And Justice for Some

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  “Okay, forget it,” James said, exasperated. “But hey, congrats on getting an acting gig.”

  She begrudged him a smile. “I didn’t think you were listening.”

  “You could have a little more faith in me,” he said. “See you around.” He nodded good-bye and continued down the street toward the community center, pleased to have had the last word. With Isobel, that was nothing short of a triumph.

  FIFTEEN

  The unexpected encounter with James left Isobel in an unremittingly grouchy mood. She accompanied Percival back to his dorm room and sat slumped on his desk chair, while he tried to engage her with stories of late-night pranks in the computer lab. Percival was a deft storyteller, and under normal circumstances she’d have been entertained. Without his usual enthusiastic audience, he eventually ran out of steam, and when one of his suitemates came back, Isobel took the opportunity to excuse herself. After hugging her good-bye, Percival held her back a moment.

  “You know, you were kind of rude to James,” he said.

  She gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, and he was all warm and fuzzy?”

  “I got the sense he was trying.”

  “Yeah. He was very trying,” she snapped.

  “Iz.”

  “What.”

  “James is obviously concerned for your well-being,” Percival said. “He just wants to make sure you don’t put yourself in danger. That tells you something.”

  “It tells me you’re on his side,” she said and left in a huff.

  On her way home, she grew even more irritated with Percival for being right and with James for prompting an uncharacteristic argument with her brother.

  A restless night’s sleep didn’t help matters, nor did Delphi’s noisy, pre-dawn preparation for an audition, which included an array of rapid-fire tongue twisters and a sotto voce recitation of Helena’s “O spite! O hell!” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Unable to grab the last hour due her, Isobel reluctantly rolled out of bed, dressed, and took herself to work early. Sarah wasn’t due in for another hour, so Isobel busied herself straightening up her desk, reading Sarah’s copies of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and researching upcoming auditions. She hoped Percival would still look up the names she’d given him, realizing guiltily that if the situation were reversed, she’d probably hold off until he apologized. But Percival was more evolved, and she was pretty sure she could trust him to make good on his promise.

  She thought back to their chance meeting with James. What Percival either hadn’t picked up on or was choosing to ignore was that James had clearly been trying to escape. He had spent the entire conversation trying to end it. If she’d been rude, she was only taking her cue from James. He was practically panting with relief when they finally parted ways.

  She pushed away from her desk and wandered into Sarah’s office. It was only eight thirty, and Sarah rarely materialized before nine. Isobel opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and flipped through the folders until she found Candy’s. Tucking the file under her arm, she returned to her cubicle, where she sat for a moment, her hands on the cover, pondering the legality of what she was doing. Sarah had already given her plenty of detail about what was in the file, and she had signed a confidentiality agreement.

  Fighting the nagging suspicion that she was still somehow out of bounds, she opened the folder. Clipped to the email from Sarah’s colleague at surrogate’s court was a full copy of Harrison’s will. She flipped through until she found the page of bequests. It was exactly as Sarah had said. Not that Isobel thought she’d been lying, but she was hoping Sarah had inadvertently left someone out. The rest of the will yielded nothing interesting, so she moved on to the correspondence between lawyers from the divorce proceedings. These proved more compelling, largely because they revealed a jocular sparring tone between them that Isobel found surprising, given the contentious aspect of the divorce and Sarah’s avowed dislike of Gordon Lang.

  The letters were mostly about the mystery woman seen on Harrison’s arm at the opera and, interestingly, Candy’s accusations of cruelty toward his sons, although that didn’t appear to factor into the official grounds for divorce. Still, Isobel found the inclusion intriguing and turned to the next document, which was the actual divorce agreement. She was engrossed in the finer points when she heard Sarah greeting a colleague down the hall. Isobel hurriedly closed the file and stuffed it in a side drawer of her desk. She turned to her computer and was deleting junk from her inbox when Sarah’s face appeared over the cubicle wall.

  “You’re in early,” Sarah remarked.

  “Delphi was up for an audition, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I figured I might as well be productive.”

  “Good for you.” Sarah bit into a chocolate croissant. “What’d you get done?”

  “Oh, I…” Isobel hesitated. “Cleared out my inbox. Straightened my desk. I’m not moving all that quickly, I guess. How was court yesterday?”

  Sarah’s face darkened. “I can’t tell you how much I want to strangle this asshole. I’m back again at ten. I just came in to take care of a few things. Think you can hold the fort for another day?”

  Isobel saluted. “Absolutely.”

  Sarah smiled gratefully. “It’s so nice to have an assistant I can trust.”

  Isobel felt a pang of guilt as she thought of Candy Harrison’s file. All Sarah needed to do was slide open Isobel’s desk drawer to see how misplaced her trust was.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Isobel said. “I looked up Angelina Rivington.”

  “And?”

  “She runs a commercial real estate company in New Jersey. Does that suggest a connection between her and the judge?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Not offhand.”

  She continued on to her office, and Isobel quickly pulled open the drawer and piled some other papers on top of Candy’s file so it wasn’t immediately visible. Then she returned to her computer and pulled up the website for Rivington Properties, which she hadn’t finished exploring.

  Angelina’s bio yielded only the most basic personal information: education (Rutgers), prior work experience (several other investment companies), and charity work (Head Start). Nothing about where she was from or whether she was married or had a family. Isobel clicked on the portfolio tab and ran down the list. Their investments included hotels, office buildings, retail centers, and industrial properties. She clicked on each category, but none of the company names meant anything to her. She scrolled over the executive photos, pausing over Mason Crawford, Vice President. She enlarged his photo and looked more closely.

  He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit instead of a navy blue one, but Isobel recognized Mason Crawford as the pasty-faced man at the judge’s table. Why hadn’t he questioned his colleague’s whereabouts that night? Surely he realized the empty seat was for her. But Isobel barely remembered hearing him speak at all. She closed her eyes and tried to envision the table at the critical moment. If only she could remember whether or not he was there.

  “I’m leaving.”

  Startled, Isobel opened her eyes. “Oh, okay. Anything you need me to do today?”

  “Here are a bunch of notes I need you to type.” She handed Isobel several sheets of yellow legal paper covered in a semi-legible scrawl. “Also, I need a contract drafted for a new client. Name is Wendy Mazzola. Use template two. And if you could get started on this month’s billing, that would be great.”

  “Sure. Good luck today,” Isobel said. “Is this the end of it?”

  “I’m going to push for a settlement. If opposing counsel doesn’t agree”—Sarah gave a wicked smile—”I’ve got a little something up my sleeve that might change his mind.”

  Isobel watched her go, wishing she could observe Sarah in action, and wondered what she’d had up her sleeve to get Candy Harrison that cushy divorce settlement.

  She gave Sarah fifteen minutes in case she forgot something and came back. When she didn’t, Isobel figured the coast was clear. She scooped
Candy’s file from the drawer and hurried into Sarah’s office to replace it. As she slammed the file drawer shut, she promised herself she wouldn’t do anything else that would give her boss a reason to distrust her. After all, Sarah had proven forthcoming whenever Isobel asked for help. Perhaps she would have shared Candy’s file if only Isobel had bothered to ask.

  She turned the corner to her cubicle and felt a crunch of paper underfoot. A glossy black-and-white photograph lay on the carpet. It must have slipped from Candy’s file. Her heart picked up speed at the thought that it might have been lying there all morning, where Sarah could have seen it. She stood where Sarah had been, looking over the cubicle wall, and was relieved to discover that her desk hid the photo from view. She knelt to pick it up and realized at once that it was the compromising photo of Harrison on the steps of the Metropolitan Opera House. Given that, she was hardly surprised to see Harrison in the picture.

  What made her gasp was the distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on the cheek of the buxom, flame-haired woman he was kissing.

  SIXTEEN

  “Come on, that’s totally Jemma!” Isobel gestured forcefully at the incriminating photo on the kitchen counter. “Who else has a birthmark like that? And those boobs? And that hair?”

  Delphi snatched up the photo and waved it at Isobel. “You stole this from Sarah’s office?”

  “I made a photocopy. And this picture ran in the paper. Anyone can pull it from the archives. Just because I found it inside a confidential legal file doesn’t make it any less publicly available,” Isobel insisted.

  Delphi raised a skeptical eyebrow. “If you say so.”

  “And she was there the night he was killed,” Isobel concluded triumphantly.

  “I have to admit, that’s a pretty freaky coincidence,” Delphi conceded.

  “I knew she was lying about something.” Isobel undid her ponytail and let her hair fall around her shoulders. “Does this look better?”

  Delphi tossed the photo back on the counter. “Definitely. You know the stain still shows on your blouse, though.”

  “I’m in denial. It’s my favorite shirt.” She looked down and sighed. “Peter lied about the fake blood coming out.”

  “Yeah, he’s another winner in the truth department, isn’t he?” Delphi pointed to Isobel’s chest. “You really can’t wear that.”

  “It’ll be dark in the club. I’ll wear a sweater.” Isobel set her hairbrush down emphatically. “Jemma knew Harrison. She knew when you were going to fire the gun. She was not in the room when it happened. Guess what? Jemma just got a callback for the role of prime suspect.”

  “And she killed him because…what, she’d rather have seen a Broadway show? What’s her motive?”

  Isobel threw her hands up. “Who knows? Maybe he never paid her. Maybe he gave her HPV. Maybe he beat her up.”

  “Maybe none of those things is a very strong motive for murder and you should think of something better. Come on. We’re going to be late.”

  They continued brainstorming plausible motives for Jemma as they headed downtown to The Purple Cow, where they were meeting Percival to hear Hugh play. By the time they arrived, they hadn’t come up with anything better than Jemma’s jealousy of Harrison’s wife and actual mistress. Even Isobel had to admit it was about as convincing as Murder à la Carte.

  Hugh had reserved them a table near the front, and they ordered wine and a plate of mozzarella sticks to share. Delphi and Isobel had moved on to speculation about the identity of Harrison’s mistress, when they heard Percival’s greeting.

  “Hey, bro…” Isobel’s voice died in her throat.

  “Holy shit—no way!” exclaimed the skinny girl at Percival’s side. “Isobel is your sister?”

  “You know each other?” Percival asked, flummoxed.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Isobel might have enjoyed seeing her unflappable brother at a loss, but her mind was racing, trying to reconcile impossibility with statistical likelihood.

  The girl with Percival was a Barnard student named Lily Rubin whom Isobel had met once before. It was the evening of her first date with Hugh. They’d been on their way to dinner when they’d run into James on the street. Then Lily had shown up, and although James joked that she had been stalking him at the gym, Isobel knew there was more to it than he was letting on. The pointed questions Lily asked had exposed undercurrents of jealousy in every direction, resulting a uniquely uncomfortable exchange for all of them. After Isobel and James had grown apart, Isobel had, on occasion, wondered whether Lily and James had gotten together. But as much as Isobel had hoped the answer was no, she didn’t want to think it was because Lily had thrown herself at Percival instead.

  Delphi cocked her head expectantly at Isobel. “How do you know each other?”

  “We don’t,” Isobel said coolly. “We met once on the street. Lily is a friend of James’s.”

  “Not really,” said Lily. “I just know him from the gym. Isobel knows James much better than I do.”

  Isobel shot her a look. “And you two—”

  “Are in the same philosophy class,” Percival finished.

  “You can cross-register between Barnard and Columbia, you know,” Lily chirped.

  “Yeah, I know,” Isobel said.

  “Well, pull up some chairs and order yourselves a couple of sodas,” said Delphi, taking over. “I think the set is about to start.”

  The lights dimmed, and the band came onstage.

  “You’ve been holding out on me,” Delphi whispered. “What’s the drama?”

  “Later,” Isobel hissed.

  “Hey, that’s what’s-his-name,” Lily said. “The guy who was with you on the street that night.”

  “Hugh,” offered Percival. “That’s why we’re here. To support him.”

  But Isobel wasn’t looking at Hugh. She nudged Delphi. “Does the drummer look familiar to you?”

  Delphi leaned forward and squinted. “I think I need glasses,” she mumbled. “Nope, not at all.”

  Isobel snapped her fingers. “I know! It’s the drummer from The Hostelry. And I think that’s Jack, the sax player. Andrew’s friend.”

  “Are you sure? Or are you just hoping?”

  “Remember when the drummer did that rim shot on one of Peter’s dumb lines? I looked right at him, and he winked at me. That’s definitely him.”

  The band played well, and Hugh fit in seamlessly. Isobel had never heard him play jazz piano before, and his fingers skittered across the keys with idiomatic ease and authority. As they listened, she alternated between watching Hugh and trying to read the body language between Percival and Lily. Percival would occasionally lean over to whisper something, and she would giggle. Isobel wondered whether Lily knew how young Percival was. She felt torn between wanting to reveal his comparative youth and trying to encourage her brother’s romantic prospects.

  The set ended, and the band took a bow. After a few moments, Hugh appeared at Isobel’s side, cheeks flushed, eyes shining. He gave her a kiss and pulled up a chair.

  “Well?”

  “Is the sax player’s name Jack?” she asked.

  “Why? Do you think he’s cute?”

  “I need to talk to him. Can you bring him over?”

  Hugh’s face fell. “Sure, I guess…”

  “You guys were great,” Lily enthused, picking up the cue Isobel had missed. “I loved your solo on ‘My Funny Valentine.’”

  Hugh blinked. “Oh, er, thanks. We’ve met, haven’t we?”

  “Once, on the street. I was with Isobel’s friend James, and you guys were going to Sylvia’s for dinner.”

  Isobel noted the flash of recognition in Hugh’s eyes and knew he remembered vividly.

  “Sorry, don’t recall,” he said.

  Percival narrowed his eyes at Isobel. “Since my sister has obviously left her manners at home, I’ll just introduce myself. I’m Percival. And this is Lily.”

  “Ah, Percival. Lovely to meet you at last.”

&n
bsp; “Honey?” Isobel wheedled.

  Hugh smiled bravely and stood up. “I’ll see if I can grab Jack.”

  “Well, I think that went swimmingly, don’t you?” Delphi said snidely.

  Isobel gestured helplessly. “What?”

  “He was dying to hear you tell him how well he played. Didn’t you see how crushed he was?”

  “He knows I think he’s wonderful,” Isobel said distractedly.

  Delphi and Percival exchanged a glance.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to remind him from time to time,” Percival said.

  “Isobel, this is Jack.” Hugh introduced the sax player, who had straight, dark-blond hair and ruddy cheeks. “Isobel was so taken with your playing, she wouldn’t stop bugging me until I promised to bring you over.”

  “Hey, I know you—both of you. From the other night.” Jack took Hugh’s chair and gestured to Isobel. “Only you were covered in fake blood, and you…” He turned to Delphi. “…were under arrest.”

  “Briefly,” said Delphi with a shiver.

  Isobel smiled triumphantly. “I thought that was you.”

  “You mean the night of your murder mystery gig?” Hugh asked.

  Isobel nodded. “Jack was in the band.”

  “Did they tell you about that?” Jack asked Hugh. “It was crazy.”

  “Did you see anything?” Isobel asked Jack.

  He shook his head. “We were on break. I wasn’t even in the room when it happened.”

  “How come you didn’t respond to my email?”

  Jack frowned. “What email?”

  “I wrote to you about—” Isobel started at the sudden memory of Sarah interrupting her. “Wait, I drafted it but I don’t think I actually sent it.”

  He leaned forward with interest. “What did it say?”

  “I was hoping you knew where Andrew was. He ran off that night.”

  “He did?” Jack glanced around the table, his eyes resting for a moment on Delphi. “I have no idea. Haven’t been in touch with him. Why?”

  “I have his check. Peter forgot to pay us, and I collected them all when I got mine. You’d think Andrew would want to get paid.”