Mittman, Stephanie (2 page)

"Charlotte,"
he begged, not even trying to feign enthusiasm. "Does that mean he's
almost done?"

"I
told you," she said, frustration finally tinging the edges of her voice.
"They've got nothing on you to warrant your being held for trial. This is
just routine. Cabot lets me handle these kinds of proceedings every day."

"Not
for me," he grumbled, tired of waiting for things to get started. If he
ran his shipping company the way Oakland ran its courts, there wouldn't have
been anything in the warehouse to burn. He had no patience for mistakes and the
Oakland police had obviously made a big one.

He
stretched out his legs, knocking her hat from its perch. He reached down for
it, his head almost level with the top of the alligator Gladstone he'd bought
her as a wedding gift in Argentina, and stopped.

There,
in the bottom of her monogrammed lady's version of the same case he'd brought
Cabot, was a small box lined with straw. A tiny baby bird strained his neck up
at Ash, opened a beak smaller even than Charlotte's fingernails, and chirped.

Well,
at least he wasn't crazy.

Charlotte
was.

Without
sitting back up he cocked his head and took a long look at his sister-in-law, the
only lady lawyer in all of Oakland. With the exception of that Clara Foltz
person his brother had told him about, she might have been the only lady lawyer
in the whole state of California.

At
the moment she looked like some schoolgirl caught with someone else's lunch
pail at recess. Her cheeks glowing, she shrugged and tried to wave away the
bird with her hand.

"He
needs to eat every few hours," she explained.

It
was a struggle to keep the smirk from his lips, but he thought he succeeded
admirably as he nodded at the esteemed Charlotte Whittier, Esquire, respected
member of the bar. "I see. We wouldn't want your bird to be hungry"

"He
isn't
my
bird," Charlotte said, her chin so high, he could hardly
see those long dark eyelashes of hers.

"Then
he belongs to Cabot?"

"Oh,
yes," she said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm. "And judges
never sleep on the bench. It's no one's bird. But someone has to feed it or
it'll die."

Well,
he'd wondered when Charlotte's nesting instinct would surface. He just hadn't
expected it to be quite so literal when it did. Although it'd been five years
since she'd married Cabot, there'd been no mention of little Whittiers to date.
Even his mother had stayed away from the subject, focusing instead on
Charlotte's incredible achievements in the legal field.

Without
a word Ash replaced the hat over the opening of the Gladstone bag. Charlotte
didn't seem to be in the mood to be ribbed about her hungry feathered friend,
and Ash wasn't in the mood to tease her anyway. He had a bird of his own, a
parrot, on board the
Bloody Mary,
who was no doubt screeching to be fed
himself.

"Cabot
is coming, isn't he?" He'd gone beyond begging. Now he was groveling.

"I
told you, it's just routine," she began again just as a haggard clerk with
a droopy mustache and a hacking cough opened the door beside the judge's bench
and yelled, "Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Superior Court of the County
of Alameda is now in session, the honorable Judge George Hammerman presiding.
All persons having business before this Court shall draw near and ye shall be
heard."

Beside
Ash, Charlotte rose, exerting a slight pressure beneath his elbow until he
realized that he, too, was expected to rise.

"I—"
Ash began, indeed having business with the court.

Charlotte
stopped him, signaling him with a finger against her lips that it was not time
for him to speak.

"Oh,
it's you, Charlotte," the judge said, grimacing. "I expected Mr.
Whittier to be here to represent his brother in a matter so grave as this. Not
that I have any doubt that you, dear, couldn't do the case justice."

Charlotte's
meager chest rose and fell sharply. Beneath her charming veneer and behind her
pleasant smile, the woman next to him was seething.

"Mr.
Whittier is next door explaining the finer points of the law to Mr.
Cohen," she said, eliciting a smile from the judge. Everyone knew that
Alfred A. Cohen hardly needed lessons in the law from Cabot or anyone else. She
pulled back her shoulders and appeared ready to do battle. "So I'm afraid
the court will have to settle for
Mrs.
Whittier for the present."

"All
right, Charlotte," the judge said, signaling her to slow down with a show
of his palm. "No need to get all huffy with me."

While
behind her skirt Charlotte's fist balled, she turned a dazzling smile on the
judge and nodded, corrected and ready for her next lesson.

"Mr.
Brent," the judge said, looking over his half-spectacles, "are you
ready to proceed?"

The
district attorney nodded.

"And
you, Charlotte? You're ready, too, dear?"

Her
intake of breath was audible, but rather than utter a word (which Ash thought
was likely to be profane—if the white knuckles dotting her clenched fists were
any indication), she simply nodded.

If
he were being perfectly honest, Ash Whittier would have to admit that he was
wholly unaccustomed to upholding a lady's honor. Still, in the case of one's
sister-in-law (especially when that sister-in-law was attempting to represent
one's interests in a court of law), he supposed an exception should be made.
And so he cleared his throat.

"Excuse
me, Your Honor," he said, amazed at how loud his voice sounded in the
quiet courtroom, how far it carried and echoed back at him, mocking him for
this sudden solicitude of the fairer sex. The judge looked over his glasses at
Ash, waiting. It appeared too late to turn back, so he continued.

"As
a defender of the law," he said—paused with the hope of finding the right
words, abandoned that hope, and forged ahead—"... and an obviously
forward-looking person who'd allow a lady attorney to appear before you, I take
you to be a man who believes in parity. Right?"

"Charlotte?"
The judge asked, dismissing Ash as if he had suddenly lost his hearing.
"Are you having trouble with your client? It seems he doesn't realize that
he will most certainly have his chance to speak, but that right now is not that
time. Would you like a moment to explain to him the purpose of being
represented by an attorney?"

"No,
Your Honor. I'm sure that there will be no further outbursts from my
client," Charlotte said sweetly. Her tone, though, held a note of warning
for Ash, which she followed with a discreet kick to his shin that brought tears
to his eyes. His reflex action sent her Gladstone skating across the floor and
her scurrying after it, affording the entire courtroom a delightful view of her
bustle. Anxious to get on with it, Ash captured the bag with a single stride
and returned it to its place between them.

"To
continue, Your Honor, I feel it is only fair," he said before she could
get in another kick, "that if you call Mr. Brent
Mister,
you should
accord my attorney the same courtesy. That is, you should call her
Mrs.
Whittier."

The
ceiling fans, which had no business being on in February anyway, got louder.

Other
than that there wasn't a sound. Not even that pathetic little bird had the
nerve to chirp in the silence. The entire courtroom refrained from drawing a
breath until the judge signaled to his clerk, who stepped up on the rise, yet
still needed to stand on his toes to hear the judge's request.

"There
will be a short recess," the clerk said. He glared pointedly at Charlotte.
"One minute!"

Charlotte
looked up at the judge, saw that he was busying himself with the papers on his
desk, and whispered at Ash through clenched teeth. "Didn't anyone ever
teach you to pick your fights carefully? Would it do us any good to have him
call me Mrs. Whittier and slap you in jail? Good glory! They must have used up
all the Whittier common sense on Cabot and left none for you."

"Anyone
with a shred of common sense can see that the law is stupid and needs changing
if it doesn't insure you the same dignity as your adversary," he hissed
back, convinced he had made a good point.

"My
adversary wants to put you in jail," she reminded him in hushed tones.
"Are you bent on helping him?"

"So
we don't care what's right, is that it?" he whispered, knowing she was
right but not knowing how to back down. "I just need to know how the game
works, so I can play it along with you."

"Okay,"
she said, crossing her arms over a blue suit jacket that was doing its best to
negate her even being a woman. "The game goes like this. You pretend
you're gagged and let me do the talking. Is that simple enough?"

"Are
we ready?" Judge Hammerman asked, his voice filling the room as he looked
over his half-spectacles at Charlotte expectantly.

"Simple
enough
would
be to allow a man to defend himself," Ash muttered. "Or to find his
damned brother.... Sorry, I shouldn't have said that in front of you."
Mixed company and all that. He knew better, he just didn't hang around ladies
much. Not the kind whose eyebrows rose at a word like
damned.

"You
can say anything you want to your lawyer," Charlotte whispered. "But
not to the judge. Where you sleep tonight is going to be up to him."

"I
asked if you were ready, Charlotte, dear. Do you need me to explain it to
him?" The judge motioned for Ash to step forward, but Charlotte put a
restraining hand on his arm.

"No,
Your Honor. He understands perfectly."

"I
guess you'd better tell him I'm sorry," Ash whispered.

She
smiled, and Ash realized that he'd been stingy in his assessment of her.
Cabot's wife left
pretty
in her wake—before she seemed to remember that
smiling was definitely not lawyerly.

"Now
you whisper?" she asked quietly. "Had you done that before, we
wouldn't be risking a contempt-of-court citation." She addressed the judge
politely on his behalf. "Your Honor, my client wishes to apologize for his
outburst, and assure the court that it will not be repeated."

The
judge nodded. "The defendant will stand for the reading of the
charge."

This
time he needed no prodding from the woman beside him. He stood and stared down
at the plain dark-blue hat beneath which was hidden the fledgling, and wondered
idly what the austere fedora
would look like atop his sister-in-law's
small head.

"In
the matter of the
State of California
versus
Ashford Warren Whittier.
Defendant is charged with the following crimes in connection with a fire
occurring at one-thirty a.m. on the morning of February ninth,
1888."
The clerk
stopped to cough and clear his throat. Ash wondered if he did
that regularly just for the dramatic effect. It was surely working in this
case. "One count of arson in the first degree; one count of arson with the
intent to commit insurance fraud, and three counts of murder in the first
degree subject to the felony-murder provisions of the State of
California—"

"What?"
Ash dragged his gaze from the clerk to the man sitting smugly on the other side
of the aisle. In the benches behind them, people gasped. The hum of the crowd
grew so loud, he could hardly hear himself ask, "Murder? Are you
crazy?"

"Murder?"
Judge Hammerman repeated, pounding his gavel and demanding silence. The judge
made no effort to hide the shock that registered blatantly on his face. "I
thought this was a simple case of business gone bad. Nowhere in the papers is
there..." He shuffled the papers before him, sifting through them
haphazardly and glancing toward the back of the room. "Get Whittier the
hell in here," he said to the guard standing at the rear door. "I don't
care what he's doing next door."

"Your
Honor," Charlotte began.

"Sit
down, Charlotte. This is a serious matter, not one of your silly little cases.
I won't have some woman fainting in my courtroom. Especially not when she's
Cabot Whittier's wife!"

Ash
looked down at his sister-in-law. She looked a lot closer to exploding than she
did to fainting.

But
obediently, she sat, her fists clenched tightly enough to turn coal into
diamonds.

Behind
him people spoke out of turn and shouted questions.

In
front of him the judge banged his gavel while the clerk called for order.

And
inside him his stomach turned sour and breakfast teased his tonsils.

After
what seemed to Ash like a very long while—but not so long as to produce his
brother in the courtroom— Judge Hammerman shook a chubby finger at the district
attorney and grimaced. "What in hell is this all about, Brent? There's no
mention of murder in these papers. You can't just—"

"Your
Honor," the district attorney said, approaching the bench somewhat
cautiously, "page four of the indictment specifically begs leave to amend
the charges should person or persons be discovered to have been injured or
annihilated by said conflagration."