The Tolling of Mercedes Bell: A Novel (6 page)

M
ercedes and Simone worked together at the conference room table. Twelve black leather chairs surrounded it and a long credenza stood against the wall beneath a triptych of uninspiring abstract paintings.

Simone was a pleasant older woman with short salt-and-pepper hair. She wore pointy black spectacles attached to a chain that dangled on either side of her face when she looked down. The two women were immersed in stacks of files, their heads bent together in quiet concentration. The overhead light shone on the mahogany table and picked up the metallic flecks in Mercedes’s sweater.

“There’s news,” a voice announced. The two paralegals looked up to see Caroline striding into the room. “We’re going to have a new tenant,” she said.

Why this news merited an interruption was lost on Mercedes, but an interruption was certainly welcome.

“Is it someone we know?” Simone asked.

“Someone we know
of
,” Caroline replied obliquely.

“Richard Chamberlain? Sean Connery?” Mercedes mocked.

“Very funny. But close. You remember the silver-tongued devil from the Fredericks trial, the one who made jurors cry?”

“Indeed. How could I not?”

“Jack Soutane is moving into the empty office,” Caroline said, pointing to the open door across the hall.

Mercedes looked Caroline in the eye. “My, that does put a different spin on things.”

“You know what Darrel says.” Caroline mimicked him, lowering her voice to the bottom of its register, “‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ Evidently he offered Soutane a deal on a sublease to lure him here.”

“When is he coming?” Simone asked.

“At the end of the week.”

“Do we know about his staff?” Simone, who was married to a doctor, wanted all the symptoms before making a diagnosis.

“No, that’s all I’ve heard so far.”

“Well, for the record, I don’t give a fig
who
moves into that office,” Mercedes stated.

“Sure you don’t,” Caroline replied sarcastically.

Simone and Caroline exchanged a look.

“Now, where were we?” Mercedes asked, looking at the stacks of files.

T
WO MORNINGS LATER,
Mercedes went to Stuart’s office to deliver a project. His lamp was on and his briefcase was open, but he wasn’t there, so she dropped the memo into his in-box. Outside the window, the lake was partially occluded by long arms of fog stretching across the water, dampening and darkening everything it touched.

She turned away from the view to see what all the commotion in
the hallway was about. A tiny woman was leading a stocky fellow with a toolbox into the paralegal room. Mercedes’s curiosity was roused, and she followed them.

“It’s over here,” the woman pointed authoritatively. “I can’t get it to print. Something must be wrong with the connection.”

The man nodded and put down his toolbox. They were setting up equipment in the unused cubicle at the end of the room. Mercedes groaned inwardly. It was already hard enough for the three paralegals to concentrate during the workday.

“Hi, I’m Mercedes Bell,” she said when they emerged. She tried to look hospitable.

“I hope we haven’t been bothering you. I’m Melanie Moran,” the small woman offered. “I’m Jack Soutane’s secretary, and this is Hank. He’s helping us get everything installed. Ms. Kinsey said we could put the printer in here. I hope you don’t mind.”

When Melanie smiled, her whole face radiated happiness, especially her chestnut brown eyes, which were rimmed in dark eyeliner. Straight blond hair hung past her waist. She was lovely, poised, and obviously comfortable in her own skin.

“No problem. Welcome to the office. I’m sure we’ll work it all out,” Mercedes replied.

B
Y EARLY AFTERNOON THE FOG
had cleared and bright sunshine warmed the Grand Lake neighborhood. Mercedes went out for her usual lunch-hour walk around the lake. Sea gulls circled over the water’s surface, keening and flapping their white wings. She was listening to a cassette of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto on the Sony Walkman that Darrel had given her for Christmas. With the ecstatic sound filling her ears, she walked the three-mile circumference, hands in pockets, deep in thought.

When she returned to the office, stout men were coaxing an immense cherrywood desk out of an elevator, angling it cautiously onto a carpet-padded dolly. Had it been a fraction of an inch wider, the desk would never have made it.

She picked up her messages from reception and started reading them as she went down the hall. Rounding the corner, she looked up. There, at the end of the long carpeted hallway, stood Jack Soutane outside his new office, talking quietly to Melanie. He was leaning over, compensating as best he could for the great disparity between their heights. He was in shirtsleeves and impeccable gabardine trousers. Not a hair on his head was out of place.

Mercedes looked down again before he spied her. Slipping into the paralegal room, she took a breath and remembered how she and Germaine had moved into their house, frazzled, sweaty, and dirty, hauling every blessed box out of the car themselves—not knowing where the next month’s rent would come from.

She sat down at her workstation and was on the phone interviewing a witness when Melanie entered the paralegal room, closely followed by Jack. Catching the subtle scent of his cologne, Mercedes turned to face the open file and continued questioning the witness.

Jack and Melanie, speaking softly, began a test print on the dot matrix printer. A terrible screeching sound ensued, like prey in the claws of a predator. Mercedes put her pen down and stuck a finger in her ear, continuing her telephone interview. Simone stopped dictating at once, stood up, scowling, and left the room. Lindsay was putting a messy stack of documents in order at her desk and happily continued.

With her test page printed, Melanie left the room. Jack said to Lindsay in a gentle rumble of a voice, like distant thunder, “It’s too bad we have to put the printer in here, but we’ve really got nowhere else in the suite to put it. Until we can work out a better arrangement,
we’ll try to time the printing so it doesn’t disturb you.” His eyes were drawn to Mercedes, who was still on the phone, with her back to him and a finger in her ear.

She hastily scribbled on a pad and then hung up the phone. Turning around, she breathed a sigh of relief to see that he had left. She looked down at the horrific scrawl of her notes and decided to take a break for tea. Only an hour more and she could leave to pick up Germaine.

In the kitchen, she found Stuart and Emerson, another young associate, futzing with the coffeemaker, trying to put on a fresh pot. Mercedes refrained from offering to help them, knowing full well what would happen if she did.

Emerson said enthusiastically, “Maybe Jack Soutane can help us sort out the First Interstate Bank matter. Darrel says we should pick his brain. He does a lot of transactional work and might be able to make better sense of the contract.” He caught sight of Mercedes pouring hot water into her teacup.

“It’s worth a shot.” Stuart replied with a wide smile. “We learned the hard way what he’s capable of, and he’s a captive audience now.”

Emerson’s eyes remained on Mercedes until she looked up and acknowledged them. She wondered who the captive audience really was.

M
ercedes wrote quickly, barely keeping up with Darrel’s fountain of ideas. They sat in his office on a stormy October morning. Rain mixed with sleet pelted the windows. Darrel sat back with his legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles on the corner of the desk away from Mercedes. His fingertips formed a tent beneath his bearded chin while he instructed her. His wide brow and angular face were those of a thoughtful, smart man.

Stuart appeared in the doorway, his dark hair slicked back. He waited for Darrel to look up before speaking.

“Jack says he and Mr. Taylor can meet us at one o’clock,” he announced.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

After Stuart left, Darrel said, “I’d like you to join us, too. Jack’s bringing in a new litigation matter, and he’s going out of the country soon for several weeks, so it’ll be a working lunch. The new client will be with him. I want us all to hear his story simultaneously.” Rain
slammed against the window in a burst of wind. “Weather notwithstanding.”

Her stomach tightened in a knot. “I hope we’re not walking too far because my raincoat isn’t up to this.” Her raincoat was a sorry threadbare affair that should long ago have been replaced.

“I’ll drive and I promise you will not get wet,” he said kindly, smiling at her naïveté.

“Then I’d love to go,” she forced herself to say.

Darrel drove his Jaguar with Mercedes and Emerson in the back and Stuart in front. As he navigated through the torrential weather, he shared what he knew of the case, a possible wrongful termination matter against a major hotel chain. Emerson leaned forward in the backseat, glancing at the back of Stuart’s head and listening intently. Mercedes passively took in Darrel’s account as she looked out the window at tall trees whipping violently and electrical power lines swinging with the force of the gale.

It was the first time she’d been in Darrel’s car. Plush white leather seats caressed her back. She pictured the four of them driving in the blue Beetle with her at the wheel, the clutch slipping periodically, the windshield seal leaking, and a fetid odor rising from the floor. She amused herself with the thought of the fastidious Emerson being gradually soaked as he sat crammed into the Beetle’s impossible backseat next to Stuart.

Darrel turned left into the driveway of an immense white stone building with Doric columns supporting a domed roof. A valet took the car as Mercedes followed the men inside, into an elevator. The doors opened on the top floor, where they were greeted and their coats taken. A maître d’ led them into the magnificent circular dining room, lined with arching windows in walls of Wedgwood blue. Quiet reigned all about them, save for the murmur of dinner-table conversation, the clink of silverware against fine china, and the tinkling
of ice in glasses. Thick rose-colored carpet absorbed the sounds of their footsteps as they were ushered to their table.

She caught Darrel watching her. Then he looked behind her across the room, watched for a moment, and stood up. She turned in time to see Jack, in a dark green suit, approach the table with a pale, brown-haired man of medium height and build. The waitstaff made way for them, all but bowing to Jack.

The pallid man took a seat between Darrel and Jack. On a signal from Darrel, a wood screen was positioned around the table to shield them from prying eyes.

Jack introduced Rand Taylor to the legal team. To Taylor, he introduced Darrel, his partner in the case, as a seasoned litigator in whom Rand could repose his full confidence. Emerson and Stuart, he told Taylor, were the associates who would do most of the legal research. “They are very skilled and hard-working,” Jack said. “I know from personal experience what it’s like to be up against them at trial.” Emerson blushed. Stuart exchanged a look with Mercedes, remembering the Fredericks debacle.

“Which is how we came to be here,” Darrel interjected. “We learned the advantage of staying on the same side as Jack.”

Try as she might, Mercedes couldn’t dispel the charm of Jack’s regal manner or good looks, especially now that he was introducing her. “This is Mercedes Bell, Darrel’s paralegal extraordinaire.” He smiled into her face for the first time.

As her stomach rolled over in a slow somersault, she nodded to Jack and acknowledged Mr. Taylor. He seemed rather unprepossessing for someone who had supposedly held a high position in a major hotel chain. Everything about him seemed bland and pasty. Perhaps he was just not used to being surrounded by lawyers or “having a legal team.”

“We’ll do our best to help you,” Mercedes replied, looking into his troubled eyes. “Please feel free to call me any time.”

Rand sat forward in his chair and began speaking in a refined Southern accent, the words flowing out like satin ribbon from an endless internal coil.