Trace (Trace 1) (9 page)

“You two must be busy, so I’ll leave you alone. Muffy, I’m going to trim the rose bushes back. Is that all right?”

“Of course it is, Nana. Just be sure to wear gloves and be careful of the thorns.”

“All right,” Mrs. Carey said as she left with the tray.

“You see what’s she’s like,” Muffy said after the door again closed. “She doesn’t really think a lot about her husband’s condition. I don’t know what to do. He’s in like a coma and she’s in a fog.”

“You told her to mention Meadow Vista to Swenson, I take it,” said Trace.

“That’s right. I met him at the funeral. Of course, Mr. Carey was in the hospital then. But later, afterward, she told me that Mr. Carey had a lot of insurance with your company. Then your boss called her last week, and I told her to mention to him about that man who died and the insurance. I guess that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. Anybody else you mention your suspicions to?”

“No. Well, yes, I talked to the family lawyer, but she didn’t seem concerned about it. I didn’t think much of her.”

“Who is she?” Trace asked.

“Callahan, her name is. Jean Callahan, I think. She just didn’t seem to think it meant anything. Sort of told me to get lost. I guess I lose my feminist merit badge over this, but I don’t trust lady lawyers.”

“Male or female,” Trace said with a shrug. “What do you think I can do?”

“Have you been to Meadow Vista?” Muffy said.

“Yes. Today. I talked to Matteson.”

“Then you’ve probably already done it. Just kind of let them know somebody’s watching what they’re up to. It should work out. And we hired a private nurse to be with Mr. Carey at night so nobody tries anything off the wall with him, you know, so let’s hope.”

“You think I scared them off?” Trace asked.

“Probably. Did you ever have an easier job from your office?” she said with a smile. It was a good warm smile filled with large perfect pearlescent teeth.

“Actually, it’s not my office. I work for the insurance company just on special cases. Did you talk to the police?”

“I didn’t have anything to tell them.” She hesitated. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen to Mrs. Carey.”

“And you got all this in your head from that family suing Dr. Matteson over the insurance?”

“I saw it in the paper and it started me thinking,” she said. “Think about it. Mr. Carey was doing well and now he’s getting worse. How do you explain that when that oxygen therapy’s supposed to make him better? I just didn’t want to take a chance.”

“Have you ever seen the Plessers? Or talked to them?” Trace asked.

“No.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds and Trace tried to sip his coffee, but his stomach didn’t really favor it.

Muffy said, “So you’ll be leaving.”

“In a little while, I imagine,” Trace said. He stood up and finished his vodka. Muffy stood up also.

“I appreciate this,” she said. “I think you and Mr. Swenson may have done a real good turn for Amanda.”

She followed him to the front door.

“I’ll tell Mrs. Carey you said good-bye,” she said.

“Oh, by the way,” Trace said, “I saw Mr. Carey at Meadow Vista.”

“Oh really,” the girl said politely.

“Yes. He spoke to me.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He said he was dying,” Trace said.

Jean Callahan’s law offices, on the second floor above a trendy small shopping arcade, looked like they might be the wave of the future in automated offices: all furniture, no personnel.

The walls were warm and woody and there were six empty desks neatly placed about, and Trace wondered where the secretaries and receptionists were. He heard a faint noise in the back of the office and found one young woman, sitting inside a glass cubicle, tapping away at the biggest typewriter he had ever seen.

He waited outside the glass wall for her to look up, but she was so intent on her keyboard that she didn’t until Trace rapped on the glass.

She saw him and a momentary frown shaded her face. Then she pressed a button on her desk and her voice came out metallically through an amplifier over his head. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Trace didn’t see any microphone into which he was supposed to respond. He didn’t like this anyway. He liked to talk mouth-to-ear, like live people, not microphone-to-microphone.

He moved his lips quietly, letting no words come out as he mouthed the syllables, I want to see Miss Callahan.

“I can’t hear you,” the young woman’s voice blasted back over the speaker.

Trace shrugged and again silently mouthed, I want to see Miss Callahan.

“The microphone’s over there,” the girl shouted. She pointed to one corner of the large glass window of her office and Trace saw a small microphone implanted in it. He walked toward it, lifted his head, and cupped his hand alongside his mouth as if shouting. Then he again mouthed, I want to see Miss Callahan.

“Goddammit,” the girl yelled, and got up from behind the enormous typewriter.

Trace heard another voice.

“Is it your usual custom to try to make secretaries crazy?”

Trace turned and saw a statuesque redhead standing in the doorway to another office. She was beautiful, even more beautiful than he had thought when he had seen her yesterday coming down the steps from Nicholas Yule’s office. Her voice was crisp, but there was a smile in her large dark eyes. Behind her, Trace could see a file cabinet and soft leather chairs.

He smiled sheepishly. “I guess I’m just not willing to join the electronic age,” he said. He turned and saw that the young woman in the glass cage had returned to her machine and was again tapping away silently at the typewriter keyboard.

“Now that you’ve disturbed us, what is it you want?”

“You’re Miss Callahan?”

“Yes.”

Trace handed her a business card, which she stared at suspiciously for a moment.

“Are you a lawyer for Garrison Fidelity?” she asked.

“No. Some things I wouldn’t do even—Never mind.”

“Exactly what is it you do?” She was a tall woman, and in her high heels her eyes were almost on a level with Trace’s.

“I’m kind of a claims investigator,” he said.

“Kind of? What else are you?”

“Well, not all of them for Garrison Fidelity. I’m a drunk and a reformed degenerate. I’m firmly committed to the libertarian principles of government. I believe in low tariffs and that you should not crucify man upon a cross of gold.”

“Any position on gun control?” she asked.

“I firmly oppose gun control, except as it relates to everyone else’s guns.”

‘Are you armed and dangerous?” the lady lawyer asked. She had a small smile on her very full wide lips.

“I’m disarmed and ingenuous.”

“You don’t talk like a gumshoe.”

“You don’t look like a lawyer.”

“Fair enough. I still don’t know what you want with me, but come on inside anyway.”

Trace followed her into the office, and when she sat behind the large oiled-walnut desk, he settled into a soft glove-leather armchair in front of her. The office walls and carpet and furniture were all muted, subtle colors, and a small refrigerator on one side of the room and a file cabinet against the other wall seemed to Trace like jarring contradictions to what could otherwise be a millionaire’s study.

“You’re here, I take it, about the Plesser matter.”

“That’s right,” Trace said.

“Honestly, Mr. Tracy, I thought your company’d send a lawyer, since it’s probably going to be involved in this suit.”

“My friends call me Trace.”

“I’ll save that privilege for when I’m sure we’re friends.”

“Shot down before I ever had a chance to fly,” he said. “The company usually sends me out to check things out before they commit lawyers and such to the battle.”

“Listen,” she said, “you’re not the advance guard for some army of minor functionaries who are going to be trooping in here every day for the next year, are you?”

“No. I’m the secret power behind the insurance throne in the United States. When I speak, heads of big conglomerates tremble.”

“Good. What do you want to know?” she asked.

“What were you talking to Nicholas Yule about yesterday?”

“So that’s where I saw you,” she said. “On the stairs.”

Trace nodded. “When I tried to pick you up.”

“Right. What did you think of Yule?” she asked, and Trace noted that she had not answered his question.

“I kind of like the idea of a lawyer who plays the trombone.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s a cradle-to-grave service. Look at the versatility of it. When you buy a house, he can pipe you aboard after the closing. When you get divorced, he can take you out dancing and make sure you like the music. When you die, he can play taps before he reads the will. I hope you play the guitar or something. If he gets you into court and it’s you against him
and
his trombone, I don’t know what’ll happen to you.”

“Don’t let the trombone fool you,” she said. “Nick’s a very effective lawyer.”

“I noticed you didn’t say ‘good,’ you said ‘effective.’ That means something.”

“It means that he gets his way most of the time because everybody’s afraid of him. He’ll do a striptease in court. He sings his summations to the jury. He’ll cross-examine a witness in rhyme. I walked past a courtroom once and he was playing an accordion. The judges are afraid of him. At first, they just thought he was quaint, but now they’ve created a Frankenstein. The press loves him, and if one judge goes against him now and tries to put a lid on him, it could bring a batch of stories about what he’s been getting away with in everybody’s courtroom and that’d bring the wrath of God and the state supreme court down on all the judges’ necks. So they kind of leave him alone and let him do what he wants. They don’t know what else to do, so he gets away with murder, and sometimes so do his clients.”

“Maybe we should surrender now,” Trace said.

“Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“Nick can get away with a lot, but he can’t manufacture something out of air. There’s nothing there. He can walk into court with John Philip Goddamn Sousa leading the Boston Pops and he’s going to lose this case.”

“You don’t think he’s got a case?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Dr. Matteson’s treatment was medically correct for Plesser. No one exerted any influence on him to turn his insurance over to George. There’s absolutely no wrongdoing in this case and Nick doesn’t have a chance of winning it. That’s what I told him yesterday.”

“Do lawyers around here generally go visit other lawyers to tell them they’re going to lose?” Trace asked.

She nodded. “One for your side. No. I went and offered him a two-thousand-dollar nuisance settlement for him to drop the suit.”

“But he wouldn’t deal?”

“No.” She hesitated for a moment and said, “Look, I’m telling you this because we’re on the same side. I heard that Nick has got a problem with money shorts, that he owes a lot more than he can pay. That’s why I thought I might be able to buy him cheap. But I couldn’t. He said he didn’t need money.”

“I still say surrender,” Trace said. “Especially if we’re facing a lawyer who won’t take money.”

“Don’t get sarcastic,” she said.

“Sorry. What else did he say?”

“He said he couldn’t wait to parade the Plessers in court. A poor family against a rich powerful doctor. He’s writing the headlines already in his mind,” she said.

“Did you ever see the Plessers?” Trace asked.

“No.”

“They’re not going to impress anybody in court.”

“You talked to them?” she asked.

“All of them. Mother Plesser, Jasmine, Boofus T. Boofus, the son-in-law, and Rex the Wonder Dog. Rex is the smartest. They showed me pictures of Plesser. The only one with a smile was him lying in his coffin.”

“Jesus, you’ve got some job,” she said. “Did it look like they were willing to deal?”

“Ordinarily, I think you could buy them and seven generations of their family for eleven dollars,” Trace said. “But I got the feeling that Yule has them snowed, that they’re convinced they’re going to get the hundred thou. Less his fee, of course.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see, then,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you that when this thing gets closer to court, I’m going to move to have George removed from the case because he’s got nothing to do with it. The Plessers’ argument is with your insurance company and with the dead man, not with Dr. Matteson.”

Trace nodded appreciatively. “Very shrewd.”

“You figured that out, huh?”

“Yep. You save your options. Later, you can always have Matteson sue the insurance company if the first case doesn’t go in your favor.”

“You’re smarter than you look,” she said. She got up from behind the desk and walked to the refrigerator. Inside, Trace saw only an apple.

“Did you eat lunch yet?” she asked him. She kept staring into the refrigerator as if hoping that somehow its contents would magically change, and then she slammed the door shut.

“I haven’t even eaten yesterday’s lunch yet,” he said.

“Well, there aren’t any real restaurants in this town, but I know a cocktail lounge down the street that makes a reasonable sandwich. You interested?”

“Yes.”

“Follow me, Trace,” she said.

The woman had led Trace into the ratty little lounge where everybody had greeted her by her first name and the waitress had brought her a brandy and water without its being ordered.

Now as they sipped their drinks, she was explaining why she had only one girl working in her office.

“I took it over, the practice, from my father when he died last year. Before that, I was his associate. Well, he had all these people working there who’d been there since the time of the Flood and he’d never let them go. He used to have to go out every hour and shake them to make sure they were still alive. When I took over, I knew that one girl with a computer could do the work of all the rest of them, so I let everybody go.”

“Is it working out?”

“Until today, when you tried to make Betsy crazy with that microphone nonsense,” she said.

“I won’t do it anymore. Did you just fire all those poor people who worked for your father? Christ, you’re heartless.”

“Fire? Pension, me bucko. My father had the biggest private pension plan in the world, I think, outside of General Motors. They’ll collect forever, but at least I don’t have to watch them sleep. Don’t worry, Trace, nobody got hurt in the deal and I get more work out in a day than I used to in a week.”

The waitress came back for a food order and watching the lawyer agonize over the menu made Trace think of Chico. Like almost all trim and beautiful women, Jean Callahan paid a lot of attention to her calories. She finally settled on a hamburger with no roll and no catsup and hold the french fries. Chico was the exception; she ate like a Russian weight lifter, ordering almost everything on the menu, eating it all, then starting to steal food from the plate of whoever she was eating with. Yet her lithe dancer’s body never seemed to add an ounce. Whatever works, Trace thought. He’d hate to have to live on the difference between the two women.

“Listen,” Trace said when the waitress had left, “I’ve got to call you Jean. I had a teacher once named Miss Callahan.”

“Was she a good teacher?”

“I hated her. She kept praying mantises in a plant on her desk.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think she taught biology or something. I don’t remember ’cause I spent all my time trying to look up her dress. She caught me one day and she kept me after school. She told me that the last kid she caught trying to look up her dress, she tied to the desk and left him there overnight. When class started in the morning, there was nothing left but a skeleton. The praying mantises ate him. It almost made me queer, so if I have to call you Miss Callahan anymore, it’ll ruin my lunch.”

“Try Jeannie. Everybody else does. I’m glad you recovered.” She signaled the bartender for two more drinks.

“Coming up, Jeannie,” he called back.

“Better be careful,” Trace said. “You’re going to get whacked and I’m going to take advantage of you.”

“Make that four more drinks,” she said sotto voce, and smiled.

She was nice to look at, Trace thought, and she was wonderful to listen to. She had a whispering throaty voice that seemed as if it should naturally be talking in your ear. From a distance of no more than two inches. Preferably while lying down.

He decided he’d better stick to work.

“So tell me about Mitchell Carey,” he said abruptly.

“Mitchell Carey?”

Trace nodded and she said, “What’s he got to do with this?” He could almost sense her bristling.

He realized he’d been clumsy and quickly he said, “They’re friends of my boss. He heard that Mr. Carey was sick and asked me to look in on the wife. So I go over there and I run into some blonde with Bride of Frankenstein hair and she tells me some story about there being a pack of killers running amok at Meadow Vista and she mentioned your name.”

“You can’t stop people from mentioning your name,” the woman said. “The insolent little twerp.”

The waitress brought the two new drinks and the hamburger, sitting alone on a small plate.

“This Muffy kid doesn’t sound like one of your favorites,” Trace said.

“She’s not,” Jeannie said just before she filled her mouth with a hunk of hamburger.

He waited until she had finished chewing before asking, “Why not?”