BREACH OF PROMISE

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Even Deputy Kimura couldn’t still the courtroom now. Riesner’s head jerked back, anger rampaging over his face, as uncontrollable as weather.

  “Move to strike the last two sentences as nonresponsive!” he shouted quickly over the hubbub, forcing his face back into the grimace that passed for normal with him.

  Winston leaned over to Nina. “You hear that?” he muttered. “The jury’s got it all figured out now.”

  “Sustained. The jury will disregard the last two statements from the witness and they will be stricken from the record. Order!” Milne’s gavel came down and the noise subsided.

  Nina watched Mike, who had half risen. Rebecca was talking fast to him, her head close to his. While Nina couldn’t catch any words, she caught the soothing tone. Rebecca was trying to keep Mike from compounding the mistake Riesner had made.

  And whatever she said worked. Mike fell heavily back into his seat. Riesner wiped his brow with his silk handkerchief and spent considerable time leading Harry through more innocuous topics, defusing the bomb. Winston continued his examination after lunch, then Harry was excused. When the afternoon break was called, the reporters and photographers stampeded him, but Harry was in no hurry to get away. He graciously consented to pose for any number of snapshots.

  Nina almost felt sorry for Riesner, who had made a fool out of his client and seen his effort backfire. It almost made up for the day before, but not quite.

  19

  Bob woke up with a fever Friday morning. Andrea had to work. Matt had to work. Nina had to work. Matt promised to pop in a few times during the day to see how he was doing. That left Nina with the single mom’s alternative: dose him with medicine and prop him in front of the television with a six pack of uncola and crackers, out of Hitchcock’s range. She left him with his head lying over Hitchcock’s back, looking like hell. “Page me in an emergency,” she told him, feeling like an idiot. What kind of a mother would leave a sick child just to go to work?

  She would make it up to him when this trial was over.

  She arrived at court extremely late. Milne had just called the midmorning break. Fortunately, Winston had jumped into her place. “You owe me,” he whispered, passing the torch the minute she dropped her briefcase on her chair.

  “Winston. A word.” Nina caught him by the coat sleeve just as he got up from the counsel table. He followed her into the cubbyhole next to the law library. Nina shut the door. He filled her in on what she had missed in court. In case he had somehow missed it, she filled him in on what was happening out there in the world.

  The stories in the papers had begun by trying to state both sides of the Markov case, but then the commentators had gotten hold of it. For the first few days of the trial Lindy was the poster child. A well-known Boston area feminist wrote in her syndicated national column about how the Markov case symbolized the fact that women hadn’t come nearly as far as they thought. Lindy turned down all interview requests, which allowed the media free rein to paint her personality and the story in accordance with the particular slant desired.

  But now Riesner had turned up a husband, at least a husband who technically had been her lawfully wedded partner for much longer than Lindy had led everyone to believe. As a result, Lindy had been hastily decommissioned as poster child and Mike had now been tacked up.

  But the media was only echoing the change of tone that had transpired in the courtroom. Before Lindy started a freefall in front of the jury, one she wouldn’t survive, Nina and Winston needed to do immediate damage control on Lindy’s image.

  “Call Florencia Morales to the stand.”

  A fit young Latina woman stood in the witness box, her interpreter beside her, and was sworn in.

  “You’re Mike Markov’s housekeeper?” asked Nina. Mrs. Morales listened to the translation and answered. She spoke English fairly well. The translator was just there to make sure the questions were interpreted accurately.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “And you’ve been employed for the past seven years at the Markov estate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, Mrs. Morales, as caretaker you must see a lot of things that happen at the Markov house.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many days a week do you work?”

  “I’m there every day. I live there. Most days, I work.”

  “So you were there, on March twenty-eighth of last year, when Gilbert Schaefer came to tell Lindy Markov that they were still married?”

  “Objection,” Riesner said. “Leading, speculative, irrelevant, lack of foundation—”

  “Sustained.”

  “On that date about a year ago, did you observe the arrival of a man called Gilbert Schaefer?”

  “I opened the door to him. He introduced himself.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I called upstairs for Lin . . . Mrs. Markov. She came down.”

  “And what was her reaction upon seeing Mr. Schaefer?”

  “Hearsay, Your Honor,” said Riesner. “We object.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Tell us, if you will, only what you observed, nothing that you overheard of any conversation.”

  “Okay,” said Mrs. Morales. “She came down the stairs. When she saw him, she turned kind of white, then kind of gray. She wanted to know what he was doing, showing up after such a long time.”

  “And why had he come?”

  “He said . . .”

  “Same objection,” said Riesner.

  “Sustained.”

  “He told her why he had come?”

  “Yes. He just came right out with it, boom.”

  “And can you characterize his mood at the time?”

  “He was clowning around like it was all a big joke.”

  “What was her reaction when he told her why he had come?”

  “She listened. At first she didn’t believe him, but he showed her some papers to prove what he said was true. Then, like she was whacked with an ax, she sat down hard on the couch. She was very surprised at whatever he told her.”

  Nina paced quietly around in front of the jury, hands behind her back, head lowered, as if pondering the scene. She was giving everyone plenty of time to get it, that Lindy had been horrified to learn she was not divorced from this man. She looked at the jury. Mrs. Lim took her notes. Kris Schmidt looked twitchy. Cliff Wright was hard to read. “Now on another topic,” said Nina. “Are you aware that Mr. Markov has a niece, age seventeen, who lives in Ely?”

  “Yes. I have met her several times.”

  “When she comes to the Markov house?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And when she comes to the Markov house, what does she call Mr. Markov?”

  “Uncle Mike.”

  “And what about Lindy Markov?”

  “Aunt Lindy.”

  Following the afternoon break, Nina took over for Winston, who had already begun with Mike Markov. She was attempting to show the jury that Mike had had all the benefits of marriage with Lindy without accepting the legal obligations, but Riesner had prepared his client well. For the last three hours of the day, stoic and impervious to provocation, Markov asserted that Lindy played only a minor role in the business. He alone had invented the Solo Spa. He had never referred to her as his wife in public or private.

  Then it was Nina’s turn to play with pictures. She asked for the lights to be dimmed and inserted a video Paul had extracted from someone in the marketing department at Markov Enterprises.

  Mike spoke from behind a podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, coworkers and friends. It gives me great pleasure to introduce my companion, my partner, my muse, my wife, Mrs. Lindy Markov!”

  The screen went blank.

  A sound escaped from beside Genevieve. Nina didn’t turn to look at Lindy, seated there.

  “Does this refresh your memory?” she asked Mike Markov.

  Before giving the rattled defendant a chance to recover from being shown up as a liar in court, she
moved in for a strike, getting him to make the crucial admission that Lindy had said “Now we can get married” when she signed the separate property agreement.

  At the end of the day, she canceled Friday night’s dinner meeting with Genevieve and Winston. They would have to haggle about the day’s work without her or wait until Saturday. In spite of their reasonably effective showing that day, she didn’t feel good. She couldn’t remember ever being in a case before where her actions in court, both good and bad, were so zealously analyzed afterward that she sometimes felt pulverized under the sheer weight of opinion.

  Calling Sandy on her cell phone to fill her in and give her what advice she could about keeping things going at her poor, neglected practice, she drove home to Bob and managed to get a dollop of soup stuffed between his puffy, fevered lips before he conked out again at about seven-thirty.

  When the phone rang, she didn’t answer. She was afraid it would be Lindy calling and she just couldn’t reassure her properly at the moment. She couldn’t even reassure herself.

  This trial had an edginess she couldn’t remember feeling before. Everyone jumped at the slightest mistake. Every revelation rated frenzied scribbling in a reporter’s notebook.

  She put on her nightgown and crawled into bed. Outside the wind blew. She tried to sleep as branches broke off and thumped against the roof, sounding to her groggy mind as heavy and ominous as bodies falling.

  20

  Over the weekend, Bob’s fever receded enough for him to take up his station at the computer, where he was lovingly creating a website with his cousin Troy based on their mutual loathing of phony people and love of Boogie-boarding. So, late on Saturday morning, Nina went into the office, straight from a glaring May sunshine into the waiting glare of Sandy.

  “I can run this place alone,” she said, “but your other fifty-nine clients might not be so sure.”

  “Sandy, I’m really sorry. But you know I’ve got trial, and Bob’s been sick. . . .”

  “Yeah. He called here while you were at court yesterday.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “Sounded low.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. So, I told him about the shaman near Woodfords in my mother’s time. A healer. He used to smoke first, a plant that would help him see what was wrong. Then he had two methods for healing. He would sing. Sometimes that worked.”

  “And then?” asked Nina, intrigued. Sandy must get lonely here all day. . . .

  “He sucked the sick person’s flesh to get rid of the ’Pain.’ “

  “What did Bob think about that?”

  “Said maybe he’d try listening to the radio first.” Sandy looked so serious, Nina squelched any desire to giggle.

  Genevieve threw open the door to the office. “Hi, Sandy, Nina. Man, it’s been one helluva month, hasn’t it?” Her arms spilling files, she breezed her way through to the conference room. “Vanilla bean coffee! Sandy, you’re the best!”

  Sandy and Nina watched as she whirled from here to there, bringing them both fresh cups and watering Sandy’s plants as she passed.

  “You would never know she’s got that hearing problem,” said Sandy as the door closed behind her. “Isn’t it great to see a disabled person doing so well?”

  Nina, still breathing in the clean air and optimism Genevieve always seemed to carry with her, agreed, wishing she felt half as optimistic. Where would she find the money to get her through this trial? What could she do about her clients?

  “You know what I wish?” she asked. “I wish Bob and I could go somewhere right now, tonight, and sleep late every morning and get brown and spend the entire day in the water.”

  “If you’re going to wish,” Sandy said, “wish for something useful. Wish for a million bucks, why don’t you?”

  Winston showed up later bearing cold, roasted chicken and salad, which they ate while they talked.

  For a few minutes, they indulged themselves in a discussion of all the places at Tahoe they hadn’t been and couldn’t wait to go to once they were out of the incarceration they imposed on themselves during any trial. Since they couldn’t actually do anything fun, they had fun imagining themselves having fun. Sandy sat with them through the first part of this discussion, then left to tap away on her computer.

  Nina led off with her latest plan: to take Bob and Matt’s family to a picnic on Fannette Island. That intrigued Winston, who loved to kayak. He decided that would be his first stop, once they finished the trial. Then he wanted to spend at least a long weekend hiking. Then two days lying on the beach. Then he might take a swim up at the Squaw Valley pool and hike all the way back down the mountain from there.

  Genevieve said she hadn’t spent enough time alone with a slot machine lately to claim more than a passing acquaintanceship. The trial was cutting into her gambling time.

  “Okay, you’re waiting to hear from me,” she said once they had finished eating, with that charming confidence that a snide person might mistake for arrogance.

  “We are?” said Winston, but he was joking.

  “Analysis of how we’re doing in one word: fanfuckingtastic.”

  “Is that like those bumper stickers people used to put on VW’s, ’fukengruven’?” asked Winston. “Because not too many of those old Bugs were in any shape to brag, you know.”

  “I don’t think we have too much to brag about yet, either,” Nina said.

  “Well, that’s fine. We don’t want you two getting smug.” Genevieve picked up a yellow sheet and read, then set it down. “So let’s start with the bad stuff. The Gilbert Schaefer thing hurt. Some of the jurors stopped listening to Lindy. Most of them frowned at some point during that testimony. I think we’re losing Kris Schmidt, and probably Ignacio Ybarra.”

  “It hurt, all right. I felt like I was having one of those operations in China where they use hypnosis instead of anesthesia, only I wasn’t hypnotized,” Winston said. They all smiled bleakly at that, and Nina for once felt a certain amount of comfort in sharing her woes with her colleagues. No wonder lawyers banded together into firms.

  “The good news is that the mountain climber, Diane Miklos, and Mrs. Lim are solid in the Lindy camp. They don’t like Mike; it sticks out all over their faces. Nina, you really got them going in your opening; we’ve already talked some about that,” Genevieve continued. “In terms of the questioning, well, everything I heard about you is true. You’re hard-hitting and effective. Eye contact is the only area you need to work on, although you did a job on Markov, that extended-play staring thing at the end. Very good. And smile more, sugar, pul-lease.

  “Now, here’s something else you should know. We’ve got troubles. Before he disappeared on us, Paul turned up some late-breaking information that is going to hurt us. Wright’s been having marital woes. Too late for us to use our peremptory, unfortunately.”

  “I heard,” said Winston. “And I have something to say about that.”

  “Go ahead,” said Genevieve graciously.

  A touch of annoyance at her giving him permission passed over his features. “I think we should recognize that Nina’s instincts were right about him. I think she deserves that, and we owe her that.”

  “Oh, Nina doesn’t need my approval like some people. And we can attract him back. Highlight the traditional female role that Lindy played at home. By all reports, other than being a political shark, he likes his women traditional.”

  “You can’t ignore the rest of the jury to win over this one guy,” said Winston. “We don’t want to lose them once we’ve got them.”

  “Nobody’s saying ignore them. It’s a subtle matter of perspective, which I’m sure Nina can handle, can’t you?”

  “Uh,” said Nina. “No. I won’t do that. Besides the bad taste it leaves in my mouth, we’ve all said many times that Lindy’s trump card is that she was an equal partner in the business. Once we get around the Separate Property Agreement, I’ve always intended to clinch our argument with the fact that she’s bee
n vital since the beginning to making their business the success it is today.”

  Winston nodded his head. “You know I hate popping your bubble, Genevieve,” he said, “but Nina’s right. I don’t think we should change our strategy to win him over. It won’t help.”

  Genevieve said, “What’s the matter with you two? You’re talkin’ like losers! We are not going to let one asshole juror ruin our game! We need nine jurors on our side, and we’re gonna get them. You have my personal guarantee.”

  Nina said, “Genevieve, I’ve seen a case turn before on the leadership abilities of one angry man. . . .”

  “This one won’t. We’re smarter than he is.” Genevieve slammed a notebook shut as if to put an end to all further discussion on the topic. “Now, moving right along . . .”

  They spent most of the afternoon and evening chewing peppermints and nuts going over what had happened, with very little time to plan for the next week, where Riesner would take the reins and redirect the case. And whenever she had a moment to stop and think, the mistake of allowing Clifford Wright to sit up there came back to Nina like a hard plastic tag in her clothing, rubbing at her until her skin hurt.

  Sunday, Andrea and Matt invited Nina and Bob along for a day at the beach. Nina said no at first, wanting to sleep late, study her notes, and give Bob a chance to get over his bug, but Andrea came up the stairs to her room, pulled the quilt off of her, and set Hitchcock on her. Packing up her paperwork into her briefcase, Nina agreed to come if they would just sit her at the table with her work. Well, hadn’t she just spent a lunch hour in her office sitting around with the others, commiserating about how they never got out?

  At Pope Beach, where Lake Tahoe spread a frothy navy-blue all the way to the horizon, they laid out towels in the warm May sunshine. Nina stripped off her layers of clothes right down to her suit. Putting her head on her briefcase, she promptly fell asleep.

  Next thing she knew, something cold and wet had landed on her back and seemed to be snaking its way down. Leaping up, she screamed.