“Only twice. Both times I ran into her on the beach. It wasn’t planned.”
Her cell phone began to ring.
“Don’t answer it.”
But she shook her head. “I have to. It might be the office with an emergency.”
“Can’t they get another Senior PD to tell whatever idiot has been arrested tonight not to talk to the cops?”
But she had already picked up her phone and said, “Kathryn Andrews.”
“Kathryn, Hugh Mahoney here. Is this a bad time?”
“Well, I have company. Paul Curtis came over for dinner.”
“I apologize, then, for the interruption. I just wanted you to know that Wycliffe called today and is demanding I make you available for deposition right away.”
“I–I see.”
“I won’t pull any punches. Being deposed is not going to be fun or easy.”
Kathryn felt her stomach churn. “I understand.”
“Not really. You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s going to be like at this point. We need to get together to begin preparing. I was hoping you’d be free to come to dinner at my house on Friday night. I’d love for you to meet my wife. She grew up in Atlanta, too. You’ll find it easier to talk over a good dinner than in a cold conference room at the firm.”
“Of course I will be there, Mr. Mahoney. What time?”
“Seven. And please call me Hugh.”
Kathryn punched the end-call button and looked over at Paul.
“I gather that was Hugh Mahoney.”
“Wycliffe wants to take my deposition right away.”
Paul nodded. “That would be their next step.”
“Why?”
“They’ll be looking for even the faintest crack in your marriage to use against you. Being deposed won’t be an enjoyable experience.”
“That’s what Hugh said.”
“Hey, you look worried. Don’t be. You’ll be in the best possible hands. They’ll give you all the do’s and don’ts.”
She gave him a wry smile. “Funny, I went to one of the best law schools in the country, and I don’t know how to have my deposition taken.”
“You’ll do fine. Come on, let’s stop being sad and serious. Let’s walk over to Cass Street, find a bar with a loud band, and dance. You know that’s what Tom and Steve would want us to do.”
She smiled. “You’re right.”
“And give some thought to ‘us.’ Tom and Steve would want that, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thursday night, April 10, 2014, 1845 Ocean Place, Pacific Beach
Her house was deadly quiet when Kathryn got home from work at seven. She’d deliberately lingered at the office because she had dreaded this moment of walking into the too-quiet house suffused with the last orange-pink rays of sunset.
She hurried to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of her usual cheap white wine from Trader Joe’s. She’d nearly finished it by the time she’d shrugged out of her suit and pulled on black yoga pants and a green hoodie. She stared down at the empty glass and considered whether to pour herself another. She was drinking too much, but fortunately she was the only one who noticed. At first she’d told herself she’d stop when the pain stopped. But when the pain didn’t stop, she told herself drinking was pain management.
She went back to the kitchen and poured another glass. The wine was all she wanted, but to make herself feel less guilty, she threw a frozen lasagna into the toaster oven. White wine and lasagna. Tom would laugh at her.
She looked around the silent kitchen, wondering if his spirit ever came back to hover here. In the early days, she had talked to him, hoping by some miracle there would be a response. But the silence night after night drove the stake of grief deeper and deeper into her heart. Tom was dead. Tom wasn’t coming back.
The oven dinged, and she fished out the sagging paper tray of tomato sauce and noodles. She balanced it on a plate and went into the living room and curled up on the sofa.
The first bite had all the charm of cardboard. She looked over at Tom’s medals and trophies and said, “We’d have gone out before we’d have eaten this.”
Tom had been an excellent cook, and he had prided himself on fast, healthy meals even after a day on his feet in trial. “If the law thing doesn’t work out, I’ll make a fortune as a short-order cook,” he’d always teased her.
She went on chewing the tasteless pasta, thinking about Paul’s warning of the night before. “And they’ll be looking for even the faintest crack in your marriage.”
Had she given enough thought to that risk before she’d decided to sue Wycliffe? Of course she’d had a vague idea that the drug company would try to show she was unhappily married to reduce the amount of her loss if the jury held the company responsible for Tom’s death. But unhappily married was so far from the truth that she’d discounted the possibility all together. Until last night when Paul had said, “faintest crack.”
She and Tom had not set out to be childless. The day they had planted the white roses around the front door, they had also planned their family: three children–boys or girls–it didn’t matter. But they had wanted a few years alone as a couple. Time to get their feet on the ground in their new jobs. Time to spend the weekends pulling up the dingy wall-to-wall carpets and putting down wood-laminate floors. Time to take out the molding 1960's tile in the bath and a half and put in shiny ceramic tile in patterns they designed themselves. Time to put in new kitchen cabinets with glass-front doors and new appliances.
But thirty came, and Kathryn began to hear the clock ticking. They agreed she should stop the pill. And three months later, to her great joy, she was pregnant. Tom came home one night with a tiny little surf board, and they put it in the spare bedroom that was going to be the nursery. She joked the baby had a surf board before he or she had a bed.
Two weeks later, the cramping and bleeding began in the middle of the night. Tom rushed her to the emergency room. By morning, she had miscarried. When he brought her home that afternoon, he’d hidden the little board in a corner of the garage. Except it wasn’t really hidden. Kathryn saw it every time she did the laundry or took out a bag of trash. Her heart ached.
Still, they’d been confident it wouldn’t take long to become pregnant again. But thirty edged upward, year-by-year, until Kathryn was thirty-five. Now they made love in time to her ovulation schedule. Tired or not, romantic or not, they labored to make a baby where they had once spontaneously and joyfully expressed their passion for each other.
The grim discipline wore them down. Tom escaped to the ocean more and more often after work or first thing in the morning instead of obeying the demands of her ovulation clock. Thirty-five edged upward to thirty-six. Kathryn realized their life as a childless couple had solidified. They went to Rosarito Beach for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. They spent Labor Day in Carmel. They went to Cancun for Thanksgiving and sometimes for Christmas. They gave parties on New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, and each other’s birthdays. And at Christmas. On the day in August when Kathryn celebrated her thirty-seventh birthday, she found the tiny little surf board gone. And her heart broke all over again.
“Oh, I gave it to Shannon,” Tom said a few days later when she summoned the courage to ask.
“Who is Shannon?”
“She’s Steve’s new girlfriend. Or soon-to-be new girlfriend. They just met, but they seem perfect for each other.”
“Does she have children?” Kathryn demanded, making no effort to hide the bitterness in her voice.
Tom laughed. “No, of course not. She’s only twenty-six. She teaches kids to surf.”
Kathryn tossed and turned all night, thinking about the little board and Tom’s signal that he’d given up on having a family. The next morning after he’d left to surf with Steve, ignoring her few fertile hours for August, she lay miserably alone, haunted by the little surfboard, until she got up, put on a hat and sunglasses, and followed him to the beach where she caught her first
glimpse of Shannon Freeman.
Shannon’s slim form rose up out of the ocean and onto a surfboard like a goddess in command of her kingdom. She was six feet of wiry, lean muscle. Her wet suit hugged her taught body like a second skin. Her long blonde hair was pulled up into a ponytail that sat high on her head.
She rode her wave into shore, confidently navigating every dip and curl without falling off. At the end of her ride, she squatted gracefully over the board and leaped into the shallow water. She looked back at Tom, who was just behind her, and laughed, shaking her ponytail so that her blonde hair gleamed like gold in the sun.
Kathryn watched Tom come up beside her and give her a hug that seemed to last a moment too long to be just friends. But Steve rolled in just behind them and didn’t react as if anything were amiss. The three of them lay down on their boards and paddled back into the waves. Kathryn didn’t wait to see any more, and she didn’t want Tom to know what she had seen. Overwhelmed with guilt for spying on him, she turned and hurried away, feeling with gut-wrenching certainty that this woman’s presence in their lives meant there would never be a baby.
* * *
Friday, April 11, 2014, Crown Manor, Coronado
Next evening, at seven p.m., Kathryn parked her Mini on the sweeping drive in front of Crown Manor, a red-brick copy of a Tudor palace, surrounded by tall palm trees with a breathtaking view of the Pacific. Although the sun had not set and the long June twilight lingered lovingly like a pink shadow over the house, its battery of lights around the entrance were already on, giving it even more the air of a royal residence. Like one of the high kings of ancient Ireland, King Hugh had summoned her.
He met her at the door and gave her the theatrical California air kiss aimed first at one cheek and then the other, a gesture that reminded her she was in the land of civil law where attorneys could trust their clients not to pull weapons on them. Although his tan casual pants and open collar knit shirt must have been expensive, like the suits she had seen him wearing in the office, his big frame still looked sloppy and unkempt. His mane of gray hair was too stiff to stay down; his collar flopped to the left as if one shoulder were higher than the other.
Behind him in the black and white marble hall stood a sleek middle-aged woman in an obviously expensive yellow knit pants suit. The woman’s light brown hair was swept up in an elegant fifties chignon. Her makeup was perfect. Her smooth jaw line and forehead screamed expensive plastic surgery.
“Come in, come in. This is my wife, Elizabeth.”
The vision in yellow extended her hand like an empress. “Buffy,” she insisted in the vowels of Kathryn’s native state. “Please, everyone calls me Buffy.”
Kathryn followed Hugh and his wife down the long chess-board hall to a glass-walled room at the rear of the mansion with a battery of French doors opening onto a large stone patio where red bougainvillea and a riot of cerulean morning glory blossoms tangled themselves over gigantic trellises.
“Please sit down,” Buffy gestured toward one of the large sofas facing the patio, covered in a flowered print that mimicked the bougainvilleas and morning glories outside.
“Red or white?” Hugh asked. “We’re having grilled salmon for dinner, if it matters.”
Kathryn accepted a glass of French Bordeaux that even Paul would have had trouble affording and answered Buffy’s questions about Kathryn’s life in Atlanta and her mother’s happy retirement to Florida.
Buffy shared photographs of her elder daughter Elise, a comparative literature professor at Duke, married to an English professor; and of Erin, a second-year associate at Craig, Lewis, and Weller in New York. They were both beautiful because they resembled Buffy, with heart-shaped faces, high cheek bones and caramel hair. The only trace of Hugh was in Erin, who had her father’s imposing height.
“My old firm,” Hugh said with pride, now well into his second scotch.
A shadow crossed Buffy’s perfectly tailored face. “Yes, following in her father’s footsteps.” Law had not been kind to this marriage, Kathryn reflected.
The patio was warmed by tall propane heaters that kept the chill of a San Diego June night at bay. Hugh was solicitous of her comfort, but she insisted her light sweater over her simple green dress was adequate. Buffy narrated the history of the organic vegetables from the large garden their gardener maintained at the rear of the estate and the origin of the organic salmon the chef served on cedar planks.
Thankfully dessert was omitted, and Buffy grew tired of gardening trivia and headed upstairs to rest.
“Shall we talk out here?” Hugh asked after requesting coffee from the housekeeper who cleared away the dinner dishes. “I like to listen to the ocean.”
“Yes, of course.”
“But you looked troubled somehow.”
She reminded herself she was in the presence of one of the top attorneys ever to practice law, so of course he noticed the nuances in people’s faces.
“I was thinking that the sea is a jealous mistress.”
“Was she a rival, then, for your husband’s affections?”
Kathryn looked down at the coffee that had just been poured into the thinnest of china cups. She took a sip of its rich perfection.“Now that you put it that way, I’d say yes, she was.”
Hugh sipped his own coffee and studied her face. “Were your husband’s activities as a surfer a source of conflict between the two of you?”
“No, of course not.”
He raised one eyebrow above his thick glasses, and she wondered if that meant he knew she was lying. “Wycliffe’s attorneys will probe for all the sore spots in your relationship. Better to tell me now, so I can help you be prepared to answer those questions.”
“We didn’t have any,” she went on lying.
“Every marriage has them. What about money?”
“We agreed on money.”
“Careers? Any conflict over working for the public defender?”
“We agreed while we were still in law school to work for the indigent. We were both Senior Deputy Public Defenders. No one’s career took off at the other’s expense. Besides, Tom was a fantastic trial attorney. I’m sure he was as good as anyone in your office. I had nothing but respect for his work.”
Hugh nodded as if absorbing the magnitude of what she was telling him. “What caused his high blood pressure? Did he do recreational drugs? Drink too much?”
“No, to both. He ran, he surfed, he ate well. Dr. Myers couldn’t explain it.”
“Bruce Myers, at Scripps? I think Rick mentioned him.”
“He was Tom’s cardiologist.”
“And he was the one who suspected Myrabin?”
“Yes.”
“Who treated him for liver failure?”
She sighed and scanned the stars for a moment. “It was a whole team because they thought he was going to have a transplant. I’m trying to remember all their names. Dr. Karl Martin was the one who saw Tom the most often.”
“And does the firm have all of your husband’s medical records?”
“I signed a release during that first interview with Mrs. Fox.”
“Then I’m sure we have them. Patty never misses anything. Wycliffe is going to want those before your deposition. I’ll make a note to Patty to take out anything we don’t want Wycliffe to get its hands on.”
She was surprised. “It’s been a long time since first-year civil procedure, but aren’t you supposed to turn over all of those records?”
“Supposed to, maybe. Will I, no. How are they going to prove I’ve got something they’ve never seen?”
“I doubt there is anything damaging to Tom in them.”
“You never know. Everyone has secrets.”
“Tom didn’t. At least, not from me.”
He refilled his cup from the silver pot the housekeeper had left on a warming stand. Kathryn saw his mind working as he sipped. She sensed he could tell she was lying. Finally he said, “My parents are the only the couple I’ve ever known who didn’t have sec
rets from each other. Buffy and I have too many to count.”
She thought of Logan Avery, but said nothing.
“You’re thinking about Logan.”
“Are you a mind reader?”
“Sometimes. Buffy and I have had an arrangement for years. I don’t hide what I’m doing.”
She thought about his arm around Logan at the party. “I see.”
“No, you don’t. And sometimes I don’t either. My parents loved each other the way you and Tom did until the day my father died. Buffy and I lost whatever we had for each other a long time ago.”
“So that’s your excuse for Logan Avery?”
“And Patty Fox before her, and too many others to name. After things are over, I make sure they are looked after.”
“As in making partner?”
“When appropriate. Patty is everything the firm could want in an attorney. And I think Logan is on the way to proving she is, too.”
“But isn’t that awkward for you? Being surrounded by so many ex-mistresses?”
He sipped his scotch and shrugged. “We have offices in San Diego, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and London. Transfers are easy to arrange.”
Kathryn shivered even though she wasn’t cold, and he noticed. “My indiscretions upset you?”
“No.”
“And you don’t like me?”
“No.”
“We are going to have to work on your ability to lie before you get in front of Wycliffe’s deposition cameras.”
“It’s not what you’ve done. You and Logan Avery were obvious the first night I came to the firm. I’m uncomfortable because you’re so frank with me about you private life.”
“But why shouldn’t I be? I’m trying to get you to tell me everything about yours. It’s much easier to open up to a friend than to a stranger.”
So he wanted her to like him. But she didn’t.
“I don’t have anything more to tell you about Tom and me.”
“Yes, you do. You loved him. You loved him so much that you’re willing to go through the hell of this lawsuit for him. Ugh! This coffee is cold. Let’s go back inside. I need another scotch.”
The Death of Distant Stars, A Legal Thriller Page 6