Skinny-dipping (14 page)

“Belleza,”
Bonita said, rising from her chair to greet Angela. “So beautiful. Your sweet little face. And your hair—
magnifico
.”

Sounding like a mother, I thought.

“I can't walk in these shoes. And my lips feel all waxy. And the guys in the library, all the clerks, they're...they're teasing me.” Angela kicked off the shoes.

“They're flirting,” I said, beaming. “But you're right—ditch the shoes. Did Brock take you shopping too?” My idea about high heel shoes is that they are weapons, to be used as such, and therefore not worn every day. Besides, even in spikes, Angela was still short, so short was a look that was going to have to work for her, and she might as well be comfortable, which you cannot be in the type of shoes Brock had apparently persuaded her to try. Also, in those kind of heels she'd never be able to keep up with me and carry my extra briefcase.

I poured the newly minted Angela a cup of coffee, loaded it with milk from my minifridge and sugar, topped mine off with milk, and grinned. I had a trophy protégée of my own creation.

Only later that night did it occur to me that Angela now looked better than I did.

Chapter 20

And lawyers wonder why
nobody likes them?

Once a year, in a spirit of exclusivity, the members of the Sarasota County Bar Association have a picnic. It's an all-day affair, with any kind of liquor a lawyer could want. With no exceptions, no one but members of the Sarasota County Bar are allowed. It's a whole treed and green grass spread on one of the few undeveloped plots of land in the county, packed full of lawyers and judges, drinking heavily on the county bar's tab.

I've often wondered who they got to do the work before women joined the bar.

The events are dreadful. But most of the lawyers in town go. Not to go is to invite suspicion and gossip.

The main food is dead cow. The main topic is some version of “I'm smarter than you; mine is bigger; I have more money” or “I'm a trial attorney and you're a wussy, gutless estate planner.” Testosterone and beer are the drugs of choice, though whiskey runs a close third. Estrogen isn't even in the running.

I had Jack the Bear with me on a leash, and Newly was there too, though I told him in no uncertain terms he was not to hover about me. The man was absolutely driving me crazy. He was smothering me. He had my house a mess. And he had dared to raise the specter of children and all that implied.

If Newly's bugging the crap out of me wasn't enough, Jack the Bear, during his ultra-watchdog phase, had ended my sexual inebriation with Newly by making sure we didn't get close enough to touch. Sleeping in my big bed with a depressed Rottweiler, I saw Newly and me for what we were: painfully mismatched and doomed. And then there was the not-so-small matter of Johnny Winter, the albino ferret that now lived in the den and chittered constantly for Newly's attentions.

But there he was, a shadow under the tree. Newly the ever watchful, as if someone would willingly enter into a crowd of drinking lawyers in full brag and attempt to do me harm.

Turning my back to Newly, I smiled in pretend attention as Angela, who had drawn quite a few “aahs” that morning in her newly madeover glamour, and an attorney named Jill discussed the proper diet for old dogs such as Crosby.

While I waited for an opportunity to jump ship to a better chat, one of the imminently exchangeable young lawyers from our firm, a first-year associate whose name I might have remembered if my life depended on it, came up and put his arm around Angela and greeted her with a drunken attempt at wit.

I saw Angela flinch, as if to dislodge his arm from her shoulder. At my feet, Jack the Bear rose, the hair on the back of his huge neck a bristle of warning in a rare showing of something other than his doggy depression. The clueless associate offered some inane banter.

As a partner with at least technically some authority over this associate, I opened my mouth to tell him to leave, but before I spoke he grabbed Angela's right breast.

Acting on what must have been sheer instinct, Angela hooked his jaw with enough clout that he spun off, collided with the beer keg, and knocked it down against a concrete picnic table, sending beer spurting everywhere. As the associate crumpled on the ground, moaning and bleeding at the corner of his mouth, Jack the Bear lunged, dragging me with him at the other end of his leash. Dog and I collapsed on top of the associate, and beer rained down on us.

Only the quick command of Fred, fortunately nearby, saved the now bloody associate from a trip to the emergency room.

Once we had pulled the dog off of the drunk associate, I was quick to stand beside Angela, ready to defend her if the men took the old-school “boys will be boys, why overreact?” response.

Fred, holding Jack's leash, said to a very red-faced Angela, “Good for you.”

To the associate on the ground, he said, “You're fired. Get up and get out. Now.”

Jackson and Ashton had materialized from a congregation of judges and agreed. “We don't tolerate that kind of boorish behavior,” Jackson said, though he might well have been referring to the young man's inability to hold his liquor rather than his pawing of a fellow associate.

Missing entirely the opportunity to leave bad enough alone, the now ex-associate stood up—nobody helped him—and began to threaten Angela and me with a lawsuit for assault, negligent infliction of emotional harm, wrongful termination, and dog-bite damages.

Judge Goddard, who had sized up the situation in a hurry, put his grizzled Florida cracker face an inch from the young man's and said, “Boy, every judge in the circuit saw you grab that girl. Now you tell her you're sorry and you get out of here. And don't let me see your face in my court.”

Suddenly understanding and outwardly repentant, the man apologized to Angela.

As he limped off, I asked her, “Where'd you learn to hit like that?”

“I was the only redheaded girl in school and I have six brothers and I grew up in Lumberton, Mississippi.”

Ah, that explained a lot. Though whatever had possessed her to think of herself as a redhead when her hair had clearly been orange before Brock converted it to auburn was a matter I didn't pursue.

Newly, who had been hovering close in case of assassination attempts, inched in closer to Angela, and I saw his eyes twinkling, and he said, “Good right hook.”

Angela blushed and ran her fingers through her newly normal-looking hair. She thanked him and twinkled back at him with her green eyes.

Hmm, I thought, Newly and Angela. Now, that might be a way to get rid of Newly without hurting him.

Leaving Angela and Newly to their flirt, I decided to bug out on the picnic. Especially since I was sticky with sprayed beer and humidity. Newly was so busy doing his Sir Galahad thing with Angela that he didn't seem to notice me as I left.

Clammy and ignored, I crawled into my Honda, fresh from the police impound with a black garbage bag taped over the window that had been shot out in the parking lot of Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley. The morose Jack the Bear drooped down in the bucket seat beside me.

Ashton and Jackson had both chastised me for driving the Honda with the garbage bag over the busted window, as this didn't set the right tone for our law firm's parking lot, but my auto insurance claims manager had taken the unenlightened attitude that having my window shot out was not covered by my insurance. The policy would pay for necessary repairs for incidents “arising from the use and enjoyment of the covered automobile,” but getting shot at was not “arising from the use and enjoyment” of my Honda according to my claims manager.

Well, technically, he was right. Unless, of course, you lived in Miami, where getting shot at most certainly arose frequently from the use and enjoyment of one's car.

And a window doesn't cost that much to replace.

But what the hell good was a law degree and a junior partnership at Sarasota's biggest and best defense law firm if I couldn't bully a mere mortal claims manager into forking over coverage for the damaged window?

Until the matter was resolved, I was just going to drive around with the black bag in place. It doesn't rain in Sarasota anymore anyway, the result, Olivia said, of overdevelopment and something about the air currents being disrupted by concrete and that global warming thing she's always talking about.

Under my musings about Angela, my auto claim, and Newly, a series of relentless thoughts were plaguing me—like when you turn on an oldies radio station and it's playing “Sugar Sugar,” and you don't hit the button quick enough to go to the next station, and for the next hours or days, the annoying chorus of “Sugar Sugar” plays in your brain. Just like “Sugar Sugar” would drive you nuts, this was driving me nuts: “Who had killed Dr. Trusdale? Did that person also try to mug me? Had that person, or persons unknown, tried to warn or kill me, or Dr. Randolph, or both of us? And what did my rifled med mal files have to do with any of this?

Was Sam next in line to replace Newly, or did Sam think I had something to do with all this? Did he know I was withholding information? Was that stare he gave me one of professional interest, romantic, sexual interest, or just suspicion?

There was only one thing to do—go sit on the beach at the end of Anna Maria Island and stare at the yellow arch of the Sunshine Skyway, watching the sun go down and thinking on my sins. Maybe, I thought, romping on the sand and playing in the Gulf of Mexico would perk up poor down-atthe-snout Jack the Bear some.

As was my habit, I drove down Longboat Key and Anna Maria to the northern tip of Anna Maria Island, parked by the No Parking sign and walked past the No Public Access and No Trespassing signs to the public right-of-way along the shore. Jack the Bear moped along beside me until we sat down directly in the sand.

I rubbed Jack's ears, and he put his big head in my lap and sighed. I sighed.

While I might work in chaos, neither my brain chemistry nor my physical constitution was designed to live in chaos at my own house.

My head was so jumbled, I decided, because my house was so jumbled. Jumbled with Newly's stuff. Jumbled with Jack's toys and Jack's mat and Jack's drinking dish and Jack's pillow. But mostly jumbled with Newly's stuff. And Newly's ferret.

Newly needed to leave my house. The ferret too. I'd just have to get someone else to go to Atlanta with me, that is, if my potential expert witness ever lighted in the city long enough for me to actually interview him. If he didn't soon, despite my various continuances, I'd have to track the expert to one of his many seminars and conferences and interview him between his presentations.

So, Atlanta trip or not, Newly had to go. Jack probably had to go too. It didn't seem like anybody was trying to kill me anymore, if anyone ever had been.

Rubbing Jack's ears again, I asked him: “Do you want to go home to Olivia's?”

At the word
Olivia,
Jack jumped up and pranced around and started running back to the car, past the No Trespassing signs. I guess that was Rottweiler for “Take me home to Mama.” So I did.

Not being an attorney, Olivia wasn't allowed at the picnic and she answered the door. Jack leaped at her with unabashed dog joy.

“He misses his mama,” I said, “so I've brought him home.”

Squeals came from the backyard.

“I've got my grandkids here. Playing with the puppies. Come on back.”

With Jack prancing at her side, we walked through the disarray of her house and into the backyard. Two girls, maybe six and eight or near to it, were doing crooked cartwheels in the cropped Bahia grass of the backyard while three puppies whirled after them.

“Where's Crosby?” I asked, looking around for the playpen.

“Oh, he's upstairs, away from the kids. He's doing all right today, but those kids'll wear out a puppy, let alone an old fella. Want to see him?”

“No, I'll take your word for it.”

“Not that there's any urgency—at least, I don't think so—but that compassionate leave thing, have you talked to Jackson about it yet?” Olivia asked. “It'll give Angela some peace of mind to know she can go without penalty when she needs to.”

The littlest girl ran up to us. “Can you do cartwheels, Grandmom?” she shouted.

Olivia shrugged, then we traded looks and grinned.

What, after all, had all those yoga classes and gym workouts been about, if not for this? Well, okay, technically all that exercise had been about how we'd look in bathing suits, white jeans, or naked. Olivia might have been of the generation that danced half-naked at Woodstock, but she was still buff.

When Fred came home a half hour later, Olivia and I and the Rotts and the grandkids were doing cartwheels, none of us too grand at it, and Jack the Bear was spinning with glee, while upstairs in a playpen the ancient little rat dog slept.

Only later, when I was leaving and followed Olivia into her garage to rinse off some of the grass and dirt, did I smell something familiar. I couldn't place it right off, but I knew it.

“What's that smell?” I asked.

Olivia picked up a blue bottle and handed it to me. “This?”

“Yes.” A perfumy, chemical smell. Familiar, but at the same time not familiar.

“Flea spray. I get it at the Granary. They special order it for me. It's got way too much perfume in it, trying to cover up the smell of the tea-tree oil and the pyrethrins. But it works, and it's mostly natural.”

Olivia said she didn't completely trust those new systemic flea and tick preventatives, so she stuck with this spray, perfume and all.

Smell has a long memory, as well as a way of triggering the mind to remember.

I hadn't gotten to my Honda before it came back to me: the night I was mugged, the night before Dr. Trusdale was killed, the smell of the mugger's hands. A strong, perfumy, chemical smell. Like the flea spray.

Now, why would Olivia have tried to mug me?