly want to try the case, but it wouldn't have been the first time a client and I hissed and spat at each other during a trial. But now I was on fire to try this case, to win it, to live up to Jackson's faith in me.

“Stop messing with your food, Lilly,” Jackson said. “Just eat it.”

After our luncheon, I spun my wheels and churned my files and agitated the rest of the afternoon, while Bonita went quietly about the important tasks. That night, at my invitation, Olivia came over to teach Jack the Bear that Newly was allowed to get near me, even touch me.

Olivia greeted Newly by asserting, “I remember you.”

Her tone of voice revealed nothing about whether this was a good memory or a bad one.

“Sure,” Newly said, extending his hand and smiling, “the other night, at Lilly's office.”

Jack the Bear growled at Newly as he reached his hand toward Olivia, and she tapped the dog on the noise lightly and took Newly's hand.

“No, the petitions, in 'ninety-eight, to persuade the county planning department to deny the variance granting Wal-Mart the right to build on the property next to Oscar Scherer.”

“Oh, sure, you're the scrub jay lady.”

Turned out Newly had been a big help to her, rounding up a whole crew of his clients to testify before the planning committee about the value of that acreage to them personally, as it was the nesting and breeding ground for the scrub jays and gopher turtles that pulled them into Oscar Scherer State Park on a regular basis.

“I love the way those little birds will come and sit right smack on top of you,” Newly said, and I wondered how all this had happened without my knowing it, but 1998 was the year I was off busy being in love with the dermatologist who eventually broke my heart. A great many things had slipped past me that year.

“Could use your help again,” Olivia said, and she and Newly went into the kitchen, Jack the Bear in tow and growling still, and they sat and discussed saving the scrub jays from the evil doctors' plans of putting up the medical arts building.

I made green tea for all of us and pretended to listen, but I was caught up in replaying the mysterious tape in my head of who killed Dr. Trusdale, and why, and what could that possibly have to do with Dr. Randolph, and (or?) me.

An hour after Olivia left, having vented her spleen about the evil doctors who would put a profitable location of a building ahead of little bluebirds, Newly and I discovered that Jack the Bear still wouldn't let him near me.

Later that night I dreamed of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. I was standing on its girders, and then suddenly they were falling, crashing into the murky black waters of Tampa Bay, with me, a small, clinging person on the crumpling metal and concrete, hurtling toward sure death.

Before I crashed into the water, I came awake with a start and a small cry.

Jack the Bear leaped into the bed, nuzzled my face, licked my cheek, and put a protective paw on my shoulder. I petted the big dog's broad head and contemplated popping a kava capsule, but the health food stores don't sell these herbs cheap and I didn't want to waste it if I was going back to sleep anyway.

From the guest room, Newly's snores continued unabated. So much for his sentry duty. Jack snuggled against me, and I put an arm around his wide black shoulders, closed my eyes, and hoped for sleep.