Mittman, Stephanie (43 page)

"Then
he won't be home tomorrow either?" Kathryn asked, finally sliding down
into the chair as if the strength in her legs had deserted her.

"No,
Mother. He will not be home tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that.
He's on trial for murder, and these things take time. You know that. You've
seen me through a hundred like cases."

Kathryn
took the cup that Rosa held out to her, leaving the girl to hold the saucer.
She took a sip of the tea, her eyes keeping contact with Cabot's over the rim.
Slowly she replaced the cup without looking down. "None of those involved
my son," she said sharply.

A
heavy sigh, a brief moment with both eyes closed, and then softly, with a small
sad smile curving his lips, Cabot shook his head. "Yes, Mother," he
said in answer. "Every one of them did."

***

After
a cold supper that they all just picked at, Charlotte had helped Kathryn up to
bed. Reality was hitting Kathryn hard, and Charlotte wasn't sure she had any
strength left to lend her mother-in-law. But then she'd helped her to undress
and saw the paper-white skin hanging in tiny, empty pleats around the woman's
bony frame. Kathryn, with her fine features and lovely silver hair, hadn't been
able to cheat time as well as she pretended, and as Charlotte tucked the older
woman beneath the covers and kissed her forehead, Kathryn had reached out and
clutched Charlotte's hand.

"Promise
me you'll do whatever you can," she begged.

Charlotte
swore she would, surprised that Kathryn thought she needed to ask.

"Whatever
it takes to make Cabot win," she said, gripping Charlotte's hand more
tightly. "Whatever that is."

Charlotte
agreed to that as well.

"I'll
check on you later," she promised Kathryn, then returned to Cabot's office
to help him prepare for the next day's voir dire for the jury selection.

He
looked up, startled when she came into the room, almost as if he didn't expect
her to be there at all. Motioning for her to sit across from him, he put down
his pen and rubbed at his forehead.

"Was
the boy very upset?" he asked.

"Davis?
He seemed to be all right. For a child his age he's had too much practice,
don't you think?" she asked.

"His
appeal comes up next week," Cabot said, flipping pages on his desk
calendar. "I'm going to ask Hammerman for a short recess so that I can
argue it."

"Have
you any use at all for me?" Charlotte asked. "Perhaps I can carry
your briefcase between courtrooms for you."

Cabot
gave her yet another sad smile. Each one seemed to cost him, but still he
offered them. "We haven't that good a shot at either, Charlie. And you
take losing so to heart. Sometimes I'm sorry I ever agreed to any of this. You were
such a happy little thing when you first came here—so full of passion and
excitement."

"You
may be sorry I'm a lawyer," she said, shocked by his honest assessment of
where they had been and where they'd come to, "but I'm not."

"What
if you were to lose the boy's case?" Cabot asked. "The last loss cost
us your lovely hair. What will be next, Charlie, your little fingers?"

"I'm
going to win his case," she said evenly, understanding what she'd done
wrong the first time. "You see, it's not the judge I need to convince.
It's Ewing Flannigan. He, not the court, is going to give us that boy."

"And
if you lose, Charlotte? Can you live with yourself?"

She
nodded. "And you, Cabot? If you should lose Ash's case? Can you live with
yourself then?"

There
it was again, that sad smile. But instead of nodding he shrugged. "The
real question, Charlotte, is, if I lose, could
you
still live with
me?"

With
her heart lodged firmly in her throat she nodded.

"Ah,"
he said. "That's a comfort."

She
rose, ready to say good-night, but turned when Cabot cleared his throat.

"And
what if I win?"

She'd
already made the promise in her heart. If Cabot wanted her to, she would stay
with him forever, forsaking all others just as she had vowed. Anything, to see
Ash walk out of the courtroom a free man.

She
nodded once again, but this time the sad little smile was hers.

The
sun was just rising when Charlotte gave up trying to sleep. She threw the
covers off and rose to stand by the window from which she had seen Ash watching
her. The carriage house looked empty, abandoned, which, of course, it was.
There was no smiling Ash, no serious Moss, not even irreverent Liberty, whom
Moss was seeing to on the
Bloody Mary.

She
put on her robe and slippers and headed downstairs and out across the lawn for
the papers she had promised to look at. Promises. She was good at making them,
even better at keeping them, and undoubtedly best at allowing them to strangle
her to death.

As
she pushed open the door to the carriage house, she took a deep breath. Knowing
he wouldn't be there filled her with warring emotions. More than anything she
wanted to see him, be held by him, touched by him. But not at the cost of
facing him. The fact that she'd been banned from the courtroom had become a
comfort in its own way. At least she wouldn't have to tell Ash that she had
promised to stay with Cabot in exchange for his freedom. Would he understand
that Cabot was their last, best hope? That she'd had no choice?

Van
Gogh greeted her at the door, happy to see his mistress. She'd resented it when
he'd switched allegiances and left her for Ash, only showing up at the kitchen
now and then for a free handout. But now—now she resented nothing Ash had ever
done. She only regretted what he hadn't done.

The
papers were where they'd been left when Moss had gone home and left them alone.
Hugging herself, she smiled at the memory. Maybe she shouldn't have stopped
him. Maybe they should have made love to each other the whole night long and
maybe he should have left his seed inside her to grow.

And
then she realized he had planted something inside her after all—in her heart,
where her love for him grew every day. And which she knew would stay there
until she took it to her grave with her, and even after that.

Beside
the papers was a box with a ribbon tied hastily around it. Perhaps it wasn't
even meant for her, she warned herself, lifting the box and shaking it gently.
"What do you think, Van Gogh?" she asked the rabbit, who was nuzzling
her ankles. "Should I open it?"

The
last few days had held only sadness for her, and she fondled the box as if its
contents were somehow magical and would turn her world around. Her hopes built
so quickly and so out of proportion to what could possibly be in the box that
she was tempted to put it down and leave it, unable to face another
disappointment in her life.

"Go
ahead and open it," a deep voice said, and she spun around to find Moss
standing in the doorway, Liberty on his shoulder. "It weren't a easy thing
to find. But he was determined. The man's a determined man, all right."

"Then
it is for me?" she asked, pulling the sash at her waist a bit tighter and
making sure she was covered up properly.

"Everything
be for you, Miz Whittier," Moss said. "The sun, the moon—the way he
tell it, they all for you. But that"—he pointed to the box on the
table—"that be especially for you alone."

"He's
in big trouble, Moss," she said, fingering the ribbon and watching the bow
fall away. "And I don't know how to help him."

"It'll
come, ma'am," he said softly. "Some things, it seem there ain't no
hope for 'em, and then a miracle happens."

"I
don't think we can wait for a miracle," Charlotte said, tears beginning to
clog her throat.

"You
don't just wait on a miracle, ma'am," he said softly, coming closer and
pulling the cover from the box. "Sometimes you gotta help it along."

Charlotte
stared down into the box, confused at first. Blinded by tears she thought she
saw her mother's teacup nestled in some paper. Her finger traced the rim,
smooth as the finest silk against her skin. As carefully as she'd ever lifted
her baby birds, her newborn rabbits, her china figurines, she pulled the cup
from its surroundings and held it in shaking hands.

Her
mother's cup.

Moss
was right. Sometimes when there was no hope, a miracle happened.

"You
go ahead and have a cry," Moss whispered. "Then we gots lots of work
to do before you get on to the court."

***

Well,
they always said bad news traveled fast, but Ash had never expected to be
living proof of it. There didn't seem to be a man in Oakland who hadn't heard
about the fires or wasn't familiar with the defendant's
reputation,
as
Cabot called it. Ash wished he'd had half the fun that was attributed to him.

His
thoughts drifted to Charlotte, as they always did. His worst sins were in his
mind, desires that, if a jury knew, would no doubt send him from the gallows to
the bottom of the bay.

"And
are you familiar with the defendant?" his brother asked yet another man in
the jury box.

"Not
as familiar as Tess the Whiting," he said, causing chuckles and guffaws
around him that egged the man on. "Or Slant-eyed Annie. Or—"

"Thank
you," Cabot said, cutting him off. "You seem rather well acquainted
with these women yourself. Might make it hard for you to serve as an unbiased
juror, don't you agree? I ask that juror twenty-four be excused for
cause."

Brent
stood, raising a hand to slow down the proceedings. "You ever see these
women you mentioned yourself?" he asked the man in the box, who got a bit
red faced and blinked in response. "Socially, that is?"

"I
ain't on trial," the man said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Ah,
but if you were, you surely wouldn't want someone holding it against you that
every now and then—not too often, of course—you might have taken a stroll down
the wrong street and been tempted to exchange pleasantries with a pretty young
woman intent on keeping the cold away, now, would you?"

"Your
Honor!" Cabot groaned. "What Mr. Brent portrays as an act of charity
now will no doubt be a heinous sin when it becomes my client who might have
once, on some isolated occasion, helped fight the chill of a January evening. I
again request the juror be excluded."

"Would
you hold it against him?" Brent asked the prospective juror, ignoring
Cabot completely. "Or might you even have a little sympathy for a lonely
bachelor with no obligations to hold him elsewhere?"

"Your
Honor," Cabot again called out, "the district attorney is tainting
the entire jury pool. He begs for a mistrial before we've even—"

Judge
Hammerman looked at Cabot hopelessly over his half-rims, shrugged as if it were
suddenly beyond his powers, and addressed the juror. "You can answer the
district attorney's question. Would you hold the fact that the defendant is of
questionable moral character against him?"

Cabot
threw up both hands as if to ask God Himself what was happening in his
courtroom. "Your Honor!" he said, disgust dripping from his words.
"Might I approach the bench?"

"You
may," Hammerman said, popping the remnants of the lunch he'd been eating
since noon into his mouth and talking around it, "but it won't do you a
bit of good. I've seen Brent's case, Mr. Whittier. Let's just move on and get
it over with. My wife's hoping I'll take her to her sister's in Sacramento for
Easter."

Apparently
things hadn't been going badly enough. Now Cabot had managed to lose favor with
the judge.

"We
can at least take heart that Mrs. Whittier won't be here for the details. I
don't know how many times I've told that woman she doesn't belong in this
courtroom. That a normal woman's sensibilities prohibit—well, we took care of
that, anyway. Juror accepted." He raised his gavel and then hesitated.
"Unless you want a preemptory—but if it were my brother's head on the
block, this isn't the one I'd toss back in the ocean. He's apparently been on
the hook once or twice himself."

Ash
rested his forehead in his hand. For the better part of his life he'd had all
the time in the world and nothing worth doing. Now he had everything to live
for, and the real possibility that there'd be no time to do it.

***

Well,
between her case and Cabot's they had filled the courthouse to capacity. Even
the courthouse steps were crammed with reporters from the various papers and
wire services. They were calling it a double-ender, like those boats that were
the same at bow and stern, claiming there was a Whittier at either end of the
courthouse.

She
couldn't imagine what the street cleaners were charging the city of Oakland to
keep the place from looking like a shanty town. Papers littered the lawns
around the courthouse. Vendors circled the block selling fresh-baked cookies
and washed fruit. A man on the corner shouted verses from the Bible and warned
that the wrath of God would be visited upon the earth and to watch for signs of
pestilence. With the fruit attracting the flies and the orator threatening
plagues, Charlotte thought the end of the world seemed just a courtroom away.