Legal Tender (18 page)

“I did meet with Mark. Two times. The first time he told me he was leaving the firm and he wanted me to go with him. He said I was the only associate he wanted to take besides Eve.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him no. The second time I called him and we met at The Rittenhouse. I was trying to talk him out of it.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I have no idea,” I said, though I had an inkling. I could sense it. Feel it coming in the increasing huskiness of Grady’s voice and the way he was leaning toward me in the darkness.

“Because of you. I didn’t want him to hurt you. I know how much the firm means to you.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. My throat was tight.

“Bennie, you can trust me. I’ll never keep anything from you again, I swear it. I’d never hurt you, not for all the money in the world.” In that second he reached into his jacket, and when his hand came out I saw the steely glint of a gun.

I gasped. My heart stopped. Grady was the killer. He was going to kill me. I reached for my screwdriver, but Grady grabbed my hand and slapped the gun into it.

“Here. It’s yours. Keep it.”

“What? How?” I looked down at the gun. It was a pistol with a cross-hatched handle, cold and heavy in my palm.

“It’s for protection. The safety’s on, but it’s loaded. It’s my gun from home. Shoot anything or anybody that tries to hurt you. If you won’t let me protect you, then let it.”

I couldn’t process it all fast enough. A screwdriver was one thing, a gun quite another. I’d never held one that wasn’t tagged as evidence, and even with an orange exhibit number they struck a dissonant note in me. I’d seen the damage guns did, how they tore at faces, heads, hearts. I handed the weapon back. “No, Grady. You keep it.”

“Why?” He slipped the weapon into his jacket. “You’re being silly.”

“No I’m not. Besides, I have my trusty screwdriver.” I drew it from the waistband of my shorts and held it up.

Grady laughed. “Aren’t we the well-armed couple? But the screwdriver’s not exactly effective at fifty yards.” He took the tool and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Hey, yo! That’s my protection.”

“You don’t need protection from me. If I were going to hurt you, would I have given you a gun?” he asked, stepping closer.

My mouth went dry. I felt exposed and vulnerable, and it had nothing to do with who had the loaded gun.

“Mark wasn’t good enough for you, Bennie.” Bitterness tainted his soft drawl. “He couldn’t give, he could only take.”

“I don’t want to talk about Mark.”

“I do, I want you to understand. You were too much in love to see him clearly. I always used to think, I wonder what it would be like to have that woman so in love with me. I wonder what that woman would be like.” He leaned over and kissed me gently.

“Grady,” I said. I pressed him back, but he didn’t move.

“‘Grady,’ what? Why can’t it be, because of Mark? Ask yourself, would he have come here? Would he have helped you?”

“Stop that.”

“No. You ask yourself,” he said urgently. “Did he ever, once, do a damn thing for you? Did he ever, once, do a thing to deserve your love?”

“We built the firm.”

“That helped
him
, Bennie, and when he started to make money he cut you loose. He was your lover, but was he your friend? Did he help you with your mother?”

I felt a hot flush of shame, unreasoning. “How do you know about my mother?”

“I made it my business to know. I saw you come in late some mornings, I heard you on the phone with the doctors. I know she was in the hospital awhile back. But all through it, Mark stayed at the office. He never went with you. I would have been there. Why wasn’t Mark? Why didn’t he help?”

“I didn’t need him to.”

“Sure you did. All of us could see you looked tired. Stressed. Marshall and I picked it up right away.”

“I never asked him to help.”

“Why did he need to be asked? The need was obvious. He could have just done it. Showed up. Been there.”

“It’s not that easy,” I started to say, but he interrupted, touching my shoulder.

“You know what I think about love, Bennie? I think it’s more than a state of being. Not just a feeling, or something you say. It’s what you do. If you love a woman, you love her every day, and you
do.
You do, for her. I love you, Bennie. I
do.
I swear.”

I started to speak, but he took me in his arms and kissed me again, longer this time. His jacket was smooth under my fingers, his arms bulky in the light wool. His mouth felt warm and open, and I let his kiss wash over me, trying to feel it, test it. I couldn’t remember being kissed or being held this way. It was an offer, not a demand, which made it suddenly compelling.

He slipped out of his jacket, and his body felt fully as strong as mine, stronger, because he was in love. He was telling me so by his kiss, by his embrace, by his hips pressing into mine, backing me onto the couch. I felt myself responding to him, because it felt as if he were giving me something, not taking. Giving me himself.

He lay me back against the couch, his mouth and body hard on mine, and I felt myself arch up to him. Giving back. I couldn’t see him, but my other senses felt heightened. I ran my hand over the scratchiness of his chin, sensed his muscles straining under his shirt. I breathed in a trace of aftershave at his jaw, mingled with the musky sweatiness of his neck.

There was a metallic jingling of his belt, then a whispered curse as he fumbled with his zipper. My own breathing, low and excited. The sounds of my own need and his, there in the darkness.

In the middle of the night.

I
hit the road in the brightness just before dawn, streaking down the expressway in a brand-new Juicyfruit-yellow Chevy Camaro. Not exactly inconspicuous, but between my red hair and gold suit, we weren’t into subtlety on the lam. The car’s vanity license plate read
JAMIE
-16, the front seat was littered with grunge rock CDs, and a banana-shaped deodorizer swung like a pendulum from the rearview mirror.
BANANAROMA
, it said, and smelled it.

I was running from the cops and heading to western Pennsylvania to find Bill Kleeb. I’d reread his file while Grady slept, then showered and tried to call Bill on my cell phone. No one had answered, and I’d given up. The police would subpoena my cell phone records, and I didn’t want them to know who I was trying to reach. They’d be looking for Bill, too, and at the same time I was.

I glanced anxiously in the rearview. No cops in sight and not much traffic. It was too early for commuters, who would be heading into the city anyway, not out of it. I switched lanes under a cloudy sky, going as fast as I dared. The car rumbled smoothly as the virgin tires met the expressway.

In the back of my mind were my mother and Hattie. When could I call them? Had Hattie set up the electroshock? How could I help her now? I was leaving them, maybe for a long time. I checked the rearview again. The city was far behind, the skyline shrouded in gray clouds.

I thought about Grady, asleep with my note on his chest.
I’ll
call when I can. Take care.
Not very romantic, but I didn’t know how I felt about him and I didn’t want to say more. It was no time to start a meaningful relationship. Meetings between bulletproof glass didn’t appeal to me, no matter how heart-wringing in miniseries prison.

I put Grady out of my mind, brushed back my carroty bangs, and trounced on the gas. I drove for two hours, sped past Harrisburg, then headed west through the fields through to Altoona in the mountainous middle of the state, and jumped off the main road. There were a few roadside bars, truck stops, and produce stands that reminded me of how hungry I was, but I didn’t want to waste time eating. I passed a series of Toro dealers, then a shack selling cement lawn statuary with a hand-lettered sign:
GIVE CONCRETE
—
THE GIFT THAT LASTS A LIFETIME
. Whoa.

I drove for hours on two- and one-lane roads, then endlessly around loops and detours until I found the bumpy route I hoped led to Bill’s hometown. I got lost twice in a maze of dusty backroads that crisscrossed fields of corn and spinach. I couldn’t orient myself in the fresh air and vegetables, I needed smog and Dumpsters.

I hung a left at the apples, a right at the blueberries, and finally reached the dirt road to the Kleeb farm. It said
THE ZOELLERS
on the mailbox, but the address was the one in Bill’s file. I pulled over next to a cornfield and cut the ignition.

I opened the window and waited for half an hour, watching tensely for any activity. Cops, press, anybody. There seemed to be none but I waited longer. The sky grew opaque with clouds, the air thickened with humidity. It soured the fresh smells of the farmland and brought up the stink of the assorted manures. Still I kept the window open, preferring it to the fruity stench of the bananamobile. I wished I had a hot coffee. It sucked, being a fugitive.

The farmhouse was a clapboard ranch, freshly painted white, and prosperous looking. Behind it to the left were two late-model pickups, a stone and clapboard barn, and a silo. Horses grazed freely on a large, grassy hill, their long necks dipping gracefully. It looked idyllic to a city girl raised by a crazy mother. The only hills I saw growing up were made of Kleenex.

I checked my watch. 12:15. If the press were coming, they would’ve been here already. I got out and stretched with my briefcase in hand, leaving the car hidden in the cornrows. I wanted to look more lawyer than lawbreaker, and the bananamobile wasn’t exactly standard-issue with a J.D.

I had to get Bill’s parents to trust me. All I would need was a little luck.

And a lot of coffee.

“God, this is good,” I slurped. It was my second cup.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Kleeb—Mrs. Zoeller since her remarriage. Her face was round and soft, floating like a motherly balloon over her pink sweatsuit outfit. She had wavy hair that matched Bill’s reddish shade, but it had thinned and gone gray at the roots.

“I mean it, this is one terrific cup of coffee.” I caught Mr. Zoeller looking strangely at me over his white Nittany Lions mug.

“So you really are Bill’s attorney,” Mrs. Zoeller said. She sounded like she believed it, now that I’d told them the whole story. Mr. Zoeller, who sat next to her at the dining room table, hadn’t said anything during my pitch, except for asking to see my credentials and my file on Bill. He glanced at the mug shot of Bill’s injured face coldly, and I got the impression he wouldn’t mind if his young stepson went to prison for life.

I set my cup down. “Yes, I really am Bill’s lawyer, despite my new hair color.”

“You did a nice job,” Mrs. Zoeller said, nodding.

“Thank you. Who says I can’t cook?”

She smiled. “You really don’t act like an attorney, or at least the attorneys I’ve seen. On the TV, I mean.”

“Ellie, honestly,” Mr. Zoeller said, and a flustered Mrs. Zoeller placed her hand over mine.

“Oh, I mean that as a compliment of course. Of course.”

“My wife’s always runnin’ off at the mouth like that,” Mr. Zoeller said with a frown. He was a large man, so beefy his striped polo shirt rode up his arm past his sunburn. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“I took it as a compliment. Forget it.”

Mrs. Zoeller blushed slightly. “It’s just that I don’t like that other lawyer Bill got, the new one. Celeste. He keeps calling us on the phone, wantin’ us to sign something for some book or something.”

“A release,” Mr. Zoeller said. “He wants us to sign a release.”

Mrs. Zoeller shook her head. “I don’t think he has Bill’s interests at heart. He’s seeing dollar signs. Now, Bill did tell me about you. He said there was no way you could have murdered anybody.”

“It’s true.”

“He told me he trusted you. I think he really likes you.”

I felt touched. “I like him, too. He’s a nice kid, but he’s in way over his head.”

“I know, I know.” Mrs. Zoeller ran her fingernails across her forehead, leaving a tiny red wake. “It’s all because of Eileen. I warned him about her. First time I met that girl, I said to Gus, ‘She’s half crazy, I swear.’ Didn’t I say that, Gus?”

Mr. Zoeller didn’t reply, but continued staring at my attorney’s card for the Pennsylvania bar. What could be so interesting? Supreme Court ID No. 35417?