Unfit to Practice (30 page)

“That's easy. Somebody called me and told me.”

“Somebody?”

“Just a voice on the phone.”

“What did this person say exactly?”

“He—or she, whatever it was, said that these two women were running all over town telling everybody that they saw me kill Phoebe, which was a lie!”

“Up until that point, the police were looking at another suspect, isn't that so?”

“Mario. Mario Lopez, that's right.”

“In fact, you had established an alibi, which the police seemed to believe.”

“That broke down when those women said they saw me at the campground.”

“Made you mad, didn't it?”

“Well, let's face it. I knew I didn't hurt Phoebe. I was just trying to save everybody the trouble of getting confused about what happened. I knew it would look bad, me being at the campground that night later. If I could, I would have kept my alibi.”

“Not only did it make you mad, it attracted the police's attention.”

“Right. It looked like, up to that point, they didn't think I was involved.”

“In fact, you were arrested as a result of the information Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume gave to the district attorney's office. You must have seen that coming. You must have been upset.”

“Your Honor,” Jack said, “asked and answered.”

“Let's not belabor the point,” said Brock. “Con-tinue.”

“What specific information did that person who called give you regarding the identity, whereabouts, and intentions of these witnesses?”

“He gave me their addresses, including one for a beauty salon where one of them worked, and the Ford guy's office. Told me they were planning to go to the D.A. to say things about me.”

“When you received this information, what was your reaction?”

“I wanted to talk to them.”

“You wanted to talk,” Nolan repeated, eyes rolling slightly. “Mr. Stinson”—Nolan waved a stapled pile of papers at him—“isn't it true that you stalked and assaulted these two women on at least two separate occasions with the intention of scaring them so completely they would never testify against you?”

“That's sheer bullsh—they jumped me!”

“And, Mr. Stinson, in between surprising the two women on the beach and again at the women's shelter at Tahoe, where you broke a window, frightening and disturbing the residents, you took the time to drive to Palo Alto and use these terrifying tactics, verbally abusing and attempting to assault Brandy's fiancé, Bruce Ford?”

“What is this? I thought this was about how bad she was, not how bad I am! I didn't attack nobody, not Phoebe, not those women, not that wuss Ford. I just wanted to straighten things out with them.”

“By straightening, do you mean you wanted them to leave town and not testify against you?”

He folded his arms. “That would suit me, yeah. Because they were lying.”

“Uh huh,” said Nolan. “If you had not received that anonymous phone call, would you have known about the potential witnesses?”

“Probably not. No.”

“You would not have gone after them?”

“To talk to them! No.”

“That's all.”

Jack stood while Nolan sank back into her chair.

“Mr. Stinson, tell us more about what happened at the beach that day that you came upon Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume. What was your intention on that day?”

“I went there to talk to them, I swear. How many times do I have to tell you people?”

“Did you take a knife along?”

“No!”

“A gun?”

“No.”

“A weapon of any kind?”

“I didn't take a weapon. These were women. I didn't go looking for trouble.”

“Yet you ended up in a fight, didn't you?”

“Like I said before, they jumped me first. Of course I'm not going to just take that. I pushed 'em off.”

“And at the women's shelter?”

“Christ, I even knocked! Next thing I know, there's a lady I never saw before waving a rifle at me.”

“When you went to Bruce Ford's—”

“Okay, I was a little drunk. I said a few things. He's a man, supposedly. I didn't expect him to give in easy. I was just trying to be forceful, but I never laid a hand on him.”

Jack shifted gears. “Mr. Stinson, were there many people camping nearby the night that Phoebe Palladino died?”

“The place was packed.”

“Isn't it possible someone else at the campground saw something that night, even saw Brandy and Angel leaving their tent, and you leaving Phoebe's tent?”

“Sure. Anything's possible. Who would have thought those two would happen to need to pee just the very second I was leaving the tent, huh?”

“Are you hard to find?”

“What?”

“Are you listed in the local directory?”

“Yes.”

“So anyone, anyone at the camp that night, might have called you?”

“Anyone can call me.”

“So an attorney's missing files aren't the only way someone might come to know about you or your return to the campground later that night?”

“You're good, man,” Cody Stinson said. “That's right except for one thing. How would anyone know my name?”

“Did the ranger take your name?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Who was there when he took down your name?”

“We had quite an audience, yeah, we did. You're right! Maybe it was the old guy from Cambria at the campsite on the other side who kept hollering at us to shut up who saw and heard everything. Maybe he called me.”

“Thank you. That'll be all,” Jack said.

On the way out of court, Nina walked over to Cody Stinson, who was sitting at the small round table in the reception area leafing through a magazine. “Thank you for your testimony,” she said. “I think you tried to be very honest,” which was a way of flattering him without saying he was honest, since she didn't know.

He put his magazine down. “You're the first to say so.”

“I've been wondering about the woman who alibied you,” she said. “My investigator tells me her name is Carol Ames.”

“She doesn't know anything. Anyway, she's out of the picture now.”

“You haven't spoken with her lately?”

“No. Why?”

Nina smiled. “I don't know why I thought about her. I guess I wondered if she was a girlfriend or something.”

“Not that it's your business,” he said, “but I loved Phoebe. Everyone forgets I lived with her for nearly a year before Mario got out.”

“Oh, well. It's probably nothing—”

“What?”

“Forget it,” she said. “I just—you don't know where she is?”

“Not at the moment. But I could find her easy enough if I wanted to.”

“Hmm. Well, thanks anyway.”

She walked away, feeling his eyes on her back, a thought forming in her mind. She felt like a girl plucking daisies to determine her lover's deepest feelings, impractical, but she couldn't sit back and do nothing.

22

“T
HANKS FOR PICKING ME UP,
” Nina told Paul. “I can't believe we're doing this. I couldn't face a two-hundred-mile drive all the way back to Tahoe tonight, and anyway, I left my car there. Wish dropped me here this morning. He said he wanted to play in the city, but I know he just wanted to help.”

They walked side by side through the evening crowd toward a nearby parking lot to retrieve his Mustang. “We'll be efficient,” Paul said, “make this a nonstop run if you like. But why are you going back tonight? You're going to have to leave very early in the morning to get back here in time for court.”

“I have to get back to Bob. I spoke with Matt at lunch. He's spending the night at the hospital with Andrea, and his kids are staying with friends. I couldn't manage to organize anything else for Bob on such short notice.”

“Is Andrea okay?”

“Fine, I'm told, except her blood pressure's up. She needs some bed rest. It's tough when you've got two kids already and you're nearly nine months along.”

“What are you going to do about Bob?”

“Well, after tonight, he could stay with Matt, although it's a bad time for them.” She fretted. “Maybe I'll just pack him and his books up and bring him back here. He could stay at the hotel with me or at Jack's until we're through.”

“Good plan.”

“Paul, today at court—Brandy mentioned some woman in the campground bathroom at about the same time Cody Stinson returned to the tent. And then Stinson testified and mentioned this woman, Carol Ames. What do you know about her?”

“You mean Cody Stinson's alibi?”

“Right.”

“I told you I checked into their history. She's an old flame. They broke up when he took up with Phoebe, nearly a year before Phoebe was killed. She's been dating other guys since then, although I'm told there's nothing serious. She's some kind of freelancer. Works out of her house doing medical billing, I believe.”

He opened the door for Nina, which she appreciated. She reached down and took off her shoes and loosened her belt. “I don't like being a defendant.”

“Hang in there.”

“Jack seems to know what he's doing.”

“Seems to.”

“Anyway, about Carol Ames. Wonder what she saw in Cody. She sounds almost respectable.”

Paul got in and buckled up. He looked left, then right, then turned right on Howard and began to zigzag up and down short blocks, apparently hoping to blaze an unknown route to the Bay Bridge that no one else in San Francisco had discovered. “She loved that drug-dealin', motorcycle-lovin' Cody Stinson,” he said, “for whatever reason. But then, all couples are hard to picture.” The car lurched across an intersection on a red light. “Look at you and me.”

“Oh, no, let's not.” She planted a kiss on his cheek. “I just want to hop on the back of your Mustang and ride off into the sunset, or toward the sunrise, in this case.”

“We don't spend enough time together, Nina. You're with Jack all the time.”

“I spend more time with him now than I did when we were married, isn't that odd? I like him better this way, doing his job, being a pro, standing by me like he never did when we were married.” She smiled. “He's redeemed himself.”

Paul said, watching the road, “He's seeing someone.”

“Good,” Nina said. She hesitated. She didn't want to know about it. “Were you worried that Jack and I might—”

“Not a bit,” Paul said. “I'm the better man and you're smart enough to know it.”

“You weren't a little bit—jealous?”

Paul snorted.

“You were,” Nina said.

“I'll be glad when this inquisition is over and we can both get on with our lives. Then let's resume where we left off in Carmel last summer, Nina. Could we do that?”

“Paul, why did you take the LSAT?”

“Why did you?” He didn't sound happy.

“Did you really want to be a lawyer?”

“I would have been a terrible lawyer. I'm not a desk type. And lawyers work too many hours. I like what I do now.”

She didn't quite believe him. Was that why Paul seemed so cavalier about the risk of her disbarment, because of some disappointment in his past? She thought about that, but couldn't reach any conclusions, so she turned her attention to the erratic behavior of their fellow rush-hour motorists and the way Paul skidded through intersections on reds. Beginning to adjust her belt lower on her hips, she stopped and thought, well, if I die, at least I won't have to come back here tomorrow morning to face the hangman.

They reached the bridge. Traffic suddenly moved right along. Paul sped up.

“Maybe Carol Ames liked excitement. She got that with Cody. I keep thinking about her,” Nina said. “About the campground. About what happened that night. About how Brandy and Angel saw a woman leaving the bathroom. It could have been any female camper, of course. It probably was. But I just keep thinking about Cody's friend, Carol. How she loved him. How he came to her that night for the first time in a long time. Don't you think she'd notice if he left? I would.”

Paul said, “There's no special reason to put the two women together, Ames and the woman in the bathroom. But it's a thought. Ames moved out of her place a while ago. You want me to locate her? I know who could help. John Kelly could.”

“Who's that?”

“Stinson's best friend. An old friend of Carol's, too. I ran into his name a couple of months ago when I was looking at the drug connection. He did a little business with Mario and Cody a long time ago.”

“Do you think this is too far-fetched?”

“For me it's just another evening like so many evenings before, without my love in my arms. I might as well eat poorly and hunt down another guy's old girlfriend. Oh, Nina, I miss you.”

Inspired by this comment and further comments on the topic, they didn't make it all the way to Tahoe nonstop. At eight-thirty she called Bob from her mobile phone explaining that she would be a little later than expected. She and Paul registered at a historic hotel on the main street in Placerville, stripped, and jumped together into the fresh, starchy sheets. For an hour they kissed, murmured, and touched each other's skin. For Nina, the release felt fantastic, her passion intensified by her inner turmoil.

Later, eating shrimp salad on the balcony overlooking the main street while Paul had a nap, Nina realized that she wasn't thinking at all about the hearing. Paul was the subject on her mind.

She loved Paul. She didn't know what she would do about it, but she felt a decision was imminent, forming somehow out of her situation.

She woke him up a few minutes later. They got to Tahoe by ten. Kissing her warmly, he dropped her at the house on Kulow, declining to come inside. “I love you,” he said.

She kissed him again, not able to say the words.

“Bob?” she said, unlocking the door to their cabin. Strange that Hitchcock did not seem to be anywhere around. She dropped her small suitcase and briefcase right inside the entryway and dragged the house, calling for Bob and for Hitchcock. She checked Bob's room, finding the door closed, lights off, and blinds shut. Hitchcock was definitely not at home, and neither, it seemed, was Bob.

In the kitchen, she pulled out some old wheat bread, spread peanut butter and jelly on it, and called Matt at the hospital. “How's it going?”

“Andrea's doing well. Should go home in the morning.”

“Matt, have you seen any sign of the boy?”

“Your boy? Why, no,” he said. “How'd it go at the hearing?”

“I'll tell you later.” She asked some more after Andrea, but the questions were
pro forma
and he knew it, so they kept the conversation short. Pouring herself a drink from a pitcher of iced tea she found in the refrigerator, she called Taylor Nordholm's house and got stuck in a diatribe his mother launched about the high school. “Have you seen Bob?” she finally asked.

“No.”

So, where could he be? Where was he now, her wandering boy, the boy of her tender care, the boy who was her joy and light, child of her love and prayer—then she realized where Bob must be. Resisting the impulse to stick her head out into the backyard and scream bloody murder, she ran upstairs to change into jeans and a sweater. She ran outside and fired up the Bronco.

She drove the couple of miles to the Bijou, parked across from the dilapidated cabin, and got out. Straightening her shoulders, she thought, well, I'm a Mom, I spell M-O-M. Mom.

She knocked on the door.

“Nina!” Daria Zack, eyes wide, her blouse open almost to her navel, answered the door, Hitchcock drooling beside her like a huge, black witch's familiar. “Wow, did I not expect you.”

“Bob here?” Nina asked.

“Um. I don't know,” Daria said. “Maybe.”

Well, Nikki had always described her mother, Nina's former client, as a flake. Nina now knew what extremes of flakiness were possible, as she walked inside the sparse living room and greeted a man in his twenties, half dressed, sprawled across a few pillows near the fireplace.

“Hi,” he said feebly. Holding one hand across the fig-leaf area, he put his other hand over the smoldering joint in the fifties ashtray, as if he could hide these things behind six-inch hand spans.

Politely greeting him, Nina thought, Bob better not be here. At least Hitchcock remembered his manners. Since her arrival, he had stuck close to her heels.

“You could check her room,” said Daria, some small recognition of the seriousness of the situation dawning.

“Okay,” Nina said, heading toward one of the two bedrooms.

She tried the door and found it locked, so she knocked. There was no answer.

“Maybe they left,” Daria offered from a few feet behind, buttoning up the middle button on her blouse.

Nina knocked again. The door opened. Nikki, entirely too relaxed-looking, stood in front of her. “Oh, hello, Nina.” Behind her, Bob loomed, a worried look plastered across his mug.

“Ms. Reilly to you,” she told Nikki. She grabbed Bob's arm and propelled him through the living room, out the front door, and into the car. Hitchcock jumped into the backseat.

“What's your problem!” Bob asked as she pulled away.

“Why aren't you home?”

“You said you'd be late. We wanted to practice—”

“Do not, please, do not give me that. She was high. I could see it in her eyes.”

Silence, then, “It was just really dark in the room. She doesn't get high, far as I know.”

Really dark in the room. Reassuring words. “Are you?”

“What? Mom, I'm not even fourteen!”

“Are you,” she repeated, her voice steely, her hand on the wheel curled rigid as pipe, “high?”

“No.”

“Bob, we've talked about this.”

“About what?”

“Drugs.”

“I don't do that stuff. I have zero interest. I told you!”

“Daria's boyfriend was smoking pot in that house while you were there. That's not only unacceptable, it's illegal.”

“She told him to quit it and so he put it out. She's not pushing a drug agenda, Mom.”

“Would you have taken anything if she was? Because my impression is that these people have a hold on you.”

“Nobody's got a hold on me,” he protested.

Unfortunately, that included her. She decided to use Paul's frequently stated solution: Nail his feet to the floor. She told him there would be no further practice of any kind, music or otherwise, with Nikki. Bob folded his arms, stared straight ahead, and no doubt hated her all the way home.

After Paul dropped Nina at her cabin, he called Wish, who needed to tell him all about the terrific spinning restaurant he had found at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco before agreeing to meet him in half an hour.

“Hey,” Paul said, pulling up next to him in the parking lot of the Starlake Building.

“Hey.” Wish climbed in beside him. “Where to?”

“Ever heard of this outfit?” He handed Wish a piece of paper Nina had written for him.

“Big Lake Sport Fishing,” he read. “Sure. They've got an office at the Keys.”

Turning right onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Paul glanced over at him. “You look sleek.”

“I do?” Wish wore a brown leather jacket over his jeans.

“So you had lunch in the city.”

“Yeah, after walking up to Chinatown and playing around for a couple of hours. I found a couple of Japanese animes I've been looking for.”

“Didn't you drop Nina off this morning at nine? Strikes me as funny, you being in the same vicinity several hours later. So I surmise a special reason for hanging around. Hmm.” He tapped his chin. “Whatever could it be?”

Wish grunted.

“Lunch with a lady.”

“You caught me red-handed, Copper.”

“How was the food?”

“Good, like I told you already.”

“Brandy after?”

“Huh?” said Wish.

“A joke. You had lunch with Brandy Taylor, didn't you?”

“She asked me.”

Paul turned toward the Keys.

“She just needs a friend.”

Paul turned the radio on.

“Aren't you going to ask me what we talked about?”

“No.”

“She told me something.”

“She did?”

“Yeah,” Wish said, unaware of the sensation he had caused. “You remember the sex-problem thing with Bruce? She told me what was going on. I guess she told her sister, too, and her mom, and maybe other people, but she just can't bring herself to tell Bruce.”

Paul sighed and put the car back where it belonged on the road. “Okay, so what did she tell you?”

“It's a secret. I do have a question, Paul. If you know something about a guy, and if you told him you could maybe help mend a relationship, but it means you'll ace yourself right out of the love picture, plus it isn't the kind of thing you ever want to talk to another guy about, especially not a stranger, what do you do?”

“Hmm.”

“Plus there's this added issue, which is, um, I, um. Aack. I have the same problem.”

Johnny quick draw? Johnny no comeback? Johnny shoot blanks? What in the world had Wish in such a tizzy?

“I like her, but I'd have to love her a whole lot,” Wish went on glumly. “A whole, whole lot.”

“Do the noble thing.” She wanted Bruce, not Wish, that much Paul knew. Poor Wish.