Mittman, Stephanie (3 page)

"And
I take it that there was a body found?"

"Three,
Your Honor."

"Whose?"

The
attorney turned and looked at Ash, his eyebrows coming down until they melded
with the frames of his glasses. "Burned beyond recognition." Ash sat
down heavily in his seat. No one ordered him to come to his feet again.
"According to the coroner, probably a woman, and two small children."

Ash
put his face in his hands, and fought the nausea that threatened to embarrass
him.

"The
doctor thinks they might have jumped to their deaths down the lift shaft."

Ash
felt Charlotte's hand on his shoulder, warm even through his jacket, and surprisingly
strong.

"Then
the charge stands as murder in the first degree," the judge agreed.
"Where the hell is Cabot Whittier?"

"Your
Honor, if it please the court, we're ready to proceed with the preliminary
examination," Charlotte said. "And we ask that any and all witness be
produced so that—"

"Open
the damn door!" Cabot's voice was the one thing that hadn't changed in all
the years. It still sliced through Ash like a fencer's foil—clean, neat, and
deadly.

While
the clerk hurried to open the double doors at the back of the courtroom,
Charlotte reached down for her hat, placed it in the little metal rack beneath
her seat, and silently closed the satchel that sat open between them. She
looked at Ash blankly, innocently, as if she had no knowledge of any baby bird
at all, or of the reaction Cabot would have had upon finding it in the
courtroom. And quite as if she dared him to suppose otherwise.

"Your
Honor," Cabot said from the back of the room, as if he'd been in the court
from the very beginning. Ash sensed the movement behind him, knew that everyone
had turned to watch his brother's rather dramatic entrance.

Everyone,
that was, but Ashford Whittier. He kept his eyes on a point just above the
judge's head and listened to the slow sound of rubber wheels turning against
the polished wooden floor.

Once
again he was out on some goddamn precipice and his big brother Cabot was coming
to save him. The last time it had cost Cabot the use of his legs.

Ash
wondered what it was going to cost him this time.

***

He
was doing it again, Charlotte thought testily. What had been the point of all
the coaching, the teaching, the studying to be admitted to the bar, if he was
going to rush in like some white knight every time she faced a challenge in
court? Oh, he was perfectly content to let her flounder when it came to
representing her indigent clients, the ones who could only pay her in freshly
laid eggs or cords of chopped firewood, but let it be a matter of any interest
to him...

A
tiny
tsk
sound escaped her lips. Of course this was of interest to him.
It was his own brother, for heaven's sake. She slid her chair closer to
Ashford's and nudged him to move farther still to make room for Cabot's
wheelchair at the defense table. Cabot's manservant, Arthur, with him since the
day he'd been placed in his invalid's chair, pushed the wood-and-cane chair up
the aisle slowly, as he'd no doubt been instructed to before the doors had ever
opened.

Sometimes
she wondered if Cabot wasn't more actor than lawyer; the way he used the area
in front of the jury box as a stage; the way he paused, sighed, shook his head.
His voice, too, was a well-honed tool. He could shout without raising the
volume of it at all. He could whisper and be heard in the last row.

Now
he sat in front of the prosecution's table, shaking his head as though he were
thoroughly disappointed with the district attorney.

"Without
me here, Brent?" he asked. "Springing a murder charge on an
unsuspecting woman whose bailiwick consists largely of apple-stealing urchins
and women whose drunken husbands attempt liberties that liquor tends to
nullify? I'd thought better of you than that."

Charlotte's
wedding band dug into her fingers as she balled the fists in her lap. The
ragged thumbnail on her left hand nearly broke the skin of her right.
The
ends, Charlotte...
he would no doubt say once they were back home, raising
his palms while he waited for her to conclude his statement with
justify the
means.

"The
facts are the facts," Brent said, straightening his lapels, as if that
could give him back the dignity Cabot had clearly stolen from him. "And
the charge is murder."

Cabot
waved his hand in the air as if the charges were merely so much smoke and could
be dismissed as easily. Charlotte wished that it were so. Three people dead!
And two of them children. She rubbed at the corner of her eye, a gesture that
didn't go unnoticed by her husband.

"Proud
of yourself, Mr. District Attorney?" he asked, handing Charlotte his hanky
with more show than concern, and letting the courtroom suppose her so distressed
by the sudden turn of events that it had brought her to tears. If there was a
trick he didn't use, she wasn't aware of it. And the fact that they involved
her every now and then never stopped him, not even after she'd made it clear,
damn
clear,
he'd said, chuckling at her frustration, how much it irritated her.

Times
like this, she wished he had feeling in his legs just so that she could give
him a good swift kick in the shins.

"Charlotte?"
Judge Hammerman asked solicitously. "You all right?"

"Of
course I'm—" she began, only to be interrupted by one of Cabot's
convenient coughing fits. She refused to look at him, knowing full well that he
was trying to catch her eye.
Time,
he was telegraphing her. They needed
some time. "Your Honor," she asked, "if I might just go down the
hall for a moment?"

"Again?"
Brent said, then clapped his hand over his mouth and turned three shades of
red. "The prosecution has no objection," he added quickly.

"I'm
relieved," Cabot said, obviously amused by his own choice of words.

As
she came to her feet, her brother-in-law gently lifted her alligator bag and
offered it to her. "Need this?" he whispered, raising one eyebrow in
question.

Was
he taunting her? Could the man have so little sense of self-preservation? He
antagonized his brother at nearly every visit, and now he was alienating her.
Who did he think was going to do the work involved in getting him off on a
murder charge? A chill ran up her arms as she thought of the babies killed in
the fire. Good glory! Was that really a tear? She hadn't cried in so very long.

Lawyers
don't cry, Charlotte,
Cabot had counseled her, shaking his head at her in
disappointment when she'd broken down after losing her first case.
They file
appeals, they serve writs, they submit memorandums of law and affidavits in
support. They don't crawl off in a corner and bawl.

Of
course, he was right. She had a whole sex to vindicate. She was paving the way
for her sisters (in the figurative sense), her daughters (again, symbolically
speaking), the young women of generations to come. And every sign of weakness
was a giant step backward not just for her, but for them all. At first she'd
hidden herself in the closet to cry, but Cabot had heard her through the wall.
Then she'd moved her tears to the cupola's high room. Finally she'd managed to
move them out of her life altogether.

Pacing
in the ladies' room, she gave Cabot five minutes. It wasn't as if any amount of
time would enable him to pull a rabbit out of his hat—not even for his brother.
Oh, in the long run they'd clear him—Cabot always saw to it that the justice
system worked—but the plan to keep him out on bail was surely burned in the
bottom of the pot.

How
would they ever tell Kathryn that instead of sitting down to the delicious meal
of
salmi de perdreaux
she had planned, her son would be feasting on
greasy fried chicken and bread and water in the county jail until his trial?
Kathryn's younger son seemed too big to cage, and much too fine.

Well,
Kathryn was strong. Hadn't she supported Charlotte fully in her quest for
recognition, helped her to conquer the weaknesses that kept her separate from
her male colleagues, and advised her on everything from her boots to her bun?

And
now Kathryn would be called upon to practice what she preached.

"Three
people,"
Brent was saying when she returned to the courtroom.
Naturally they hadn't waited for her. She was only the attorney of record. A
formality with which men like Judge Hammerman and her husband had no problem
dispensing. "Not
vagrants.
People."

"Uh,
uh, uh," Cabot said, waving one finger back and forth to show Brent the
error of his ways. "Not
people.
Vagrants."

Hurriedly
she took her seat, whispering for her brother-in-law to explain what she had
missed.

"Someone's
killed three people," Ash said quietly, his voice cracking. "One just
a baby. And he's—"

"My
point is that under the law, if there were occupants of the warehouse at the
time of the fire, which for our purposes we shall call 'nighttime'—that period
referred to in the penal code as the time between sunset and sunrise—they were
not 'lodgers,' a category of protected occupants which constitute an 'inhabited
building'; but rather 'vagrants,' unlawfully occupying, or more specifically
trespassing, at said time and therefore not entitled to the protection of the
law."

"They're
still dead," Brent said dryly, removing his glasses and tossing them
carelessly on the table as he rubbed at his eyes.

"Dead,
yes," Cabot said, wheeling himself around in a wide circle until he faced
Judge Hammerman. "But murdered? No. This is a case of arson. If that. For
all we know, those vagrants were responsible for the fire. Trying to keep warm
on a cold night with no thought to the public safety—"

"This
is California, not Siberia," Brent said. "Your Honor, please!"

But
Charlotte could tell from the way Judge Hammerman was lapping up every word
Cabot was saying that, at the very least, Ash Whittier would be released to his
older brother's custody.

"Surely
the charge of murder seems excessive," the judge argued on Cabot's behalf.
"There is certainly not the required malice aforethought here. And while
death could possibly have been the result of arson, which would certainly make
it fall within the purview of a felony, I think manslaughter is the best you
could hope for, Brent, considering that the vagrants were likely to be
foreigners."

Beside
her, Ash threw up his hands. "Are they less dead if they're not
citizens?" he asked her under his breath. "If they made my roof
theirs, then they weren't people?"

"I'll
go for manslaughter," Brent agreed, while Charlotte studied the anguish on
her brother-in-law's face. It was a nice face, too, weathered by his trips at
sea, burned by the sun of exotic ports and crisscrossed with smile lines by his
eyes and his lips. "And arson in the first degree with intent to commit
insurance fraud."

On
the pad in front of him Ash set to doodling with a pencil. A lefty, his hand
curled around his work, hiding what he drew and no doubt smudging it.
"Sure you don't want to add that I was toasting them to eat for breakfast?
Or that I torched the Piedmont Springs Hotel while I was still away in
Argentina?" Ash asked the DA.

Charlotte
clapped her hand over her mouth while Cabot glared at his brother. "My
client apologizes to the court, Your Honor."

"Again,"
Brent added.

"Again?"
Cabot asked, raising an eyebrow at Charlotte as if she had any more control
over his brother's behavior than he did.

"Your
Honor," Charlotte said, coming to her feet, "Mr. Whittier arrived
last night from a six-month sail in connection with his business. After only a
few hours' sleep he was arrested on his boat, brought to the mainland, and
interrogated extensively without benefit of food or sleep. He is tired, his
nerves are frayed. I beg the court's indulgence on his behalf."

"You
left out the part about being told his business was well into the red because
the coffee beans he'd bought on the last trip were rotten and couldn't be sold.
That surely didn't soothe your client's nerves."

Only
Charlotte Whittier could sense the change in Cabot. Five years of marriage had
taught her the subtle signs that others missed. Two fingers traced the spokes
of his chair wheel. He sucked for a moment on the corner of his mustache.

"And
tired? Not surprising after the knock-down-drag-out fight he had with his
partner, Mr. Greenbough, over the receipts," Brent added, gesturing toward
the judge as if he'd made his case.

Idiot.
He ought to know better than to show a single card to Cabot Whittier, never
mind his whole hand.

"My
client admits to being tired and unnerved," Cabot said. "Within hours
of his arrival he learned that his warehouse had been burned to the ground,
then was accused of the crime, arrested, and deprived of sleep. Now he learns
that deaths occurred on his premises. He apologizes for any thoughtless
statements arising from that condition."