Mittman, Stephanie (41 page)

And
if she had any doubts about just how bad it was, the fact that Brent nodded
rather than argued latched the lock for her. Reaching over, she tried to take
the summons from Cabot, but his fingers refused to release it. She pulled
harder, until he finally shrugged and let go so abruptly that she nearly lost
her balance.

She
was familiar enough with summonses to cut right to the heart of the matter with
one glance.
The People of
the State of California
were arresting
Ashford Warren Whittier for the murder of Selma Mollenoff.

Selma
was dead.

"I
was going to see her this morning," Charlotte said to no one in
particular, "after we got some work done on Ash's case. I was going to
stop at court on the way over to the hospital and get a date for Virginia's
case so I'd be able to tell her. I was going to bring her a bouquet of
Liberty's feathers in that lovely bottle Ash brought me from South America. And
I was going to tell her about the letter from Clara Foltz."

No
one said anything.

"You
can't think that Ash would ever have hurt Selma," she told Brent. "He
was going to start reading
Little Lord Fauntleroy
to her this morning.
He was the one to give her a job when no one else would. Remember, Cabot, how
everyone
said she was a troublemaker and they didn't want their women roused?"

"They're
going to take him in," Cabot said softly. His mother was just coming down
the stairs and he motioned for the officers to move back toward the door.
"He's out in the carriage house," he told them.

"You
aren't going to let them," Charlotte said, coming down hard on her knees
by Cabot's side. "Cabot, he's free on bail. Tell them. Tell them he's been
remanded to your custody."

"It's
a capital offense, Charlotte," Cabot said, his hand touching her wayward
locks. "Bail is revoked and further bail will surely be denied."

On
the stairwell Kathryn's cane rapped softly. "But you will see him found
innocent, won't you?" she asked, holding the banister so tightly that her
knuckles were white.

"I'll
do my best to see him found not guilty," Cabot corrected. "But I'm a
lawyer, Mother, not a miracle worker."

"Selma
dead. Poor Eli!" Kathryn said, sinking down to the third step as if it
were her chair. "Charlotte, tell Arthur I'll need the carriage brought
around and someone to drive me to Dr. Mollenoff's. Where's Maria? I'll need
something baked right away to bring with me. And Rosa can come and serve. What
is it they call a Jewish wake? A cold?"

"Shivah,"
Charlotte said. "Appropriate, isn't it?"

"Well,
I wonder what Eli will think of his God now," Cabot said.

Kathryn,
who had gotten up with Charlotte's help and then turned around on the steps,
heading back up, paused. "I don't want to see my son taken from
here," she said, more to herself than to Charlotte and Cabot. She shook
her head, slowly took a few more steps, and then called over her shoulder.
"Cabot, see that he's released in time for supper."

Cabot
chewed at the corner of his mustache. "Of what year?" he mumbled,
shaking his head at his mother's back.

"Ash
and Moss were working on some new possibilities," Charlotte said,
positioning herself so that she could see through the dining room windows even
though she remained in the vestibule.

"Really?"
Cabot's eyebrows lifted slightly. "When was this?"

"Last
night," she said. "After you went to sleep."

"Yes,
I thought I heard you three talking down here after I went up. What did those
two legal beagles sniff out?"

"It
was very late, Cabot," she said softly. "In the carriage house."

"And
then they came back here and told you what they'd come up with," he
insisted. "What was it?"

Cabot
Whittier was a complicated man, but he was nobody's fool. He believed nothing
that he didn't choose to believe, of that Charlotte was certain.

"Charlotte?"

"Hmm?"
If he wished so clearly to remain in the dark, was it fair for her to turn up
the lights?

"Lawyers
do not daydream, Charlotte. Daydreaming doesn't win cases." She supposed
he didn't understand that dreams were all that were left to her.

"Can
we win this, Cabot?" she asked, watching for Ash to emerge from the
carriage house with the men who had gone in after him.

"Win
it, Charlotte?" he answered. "We'll be lucky to survive it."

***

"Would
it be all right if we just stopped off at the main house for a moment?"
Ash asked the district attorney, who'd reluctantly agreed to let him get into
his clothing as one of the men opened the box Moss had left on his dresser.

"Your
lawyers can visit you in jail," Brent said, signaling the officers to get
going.

"Can
you give my brother a message for me, then?" he asked as they put his
hands behind his back and fastened his wrists together. Brent was right.
Kathryn wouldn't want to see him like this. And Charlotte... All he wanted was
to keep Charlotte out of the sordid details of his past, to keep her safe,
separate. "Can you tell him I don't want some woman defending me? Tell him
to keep his wife at home and do the job himself, or I'll get myself some other
lawyer."

She'd
hate him for shutting her out. But he was going down and he wasn't going to
take her with him to the bottom, or allow her to be there to watch him go
under.

I
want you to be my first. My only.

He
was grateful they'd stopped when they had. No good ever came from opening up
someone else's gift.

He
was glad. Hell, maybe someday he would be anyway. When he was too old to
remember what had really been between them.

"Look,"
he said as they stood in the lobby of the courthouse, two guards watching his
every move.

"She's
said herself a million times that no judge takes her seriously—"

Cabot,
like the rest of them, was caught between a rock and a hard place. Not that Ash
gave a damn where Cabot was caught, just so long as Charlotte was kept out of
it.

"And
you?" Charlotte asked, just the hint of a quiver in her voice. She might
have been looking at him. He supposed she was, from the way his skin warmed and
his bones went soft. But he kept his eyes riveted to his brother at all costs.
"Don't you take me seriously?"

"Well,
you might be able to do some good outside the courtroom," he said as
casually as he could without risking a look her way. "There are the notes
Moss and I left in the carriage house, if you want to go through them."

"Maybe
I ought to take a look at them," Cabot said, his eyes shifting to
Charlotte with no thought for what Ash would give to study her face just one
more time.

"At
least it's something I can do to help you," she said. "But don't
think I don't know why you're doing this."

Even
laced with pain she had the loveliest voice he'd ever heard—somehow it was
strong, yet soft. Or maybe it was soft, yet strong. He concentrated on what the
difference was, if any, while he studied the floor beneath them.

God,
but it hurt to stand there as if she meant nothing to him. He watched her
shadow on the floor and studied the curve of her cheek, the tilt of her nose,
the way her new short hair capped her head beneath her hat.

"You
find anything that might help me, Cabot?" he asked, still studying the
floor. There were sixteen pieces of black marble in a square around her shadow.
Within the sixteen black tiles were eight white. Her shadow fell across six of
them. In the center was another black tile about where her heart would be. He
moved slightly so that his foot could touch the shadow of her hem while his
brother cleared his throat.

"A
host of things," Cabot said unconvincingly. "Myriad lines of defense.
And a suspect to throw at the jury, to boot." One wheel of his chair was
lined up perfectly against the edge of the black marble. The other missed by
several inches. The imperfection of it must have irritated him to no end.

But
not as much as seeing just the tip of Charlotte's brown kid boots was bothering
Ash.

"I
heard this brother of mine is thinking of taking you on a vacation when this
whole mess is over," he said as cheerily as he could, allowing himself to
look in her direction for just the quickest moment.

She'd
been crying. Her eyes were red rimmed and her nose matched them well.

"Where
might you go?" he asked. He liked the thought of her on a ship sailing to
the South Seas, where she would drink milk from coconuts and turn brown from
the sun.

She
looked at the watch on her breast. His eyes followed. Through the brown wool
jacket, through the starched white shirtwaist, through the underthings beneath
that, he could still see the contour of her breast, feel the slight weight of
it in his hand, taste its sweetness on his lips.

He
groaned and pulled his eyes from her.

"I
thought perhaps Chicago," Cabot said. "Or St. Louis." He
pronounced the
s
at the end.

"Chicago?"
he said, nearly choking on the word. "Why the hel—" He caught
himself. None of his business anyway. He surely couldn't offer her anything
better, now, could he? Chicago beat visiting him in prison, if only by a
little.

"There's
a seat on the Federal bench opening up there," Cabot said. "And
another in St. Louis."

"Well,"
Ash said, swallowing hard. She'd be hundreds of miles away. Thousands. The air
he breathed would never have touched her first to carry a kind thought to him.
He risked another look at her. "At least there'd be one judge on the bench
who took you seriously. Even if it is in Chicago."

"Better
than Wyoming, don't you think?" Cabot asked. "Though from what
Charlotte tells me, they'd welcome anyone to the bench there—even her!"

"You'd
get your vote there, anyway," Ash said, looking only at the top of her
head.

"Time!"
one of the clerks told Cabot. "Judge is coming in now."

Cabot
nodded. "Ready?" he asked Ash.

"You
might as well go pay our respects to Eli, Charlotte," Ash said.

"Oh,
but I—" she began in the voice that he heard with his heart.

"Tell
him how sorry I am. Not that—you know what I mean. Tell him I'd like to find
the man who did this to Selma and watch him swing from the end of a
noose."

"I
know." That voice again.

He
wished she wouldn't say another word. And he wished she'd never stop speaking.

"Please
let me come in."

"We
can't stop you from sitting in the back," Cabot said, already beginning to
wheel himself toward the courtroom doors. "But if the client doesn't want
you at the table, there's nothing I can do."

Ash
made room for her to pass and as she did, she touched him. All right, perhaps
it wasn't even a touch— perhaps her skirts merely brushed against his leg—still
he felt her softness one last time.

"Don't
be part of this," he begged, his voice so low that only she could hear.

"I
won't get in Cabot's way of defending you," she said. "But don't
think I won't be doing everything I can."

"It's
not your fight," he said, bending down to tie laces that didn't need
retying so that Cabot would get farther and farther ahead of them. "Stay
out of it."

She
looked down at him with her tiny breasts heaving, so that he could only see
part of her face. "Cabot's right," she said, stepping on his lace as
he rose so that this time it was truly undone. "You are an idiot."

She
crossed in front of him, nearly knocking him off balance, just as the guards
who had kept their eyes on him from the distance came to escort him to the
defense table.

He
stood, straightening his jacket and vest, his tie. He checked the cuffs of his
shirt to see that they looked presentable, and then stole one last glance at
the woman he couldn't bear to see witness his debacle.

She
was sitting with her arms crossed over her chest in the very last row.
Seething.

***

Davis
stood against the wall in Dr. Mollenoff's parlor and watched as the old women
threw black cotton cloths over the mirrors. He watched as they pulled out small
stools and fussed with platters of food that made his mouth water.

He
was ashamed to think of food when Miss Mollenoff was dead, but he'd left his
breakfast on the table when the news came spreading down the street hours ago,
and he hadn't eaten since.

Old
Mrs. Whittier had shown up around eleven or so. She'd been surprised that the
doc wasn't there, but she'd rolled up her fancy sleeves and joined right in
with the other ladies, ordering him around, telling him to go here and go there
and do this and do that. He didn't mind much, though, since it gave him
something to do.

He
wasn't really sure why he was even there, except that the doc had been good to
him. And then again, he sure didn't want to be home when his da got back. Not
the way he'd been carrying on since Miss Mollenoff had been taken to the
hospital. Davis was pretty sure from the looks of them that his father had
broken a couple of fingers when he'd slammed his fist against the wall.