Lindy sat there, as deflated as the red party balloons back on the boat must be now. “Okay. If you have to,” she said. Reluctant to end an argument she had not entirely won, she took a long time to gather her things and leave. Sandy, who had been hovering at the door, showed her out.
Then Sandy came into Nina’s office and sat down in the chair just vacated by Lindy, turning two dark pebble eyes on Nina, her broad face smooth and unwrinkled as Truckee River rock. Today, her single long braid of black hair was laced with a strip of leather. In the outer office the phone rang but she gave no sign of hearing it.
“Well?” she said. “Good party? Does she have some work for us?”
“I knew that party was a mistake,” Nina said. “And don’t pretend you weren’t listening.”
A minute stiffening of Sandy’s shoulders signaled Nina that she had guessed correctly. “I missed a lot, although I caught the shattering climax,” Sandy said. “What happens now? You can’t exactly divorce a man you never married.”
“Eight letters,” said Nina. “Starts with a p.”
“Paranoia?”
“You’re good. But let’s hope not.”
“Hmmm. Give me a minute.”
“I’ve got court at ten. I’ve got to get going.”
“I’ve got it,” she announced as Nina put her hand on the doorknob. “Paramour. She takes a lover and shows him what he’s missing.”
“Well, not exactly what I had in mind, but that’s a possibility.”
The pebbles flashed with light. “Not palimony.”
“Bingo.”
“But the plaintiffs never win those cases, do they?” said Sandy. “Speaking strictly about money, which we don’t do often enough, you’re on the wrong side.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Who’s the lucky guy representing Mike Markov?”
“The lucky guy would be Jeffrey Riesner.”
Sandy made a sound low in her throat. Her eyes narrowed to a squint.
While she grappled with this latest abominable turn of events, Nina escaped out the door.
That afternoon, Nina hit first the on-line computer resources, and then emptied her pockets of change at the copy machine, collecting everything she could find in a cursory overview at the law library.
Palimony. The word had been coined in the seventies when Michelle Triola sued the movie actor Lee Marvin for a share of his earnings after a relationship without the benefit of marriage. Unfortunately for Ms. Triola, although the jury awarded her some money for “rehabilitation,” an appeals court had thrown the decision out. She got nothing, but Marvin v. Marvin had put the concept onto the legal map, and that was almost as good as setting a precedent.
Nina skimmed the cases she already knew and a few she didn’t. Liberace’s estate had been sued by his lover, a young fellow who felt stiffed, so to speak. It was hard to take some of the cases seriously. There was a border area of frivolous cases in which aggrieved lovers simply felt entitled to something after their partners died or moved on. The cases were full of the ingredients the press loves the most: romance and fame.
And, considering the pot of money involved, how they would love this one.
For some time she lost herself in the suit filed by Kelly Fisher, the model who had been Dodi Fayed’s lover before Princess Diana, and who had actually been able to sue for breach of promise in a French court. As Nina had told Lindy, there would be no such luck in hard-nosed California. There had to be some kind of contract to share income and assets, and the contract had to be provable. At least, that was how the issues had been decided in the past.
As she sat at the library conference table straining her eyes on the fine print of opinions, she thought to herself that she had never seen the word “love” in any of the thousands of pages of California laws. “What’s love got to do with it,” she hummed to herself as she read.
Love was yin, traditionally the province of women, female, subjective. Law was yang, male, objective. She felt uncomfortable about Lindy’s position. Show me the hard evidence, the lawyer in her said. Promises of marriage, sex, talk of love, midlife crises, affairs—the legal system had washed its hands of these. She didn’t want to be associated with such sloppy emotional matters herself. A woman lawyer had to take special care to be more objective than anybody else.
Yet these matters were now inextricably intertwined with a huge amount of money, and the legal system was being used to keep the money in the hands of Mike Markov. It wasn’t right. Her anger worked on her, as it always did, seeking a productive outlet. But what could she do all by herself in a fight against these big boys?
She found herself thumbing through the Civil Code, skimming mindlessly through the sections on marriage. They wouldn’t be applicable to unmarried people, but what were Lindy and Mike if not married? Lindy was much more than a girlfriend.
Frustrated, Nina thought, we need more laws to cover this, and caught herself just in time. Her entire wall was covered with the Annotated Codes of the State of California, with so many new ones passed each year that no one could keep up.
All right, make an old law fit, she thought. She went through the statutes again. This time her eye caught on a humble little statute that would probably be repealed as obsolete the first time some modern lawmaker noticed it: Civil Code section 1590 said, Where either party to a contemplated marriage in this State makes a gift of property to the other on the basis or assumption that the marriage will take place, in the event that the donee refuses to enter into the marriage . . . the donor may recover such gift. . . .
Nina repeated that to herself. She thought of dowries, of handsome men in high collars, of jilted fiancés.
Suppose Paul gave me a wildly expensive diamond engagement ring, she thought, but I refused to marry him after all. The ring would have to go back, or at least, the jury could give it back to him if he took me to court.
Say she gave him something. I will give you my fortune if you marry me, she said to herself, trying to paraphrase the code into words she easily understood. She still didn’t quite get it. She tried again. I promise you something, and in return you marry, or promise to marry, me. Yes. That’s what the code said in plain language.
She thought again about her interview with Lindy, about what Lindy had said.
Looking down at her legal pad, which had more doodles than notes, she saw that she had drawn a pair of wedding bells with a ribbon on top. Musical notes made a circle around them.
Certainly bells had begun to ring in her brain.
She planted a big kiss on the homely phrase before copying it down.
At five o’clock she slammed closed her last book of the day, then drove to her brother Matt’s to pick up her son. Matt and his wife, Andrea, lived with their two children in a neighborhood known as Tahoe Paradise, only a few blocks from where Nina and her son now lived. Matt ran a parasailing business in the summer and a tow truck business in the winter. Andrea worked at the local women’s shelter, a way station through which a steady and burgeoning stream of battered women and their kids flowed.
Tucked into a clearing in the woods in a small wooden house with a stone fireplace that smoked for most of the year, they lived the way people had lived a hundred years ago at Tahoe, the only visible nod to suburbia being the struggling lawn that was now, with all the rain they had been having, a silky-looking iridescent green patch.
She pulled the Bronco up to the house, removed her shoes, and marched across the damp grass. Might as well enjoy it. Winter was just around the corner.
Andrea opened the door before she could knock. “Nina! We expected you for lunch,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I just got busy. Is Bob still here?”
“He and Troy are up in Troy’s room working on the computer.”
Nina reached out to squeeze Andrea’s arm. “How’s everyone doing? Have they been at it since they got home from school?”
“Pretty much.”
“Did Bob do any homewor
k?”
“I doubt it.”
“Uh-oh. It’s going to be a long night.”
“They work awfully hard. He needed to do something besides the usual grind.”
“I wish he’d gone outside to play. It’s so beautiful this time of year,” Nina said, breathing in the pine air, feeling the kiss of a breeze.
“Like mother, like son,” said Andrea, leading her into the house. “Put ’em in a dark room with a computer and they’re as happy as Bill Gates.”
“We’re not going to hit you up for dinner. I’ve got to get him home.” Nina went upstairs to get Bob.
Other than the difference in size, Troy and Bob looked identical from the rear in their California boy uniforms, Van’s two-toned suede sneakers, emblemed T-shirts, baggy plaid shorts, hair a modified monk style. Troy, a year younger, turned around to say hi when she came in. Bob continued to stare hypnotically at the screen in front of him.
“Hey, Mom. Come and look.”
From the time he could talk, Bob had demanded that she witness and convey her blessing upon his every act. She wondered if this was unique to male children. Bob’s cousin Brianna, who was younger, seemed more self-contained than either of the boys. Nina applauded the improved Web page, then bribed and threatened him out the front door. “Where’s Matt?” she asked Andrea as they stood in the doorway and Bob ran down the path to the car.
“Packing up the last of the parasails, and if I know him, paying a final tribute to summer’s end with a little ride around Emerald Bay. Hey, isn’t that where you went on the Dixie Queen last weekend?”
“Yes, it is.” Nina gave her a brief rundown of the party and its grand finale without naming its participants.
“Did you see the little island in the middle, Fannette?”
“Yes.”
“I heard the most interesting gossip about that place last week from a woman whose grandfather created some of the handmade wrought iron light fixtures at Vikingsholm.”
“That’s the Scandinavian-looking mansion on the bay across from the island.”
“Right. Built by Lora Knight, who also built the teahouse on the island.”
“What gossip?”
“Before the teahouse was built, a sailor built a tomb in the rocks.”
“Who for?”
“Himself.”
“Is he buried there?”
“Nope. Drowned in the lake. His body was never recovered. You know Lake Tahoe,” she said. “It’s too cold for bodies to float.”
“So what happened to the tomb?”
“She said tourists used to visit it, but that by the time the teahouse was built, nobody knew where it was or what had happened to it.”
“You’re trying to spook me.”
“It’s the solemn truth.”
“Well, one fine day, let’s get Matt to load up the boat and check that place out. Can you go on the island?”
“There’s no dock anymore. You have to swim from a boat, or kayak there. Besides, his boat is chronically ailing.”
“First chance I get, I’m going.”
“You’re not going anywhere. I recognize that gleam in your eyes. Something wicked has come your way.” Andrea was looking at her appraisingly. “You always look happiest when you’ve got some horrible problem at work.”
“True,” Nina said. “Horrible problems are my beat.”
Andrea laughed in a girlish treble that went with the curly red hair and the blue jeans and the flannel shirt.
“Andrea, have you ever met Lindy Markov?” Nina asked.
“Of course. She’s involved in some charities and nonprofits around town. She gives fund-raisers at her house. Everybody comes, partly because of their curiosity about her home, which she’s happy to satisfy in the service of her pet causes.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yep. Cost me two hundred bucks, too. A worthy cause, but money we couldn’t afford.” Andrea made a face. “Oh, Lord, how Matt moaned. A dent in that untouchable college fund for the kids. He practically cried. But sometimes there are more immediate problems that need attending.”
“Andrea, you’re such a good soul.”
“No. I found help when I was desperate.” Andrea had weathered a rough relationship with her first husband, the father of her two children, and a shelter like the one she now managed had helped her get free. “This is just another token dime to the dollar.”
“Where do the Markovs live? What’s the house like?”
“Near Emerald Bay on Cascade Road, on one of the most magnificent estates on the lake, bar none. They must have acres of lakefront property. Mrs. Markov has been generous with the shelter. Wish we had more like her. She propped up a lot of women who needed help.”
“I wish I hadn’t asked. You make her sound like a saint.”
“She’s no saint. Just generous.”
Nina heard the horn on the Bronco. “I have to go.”
“Wait. Is Mrs. Markov in some kind of trouble? Anything to do with that scene on the boat you witnessed?”
“You know I couldn’t talk about it if she was.”
“Well, I just want to say, please let me know if there’s anything I can to do to help her. She’s one in a million.”
Bob honked the horn of the Bronco again and Nina trotted out to the car and caught sight of him in the driver’s seat. His head nearly scraped the ceiling. In three years he would be driving. The thought was appalling.
“Mom, Christmas is coming,” he said as they approached the corner of Kulow.
So it was. She hadn’t given it much thought, but like most kids, Bob had.
“There’s this program I want for the computer. Troy and I can use it on our website to make things three dimensional.”
“That sounds nice,” she said, swinging the Bronco into their driveway. “You be sure to ask Santa for it.” Bob knew the truth about Santa but liked keeping on with the fairy tale, protective of their few family traditions.
“It’s kind of expensive.”
“Oh?”
“About three hundred dollars.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll just hope Santa can bring it, and if he doesn’t, I won’t be disappointed.”
“Bob, since we bought the house, this year is going to be tight. Isn’t there anything else you want?”
“Just one thing. It’s what I really, really want.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t want to know.” He got out and slammed the door. Nina could see Hitchcock inside the house, scrabbling at the window and barking a greeting.
“I do. What do you really want?”
“I want to visit my dad.” He ran for the door, slipped his fingers under the potted plant to extricate the key, and unlocked the door while she stood on the driveway feeling as if she had been hit with a snowball the size of a snowman.
Bob’s father, Kurt, a man she had loved once but never married, now lived in Germany. A ticket to Germany would wipe her out.
So this would be one of those holidays where she would worry that she could not do right by Bob. She worked too hard, she worked long hours, she lived in a little cabin, and she couldn’t be both mother and father. And she couldn’t afford to give him what he really, really, wanted.
At eight-thirty, while Bob was in the shower, the phone rang.
Sandy, who never called Nina at home, spoke. “I was cruising around the Net,” she said, chewing on something. Nina wondered, not for the first time, where Sandy lived. She had never been invited to find out. “I was thinking about that Mrs. Markov.”
“What’d you find?”
“A case. I wasn’t sure you knew about it. Maglica v. Maglica.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Down in Orange County. You ever hear of the Maglite?”
“A little flashlight? I use it to take the dog out for a walk.”
“Well, there you go. The guy invented it. And he and his so-called wife built up this huge company. The
y had a falling-out and she sued him.”
“For what?”
“Breach of contract. She asked for half the company. Unlike these other cases in this old brief of yours I’ve been looking at, this one went to a jury.”
“And?”
“The jury gave her eighty-four million dollars, mainly for her services to the company.”
“Wow.”
“Of course, I’m just a badly paid peon without a brain in her head getting it all wrong.”
“Oh, stop it, Sandy. It sounds interesting. Give me the Web address and I’ll look it up before I go to bed.” Sandy gave it to her.
“Are you taking the case?” Sandy asked.
“I’m still deciding. Most signs pointed to no, but then I got the glimmer of an idea at the law library—too soon to talk about, though. And now this case you’ve found shows somebody has won at least once in a similar lawsuit.”
“Markov’s another Maglica,” Sandy said.
“What’s so special about this case that you’re spending your evenings doing research without being asked?”
“Lindy Markov helped some girlfriends of mine a few years ago without putting them through a lot of bureaucratic bilgewater. Now she needs help.”
“And here’s another thing,” Nina said. “She needs a firm in Sacramento or San Francisco, a firm with the resources and capital to carry the case. There’s so much money at stake.”
“But . . .”
“Think about what your average thug will do for fifty bucks on the street.”
“I’d rather not,” said Sandy.
“Now multiply that take by a couple of million . . . and consider how far our friend Jeffrey Riesner might be willing to go to mug Lindy Markov.”
“That’s exactly what I have been thinking,” Sandy said. “Now listen. He had a palimony case out of Placerville some time back. And here’s what he did.” Sandy avoided saying Riesner’s name the way some people avoided curse words. “He associated in this dude from L.A. who handles all the Hollywood people. Winston Reynolds. He’ll want to do that again for this case.”
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