Wildcat Wine

by Claire Matturro

  Calculating that if I made lunch out of a pot of coffee and an organic dried nut granola bar from a box stashed in my desk, I could bill at least three, maybe four hours, I pulled open my newest legal malpractice file. I was to defend an attorney who I rapidly concluded was an idiot for failing to correctly calculate the two-year statute of limitations on his client’s case. Then I jumped up.

  If Tired hadn’t already gone through Kenneth’s office here, he would.

  Before Tired searched it, I sure wanted to go through that office a second time to make damn certain that any traces of whatever Kenneth might have had against Bonita were removed from Tired’s potential discovery. I also wanted to destroy any copies of Kenneth’s pleading on behalf of the bottling company against Bonita—paper and computer both. If Tired learned of any of that, he might conceive of a motive on Bonita’s part to shoot Kenneth.

  Practically running down the hallway, I passed a covey of law clerks who parted like the Red Sea to let me through. When I arrived in Cristal’s cubbyhole, she was shredding paper in a portable shredder. Not giving a rat’s ass about what she was destroying, and thinking in general that this was a good idea, I smiled and spoke and she nodded.

  “Is Kenneth’s office unlocked?” I asked.

  “Yes, but you can’t go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “That investigator from the sheriff’s office. The chubby one. He wanted to go through there but Jackson wouldn’t let him. Jackson explained all about client confidentiality and all, and insisted he had to get a warrant or Kenneth’s clients and The Florida Bar would be screaming at us. So nobody is supposed to go in there until that cop guy gets back.”

  “How long did Tired say it would take to get a warrant?”

  “Tired, yeah, that was his name. He didn’t say, but it’s just a matter of somebody typing up the paper and finding a judge to sign it.”

  “You know this how?”

  “I’m a certified paralegal. I know about as much as most lawyers. More than some.”

  So Tired could be walking in any minute with his warrant, I thought as my heart gave a conspicuous thump-thump. I pushed toward the door.

  “Hey!” Cristal spoke rather sharply for an underling and jumped up with the speed of a mad cat to physically block Kenneth’s door. “You can’t go in there. Tired said he didn’t have the manpower to post a guard, so I assured him nobody would go in there.”

  “Cristal, I won’t hurt anything. I just need to take care of something. Real quick.”

  Cristal pursed her lips and stood her ground. She wore a red blouse and was really very striking, and I thought blondes should always wear red, and then I wondered if her hair was naturally that shade of blond.

  Putting aside hair comparison, I reiterated, “Cristal, I need to go through Kenneth’s office. Now.” I put effort into sounding like a Boss Person.

  “Look, I gave my word to that officer.”

  “All right, so you told me to stay out,” I said and pushed her aside. Cristal scrambled to regain her balance and stop me, but I was determined. We more or less tumbled into Kenneth’s office together, with her grabbing at my arms to pull me back and me yelling at her to leave me alone, that I was a partner and a boss and she’d better do what I asked and to take her damned hands off me. She had a darn good grip on my left arm and was tugging at me with surprising strength.

  As we spun closer to a fight, I heard rustling papers and turned toward Kenneth’s desk, with Cristal still pulling on me. To my amazement, Jackson was crouched behind Kenneth’s desk, ransacking his way through his dead partner’s credenza. Jackson, having no doubt overheard Cristal and me jousting, thundered at me, “Leave Cristal alone. Don’t you practice law anymore, or do you just push people around?”

  Oh, like there’s a huge difference. And why exactly was he defending Cristal when she was the one who was assaulting me?

  Cristal, to her credit, sized it up quickly and disappeared out the door, back to her cubbyhole.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted out, realizing just a half second too late that I had the wrong tone for addressing Jackson, especially when he was wearing his mad-grizzly expression.

  “What are you doing here?” he thundered back.

  Okay, he asked loudest. “I need to find some papers that Kenneth and I were working on and I—”

  “You and Kenneth never worked on anything together once I pulled you away from his workers’ comp crap. Now, what are you doing in here?”

  “He, ah, he was going to file this suit against Bonita on behalf of that bottling company, a relief-from-judgment complaint, trying to get her wrongful-death award reversed. He might have some evidence that would support this. I wanted to find it if he does.”

  Jackson looked at me like I had said that Kenneth was really the Evil Witch or the Evil Snow Queen, or whatever the hell she was, and I was looking for the ruby slippers.

  “Evidence of what? On what grounds?” His voice echoed against the aqua silk wallpaper of Kenneth’s office.

  “Just totally bogus stuff.”

  “Such as?”

  “He was claiming Bonita deliberately lied and defrauded the court and that those kids weren’t really Felipe’s.”

  “Felipe was her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if he could prove that, which I doubt, he wouldn’t be likely to overturn the whole judgment.”

  “But he could make her life hell trying.”

  “Litigation as extortion,” Jackson said, catching on right away. “So what did he really want?”

  Okay, in for a dime, in for a dollar. Ignoring timeline confusions, I simplified down to the known tangible. “A sack of cash.”

  Jackson stared at me long enough that I started to sweat.

  “You’re not dealing drugs, are you?”

  Oh, like that’s the only way to get a paper sack full of cash. “No, I am neither a fool nor a criminal.” I hoped that was true on both counts, but in any event, it drew another long stare from Jackson.

  During the pause, while Jackson studied my expression and I sweated more, I blurted out, “What are you looking for?”

  “His billing sheets. You know that man was billing thirty-hour days, divided up between different clients so none of them would catch the overbilling. I don’t know how smart that sheriff’s investigator guy is, or if he’d understand about billing fraud, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  “So that’s what Cristal’s shredding, his bills?”

  Jackson barely nodded.

  “We need to get into his computer,” I said. “But he’s got his files passworded.”

  “How do you know his files are password protected?”

  “Look, Jackson, let’s get Cristal in here to help us bust into his files and erase everything. Better yet, let’s take Kenneth’s computer outside and run his Hummer over it.”

  “You’re forgetting, we’re on a network, we’d have to trash every computer in the place.”

  “Then we erase Kenneth’s files from the hard drive now and hope for the best,” I said, wondering how far Tired would go with Kenneth’s computer.

  “Cristal, get in here,” Jackson bellowed, and she came running back in.

  Though I thought Cristal was hesitant about giving up Kenneth’s password, which was lepidoptera, whatever the hell that was, she told us, and Jackson and I had Kenneth’s computer on and were pulling up his files before you could look up lepidoptera in the dictionary.

  Once Cristal understood we were mostly interested in erasing stuff, she was suddenly Miss Helpful, and began to explain how she could pull up all of Kenneth’s files at once and show us how to erase them in one zap, instead of a file-by-file, take-all-day sort of delete.

  But before she started the process, Edith, our officer-manager jackal, came barging in without knocking or without greeting Cristal or me. She waved papers at Jackson. “Kenneth never signed that personal guarantee on the firm’s bank loan like h
e was supposed to. Every partner was obliged to sign it. That was the bank’s agreement.”

  “Son of a bitch refused to sign until I promised him I’d back his demand for a special performance, midyear bonus,” Jackson said huffily.

  So this was important how, now that he was dead?

  “Well, the banker I spoke with was adamant—all the partners had to sign the guarantee,” Edith said.

  “No problem,” Cristal said, and took the papers, put them flat on the edge of Kenneth’s desk, and picked up a pen. While I peered over her shoulder, Cristal signed Kenneth’s name, backdated the form to two weeks ago, and handed it to Edith.

  Edith stared at the signature a moment. “That should shut the bank up,” she said. And she stomped out.

  As most of the secretaries could do passable forgeries of their attorney’s signatures, I wasn’t surprised by her talent. However, I was amazed that Edith and Jackson were willing to let Cristal sign Kenneth’s name to a bank document. Bonita limits her uses of forging my name to correspondences and the occasional firm-reimbursement form.

  But then Jackson said, “Let’s get on with it,” and we all leaned over Kenneth’s computer screen.

  Cristal pulled up a list of all of Kenneth’s files and vacated the computer chair for Jackson, who had his finger on the key to delete the whole collection when I noticed that one of the recent files was labeled EStall.

  “Whoa,” I shouted, causing Cristal to flinch and Jackson to glower.

  EStall could be short for Earl Stallings. And if Kenneth had something to do with the dead vintner, then I damn sure wanted to know what.

  “Let me pull this one up, real quick,” I said. After I made Jackson get out of Kenneth’s chair, I sat down and opened the EStall file.

  Despite my anticipation, there was nothing but general information on rudimentary patent law. Essentially boring and nothing that Kenneth should be messing around with, as he was not a licensed patent attorney. Certainly nothing about Earl Stallings there. To be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything about Earl, I did a “find” search for every variation of Earl and Stallings and wine and vineyard I could think of while Jackson made huffy, hurry-up noises over my shoulder.

  Though neither Earl nor Stallings showed up as search terms, I couldn’t figure what else EStall could stand for. But nothing in the file suggested any connection between poor dead Earl, mauled by his own grape picker, and dead Kenneth, shot six times by someone driving my car or its twin.

  While I pondered what else to do, Jackson reached over my shoulder, clicked the EStall file closed, then deleted every one of Kenneth’s files into never-never land. Jackson was not one to be indecisive.

  But I wasn’t so sure that deleting all of Kenneth’s files was such a great idea. Of course, Cristal would have copies of all the legitimate pleadings on her hard drive, and there were paper copies of anything we would need to continue in the finest representation of Kenneth’s clients, clients who, thanks to the Cristal and Jackson covert operation, would probably never know Kenneth had been fraudulently augmenting their bills.

  Cristal and Jackson, no doubt, thought we were fine, just erasing any evidence of wrongdoing.

  Tampering with the evidence didn’t bother us, we were trial attorneys.

  Cristal wiped our fingerprints off Kenneth’s computer, the credenza, the desk, the filing cabinet, and the door.

  “That way,” she said, and smiled one of those sweet Girl Scout Angel smiles that was wholly at odds with her Victoria’s Secret body, “I can assure that cop guy that no one was in Kenneth’s office today, just like he asked me, and he can’t prove who erased Kenneth’s computer. We’ll just say Kenneth must’ve.”

  Smart for a blonde, I thought, and swallowed my misgivings. Whatever qualms I had didn’t matter anyway, this was Jackson’s show, and he grumped a thank-you to Cristal.

  I apologized to Cristal for my earlier impudence and she assured me it was all right, saying, “I’m never surprised anymore by what you attorneys do.”

  Jackson escorted me back to my office, while explaining that he was personally calling all of Kenneth’s clients to reassure them that the firm would continue to provide quality representation for them.

  “Please send some of the noncomp files my way,” I said.

  Jackson nodded. Then, as if he’d already forgotten my request, he said, “Guess we don’t have to give him that midyear bonus and pay off his damn Hummer after all,” and turned and marched down the hallway.

  Precisely at 1:45 P.M., and armed with nothing except generalized anxiety, I drove my suspect car to the sheriff’s department parking lot.

  Philip was already there waiting for me, standing outside by his own car. In the parking lot, blue Hondas were collected in a straight line. I had to admire Tired’s efforts in rounding up four other late-model blue Hondas, one an obvious repaint job, plus a newer Honda, and even a green one.

  Philip led me inside with a minimum of pleasantries on both sides.

  A dumpy woman in an expensive dress, and a really very sharp haircut, was standing around with Tired and that Stan man. Tired nodded at me and then he and Stan led the woman out of my sight, into an office.

  When Tired came back, we shook hands, and Tired took my keys and we all went outside and watched him line up my car, third from the left, with the rest of the suspects.

  Philip and I backed off to join a small circle of other curious onlookers, and the well-coiffed woman came outside.

  It took her all of a minute to pick out my car.

  “That’s such an intense blue,” she said. “You can’t help but remember that. And those windows. Can’t see through them.”

  Philip immediately began protesting the admissibility of such a lineup. As he and Tired and Stan began to argue, I realized my head really hurt and I was standing in a parking lot in the glare of the midafternoon sun with nothing but two granola bars to fuel my blood sugar. A bit dizzy, I walked off toward shade.

  Philip followed, took me inside, brought me a Coke from a machine, didn’t laugh at me when I had to wash the top with soap and water from the bathroom, and we sat for a bit in the relative cool of the entranceway to the sheriff’s office and I gathered he was over being mad.

  Neither of us gave it much thought at the time that we’d left Tired and Stan with my car and my keys perfectly unattended for a good half hour or so.

  Chapter 23

  By the time I got back to my office after the car lineup, my first priority was to find Bonita and Benny. No one answered at their house. I tried Henry’s number. No answer. Finally I thought to call Benny’s aunt, Gracie, who was Bonita’s older sister and had once been a nun in one of those Central American counties where life was often violent and usually short. As a result, or at least this was my suspicion, Gracie was a solitary woman who spent some serious time with her wine. Despite some chilliness on her part toward me, Gracie was a rock for Bonita, the first person Bonita called upon, and hence, I knew, she was the first hit on Bonita’s speed dial.

  Gracie took a few minutes either to decide whether to tell me or to figure out exactly who I was. “She and the children and that pink-faced man all went to Busch Gardens. You know, that fancy zoo and theme park. Up in Tampa.”

  Yes, thank you, in all my years in Sarasota, a mere fifty miles south of Tampa, I’d managed never to have heard of Busch Gardens.

  “Thank you. If you see Bonita, that is, when you see her, tell her it is terribly important that she find me. Immediately. And not to talk to any law-enforcement officers.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Just office stuff, don’t worry.”

  After hanging up, I thought, Okay, Busch Gardens. Not where a family of murderers would go on a fine spring Saturday, but exactly where nice, normal people—people who don’t plug other people with six bullets—would go. I felt marginally better.

  Now, I needed to find Dave. Dave who was staying at Waylon’s duplex. Waylon whose last name I had neve
r once heard anybody say. I called Philip to see if he had a number or address for Waylon or Dave, but got no answer. Then I had the vaguely brilliant notion that if Dave had worked for Earl Stallings before Earl got killed, that maybe the widow had hired Dave back. I mean, she did drop the charges against him. Or maybe she would have an address for Waylon’s duplex on file, as Waylon had worked there too. Or she might explain something to me that would make sense.

  Instead of going home and making myself gorgeous for my late date with Philip, I jumped into my Honda, released as it was from police custody, and I drove out to Earl’s vineyard.

  Driving past the closed Gift and Wine Shoppe and the barn with the weird little Star Wars toys, I followed the dirt road.

  At its end was a most peculiar house, like a large, geometrical tent, shrouded in drooping fuchsia bougainvillea, elephant-ear philodendrons, and shaggy banana trees.

  I knocked on the door, and to both my relief and surprise, Farmer Dave answered.

  “Great, Dave. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Hey, sweetheart, you found me.” Dave bear-hugged me and kissed me on the mouth.

  I struggled free, too anxious and curious for snuggling. “We’ve got to talk. You need to tell me—”

  Dave did the dance of the frantic and shushed me with his hands and his mouth.

  Just as I got the message, I saw the paunch of Investigator Tired Rufus Johnson belly up to the door. Why was he here? And how’d he get here? I hadn’t seen any big-ass, black Chevy with its collection of antennae and a state license plate that was supposed to fool people as an unmarked car.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  A very good question. I wasn’t even sure I knew.

  “So what is this?” I asked. “The house, I mean. It’s most unusual.”

  “It’s a yurt,” Dave said.

  “What’s a yurt?”

  “A house like this.”

  Oh, well, talking with Dave and Delvon was sometimes like that.