Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) (13 page)

Niki kind of waved his hand in dismissal and said something
vague about Stacy’s kidnapping incident.  She’d disappeared for the moment but
returned with two icepacks, one for Niki’s jaw and one for my hand.

“Come sit down,” she ordered, and she slapped the icepack on
the back of my hand, then placed my other hand on top of it to hold it there.

“Thanks,” I said sheepishly.

“So what were you delinquents doing when you got into a fight?”
she asked.  She intentionally directed the question to me and I could see Niki
smiling out of the corner of my eye.

“We were breaking into an office building,” I told her.  Why I
told her the truth, I have no idea.  It just seemed like I shouldn’t compound
my delinquent behavior by lying about it.

She got a shocked look on her face and said, “You’re an
attorney.  If you got caught breaking and entering, you’d lose you license.”

“That’s why I hit him.”

Stacy laughed and looked over at Niki.  “Obviously it was your
idea?”

“Obviously.  Sammy’s not going to come up with a brilliant plan
like that.  And it was brilliant wasn’t it?” he said, looking over at me.

I had to admit I was pleased with the outcome.  Either way,
Maddie and I were going to win big.  If we actually went to trial, it would be
an absolute circus.  There was no doubt we’d win big time, it was just a matter
of whether Maddie was willing to endure the publicity that went with the
circus.  On the other hand, if I played my cards right, I figured we could
settle for a nice sum and avoid actually going to trial.  There was no way
Datacare would want what we had discovered that night made public through a
court proceeding.  It had the potential of ruining them.  No . . . Datacare
would fork out big time to keep this scandal quiet.

A bitter cold front came in Saturday morning, dropping the
temperature well below freezing.  I had a fire roaring in the fireplace and I
was sitting back in the fortress reading the paper when the Siamese scratched
at the back door.  A huge gust of cold air blew in when I opened the door to
let him in, and I realized Mrs. Howard might decide that it was too cold to be
tromping around the neighborhood with my muffins.  It was only 7:30, but I knew
she would have already been up for hours, so I bundled up and trekked across
the street, leaving the Siamese inside by the fire.

I rang Mrs. Howard’s bell and it took her forever to come to
the door.  Meanwhile, I was freezing my ass off outside in the cold.  I could
hear her fumbling with the lock and when she finally got the damn thing open,
she gave me her toothy grin.  The smell of freshly baked goodies wafted
outside, but much to my dismay, the muffins were still in the oven.  And rather
than have me come back in 20 minutes, Mrs. Howard insisted that I come in and
wait.  She must have had the heater set on 85° and it was like going from Siberia
to the Sahara, and I broke into a sweat almost immediately.  I peeled off a
couple of layers of clothes and laid them on a chair in the living room, then
followed Mrs. Howard back to the kitchen.  It was bright and cheerful, but it
hadn’t been updated since she bought the house 40 years earlier.  It reminded
me of my grandmother’s kitchen, which hadn’t changed in all the years that I’d
been going there.

Mrs. Howard directed me to a chair at her kitchen table, which
was so old that it was back in style again, and she poured me a cup of coffee
without even asking if I wanted one.  I didn’t, because I like my coffee good
and strong and old people always make weak coffee.  I took a sip just be polite
and I literally gagged, it was so strong.

“Good grief, Mrs. Howard!  That’s disgusting,” I said, pushing
it away from me. I felt like I needed to wipe my tongue. “How do you drink
that?”

She laughed at me like I was a novice.  “Is it too strong for
you?” she asked innocently.  “Landra says the same thing.”

Since she’d brought her up, I took the opportunity to do some
fishing.  “Did you know Landra’s husband?” I asked.

Mrs. Howard’s eyes narrowed.  “He was a terrible man.  I never
liked him from the beginning.  I warned Landra about him when she first started
dating him, but she doesn’t listen to me,” she said, shaking her head.  “Never
has.”

“What didn’t you like about him?”

“What was to like!  He was worthless.  And he took advantage of
Landra’s youth and almost ruined the poor girl.”

I’d never seen Mrs. Howard mad before, and I decided I wouldn’t
want to get on her bad side.

“What about Drake Reeds?” I asked.  “Did you know him?”

“Didn’t like him either!” she said, waving her hand in
dismissal.  “If there’s one thing I could fault in that girl, it’s her taste in
men.”

She didn’t exclude me from the list, so I had to assume she
either felt the same way about me or she didn’t think of me as one of Landra’s
men.  Either way, it made me feel like I had to prove myself to Mrs. Howard,
and that was something that didn’t sit well with me.  If she knew she had
insulted me, she didn’t care.  She kept right on belittling the men in Landra’s
life, or at least the two that Landra may have bumped off.

“Drake Reeds was a good-for-nothing bum.  Never worked a day in
his life.  Had the world handed to him on a silver platter.  His looks were the
only thing he had going for him, and when you looked close, even those weren’t
that good.  His eyes were too close together – like a dumb dog’s.”

She was on a roll, but the phone rang and she got up to answer
it.  I walked across the kitchen while she talked on the phone and I was about
to open the oven door when Mrs. Howard swatted my hand away with the oven mitt.

“Just a minute, Landra,” she said, then she covered the
mouthpiece with her hand.   “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked me in
an accusatory tone.

“Checking on the muffins.”
Duh.

“Go sit down,” she said, shooing me back to the table like I
was a little kid.  “You
never
open the oven door when you’re baking
muffins,” she scolded.

Even as a kid, I never liked being told what to do.  Mrs.
Howard had taken her hand off the mouthpiece and was about to say something to
Landra, but I couldn’t resist a smart-ass juvenile comeback.

“Well if you
never
open the door, how are you going to
get the muffins out?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face.

Mrs. Howard stared at me for a second and then she burst into
her toothy grin and pointed her oven mitt at me.  “Your Sam is over here,” she
told Landra.  She was smiling at me with a gleam in her eye when she said it,
and right then I knew I had her.  Why it was important to me that I rated Mrs.
Howard’s approval where Landra was concerned, I have no idea, but it was.

“Let me talk to her before you hang up,” I said.

“He wants to talk to you, dear,” Mrs. Howard said, and she
brought the phone over to me.

It was one of those old rotary phones that attached to the wall
and it had a really long cord that could reach all the way across the
kitchen.   She patted me on the shoulder affectionately, then she walked back
to the oven and took out the muffins and set them on a cooling rack.  They
smelled really good and I couldn’t wait to eat one, but I knew better than to
approach the stove.  She probably had some rule about leaving them in the tins
for a certain amount of time, or letting them sit for a given period before
touching them.  Heaven forbid that I intrude again on Mrs. Howard’s muffin
ritual.

“What are you doing over there?” Landra asked.

It was good to hear her voice.  I wanted to ask her what she
was wearing, but I decided it wasn’t a good idea with Mrs. Howard right there.

“Waiting for my muffins.  Have you been outside?  It’s
freezing.”

“No.  I just woke up.  But I can hear the wind blowing.”

“When are you coming over?  You can do my walls today.”

“Your walls . . . is that the only reason you want me to come
over?”  I could tell she was smiling – she was playing with me again.

“Well, yeah.  What other reason is there?”

Landra laughed.  I couldn’t remember the last time I was in a
relationship with a woman who made me smile so much, but at that moment I
couldn’t get the stupid smile off my face.  I hoped that Mrs. Howard didn’t
turn around, because she’d realize instantly how much I liked Landra.  I could
just picture her picking out names for our children.

“Why don’t you come over now?  I’ll share my muffins with you,”
I tempted.  Mrs. Howard turned around and smiled.

“I can’t.  I told Sara I’d come over there this morning.”

No problem
.  “Mrs. Howard, Landra wants to know if you
really
need her this morning, because if you don’t, she’d like to spend the whole day
with me,” I said.

“Don’t tell her that!” Landra said.

Mrs. Howard smiled.  “I suppose there’s nothing that can’t be
put off,” she said.  “You tell her that I said that she should take the day off
and spend it with you.”

I turned back to the phone.  “Mrs. Howard doesn’t need you
after all.”

“You’re such a jerk!” Landra said laughing.

“When are you coming?”

“I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

“Good.  I’ll see you then,” I said, and I hung up before she
could ask to speak to Mrs. Howard again.  Mrs. Howard had taken the muffins out
of the tins and they were on the cooling rack.  She refilled her cup and sat
back down at the table.

“Landra didn’t really say that,” I told her.

“I know,” she smiled. She took a sip of coffee.  “You and
Landra are good together, Sam.  You make a fine looking couple.  And I can tell
that you don’t let her boss you around.  Landra has a tendency to do that, you
know.”

“She likes to be in charge – I’ll say that.”

“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Howard said laughing.  She got up and
loaded a basket full of muffins and closed the cloth napkin up around them. 
“These are ready!” she said cheerfully.

“Thanks, Mrs. Howard.  It was nice to visit with you.”  I
normally would have said it just to be polite, but in this case it was actually
true.

“Yes it was.  Thank you, Sam.”

She walked me to the door and I layered up again.  I had my
gloves in one hand and the basket of muffins in the other and I opened the door
to a blast of freezing air.  It had started to sleet and the grass was covered
with a thin layer of white that looked almost like snow.  Mrs. Howard stepped
outside to check it out and she must have missed the last step, because she
went teetering off to the left and was falling, headed straight for a wrought
iron post.  Luckily, she regained her balance just in time, but evidently she
overcompensated, and it sent her tottering off in another direction, this time
towards a big potted plant in the corner.  I fumbled with my gloves and the
basket of muffins and lunged to catch her, when without warning she changed
directions yet again and teetered off in a whole different direction
altogether.  She looked like a drunk old man stumbling all over the place. She
had stumbled out of my reach and this time, she was headed right for a 3-foot
drop off, and I was helpless to do anything.  The whole thing from when she
missed the step to when she started over the edge happened so fast, but from
then on, things went in slow motion.  She seemed to hang in the air forever as
she fell, and when she landed there was a sickening thud.  How I heard it over
my yelling, I’ll never know, but it was a sound that I’ll never forget.

“Mrs. Howard!”  I dropped the basket of muffins and my gloves
and jumped off the porch to see how bad it was.  The ground was wet, so that
was some consolation, but there was no grass to cushion the fall.

“Mrs. Howard!”  I was kneeling down beside her and my heart was
pounding like a drum.  She had landed on her side and she rolled over onto her
back and looked up at me with a shocked expression on her face.

“Well, how did that happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  What hurts?” I said, looking her over.

She lay there thinking about it.  “I’m not sure.  Help me up
and I’ll let you know.”  I hooked my arm around her and helped her to her feet
and she just kind of stood there, I think trying to figure out if she was hurt.

“Did you break anything?”

“I don’t think so.  My shoulder hurts, but I think it’s okay.”

“Let’s get you inside,” I said, and I scooped her up and
started carrying her back to the house.

“Put me down, Sam!” she exclaimed.  “You’re going to hurt
yourself!”

“No, I’m not.”

“I can walk on my own!  Put me down!”

“Pipe down, Mrs. Howard.  You’re going to stir up the whole
neighborhood and they’re going to think something’s going on between us.  Then
Landra’s going to get all jealous . . .”

She laughed, but continued to protest until I got her inside
and set her down on her couch.   Her hair had come out of her bun in a couple
of places and there was mud all over her.  She looked like a wild woman, and if
I hadn’t been so worried I probably would have laughed out loud.

“Man, you’re a mess,” I told her, trying to wipe some mud off
of her arm.  “Can you move everything?”

She systematically checked to see if everything was working,
ending at the shoulder she had complained of earlier.  “My shoulder’s pretty
sore.”

I took the muffler I had wrapped around my neck and tied the
ends together and made a sling out of it, then I helped her get it over her
head and rest her arm in it.  “I think we better take you to the emergency
room,” I told her.

“No.  It’ll be fine,” she said.  She was putting on a brave
face, but I knew that she was flustered badly.  Hell,
I
was flustered
badly, and Mrs. Howard was 80 years old – she had to be.

We argued back and forth whether she should be checked out by a
doctor and  finally agreed to call Landra to get her opinion on the matter.  I
caught her walking out the door to come to my house and I explained what had happened
as objectively as I could.  She hung up and was on Mrs. Howard’s doorstep in
less than three minutes.

“She fell off
that
?” she said in disbelief.  “Oh my
God!  She could have killed herself.”

“No shit.  You should have seen it,” I told her.  “She was all
over the place.”

I retraced Mrs. Howard’s steps and showed Landra how she went
from one end of the porch to the other before taking the plunge over the edge,
and she stood there with her mouth open shaking her head.  We went inside and
Landra went straight over to Mrs. Howard and sat down beside her.  Mrs. Howard
looked embarrassed.

“Are you okay?” Landra asked, looking her over.

“My shoulder hurts, but other than that and a bruised ego, I
think I’m fine.  You might check on Sam though.  Bless his heart, I scared him
to death.”  They both looked at me and smiled.

We stayed there for the next hour while Landra helped Mrs.
Howard get cleaned up.  The old woman refused to see a doctor, in spite of the
fact that both Landra and I thought she should, so Landra gave her something to
take care of the aches and pains that were already setting in.  By the time we
got out of there I felt like I needed a sedative myself.  We left Mrs. Howard
lying in her bed resting with Landra promising to check on her regularly, and
went back to my house.  I’d forgotten all about the Siamese, but he was sitting
on the hearth right where I’d left him.

“Oh,” Landra said surprised. “Have you and Siam become
friends?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.  “I only let him in because
it’s so cold outside.”

She came over and put her arms around my waist and kissed me. 
“I think Mrs. Howard has a crush on you.”