Scandal on Rincon Hill (25 page)

“Please consider this a retainer, Miss Woolson.”

Gravely, he shook his head. “As in the case of the early Christians, I feel as though I am throwing you to the lions. I can only pray that you will escape from the arena unscathed.”

D
uring the ride home, I had time to reflect upon my decision to represent Li Ying's countrymen. As I had told the tong lord, there was virtually no possibility that I could obtain their
release on bail. The most I could reasonably hope to achieve was to get their arraignment hearings scheduled as quickly as possible. Other than that, I could only ensure that they were being treated fairly at the jail which, given their nationality, was hardly an assured thing.

Of course I had yet to meet my clients, but it required no great leap of faith on my part to believe in their innocence. As Samuel and I both agreed, it stretched coincidence beyond reason to presume that Nigel Logan and Dieter Hume had been murdered by two different villains. I remained convinced that there was only one killer, and that that person had chosen his victims with care, and then carried out the murders with deadly forethought. To my mind, the only crime those unfortunate young Celestials were guilty of was being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

What concerned me most at this particular moment, however, was that now that the police had two suspects in custody, they would give up looking for the real murderer. The citizens of San Francisco were in an uproar. When the city's newspapers discovered that two Chinese men had been arrested for the crimes the situation was bound to become even more volatile.

As soon as I was allowed to remove my blindfold, I took Li's envelope from my reticule. Inside, I discovered a thick wad of bills amounting to an extremely generous retainer. Closing my eyes, I felt almost light-headed with fear. Unless I could somehow manage a miracle—which almost certainly would require me to find Nigel Logan and Dieter Hume's murderer myself—how was I possibly going to prove my new clients' innocence? I continued to believe wholeheartedly in our Constitution's promise of justice for all, but at this particular moment I simply had no idea how to achieve it.

I would have preferred nothing more, when I returned home, than to spend what remained of Saturday afternoon contemplating this latest dilemma, as well as the challenging matter of Brielle Bouchard and her baby. Not for the first time in my brief legal career, I felt out of my depth. I wished that Samuel were not spending the weekend in the country. If he were here, I would at least have
someone to discuss the cases with. Samuel was adept at playing devil's advocate; between the two of us we often came up with ideas neither of us would have considered on our own.

Much as I might have desired time for much needed contemplation before dinner, however, it was not to be. I had no sooner stepped inside the house than Mama swept me up to help with the preparations for next Saturday's Christmas party.

My sister-in-law Celia, along with her two eldest children, Tom and little Mandy, were already seated at a table in the kitchen stringing popcorn and cranberries to be used as decorations for the Christmas tree (although it seemed that as much popcorn was going into their mouths as was making it onto the string). The newest addition to the Woolson family, three-month-old Charlie, was sleeping peacefully in his cradle at his doting mother's feet.

Hazel Bentley, our ladies' maid, and the children's nanny, Mary Douglas, were seated well out of range of the children's sticky fingers, busily tatting white snowflakes and other delicate patterns which would also be hung on the tree. Cook was busy at the stove baking gingerbread men and other hard cookies, while Ina Corks, our Irish maid, bent over a tray, her small tongue protruding slightly from between set lips as she carefully decorated the cooled pastries with colored icing squeezed from an assortment of piping bags.

Brooding over my legal quandaries was all but fruitless, when surrounded by so much joyful family activity. If I had been lacking Christmas spirit before this afternoon, it was present now all around me. Our warm, cozy kitchen was filled with happy chatter, childish giggles, and mouthwatering smells, all of which I found impossible to resist. Taking off my suit jacket, I slipped on the apron Mama handed me, and set to work.

Since I was hopeless at tatting, as well as embroidery, knitting, crocheting, and other womanly skills, I was set to work twisting sprigs of mistletoe, holly, and other greenery into arrangements to be hung about the house. Time permitting, Mama had instructed me to commence work on the paper streamers which would also be used for tree and room decorations. The following week, of course,
would find the entire household staff turning our home upside down in a frenzy of last-minute housecleaning.

Several hours later, after a simple dinner of cold meat, bread, cheese, and apples, I sought out my father, hoping to discuss Brielle Bouchard's case with him.
Only
Brielle's case. I knew he would not be happy to learn that I had once again ventured into Chinatown alone, or that I'd had a private audience with Li Ying. He certainly would be upset if he knew that I'd agreed to represent the two Chinese men arrested for Dieter Hume's murder. As I had other fish to fry this weekend, I preferred to leave that particular confession until later.

I was disappointed, although not surprised, to learn that he was spending the evening at his club. It did not require a mind reader to guess that he had probably slipped out immediately after dinner before Mama could involve him in the flurry of Christmas preparations which resumed immediately after our evening meal. Unfortunately, I had no club to escape to, and was once again recruited to paste together the paper streamers.

This busywork with my mother and Celia had one undeniable benefit: It once again kept me too occupied to worry about Brielle Bouchard, and the two young Chinese men I had rather rashly agreed to represent. Time for that would come later, when I retired for the night. Then I would have entirely too much time to consider my two all but impossible cases.

I feared I was destined to pass another long night.

A
s it turned out, I had no opportunity to speak to my father about Brielle Bouchard until the following afternoon. My hope that he would be able to conjure up some scheme to help the girl, however, had faded with each passing hour. Papa might be a brilliant if slightly unorthodox judge, I told myself, but he was not a miracle worker. His job was to enforce the law, not invent new ways to circumvent it. On the other hand, he had an uncanny ability to pull a rabbit out of his hat when one least expected it, and in the end I couldn't bring myself to give up on the young mother until I had at least run the problem by him.

I found Papa supervising Marco Ciatti, an affable part-time gardener and general handyman who was much sought after to do odd jobs in the neighborhood. They were clearing out several overgrown rhododendron bushes that were encroaching on the back fence.

“
Buon giorno
, Miss Woolson,” Marco said with a broad grin. He jauntily tipped his cap as I joined the two men.

I was about to address my father when, for a startled moment, I actually thought I caught the little Italian winking at me. When I turned back for a second look, however, he was whistling cheerfully and taking up a large pair of clipping shears to attack the
overgrown bushes. I remembered odd bits of gossip I'd overheard from several women in the neighborhood, implying none too subtly that the good-looking handyman had a well-developed eye for the ladies. Since Marco's behavior toward me had always been pleasant and well mannered, I chided myself for possessing an overactive imagination.

“How are you, Marco?” I asked, returning his smile.

“
Bene
, Miss Woolson,” he replied, beaming. “
Grazie
.”

“Hello, Sarah,” my father's voice greeted me. A moment later, he appeared from around the side of a large rhododendron bush. “Did you finally grow tired of pasting strips of paper together? I swear, your mother has become obsessed with this Christmas party of hers. In the end, she'll have our house looking like one of those ridiculous scenes inside a snow globe.”

“Actually, Mama is helping Celia with little Charlie. Mary Douglas has the afternoon off to visit her family,” I said, referring to the children's nanny.

“Good. Then maybe it'll be safe to go back inside the house. I don't understand why women have to make such a fuss over the Christmas holidays. If she didn't want everything to look so perfect for that dad-burn party of hers, she'd have had a conniption fit to see me working out here on a Sunday afternoon.” He chuckled. “Never mind that the back fence is about to be bowled over by these bushes.”

He took a few steps to the right and studied the rhododendron bush from another angle, then pulled back a thick branch and nodded to our handyman.

“Cut it here, Marco. With this bit gone, we should be able to reach around back and trim the branches that are invading the fence.”

Whistling cheerfully, Marco did as he was instructed, then tossed the cuttings onto a pile of debris in front of some shrubs. Making his way farther around the overgrown rhododendron, he was momentarily lost to sight, although his merry whistle continued unabated.

“I planned on speaking to you after we were through here,”
Papa said, turning back to me. “I was wondering if you knew when Samuel would be returning from his weekend in the country?”

I gave Papa a suspicious look, then immediately tried to disguise it by idly using my foot to nudge some stray leaves onto the pile of cuttings.

“I believe he said he would be back sometime tomorrow morning. Why do you ask?”

“I've made an appointment for him to see Arthur Cunningham Tuesday morning. I planned to tell him about it Friday night, but he'd already taken off for the weekend—without saying anything to me, as usual.”

His normally cheerful face grew serious. “I've gone to an almighty amount of trouble arranging this interview, Sarah, and I don't intend to let Samuel wriggle out of it. He's thirty years old, high time he stopped cavorting around and took his bar exam. He can't spend the rest of his life as a part-time paralegal. Arthur Cunningham and John Brill run a respectable law firm. Samuel could do a good deal worse than start off his career with them.”

I gave a little shudder to think of how Samuel would react to this news. Misunderstanding my shiver, Papa started to remove his jacket. “Here, Sarah, it's grown cold and you'll catch a chill.”

“Thank you, Papa, but I'm fine.”

Nervously, I cleared my throat, then I hurried on before my face inadvertently gave away my brother's secret.

“Actually there's something I'd like to discuss with you, too, Papa,” I said, as another large branch came flying out from behind the bush.

“Is that so?” my father replied, wiping his hands on a handkerchief and starting toward a wooden bench that stood beside an acacia tree. “Well, there's no time like the present. I think Marcus has the rhododendrons well in hand.”

Settling onto the bench, Papa gave a tired sigh, and I suspected he was only too happy to be afforded a break from the pruning. Although he was fond of telling his family and friends how much he enjoyed gardening, I've often thought it would be more accurate
to say that he enjoyed a supervisory role in the garden, rather than actually tilling the soil himself.

“So, what's on your mind, my girl?” he asked, brushing small clumps of dirt off his coat sleeves. “If you're looking for Christmas gift ideas for your mother you're out of luck. In fact, I was going to ask you for suggestions. I swear, that woman gets harder to shop for every year.”

I smiled at this. “She is, isn't she? But that's not why I wanted to talk to you. I need your advice about a young woman who visited my office last week.”

“A new client?” he said, pleased. “Excellent! I always knew it was only a matter of time until your law firm took off.”

“A
possible
client,” I amended, and went on to describe Brielle Bouchard's visit to my office the previous Monday morning. His eyes widened when I mentioned that she had spent more than a year and a half as a “kept woman.” They became absolutely huge when I told him the name of Brielle's lover.

“Gerald Knight!” He slapped his knee and exploded with laughter. “The oh so virtuous preacher of righteous living. My, my, how the mighty have fallen.”

“You're familiar with his newspaper, then?”

“I've glanced over the
Daily Journal
a time or two,” he admitted a bit shamefacedly. Considering Papa's oft-spoken views—all negative—on the daily press in general, I was surprised at this confession. “More to keep up with who he's currently lambasting than to read his pitiful prose. As far as I'm concerned, Gerald Knight is a perfect example of plug-ugly journalism.”

“I'm not familiar with Mr. Knight, other than to recognize his name and that of his newspaper. From what I've heard, though, he strikes me as being rather pompous and narrow-minded.”

“You're right there, my girl,” pronounced Papa. “That paper of his is always going on about one cause or another, especially the sanctity of the family. Which is all-fired ironic, don't you think?”

I nodded my head in agreement. “According to Brielle, he kept
two previous mistresses in the Pacific Avenue house before she moved in.”

“All the while posing as the champion of all that is good and moral,” Papa spat in disgust.

He looked up to see Marco moving on to the next rhododendron bush. “Just a minute, Sarah.”

He rose a bit stiffly from the bench and went to speak to the handyman, returning several minutes later after issuing a fresh set of instructions.

“Of course, listing Gerald Knight's faults does nothing to help this young girl of yours,” he said, sitting back down beside me. He shook his head in obvious appreciation. “She sounds like a right little fireball. Imagine the nerve it took for her to visit you, waving that contract and insisting on suing the bounder. By God, I'd like to try the case myself. I'd throw the book at that womanizer. He deserves to pay through the teeth for being such a two-faced good-for-nothing. It's a shame the poor girl doesn't have a leg to stand on.”