Murder at Bear Ranch
Page 4
Chapter 4
Mondays came with law and motion day in Superior Court and juggling four different court rooms with 14 different clients, by noon, Marlowe wanted a cigarette and a Scotch, but she’d given up smoking and knew the Scotch would and could wait until she got back to the ranch. The typical law and motion ran to pre-trial conferences for an alleged rapist, arsonist and meth head; initials on three new cases and the ordinary run of the mill clients who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong pants on. It seemed that whenever someone got caught with dope, the answer to the cops was, those aren’t my pants-coat- shirt- someone must have put that in my pocket, purse, backpack.
And no matter how hectic law and motion day was, Marlowe loved it, the excitement, the challenge, the pain and the promise. Defense work was all she ever wanted from the time she entered law school commuting three days a week to Phoenix for four years while Summer looked after Oriole. The years had whizzed by as she built a reputation as a solid defense attorney in Coconino, Mohave and Yavapai Counties. Occasionally, Marlowe would take cases in Maricopa, La Paz or Gila County for friends or friends of friends, but on the whole the northern region was her comfort zone. Corruption of the frontier days had been supplanted by strokes from good ole boys. Justice was still bought and sold, but with sophisticated barter and rewards of political reimbursements. And her goal was to challenge justice to overcome history.
Every day she saw the sign in the window of her downtown office, she smiled to herself. Marlowe Sharpe. Summer had named her after her late great grandfather, Marlowe Wilson. Sharpe came from the brief marriage to Johnston Sharpe, who died as a result of Hodgkin’s disease before Oriole started school. The insurance policy covered law school and a college trust for Oriole. Almost as tall as Summer, with the same clear, ageless skin and blond highlights covering the advancing gray, she was as comfortable in a Carole Little or Jones New York suit as she was in blue jeans and Lucheses.
Marlowe had designed her office to fit her life style. The lobby was full of antiques collected from garage sales, auctions and second hand stores. A drop down secretary desk hid office supplies, a wire meshed armoire held active files, and her secretary’s desk consisted of file cabinets supporting a barn door that had been refinished by Marlowe herself. Since clients rarely lingered in the office, Marlowe had gone with simple but stout leather chairs rescued from an estate sale, between which sat an end table from her great-great grandfather’s ranch. The look and feel of country comfort continued into her office where instead of a desk she had a slab from a 250 year old alligator oak tree, cut and polished after it bit the dust in a huge wind storm some years back. Instead of client chairs, she had favored an old oak couch she found at a garage sale and had re-done in dark mahogany brushed leather. Topping off the oak tongue-n-groove floor, she herself had done, was a Navajo rug given to her by friends of Summer’s when she opened her doors to work. People who knew such things, often told her it was a mistake to use the rug, to walk on it. It should be on the wall to admire. However, when Richard Yellowhorse’s grandmother unrolled it in the office, she said, “this rug is to live on, walk on, learn on, and to soak up spirit.” So soak up spirit it has.
The first few years of practice the lobby had served as an after school hold over for Oriole, then one day Joan walked in looking for a female attorney to handle a no contest divorce and she never left. Joan’s husband had skipped the country leaving her and her three kids without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. Joan Marshall’s training was in corporate law, but she knew how to organize, manage and cajole attorneys to get done the daily necessities of a practice. Marlowe didn’t realize she needed a secretary until Joan took over the front office and the practice flourished. Potential clients would call in for a consult and Joan would screen them according to her own guidelines: serious-can pay; shopping-don’t need the headache; desperate-they need us whether they can pay or not. And most of the ones who couldn’t pay with money found other ways of paying for Marlowe’s services-pigs, chickens, a horse now and then, hay, fencing, tractor work, plumbing and the new kitchen out at the ranch. Joan would walk in to Marlowe’s office and tell her “you need to help these people, they have a child that’s a special needs and the school isn’t following the IEP. I scheduled them in at 4:00 so you could talk with them. It just isn’t right what that school is doing.” And at 4:00 Marlowe would meet with the parents and take the case, money or no money.
Joan looked diminutive, but acted like a bulldog, 5' nothing, stylish clothes, that Marlowe helped her find at consignment stores, smoked like a stevedore, swore like a longshoreman and the biggest heart of anyone except perhaps Summer. Joan would help some of the unfortunate clients with a food basket or possible job, and others she’d give a kick in the ass and a kiss on the check.
Marlowe had helped set up a college fund for each of the Marshall kids from some of the child support Joan was awarded. As each one of the kids graduated from high school, Marlowe helped them get into college and oft times helped them stay there. Once the last one hit college, Joan decided she needed a hobby and took up square dancing for something to do. At 56, she looked more like 36, tight calf muscles, narrow waist, none of those saggy arms that come with age.
“Joan,” Marlowe voiced louder than a conversation, but not quite a yell from her office, “what’s the status of the motion to suppress on Calderon?”
“Listen, we had the intercom put in to save your voice. Just press the button and you speak normally.” Joan had stepped into Marlowe’s office door while chastising the misuse of the modern equipment.
“I just can’t get used to it. I’ll keep trying.”
“The motion is hard copy on your desk, computer copy in the folder for Calderon. I made some changes, just grammar. See what you think.”
With Joan’s experience and understanding, she could probably write the motion herself. Frequently, she drafted motions based on telephone conversations with Marlowe or clients and rarely did they require much perfection.
“The hearing is coming up, I really want to stick it to Arthur. He’s such a prick. This is one of those that should never have been charged in the first place. No evidence, no witness, no crime. Bastard.” Marlowe unloaded her disgust of Gentry Arthur, the assigned deputy county attorney. “The ass hole won’t give me updated reports, disks, or photos and we’re set for an evidentiary hearing and the judge won’t continue. She says we’ll hear what there is. How stupid is that?”
“All we need, Marlowe, is a blood expert to say it couldn’ta been Calderon and you got a defense verdict.”
“Yea, but where can we find an expert for next to nothing who’ll say there’s no way it coulda been Calderon?”
“Ok, if we don’t have money for an expert, we use the experts we got. Which officer do you know who knows more about blood spatter than any expert?”
“Great idea. There’s that guy who’s a former Seal. He’s studied blood spatter, oh, and that guy from Mohave that has 35 years in as a federal agent. Can you get me one of them on the phone and let’s see what they know.” Marlowe started pacing her office.