Suspicion of Guilt (29 page)

She shook her head slowly. "Patrick doesn't see any point in settling unless they agree to something decent. I agree, Larry. The police have nothing on Patrick. We shouldn't be afraid of what Sanford Ehringer might do."

His brows knitting, Larry asked, "What does Patrick Norris call a decent settlement?"

"Ten million dollars."

"Oh, my God."

"He'll settle for four, but don't let Weissman know that," Gail said. "I've told Patrick we don't have much of a case yet. He'd rather have four now than litigate for a year or two and possibly end up with nothing. Frankly, I'll be disappointed if we can't get them up to at least six."

Larry nibbled off a piece of cuticle, then smoothed it with the other hand. "Isn't this what Howard Odell was proposing at the gallery? A settlement?"

Gail said, "I'd rather not deal with Howard Odell. I don't trust men with toupees and capped teeth. If he and cousin Sanford want to participate in a settlement, fine, but I'm not going to delay this case for them. Unless something unexpected happens upstairs, we're filing the petition for revocation of probate tomorrow."

Larry looked desolately at the front of the building. "Well. We'd better go on upstairs, hadn't we?"

Gail grabbed his arm. "Wait. Let me take the lead on this. You're a friend of his, and that could hurt us. We have to get his attention, Larry. Weissman has to be convinced we've got a case, that we're only talking settlement as a convenience to our client, and if he won't go along, we'll slice out his heart. Larry, listen to me. Forget you ever worked with him
on a civic committee. Don't smile, don't make small talk. Let me be the one to tell him what we want."

"What do I do? Sit there and growl?"

"No. What I want you to do is drag me off him the minute he gives us anything. Play the good guy. He won't like me very much, and he needs someone to go to. Can you do that?"

"My God. Trial lawyers."

Gail picked up her briefcase from the bench. "Did you get a chance to think about what Sanford Ehringer said to me about Easton?"

"That he doesn't exist?" Larry shook his head. "I have no earthly idea what he meant."

"Easton. Maybe he was a ghost. Or a character out of a Rudyard Kipling poem. You know, 'the white man's burden' and all that jolly rot."

Looking at her mournfully, Larry said, "You're awfully cheerful."

"I'm manic, are you kidding?"

They walked toward the bronze-tinted glass doors, which swung outward, the name of the bank flashing in the sun. When they got on the elevator, they were alone.

Gail said, "Larry, tell me about the Easton Trust. The last time we talked, I got the distinct impression that you knew some of the people on the board of directors. You hinted that some are clients of our firm."

"I don't believe I said that."

"You definitely said you knew some of them."

"Did I?"

Gail laughed. "Yes, Larry. You did. A couple of weeks ago you had lunch in the partners' room with Howard Odell. You know him. He's in Easton."

"We weren't discussing Easton," Larry said.

"Whatever. Odell is the director, Sanford Ehringer is the chairman. Who else?"

"Why do you need to know?" The sides of the elevator were mirrored in smoky glass, and his image reflected in a long curving row of heads with thinning hair and the fronts of Brooks Brothers suits.

"I don't know why I need to know," she said. "I just wonder why the registered agent for Seagate and Atlantic are in the same building as Easton. The will leaves money to the Easton Trust, and the notary works for Gateway. What's the connection?"

"Does there have to be one? You know, Gail, there are coincidences in life. Serendipitous events. Oddities placed by the God of Irony to drive us mad." He watched the numbers flashing from floor to floor.

Gail looked at him for a few seconds as the elevator rolled smoothly upward. "Who's in the Easton Trust, Larry?"

The bell sounded. "We'll talk later." The door opened and he put out a hand to let her go first.

She stuck her foot across the tracks. "Weissman can wait. I don't want to go in there to talk about this case—which involves the Easton Charitable Trust even indirectly—and get myself blindsided by a brick thrown out of nowhere."

"This is completely
irrelevant
!”

The door bucked against her foot, and Gail reached in and pulled Larry out by one arm. There was no one in the carpeted corridor, only doors in both directions and across from the elevator a gilded half-table with a vase of artificial flowers.

She had her fist around the fabric of his coat sleeve. "Sanford Ehringer was positively creepy. He gave me nightmares. Then yesterday with Frankie Delgado ... I think if I could get my fingernails under the edge of this case, and turn it over, I'd see wet, slimy things twisting into the ground."

His eyes widened. "Gail. I am sincerely worried about you. You've been under a strain lately, you know. Financial woes. Your sister's death. Divorce. The pressure of making partner—"

"Larry, please. I'm not having a breakdown." She spoke softly. "I only want to know who is on the board of the Easton Trust."

After a few seconds, he said, "I'd prefer not to discuss it."

"Why in hell not?"

"Because they have nothing to do with this. You are invading their privacy simply out of misguided curiosity."

"Curiosity? This is a twenty-five-million-dollar estate! You're supposed to be on my side. Larry, what is the big deal?"

Larry Black's usually gentle expression turned furious and hard, and his lips drew back along his teeth. "You presume too much. You show me no respect as your supervising partner. Oh, I've let you get away with it, because I tend to be too good-natured, but even I can be pushed only so far. I have championed you with the partnership committee at the firm, but I am very close to regretting that decision. Your judgment is deplorable. Speaking to Carla Napolitano on your own, and in that manner. I am shocked. Partners of major law firms are not so impetuous!"

After a moment of stunned silence, Gail took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry if I have disappointed you. I've always tried to do my best."

Larry squeezed his eyes shut for a second. "I know you have."

"Your timing's lousy."

His hand went briefly to her arm, then dropped. "I am sorry. Gail, I didn't mean what I said. It was my temper speaking."

She turned away and marched down the hall toward Weissman's office. "Let's just get this over with."

Alan R. Weissman had flown a fighter jet in Vietnam; his wings and battle ribbons hung in a glass case on a wall of his office. He had been a president of the Florida Bar, and there were photos of that. There were also photos of Weissman shaking hands with Jimmy Carter, Golda Meir, Frank Sinatra, and Arnold Palmer. There was Weissman lined up with other members of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, cutting a ribbon. Alan Weissman looking tanned and fit, his suits shining like fine silk armor in the flashbulbs. He was a handsome guy with a big grin, a high forehead, and curly gray hair receding to show more of it.

He had burned up the track in his thirties and forties. He still knew people. The judges would call him by his first name in court. His clients were mostly on Miami Beach, mostly elderly. Weissman and a few other mid-fifties attorneys would congregate in a bar up on Collins Avenue in the afternoon and drink. Of his three partners, one had died last spring of a heart attack on the fifth tee at the LaGorce Country Club. The firm hadn't gotten around to changing the stationery. Another kept himself busy with real estate deals, and the last—Lauren Sontag—was a good bet for the Circuit Court bench. Weissman was her campaign manager. There were rumors they were having an affair, and mmors that this was the reason his wife had left him.

Weissman was a prominent attorney because he had been around for a long time, and because he had once been good at it. Several complaints had been made by clients who said he had neglected their cases, but the Bar had let him quietly settle with each of them. How would it look, a former Florida Bar president, disciplined for ethical violations? They made him go to a clinic in Boca Raton to dry out. His wife, Mona, had already hired a divorce lawyer. She had closed their joint accounts, and now she was going after the real estate. His younger son was in jail in New York for securities fraud, and his only daughter had converted to Catholicism.

Gail had found all this out in the last week or so by asking the right people.
Know thine enemy.

In her car this morning, driving to the Beach, she had played out this version in her head: Alan Weissman must have wept with gratitude that Rudy and Monica Tillett showed up, asking his advice on the matter of their deceased stepmother's will. They couldn't find it. It was gone, burned, torn into pieces—God only knew. The consequences were beyond terrible: Patrick Norris, her only heir, would get their parents' house, their mother's art, everything! So perhaps Mr. Weissman would help? He would be well compensated, and surely the risk would be small.

What luck that Althea had come to see him just the month before. No problem using that date. No problem inventing a new will. After all, it would be the same as all the other wills—except for the provision giving Rudy and Monica the house and the art collection.

But then Patrick Norris showed up screaming forgery.

Alternate version: It had been Sanford Ehringer who had contacted Weissman. Dear Althea is dead; there is no will and my charity stands to lose God-knows-how-much money. Can you think of a solution? Irving and Jessica will be happy to help. And we'd better pay off Rudy and Monica to keep them quiet.

Gail had to feel a Utile sorry for Alan Weissman. He probably liked doing probate, except that his clientele were dying off. Not much stress to filing an estate. You fill out the right forms and have a CPA check behind you to make sure you don't screw up on the taxes. But the Tillett case! A bog, a swamp!

What didn't fit, Gail had decided, was the part Lauren Son-tag had played in this little drama. Why would she risk her career for Alan Weissman? Friendship? Love?

Love. Alan Weissman was a handsome, broken man. A tragic man, in a way, and didn't Lauren possess her own streak of tragedy? There was an elegant, wistful, even a
noble
sadness to her that Gail, in the years of knowing Lauren Son-tag, had never been able to fathom. So she'd had a bad marriage. Lots of women had survived that. She had a daughter, a smart and pretty girl finishing her last year of high school, planning to go on to Radcliffe College. That was cause for happiness, surely.

How fascinating that the cool and distant Lauren Sontag had lied for love. And yet she had said there was no sex between them. What, then? Truly, there were mysteries to this relationship, and the ways of love were exceedingly strange. Was there such a thing as sexless passion? Gail could not imagine it with Anthony Quintana.

And there her thoughts had broken off, and crossing the causeway to the Beach again, Gail had felt a stab of loneliness, of panic, knowing she was losing him.

She had driven the rest of the way to Alan Weissman's office with her radio turned up high, blasting into the silence.

Now Gail and Larry Black faced him across his desk. Weissman was sliding his hands along the edge of it, fingers flat, thumb underneath as if he might suddenly flip the desk over or rip it down the middle.

The desktop bore burn marks near the overflowing marble ashtray. He had put out his cigarette when they came in. The room was carpeted in brown shag and wallpapered in beige vinyl that had frayed around the light switch. Open-weave curtains hung limply on either side of metallic miniblinds, tilted shut against the morning sun.

Weissman laughed disbelievingly. "Ten million dollars? Larry, where'd you get this woman? She's out of her fucking mind."

Larry moved in his chair. "Alan, there's no need for anyone to become personal. What Gail is trying to say—"

Gail shut him up with a glance as she rose from her chair and began to walk—jacket open, hands in the pockets of her skirt. The platform pumps she had chosen for today put her just over six feet tall. "Look at the evidence, Alan. The leading document examiner in South Florida says Althea Tillett didn't sign the will. The alleged witnesses can't agree on what happened. They're going to crash and bum on the stand. You know this."

Larry said, "I'd settle it for ten, Alan."

"And you're fulla crap, both of you." He waved a hand.

Gail said, "Althea Tillett's will was forged. I believe that it was done in this office, either directly by you or with your knowledge and cooperation. If this case goes to trial, you're going to have some problems."

"
I
forged a client's will?" He poked the front of his knit shirt. "I should be so stupid?" A bit of gray hair curled from the open collar. He picked up his red appointment book. "Here's something for you to mull over, Ms. Connor. My secretary spoke to Althea. She wrote down that Althea would come to see me on Saturday, August third, at ten a.m." He let his book drop on his desk with a thud. "And guess what. Althea showed up."

Arms folded, Gail said, "Fine. She was here on August third. Was it to sign her will? Or did you pick that date for the will because her name was already in your appointment book?"

Larry continued to gaze at Weissman without a flicker.

Gail asked, "Were you aware that the woman who notarized Althea Tillett's will was in New Jersey on the third of August?"

Alan Weissman's high forehead was flaming. He opened his arms and laughed. "Go for it. File your case. You'll get
bupkis.
Make a complaint to the Florida Bar while you're at it. I'll look like an idiot for a few months, which I admit I was. An idiot for doing Althea Tillett a favor. But you think other attorneys haven't done favors for their clients? It's done, Ms. Connor. It is done." "Not by my firm,"

"Your
firm? You're nothing over there." Alan Weissman, gathering some steam now, stood up, hitching his trousers around his waist. "Ten million dollars! You people are nuts. We'll give him two. That's it. Patrick Norris should take it and be grateful. Althea would die all over again if she could see this."