Ladies' Night (56 page)

Her cell phone rang. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was Camryn.

“Where are you and what are you doing?” Camryn demanded.

“I’m at a client’s condo, watching
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
,” she said warily. “Can I ask you a question? Who are these women? Why do they have their own television show?”

“Girlfriend, I do not have the time to explain RHOA to you. Anyway, you need to turn on channel eight. Now. Because, honey, this is priceless.”

Sweetie was sitting directly on top of the remote control. Grace gently slid it out from under the dog’s butt and pointed the remote at Mitzi’s forty-eight-inch flat screen. She was rewarded by fuzzy footage of what looked like two well-dressed women who appeared to be pelting each other with … dinner rolls? They were both screeching at the top of their lungs.

“A food fight? On the ten o’clock news? This is why you called?” Grace asked.

“Keep watching,” Camryn said, chuckling. “It gets better.”

A man’s deep voice cut through the shrill din. “Eileen! What the hell?”

“Did you get that?” Camryn asked. “Recognize that voice?”

Grace leaned forward and stared intently at the television, but the camera kept jerking back and forth between the two women. The older of the two, a brunette, lunged toward the other, clawing at her face. Now, a man was tugging at her arm, vainly attempting to fend her off. His back was to the camera, but, once, Grace glimpsed a vaguely familiar profile.

The younger woman, a strikingly attractive African-American woman with short, platinum-blond hair was batting away the other woman’s blows. “Get her off of me,” she hollered. “Cedric, do something.”

Cedric?

“It can’t be,” Grace whispered, dropping onto the floor, crawling closer to the television until her face was only inches from the screen. The man glanced over his shoulder at the camera, then flung his hand across his face. “Are you filming this? Stop that! Get that thing away from me.” He whirled around, and for a moment, just a moment, Grace saw the angry countenance of the Honorable Cedric N. Stackpole Jr.

“Hey, man,” another male voice protested. “You can’t do that.” And then the camera jerked violently, and the footage ended.

“Oh. My. God.” Grace was clutching her hand to her chest. “Did I really just see what I think I saw?”

“In living color,” Camryn said. “Merry Christmas to us.”

“What? I mean, how…” Grace sputtered. “What exactly did I just watch?”

“That, Gracie dear, was footage taken last night at a restaurant in Sarasota by an alert diner, who just happened to be talking to a friend on his cell phone, when Eileen Stackpole walked into the restaurant and caught her husband having a tête-à-tête with a pretty young thing.”

“I think I’ve seen her before,” Grace said. “The PYT, I mean.”

“Mm-hmm,” Camryn said. “We have all seen that girl. She’s a twenty-three-year-old bailiff assigned to Stackpole’s courtroom. Her name is Monique Massey. And I guarantee you the two of them were not discussing tort reform in a cozy little booth in a pricey French bistro at ten o’clock last night.”

Grace could hardly take it all in. “How did this end up on the news? What’s it all mean?”

“It got on the news because Stackpole flipped his shit when he realized the other diner was filming the whole thing. He knocked the cell phone out of the guy’s hand and took a swing at him. One of the waiters pulled the judge off the guy, but, in the meantime, the cell-phone guy’s dinner companion called the cops.”

“Tell me they arrested Stackpole,” Grace begged.

“No such luck,” Camryn said. “Stackpole paid his bill and hustled lil Monique outta there before the po-po arrived. And Eileen took a powder, too. The restaurant manager smoothed things over by offering everybody in the place a free drink and dessert. By the time the cops arrived, all was calm. But at some point, the waiter pulled the cell-phone guy aside and whispered to him the identity of his assailant. Apparently, Stackpole is a regular there—and a lousy tipper. Now the cell-phone guy says he’s going to sue Stackpole for assault and battery.”

“How do you happen to know so much about all this?” Grace asked. “And why isn’t this story on
your
station?”

Camryn sighed heavily. “The cell-phone guy e-mailed the footage to me first. But because of my, er, prior history with Stackpole, my news director doesn’t want anything to do with the story. I begged and pleaded and threatened, but he won’t budge. So I might have tipped off a friend at our rival station. Anonymously, of course. At least the story is out there, and it’s hugely embarrassing to Stackpole. So for once, I don’t even mind being scooped.”

“What else do you know?” Grace asked. “Did Mrs. Stackpole just happen to bump into the judge and this bailiff, or did she know they’d been seeing each other? And what happens now? Will she divorce him? And what about the guy with the camera?”

Before Camryn could answer her barrage of questions, Grace’s phone beeped to alert her that she had another incoming call. “Sorry,” Grace said. “I better take this. It’s my lawyer.”

“I’m thinking this calls for a celebration,” Camryn said hastily. “Tomorrow night, eight, at the Sandbox. I’ll call everybody else. You’re in, right?”

“Absolutely,” Grace said.

*   *   *

“Did you just see the news on channel eight?” Mitzi asked gleefully.

“Camryn, one of the girls in my divorce group, called to tell me about it,” Grace said. “I could just watch it over and over; it’s so delicious.”

“You totally can. It was on at six o’clock, too. They’ve already posted the footage on the station’s Web site,” Mitzi told her. “I’ve watched it four times, and it gets better with every viewing.”

“Better for us,” Grace said. “But how would you like to be Eileen Stackpole? Can you imagine the humiliation?”

“I can’t imagine marrying the man in the first place. Yeechhh. What a worm! Of course, there’s got to be a lot more to the story than what they put on the air tonight,” Mitzi speculated. “And the rumors are already flying all over town. Right before I called you, I heard from one of the other lawyers who’s tried divorces before Stackpole. She heard Eileen Stackpole didn’t just stumble into that restaurant last night. She’d supposedly hired a private investigator. He’s the one who let her know Stackpole was playing footsie with his bailiff.”

“A twenty-three-year-old!” Grace exclaimed. “And I definitely remember her being in the courtroom that first time we went before Stackpole. Remember, she shushed us?”

“So that’s where I’ve seen her,” Mitzi said. She laughed. “Oh, my. Cedric has been a very naughty boy, hasn’t he?”

“But is all of this anything that would get him in trouble with your JQC?” Grace asked. “I mean, is being a slimeball enough to get you kicked off the bench?”

“Good question,” Mitzi said. “Having your wife attack your girlfriend in a very public place might not be grounds for discipline by the JQC. Although the fact that he’s involved with an employee of the court seems unethical. But I wonder how it would sit with Paula? I wonder if she knows Stackpole has
another
other woman—besides her?”

“I guess I’ll have to ask her how she feels about it,” Grace said, wincing.

“You do that. And let me know what you find out,” Mitzi said.

63

Grace arrived at Paula Sinclair-Talbott’s office at eight o’clock on that already-steamy Monday morning, determined that she would be Paula’s first client of the day.

She watched idly as the strip shopping center slowly came to life. At nine, a woman wearing a brilliant orange silk sari unlocked the doors at the Diaper Depot. At 9:30 two middle-aged Hispanic women arrived together at the door to the hearing-aid center.

Twice, her phone rang. Both times it was Wyatt. The second time, she was tempted to answer, just to hear his voice, hear him tell her he missed her and wanted her back. She had to grip the steering wheel with both hands to keep from picking up. This was for the best, she told herself.

Finally, at ten ’til ten, she watched as the VW bug zipped into a parking space three cars away. Paula Talbott-Sinclair walked briskly to her office door, unlocked it, and disappeared inside.

Paula was standing in the reception area, staring down at the computer terminal, when Grace walked inside.

“Grace?” Paula looked up and frowned. Her blond curls were mussed and there were dark circles under her unmade-up eyes. She wore a faded, shapeless black jersey dress that hung limply on her slender frame and cheap red rubber flip-flops. There were no tinkly earrings or ankle bracelets this morning. It didn’t look like she’d had a fun weekend.

That makes two of us,
Grace thought.

“This is a surprise,” Paula said. “Is there something urgent you need to discuss?”

Grace cleared her throat. “Uh, yes, actually, there is something kind of important I’d like to talk to you about. That’s okay, right? I mean, in the beginning, you told us we could call you about anything.”

“Well … I suppose I have time,” Paula said, hesitantly. “My first group doesn’t start until ten thirty. Come on inside.”

Grace followed the therapist into the inner office. The heat was stifling. She watched while Paula switched on the lights and then a small window-air-conditioning unit. “Sit down,” Paula said, grabbing one of the folding chairs from the semicircle and dragging it over to a position in front of her desk.

“I’m going to make some tea,” Paula said. “Would you like a cup?”

What she’d like, Grace thought nervously, was a Xanax, or at least a stiff cocktail. “No thanks,” she said politely.

Paula drifted around the room, putting a kettle on a hot plate, rearranging the circle of chairs, and then, finally, when the tea kettle whistled, pouring the water into a lumpy pottery mug.

“Now,” she said, settling into the chair behind her desk. “What’s happening in your world today, Grace?”

“Um.” Grace fidgeted with the strap of her purse. She’d rehearsed her speech half a dozen times at home and in the car this morning, but there was no way she could make this an easy discussion.

“The thing is, Paula,” she started. “I think there’s something happening in
your
world that we need to discuss.”

“Oh?” Paula cautiously sipped her tea. “And how is anything in my world relevant to you?”

Grace felt her face grow warm. “I’ve been attending your divorce-recovery sessions—for six weeks now—because Judge Stackpole basically made it a condition of granting my divorce. And the others in my group—Camryn, Ashleigh, and Wyatt—Judge Stackpole sent them to you, too.”

“That’s correct,” Paula said. “The judge has been a wonderful advocate for my healing work.”

“He’s been your lover, too,” Grace blurted. “Right?”

Paula looked like she’d been slapped. “I beg your pardon?”

Grace took a deep breath, and the words came tumbling out. “We saw you together! That night the judge dropped in on our session. Wyatt and I came back here to your office. We saw you getting out of his car. You’d obviously had a big fight. You were yelling at him, and then you got out of his car and kicked his tires. You were crying and really upset.”

“You’re mistaken,” Paula said, her voice low.

“We both saw you, Paula,” Grace insisted. “And we know it was Judge Stackpole, because after he left you, we followed him back to his house on Longboat Key.”

Bright pink splotches of color bloomed on Paula’s long pale face. “The judge is … a friend. We had a misunderstanding that night. That’s all.”

“I don’t think so. We all noticed how you were around him that night. You were absolutely … giddy. Come on, Paula. You’re always after all of us about honesty. Why don’t you be honest with me? Admit you’re having an affair with Stackpole.”

Paula’s hands shook so violently she had to set the mug of tea on the desktop. “Therapists never discuss their personal life with their patients. This is highly inappropriate, Grace.” Her voice was stern, but Grace noticed that Paula was now clasping her hands tightly together in her lap—probably to stop the shaking.

Grace was shaking, too. But now the fear was gone, replaced by anger.

“Inappropriate? Do you want to talk about appropriate behavior, Paula? Because that’s a subject I’d love to discuss with you. What would you say about a prominent judge—who, by the way, is married—having an affair with a therapist? Would you say it’s appropriate for that judge to
require
parties in divorces in his court to attend therapy with his mistress?”

“Mistress!” Paula yelped. “How dare you?”

Paula’s outrage only fueled Grace’s refusal to back down.

“Mistress—it’s a nasty word, isn’t it, Paula? But that’s what you are. You’re sleeping with him, and in return he sends all these shell-shocked divorce disasters right here to your office, where they pay handsomely for the privilege of listening to your hypocrisy. The five people in my group are forking over fifteen hundred dollars a week for this bullshit,” Grace said. “How much of that do you have to kick to Stackpole, Paula? Half? Or does he even let you keep that much?”

“You’ve got no right to talk to me like this,” Paula said, pushing back from her desk, looking wildly around the room for an escape hatch.

“What are you gonna do, Paula? Rat me out to the judge? Flunk me out of divorce camp? I have every right to call you out. But what I want to know is, When do you call him out? Huh, Paula? When do you quit being his victim?”

Paula’s eyes flared. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure I do. You moved here from Oregon after your life went up in flames—a bad divorce, a nasty little pill habit, then the arrest and then rehab. You moved to Florida to start over again, right? But you can’t get licensed to call yourself a therapist here, can you? And then you meet Stackpole, and the two of you cook up this little ‘divorce recovery’ racket.”

“It’s not a racket,” Paula said fiercely. “I care deeply about my patients. I counsel them and do my damnedest to help them…” Her voice trailed off, and her shoulders slumped.

“Avoid what happened to you?” Grace finished it for her. “How are you going to help us, Paula, when you’re still so messed up yourself?”