Skinny-dipping

by Claire Matturro

  “Angela Harper. That’s her name. Her name is not ‘that little orange-haired gal.’ And she is not, technically, my gal. She’s an associate and she has her own caseload.” I raised my voice, though I struggled for control. This man had dumped a killer veggie baby case on me at the last minute and hadn’t even warned me about the pretrial and didn’t say nice job for getting out of that, and now he wanted to dump more of his work on me. “No,” I said, loudly and with an edge. “The brain-damaged baby case is quite enough of your work for one week.”

  His eyes narrowed into that eagle-eyed glint that Stonewall’s face bore in the bigger-than-life-size portrait over Jackson’s desk. “What?” he said, as if misunderstanding me.

  “No. I’m not taking any more of your cases.”

  Jackson’s eyes squinted another notch, so much so that I doubted he could focus on me.

  “You didn’t even warn me about the pretrial,” I said shrilly.

  Possibly in response to my sharp voice, little Ashton the Maniac stuck his head out of the conference-room door across from where I stood. He cleared his throat, and I glanced at him and saw that his girlfriend, Jennifer the Stairmaster wizard, was hanging over his shoulder, and I realized I was yelling and stopped.

  When Ashton started clapping, Jackson made a loud, inarticulate noise and stomped down the hallway.

  “Good girl,” Ashton said. “Come in. Join us. We’re relaxing.”

  “Relaxing” is a lawyer euphemism for drinking on the job. I slipped into the room and shut the door.

  Ashton, whose irises were huge bowls of blue glass, grabbed me, hugged me, and gave me a big kiss, right on the lips. I kept my mouth tightly closed as I tugged away from him.

  “Proud of you, babe. Telling the big guy off. Told him not to give you that brain-damaged baby case.” Ashton then twirled me around as if we were square-dancing.

  I spun and came to rest in front of Ashton and rolled my eyes at Jennifer.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Jenn. I told her all about us.” Ashton grinned.

  Huh? Ashton and me? An “us”? He told Jennifer what? Caray! There is no “us,” as in Ashton and me, and that was about the last rumor I needed.

  “What do you mean, ‘us’?” I narrowed my eyes in a plausible imitation of Jackson and looked into Ashton’s as he took a swig of his drink.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Jennifer sang. “He said you had this big, you know, schoolgirl, like, crush thing and all, because he was your, ah, mentor, but he, you know, didn’t want to mess up how you worked together. That was all before he met me, anyway.” Jennifer smiled the confident smile of a pretty blonde with big tits. “Martini?” she asked and held up a shaker.

  “With vodka,” I said, and eyed Ashton again. “Us?”

  “Ah, babe, come on, you’re gorgeous and all, so don’t take it personal, but you’re an Amazon, not my type. I told Jenn we never consummated it.”

  “Here you go, Lilly.” Jennifer handed me a glass and winked at me.

  I sipped, and I simmered, and I wondered if it was safe for Ashton to drink when his dilated eyes suggested other mind-altering substances were already afloat in his system.

  “You were sooo cool out there,” Jennifer said.

  I sipped, and sipped again, and I mellowed.

  Jennifer, in my unstudied opinion, was a dingbat of the highest order. But the girl knew how to make a martini. There is, of course, a hidden bar in the credenza in every conference room in the firm, and in most of the lawyers’ offices, and soon I felt the warm, fuzzy feeling of hard liquor running down my throat. I also felt the warm, fuzzy feelings of a friendship beginning as Jennifer continued to ooh and aah over me as if I had single-handedly ended male dominance of the female sex.

  “They just won’t ever respect us,” Jennifer said, shaking her martini and her Barbie-doll breasts, which were, naturally, generously displayed.

  “Un-huh,” I said, wondering if Jennifer understood about irony.

  “Why, I had this boss once, when I worked at a big bank, and he, no matter what I did, that man just never gave me credit for having any sense.”

  “Un-huh,” I said, sipping my drink and losing interest.

  “You were sooo wonderful to stand up for yourself and that other woman,” Jennifer cooed. “I showed that banker boss a thing or two, like you, and I taught him about respecting women.”

  “Yeah? Did you tie him to the bed and read him Betty Friedman?” Ashton asked.

  “Who’s that?” Jennifer responded.

  Yup. I had definitely lost interest.

  “That squat woman with the big hats. You know, that feminist congresswoman,” Ashton said.

  Swallowing my vodka martini, I started to correct him, plus educate Jennifer, and then I thought, You can’t teach a pig to sing, and I took another sip.

  “No, what I did was I bought out a bait shop full of crickets and put them in his house, and then I spray painted his car windows—he had a Mercedes, a huge, black one, and it had just about the best speakers, had ’em special installed—Bose, I think— and that car rocked, and the leather seats, those leather seats...” Jennifer glazed over for a minute. “That car, I . . . those leather seats. Then I . . .” Jennifer seemed to have lost her place. I know I had.

  “Baby,” Ashton said in a soft tone, almost endearing.

  “Anyway,” she said, suddenly beaming her baby blues across at me with a quick-change giddiness that made me suspect psychogenic drugs, “you are just so cool, and Ashton’s always telling me how smart you are, how you don’t miss a trick.”

  I was so this and so that, she continued, winning back my interest. The vodka teased my brain into believing her. I might forgive her for being blond, blue-eyed, and stacked.

  But I wasn’t sure I would forgive Ashton for spreading a tale that I’d had the hots for him.

  Chapter 9

  Bonita knocked on my door and stuck her head in to tell me that Newly was on the phone. So, okay, I thought, and waited for the maternal postscript I could tell was coming.

  “Don’t you break that man’s heart again,” she said, and closed the door gently behind her. Because Newly had represented her in litigation after her husband’s fatal encounter with an orange juice bottling machine and didn’t charge her a dime, letting his office eat even the expenses, Bonita had a special affection for Newly. “My five children have a college trust fund, thanks to that man,” she had told Jackson to his face once when he was thunderously cursing Newly for some sleight-of-hand nonsense in a case.

  Notwithstanding Bonita’s rare regard for Newly, I thought, Break his heart, my ass—he’s a pretty tough guy—and I picked up the phone. That morning I’d asked him to find out what was going on with the Trusdale investigation. But Newly’s sources in the police department apparently were more attuned to auto wrecks and industrial accidents and didn’t have a clue as to why Sam Santuri might be investigating me in connection with Dr. Trusdale’s death.

  So I called the hunky detective, not to ask him that directly, but to ask about the autopsy.

  Before he answered my question, he asked me how the Trusdale malpractice case was coming along, now that my client was dead.

  “Settled it,” I told him and lied when he asked, “How much?” Frankly, I was embarrassed that the figure was so high, and maybe just a bit afraid the amount might make him think I was in cahoots with the bum-knee guy’s attorney or something.

  You know how paranoid you get driving in traffic when a police car pulls in behind you? It doesn’t matter if you’re going the speed limit, seat belt fastened, and no illegal contraband or not—a cop on your tail makes you nervous. Basic human nature.

  So, yeah, I lied to Detective Santuri because I was paranoid.

  But he let it go and told me what he’d learned from the autopsy.

  Dr. Trusdale had died of smoking the highly toxic but common flowering oleander. There were dried oleander leaves in the joint, along with some skunk-hybrid marijuana, a green
marijuana particularly adapted for growing in the South, the detective explained, of a color that would blend with the oleander leaves.

  “Damn,” I said, not owning up for a moment that I knew what skunk sativa was, had weeded, watered, and fertilized plots of the stuff myself for summer work between my freshman and sophomore years in high school. Moderately mold resistant, with a kick-ass high. But not mixed with oleander leaves. “That would have been an ugly way to go.”

  Yes, Detective Santuri agreed it would be.

  And all those kids at college laughed at me because the only marijuana I’d ever smoke was that which my one outlaw brother grew in his back forty, strictly organic skunk-hybrid, a rural southwest Georgia “u-pick” with a modest row of opium poppies blooming red and beautiful in the bright southern sun. But he was taken by religion and became a Pentecostal, and though his u-pick business continued to grow, he had started speaking in tongues, and he proselyted, so I gave up going around until he calmed down, only he never did. By the time I was used to his speaking in tongues, I was in law school and too busy memorizing the penumbras of the Constitution to smoke dope. I never did touch the poppies.

  Poisoned marijuana. Damn. I thanked Sam for the information and, feeling queasy, was about to hang up.

  “Did you know Dr. Trusdale had two other malpractice judgments against him? One in Texas and another in Florida.”

  “No.” I felt sweat break out on my face. How had Henry and I missed this? I had done the standard search through LEXIS and Westlaw for judgments against Dr. Trusdale, plus looked through the guard-dog consumer sites that list lawsuits against doctors, and had found nothing. Our firm’s private investigator had done a background search on the good doctor but hadn’t listed any prior suits. And, of course, Henry was supposed to prowl the extensive resources and databases available to insurance companies and find out about other suits before he even assigned the case to me. And, naturally, I’d asked Dr. Trusdale about this too. Damn doctor had lied straight-faced to me. A con made that much easier by a system that helps doctors hide malpractice judgments by a simple change of location and carefully worded language in the settlements. I said another quick prayer of thanks to the cosmic forces that the bum-knee guy’s attorney apparently hadn’t known about these prior hits either.

  Then I wondered, if I hadn’t been able to find this out, how in the world Sam had.

  “How’d you find out about the other lawsuits?”

  “His wife told us.”

  Oh, research the old-fashioned way.

  “Got any details?”

  “Not yet. The wife didn’t know, but she’s trying to find his papers. That’s coming.”

  “Let me know when you do, please?”

  We said our pleases and thank-yous and hung up. I was still shaking off the sense of the narrow escape when Fred O’Leary, partner number two and husband of Olivia, aka the bird lady, knocked on my door and opened it at the same time.

  “Come in,” I offered, though technically it was too late to issue the invitation.

  “Puppies,” Fred said, and lit a cigarette right under the No Smoking sign on my wall.

  “Ooh,” I murmured, not, I realized, unlike a girl, something I try to minimize around Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, P.A. “Puppies. When? How many?”

  “Three. Last night. Olivia says to come over after work and see them. One female. Olivia says she’s got your name on her.”

  “Oooh, puppies,” I repeated, drawing Bonita into the office with my cooing. Little bundles of black and brown Rottweiler, tiny tots of blind dependency, with their sweet, soft skin and mewing little mouths. “I’ll stop on the way home and see them.”

  “You too, Bonita. Bring your children for a peek,” Fred said, and left, trailing smoke down the hallway of our “smoke-free” building. He’s the only partner who ever socializes with the support staff. In fact, he was the only partner to socialize with me when I was a mere associate, and at the end of my first terrifying day he had taken me home with him, where Olivia mothered and fed me fresh vegetables sauteed in secondhand cigarette smoke.

  After Fred left, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes and had visions of puppies running over me, their little tongues licking and tickling, and that sweet puppy smell they have. “Ahh, puppies.”

  “That’s how you’re supposed to feel about babies,” Bonita said.

  So, okay, spank me, my maternal instincts had been diverted from babies to puppies.

  Bonita sighed and left my office, leaving the door cracked.

  Technically I was supposed to be doing the final edits on an appellate brief, but my mind wandered back to Dr. Trusdale and my mugging and Sam and Newly and just about everything except the appellate brief. So when Bonita knocked on my door and asked if I had a minute for Detective Santuri, I was actually glad.

  “Twice in one day,” I said, smiling, as he walked into my office.

  He nodded, which I assumed was Strong-and-Silent for hello.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said.

  “Sure.” I was game and led him out the back door by my office.

  “This is where you were mugged, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know the code on the lock was changed the day before you were mugged?”

  Lock codes, I thought, trying to remember but mostly noticing the way the sun lit up his chocolate eyes. “Yeah, sure. We changed it after we fired one of the bookkeepers.”

  “Did you already know the new code, or did you have it written down, have to get it out of your purse?”

  “No, I knew the code. I memorize numbers easily.”

  “Talk me through the mugging again,” he ordered.

  I complied. Leaving out, I realized, that I’d stomped on the mugger’s foot and then screamed. “Did I mention I fought back?” I didn’t want Sam thinking I was a sissy.

  “Yes. You struggled, you said. But walk me through it again.”

  My not-so-latent fondness for theatrics—another fine trait for a trial attorney—came out as I acted out the stomping, the scream, and the knock upside the head.

  “He hit you when you screamed?”

  “Yes. With something hard. In his hand.”

  “You didn’t mention this before.”

  An accusation from Sam? That I was making it up? Or not cooperating by leaving out details?

  The best defense is a good offense is a trial strategy I had frequently followed to mixed results but still favored. So I said, sounding, even to myself, a bit snippy, “I did too.”

  “Not to me.” Very sure of himself, I saw.

  Dodge on my part. “Why is that possibly relevant?”

  “I’ll show you. Where did the mugger come from?”

  “Beats me,” I said. Thin air? Hell? The karma of a misspent adolescence?

  “You walked through the alley, right?” Sam nodded toward the alley beside the law firm.

  I nodded.

  “So you would have noticed somebody in the alley?”

  “One would hope,” I offered, unsure.

  “You would have seen him if he’d been standing here, by the door?”

  “One would think so, yes.”

  “So he must have been here, behind the stairs.” Sam pointed to the stairs that led to the door on the second floor, the stairs used primarily by the smokers as a hangout during the workday, where they inhaled carcinogenics and avoided work.

  “So,” Sam said, “it must have been like this.”

  With the “this,” Sam turned me toward the door, positioned my right hand on the lock, stepped back by the stairs, then advanced on me, put his arm around my neck and lightly tugged, pulling me closer against him.

  Hmm, I thought, feeling his body heat through our clothes, this is kind of nice.

  “Had you already punched in the access code?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Was the door opened?”

  “I don’t know.” He still had his arm
around my neck, though this seemed unnecessary by now. I inhaled, and he pressed up against me, his chest coming neatly and tightly up against my back.

  I held my breath. He dipped his face into my hair.

  “Gardenias,” he said, and sighed, and paused. “Now, scream. Like you did that night with the mugger.”

  Wondering if this might be some kind of turn-on for Sam, I faked a modest scream and his left hand came up with the speed of a demon and clamped over my mouth, shutting me up. I tried to bite his hand, but his grip was too strong. Then he dropped his hand from my mouth and his arm from around my neck and stepped back.

  “That’s why it doesn’t make sense that a mugger would let go of your neck and hit you to shut you up.”

  “Oh.” Well, yeah. Sam did have a point.

  “What I’m thinking is that we’ve got somebody who is a rank amateur. It doesn’t seem like the mugger was trying to kill you. And he didn’t steal your purse. So what was he after?”

  “Why do you say he wasn’t trying to kill me?”

  “He had you by surprise. You were unarmed and a clear target under the security light. If he wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. He’d have shot you, or used a knife. Unless he’s a total idiot.”

  “He was trying to choke me.”

  “A choke hold isn’t designed to kill someone, but to subdue them. And despite what television might show, it’s hard to kill somebody with your bare hands. Especially someone tall and fit like you.”

  Ah, “fit.” So he had noticed. “And the guy was, ah, small, I’d guess you’d say. Or, short—maybe not small,” I said. The image was fuzzy in my brain. I’d gotten only a dizzy, air-deprived glance as he’d run away: jeans, jean jacket, baseball hat. He must have been hot as hell.

  “You know, could’ve been a stoned junkie who didn’t know what he was doing, and it doesn’t mean a thing,” Sam said.

  “It wasn’t a rank amateur who killed Dr. Trusdale, was it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why do you think there is a connection between Dr. Trusdale’s death and my mugging? Couldn’t it just be coincidence?”