by A. J. Carton
In fact, as Emma had explained to Jack, she was pretty sure she knew exactly why Piers was texting. She was also pretty sure she didn’t want to talk about it. One of Piers’ biggest clients, Curt Randall, an ornery old reclusive widower who’d lost his only son in the Viet Nam War, was selling a vast parcel of land between Blissburg and Cloverdale. Over five hundred acres of plum trees that once had been a mainstay of Blissburg’s economy. Randall also owned thousands of acres of farmland down south, near Coachella. But this parcel was special. Randall claimed that his distant relative by marriage, the famed Santa Rosa horticulturalist, Luther Burbank, had planted the plum trees himself over a hundred years before.
Now, at the bitter old age of eighty-eight, Curt Randall, left by his son’s untimely death without an heir, was finally selling the Sonoma property. All five hundred plus acres of it. To a Chinese investor who planned to convert the plum trees to vineyards – a new-to-California variety of grapes – for wine to be marketed in China. Piers was handling the deal.
The exact terms of the sale were secret. The Chinese demanded it and Piers intended to keep it that way. But the rumor around Blissburg was that, if the deal went through, by the following spring all the prune trees would be gone and the acres of rolling hills would be planted with a cheap new Chinese variety of grapes. Now even Sonoma wine would be “Made in China.”
Needless to say, the sale was controversial. All the more reason for Piers to keep its provisions secret. Many of Blissburg’s older natives – the few that were left – remembered when plums, or more accurately prunes, got the residents of Blissburg through hard times. Most of them working as prune pickers and packers shipping the famed Blissburg plums all over the world.
Emma’s eyes drifted across the street to Jack then back to her phone. She reluctantly hit the call return button. Sure that her son-in-law’s concern was about the Gomez lawsuit that Steve Zimmer, her boss at the free legal clinic, had filed on behalf of a Mexican worker at one of Randall’s Coachella farms. The complaint accused her son-in-law’s client of providing his employee with substandard housing and not enough water and shade in the blistering Coachella heat.
A week before, Piers had all but ordered Emma, privately, to ask Steve to drop the lawsuit. To settle it, quietly, before it jeopardized the plum ranch sale.
Emma, however, decided not to act on the request. For the very first time, she thought her son-in-law was out of line. Now she was sure Piers was texting to find out why Steve still hadn’t dropped the lawsuit so he could close the plum ranch sale.
Emma listened to the phone ring. It was the direct line to Piers’ office. And braced herself for her son-in-law’s annoyance.
She heard the click of someone picking up the phone and putting her on speaker.
“Emma?” he began, Piers’ caller ID having already identified the source of the call. “Bad news.” He stated the two words slowly, giving equal weight to each. “Very bad news…”
Emma felt her heart plunge into her stomach. In the middle of the night, she’d imagined such a call – always about her grandson, Harry.
“Santiago Gomez…”
“What?” Emma couldn’t understand what Piers was saying.
“Santiago Gomez,” Piers repeated. “The Mexican farm worker. The guy your boss bullied into suing Curt Randall…”
Emma still couldn’t answer. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest and she hadn’t caught her breath. When would Julie and Piers learn that, for her, “very bad news” only meant one thing? Harm to them or to Harry.
The phone went silent while Emma slowly exhaled.
“Emma,” Piers demanded. “Are you there?”
“OK,” she finally said. “Yeah. Santiago Gomez. I was just talking about him. Listen, Piers,” she rushed to add. “I haven’t had time to talk to Steve about that lawsuit yet. In fact, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to…”
Piers cut her off. “I know you’re not going to be able to talk to Steve about dropping the Gomez lawsuit,” he said. “Gomez is dead. The police just called. They found his body. With a knife through his throat.”
“Oh my goodness,” Emma whispered. The blood was retreating from her ears in loud whoshes and her heart still beat staccato. It’s OK. She tried to calm herself. Everyone’s OK. Everyone meaning Harry, Julie and Piers.
Suddenly, Emma remembered the sirens. Barely an hour before. Sirens heading north out of town.
“Where?” she asked.
“That’s the point,” Piers replied. “Gomez’s cousin found the body on Curt Randall’s ranch this morning. A quarter of a mile from the road. The police have already identified the murder weapon hidden under a tarp in Curt’s garage. Now,” he continued, “thanks to Steve’s self-serving lawsuit, the police believe Curt had a motive to kill Gomez. They’re holding him for murder. Of course, Curt’s madder than blazes. Not to mention that he’s my client and he’s innocent.”
Piers paused, apparently waiting for Emma to sympathize with his outrage. When she didn’t, he added, “Emma, a young Mexican is dead and a broken-spirited, eighty-eight-year-old innocent man has just been led away in handcuffs. Now don’t you wish you’d convinced that fool boss of yours to stop making trouble and drop that trumped up lawsuit?”
Chapter 2: Saturday Afternoon – Second Thoughts
By the time Emma returned to the restaurant, Jack had already heard about the murder. Bad news traveled fast in Blissburg.
Maureen Tompkins, the police chief’s wife, was seated at their table, her spikey, red-haired head dipped in close to Jack’s.
“Harry’s fine,” Emma replied to Jack’s questioning look as she sat down next to Maureen. “Piers was calling about all those sirens we heard an hour ago.”
Maureen nodded knowingly. “I just told Jack all about it.” Suddenly her dark, penciled-in eyebrows shot up. “Of course! Piers is Curt Randall’s lawyer.” She studied Emma’s face for a second. “You know that the old man’s been arrested for murder?”
“Piers said they found the murder weapon hidden in Curt Randall’s garage,” Emma shrugged.
Maureen’s eyes narrowed. “The Mexican’s throat was slit. With a pruning knife. The kind they used in the old days. The Chief says it has a very distinctive elk horn hand…”
Maureen clapped her hand over her mouth. “You didn’t hear that, right? About the murder weapon.”
Emma and Jack shook their heads. Emma knew it wasn’t the first time Maureen’s big mouth had gotten the better of her. She wasn’t knicknamed “Loose Lips” for nothing.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” said Emma.
“Hear what?” Jack said.
“Thank goodness for that!” Maureen exclaimed, patting her heart with her hand. “Top secret,” she added. “The Chief would kill me if…” She took a deep breath and exhaled. Like someone who had just dodged a bullet. She stood up. “I gotta go.”
Emma glanced at Jack and rolled her eyes. Then she frowned. “I can’t believe it, Jack. The victim is Santiago Gomez. The Mexican worker who is – I should say was – suing Curt Randall for unfair labor practices. He’s our client at the free legal clinic. Gomez’s cousin found his body this morning at the ranch. Now they’re holding Randall for murder.”
“I just saw Curt,” Jack replied.
In less than a year living in Blissburg, the East Coast transplant seemed to have met just about everyone within a thirty mile radius of the Blissburg plaza.
“Hard to believe he murdered someone,” Jack added. “The guy’s in his eighties and sick. Although,” he raised his shoulders fatalistically again, “he made no secret of how steamed he was about that lawsuit. Just last week I heard him ranting at the Chatham Club. Said he’d like to get his hands on the Mexican - he used a different word - who filed it. Something about migrant worker housing...?”
“Seasonal worker,” Emma interjected. “I think the proper term is ‘seasonal.’”
Jack ignored the interruption. “Down in Coachella wher
e he owns all that farmland. Substandard housing conditions. Not enough shade and water. Randall told the bartender he’d spent every summer as a teenager living in the exact same housing, working for his father under the exact same conditions – as did his son before he died. And all it did was ‘build character’. I quote.”
“Doesn’t make it right,” Emma scoffed.
Jack nodded. “But it does make it hard for a bitter, angry, heart-broken eighty-something-year-old to understand.”
They had finished eating. Jack motioned for the waiter to bring the bill. He always paid for lunch.
“You heading for the clinic?” he asked.
Emma nodded. It was Saturday, one of the days she volunteered. The place would be buzzing with news of the murder.
She stood up and grabbed her purse. “Yeah, I’d better run. I’m late.”
They kissed each other lightly on each cheek, Sicilian style.
“Ciao bella,” he called after her. He was learning Italian and interjected such phrases whenever he could. “And you’re right. I won’t worry about the dinner. It’s gonna be fine. Without the ex. And don’t forget tomorrow night at Sergio’s. We’re picking out the wine.”
Emma waved back. Grateful for the reminder. She’d almost forgotten about the wine.
Half an hour later Barbara, the receptionist, nodded to Emma as she stepped through the sliding glass doors of the Blissburg Free Legal Services Clinic aka the BFLSC. The cement box of a building sat in an abandoned shopping center on the outskirts of town.
Barbara, a Blissburg native and divorced mother of five grown sons, was a rare free clinic lifer. One of two paid employees out of a transient staff of volunteers. The other paid staff was the clinic’s resident attorney, Steve Zimmer, a classmate of Emma’s son-in-law from the prestigious Cal Berkeley law school, and now Emma’s boss.
“I’m warning you,” Barbara jerked her thumb behind her. “Steve’s bummed. You heard about Gomez?”
Emma nodded.
Barbara looked back down at the book she was reading. Emma noted the title, Born to Sin. On the book’s paperback cover, a hunky cowboy clad only in a Stetson and blue jeans hauled in a shapely schoolmarm by a lasso attached around her waist. At least Emma thought it was a schoolmarm, complete with wire rimmed glasses and ruffled high necked blouse. Emma acknowledged that the cross dangling around the heroine’s neck could also have signaled the preacher’s daughter.
Barbara didn’t look anything like the women on the covers of the western romance novels she read by the truckload. That day the overweight blond wore a V-necked see-through lace tunic over khaki shorts, along with bracelets and a necklace made out of bullet casings.
Emma walked past Barbara’s desk and entered the warren of make shift cubicles constructed out of second hand plastic room dividers. She never got over what a far cry the legal clinic was from the downtown San Francisco law firm where she’d worked as a paralegal for so many years.
At the clinic she worked for free and loved her three-day-a-week, volunteer job. There was nothing abstract or impersonal about it. Unlike her old job. No corporate clients spewing endless downloads of documents to review, catalogue, summarize, locate - and re-create when a forgetful partner left his entire discovery binder on the Larkspur ferry.
How could that possibly have been my fault, Emma asked herself. Wondering for the hundredth time why the lawyer blamed her for all the hours it took her to make him another copy. The criticsm had even come up, again, in her exit review.
No. The clinic was different. Now work was about people, not paper. Real people with real problems. Like how to get green cards or health insurance. How to avoid eviction. Find a runaway child. Get a restraining order against an abusive spouse. Sue an employer for unfair...
Emma was about to enter her cubicle when she was reminded of Gomez. Poor Gomez, she thought to herself. She’d never met the man. But she’d glanced at the complaint right before Steve filed it.
The claims Gomez made were unusual for Sonoma. A county reputed to be squeaky clean with regard to its seasonal workers. What local grower wanted tourists, out for a weekend of wine tasting, distracted by images of exploited farm workers?
“No seasonal workers here,” she’d recently heard one prominent vintner remark to a tasting guest who’d just seen the movie about Cesar Chavez. “Just full time employees living in new housing we subsidize out of our profits.”
Emma and Jack had been sipping wine at the Buchanon Vineyards tasting room when their friend, Barry Buchanon, made the comment. Emma was doing research for her new collaboration with Buchanon Vineyards, a cookbook titled, What a Pair: Eating and Drinking Locally in Sonoma County.
Later, privately, Emma had asked Jack if Barry’s boast about seasonal workers was true.
Jack had nodded. “Sure. Here in Disneyland,” he added. “The vineyards are stage sets. Entertainment. They have to be. But down south,” he shrugged.
And sure enough, a brief glance at the Gomez complaint told a very different story. Of laborers at Randall Farms Enterprises earning less than minimum wage paid by the bag full of vegetables picked under the punishing Coachella sun without adequate water and shade. Of families warehoused cheek to jowl in squalid shacks untouched for half a century.
Emma stood in the doorway to her cubicle and thought about Piers’ call. A month ago, when Steve first filed his lawsuit against Randall, her son-in-law went ballistic. He accused Steve of bullying Gomez into leaving a good job at the plum ranch to move south and work at Randall’s vegetable farms. All so Steve could file an unfair employment practices lawsuit against Piers’ rich client.
And maybe Piers was right. Emma knew such things were done by lawyers, like Steve, who were on a personal mission to change the world.
In any case, she now found herself caught between two warring attorneys. They couldn’t have been more different – her son-in-law, Piers the crisp corporate suit and Steve her long-haired legal activist boss.
More importantly, a poor young Mexican man was dead. But who’d have thought that frail eighty-eight-year-old Curt Randall was capable of murder?
Instead of sitting down at her desk to check her emails, Emma turned around, walked down the hall and entered Steve’s office. He was on the phone.
That afternoon, he quickly excused himself from his call and smiled up at her from his desk. Unlike most lawyers Emma knew, the pale, pony-tailed thirty-something, dressed in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, really loved his job. Every poorly paid second of it.
“What can I do for you, Emma?” he said. Then a cloud crossed his face banishing the smile. “You heard, right? About Santiago?” He shook his head and shuddered.
Emma knew that unlike many of Steve’s colleagues, Steve genuinely loved his downtrodden clients. They were his friends. “Steve, I’m so sorry. Poor man,” she added. “What a shock! I never met him, but...” she shook her head. “Is there family?”
“A wife,” Steve nodded. “Three kids. Two, five and eight.” He rubbed his face in his hands. “He wanted to file that suit, you know. It was his idea, not mine.” He looked up at Emma. “But I encouraged him. I have to live with that. I just never thought...” The young man hung his head.
“Steve, let it go,” Emma cut in.
Nonetheless, her son-in-law’s voice still rang in her ear. “Tell Steve at least to withdraw the suit till after the plum ranch is sold. Once that’s done, Curt will settle Gomez’s claims. Out of court. Privately. No litigation. He wants to sell the whole southern operation next year. He’s an old man. His health is bad. His only child is dead and his wife is gone. Can’t Steve let him die in peace?”
But after her conversation with Piers, Emma didn’t “tell” Steve to drop the suit. She told herself it wasn’t her place. Her son-in-law was out of line and Steve wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. Now the poor Mexican was dead, and somehow she felt responsible.
“You thought you were doing the right thing, Steve,” Emma continued as much
for her own sake as his. “How could anybody know?” Then she added, “Shall I take the hearing off calendar? I mean, without a client...What do you want me to do?”
Steve glanced up quickly. His answer wasn’t what Emma expected.
“Drop the lawsuit? Heck no!” he said. “We are filing a new lawsuit on behalf of Santiago’s wife and children and all similarly situated employees of Randall Farm Enterprises. Santiago had already begun collecting signatures for a class action. That’s why he was up here. Contacting folks, like his cousin who used to work for Randall in Coachella.”
As he spoke, Steve’s face assumed the determined look Emma had seen so many times before.
“In addition to the criminal charges, we’re also going to file a civil action against Curt Randall, personally, for wrongful death,” he added. “We’re going to get Santiago’s wife and children every penny they deserve on account of what that monster did. Strip him of his millions and make sure Yolanda Gomez never has to worry about money again.”
Emma’s heart sank. She was pretty sure Steve wasn’t using the ‘royal we’ when he spoke. His “we” included her. What, she wondered, was she going to tell Piers?
Before she thought of an answer, Steve added, “I have some phone calls to make, Emma. Let’s meet 10:00 Monday morning to plan our strategy.”
Steve picked up the receiver, hit a button on his phone and said, “Barbara – get Yolanda Gomez on the line.”
Emma glanced at Steve and cringed. If, as her son-in-law believed, old man Randall hadn’t murdered Santiago Gomez, then someone had better find the real killer fast. Before Steve filed those lawsuits.