Legal Tender (36 page)

My eyes stung. A lump appeared in my throat. My heart lifted. She didn’t know how right she was, and neither did I.

Until now.

M
ahogany bookshelves stocked with Supreme Court reporters surrounded the huge, still office. His desk was an English lowboy, bare except for a Waterford cup that held a flock of white quills. Three telephones sat on the various polished surfaces, but they hadn’t rung all morning. There wasn’t a computer in sight, but there was a box of Godiva chocolates on the coffee table. Next to a kitten.

“She’s a cute one,” Grun said. We sat together on a couch covered with navy damask.

“And she’s already litter trained.” I didn’t mention she preferred legal briefs. I was pushing my luck as it was.

“She reminds me of my Tiger. She has a similar color fur.”

“I thought Tiger was striped.”

“Underneath the stripes, she was tan. Brownish.”

“Well, she’s yours, if you want her. She needs a home now that her owner’s on … vacation.” I didn’t tell him Sam was in rehab, since everyone at the firm thought he was at Disney World, switching cartoon allegiances.

“Do you think she likes me?” He tickled Jamie 17 with a wrinkled index finger, but she ignored him in favor of a black Mont Blanc.

“Of course she does. How could she not?”

“You didn’t,” he said, more than a bit resentfully.

“I told you, that was before I knew you.” We had spent the morning together, with me confessing my ruse as Linda Frost and The Great and Powerful forgiving me, at least after I swore to reimburse the firm for the hooker suit and tuna fish.

“I don’t think she likes me. She doesn’t pay me any attention.”

“She will in time.”

“I’m eighty-two, dear. I don’t have much time.”

“Stop that.” I didn’t want to think about it. I’d had enough death for a lifetime.

Grun watched Jamie 17 flop over on the table and stretch one furry paw to the pen. “She certainly is a playful gal. Tiger was, too. She was this little when we got her.” He held his hands six inches apart. “She liked cream cheese.”

“I remember, you told me.”

“What does this kitten like?”

“Uh, Snickers and Diet Coke?”

“You’re joking.”

“Of course.” Eeek. “She likes salmon. Only the best for this baby.”

He paused. “I must say, I didn’t know what to make of it when I saw your note.” He meant the one I’d left him when he fell asleep on me in the conference room. It lay crinkled on the coffee table between us, a single sheet of yellow legal paper on which I’d scribbled three large letters: I O U.

“Well, I did owe you. I owed you an apology and a kitten. Now you got both.”

“I don’t remember the apology. Perhaps you could you say it again. I’m quite old and my memory fails.” He was smiling slyly.

“You remember, Mr. Grun.”

“Perhaps I didn’t hear it. My hearing, particularly in my right ear—”

“All right, already. I’m sorry I thought you were a tyrranical bastard.”

“I accept your apology.” He tickled Jamie 17, and she batted at him with a floppy paw. He tickled again, she batted again, and she finally abandoned the pen for one of the most prominent lawyers of his day.

“See, she likes you, Mr. Grun. You have to take her. She has no place else to go.”

“Why cant you keep her?”

“My dog doesn’t like her. She’s jealous.” Another lie, and it had come so easily. Practice makes perfect. “This cat has no home. She needs you.”

“Well. I suppose I’ll take her.”

“Wonderful!” I said, only partly meaning it. We both watched the cat, me for the last time, but I didn’t want to think about that. Maybe I could visit her. In Boca. In December.

“Bennie,” he said, “where will you practice now? There’s a place for you here at Grun. I’d arrange for you to have a fine office near this one. I have many important clients that need attention and, considering your years of experience, your partnership draw would be considerable.”

It gave me pause. A Gold Coast office? A huge paycheck? Blue chip clients and Ivy League associates? It was a no-brainer. “No thanks, sir. I’m starting another firm.”

“Understood.” He nodded, smiling, as he stroked Jamie 17’s back. “You say the kitten has no name?”

“None at all.”

“A cat should have a name.”

“Why? It’s only a cat.”

“I’m shocked to hear you say that!”

“It’s not a real pet, like a dog. I bet you could even leave it in a car, all day long.”

“Never! Cats are intelligent creatures, sensitive creatures!”

“Sorry.” We both looked at Jamie 17, who had waltzed over to the box of chocolates and was sniffing at it delicately. Her cat brain was telling her it was Snickers, but it was only Godiva. “So what do you want to name her, Mr. Grun?”

“I confess, I don’t know any good names.”

I acted like I was thinking hard. “How about Jamie 17?”

“That’s a horrid name.”

“Sorry.”

“Horrid.”
He wrinkled his wrinkled nose.

“Gotcha.”

“I could name her Tiger, like my other.”

“No. It’s stupid to name all your cats the same thing.”

“Quite right. I stand corrected.” He nodded. “Her name, it should suit her.” He paused. “I have the perfect one.”

“What?”

“Think. She’s a brown cat. What else is brown?”

Shit? “I give up.”

“I’ll give you a hint. We both adore it.”

“Coffee?”

“No, use your head.”

He looked at me, I looked at him.

And we smiled at the same moment.

They tell me my acknowledgments are too long and mushy, but I think a thank-you is supposed to be long and mushy. In fact, I avoid people whose thank-yous aren’t long or mushy enough. Life is short. Say thanks. And this is my chance.

Thank you very much to my editor, Carolyn Marino, to whom this book is dedicated. Her professionalism and her judgment are invaluable, and if I could handcuff her to my chair as I wrote, I would. Thanks as well to her assistant, Patricia Gatti, for all her hard work.

Thank you so much to my agent, Molly Friedrich, for her improvements to this manuscript and for her representation. Molly has nurtured me with the devotion of a mother grizzly, but is much prettier, and I am one lucky cub. Thanks, too, to Molly’s staff, The Amazing Paul Cirone and author-to-be Sheri Holman. Thank you also to Linda Hayes, for everything she has done for me and my books.

Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, especially to Jack McKeown, Geoff Hannell, and Gene Mydlowski. As always, thanks to Laura Baker, publicist and bride extraordinaire. Thanks to the sales and marketing departments, and to the trade and paperback reps on the road. Stay safe, folks.

Special thanks to Robin Schatz of the Mayor’s Office in Philadelphia. Robin has answered all of my nitpicking questions for many books now, and for this book smuggled me into the Homicide Division at the Roundhouse, where I met the nicest and most professional group of detectives ever. They talked law and plot with equal ease, and helped me on more than one occasion. They know better than anybody else that
Legal Tender
and its characters are fiction. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thanks to Joseph LaBar of the District Attorney’s Office, a true pro, and to Susan Burt, another pro, but for the other side of the fence. For superb estates advice, thank you to Robert L. Freedman of Dechert, Price & Rhoads in Philadelphia, my alma mater.

For medical and psychiatric advice, thanks to Dr. Daniel Kushon and Dr. Ginny Galetta.

To the University of Pennsylvania Women’s Crew, thanks for letting me hang at the boathouse and act like I still belonged there. To Dana Quattrone of Benjamin Lovell Shoes, thanks for teaching me about Doc Martens.

For managing not to point and laugh as I crawled around their sub-basement, thanks to the building engineers at Commerce Square.

A big bear hug to one Frank Scottoline, an architect who proved very helpful. For research assistance in the clutch and eggplant parmigiana beyond the call of duty, a loving thank-you to Mary Scottoline. Whoever said you get what you pay for never knew my parents. Finally, thanks and love to Fayne and my friends, and especially to Kiki and Peter.

A final thanks to Chuck Jones, and a tear for Mel Blanc.

Lisa Scottoline is a New York Times best-selling author and former trial lawyer. She has won the Edgar Award, the highest prize in suspense fiction, and the Distinguished Author Award, from the Weinberg Library of the University of Scranton. She has served as the Leo Goodwin Senior Professor of Law and Popular Culture at Nova Southeastern Law School, and her novels are used by bar associations for the ethical issues they present. Her books are published in over twenty languages. She lives with her family in the Philadelphia area and welcomes reader email at www.scottoline.com.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR
LISA SCOTTOLINE

LEGAL TENDER

“Lisa Scottoline is one of the hot new writers of legal/crime fiction snapping at the heels of John Grisham and Scott Turow.”

—
Cincinnati Post

“Still hot … Lisa Scottoline proves herself equal to the task of maintaining a winning formula that is both fresh and entertaining…. Scottoline’s heroine is a tough cookie with a marsh-mallow heart, and she talks like a cross between Mike Hammer and Erma Bombeck … [A] hard-edged, humorous sensibility defines the book’s mood and runs through it like a river of hope….
Legal Tender
is a page-turning thriller festooned with red herrings and a comic sensibility that is quite rare in the cloak and dagger department…. Lisa Scottoline is a welcome breath of fresh—and funny—air.”

—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“This smooth tale moves.”

—
San Jose Mercury News

“Don’t miss former practicing attorney Lisa Scottoline’s latest.”

—
American Woman

“Bright, funny, and fast-reading.”

—
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“A perfect example of the way a mystery-thriller should be written: taut, lean, and moving at the speed of a bullet train…. Edgar Award-winning author Lisa Scottoline has dreamed up a legal nightmare in her latest novel,
Legal Tender,
honing and improving her storytelling with sharp, spare prose and snappy, often witty dialogue.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

“
Legal Tender
’s pace is so brisk and riveting that you may find yourself, as I did, up most of the night, gobbling it up, straight through, cover to cover.”

—
Newport News Press

“Ms. Scottoline’s writing style is modern, breezy…. The amazing conclusion takes place in an interrupted courtroom proceeding with all the excitement of the built-up suspense … a witty … tale of mayhem in the fast lane.”

—
Richmond Times Dispatch

“Sometimes funny, sometimes action-packed, sometimes edge-of-the-seat suspenseful…. The book pictures the good, the bad, and the ugly in the legal profession from an insider’s view, and the tale is told in a brisk, entertaining way. Ms. Scottoline is a talented writer, keeping the reader’s interest from beginning to end.”