Blood Orange (18 page)

A pause.

“She asked me to call you.”

“Okay.”

“She’s dying.”

Another pause, and this time Lexy waited, listening to the buzz
on the line.

“I thought maybe she’d gone already. She’ll be a hundred and
two next April.”

“Actually she’s a hundred and two now.”

“No kidding.” There was a moment of silence. “I thought I’d probably know if she was gone. I mean, isn’t that what happens in
movies? Someone dies and another person senses it?”

What Lexy sensed was that Ellen didn’t know what to say.

“Does she have cancer? Is she suffering?”

“She’s remarkably healthy. She’s almost blind, but her hearing’s
as good as mine. She’s tired, though.”

Ellen’s laugh reminded Lexy of a small dog’s yap.

“She’d like to see you.”

“Would she?”

“Do you have a way to get here?” Lexy had a meeting the next
morning, but she could be late, drive up to Del Mar and get this
woman. “I could come-“

“Of course I have a way to get there. I have a car. I have a garage
full of cars. That doesn’t mean I want to see her.”

An Alaskan chill came down from Del Mar, but Lexy persisted.
“I wish you’d reconsider, Ellen. I believe your mother would like to
let go of life, but there’s apparently some unfinished business.”

Again that laugh. “You bet there is.”

Whatever had made Lexy think she could be a priest? It wasn’t
enough to love God, you had to be able to love the child of God in
women like Ellen Brownlee; and this evening, right now, not only
could she not do that, she lacked even the will to try.

“You can tell my mother she’ll have to die without my help. And
if you’ve managed to save my mother’s soul, my hat’s off to you. For
me, I’m not in the soul-saving business.”

“Mrs. Brownlee, we don’t know each other, and-“

“And we never will.”

“There’s a great deal I don’t know about your mother. But you
and she-“

“I’m not coming down there so she can relieve her conscience
and die in peace.”

Cliches were a kind of verbal shorthand people used when they
did not want to think or feel.

“Think of it as something you might do for yourself. We’ve all
got wreckage in our past, Ms. Brownlee, and once your mother is
dead-“

“You’re saying it’s a use-it-or-lose-it thing? I’ll take my chances,
thanks.” The phone clicked dead.

t six-thirty that same evening Luigi’s delivered two large deluxe,
everything-on-them, double-cheese pizzas to the conference
room at Cabot and Klinger. To make room for the feast on the scarred
conference table inherited from the office’s previous occupant,
Allison pushed aside documents, laptops, water bottles, soda cans,
and mugs half full of scummy coffee while David’s administrative
assistant, Geoff Woodworth, distributed paper plates and napkins
with the flair of a blackjack dealer.

David hated pizza. It reminded him of being a student and always broke.

Gracie came into the room and closed the door behind her.
Avoiding David’s eyes, she snagged a plate and a wedge of pizza.

“He says no,” she told the room in general, as she pulled out the
chair at the end of the table farthest from David. “I quote, `Fuck,
no, no way.

“That Marshall,” Geoff said, smirking. “Always so indecisive.”

David said, “Did you tell him it’s important?”

Gracie used her long silvery fingernails to pick the green pepper
off her pizza. “And he said the condo’s not big enough for the two of us, forget a pregnant woman with attitude.” Finally she looked at
David, her almost smiling expression telling him she was glad to be
off the hook. “You can’t blame him for not wanting to give up his
home office for Marsha Filmore.”

“She’s right,” Geoff said, reaching over and putting the discarded peppers on his own pizza slice. “There’s a limit, Boss.”

“By which I take it you and Billy-Bob would not-“

B’ y Ray.

“You guys have that big house-“

“Abso-fuckin’-lutely N-O.” Geoff rolled his eyes in horror.

David didn’t bother asking Allison if she’d take in Marsha Filmore.
Allison lived in a two-bedroom apartment with two other young
paralegals, all of them just getting by. For the sake of show he tried
to look put out; but he had known from the start how the play
would go. Still, it never hurt to have the team feel a little guilty; that
way they owed him.

“I’ll talk to Dana.”

Geoff whooped. “Can I watch?”

“Boss,” Gracie said, her voice sinking, “you can’t do that. Not
after what she’s been through.”

People seemed to believe he had not suffered sufficiently during
Bailey’s absence because he had gone to work every day and most
weekends, because while Dana fell apart he had remained onehundred-percent functional. It was no way to get sympathy, but it
was the only way he knew to behave in a crisis. Sophomore year of
high school he played a whole season with a severely sprained knee.
If he’d sat out, the season would have been a bust; as it was, even
with a gimpy quarterback they’d won two thirds of their games,
which wasn’t great, but not a humiliation either. You hurt all over,
and that’s when you play your hardest. You play all four quarters.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t suffer.

The conference-room door opened again, and the firm’s other
associate, Larry McFarland, came in and helped himself to pizza.
The chair beside Allison groaned as he settled his big frame.

“You do it, Larry,” Gracie said. “You take in Marsha Filmore.”

McFarland didn’t even bother to respond.

“If you don’t, the Boss will.”

“Jesus, David,” McFarland said, his mouth already full of pizza,
“you can’t do that to Dana.”

David pushed his pizza away. What he wanted was a steak.

“Run it by me again,” Allison said. “Why are we rescuing Marsha Filmore?”

“Yeah,” Geoff said. “She’s the one who went and got herself
pregnant.”

“And now we know she’s been there before,” Gracie said. “It’s
all in Buddy’s report.”

Buddy Collins was the smartest and fastest investigator David
knew. According to the report he submitted that afternoon, Frank
and Marsha Filmore had lived across the border in the early nineties
in Rosarito Beach, where many of the residents were snowbird retirees or Americans like the Filmores taking advantage of Mexico’s
favorable exchange rate. Filmore had commuted to work just inside
the U.S. border while Marsha stayed home with their daughter,
Shawna. According to Collins’s report they had moved north after
Shawna’s death.

“She fell down a well, for chrissake,” Geoff said. “She was down
there three days before anyone thought to look. The guy who
owned the well had been warned twice already to cover the top.”

Allison asked, “Do you think the prosecution knows?”

“If they don’t yet, they will,” David said.

Mexican officials had found Shawna’s death to be a tragic
accident.

“What I’m wondering is, what’s not in the Mexican report?”
David said. He looked around the room. “Who’s taking notes?”

“Me, Boss,” Allison said.

“Okay, make a note to send Buddy back down there, talk to
folks, see what he comes up with.”

“It’s years ago,” Larry said.

“Yeah, but there’s a big expat community in Rosarito. Once they
get used to Mexico, a lot of ‘em stay put.”

“I’d like to give Marsha a little truth serum,” Gracie said.

“That’s my point.” David hit the table with the palm of his hand.
“That’s why I wanted her to live with you guys. You could do the female bonding thing.”

“Did you say bondage, Boss?”

Gracie said, “I don’t think Dana’s going to want to be Marsha’s
new best friend.”

“Maybe not,” David said, “but if she gets ready to share the secrets of her heart, I want our side there to listen, not someone
Peluso plants in the local Starbucks.”

Geoff said, “Can we move on to something else?”

David threw up his hands.

“It’s about the hate mail.”

Threatening and abusive letters arrived at the office two or three
times a week. The police checked each for identifying marks, but it
was hard to get clues from a sheet of ordinary paper and a message
typed or written by hand or in cutout letters glued to the paper with
the kind of glue stick found in stores and offices and schools everywhere. Lieutenant Gary didn’t think there was necessarily a connection between the rock thrown through the Cabot’s window and the
messages addressed to the office. There were plenty of crazies to go
around, he said. The most recent letter had called David a baby
killer.

“It’s so irrational,” Gracie said. “What kind of jackass can’t distinguish between a lawyer and his client?”

Darryl Klinger wanted David to hire a bodyguard for Dana and
Bailey. He knew a woman, ex-Navy; David had been carrying her
phone number around with him for two weeks.

Geoff said, “We’d all feel a lot better if we knew someone was
watching your back, too.”

“No,” David said too quickly. He knew he sounded defensive.
“We can’t afford bodyguards. We’re scraping bottom as it is.”

Sometimes he awoke in the night shivering cold and saw the
debt piling up like snow around a house, the storm of the century.
Everything depended on winning this case. “I want Buddy back in
Rosarito asking more questions.” When Frank Filmore was a free
man, the word would go out, and the big clients, the Court TV
clients, would line up and take a number. They’d get out of debt,
and Dana would relax and start being her old self again.

He looked at his team. He cared for every one of them. Loyal,
hardworking: he could depend on them to give their best effort and
then a little more.

“I’ll be okay, guys. Trust me.”

It was after nine when the strategy session finished and the defense team filed out of the office.

David hailed Gracie, who was the last to leave.

“Can you stick around?”

“Sure, Boss. What’s up?”

His eyes burned with fatigue. “What’s your gut tell you about
this case?”

“Are you kidding? He’s guilty as Nixon.”

David grinned. “But he’s not a crook, right?”

“I’d say he was more a shit-eating pervert.”

He had not asked Gracie to stay behind so he could hear his own thoughts affirmed. “The thing is,” he said, “I keep thinking there’s
something we’re missing here. That’s why I want Marsha-“

“I told you, Boss,” she looked wary, “Marshall says no, and when
he-“

“I’m not talking about that. She’ll stay at our place. Dana’ll fuss
at first, but she’ll come around.” David leaned back and kicked his
feet up onto the conference table. Folding his hands behind his
head, he said, “Let me talk this out, okay? I mean, if I’m going in
the completely wrong direction, you’ll tell me. Right?”

Gracie nodded.

“Okay. Here’s Marsha Filmore. She’s got a twenty-thousanddollar diamond ring and a five-thousand-dollar watch. She’s eight
months pregnant and living in a housekeeping suite in Mission
Valley, and all she does all day is sleep and watch television. And
cry.

“Only her eyes are never swollen. You notice that?”

“No, I hadn’t, but you’re absolutely right.” He jotted a note on
the yellow pad beside him. “She has no family on the West Coast,
and apparently her friends have all deserted her. Not that she and
Frank ever had much of a social life. The way she describes it-their
life together-except for the Calhouns next door, they kept to
themselves pretty much.” He doodled a moment, drawing circles
inside squares inside circles.

He asked, “You know what cognitive dissonance is, when your
brain gets conflicting messages about something?”

“Like she’s supposed to be a very smart and savvy business
woman, but you’d never know it now. She can’t even get to the doctor’s office on time. All that expensive jewelry, and she dresses like a
bag lady.”

David said, “Married to a kid killer, that’d throw anyone off.”

“Boss, it’s more than that.” Gracie leaned forward. “The way she talks about him, it’s too weird. She thinks he’s some kind of superbrain. The other day when I walked her to the elevator, she just suddenly stopped and told me how powerful he is. She talks like he’s
the Godfather and if I step out of line I better watch out. That’s off,
Boss. Plus, she says she loves this guy, but she hardly ever goes to
see him. She says she cries, but we never see any sign of tears. And if
you hadn’t read between the lines, we’d never know about the first
child. Shawna.”