to give you this.” The man held out a folded piece of paper, innocuous-looking for all the consequences implicit in its contents. “You’ve been charged with a crime, sir, and are required to appear at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning….” He named the branch of California Superior Court not far from Blake’s office. “If you fail to appear there will be a warrant issued for your arrest.”
Blake had a breakfast meeting with the mayor Friday morning. Not that he considered mentioning it. Guaranteed, neither Schuster nor the Superior Court of California gave a damn about Blake’s breakfast. No matter whom it might be with.
Already his freedom was being curtailed. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Blake took the document. Signed where he was told to sign. Thanked the man. And closed the door.
“I THANKED HIM!” were the first words out of his mouth ten minutes later when Juliet McNeil answered her phone.
“Thanked who?”
Somewhere in the back of his mind was the realization that she didn’t ask who he was.
“It’s only seven-thirty in the morning,” was his reply. “I expected to get an answering machine. And you answered yesterday, too. I wouldn’t have thought you’d spend much time in your office, answering phones. You hard up for cases, Counselor?”
Forearm leaning against the wall, Blake ran his other hand down his face. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he continued. He held the hand clutching the folded paper above him.
“It’s okay.” Juliet’s tone was soft, almost a whisper. “The number on my card is my cell phone. It takes messages just as effectively as an answering service would and cuts out the middleman.”
Blake heard about half of what she said. He had her cell number. That was good.
“So you answer it at home?”
“Not usually,” she said. “I saw your number come up on the screen.”
He’d given it to her the previous day, just before she’d left his office. He hadn’t expected her to memorize it.
“Who did you thank, Blake?”
“The deputy who served me.”
He was standing in the kitchen, his back to the windows, avoiding the ocean. Today it didn’t say anything to him but words he didn’t want to hear.
“What’s the charge?” Juliet asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t read the document.”
“Did you look at it?”
“No.” He glanced up at the offending piece of paper. “It’s still folded.” Not that he held out any hope that not looking would change the result.
Right now, he needed more than hope. He needed strength, whatever he could muster. He needed this woman to represent him in court.
“You want to meet me at my office in an hour and we’ll look at it together?”
“Sure, but don’t you need to get that waiver?”
“It’s done.”
The muscles in Blake’s stomach relaxed. She was reliable and quick and committed. She’d be able to take his case. He had the best on his side.
And he was going to be spending some of the darkest days he’d known with the best memory of his life.
“WAS THAT AUNT MARCIE? Why didn’t she call our number?” Mary Jane asked as Juliet came into the kitchen Tuesday morning.
Mary Jane’s skinny long longs swung back and forth beneath the table. In jeans, her white frilly blouse tucked in, the little girl was just finishing up the cereal Juliet had poured for her earlier.
“It wasn’t Aunt Marcie.”
“Who else calls us this early?”
Juliet checked the lunch she’d already packed for Mary Jane. Chips were there, on top, where they wouldn’t be crushed. Juice box in the bottom. “It was work.”
“Uncle Duane?”
Duane Wilson was one of the other partners in the criminal division at Truman and Associates, with whom Juliet often talked through her cases. He and his wife, Donna, had never been able to have children and, now in their mid-fifties, had “adopted” Mary Jane for their grandchild “fixes.”
“No.”
Mary Jane slid down, carried her bowl to the sink, turned on the water.
Juliet grabbed an orange for later. Looked in the freezer for dinner ideas and decided to just order pizza.
“Is it about that guy that died?” The little girl stood beside her at the freezer, her eyes full of that extraordinary mixture of empathy and childlike innocence.
God, how was she ever going to make this work?
Just as she didn’t ever want her daughter to keep secrets from her, she didn’t keep secrets from Mary Jane. But the little girl hadn’t been herself lately, refusing to go to Brownies until the father-daughter banquet was over and she didn’t have to hear about it anymore. And she’d brought home only an average grade on her math test the previous week.
Fine for many kids. A first for Mary Jane McNeil.
Any mention of her father—or any father—upset her. She was becoming obsessed with hanging on to the partnership she and Juliet had formed over the years.
She’d climbed into bed with Juliet twice in the past week.
“Yes,” she finally said when her daughter’s curlframed face started to pucker with worry. “It absolutely does have to do with all of that.” Completely true. If not complete.
The validation didn’t seem to reassure the little girl. At least not immediately. Mary Jane continued to study her for several more seconds. Juliet’s heart ached with the things she couldn’t change, a world that was going to hurt her little girl no matter how diligently she tried to prevent it. There were just some things a mother couldn’t do.
And she’d thought she’d already learned all the toughest lessons.
THERE WERE FOUR COUNTS of theft, four counts of fraud due to misrepresentation and one count of conspiracy—all class-two felonies. Maximum sentence fourteen years for each. And if the judge ruled that the sentences were to be served consecutively, that could mean one hundred and twenty-six years behind bars.
“I’m going to beat this.” Blake sat on the edge of the upholstered chair in front of Juliet’s desk in her office at Truman and Associates. Forearms on his knees, he looked down at his clasped hands. Looking for strength. He could do this. He just had to figure out how.
Juliet sat back opposite him, her olive green skirt and jacket a complement to the not-quite-pink chair.
Sliding
