Chapter Seven

“I don’t believe she did it,” I commented to A.D.A. Skip Wilder. We were sitting in his office, awaiting the arrival of District Attorney Michael Lytell.

“That’s your considered opinion?”

“It is.”

“I’ll make note of it. In the meantime, she stays in County. No bail. She’s already proven to be a flight risk.”

“Come on, Skip. She didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to leave the state. No one told her.”

“She acted willfully, with full knowledge that the Sheriff’s Department was trying to reach her.”

“This won’t stick. Once she lawyers up, she’ll be out in no time.”

“Tell that to the D.A.”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

He glared at me. I knew Skip from junior high school, when he was a nerdy kid with pimply skin. Like me. We were twelve. We hit it off almost immediately and soon became inseparable.

We had an uncanny knack for getting ourselves into trouble. Like the day we showed up for art class and found the teacher, Miss Safro, absent.

She had written the day’s instructions on the blackboard. We were to sketch any structure of our choosing and then color it in. A profusion of crayons were on her desk.

She had also inadvertently left a tube of Elmer’s Glue-All beside the crayons. Which immediately caught our attention.

Rather than bother with the exercise of drawing and coloring, for some self-destructive reason, we chose instead to glue a number of the crayons onto the drawing table at which we were seated.

We arranged the crayons to look as if they had been haphazardly scattered on the table, but when you tried to pick one up, you couldn’t.

Which reduced us to uncontrollable laughter.

At the end of the class, with still no Miss Safro, we exited the room, leaving the glued crayons behind.

It wasn’t exactly brain surgery for Miss Safro to figure out it was Skip and me who had committed the crayon mayhem. Before the end of the school day, we were summoned to the Principal’s office.

We sheepishly admitted our guilt. Our parents were notified and for the next four weeks, Skip and I were forbidden to have any contact with each other.

Except for when we inadvertently bumped into each other in the hallways. One glance and without so much as a word spoken, we would break into riotous laughter.

We’ve been friends ever since. Even now, in the face of a testy relationship between his boss and me, Skip and I remain close. They say the friends you make in your youth are the ones who remain truest throughout your lifetime.

There was a knock on Skip’s door but before he could respond, it opened, revealing Michael Lytell, the portly D.A., along with Murray Kornbluth, the county’s preeminent legal personage.

“Murray’s representing the widow,” Lytell exclaimed with a flourish as he and Kornbluth stormed into the office.

In typical Lytell fashion, he planted himself behind Wilder’s desk, assuming the room’s power position. They still tell the story of Thomas Baum, the San Remo County Chairman, who to this day refuses to stand whenever Lytell visits his office.

“That son of a bitch isn’t going to sit in my chair,” Baum tells anyone who questions why he remains seated whenever the District Attorney makes one of his grandiloquent entrances.

Murray Kornbluth, who grinned broadly when he spotted Lytell behind Wilder’s desk, sat next to me in the vacant guest chair, leaving Wilder, who had risen deferentially when Lytell entered, forced to stand behind him, a frown darkening his visage as he watched the frenetic District Attorney peruse the chaotic crush of paperwork scattered atop Wilder’s desk.

As I watched this little drama play itself out, I interrupted it. “I suppose this means I’ll be releasing her.”

Lytell shifted his focus to me. “Not until Judge Hiller says so.”

“Which he most assuredly will,” Kornbluth added.

The flashily dressed Murray Kornbluth was San Remo County’s most celebrated attorney. Although he and D.A. Lytell were charter members of the exclusive Crestview Country Club, they were also longtime rivals at the Bar. Each kept a mental tab of how they fared against each other and the current tally showed them running neck and neck. I wanted no more of these two paragons of self-importance, so I stood and smiled at them both. “It’s comforting to see the wheels of justice still greased and chugging.”

“Always with the smart mouth, eh, Buddy?” Kornbluth said.

“In case it’s of interest, there’s little likelihood she did it.”

“I told you he’d say that,” Lytell said to Kornbluth.

“How long?” I asked.

“How long for what?” Lytell retorted.

“Until the illustrious judge rules?”

“He’s already received the petition. He’ll rule when he rules,” Lytell said.

“Then I’ll await further instruction,” I said with a glance at Skip Wilder, who was still standing awkwardly behind his desk.

“Chair, Skip?” I said, pointing to the one I just vacated.

He glowered.

“Standing like that must be brutal,” I chided. “It’s always the legs that go first.” I grinned at him and with nods to both the District Attorney and Murray Kornbluth, I hot-footed it out of there.

“I wonder how she hooked up with Kornbluth so fast,” my father mused.

We were sitting on the sunporch of the family manse. He was on a lounge chair, swathed in a fleece blanket. He had lost weight and appeared gaunt. He was rubbing his hands together as if for warmth, even though the temperature was in the seventies.

“Had to have been at the arraignment,” I surmised.

“You think a judicial staffer tipped him off?”

“As sure as we’re sitting here, there’s someone on the inside who’s on his payroll.”

“Any idea who?”

“Does it matter? He was bound to get this case one way or the other.”

The old man nodded. “The investigation?”

“The widow told me she was planning to divorce him.”

“Not an encouraging sign.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think she did it.”

“Because?”

“Coply intuition.”

“And?”

“She believes he was involved in some kind of sexual shenanigans.”

“At the school?”

“Yes.”

My father shook his head and stuffed his hands more deeply into the pockets of his ancient cardigan. Despite his visible discomfort, he enjoyed being informed as to the goings-on at the office.

As for me, I welcomed the chance to discuss business with him, to refocus his attention on something other than his illness. It allowed us to share a kind of forced intimacy, a chance to be close, an opportunity to permit the conversation to camouflage his terror, which lurked beneath the surface like an unseen predator, poised and ready to strike at any moment.

“Does the unholy trinity know about the so-called sexual shenanigans?” he asked.

“You mean Lytell, Kornbluth, and Judge Hiller?”

“Yeah. Them.”

“Kornbluth, maybe. But I don’t believe the others do.”

“You’re going to inform them?”

“Not yet.”

“Because?”

“I don’t know for sure it’s true.”

“But you think it is?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’m at the starting line. I’ll let you know more as soon as I have some concrete information.”

An eerie silence engulfed us. The old man began rubbing his hands again, a forlorn look appearing on his tired-looking face. “I feel like shit, Buddy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have any motivation.”

“You can’t be expected to.”

“Tell that to my constituency.”

As I caught him ebbing into self-pity, I did my best to steer him away from it.

“Your constituency adores you. They’re solidly in your corner.”

“Says you.”

“You bet, says me. This thing you have ebbs and flows. Hang in, Burton. You still have a lot of good days in front of you.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

At last he flashed me a smile. “From your mouth to God’s ear.”