Bone Valley (3 page)

Oh, great, now
what?

Jimmie Rodgers was parked in a dilapidated Oldsmobile, waiting for me, in my driveway, in front of my own house, blocking my way inside my own carport.

Being that it was now officially late, i.e., past quitting time at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, I wanted to go inside my home and be quiet. Not that I had earned that right, per se, given the lagging last hours I’d put in after Miguel and Angus left. No, I’d spent what was left of the afternoon doing billable work that didn’t require me to actually think—laypeople would be amazed by how much of lawyers’ work meets this definition.

By dark, I’d charted enough hours on my time sheet to rival the firm’s average daily billings, and so I had sprinted out the door after a good-bye-good-weekend-call-me-if-any-of-your-kids-do-anything-that-needs-a-lawyer to Bonita, and driven home to my modest little Florida ranch in Southgate.

Where Jimmie was waiting for me.

I parked behind Jimmie’s ratty vehicle, and got out of my own just as he pushed himself out of his front seat and into open air. Before Jimmie or I could speak, my neighbor, the Hall Monitor of the Universe, opened her front door and came out, with Bearess, my former rottweiler, beside her.

“I was about to call the police on that car,” Dolly shouted. “Do you know this man?”

“I do. Thank you. We’re fine,” I said, and waved, hoping to head her off.

But no, of course not. Dolly was not to be headed off. Now that Dolly was officially my grandmother-by-proxy, we spent way more time than necessary chatting about my shortcomings, and having an old car with a strange man in it in my driveway would count as a transgression against good neighborliness. This from a woman who had stolen the affections of my own dog. She and Bearess ambled over toward us. Bearess woofed, jumped on me, and licked my chin, like she was saying, you know, no hard feelings, and then dashed back to sit beside her new momma.

Dolly squinted at Jimmie. “You sure you know him?”

“Yes, Dolly, I’m sure. I know him.”

“Jimmie Rodgers,” Jimmie said, and stuck out his hand. Bearess, never known for her guard-dog talents, licked his hand as it passed under her nose. Dolly squinted at him again.

“Yes, that’s right, I remember you. You spent a summer fixing her porch after that storm. You left trash on the front lawn.”

“Dolly Gorman, this is Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie, this is Dolly.”

Now, I wanted everybody to go home and leave me alone, but I stood a moment waiting to see who would leave first.

Dolly shot a last hostile glare at Jimmie and his car, and said, “Well, dear, call me if you need me. Oh, and Bearess is about out of that food from that health food store that you feed her.”

Despite the fact that Bearess had moved in with Dolly, I still had to buy her food, take her to the vet, and pay for her expenses. All this because Dolly’s official stance was that she just baby-sat for Bearess while I was gone, and I was gone most of the time, so Bearess was still officially my dog, she just didn’t live with me anymore, and I was lucky Dolly didn’t charge me for dog-sitting. Bearess woofed good-bye at me and bounced off with Dolly.

When they were gone, Jimmie looked at me and grinned. “I’s wondering if I might borrow your second bath and take me a shower?”

“Why can’t you shower at your place?”

“Ah, I got me some plumbing problems. Serious plumbing problems. Gonna take me a while to get it all fixed up.”

Okay, that explained his less than daisy freshness earlier. “So, you’re the home handyman, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and I’m fixing to fix it, but right now I needs a shower. Can I use yours or not?”

“Of course. Come on in. You can shower,” I said, though I wanted Jimmie in my guest bathroom about as much as I wanted him to bring me another used poetry book full of gosh-knows-what germs and viruses. But it didn’t seem nice to send him out smelly in the world on a weekend. In other words, I didn’t see any other option—other than coldheartedness—and no way could I be coldhearted to Jimmie. But after his shower, I was going to run him off as fast as I could.

Which I did, but not before he promised to return first thing in the morning and cut my grass.

But the next morning, when Jimmie banged on my front door and wanted to know if I had any bacon, coldheartedness didn’t look so bad. Especially since my own beloved, Philip Cohen, the criminal-defense-attorney genius who had once rendered me nearly mute by touching the inside of my arm while talking in his Dean Martin voice, was sitting across the table from me when Jimmie barged into the kitchen. Philip, who had arrived before Jimmie had, came bearing gifts of organic, stone-ground, whole wheat muffins, organic fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a dozen red roses, lust on his agenda. He had been just about to remind me of why I was considering marrying him when Jimmie rang the doorbell.

Having barged into my kitchen, Jimmie glared at Philip, then grinned and stuck out his hand. “I knows you. You got me out a the jail that time I’s in for driving drunk. The second time. Jimmie, Jimmie Rodgers. Good to see you.”

Like this was his house, like Philip was his guest.

“Lady, I’ll cook it myself, if you got any bacon,” Jimmie said, turning his attentions back to me. “Them plumbing problems done spread to my kitchen, and I can’t cook nothing right now.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” I said, eyeing Philip, who, being Mr. Manners, had naturally stood up and taken Jimmie’s hand, and was waiting for Jimmie and me to shut up so he could speak.

“Philip Cohen,” he said, and gestured toward a chair. “Join us?”

“Thank you, thank you. I jes’ might at that,” Jimmie said, edging toward a chair, then veering off toward my French press. “That coffee?”

“Help yourself,” I said, but Jimmie was already getting a cup from my cupboard.

Jimmie poured, sipped, made a loud, “Ahh,” and then turned back to me. “You loan me the money and I’ll go and get us some bacon. It’d be real nice with those muffins.”

“I’m a vegetarian. Vegetarians don’t eat bacon. Bacon is a dead pig with carcinogenic chemicals added for flavorings and I don’t eat dead pigs.”

“And I’m Jewish and we don’t consume pork either,” Philip added.

“Well, okay, but if you ask me, bacon don’t offend God. Why you think they’s about forty different kind a it for sale over to the Publix?” Jimmie sat down and took a muffin, slathered enough butter on it for an entire pound cake, and ate it—without a plate and dribbling crumbs everywhere.

To my relief, Philip let the theological debate pass and sat back down, cast me a quizzical but not totally unfriendly look, and picked up another muffin.

“At least get a plate,” I said to Jimmie as he splattered another round of crumbs on the table.

“Two different drunk drivings, and I ain’t spent but six days in jail on any of ’em. But I durn learnt my lesson. Ain’t been driving while drinking in ages. Don’t want to hurt nobody,” Jimmie said as he helped himself to a plate from my cupboard, and returned to his muffin. “Maybe some ham? I gotta have meat with my breakfast.”

“I’ll give you the money to go to a drive-through, and you can get some breakfast.” Normally I wouldn’t contribute to the delinquency of dead-pig eating, but I wanted Jimmie to be gone so Philip could continue with his post-breakfast seduction.

“Aw, I reckon this is awright. Good company, anyways. Did I tell you, Lady, that this here man got me out of jail on my second driving while drunk?”

Yeah, coldheartedness was looking better and better.

“I finished a trial late yesterday evening,” Philip said. “Too late and too tired to entertain Lilly last night, but I was hoping to spend some quality time with her this morning. Before we both have to go into the office.” Philip looked at me with his bedroom eyes, and then he and I both looked at Jimmie with our “get out of here” eyes.

“Y’all got to go to the office today? It’s Saturday.” Jimmie buttered still another muffin. For a skinny man, he sure could eat.

I sighed. If I’d only had enough sense not to have let Jimmie inside the door this morning, Philip would be just about to make me forget the good-looking Cuban who had caught my fancy yesterday. Instead, I found myself daydreaming about Miguel while Jimmie prattled on.

After the coffee, the juice, and all but two of the muffins were gone, Jimmie said to me, “I’d offer to clean up the kitchen, but I knows how you get about that. So, I’ll get started on cutting the grass.”

I bowed to the inevitable, but not before scrubbing down the kitchen—nobody, not even the meticulous Philip, cleans a kitchen good enough for me. But letting Jimmie cut the grass for me was okay. I’d tried that once and couldn’t get the lawn mower to start and figured that was a cosmic message that I needed to always make enough money to hire a lawn man. And since Benicio, Bonita’s sixteen-year-old son and my official yardman and unofficial godson, had gotten a driver’s license and discovered girls, he didn’t have much interest in cutting my grass. So, Jimmie was it, I figured, for my new yardman.

Once Jimmie was straight on money for gas, and had a key to my house, I made him promise not to cut his foot off, or not to sue me if he did. Then, as the early morning and the romantic moment had passed, Philip walked me to my car.

With what I took for a bemused smile, Philip asked, “Why is your yardman so personal with you?”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I mean Jimmie and the interruption. I’ve known him for ages. He can talk the ears off a mule, but he’s a nice man, and my client, and he reminds me of my granddad. His bathroom is busted and he showered here last night, and, I guess he figured breakfast came with the hot water.”

Philip leaned over and gave me a casual kiss on the cheek. “You are so sweet.”

I jerked back my head from his lips. “I am not.” You can’t be sweet and be a tough-minded, tough-hearted Big-time Trial Lawyer at the same time.

“Lillian, it’s not an insult.”

I hated it when he called me Lillian. I hated that look on his face—the one that bordered on patronizing.

“We’ll make up for it later,” Philip said, in that sensual, silky voice that used to literally make me weak in the knees. He ran a finger down my arm. But instead of the tingle that trailing touch used to give me, I suddenly wondered how Miguel would have acted if Jimmie had interrupted his planned breakfast-and-bed routine. I bet I would have been happily bedded despite Jimmie. By the time I came out of that fantasy, I realized that Philip had moved on to new topics.

“Why don’t you spend tonight with me? I’ll come over around six, we can go out for dinner, and then retire to my house.”

I made a noncommittal noise.

“We should definitely start planning the wedding tonight. I think we should consider a neutral spot to avoid any religious issues,” Philip said. “Perhaps Selby Gardens.”

The word
wedding
made the muffins in my stomach pitch and swirl like I was on the downhill swing of a really high roller coaster. If that wasn’t bad enough, something like PMS times ten came over me. “You think maybe we should wait to plan the wedding until I’ve actually said yes?”

“Lilly, we’ve talked about this.” Philip stopped using his sexy voice. He was using his Philip-in-charge voice. Which, I might add, did nothing to alleviate that PMS-times-ten feeling that was now reverberating behind my eyes in a sickening pulse.

All the man had to do was say
wedding
and a baby migraine started.

Not a good sign.

When I didn’t speak, Philip said, “It’s time to stop being coy.”

“I’m not being coy, I’m being indecisive.”

“Lillian, you’ve just got bridal jitters. You’ll get over it.” With that, Philip opened my car door for me.

But instead of getting in the car and driving away, I said, “Bud, don’t patronize me.”

“Then, please, make up your mind and tell me tonight. And do not call me ‘bud.’ I’m not one of your good old boys. Shall I call for you at six?” This in a tone of pure patronizing. I mean, did this man even know me?

“Don’t you dare come over here at six. I’m not going to be here, and if I am, I’m not going out with you.” With that I got into my car, slammed the door, and started the engine. Through my tinted window, I could see him standing there, looking a tad dazed and definitely befuddled, as I gunned my ancient Honda and sped away.

If I’d known then that I would nearly get blown up later that night, I would have made nice and gone to dinner with Philip instead.

Not sure whether
I had just broken off my alleged engagement or not, I jolted down Shade Avenue over the five hundred speed bumps the city had installed to keep commuters like me from using the road—I mean, okay, why put a road there in the first place if people aren’t supposed to actually use it? After that less than soothing commute to my office, I pulled into my named parking spot, right next to Jackson Smith’s car, right as Jackson, the firm’s founding partner and the living, breathing reincarnation of Stonewall Jackson, was getting out.

Jackson slammed his car door, then opened mine for me, stepping back like a perfect gentleman, but drawing the line at offering me his hand. I eased out of my car and flashed him a grin—if I’d been in a dress, I’d have flashed him some leg too, but pants have that drawback.

“Heard you’re a suspect in the M. David Moody murder,” Jackson thundered. He didn’t sound so loud outside.

“I’m not a suspect,” I said. “Hello. How are you?”

“Didn’t think you’d wait that long to kill him.”

“I’m not a suspect and I didn’t kill him.” I noticed Jackson was wearing his golfing clothes, and made a mental note to add to my grooming school curriculum a list of things men over fifty and under a hundred should not wear, i.e., bright green golf pants. “Golfing with the judges this afternoon?” I asked.

“Why did the homicide detective want to question you if you’re not a suspect?”

“Just general stuff. Nice day for a golf game. Why don’t you take me with you sometime?”

“Uh-huh. So, the detective just randomly chose you from a phone book to interview about why M. David ended up facedown in a gyp stack?” As he said this, Jackson took giant Jackson steps toward the back door, punched in the code on the lock with his big, long finger, and opened the door, standing back so I could ease in by him.

“He had my firm bio and had told his secretary to make an appointment with me, so naturally, the detective wanted to find out what that was about.” So saying, I walked past Jackson to the inside of our law firm, where the overly air-conditioned frigid atmosphere engulfed me.

“What was that about?”

“Beats me.” I shivered from the cold and cursed our office-manager jackal for locking up the air-conditioning controls so that only she could adjust them.

“You sure?” Jackson’s voice reverberated down the hallway and bounced back to me.

“I’m sure I don’t have any idea why he wanted to see me.” And I was equally sure the real Stonewall Jackson would never have worn green pants, I thought, but was wise enough not to say so.

“You get questioned any more, doll, you let me know, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wouldn’t hold it against you if you had killed that son of a bitch. Crossed my mind a time or two to kill him myself.” With that, Jackson stormed away and left me to my own counsel.

So people were thinking I was a suspect in M. David’s murder, eh? I wondered if a reputation for having killed someone would balance out the parrot-and-bikini and orange-defamation cases in terms of restoring my image as a tough litigator among the community’s lawyers.

Once inside my own office, I reread the Florida Food Disparagement Act, hoping, I guess, that I’d failed to find the tiny print yesterday that said, “April Fools’, just kidding.” So, okay, where were the free-speech lobbyists when that bill was passed?

I sighed, made more coffee, and then studied the two separate orange-defamation complaints against Angus and Miguel. Both lawsuits pled the same allegations against the two men, both were brought by the same plaintiff—Delilah Groves, Inc.—and both were signed by the same lawyer. Both complaints claimed that Miguel and Angus had economically damaged the groves by claiming the oranges grown by Delilah were fertilized with a radioactive waste by-product of phosphate processing—phosphogypsum, or gyp, in phosphate-speak—and that as a result, the oranges were toxic. The lawsuit sought a monetary judgment because of past, lost profits, as well as an injunction that would forbid Angus and Miguel from speaking out in the future about the groves’ agricultural practices.

I got out my phone book and looked up Delilah Groves. On a whim, I called the number in the book and asked to speak to the owner. A moment later, a gruff voice came over the line and said, “Yeah.”

Oh, management from the suave school of MBAs, I thought, and said, “Yes, I’m interested in buying some oranges to ship and—”

“Season’s over, lady.”

“Oh. Could you tell me your name, please?”

“Why?”

“So I can be sure to ask for you next winter when I order some oranges. I’m talking a big buy. I’d like to talk discounts for volume. We can start talking now if you’d like.”

“Big volume?”

“Yes, very big. I represent a new food cooperative that’s franchising in New England and—”

“I’d need payment in advance. A down payment now to guarantee the availability.”

Yeah, right, I thought. “Please, sir, tell me your name?”

“Rayford Clothier. And who are you?”

“Sunny McDemis. Now, sir, do you own Delilah Groves?”

“Yeah. You want to come by the groves today, leave me a deposit, and we can do the paperwork on next winter’s crop. Take the State Road 72 exit off I-75 and turn north on Sugar Bowl Road, can’t miss it.”

“Oh lovely. Now my buyers are fussy. They don’t require organic, but I’ll need a list of the chemicals you use on the oranges before I contract.”

“And I’ll need a down payment on the order. After all, we ship most of our oranges up north, and we have standing contracts already. If you want to reserve a portion of the crop, you need to act quickly.”

“Fine, you get that list of chemicals and I’ll bring my checkbook.”

With that exchange of lies and fraud-in-the-making, we hung up the phone. I debated the wisdom of sweet-talking Olivia into running out to Sugar Bowl Road and leaving a bad check in exchange for a list of chemicals, but a list obtained that way wouldn’t be admissible into evidence at the trial, and, anyway, already I could tell Rayford Clothier was the sort who’d lie. So for half a second, I wondered how long he’d wait for me and my checkbook, then I went back to work.

Being the List Queen of the law firm, I listed the things I wanted to know: all about Delilah Groves, Rayford the suave owner, phosphogypsum as fertilizer, and other such things, and then I listed the legal issues, which all pretty much turned out to be First Amendment questions. Because I hadn’t been a star student in constitutional law in law school, I was going to need help—especially since this was either a reduced-fee or a pro bono case. One of the unwritten rules of the successful maintenance of a partnership in a law firm is this: delegate any project that doesn’t earn big bucks. That meant law clerks. And law clerks, those entry-level peons who toiled in the library hoping to be noticed and promoted, meant a chance for error.

To cut that distinct possibility for mistakes, I decided I’d put two of them on the case, and pit them against each other.

With that plan in mind, I marched into the library, where, despite the bright, sunny Saturday, all the law clerks at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, were shoulder deep in fine print.

Everybody looked up when I came into the library.

“Anybody in here make an A in constitutional law?”

Everybody looked down.

Okay, next round. “Anybody make a B in constitutional law?”

Two heads popped up, the rest looked farther down. One of the heads belonged to a young woman, who quickly asked, “Do you mean both semesters? Or would one B do?”

The popped-up head that belonged to a young man retorted, “I got a B one semester also.”

Oh, good, competition already.

“Fine. If you two would come with me to my office.”

They both hopped up, and I stood back and gestured that they should go in front of me. As they walked past me, I studied them for telltale hints of character traits that might suggest some competency.

The woman, who was elegant to the point of irritation, looked like a young Whitney Houston. The man, with his sharp, pointed face and manic gestures, reminded me of a Jack Russell terrier.

Once seated in my office, they introduced themselves and then both listened as I explained my basic queries—whether I could successfully defend Miguel and Angus against orange-defamation charges by claiming they had a First Amendment right to speak on what was surely considered a public issue? Would the
New York Times v. Sullivan
standard of willful malice apply? Was the veggie-defamation statute unconstitutional on the face of it, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay, the real query was, could I win quickly (read: cheaply) with a motion to dismiss on First Amendment grounds, but I had to throw out a lot of big words in the process of asking that question to indicate that I might know what I was talking about. I shoved a copy of the complaint at Jack Russell and a copy of my list of legal issues at Whitney Houston and told them to make copies, return the originals, and get cracking.

“You want us both working on the same issues?” Jack asked, a hint of a yippy quality to his voice.

“Yes, this is very important, very important, big clients, and we need to know absolutely everything we can—state law and federal law. Very big project. The kind of project that can make or break you, show whether you are associate material or not.” Tantalize a law clerk with the promise of a promotion to associate and he or she will do just about anything.

They looked a little unsure, but I shooed them out of my office anyway. I was counting on their natural competitive streaks to guarantee an adequate job.

Alone in my office, I looked at my remaining active cases. Piddling. All of them. And while it’s true an attorney can make a nice living on piddling cases if the cases are milked hard enough, what I wanted was a big-ass, page-one, above-the-fold medical malpractice case to defend. I punched in Henry Platt’s number, though I knew he wouldn’t be in the office today because he was busy courting Bonita and her five children. Henry is the claims adjuster at a Big Medical Malpractice Liability Insurance Company and his main job is to assign cases to me so that I can defend doctors, bill heavily, and make good press in the local newspaper.

Well, okay, he’d probably describe his job differently.

When his answering machine came on, I said, “Henry, Lilly here. I need a med-mal case. A big case. The biggest case you’ve got. Now.”

Having accomplished little thus far, and nothing I could bill for, I attacked my piddling files with all the determination of a small terrier and churned my paperwork till lunch.

By noon my coffeepot was empty, Jack Russell had popped his head in my office five times to ask irritating First Amendment questions of the sort I thought he understood he was supposed to be answering, and I’d billed enough time to take a break. I stretched and stood and went out the back door, where I got into my little Honda and drove home.

My couscous was steaming in the pot while I cut up some beet greens and toasted some walnuts to make a hot salad, and, damn, Jimmie popped in. Opened the door, and shouted out, “Hey, Lady, you home?” and came right into the kitchen before I could say boo. He held up a greasy sack. “Want some?”

“No, thank you. I’m a vegetarian.”

“Well, suit yourself.” With that, Jimmie sat down at my kitchen table, opened his sack, and started eating. “Bacon cheeseburger,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some? I’ll cut you off half.”

Apparently there wasn’t much point in explaining the vegetarian thing to Jimmie, and, after all, he must be close to eighty and he looked pretty healthy, and then, like my grandmother was overly fond of explaining, you just can’t teach a pig to sing or a cow to waltz. So instead of proselytizing about the moral and health benefits of being a vegetarian, I simply asked, “Get much grass cut?”

“Oh, yeah, the back half.”

I tossed my greens, nuts, and grains together, dribbled toasted sesame seed oil over my dish of healthy goodies, put it on the table next to Jimmie, and then pointedly walked into the den and looked out at the backyard. “Doesn’t look cut to me.”

“Well, I only got to the half of it. Behind the oak tree. You can’t see it good from in here.”

Oh, in other words, he hadn’t done anything.

“Listen to this, I done got more of this here poem memorized.” With that, he put down his hamburger, stood up, spread his arms, and recited: “‘We were, er, er, a ménage à trois of lightning bugs in a jar with no air holes. Busted, William crashed. I danced through the shards with no visible wound.’”

While he recited, I peeked into my trash can under the sink and, sure enough, saw an empty bottle of wine. Mine. The expensive organic stuff. I pulled the bottle out, and said, “Recycle glass, okay?”

So, I didn’t need to wonder what he’d been up to all morning instead of cutting the grass.

“It’s some more of that poem I told you ’bout yesterday. I done been studying them poems in that book between cutting your grass.”

“But you gave me that book,” I said, even though I’d promptly tossed it in the trash.

“Oh, Bonita done give it back to me. Says you was too busy hep’ing them wild boys to read poetry right now. I’ll get it back to you, but after I got it all in my memory.”

“No hurry.” I washed my hands and sat down to eat.

As we ate, Jimmie prattled about stuff around my house that needed his special handyman touch, soffits and eaves and trims and door hinges and such, and I calculated that at his current speed, he’d managed to find about two years’ worth of work. Before I could dodge his pitch, the doorbell rang.

“Might could be that Dolly woman agin. She done been over bitchin’ ’bout my car, twiced now. Says I can’t leave it out in the open like that.”

“We do have neighborhood covenants,” I said, hoping to imply that Dolly was correct. But when Jimmie didn’t respond, I went to answer the door.

Miguel and Angus stood there, Miguel with a come-home-with-me grin and Angus with a scowl. I matched Miguel’s grin and hoped I didn’t have beet greens stuck in my teeth.

“How’d you find out where I lived?” I asked.