Evidence of Guilt (9 page)

I nodded.

Curt curled his fingers around his glass. "I don't understand how you could have traded a prestigious San Francisco practice for this." He gestured with his arm. I assumed he was referring to the town rather than the bar.

"As I've explained before, it wasn't exactly a trade. Not a voluntary one, anyway."

"With your credentials and experience, you must have a wealth of options. What does Silver Creek have to offer?"

"Free parking?"

He laughed. "Given the wages in this two-bit town, you need free parking."

In truth, my options had not been as wide-open as Curt imagined. With a growing glut of lawyers, particularly at my mid-career level, and firms everywhere cutting back,

the market was tight. I could have beat the bushes for a job in another big firm, gone through the whole prove-yourself-worthy-of-partnership contest, and then found myself once again bounced out the door for reasons over which I had no control.

My other option was to go it on my own, which is what I'd chosen to do. Why I'd chosen to do it in Silver Creek was less clear to me.

Curt downed half his vodka martini in one swallow.
"You
think I ought to set my sights on San Francisco or Los Angeles?"

"Depends on whether you prefer fog or smog."

Nary a chuckle. Curt took his career options seriously. "It's a long shot, I know, but someday I might even wind up being appointed to the bench." Finally, he allowed himself a smile. "Wouldn't that be something."

"You'd better concentrate on winning this case first."

"Oh, I'm going to win it." He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a file and slapped it on the table in front of me.

"What's this?"

'The lab report on clothing items taken from Wes Harding's place. The blood on the jeans was definitely not Wes's." He paused for effect. "Not only does the blood group match Lisa Cornell's, it's type B, which is found in only seven percent of the entire Caucasian population."

"That's still a lot of people."

He nodded. "Yeah, including me. But the jury's not going to be looking at the rest of that seven-percent pool. They're going to know the blood was Lisa's."

"Did they do a DNA analysis?"

Curt shook his head. 'The sample wasn't fresh enough for that."

'Then there's no way to prove it's Lisa's blood. You're talking probabilities, not certainty."

"Sweetheart, there ain't nothing in life that's certain, but this is about as close as you get."

I suppose on one level it was good news. If the prosecution had a slam-dunk case against Wes Harding, who could blame us for losing?

"You won't hate me for trouncing you in court, will you?" Curt asked with a self-satisfied smile.

While Curt's certainty about the case made me uneasy, it also made me more determined than ever to fight back. I gave his hand a gentle pat. "You're not going to be the one doing the trouncing,
sweetheart."

It surprised me to discover I meant it. I don't like to lose, but more than that, I found myself feeling oddly supportive of Wes.

Curt's smile broadened. Lack of confidence was not one of his shortcomings.

He signaled the waitress and ordered us each a second drink. By unspoken accord, we left further discussion of the Wes Harding issue for another day and venue. Instead, we swapped lawyer jokes and told war stories about cases and clients from hell. I declined his invitation for dinner

largely because I felt we'd about run out of things to say to one another.

Not that it wasn't pleasant while it lasted. Despite his smug and sometimes pompous posturing, Curt Willis was an easy companion. There'd been a time, once, when I'd been angry with Tom and full of enough wine that I'd actually considered the possibility of romantic involvement. Luckily, Curt had had as much to drink as I had, and he'd passed out on the living room sofa before I had a chance to consider further.

We parted ways at the door to Ollie's. I stopped back by the office, picked up my messages and the file of clippings Myra had set out for me, then headed home by way of Taco Bell. My take-out meal was cold by the time I got back, but at least I didn't have to cook. Or clean up afterwards.

What with Curt's announcement about the blood-type results and the two margaritas I'd put away at Ollie's, I wasn't in much of a mood for work. Nonetheless, in the interests of keeping my clients happy, and thus in a mood to pay their bills, I made myself a cup of coffee and set about returning the most urgent messages.

This was the downside of small-town practice. While I'd been at Goldman & Latham, I'd often worked late nights and weekends, but rarely had I been called upon to deal with flesh-and-blood clients other than during regular office hours. Since a round or two of telephone tag was more or less expected, few people sat around awaiting your call. Small-town clients, on the other hand, expected more personalized service.

There were only five messages, and I took care of the first three quickly. The remaining two were from Ms. Sheri Pearl, daughter and conservator of the more affable Mrs.

Irma Pearl. On the bottom of the second message Myra had penciled in her own communication--
-Would you PLEASE call this woman before she has a blowout in her bloomers!

I placed the call, giving a silent prayer of thanks when the answering machine clicked on. I would leave a quick message and be off the hook, at least temporarily. But no sooner had I started to leave my name than the phone picked up.

"Goodness, Kali, I've been trying to reach you for days."

Sheri was apparently home after all. "I've been swamped," I told her.

"I made an appointment for next week, but I wanted to talk to you first so you'd have a chance to think things through before our meeting."

And therefore bill her for a short conference rather than a lengthy one. Clients seem to think they ought to get your thinking time for free.

"I've been going over Mother's finances--and between the money she poured into sweepstakes and the bogus investments she got herself involved in--well, there's not a lot left. Certainly nothing liquid. I need to raise some cash and I thought I'd start by selling the house. There's no sense keeping it."

"Except that your mother gets such pleasure from visiting for the afternoon."

"She's never going to be able to actually move back. You know that as well as I do. And the place is an effort to keep up."

"I thought your cousin was staying there."

"She is, but that's certainly not a permanent solution."

I was sure none of us imagined it was. But Irma Pearl hadn't wanted to sell the place, and it had only been five weeks since she'd moved into the nursing home, on what

she undoubtedly assumed was a temporary basis. Not that Irma's wishes mattered anymore. Not legally anyway. That's what conservatorship is all about.

"Besides," Sheri added, "the market for houses in that price range is quite strong at the moment. And summer's a good time to sell. We could probably move it fairly quickly."

The picture was becoming clearer. Sheri was, among other things, a real estate agent.

"I thought I'd sell the duplex as well," she continued in an off-hand manner, as though we were playing Monopoly.

"That's steady income."

"And a steady headache."

Double commission time, I thought, rather nastily. "We'll have to get court approval," I told her. "They oversee sales of real property."

"The court oversees everything," she said, exasperated. "I'm the one who does all the work while they sit there and create new hoops for me to jump through."

She had a point. Being a conservator was, for the most part, a royal pain in the behind. You took it on out of love or a sense of duty, and not because of any inherent rewards. "Have you talked to your mother about this?"

"Mother doesn't know day from night half the time." Sheri sighed. "I'm going to have to sell the house; there's no way around it. But I don't see the point in upsetting Mother by bringing it up just yet."

Much as I hated to admit it, Sheri was probably right. Besides, I reminded myself begrudgingly, it was Sheri, not Irma, who was my client. "I'll get going with the preliminaries. We can talk about the details next week when we meet."

"That's fine." She paused for a moment. "I hear you're involved with the Lisa Cornell case."

"Right."

"You don't happen to know what's going on with the house, do you? I've got a client who might be interested."

"That's not my area of involvement, I'm afraid."

"Well, if you hear anything, let me know. It's an unusual piece of property. Runs all the way past the creek, then fans out so there's access from the old highway where Foster's Freeze used to be. There's a lot of potential there."

When someone, particularly a real estate someone, starts talking about potential, it's a sure sign there's an unspoken agenda. But I figured Sheri wasn't going to tell me anything more on her own, and I didn't have the energy to push it. My only hope was that whatever potential finally won out, it didn't involve subdividing the property into postage-stamp lots. There was enough of that going on around town already.

I made one last phone call, to Sam, to tell him about the lab results on Wes's bloodstained jeans. He wasn't in and I decided against leaving a message, although I was certain I found the news more troublesome than he would. Sam's a great believer in keeping the world on an even keel. "It's not a good development," he'd say when I told him about the blood-typing, "but it's not the end of the world either."

Maybe not, but I thought it pointed the way pretty clearly.

I was pulling out my notes on Irma Pearl's conservatorship when Sabrina called.

"I've got a new lawyer joke for you," she said. In the background I could hear the clink of ice against glass. Vodka tonic. After five o'clock there was never any doubt.

"I don't like lawyer jokes," I told her.

"You'll like this one. See, this man breaks into a bunker in Iraq and finds Saddam Hussein, Muamar Gaddafi and a lawyer. The guy has only two bullets in his gun. What does he do?" She waited.

"I give up."

"He shoots the lawyer twice."

'This is supposed to make me laugh?"

Sabrina sighed. "I thought it might. What's the matter, you didn't used to be so testy."

"Sorry. Bad day."

"Did you call the attorney I told you about at Golden Gate Savings?"

I hadn't even written down his number. "I'm not interested in working for a bank, Sabrina."

"It's this Wes Harding thing, isn't it? That's what's got you so riled up."

"I'm not riled up, I'm tired." But she was right, Wes Harding was on my mind.

By the time I'd finished talking with Sabrina I was in no mood for work. I took Loretta and Barney out for their evening romp, then poured myself a hefty shot of brandy and settled in with a "Star Trek" rerun. If Tom had been there with me it would have been a nearly perfect Friday night.

Summer mornings in Silver Creek are magical niches in time that make me happy to be alive. In the Bay Area I'd grown accustomed to waking under habitually gray skies and rarely seeing the sun until noon. But here in the foothills the sun slides easily over the horizon, spreading fingers of pink and purple across the vast expanse of open sky. The morning breeze is cool enough that it prickles

the skin, but the air underneath is awash with the promise of warmth. I made myself a cup of coffee and took it out back with the file of news clippings on Lisa Cornell's death.

I moved my chair to a spot in the sun, propped my feet on a section of fallen pine and started going through the articles chronologically. Early pieces focused on the grisly nature of the crime scene itself and expressions of disbelief from neighbors. There was some speculation about the deaths being the work of a serial killer, but this was discounted almost immediately by a police spokesperson, who noted there was nothing about the crime to support the premise. Also squelched at the outset was one man's theory about a federally sanctioned invasion of alien body snatchers.

The press had been thorough, talking to friends and neighbors in addition to official police sources. One article made note of a taxi cab that had been seen that Friday night stopped beside an empty lot near the Cornell place. Another alluded to sightings of a van and a pickup truck, both of which had struck their respective viewers as "suspicious." There was, interestingly enough, no mention of a motorcycle by any of Lisa's neighbors.