Unlucky in Law

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Thank God.”

  “But-will you and Paul be keeping it? I could help you find someone to rent, if you want.”

  “Oh, Andrea.” Nina felt choked up, and put her hand up to her face to press her cheek, holding in the emotion.

  “Are you okay, Nina?”

  No wonder Andrea was so successful in her work at the women’s shelter. Eventually, even the hardest core cracked and revealed all. The silky warmth in her voice made Nina want to climb through the phone and sink into her arms. Instead, she told her everything, about her problems with the befuddling case, about her confusion about Paul.

  “As soon as you finish the trial, come for a visit,” Andrea urged. “We’ll help you sort things out.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s wonderful to hear that our house is ready for us again, but Paul and I have a commitment to each other. We’re working on moving back in together. So don’t go looking for me. On the other hand, I don’t want to make any decisions about the house up there yet, okay?”

  “I guess you’ll want to consult with Paul about it, decide whether to sell,” Andrea agreed. “Gee, I can’t imagine you without Sandy.”

  “Neither can I. And, as happy as I am with Paul, I’m afraid of all the changes. But I never let fear stop me.”

  “Matt and I will keep a close eye on things. Just come when you can.”

  “How’re the kids?”

  “Well, Troy’s trying out for basketball at the junior high tomorrow. He’s stressed out. Brianna’s good. I’m teaching her to sew.”

  “How do you find time? With the baby?”

  “She’s a good little thing,” Andrea said, and Nina could imagine her reaching out to touch her daughter June.

  “You’re astounding. You do it all with such-such élan.”

  Andrea laughed. “Funny you should say that. We’re having roast élan for dinner. Take care of yourself.”

  The afternoon wore on. Paul had turned off his cell phone. Nina was having a hard time concentrating due to Sandy’s announcement.

  At four, Nina called the attorney who had taken over her practice at the Starlake Building in South Lake Tahoe. As she expected, Carly Ann Moffatt was at the office on this magnificent Sunday in September. It is the way of my people, Nina thought.

  “Hi!” Carly Ann said brightly, launching into a progress report. The cases were going very well. She had just finished the dissolution hearing on Mrs. Rennsalaer, and the client would get her share of her husband’s pension plan after all.

  “Good work,” Nina said. “That case dragged on too long.”

  Carly Ann had brought in twenty thousand bucks already this month, settling half a dozen small personal-injury cases, and one of the P.I.’s had brought in her brother yesterday. The brother was on crutches and in obvious pain. He had police reports and medical records, and the driver who had hit him was a drunk with deep pockets! A potential bonanza!

  And the ladies down the hall were so nice. Carly Ann had lunch with them every day, and she wanted Nina to know she didn’t need to worry about a thing, Carly Ann had everything under control. She was loving it, in fact, and wondering if, well, Nina would let her buy Nina out.

  “I’d pay you monthly, and just take over the practice, Nina! Isn’t it great, you can set up down there with Paul and you won’t have the practice hanging over your head!”

  “Wait a minute, Carly Ann. Slow down.”

  “It’s been months…”

  “Just the summer…”

  “Whatever. I can’t work on salary forever. I’m doing all the work up here, getting some super settlements. I thought you’d be ecstatic!”

  “Maybe I am ecstatic,” Nina told her. “I’m glad you’re doing well. I’ll consider your offer.”

  Hanging up, she sipped her tea, wondering where Paul was. She had a sudden strong desire to run over to the condo to see him, but she really had to work. She took a break and walked down misty Eighth Street to the Tuck Box, a tiny establishment with the curving shingles usually associated with rural England. One cottage pie, a steaming Darjeeling, and an hour later she was back at the shack, the office rather, bending her head over Ginger’s report.

  Stefan’s blood matched the blood found at Christina’s. It was unlikely such tiny amounts of blood had been planted. Ginger had some tests pending.

  Stefan must be lying. The blood evidence had gone through the state’s lab and Ginger’s lab. He had to have gone there, a glass had to have been thrown. Had Alex Zhukovsky hired him to kill his sister?

  But he swore he’d never been there, and he didn’t even know her.

  Then there was the complete blank on Constantin’s samples. Yes, Christina was his daughter; that was about all Ginger could establish. What was so important about the bones? Why were the Romanovs haunting her case almost a century after their tragic ends?

  “Hello, Ginger.”

  “Just a minute.” A wheeze of machinery. Ginger got back on the phone. “How are you doing?”

  “Tired.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I’m always tired on Sunday. So you’re working tonight, too,” Nina said.

  “My night doesn’t start till midnight, my workaholic baby,” Ginger said, “but I’m glad you’re on the case tonight. You wouldn’t be as good as you are if you weren’t working all weekend. Never go to a lawyer who golfs or can talk to you about the latest movies, because those are sure signs of a procrastinator. Plus, I know you do it out of a sense of responsibility. I do it out of a sense of money, so I don’t get as many points. Did you get my bill?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Hold on to your baseball cap. It’s big. Figured out what day I’m testifying? Is it Tuesday or Wednesday?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Ginger, I’m not sure about you testifying at all. You’re not helping us on this case.”

  “I can sound dubious and talk at length about the unproved type of testing the state is doing, the rat-infested labs-wait a minute, I guess they want the rats there-but the news on the blood is bad. I got the second round of panels back this afternoon. I was just going over them one more time, trying to find some mistake I’d made. Bummer. My work is impeccable.”

  “Then he did it,” Nina said, closing her eyes. She let a wave of exhaustion blank out her brain for an instant.

  “He left his blood, unless the sample isn’t really from her apartment at all, and the cops are pulling something.”

  “I’ve gone over the chain of custody. It’s solid. Thanks anyway, Ginger. Did you get anything from the bone samples?”

  “There is something.”

  “Judging by your voice, I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  “I have no idea if this will be a help or a hindrance to you. I know for sure it’s puzzling. Remember there was something I couldn’t remember the night I was attacked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, here’s what I was doing. I had the electrophoresis results for Constantin, Christina, and Stefan jumbled together on my bench, just kind of lying there side by side.”

  “Electrophoresis?”

  “It’s a way to separate out large molecules, like DNA fragments, from a mixture of similar molecules. You pass an electric current through a medium that contains your mixture. Each kind of molecule makes a trip through the medium at a different rate, and separates out. You get a picture that looks like a bar code in the supermarket, different for each person. Then you can compare them for similarities and differences.”

  “I know you’ve explained it before. Someday I’ll go back and study chemistry and I’ll remember from one moment to the next. But I think I get the picture. You have bar codes that are different for each individual that you compare, and there are details you can read from those codes. Fifty-nine cents versus two bucks. Pringles versus Doritos. Check.”

  “Right. Now, Nina, are you sitting down?”

  “Why?”

  “They’re related.”

 
; Nina felt impatient. “You told me the paternity checked out-”

  “They are all three related. The parallels are unmistakable.”

  “Who?”

  “Constantin, Christina, and Stefan.”

  “No.”

  “Im-peccable. No doubt.” Nina’s mouth was hanging open. She just couldn’t take it in.

  “You’re saying…”

  “It’s a close relationship. Christina was Stefan’s half-sister, I would say. Constantin was his father.”

  “It’s all one family?”

  “The mothers are probably different.”

  “Of course! Of course!” She thought about Wanda’s money from Constantin. Wanda would have been in her mid-thirties between 1971, when Davida Zhukovsky died, and 1978, when Constantin died. And-Gabe had been born in 1974, Stefan in 1975.

  “So Constantin and Wanda were lovers!”

  “And had two children, I’m thinking,” Ginger said.

  “But-what did Stefan know? Did he knowingly go there to kill his own sister and then dig up his own father? Could he want the money from her inheritance?” They talked all around the subject, speculating on the repercussions.

  “Try to give me twenty-four hours notice on the testimony thing, if you decide to call me,” Ginger finally said, “so I can get down there from Sacramento. I’m leaving my calendar as open as I can. Look. Why don’t I drive down right now and take you out to a fashionably late dinner. You must be feeling like shit with the case in the dumper, and Paul…”

  “Paul?”

  “You don’t have to act all brave with me, babe. This is Ginger. Go ahead, cry on my shoulder. Or maybe you’re not crying? Maybe it’s okay? Which is it?”

  “Which is what?”

  “Who’s on first?” Ginger said, and laughed merrily, then went on in a kindhearted voice, “You know, I think I mentioned, there aren’t that many Japanese-American gal pathologists in California. In point of fact, there are only three of us. We keep in touch, tell autopsy horror stories late into the night and stuff. As I said, I know Susan.”

  “You know Susan Misumi.”

  “She told me she’s in love today.”

  “With Paul? Well, he’s taken,” Nina said.

  Ginger seemed to have dropped the phone. There was that rhythmic, awful, machinery wheeze again, like some monster coming to rip Nina’s heart out…

  “Babe, I am about to become the bearer of seriously majorly bad tidings,” Ginger said. “Because you have to know, there’s no way I’m going to let you walk around with a foolish grin on your face. And I’m warning you right now, it’s going to blow your work tonight.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Nina said. “Get to it.”

  “Okay. Susan spent the night with Paul last night. She’s in love. She couldn’t wait to tell me. She’s been alone a long time, and she’s dead earnest. So that puts you somewhere brand-new. I don’t understand why two smart babes like you let Paul do this to you. And I liked Paul, too, in spite of my reservations. I took him for basically cool. Nina?”

  Nina said through her tears, “What?”

  “Let me come down there.”

  “No. I have another three or four hours of work tonight.”

  A pause. “You sure?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire. Look, call me tomorrow. I’m going to stay up late in your honor and figure out this blood evidence thing. It’s the least I can do. I’ll think of something.”

  At nine P.M., Paul came to the office. Nina went out front and let him in. He looked sporty in a red windbreaker and new white shoes. Relaxed. Happy.

  “What happened to you?” he said, examining her. “Your eyes look like someone jabbed them with a poker stick. And did you know your phone’s off the hook?” He followed her into her office. “That looks an awful lot like Klaus’s special Napoleon brandy on the desk. Almost empty, too.”

  “It is.”

  “Well, I’ve got news worth celebrating,” Paul said, sitting down in the chair opposite the desk and putting his feet up on it. He smiled brilliantly. “Sit down, honey, and let me get to my report.”

  “Your report,” Nina said. She sat down.

  “Two breaks, Nina, big ones. Number one: we’ve caught Alex talking to Stefan on the phone right before the murder. I already subpoenaed the bastard. Maybe you’re right, maybe he did hire our poor schmuck of a client to dig up some bones and leave his footprints around. Anyway, he’s a perjurer, and you’re gonna rip him apart.”

  “Rip him apart,” she repeated.

  “What’s that look? You sick?”

  “Yeah, I’m sick.”

  “Well, this’ll make you feel better. I got a hit on Wanda Wyatt. Ready? Constantin Zhukovsky engaged in holy matrimony with Wanda Ruth Wyatt on May twelfth, 1973. After his first wife died, he married his housekeeper.”

  “Huh.”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “It’s a little anticlimactic.”

  He stared at her. “Well, I can’t figure out what it all means, but man, look at the birth dates on the Wyatt boys. Wanda’s a liar, for one thing. Dominoes, Nina. The bones could be Stefan’s father! Let’s get Ginger right on it. She’ll prove the relationship.”

  “No need. She already did.”

  Startled, Paul paused. “You knew? Well, what do you think?”

  Nina got up, came around the desk, and pushed Paul’s feet off the desk. “I think you should make an appointment when you want to come into the office and report. I think you should keep your freaking shoes off my desk. That’s what I think.”

  Panic flickered in Paul’s hazel eyes. “What’s got into you?” he said.

  “I have court tomorrow at nine-thirty and we are starting the defense case. I didn’t sleep much last night and I don’t plan to sleep much tonight. You have just given me two crucial pieces of information, and I’m trying to incorporate them into a mind that is already at the bursting point.”

  “Oh. Is that all?”

  “That’s all I can stand right this minute. Now. The phone record. Zhukovsky.”

  “What’s our strategy?”

  “Get the truth out,” Nina said. “Zhukovsky did hire Stefan, so we give him a chance to tell the jury why and save himself from his previous perjury. And maybe we start understanding why Christina was murdered.”

  “What’s he gonna say? What do you think?”

  “No idea,” Nina said briefly. “But he’s not going to implicate Stefan any worse than he’s already implicated. He’s not going to say he hired Stefan to do the killing, I promise you that. I know it’s never good to ask questions without knowing the answers, but you’ve talked to him twice, and the witness stand is where he belongs. Is Wanda subpoenaed?”

  “Not yet. I-”

  “Here’s another issued subpoena. Go get her. Right now. I want her back in court tomorrow. Stefan is Constantin Zhukovsky’s son. I believe he doesn’t know it.”

  “His brother, Gabe, too, who may know. He’s closer to his mom.”

  “Which makes Christina and Alex Zhukovsky-assuming the rest of the story is true and they had a different mother-half-siblings with Stefan and Gabe.”

  “Yes. It connects Stefan to Christina directly for the first time.”

  “Which is bad,” Nina said, “extremely. There may even be a money angle, someone trying to get some. The two older kids got all of it. Maybe that’s where the consult to Alan ties in. Well, the only person who can fill in the background is Wanda.”

  “She’ll be there. But be careful, Nina. You sound frustrated. Don’t make any mistakes tomorrow.”

  “Right. No more mistakes,” Nina said. She opened the door. “Better get going.”

  “Can I drop you at home on my way to Wanda’s?”

  “I have my car.”

  “How much of that brandy have you had?”

  “I’m not going home for a long time yet. I’ll be fine.”

  Paul hung in
the doorway. Nina went back to her desk. She read phone records and took notes.

  “No kiss?” he said finally.

  “We’re in the middle of a trial. Let’s keep things on a business footing, okay? It’s easier right now.”

  “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way I want it.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Then get going.”

  She heard the Mustang roar to life on the quiet street outside, dropped the records, and put her hands on her cheeks and her elbows on her desk.

  She had seen it in the shifting of his eyes and felt it in the distant politeness of his body. Paul had been with another woman.

  But Stefan was depending on her. She had to concentrate on the case. Talking with Paul would incapacitate her.

  She put him out of her mind. She had to.

  23

  Monday 9/29

  “RUSSIANS,” KLAUS SAID WITH SATISFACTION. HE FOLDED HIS HANDS on his paunch and snuggled back into the soft leather passenger seat of his Jag. Nina had just told him about the connections Paul had found, and updated him on Ginger’s evidence. “Everybody east of the Danube. All the same.”

  “How do you mean?” Nina asked abstractedly. Nine o’clock on Monday morning, court starting up in half an hour, and now that she had safely navigated them both to the courthouse parking lot, she was polishing off lukewarm liquid in the travel mug she had brought from home. Bright marine sun glanced in at them. Klaus was resplendent in navy blue and high spirits.

  “I will take Wanda,” he said. “Yes, indeed.”

  “Do you know something I don’t know?”

  “Put a couple of Slavs in a room,” Klaus said. “Two minutes later, you will have a conspiracy. That is what we have in this case.”

  Klaus would have been in his prime in the fifties. He probably had a photo of himself and Stalin tucked away in a box. His idea of Russia was antiquated. “Who’s in this conspiracy?” she asked, setting the brake. “What’s the purpose of it?”

  “We will find out. The ball of kite string is rolling free and the kite is flying off into the blue.”