Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “To you, maybe.” But curiosity got the better of her, and she said, “Irene, I’ll be out back.”

  She led Nina outside to a small, sunny, flowery courtyard. They sat down on some ironwork patio chairs. Britta pulled out a pack of cigarettes, stuck one in her mouth, and lit it with her Zippo. She wore tight white pants and a polo shirt. Her arms were toned and tan and the gold bracelets she wore showed them off.

  “Nice poster. By your desk. Are you originally from Iceland?”

  “Yes. Home of hot springs and Bjork.”

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “I speak four languages without an accent. I was a flight attendant for Icelandic when I met David. He was drunk and I was poor. A perfect match, I thought.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Eight years.” She inhaled the smoke with pleasure. Sun filtered through the trees and made a halo of her hair. “And here I am.”

  Nina was having trouble finding an opening. She decided to try to match Britta’s bluntness.

  “A happy marriage?” she said.

  “Sure.” Britta smiled slightly, enjoying Nina’s discomfiture.

  “But you had an affair with Danny Cervantes last year.”

  “Yes. And Sam Puglia too. But Sam was only good for a few nights. He ran home to Mama.”

  “And Danny?”

  “A kid.”

  “Was he in love with you?”

  “No. In fact, I think he despised me. But we got along in bed. Are we having fun yet?”

  “How did your husband take these affairs?”

  “David doesn’t care.”

  “Then why do you stay married to him?”

  “Faithfulness is overrated. We have things in common. Next question.”

  “All right. Danny. How did you leave it with him?”

  “I told him to get lost. He was borrowing money from me. The thrill was gone.”

  “Did Danny talk to you recently about making some big money?”

  For the first time Britta’s eyes clouded. She smoked some more, then said, “Maybe. Maybe I don’t want to be a witness in court about any of this, though.”

  “I can understand that.” I’ll take that as a yes, Nina thought to herself, and furthermore, I’ll subpoena you if you know anything. She went on, “Did you ever meet Robert Johnson?”

  “Coyote? Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At a bar.”

  “Alma’s?”

  “Very good!”

  Nina chose her next words carefully. “What did you think of him?”

  “A jerk.”

  “How so?”

  “The type who gets belligerent and shoots his mouth off when he gets drunk. The type who dies in a bar fight.”

  “What were he and Danny talking about?”

  “The score.”

  “The score?”

  “That’s what they called it.”

  “They were going to make some money?”

  “Danny hired Coyote for some job. A big job.”

  “What else, Britta?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  Nina apologized to Paul, Jaime, and all authority figures in her mind, then said, “You know, Britta, Coyote has disappeared. He may have killed the Cat Lady. And he has made some threats.”

  “Against who?”

  “Some children. We don’t know yet whose children.”

  “I’ll be sure to take mine out of town.” But her mouth trembled. “So he’s the man you were talking about at Debbie’s house.”

  “If you know anything about Coyote that might help, you shouldn’t keep it a secret, no matter how much you don’t want to go to court.”

  “You think he’d come after me?”

  Nina shrugged. “What do you know?” she said.

  Britta stubbed out her cigarette under her sandal. “You told me something,” she said, “so I’ll tell you something. Your client’s guilty.”

  Nina closed her eyes and took that in. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Danny was in on the fires. With Coyote. They had this Tahoe connection, Washoe Indians or something. And your client, he’s another Washoe, right? He went up the mountain, right?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Alma’s. We’re sitting at the bar and they’re talking, and Coyote says something about laying in enough kerosene. And Danny says shut your mouth, and shoves him right off the bar stool. Coyote lies there for a while and then he gets up and shoves Danny back. Danny gives him this look and Coyote sits back down like a good boy. That’s it.”

  “Was anyone else there who could have heard that statement?”

  “I was drinking too. The room was turning into a carousel. But let me think. Yes. A cute guy with a gray beard. Paint all over his clothes. I think he knew both of them.”

  The paranoid artist spent a lot of time at Alma’s. What had Cowboy Two said? Something about him doing drugs.

  “I met him,” Nina said.

  “He didn’t talk much, he just listened. And stared at me. I managed to slip him my phone number. He called and a couple of days later I went to his place.”

  “I don’t need to know that-” Nina started, but Britta held up her hand.

  “Danny and Coyote were just leaving when I got there, and I didn’t want Danny to see me, so I left and came back later. Donnelly-Donnelly was a dud. Wait. I won’t make your ears burn. But he told me that the two guys had been drinking with him, then he got a little scared of them. They were asking for a loan and he said no.”

  “Thank you, Britta.” Stay calm, Nina told herself, and began analyzing this information, deciding how it impacted Wish’s case.

  “Maybe it’s my ass on the line now. Or my kids. I think I better go home and deal with this.”

  “Just one more question. At any time-did Coyote or Danny ever use my client’s name? Wish or Willis?”

  Britta said, “I never heard of your client. He came out of the blue. Maybe Danny hired him later on.”

  “Okay,” Nina said.

  “But if you subpoena me, I’m gonna hurt you.”

  “I see that you might.”

  “Good.” She smoked calmly. She was quite beautiful, shiny with her polished nails and lip gloss on her plump mouth.

  “Britta? I still don’t understand. About your marriage. About you.”

  “And I’m not going to enlighten you. I’ll tell you just one thing. David and I will be together until the end of time.”

  “Just a suggestion,” Nina said. “You might want to double-check your husband’s bank accounts to see if he’s the one who paid Coyote. Just to be sure. About that end-of-time thing.” She left Britta on the sunny patio, looking thoughtful.

  “Hello, Sandy,” Nina said into the cell phone. “So you have a cell phone too now.”

  “I got right in there with the twenty-first century. It does come in handy. Have you got Willis out of jail yet?”

  “Not yet.” Nina updated Sandy, then said, “I’m afraid it’s going to go into a prelim.”

  “Well, you’re pretty good at those. You’re gonna put up a defense, aren’t you?”

  The preliminary hearing in California had only two purposes-to determine if there was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed, and that the defendant was the person who had committed the crime. If so, the defendant would be bound over for trial.

  At this early stage, the defense usually assumed probable cause would be found to exist, and let the D.A. present its minimal evidence for that purpose. Though the defense might cross-examine, in general the defense did not put on its own witnesses.

  Nina did not agree with this traditional strategy of defense attorneys. With current discovery rules, the defense often knew as much as the police at the time of the prelim, and with hard and fast work could put on a sort of minitrial. Since a defendant might be incarcerated for months before finally going to trial, it made sense to fight hard every step of th
e way.

  So Nina said, “Yes, I’ll call witnesses. Time is of the essence, though.”

  “What are you doing for an office?”

  “Using Paul’s. He’s got a spare iBook for pounding out paperwork, and a fax and all that.”

  “What about a legal secretary?”

  “I called a temp service. I’m interviewing a woman at two tomorrow at Paul’s office.”

  “You won’t get anybody who knows law.”

  “I’ll choose carefully. Don’t worry, Sandy. I’ll do a good job for Wish. But-but if Wish is bound over for trial-I can’t commit to handling a full-fledged murder trial, you know that.”

  Sandy said, “Then win the prelim.”

  “Right.”

  “I talked to Susie Johnson. Robert Johnson’s mother. She’s not close but I know her. She says Robert hasn’t been in touch. She’s telling the truth.”

  “Okay.” So Coyote hadn’t called home. Where would he go? Deeper into the forest?

  “Social Services for Monterey County called Susie about Nate. They say he’s almost ready to leave. She’s not sure she can take care of him. Did Dr. Cervenka go see him yet?”

  “No. I think he’s making the trip down from San Francisco in a day or two. He’ll help. Tell Susie he has to talk to Nate first.”

  “Okay. Robert Johnson and Danny Cervantes, they both had Washoe mothers. I checked around. Those boys went to high school together in Minden.”

  “What’s their connection to Wish?”

  “He and Danny were friends when they were in elementary school, and they stayed in touch. Danny’s family moved from Markleeville down to Minden for a while. His father worked construction down there. Then when Wish came to Monterey County this summer, he looked Danny up. Danny was the only soul he knew, other than you and Paul, when he came down here.”

  “Does Wish know Coyote? Robert Johnson?”

  “Ask him. But I don’t think he ever went to school with him. I don’t think he knew him from Tahoe.”

  “Okay,” Nina said.

  Sandy said, “Willis’s father is a tad worried.”

  “I’ll call Joseph.”

  “That’s all right. We talk every night.”

  “Do you miss Tahoe, Sandy?”

  “This Washington trip’ll be over whenever I say it’s over. But good things are happening. The Washoe tribe is going to get twelve acres on Lake Tahoe at Skunk Harbor. That’s one of the tribe’s summer spots.”

  “Fantastic, Sandy!” The Washoe tribe had summered at Tahoe for ten thousand years, until the previous century, when logging and silver mining interests took it over. Ever since, the tribe had been trying to get recognized and get some land back. “That’s historic,” Nina went on.

  “It’s historic, all right,” Sandy said. “Guess what the conditions are.”

  “What?”

  “We can only do activities that are traditional. Hunt, fish, grind up pine nuts. Act like Indians in the westerns.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, we get the land, but in a time warp. It’s okay, we didn’t want to build a casino. We’re just glad to get our toes back in the water.”

  “A toe at Tahoe,” Nina said.

  “Hmph.”

  “Excellent work, Sandy.”

  “Did you talk to Crockett?”

  “Paul did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, to Paul’s surprise, he is a descendant. And he sounded boastful when he talked about what an Indian fighter his ancestor was.”

  “I knew it. I knew it.”

  “He’s really not so bad, Sandy.”

  “It’s deeper than that. We have to get Willis out of jail.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  A silence. Then, “Paul treating you right?”

  “Great.”

  “Good. Hmm.”

  “Something else on your mind, Sandy?”

  “I just had a thought.”

  “Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Not yet. You’ll find out.” And with that ominous statement, Sandy signed off.

  Nina thought about Sandy in Washington, setting up a Tahoe land trust for the Washoe tribe. She felt quite proud, but not surprised. Sandy was smart and unbelievably sure of herself. Nina had seen that the first day she’d met her, when she showed up for a job interview with Nina with no qualifications to be a legal secretary besides total self-confidence, having been a file clerk at another law firm, and a will to learn.

  Sandy was probably regretting that she’d ever met Nina at this point. Wish wouldn’t be in jail if he hadn’t come down here to work for Paul, who’d met Wish through Nina.

  Nina closed up her cell phone and pulled the Bronco back out onto Carmel Valley Road. Her mind went back to Britta, to the astonishing thing Britta had told her: Danny was in on the fires.

  25

  A ND SO IT CAME TO PASS that on Monday, June 23, Nina went back into law practice, in a half-assed sort of way.

  She had a case and half an office, which, because it was shared with a nonlawyer, presented certain ethical problems. She wasn’t supposed to split fees with nonlawyers or partner with them. They might have cooties, the state bar had decided.

  She inspected Paul, who leaned back in his yellow leather chair talking on the phone and looking out his window, for those mythical insects. He could use a haircut but looked clean withal. Satisfied, she turned back to putting away the new secretarial supplies purchased that morning from Office Depot into Wish’s old desk. She was a lawyer; she would draft up some paperwork defining her professional relationship with Paul that would leave the state bar puffing uselessly.

  Outside, fog blanketed Carmel. Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was one summer in San Francisco. He obviously hadn’t spent June in the microclimate of Carmel-by-the-Sea. A few miles inland, the radio said, the central coast was having a heat wave.

  Problem: The new temp would have to sit at that desk. So where was Nina going to work? She looked longingly at Paul’s fine desk with its client overhang, covered with Paul’s computers and files. She surveyed the office. In the corner by the door, Paul had a padded leather client chair and a small table beside it with a lamp and some adventure trekking brochures, where his clients could sit.

  So be it. She dragged her new cardboard file boxes over there and stacked them. Now she had a file cabinet. She removed the lamp and brochures and pulled the table around in front of the chair. Luckily, it was high and broad. The corner had one electrical plug into which she plugged a power strip with many outlets. She opened her laptop and it brought up its ocean desktop picture, popping up the icons like long-submerged buoys.

  No one must ever come in here and see her like Little Jack Horner. But with Wish in jail, her client wouldn’t be visiting, and her tenure here would be short: a few days of preparation for the prelim, the prelim itself, which probably would last about two to three days, and out.

  She began filing the material she had on Wish’s case. Paul stretched and said, “Guess it’s about time for your job interview. I’ll make myself scarce. If you need me, I’ll be at the Hog’s Breath having a late lunch.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  “Nice setup.”

  “It’ll do.”

  Paul went out and Nina continued organizing. Two o’clock came and went, and nobody came from the agency. Nina had to go down the hall to the ladies’ rest room. She left the door to the office unlocked.

  When she came back into Paul’s office, the applicant was there, already seated at Wish’s desk, reading a file, her back to Nina. Nina saw black hair and a purple coat.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” she said, and rushed over to grab the file. The woman turned her head.

  “Aughh!” Nina cried.

  Sandy said nothing. She lifted an eyebrow and continued reading.

  “What are you doing here! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

  “What d
oes it look like? I’m your new secretary.”

  “Where-where’s the temp?”

  “I caught her outside and told her the job was taken. You need envelopes and a Rolodex. What are we going to do for a law library?”

  Nina sat down at her new desk. Sandy continued her reading. Finally, Nina nodded.

  “I thought you had big business in Washington.”

  “My son’s in jail.”

  “I should have known,” she said. “When you said, ‘Hmm,’ on the phone yesterday.”

  “I’ve only got two weeks,” Sandy said. “We could spend that time looking at each other, or we could get to work.”

  Paul came in. He saw Sandy in her purple coat and sneakers and broke into a big smile. “Welcome to Carmel,” he said.

  “That’s more like it.”

  The phone rang, and Sandy picked it up.

  “Law offices of Nina Reilly,” she said.

  Strange twist of fate: The phone call actually was official, and for Nina. “There has been a development,” Jaime told her, over a wail of sirens. The D.A. sounded unusually calm, a bad sign.

  “What?”

  “An assault. On a woman who lives on Siesta Court. Her name is Britta Cowan. She’s at Community Hospital.”

  Paul and Sandy had stopped moving around and seemed to be listening, too, though they couldn’t possibly know what Jaime was saying. Nina’s shock must have shown on her face.

  “How serious is it?”

  “Serious. She was hit in the head with a baseball bat. She’s in surgery. Skull fracture. Her husband is with her.”

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “Only God knows. I’m just a lawyer. She was found this morning by a janitor at the business where she works in Carmel Valley.” By now, Nina had put on the speakerphone and they were all listening.

  Jaime went on, “Her associate says you visited her yesterday, and she went home right after your talk.”

  “I warned her, Jaime. About the children. Are her children all right?” She gripped the phone.

  “You know, Nina, you and I have known each other for a long time. And I want to tell you something today. I always thought you were bad lawyer material. Because you never listen to anybody.”

  “Don’t blame me for this.”

  “The timing is right. You talk to her, you set the alarm in motion, and this woman gets hurt. Yes, her children are all right.”