Hanging on a String (5 page)

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Authors: Janette M. Louard

BOOK: Hanging on a String
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“I'll try not to take up too much of your time.” His eyes scanned my office, taking in my various diplomas. “Wow, did you go to Columbia?”
“Yes, Detective Claremont, I went to Columbia. As I said, Detective, I don't mean to be rude, but I am extremely busy.” I wanted to get away from him, and I also wanted to kiss him. I was horrified that my thoughts had veered in such a carnal direction. I needed to get away from this man. I needed to breathe. I took another sip of my mint tea.
Although the smile left his face, I got the distinct impression that he was amused by me—which was not the impression that I usually liked to give folks.
“I was told that you were working on a case with Mr. Jackson,” said Detective Claremont.
“That's correct,” I replied.
“Why don't you tell me a little about the case? Isn't this the police brutality case that's been all over the news, the one about the kid from Morehouse College?”
“If you're referring to the Daniel Brown case, yes, Mr. Jackson and I were working together on the case.”
“Tough case. I actually used to work in the same precinct as Lucius Pileski.”
I didn't know where this was leading. From the expression on his face, I could see that he didn't care for my client, and on that point, we were in agreement. Still, I wondered what our defense of Officer Pileski had to do with Chester's death, if anything.
Marcus Claremont got to the point. “It's my understanding that Daniel's mother threatened Mr. Jackson in court a few days ago.”
I thought back to Mariah Brown's outburst.
Your end will be bitter.
“I wouldn't call it a threat, Detective Claremont,” I replied cautiously. “The woman was upset. Under the circumstances, it was understandable.”
Why was I defending this woman? For all I knew, it might have been a threat, but I didn't think she had anything to do with Chester's death, and I wanted to make that clear. I think, somewhere deep down inside, I felt bad for representing the man who had hurt Mariah's son. I had defended many unpopular clients, but in my heart, I thought that Lucius Pileski was capable of doing exactly what the New York City Police Department and Mariah Brown had accused him of doing—assaulting an innocent young man based solely on the color of his skin.
“As I understand it,” said Detective Claremont, “it was a direct threat.”
I didn't want to engage him in a debate. “What does Mariah Brown have to do with anything? Is she a suspect?”
“I wouldn't call her a suspect,” he said, “but we've been trying to find her to talk with her. Thus far, we've been unsuccessful. Her son hasn't seen her since yesterday morning.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Her son seems to think it is. He's worried about her.”
I thought about Daniel Brown, a son any mother would be proud to call her own. From his second birthday, it had just been Daniel and his mother. He excelled at school, attended church regularly, and was extremely close to and protective of his mother. He'd been through a lot since his encounter with Pileski. His mother had been there every step of the way, and I knew if she was missing, what little was holding Daniel's world together would come apart.
“Okay, so what does Mariah Brown have to do with this?” I asked again.
“I'm not sure, Miss Spain. I wanted to find out what you thought about her. You say she was upset. Do you know if Mr. Jackson took her threats seriously?”
“We have a different definition of threats, Detective, but if you're asking whether Chester was worried about Mrs. Brown's outbursts, I can tell you that in all the time I knew him, Chester was never intimidated by anyone, and I'm sure that held true for Mrs. Brown.”
Detective Claremont digested those words, then asked some more general questions about the case and about B&J's practice. I answered them all and prayed for a swift ending to the interview. All this talk about Chester was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. Finally, after about half an hour, Detective Claremont stood up, and I struggled to hide my relief. Apparently, I was unsuccessful.
“It wasn't that bad was it?” the detective asked, smiling and extending his hand.
I stood and shook his hand. “No offense, Detective Claremont,” I said, “but I'm glad it's over.”
“Maybe we'll meet under different circumstances, Miss Spain,” he said, his hands holding mine in a firm grasp, “and it'll be far more pleasant.”
I considered his statement for a brief moment, wondering if he was flirting with me. I'd been out of the dating pool for so long, I wasn't quite sure. I had the very disturbing feeling that my completely unsuitable attraction might be a mutual thing.
I pulled my hands from his.
“If that's all, Detective Claremont,” I said in a chilly voice, which I hoped would cool any burgeoning ardor.
“It is for now, Miss Spain,” he said.
His statement was like a promise of delicious things to come.
Stop it,
I chided myself.
Your imagination and your overactive hormones are leading you down a path you don't need to travel.
“I may have a few more questions,” he continued.
I knew without a doubt that this man was not finished with me. This was merely an appetizer in what was apparently a three-course meal. “You know where to find me.”
He smiled. “If anything comes to mind, Miss Spain, please give me a call.”
5
By two o'clock that afternoon, I longed for a drink. The phone had been ringing incessantly on the one day that my secretary, Hernanda, decided to call in sick. Reporters were calling. Friends whom I hadn't heard from in a while decided to call to either chat, offer murmured and unhelpful comments about the violent times we live in, or fulfill their morbid curiosity. Even worse, I'd had to cancel my eleven o'clock hearing because I'd been so busy dealing with Chester's caseload as well as my own.
Raymond had stopped by earlier for a brief conversation. He was clearly distracted, and I got the impression something other than Chester's death was occupying his thoughts.
“Have you started going through Chester's files?” he asked.
“Not all of them,” I replied honestly. “I'm still going through my own pile, but by later this afternoon, I should be able to turn my attention back to his files. I checked with docketing, and his calendar is clear, at least for the next three days.”
“Nothing in court?” asked Raymond, clearly surprised.
“No,” I said, “according to docketing, last week he decided to cancel his appointments through the end of the week.”
“Maybe he was planning to take a vacation,” said Raymond, “but he never mentioned it to me. I'll have to check with his secretary.”
I knew that would be a waste of time. “I don't think he was planning a vacation, at least he never mentioned anything to me. I'd think that if he was going away from the office for a couple of days, he would have told me, considering that the Pileski trial is two weeks away.”
Taking on that distracted, almost vacant look again, Raymond said cryptically, “Yeah, well, Chester always was secretive.”
Chester wasn't the only one that was secretive. I knew that Raymond wasn't giving me all the information he had about Chester's files. He also wasn't telling me what he was looking for, and the whole needle in the haystack thing wasn't working for me. I suspected that whatever Raymond was seeking might have ultimately gotten Chester killed, but I couldn't be sure if this was just my overactive imagination. Could Raymond have had something to do with Chester's murder? I shook those terrible thoughts out of my head. Raymond was no murderer. Still, after spending hours poring through files, not knowing what I was looking for, my patience, which was never strong to begin with, was wearing very thin.
“Raymond, what am I looking for?”
“I don't know exactly,” he replied. “Just make sure that his files are in order ... but if there's anything unusual that you find, let me know right away.”
I knew he was lying.
“Unusual?” I asked. “That's not being very specific.”
“Use that brain that God gave you, Jasmine,” he replied in a voice more curt than I thought was necessary. “You've got a whole lot of common sense. If something doesn't smell right, let me know.”
He left my office, still distracted and a bit more agitated than he'd been before arriving.
Well,
I thought as I watched him walk away,
welcome to my world.
I turned my attention back to the files.
 
If I'd intended to get any work done that day, I was mistaken. When the phones were not ringing, there was someone knocking at my door. There was a steady stream of associates and secretaries in and out of my office who wanted to talk about Chester's murder or to speculate about what was going to happen to his cases now that he was gone. The secretaries all came into my office clearly upset, talking about Chester and his wonderful attributes. I have often wondered why the dead, even when they are undisputably evil, often take on kinder and gentler attributes after their departure to the hereafter.
Was this the same Chester who had yelled, cursed, and snarled at the secretaries when his good looks didn't get him whatever it was he desired at a particular moment? Was this the same Chester who had insisted that all of the secretaries address him by his last name? The same Chester who had fired his most recent paralegal for the unpardonable sin of misspelling a client's name and not having the good sense to feel bad about it?
The associates who came to my office also mourned his loss, but a good percentage of them seemed more intrigued about who would inherit his formidable caseload or, more to the point, his clients. I was disheartened, but not surprised. Although the world is full of many good, decent, caring people who happen to be lawyers, I had come across my fair share of sociopaths with a briefcase, who answered to the title attorney at law. Nevertheless, I admonished the associates, none of whom were as senior as me on the food chain, and who therefore had to take it, that a bright and promising life had been taken, Chester's caseload be damned. As much as I'd personally disliked Chester, I found the casual callousness with which these people treated his death as another reason I probably should have bypassed law school when I'd had the chance. The Peace Corps started to look more and more appealing to me.
The telephone rang, and I answered it automatically. Immediately, I regretted my actions. It was my mother.
“Jasmine, how could you let Thea and Reese stay with you?” she said, without any greeting.
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I knew what was coming.
“Her place is with her husband,” my mother continued.
“What did you want me to do, Mom? Kick them out on the street?”
My mother sighed loudly over the phone—a long suffering sigh—then she said, “One divorce in this family is more than enough, Jasmine. You need to talk some sense into her, not harbor her and her child like fugitives in that apartment of yours.”
I truly love my mother, but there were days when I had to work hard to remember that.
“Mom, have you talked to Thea?”
My mother sighed again. “I've been
trying
to talk some sense into her all day, but she won't listen to me.”
“Did she tell you about Brooks?” I asked. I didn't want to betray my sister's confidences.
“Yes, she told me some madness about another woman.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. I could not believe that my mother, as feisty as she was in her own marriage, was going to start singing some “stand by your man no matter what he's done” craziness.
“Mom, please do not tell me all men do this and—”
She cut me off. “You know me better than that. If
that
is what Brooks did, well, then he made his bed, so to speak, and he's got to lie down in it
without
his wife. But I don't believe that Brooks is that kind of man.”
“Thea feels pretty strongly that he cheated on her.”
“Hmph! She hasn't even talked to him. She doesn't know what he's done, if anything!”
“How do you know all this?” I asked, although I was fairly certain I knew the answer.
“Brooks called me. He's beside himself with worry! He tried calling her on her cell phone, and she won't answer. It was Reese who called him this morning to tell his father where they were. Can you imagine Reese having to do this? I don't know what's gotten into your sister. I would have expected this from ...”
She stopped her sentence abruptly when she remembered that she was speaking to me.
I won't lie and say my mother's words didn't hurt. I was used to them, but they still hurt. I tried to remind myself that sometimes her mouth got a little ahead of her brain, but Lord knows, the unspoken words felt like a slap in the face. It wasn't as if I sold crack on a street corner, I wanted to yell at my mother. I'm a lawyer. A respectable member of society. Just because I didn't follow the life you mapped for me doesn't make me a failure. But this was a battle I'd have to wait another time to fight.
“I've got to go, Mom. I'm really busy this morning.”
“But what about Thea?” she asked, undeterred.
“Whatever she decides, she'll be just fine,” I said, and in my heart I knew that I was right about this. My sister was going to be fine. “And I'll support any decision she makes.”
“Jasmine, listen ... talk to her—”
“I've got to go, Mom,” I said, before placing the telephone in the cradle.
I remembered a time, many years ago, when I was a little girl. I was tired, and we were in church. We'd gone to my grandmother's Baptist church in Georgia. Unlike the efficient (quick) Episcopal services I was used to, we were in our third hour of worship, and the end was nowhere in sight. I remember laying my head on my mother's lap—I must have been around seven years old—and she'd stroked my hair. I felt safe that day. Safe and loved by my mother. I was glad for that memory. It reassured me that there was love there. Even when my mother's words hurt, there was still some love in there.
 
Several hours after my mother's telephone call, I was knee-deep in Chester's files. A quick knock on my door announced the arrival of Lamarr, the head of the mail room and my all-around helpmate. He was one of the few people in the firm whom I considered to be a friend. I had enlisted his aid in obtaining all of Chester's files, which were now placed on my floor, my chairs, and in every other available space in my office.
“Here's the last load, Jasmine,” he announced. “Thank God.”
I looked up from the work and was relieved to see a friendly face.
“You look as if you've just lost your favorite teddy bear,” he said.
“Tough times,” I replied.
Lamarr closed the door behind him. “This thing with Chester has gotten everybody pretty spooked.”
I let out a long sigh in response, unable to think of anything to say other than the obvious. For most folks, including me, murder was a spooky thing.
“I know this might be a stupid question,” Lamarr continued, looking directly at me, “but is something else, something other than the demise of Chester Jackson, bothering you?”
He knew me too well. “Thea left her husband.”
“What happened?” Like most of my male friends, Lamarr had a not so secret crush on my sister.
“He cheated on her.”
He shook his head. “I don't believe that. Brooks isn't stupid enough to do that.”
I thought back to the conversation I'd just had with my mother. Both she and Lamarr obviously had more faith in Brooks than was warranted.
“Could we change the subject?” I asked. I didn't feel like discussing my sister's marital issues, particularly after my less than wonderful conversation with my mother on the subject. The demise of my own marriage still caused the occasional bouts of pain, and the thought of my sister having to go through the same crisis depressed me.
“How many files have you got there?” I asked him.
“Forty-two files. That should be all of them, or that's what Irmalee says.”
I got up to help Lamarr unload the cart laden with Chester's case files.
I thought of Irmalee's bitter reaction to my offer of condolences earlier this morning and shook my head. I hoped I didn't have to deal with her too often, although I knew she would be the most logical person to help me if I had any questions about the files.
“I told her that she probably shouldn't have come to work today,” said Lamarr as we took case files off the cart and searched for space in my office to store them. “But she wasn't about to hear that. It's almost as if she feels like she's still working for him.”
“They were close,” I said neutrally.
“Yes, they were,” he agreed, but there was something about the tone of his voice that made me stop and look at him.
I knew that tone of voice well. He had some serious scoop, and with gentle or not so gentle prodding, I would soon find out exactly what it was he knew.
Although I got along with most of the people in the firm, I wasn't close to anyone but Raymond, Lamarr, and Hernanda, my secretary. Lamarr and I had spent many late evenings in the office, talking about life and firm gossip. He kept my secrets and made me laugh even on bleak days when I cursed the day I entered the legal profession. We were buddies almost from his first day at work at B&J.
Tall, thin, with skin so light that most people thought that he was white, Lamarr had come to B&J right out of drug rehab. Raymond had been a board member of the rehab center, and another board member, an idealistic social worker who still believed in the goodness of people's hearts, prevailed upon Raymond to give Lamarr a job. Lamarr had started out as a file clerk and ended up running the mail room, and in most respects, running the office. He helped out with everything, from sorting mail to document production, to supervising the file clerks. Raymond often said that Lamarr was his best hire. I was inclined to agree.
“Now, Jasmine girl, you know how I hate to gossip... .”

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