Deathbed Dimes

by Naomi Elana Zener

  “I never lied,” I said flatly. “I just told you both what you needed to know.”

  “You lied to me,” Esty said, sounding worried and confused.

  “I didn’t lie, Esty,” I explained, feeling desperate. “Would you still have hired me if you knew what my past involvement was, even though I knew that it would have no effect on your case?”

  “That was my decision to make and you withheld information about what you did and didn’t know,” she said. “I always thought it was funny how you seemed to have such a quick understanding of the case. You made it sound too easy to win. It was too good to be true.”

  “I have never been dishonest with you about what I have thought about this case or your chances of winning,” I said, scrambling to keep control. “I know how to win this case and I will win it for you.”

  “No, you won’t. You can’t. The judge kicked you off of the case,” Esty said.

  Javier and Tanya stood there silently, too nervous to utter a word, while Ethan was fuming with anger and trying to keep himself from erupting.

  “No, he didn’t. He just demoted me a bit. I’ll still be your attorney, but I need co-counsel and that isn’t a problem,” I explained.

  “What, he’s going to assist you?” Esty said, gesturing to Ethan. “Didn’t you tell me that he’s a corporate lawyer? Can he even appear in court?”

  “I know this is confusing, Esty. It’s ok. Our other partner, Coco Hirohito, will be assisting Joely. That’s what we established with Judge Williams today,” Ethan explained, his voice returning to its kind and even tone.

  “Thanks for telling the judge that this is now Coco’s case,” I spat.

  “Are you serious? Who other than Coco would assist you? Him?” Ethan shot back, sarcastically pointing at Blake. “Over my dead body.”

  “Of course, I would work with Coco, but you’re my partner, not my boss. You don’t tell me what to do,” I replied, biting my cheek bitterly.

  “I think that we will be leaving now,” Rita said, directing Esty to depart with her. “We will be in touch as to what our decision will be regarding your continued representation. I am very disappointed in your lack of professionalism, Joely.”

  “Please wait, Esty,” I begged, clacking behind her in my heels. “This is really just a misunderstanding. Did I know about this file when I was at Mavis? Yes. Did I know some background information that became public when Chip served you with his notice and filed for probate? Yes. Was I less than forthcoming about what I did and did not know? Yes! Yes! Yes! But never once did I tell you something untrue about your odds of winning. Mandy is a scheming and lying shrew who wouldn’t even let me work on the case back in New York because I tried to explain to her that based on what I knew she had little to no chance of coming away with a dime.”

  “Seems to me you have done some scheming and lying of your own,” Esty replied with tears welling in her eyes. “The worst part about all of this is that I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. Didn’t I help you with your contracts for your show? Haven’t I been at your beck and call for this case? I want to see you win and inherit everything,” I exclaimed.

  “Only because you will make a lot of money,” Rita stated. “Esty has been taken advantage of by Miss Chalmers and the Sumners. I will not let her attorney screw her too.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m begging you to reconsider. I promise you that I will not let you down again,” I pleaded, my face flushing with panic and guilt.

  Esty and Rita turned to leave without another word. I stood in the gallery, knowing that behind me were four people I couldn’t stand to face. When I turned to confront my firing squad, Blake looked at me with sympathetic eyes. He sensed my vulnerability and was likely calculating how he could use it to win me back. Ethan was sitting down at the counsel’s table, head hanging over clasped hands, being comforted by an attentive Tanya. Javier was the only one who seemed unfazed by what had transpired.

  “Joey, are you alright?” Blake asked, eyes grazing my face sympathetically. “I know that you would never have lied if you didn’t think that you were acting in the best interests of your client.”

  “I didn’t lie. I omitted,” I said defensively, collecting my briefcase. Ethan looked up at me silently as Tanya stood rubbing his back.

  “Excuse me, is there a Joely Zeller in this court?” a clean-shaven court officer who had slipped into the courtroom while we had been talking called out.

  “Javier, please go and see what he wants,” I said, not ready to face another blip.

  “Ethan, we need to discuss what went on here so that it won’t ever happen again,” I said without meeting his eyes.

  “I have nothing to say to you right now. I’ll deal with you tomorrow,” he said dismissively, getting up to leave.

  “Ethan, if we don’t go somewhere and address this — and all of our other issues for that matter — we will be courting disaster for this firm,” I pleaded, grabbing his arm. Ethan withdrew his arm forcefully from my grasp and walked away, Tanya trying hurriedly to match his strides.

  “Ethan, please,” I called out after him, my voice pinching desperately.

  Tanya looked back at me with a grin. “Don’t worry, Joely. I’ll take care of him,” she called obnoxiously.

  “Just let him go. He’s a big boy and he needs to lick his wounds,” Blake said, bringing a large palm to rest on my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. I think we both need a drink.”

  “The only thing I need right now is for Esty to tell me that I’m still her lawyer. Come by the office tomorrow and we will figure out how we are all going to work together,” I said, shrugging a shoulder to ditch his sweaty hand before marching toward the exit. Javier stood waiting for me.

  “Yoely, we got another delivery from our mysterious informant,” Javier said.

  “Another letter?” I asked, plucking my index finger under the manila envelope’s broken seal.

  “Mandy is a lying bitch! The second will is a total fake!”

  “Did the court officer tell you who gave it to him?” I asked, scanning the paper for a clue.

  “Nope,” he said. “Apparently it was left at the security desk when the guard went to the bathroom. He gave it to the officer who gave it to me.”

  “What about the security tapes? Did anyone review them to see who left the package?” I asked.

  “I asked that, and apparently the guard reviewed the tape since they were unsure if the letter was safe to open,” Javier replied.

  “So who left it?” I asked eagerly.

  “Some little kid,” Javier said. “Whoever is writing these letters probably gave the kid a candy bar to deliver it for them.”

  “So much for not taking candy from strangers,” Blake laughed from behind me.

  “This is not funny, Blake,” I said. “We have a witness out there we can’t track down who has some evidence proving that the second will is fake.”

  “Whoever it is has their reasons for leaving you these messages. One way or another, they’ll come out of the woodwork when they are ready to,” Blake said nonchalantly. “No sense hanging around the court trying to figure it out right now.”

  “He’s right, Yoely,” Javier said. “Why don’t we head back to the office and figure out a way to get back into Esty’s good graces?”

  “Good idea,” I said, sighing deeply. “See you tomorrow, Blake.”

  “You stayed pretty calm before, Javier. When everybody else was freaking out over my connection, I saw you standing patiently …” I said to Javier as we walked out of the courthouse.

  “Yoely, I’ve been working on this case with you. You don’t think that I reviewed your file in its entirety, including all of your notes?” he asked with a knowing glance. I understood. He knew exactly what my prior knowledge was. “Don’t worry, Yoely, you gave me a career. Your secret is safe with me.”

  I thanked Javier with a silent smile.

  CHAPTER 16

>   Bel Air, We Have a Problem

  Javier hardly left my side in the twelve hours after our courtroom appearance. He had spent the rest of the day with me devising a plan to convince Esty that I was the only lawyer who could help her win. By the time we parted company that evening, Javier had managed to reassure me that by morning Esty and I would be sipping cappuccinos and laughing about how silly the entire misunderstanding was.

  By morning, the silence of my iPhone alerted me to the fact that neither Esty nor Javier had called, emailed or texted me all night to let me know that I was still Esty’s lawyer. Not willing to give up hope, I drove to the office, picking Coco up along the way. I was determined to continue work on Esty’s file. The office was a ghost town at 9:30 a.m. Odd, I thought to myself, as Coco and I walked down the hallway toward our offices. Approaching my door, we heard hushed whispers coming from behind the closed door of Ethan’s office. My anger towards Ethan from the day before stirred violently in my belly.

  “So, what do we have here?” I said, opening Ethan’s door without a knock. He and Tanya were nestled on the sofa, her long nails stroking his neck lightly.

  “Oh, good morning, Joely, Coco,” Tanya said, looking up at me with a bold grin. “Ethan and I were discussing a file …”

  “Really? Because to me it looked like you were giving him a neck massage,” Coco said, coming up behind me to survey the pair.

  Tanya got up, smoothed out her dress and slid her shoes back on.

  “Tanya, since you are on your way out, I need you to go to the UCLA law library and look up the list of cases and articles I jotted down on the notepad sitting on my desk,” I said, staring furiously at her glossy pout. Tanya nodded submissively and scurried out of Ethan’s office.

  “Where are Janice and Trevor?” I asked Ethan.

  “I gave them the morning off,” Ethan advised. “Listen, Tanya was only helping me out with …”

  “Ethan, Joely and I didn’t hire Tanya so you wouldn’t have to order in from 1-900-Dial-A-Ho when you needed to get laid,” Coco interrupted angrily.

  “Nothing happened, Coco,” Ethan said defensively. “She was simply reassuring me that I did the right thing for all of our legal careers.”

  “I’ve simply had enough of your self-righteous bullshit,” I said, planting a heel in the ground for emphasis. “I made one mistake—”

  “One mistake?” Ethan interrupted, laughing sarcastically. “What would you call Blake?”

  “Nothing is going on with him. You know just as well as I do that having him in our corner gives our client the heavy artillery we need to win,” I said, my anger reducing to sharp reason.

  “That’s if you still have a client,” Ethan said, arching an eyebrow to challenge me.

  “Don’t act like you are Mr. Perfect,” Coco said, stepping in to look at Ethan directly. “I seem to recall you had a few clients back in San Fran with questionable conflicts of interest.”

  “We aren’t talking about me,” Ethan stammered, smoothing his checkered tie nervously.

  “Oh yes, we are. The three of us have all made mistakes: mistakes on files, mistakes with clients, mistakes in our personal lives. Not one of us can stand on a pedestal judging what the other has done,” Coco said firmly. “Now can we please move on?”

  “With all of this fighting, it’s surprising that any of you get any work done,” Blake said from the door frame where he had been leaning, hands tucked into his pockets.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, glancing back at him with a quick smile.

  “What the fuck is he doing here again?” Ethan shot up from his seat.

  “Ethan, calm down. You know that I agreed to help out on this case,” Blake said in his most professorial tone.

  “We don’t need your help,” Ethan said, giving Blake a once-over.

  “Really? You have some estates expertise that is going to help Esty win her case?” Blake said, maintaining the reasonable tone to patronize him.

  “Enough,” I said, raising my voice. “Blake is working on the Chalmers file. No questions asked. I made an executive decision and you just have to accept it.”

  “I’m your partner, not your employee. I don’t have to accept anything,” Ethan said angrily.

  “Yes, you do, because I am agreeing with Joely on this one,” Coco declared.

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling at her humbly. She looked back at me with a glare.

  “Especially considering she has royally fucked this case by not telling any of us that she worked on the file at Mavis,” Coco said as my smile dropped. “Since I am now lead counsel on this file, I’ll decide who is going to work on helping our client win and I say that Blake stays.”

  Ethan looked up at me, fuming. Coco still did not know that he and I had engaged in some version of sexual relations or that we had not really spoken since, and I was not about to tell her. Blake, however, caught a glimpse of the tacit tension between Ethan and me.

  “Whatever, Coco, it’s your show to run now — that is if you still have a client,” Ethan said.

  “You most definitely have a client,” Javier announced breathlessly, jogging into Ethan’s office dressed in the same suit he had been wearing yesterday.

  “How can you be so sure?” I said, happy at the sight of him.

  “Well, let’s just say that I was able to appeal to Esty’s sense of compassion. She and I both know a thing or two about struggling to find a nugget of success in our sad and lonely lives, only for it to be torn from you unceremoniously …” Javier trailed off, looking to the door.

  “Speak. English.” Coco caught Javier’s gaze and stared at him expectantly.

  “She’s willing to have you stay on as her attorney because she knows what it’s like to be an underdog living in the shadow of others. We all know that sometimes in order to succeed, you need to take some shortcuts,” Javier said, looking at each of us in turn.

  “He saved your ass,” Coco replied, shaking her head and turning to look at me. “If I had reviewed the file earlier, I would have known that you had a conflict of interest.”

  “I don’t need you to babysit me,” I said indignantly.

  “You don’t know what you need,” Ethan said from his spot near the couch.

  “Shut up all of you,” Blake barked, two fists planted on Ethan’s desk as he leaned forward aggressively. “You are all behaving like you are in high school. Keep this up and you won’t have a firm, let alone any friendships to fight over. Grow the fuck up and let’s get to work.”

  The room went silent. Blake scolded us like we were back in his lecture hall at Stanford.

  “Blake is right,” I said eventually.

  “We still have to try to figure out where the mystery letters are coming from,” Blake said, leaning back onto his heels.

  “What letters?” Ethan asked.

  “The ones Joely received from someone claiming that they know the second will is a fake,” Blake said.

  “Yet another lie!” Ethan shouted, throwing his arms up. “Coco, did you know about them?”

  Coco shook her head no.

  “Yoely never lied,” Javier said. “I’ve known about the letters all along. We kept them a secret so that we would not have to disclose them until we could figure out who our informant is.”

  “Then how come Blake knew about the letters before your partners did?” Coco asked me.

  “I only found out because I happened to be in the courtroom when the last one was delivered. Joely never told me about them,” Blake jumped in to defend me. “I do think though that if your partnership is going to be a success, the three of you need to disclose to each other what the other is working on so that no one is kept in the dark, unintentionally or not.”

  “Thanks, but we’ve all been practicing law for many years, so you can keep your dime-store advice to yourself,” Ethan said.

  “Blake is right. What do the three of us really know about running a firm?” Coco said. “We’ve all spent the last eight years as le
an, mean, billing machines for our respective firms. Well, the three of us, I mean. Javier’s been bussing tables.”

  I shot Coco a warning look.

  “Just kidding,” Coco laughed. “Come on, you people need a better sense of humour.”

  “I agree. Let’s put together our file lists and meet this afternoon to discuss what we all have on the go,” I said. “Ethan?”

  “Whatever, sure,” he replied.

  “Listen, if you want out of the partnership, then just tell me now,” I said coldly.

  “No, I’m in. But things are going to change around here,” he said.

  “Starting with us staying out of each other’s personal lives,” I stated.

  “Speaking of which, I am not comfortable with intra-office dating,” Coco advised pointedly, staring at Ethan.

  “I’m telling you, nothing is going on between Tanya and me,” Ethan said defensively.

  “Leave it alone, Coco,” I said. “What he does in his private life is none of our business.”

  “Ok,” Coco conceded. “But, Ethan, be forewarned. That little minx is playing for keeps. So unless you plan on marrying Tanya, you had better know that you are in for a lifetime of commitment with her.”

  Having nothing left to say, we left Ethan’s office and returned to our respective spaces to get to work. Blake, Javier and I set about sifting through the documents from our secret informant, looking for clues as to their identity. Thankfully, after our morning blowout ended, I received an email from Esty advising me that she was giving me a second chance and that both she and Rita had been too hasty to judge me yesterday. Hearing the news directly from Esty lifted the weight of anxiety and stress from my shoulders. With Tanya at the library and both of our firm’s resident drama queens enjoying a relaxing day off, we were all able to work in tranquility. Well, that depended on how one defines tranquility. With the paparazzi permanently parked outside of the building entrances due to the increasing number of celebrity clients we were servicing, our offices had become an enduring three-ring circus. As distracting as the spectacle was, it did have the effect of translating into free publicity for our firm, which quickly spread the word that we were the new go-to attorneys for the disinherited, dispossessed and nouveau poor struggling to inherit their way back into wealth.