“It was a great paper,” Bonita said. “He got an A.” Farmer Dave turned to Bonita, tall, perfectly groomed Bonita, with her chocolate-colored hair smoothed back into a silver barrette. As I watched, Dave took her in more fully, and he smiled, big and full mouthed, making me wonder if he hadn’t gotten his teeth capped. “Bonita, yeah, we’ve talked on the phone, at Lilly’s office.” Grin, grin from Dave, his pelvis jutting out in a Mick Jaggar imitation. “Your son’s a great writer. Fruit don’t fall far from the tree.”
Sure, okay, Bonita’s a looker, but flattering her son wasn’t going to make her flirt back with a man who had two pigtails and a married girlfriend, no matter how pearly his teeth.
“What’s all this got to do with Benny’s jaguarundi paper?” I asked. Benny had written a paper for school about the elusive South American wildcats long rumored to be living, in scarce numbers, in Florida, and he had collected enough of the old Florida-cracker accounts to make a convincing case that the long-tailed cats prowled around at Myakka, the cypress-swamp state park in the eastern part of the county. Rich travelers from the 1920s had brought the cats back from South America, planning to domesticate them. When that didn’t work, the cats were either turned loose or escaped into the wild lands in the area and reproduced.
“Man, that paper convinced me those cats are out there. Hey, man, I’m a real good tracker. Why don’t I leave the truck here and borrow Lilly Belle’s car and go check it out? Then tomorrow, at the crack of day, I gotta go, get to Gainesville and sell me some cases of wine there. Them college kids suck up that organic wine. After that, up to Atlanta. Got a bunch of health food stores and fancy-ass wine stores in that town.” He grinned again at Bonita, then turned to me.
“Hey, Lilly Belle, why don’t you come with me, like old times, you and me in the woods.” He winked, implying exactly the kind of thing I’d rather Bonita never suspected.
“I can’t. Not today. I’m getting ready for an oral argument.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an appellate argument.”
“Yeah, oh, sure, like all those high-priced boys did before the Supreme Court so we’d know who our president was gonna be.”
“Precisely. I have twenty minutes to convince a three-judge panel in the appellate court in Lakeland to affirm the summary judgment I won at the trial level for my client, who is a counselor, and one of his patients claimed that his, er, his...therapy fell below the applicable standard of care.” Yeah, the woman who was suing my guy thought she’d been abducted by space aliens, oh, and get this, had the nerve to accuse my client of malpractice, just because he thought for an hourly fee rivaling my own that he could reduce her lingering emotional trauma. This would, no doubt, play good in the rarified air of the appellate court.
“You always were one to plan everything down to a gnat’s eyebrows, but what’s so hard about a twenty-minute speech you gotta spend all day working on it?”
“Because, while I’m trying to argue my client’s position, the judges can, and do, interrupt with questions. They can ask me anything about the case and I absolutely have to know the answers, no matter how obscure the question, and then I have to twist my answers to support the summary judgment I won at the trial level. See, a summary judgment is when the trial judge rules on a case before it goes to the jury, because the facts are not really in dispute and the law is clear, and in my case—”
“Whoa, Lilly Belle. Stop. TMI, babe.”
“ ‘TMI’?” Bonita asked.
“Too much info. Way too much,” Dave said.
“Hey, bud, you made me listen to your entire monologue on how the combustion engine works in an average car, which took hours, days even, and—”
“Belle, I didn’t want you helpless, broke down on the side of the road, or taken advantage of by some mechanic thinking girls don’t know spit about cars. But, sweetheart, when do you think I might need to know what a summary judgment is?”
“Okay, but you asked. And no, I can’t go with you to Myakka. I’m busy. I already told you I’m working. I work for a living. I have clients. I can’t run off with you at the drop of a hat just because you show up from out of nowhere.”
“Whoa. Got it, Belle. Got it, okay.” Dave turned to Benicio. “Hey, Benny, you want to come with me to Myakka, see if we can track us a jaguarundi?”
“Cool,” Benny said before Bonita could object. “We can take my Ford Ranger. It’s a 1992, but it’s only got 170,000 miles on it.”
“You got a Ford with 170,000 miles, and it still runs? You a mechanic or a mojo?” Then Dave eyed Benny closer. “You can’t be no sixteen.”
“Almost, and I got a learner’s permit, but I’ve been driving since I was twelve. Lilly taught me. She got me that truck too.”
Yep, and Bonita was still working on forgiving me for both facts.
“Let’s go then, son.”
Bonita put a hand on Benny’s shoulder. “No conoces tu aquel hombre.”
“Yeah, but I know him, known him all my life,” I said, overlooking for the moment how much trouble I’d gotten in with Dave when I was fifteen. “He’s cool.” That Dave was cool was true, but largely irrelevant from a mother’s point of view.
Bonita gave me the same look she’d given me when I bought Benny the truck.
“I’ll take care of him, have him back by night,” Dave said.
As Benny reached for his jacket and his keys, Bonita reached for him. “Do not drink or smoke anything.”
“While your momma finishes the don’t dos, I’ll get my gear and bring it in,” Dave said. “No sense letting it bake in that truck.” A minute later, Dave dropped a worn-out backpack on the floor and handed me a ring of keys. “Hang on to these, will you? I’m always losing ’em. And here’s the truck key. Don’t lose that, you hear?” And he handed me a single key on a U-Haul plastic key ring.
I followed Dave and Benny to the door. “Did you get your teeth fixed?”
“Yeah, looks great, huh? Delvon and me had some loose cash after—”
I cut my eyes to Benny.
“Ah, after our, er, last harvest, apple harvest.” Grin, grin at me. “Hey, sweetheart, I’ll take good care of your boy here.”
As Dave and Benny drove off, Benny steady at the wheel, Bonita fingered the gold cross on the chain around her neck and moved her lips in prayer. “I should not have let him go, but he is so, so... obsessed.” Bonita stopped and looked at me as if obsessive behavior was contagious. “He is so intense about seeing a jaguarundi.”
The phone rang, and this time I answered it.
“I’ve called the police on that truck. You’ve got to move it, now.”
“Got that nursing-home application filled out yet?” I snapped, and hung up. Mrs. Covenant Nazi had reported me to the police a number of times before. Imagine how it improved my mood to come home after ten hours at the Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley whipping post to find that a member of the city police force had pulled up my okra plants after the Nazi next door told them I was growing marijuana. I still had a pending damages claim.
“He’ll be all right,” I said to Bonita, and washed my hands and poured coffee for Bonita and me, then went back to the den where the floor was covered by perfectly organized piles of stuff we still had to do.
Well, okay, maybe I’m not the Mother Teresa of godmothers, but honest, I wouldn’t have let Benny go if I’d had any idea that they would find a dead body and a suitcase of money in the outreaches of Myakka.
Acknowledgments
Indulge me, please, in first acknowledging and thanking these most fabulous members of my family: my husband, William Matturro, for believing and loving and listening and being my living dictionary and never once complaining when I quit my day job to write mysteries; my parents, John and Della Hamner, who have bestowed on me many gifts, including their lifelong examples of honesty, compassion, and hard work, and for banning television from my childhood home until I was addicted to books; my brother, William Hamner, for not l
etting go and for being, unfailingly, friend and fan; and Mike Lehner, who with no blood or marriage ties to make him part of my family simply became so through the force of enduring friendship.
In addition to the help and support of my family, in writing this book I was blessed to have the help of friends, fellow lawyers, the HarperCollins family, and even perfect strangers. I cannot thank each of you enough but will try once more.
Steven Babitsky, esquire and president of SEAK, Inc., and a man that as of this writing I still have not met face to face, provided a most gracious gift in enthusiastically awarding an excerpt of this book first prize in the SEAK National Legal Fiction Writing for Lawyers Contest. Not only was he one of the judges in that contest, but he became chief cheerleader for me during a low point when, by phone and e-mail, he strongly encouraged me to finish the book and offered his help to me in getting it published.
The SEAK prize proved to be my toe in the door with Carolyn Marino, my editor and a vice president at HarperCollins. Not only did Carolyn let me sneak in without an agent, she has edited, encouraged, brainstormed, and answered a hundred questions or more, all with gentle good graces and patience. Her time and talents made this book sharper, funnier, and immeasurably better. I offer sincerest thanks to both Carolyn and her able assistant, Jennifer Civiletto, who not only has her own way with words and an instinct about plots but also could and did answer every question within minutes.
It would be wholly remiss of me not to acknowledge and thank Gary Larsen, one of my former law partners and the funniest lawyer I’ve ever met, perhaps even the funniest person I’ve ever met, for the loan of his “Anything wrong with your mouth?” story. Thank you, Gary.
Martin Levin, lawyer and retired publisher and author of Be Your Own Literary Agent, shared his vast knowledge with me, both through his book and his words. I had the great pleasure of assisting him in revising his book and researching another, and the lessons learned during those months have proved invaluable. His book Be Your Own Literary Agent, his advice, and his friendship helped me navigate wholly new waters.
On a legal note, let me acknowledge that the type of brain-damaged baby case that Lilly defends in this novel would more than likely be outside of the tort system under Florida’s current law. In an attempt to curb the costs of liability insurance and create a no-fault system for catastrophic birth-related neurological injuries, that state adopted the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Plan, Chapter 766, Florida Statutes, in which an administrative law judge determines such claims rather than a jury.
Perhaps the hardest job of the friends and spouse of any writer is that of telling the writer that something in a manuscript doesn’t work. And that job fell repeatedly to Bill, my husband, and Mike Lehner, my friend. Both men had to convince me that about ten thousand words of the first draft of Skinny-dipping were utter garbage and had to go. For that unsparing honesty, I thank you both.
And on that note, let me end where I began: with my family. My husband, Bill, and my father, John, proved repetitively to be talented sounding boards and editors. Their logical minds, their command of grammar, and their awesome vocabularies kept me from many a stumble. My mother, Della Johnson Hamner, proved to have the ablest ear for dialect and language, and thus, taught me early in my writing to reach for exactly the right word. My brother, Lieutenant William Hamner of the Selma, Alabama, police department, served earnestly as my technical adviser and helped me rewrite my police officer’s dialogue to realistically reflect the speech patterns of that honorable profession. There was no detail too small, no question too obscure, and no forensics query too weird for my brother to answer for me.
Books by Claire Matturro
WILDCAT WINE
SKINNY-DIPPING
AN OCEAN OF PRAISE FOR
CLAIRE MATTURRO’S SKINNY-DIPPING
“Skinny-dipping is breezy and funny, with a heroine who’s a magnet for trouble. Dive in!”
Lisa Scottoline, author of Killer Smile
“Claire Matturro is a brand new writer poised to become one of the stars of this brand new era. Her attorney, Lilly Cleary, blends cynical amorality with a fetish for organic foods that perfectly reflects today’s political and cultural values. I loved the fresh, original voice and am already looking forward to her next adventure.
Margaret Maron, author of Last Lessons of Summer
“Timely, irreverent, and loads of fun, Skinny-dipping kept me chuckling and turning the pages until the very end.”
James Grippando, author of Last to Die
“A bright, brassy, sexy heroine enters the lists of legal fiction with a joyful noise... Funny, sharp, savvy, both as to the courtroom and the human condition... This new kid on Grisham’s block is one to watch.”
Kirkus Reviews
“We Florida writers don’t need this kind of competition—and I’ll be standing in line for her next one.”
Tim Dorsey, author of Cadillac Beach
“Witty, intelligent novel of suspense... It’s chick lit meets Perry Mason in this lively novel full of quirky characters and a dash of romance... Lilly’s voice is irrepressible...but it’s not just the smart narrative and good dialogue— Matturro, a former appellate attorney, has the legal stuff down pat.”
Publishers Weekly
“A Florida-based former attorney, Matturro has a wicked sense of comedic timing. I don’t know what they put in the water down there, but she’s got to be drinking from the same well as Carl Hiaasen...a great time.”
Boston Globe
“In Skinny-dipping, Claire Matturro takes the legal thriller firmly in hand and invigorates it with an irreverent but always on-target mix of humor, suspense and characters so real you’ll swear you see these people every day... [She] combines in her debut the kind of off-the-wall humor that Janet Evanovich does so well, adds a sophisticated twist to the wit and then layers in an insider’s jaundiced view of the law akin to Lisa Scottoline’s novels... may prove to be among the best debuts of 2004.”
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“A frothy confection that moves at the speed of sound, much like the main character.”
Detroit Free Press
“Lilly Cleary is an endearingly neurotic, tofu-eating sleuth who will remind readers of the stories of Janet Evanovich.”
Rocky Mountain News
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Claire Hammer Matturro
Excerpt from Wildcat Wine copyright © 2005 by Claire Hammer Matturro
ISBN: 0-06-056706-6
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EPub Edition © October 2011 ISBN: 9780062133588
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