Case of Lies

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  And she had made one other uncomfortable discovery since returning to Tahoe.

  Her ex-lover, Paul van Wagoner, and his new flame, Susan Misumi, had quickly moved in together down in Carmel. Fair enough, since Nina had ended it with Paul. The choice of Susan Misumi, with her black bangs, her humorlessness, escaped Nina, but it wasn’t her business anymore. Nina and Paul still checked in on each other. They managed to stay friendly because they had been friends before they became lovers.

  Nina had moved on. She went out, danced, ate good food, had a few unexpectedly intimate conversations. But she had discovered that she didn’t expect much from men anymore. She didn’t want to try for love.

  That feeling had been growing in her for a long time, and she sometimes wondered if it had something to do with the breakup with Paul. Finding a partner seemed impossible, based on her experiences, so she put it out of her mind.

  Men and places. Still, the restlessness would come over her, and she’d feel a need for another place and another man. Other people followed their lifelines. She careened along, too fast, not able to see her own.

  But she would always have two constants to ground her: Bob, and her work.

  Today, we persevere, she thought. With the last gulp of coffee, she threw two ibuprofen down her throat.

  ***

  The phone buzzed. Nina swung her legs down, sighed, and picked up the phone. Sandy must have come in. Her desk was only ten feet away, through the closed door, but Sandy didn’t like getting up.

  “He’s here, and so’s she. Your eight o’clocks,” Sandy said.

  “And a fine morning it is.”

  “Hmph. You have half an hour.”

  The man stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets, looking at one of Sandy ’s decorations, a Washoe Indian basket on the shelf. He wore a green-and-black plaid lumberjack shirt tucked into a well-broken-in pair of jeans. The belt, a leathercraft affair, must have dated from the sixties. Work boots, a body used to physical work.

  A conservative local, Nina thought, pegging him almost before he turned around. Nice wrinkled tan face. Grim expression. Plenty of gray-brown hair on both head and chin. A belly, that was a surprise.

  Behind him, pretty Chelsi nodded. She was taller than her uncle. She wore her hair down today and it fell straight and satiny. Something had turned off the smile.

  “Hi. I’m Nina Reilly,” Nina said, looking the man in the eye, holding out her hand.

  “David Hanna.”

  “Please come in.” After ushering Chelsi in, too, Nina glanced toward Sandy, who, resplendent this morning in a heavy turquoise necklace and a denim jumper, seemed to be writing something in the appointment book. Sandy gave Nina a swift look back, one eyebrow cocked.

  Look out.

  Now, that was an interesting take, since Uncle Dave looked harmless, but Sandy ’s first impressions had to be taken seriously. Sandy knew where clients hid their guns and buck knives; she knew if the Rolex was real or faux; a few words to her in the reception area revealed if a new client was resentful, desperate, or suicidal. Recently they had installed an emergency button hooked up to the local police under her desk, and the golf club propped behind her desk only doubled as a decoration.

  Such is solo law office life in a gambling town. Prepare for Uzis, Sandy frequently said.

  Nina closed the door and Hanna pulled an orange chair away from the wide desk. He sat, crossing one leg at the ankle, stroking his beard, looking out the window behind her desk toward the steel gray lake, but not focusing, just gazing. Chelsi sat in the chair next to his, back straight.

  Nina took her time getting comfortable, arranging a few papers on her desk, adjusting her chair. Let them get used to her.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” David Hanna said finally.

  “Because you need to be,” Chelsi said.

  “I’m not working much. Money’s tight. Chelsi and her dad, they’ve offered to pay for your services, but I just don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. I hear Chelsi’s already told you about the case.”

  “A little,” Nina said.

  “Rog was Sarah’s brother. I know he can’t help wanting to do something. What I can’t figure out, what I haven’t been able to get my head around all along, is what good it does, suing someone. My wife is gone.”

  “What’s your brother-in-law’s name again?”

  “Roger Freeman.” While Nina made a note on her yellow pad, Hanna watched, squinting. The tops of his ears were red and his nose looked sunburned, too. Either he spent a lot of time outside, or, as Chelsi had suggested, less healthy indoor pursuits heightened his natural color. “What’s your usual line of work, Mr. Hanna?”

  “I’m a carpenter. Used to be a firefighter.”

  Nina looked at her client-interview sheet. “ Placerville ’s a great town.”

  “It’s a long drive up Fifty to get here. I don’t come up the Hill much anymore since it happened. Chelsi said this conversation right now isn’t going to cost us anything?”

  “Free consultation,” Nina said. “We have half an hour and you came a long way, so how can I help you?”

  Hanna shrugged and said, “That’s the point. I haven’t got a fucking clue.”

  When Nina didn’t bridle at that, he added, “Like I said, talk won’t bring her back.”

  “But you’re already involved in a lawsuit. Isn’t that right?”

  “I had a lawyer in Placerville named Bruce Bennett. Two years ago, after Sarah died, Roger contacted him and had this lawyer file a civil suit against the motel where it all happened. I wasn’t sure about the whole thing, but Bennett got us in his office and oh, he talked it up, how much money we were going to hit them up for, how they were negligent. They let the bastard onto the property. No video camera and the clerk off somewhere. The lawyer talked us into suing the motel. Why, he practically had us convinced that the motel owner, who by the way wasn’t even around that night, did the shooting.”

  “Sounds like he was trying to put on a very aggressive case on your behalf.”

  “I guess.” He shook his head. “It never sat right with me, blaming the motel, but Roger was so gung ho. We used up some of Sarah’s life insurance to pay Bennett, but when the money ran out he filed a substitution-of-attorney form and left us flat.”

  “I guess that didn’t leave you with a very high opinion of lawyers. I know Bruce. The lawsuit stayed active?”

  He shook his head. “I really don’t know where things stand with it.”

  “You couldn’t pay Bruce Bennett, so he quit?”

  “Basically.”

  “I would think carpenters were in big demand around here. I can never get anyone to come out and fix my porch,” Nina said.

  “I don’t work much lately.” He sighed. “I have problems.”

  “Problems?”

  He chewed on a thumb, as if the question demanded arduous consideration that was beyond him. Scanning the room as if he might locate a swift escape route that wouldn’t require him to pass Sandy, his eyes landed on Chelsi.

  “Uncle Dave’s been sick,” Chelsi said, taking her cue.

  “Hmm,” Nina said. “Well, I understand you were going to bring me the court papers to look at,” she went on neutrally.

  “Right.” He reached inside his wool shirt and pulled out a battered envelope. He set it on the desk, the hand revealing a slight tremor. Nina looked at him carefully, noting the thin burst of broken capillaries in his ruddy cheeks, the tangle of red veins around the edges of his eyes.

  He hasn’t had the hair of the dog this morning, she thought, and he misses it. No wonder Sandy had given her a warning eyebrow. Sandy didn’t like drinkers.

  On the other hand, wasn’t it a positive sign that he had held off to talk with her? Maybe there was still hope for him.

  She opened the envelope and pulled out several legal documents in the Wrongful Death and Negligence case of Hanna v. Ace High Lodge and Does I-X.

  The complaint Bruce Bennett had
drafted was on top, followed by some unserved summonses, an answer filed by the Ace High Lodge, and a set of pleadings filed recently by the Lodge’s attorney, Betty Jo Puckett of South Lake Tahoe. While Nina skimmed through the pleadings, Dave Hanna slumped in his chair, never taking his eyes off her.

  Chelsi had displayed a good grasp of her uncle’s legal situation. He was about to have his case dismissed on the motion of the Ace High Lodge, because he had done nothing to bring the matter to trial for almost two years.

  Bennett had done a workmanlike job laying out the facts in the complaint. The Hannas had been celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary by spending the weekend at Lake Tahoe at the Ace High Lodge, one block from Harveys and the other Stateline casinos. They had gone to a show at Prize’s and walked back, then stepped out to the second-floor balcony of their room.

  There, according to the dry legalese of the complaint, “they observed an armed robbery in progress.” And, in what seemed to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, at thirty-eight, third-grade teacher Sarah Hanna had been shot once through the heart. She was three months pregnant.

  There were few traces of the gunman or other witnesses. The motel clerk, Meredith Assawaroj, had heard the shots from an adjoining property. She had missed seeing the killer but had provided the South Lake Tahoe police with a fair description of the three motel guests who had been held up, young people who had packed up and left before the police arrived.

  The clerk’s descriptions of these three led nowhere. The gun hadn’t been left at the scene. The witnesses had paid in cash and the description provided had been inadequate to find them. Nina made a note to find out more about that.

  Now the Ace High Lodge wanted out of Hanna’s lawsuit, which alleged that its clerk should have been in the office, that the motel security should have been better, and so on and so on. Hanna might have had some sort of case on the merits if he had pursued it, but leaving it to languish for so long had exposed him to Betty Jo Puckett’s Motion to Dismiss.

  Puckett’s work looked good. Her law was solid. Statutory limits restricted the ability of plaintiffs to file a lawsuit and then do nothing, as Dave Hanna had done.

  Puckett had apparently advised the motel owner well-to lay low for as long as possible and then attack Hanna for failure to prosecute. Nina hadn’t met the lawyer, but the courtroom grapevine said she had an effective style.

  She looked up. Hanna’s cheeks flamed, but his eyes were sunken into the sockets. He looked like a big, healthy man who had developed some wasting disease that was ruining him. Nina wondered how long he had been drinking way too much. At least he was sober at eight in the morning. She found it painful to imagine what he’d gone through, how bitter he must feel now.

  She cleared her throat. Setting down the motion to dismiss, she said, “Your wife seems to have been the classic innocent bystander.”

  “Did you know she was expecting?”

  “Yes.”

  He shifted in his chair, like the seat hurt him.

  “What do you plan to do now?” Nina asked him.

  “Slink away, I guess.”

  “The Lodge wants attorney’s fees.”

  “I might get socked with their lawyer fees?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Dave Hanna put his hand on his heart and said, “Let me get this straight. They want me to pay them? How much money are we talking about?”

  “I don’t know. I could guess, from the amount of work I see here, possibly several thousand dollars.”

  “If I do nothing, what will happen?”

  “You’ll probably have to pay their fees.”

  During a long silence Hanna deliberated about whether to-what? Confide in her? Walk out on her?

  “Well?” he asked finally.

  Nina raised her eyebrows.

  “What do you think?”

  “It isn’t hopeless,” Nina said.

  “There isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop them, is there?”

  “You can fight the motion. The Code of Civil Procedure does require that a suit like yours be dismissed two years after service on the defendant with no action. But it hasn’t been quite two years. It’s still in the discretion of the court.”

  Hanna blurted, “Look, lady. I understand you need to drum up business. Maybe you hope we’ve got a stash of dough hidden away. I hate to say this, but we don’t. Bennett demanded a hundred fifty dollars an hour and five thousand up front, and called himself cheap. I don’t want to bankrupt Roger and Chelsi. And I’m broke, like I keep telling you.”

  “We’ll take care of the money, Uncle Dave,” Chelsi said.

  “I will need a retainer,” Nina said, thinking of Sandy, who would hold her accountable. She came up with the lowest amount she could manage. “Two thousand, billed against my hours. I also charge a hundred fifty an hour. There may be expenses. If we manage to keep the case going, those expenses could mount up fast.”

  “Done,” Chelsi said, whipping out her checkbook. Hanna bowed his head, looked at the rug. “It’s not for revenge,” Chelsi said. “It’s not for money. It’s for my aunt. You know?”

  Nina nodded. She pushed the button as though Sandy hadn’t left the door open a crack and been listening the whole time.

  After Hanna had signed an agreement and left with Chelsi, Nina adjusted her suit coat and hung her new briefcase over her shoulder.

  “You think we can make money on this?” Sandy said. She reposed like a Buddha in her Aeron chair, detached, hands folded calmly on the desk over Nina’s notes.

  “I do. Fast money. That’s if we can get past this motion to dismiss. The motel clerk should have been in the office. The area should have been less of an ambush invitation. There may have been other incidents-this kind of crime occurs in clusters. Maybe the motel should have been on notice.”

  “The client’s unreliable.”

  “Yes. But his relatives seem to have him in line. I think some money might help him, Sandy. Rehab. Grief counseling. Whatever. I trust Chelsi to steer him right.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s get the police reports and check to see if there were similar crimes reported in the area over the past ten years. File a notice that I’m in as Hanna’s attorney and send a copy of the notice to Betty Jo Puckett. She represents the Ace High Lodge.”

  “Betty Jo Puckett?”

  “You know her?”

  “I met her. She has a problem in the tact department.”

  Nina smiled, saying, “Report anything else you hear.”

  “Before you go, what else do you need?”

  “Get the file made up. I’ll get going on drafting the Response to the Motion to Dismiss after court. There is a long line of precedents regarding innkeeper liability for inadequate security. Sandy, remember Connie Francis?”

  “The singer? Nineteen-sixties. ‘Lipstick on Your Collar.’ That wasn’t even her biggest hit. But even now it strikes a chord with me.” Sandy ’s husband, Joe, and she had broken up for many years and only recently remarried.

  “She won an early motel-security case. The damages award was in the seven figures. I don’t think it was in California, though. The trial took place in the mid-seventies. See if you can locate the case on Lexis.”

  “She was robbed?”

  “She was raped. While staying in a hotel room. It was brutal. I think it almost ended her career.”

  Neither woman spoke for a moment. Nina was thinking that people don’t get over violence like that. They may carry on, but they are changed forever. Finally Sandy said, her voice tight, “So some turkey fired off a wild one during a stickup and killed a pregnant third-grade teacher. Do we go looking for him, or just nick the motel?”

  “We go looking.”

  “Good.”

  “We get started, at least.”

  “Shall I call Paul?”

  “He’s tied up.”

  “You’ll need an investigator, and he’s the best.”

&n
bsp; But for many reasons, Nina did not want Paul van Wagoner involved. She did not wish to see his confident face, his flirty manner, his sexual vibrations. She was over him, at least for the moment. Someday, Paul could reenter her life neutered into a professional associate. Until then, he needed to stay filed in the Great Memory file.

  She said with emphasis, “Do not call Paul.”

  “Okay, okay. I heard about another good investigator who might be available.”

  “Good. See what you can do.” Nina trotted down the hall and climbed into her old Bronco. Five minutes until court. She bumped off the curb into the street.

  There’s an advantage to small-town law. She would make it to court right on time.

  3

  TWO DAYS LATER, JUST AFTER FIVE, Nina drove north on the Nevada side of the road that circled Lake Tahoe.

  Her response had been filed with the court that morning, and opposing attorney Betty Jo Puckett was nothing if not decisive. She had called Nina within an hour of the faxed service to her office and invited Nina to have a drink with her at her home in Incline Village, on the North Shore.

  In all her time practicing law at Tahoe, Nina had never been invited to the home of another lawyer. A talk like this would ordinarily occur in a paneled office where computers clicked and whirred just outside the door. The reason, she had long ago decided, was that she was one of the few women lawyers in town. Men could meet after work, but a meeting with a woman lawyer caused gossip and trouble at home.

  She hoped Ms. Puckett would be reasonable. Maybe she’d even be a congenial person, a new friend. Nina snorted at herself as she waited at the Stateline light. A new friend! The woman was a lawyer on the other side of a case, for Pete’s sake!

  At least she’d enjoy the forty-five-minute drive.

  Rush hour does not exactly exist on the twenty-five-mile stretch between the south and north shores of Lake Tahoe. Traffic may be slowed by gawkers, by people pulling over to park at the nude beaches, by the construction projects that last all summer, but the population for a real traffic jam just isn’t there.