For the Defense

by M. J. Rodgers

  When the man straightened and replaced the pipe in his mouth, Jack saw a large black cat in the crook of the guy’s left arm, previously hidden by the cloak. The cat stared at Jack with large yellow eyes.

  “Do you have a card?” the stranger asked.

  Jack gave him his card and was about to ask how he knew Diana when Mel sidled up to the man and spoke in a hurried whisper. “Shirley, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Shirley?

  Jack turned back to the strange man beside him, noticing for the first time the missing Adam’s apple and the small pores on his face. Well, hell. He wasn’t easily taken in, but he sure had been this time. That had been some acting job.

  “I had to tell Mr. Knight who I really am, Watson,” Shirley said to Mel. “He’s a fellow detective. It’s professional courtesy to offer my help.”

  Or maybe not such a great acting job. This woman thought she really was Sherlock Holmes.

  “This is important,” Mel pleaded. “You must tell everyone that you’re my great-aunt Shirley. There can be no exceptions. Remember, you gave your word to Mom.”

  “You have made your point, Watson,” Shirley said with a touch of annoyance. “No sense in belaboring it.”

  “And you were supposed to have worn something appropriate,” Mel whispered, her embarrassment obvious.

  “Dr. Watson is concerned for my safety,” Shirley said as she turned to Jack. “But he asks too much sometimes with this impersonation of his great aunt. A man does not don a woman’s clothes.”

  There was a deep pride in the rebuke that Jack found fascinating. The slight disdain in the tone, the prominent beak pointing upward, the snub of not addressing her critic directly—subtle points of characterizations, all well executed.

  Shirley might be crazy, but she did a very creditable job of immersing herself in her role. He was too much of an actor not to appreciate a part well played.

  “Concern over Professor Moriarty?” Jack asked soberly.

  Shirley’s head lifted in immediate and gratified acknowledgment. “Very astute of you to grasp the essence of Dr. Watson’s worry so quickly. Diana has not erred in her choice of detectives, Mr. Knight.”

  He smiled. “Call me Jack.”

  “And you must call me Holmes, despite the good doctor’s concerns.” She paused to pet the cat in her arms. “And this good fellow is the Hound.”

  “A fine fellow indeed,” Jack said, happy to play along. He gave the cat’s head a cautious pat and was rewarded with eager fur thrusting itself into his palm.

  “Once owned by the Baskervilles?” Jack ventured as he indulged the cat’s demand to be petted.

  “Quite right!” Shirley said, clearly pleased to have found a kindred soul both able and willing to speak her language. “Man’s best friend, once misled by human miscreants. I have taken him under my wing.”

  The cat was purring like a buzz saw when Jack became aware of Diana’s presence. He couldn’t have said exactly how, except that there was a sweetening of the air. He turned to find her a few steps away.

  “I see you’ve met my aunt,” Diana said as she stepped closer. “Mel, would you like to accompany Shirley to the buffet?”

  Mel obediently slipped her hand through her aunt’s arm, but Shirley was not to be dismissed so easily.

  “Diana, I’m not a fool. This feeble attempt to get me out of the way so that you can tell your detective who I really am is unnecessary. Jack and I have already exchanged professional courtesies. I may be retired, but my powers of observation are still keen. I knew immediately who he was.”

  Mel shook her head in exasperation, but Diana smiled indulgently at her aunt.

  “I very much doubt anyone could fool you. Would you do me a favor and accompany Mel to the buffet? She didn’t get a proper breakfast this morning, and I’m counting on you to see she eats a good lunch.”

  Shirley replaced the pipe in her mouth. “Well, of course. Delighted to be of service. Come, Watson.”

  Sighing audibly, Mel went along.

  As soon as Mel and Shirley were out of hearing distance, Jack turned to Diana. “Your aunt’s a charming character.”

  “Thanks for…indulging her.”

  “When did she decide she was Sherlock Holmes?”

  Diana watched her aunt and daughter at the buffet table. Her voice was soft. “After a car accident that killed her husband and two children. They were her world, Jack. The only way she could survive losing them was to become someone else.”

  “How long ago was this?” Jack asked.

  “Twenty years. Psychiatrists wanted to lock her up in an institution, shoot her full of drugs, but my mom wouldn’t let them. The psychologists who tried to talk her back into reality all gave up. Last one told my mom that as long as Shirley is happy being Sherlock Holmes, she’ll hold on to her delusion.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Shirley has a wonderful heart. I don’t care what name she goes by. She always told me that if I ever needed her, all I had to do was call. I called. And here she is.”

  A deep warmth radiated from Diana as her eyes remained on her aunt’s oddly clad form. Jack found himself wondering what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of one of those looks.

  “So, that’s the stupid old broad who thinks she’s Sherlock Holmes,” a nasty voice said, making her visibly flinch.

  Jack had seen Ray’s stepson approach out of the corner of his eye. Up close the guy was a couple of inches taller than him and at least thirty pounds heavier. He gave Jack a dismissive once-over as he set down his champagne glass on a nearby table.

  Diana turned slowly toward the guy, stiff-limbed. “She is my very sweet aunt. I suggest you watch your language, Arnie.”

  The noise that came out of Arnie’s throat was probably meant to be a laugh. “And you’re still acting like you’re too good for me with that crazy bitch in the family,” he said as he grabbed a chip off the snack table and angled it toward the dip.

  Jack decided right then that if the guy wanted some dip, he’d give it to him. Hand on the nape of Arnie’s neck, he pushed his sneering face into the large bowl. Arnie made a noise that sounded like a squealing pig at a trough as he swung blindly at Jack. Jack quickly released his hold and stepped out of reach. Arnie tumbled backward, the bowl of bean dip following him to the floor.

  He was sputtering and cursing when Ray rushed over and went down on his knee beside his stepson.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Before Jack could tell him, Diana stepped forward. “I think Arnie may have had too much to drink, Ray. Jack and I will put him in a cab and send him home if you’d like.”

  Ray looked from Diana to Jack. From the expression of defeat on the man’s face, it was apparent to Jack that Ray had no trouble guessing what had happened. Jack leaned toward him and held out his hand. “I’m the Jack Diana mentioned.”

  Ray grasped Jack’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. He looked down at his stepson, who was wiping the bean dip from his face and cursing. “I’m sorry about this, Diana. If you’ll call the cab, I’ll get him into it. He’s my responsibility.”

  And not a pleasant one. Arnie was in his mid-thirties and still a major pain for his stepfather. Jack shook his head. Becoming a parent—even a stepparent—was a life sentence, served without parole.

  Diana left to call the cab. As Jack watched Ray walk his stepson out, he promised himself a man-to-man talk with Margaret’s new husband later. He’d better know that if Jack ever caught Arnie around Diana again—

  “Thank you, Jack,” Margaret said as she approached.

  He gave her a little bow. “At your service. Diana told you, I presume?”

  “When I pressed her for the truth. My daughter’s a tough customer. But she also has the tenderest heart. She’s in the library. You’ll be careful?”

  Not sure if Margaret was warning him because Diana was tough or because she was tender, Jack had no chance to ask because Ray ree
ntered the house then to whisk his bride away for a dance.

  Jack went in search of the library. He found Diana inside, standing in front of a bookcase, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a picture of a man in the other. As he went closer, Jack saw the unmistakable resemblance between her and the man.

  “Your father.”

  She nodded.

  He gently lifted the framed picture out of her hand. “What happened to him?”

  “Heart attack eight years ago. He was fifty-three.”

  “Young.”

  Diana sipped some of her champagne. “Filling his lungs with cigarette smoke every day since he was seventeen made him an old man.”

  He handed her back the photo. “Was he a good father?”

  “He always had a smile and a hug for me. Told me I could do anything, be anything I wanted to be. What I wanted to be was exactly like him.”

  Despite the accolades in her words, her tone was sad. The combination perplexed Jack.

  “You never wanted to be like your mother when you were growing up?”

  “My dad earned a salary. She was given an allowance.”

  Ah.

  Diana returned the photo to the shelf. “He had no smiles or hugs for her. He treated her like she was his paid employee because her job was in the home. Since he devalued her contribution, so did I. Took me a while to finally wise up.”

  Jack understood her sadness now. She loved her father, but the respect she’d once held for him was gone. That was what she mourned.

  She finished her champagne, set the glass on the shelf as she continued to look at the picture.

  “My dad was a big man, six-four,” she said. “Ray is barely five-eight. Yet he stands tall over my dad when it comes to loving my mom for who she is and making her happy.”

  “Shame a nice guy like him got struck with such a jackass of a stepson.”

  Diana turned toward Jack. “Nice move with that bean dip. Arnie never saw it coming.”

  “Thinking on your feet is mandatory when you grow up with three brothers. Of course with two of those brothers a whole lot bigger and all of them tougher, I learned early on that my funny bone was the only one in my body not likely to get broken in a sparring match. I’m still relying on it.”

  She chuckled. “So all of your brothers are tougher than you?”

  “I used to think I had the edge on David. But a couple of months ago, that sort of got blown out of the water.”

  “What happened?”

  Jack sent her an enigmatic smile. “A lot of things, not the least of which was he decided to get married and raise a family. That’s way too brave for me.”

  “Now you’re the certified wimp in the family?”

  “And damn proud of it.”

  She laughed with a rumbling huskiness that he felt down in his insoles. He moved closer.

  Her voice and smile were full of warmth. “Thank you for what you did for my Aunt Shirley.”

  He’d wondered what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of that kind of look. Now he knew.

  “Diana, I did it for you.”

  His eyes held hers for a moment before he bent his head. A soft gasp escaped her lips as their breaths mingled.

  “Jack, I can’t do this.”

  He watched the pulse in her neck throbbing.

  “Tell me why, Diana.”

  For the space of several interminable seconds he waited for her to give him that reason or move away.

  She did neither.

  He brushed his mouth against hers, tasting cool champagne and something even sweeter that was her.

  An eager little sigh escaped her lips. The next thing he knew his arms were tight around her and he was kissing her with a hunger that was deeper than any he’d ever known.

  “Mom?”

  Oh, God, kid. Not now.

  Diana stiffened in his arms, then pushed away. Jack knew she would. A mother’s number one priority was always going to be her kid. Best a man could ever do was come in a distant second.

  He turned toward the doorway to see Mel frowning at him.

  “Everything okay?” Diana asked her daughter in such a calm tone that Jack couldn’t believe she was the same woman who had just kissed him with enough heat to burn the hair off his chest.

  “Grandmother and Ray are getting ready to pose for pictures,” Mel said. “They want us to be in them.”

  “Okay. Coming, Jack?”

  Diana was already halfway to the door.

  Jack put his back against the bookcase and concentrated on trying to get his heart to stop punching his rib cage. “In a minute.”

  Mel stayed when her mother left. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him squarely. “We don’t want this, Jack.”

  Great. Exactly what he needed right now. A kid with attitude. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Don’t want what?”

  “A man messing up our lives.”

  “You think I’m going to mess up your life because I kissed your mother?”

  “You like my mom. And she likes you. I knew it the other night when you kept looking at each other. It’ll only get worse from here.”

  “You really do lack tact when you lose your temper.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Mel, whatever your mother and I do is between us. You are not involved.”

  “I am involved. Hormones make a woman lose her logic. It happened to Mom before when she fell in love with my dad. She was trying to finish law school. But he wanted a family right away so he got her pregnant, which meant she had to drop out of school. I was two years old when he changed his mind and decided he didn’t want us anymore.”

  So that’s how Diana’s marriage had ended. He wished she’d told him. “I can understand why that would make her angry.”

  “She’s not angry. I am. She doesn’t even know I know.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “He always calls me on my birthday and Christmas, like he’s nobly fulfilling some fatherly duty. On my last birthday he confessed what he’d done. Said he was sorry, but he’d screwed up. Thought the family and kid scene were what he wanted. Like that was supposed to make everything all right. I’ve never had a dad.”

  “And you want one.”

  “No, I don’t. My mom and I are doing fine the way we are. A man would only come between us.”

  “I have no intention of coming between you and your mom.”

  “Ray had no intention of coming between me and my grandmother, either. But he did.”

  “Not all relationships between men and women have to end in marriage, Mel.”

  “So you’re only fooling around with my mom? You don’t really care for her when you kiss her? Does she know that?”

  Now what could possibly be the right answer to those questions? Jack suddenly felt like he was facing an irate father who was demanding to know his intentions.

  “This can’t be a new situation for you,” he said. “Your mother must have dated other guys.”

  “Mom only has serious relationships. She told me any other kind is meaningless. When I didn’t like either of the men she brought home for me to meet, she stopped dating them.”

  “Mel, I think I know your mother well enough by now to appreciate that no one can persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to. Not even you.”

  “But you became her private investigator just recently. I’ve been with my mom all my life. And I really care about her.”

  “I care for your mom as well.”

  “For how long? Until the case is over and you leave her like my dad did?”

  Another one of those damn questions for which he had no answer.

  “If you really care about my mom, you’ll leave her alone. She says you’re nice and a good private investigator, and she wouldn’t say those things if they weren’t true. She needs your help to free Connie. What she doesn’t need is for you to mess up our lives. Now, I have to get back to my grandmother.”


  She stalked out of the room.

  Jack should be amused at the audacity of the kid. Or angry. But he was finding that he admired her a little too much to be either. She’d faced him with the same no-holds-barred kind of honesty that her mother possessed.

  And she’d asked some questions he should have asked before his brain flatlined and he kissed Diana.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DIANA WATCHED the local news as she sipped her morning coffee. Her interview had been run four times since Friday. But this was the first time that reporter Bob Zucker had Judge Barbara Weaton in front of the camera, answering the charge of lack of cooperation from the Weaton family. The blazing lights in the background told Diana that Bob had cornered the woman the night before at a much-publicized political fund-raiser for Staker.

  “It would be inappropriate of me to comment on the upcoming trial of Ms. Pearce, as you well know,” Judge Weaton said in a voice that was very annoyed.

  “Is it true that you, your son and daughter-in-law have all ignored Ms. Mason’s letters and refused to return her calls?” Bob asked before he thrust the mike back in her face.

  “We gave our statements to the police,” Judge Weaton said. “The law does not require us to talk to the attorney for the accused.”

  “So you’re refusing to tell her what happened?”

  Diana had argued cases before Judge Weaton. The lady was tough. But she was up against a very smart reporter who knew the voting public understood very little about the law, and a whole lot about evasion.

  A solid fixture in the local news scene, Bob was somewhere past fifty and long past worrying about offending people in power, particularly the ones who rubbed him the wrong way. Matter of fact, he seemed to thrive on it.

  Barbara Weaton’s erect shoulders and uncompromising tone radiated an air of no-nonsense authority. “I, and the members of my family, will answer Ms. Mason’s questions. In court.”

  “Where your good friend, Judge Gimbrere, will be able to restrict what she can ask?”

  “How dare you imply—”

  “Ms. Mason’s made a simple request, Judge Weaton,” Bob smoothly interrupted. “All she’s asked is that you sit down with her and tell the truth. Is that really so hard for you and your family to do?”