In this case the sad face belongs to a warm spirit. If Potter, Skarpellos could ever have been said to have a soul, Jo Ann Campanelli was its embodiment.
She ushers me toward the living room and turns on a floor lamp to give the place some light.
“It has been a while,” I say. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to you at Ben’s funeral.” So here I stand, at the threshold of her front room, trawling for information. It has been a singular question that has eaten at me since I finished our survey of the state’s case against Talia. Why was there no statement from Jo Ann, Ben’s secretary?
She’s leaning over the couch, reaching for the drawstring on the curtains, to let a little daylight into this cavern. She finds it and bathes us both in bright light.
“Oh dear, that is better, isn’t it? I spend so much time in the back of the house, it seems I never use this room anymore. When you’re alone you don’t do much entertaining,” she says. “Not many people come by.
“You were asking about the funeral,” she says, remembering where we were. “I went later, after it was over, to his grave, to be alone with him for a while.”
“Ah.” I nod, like I can understand such sentiment.
“Who wants to be subjected to a crying old woman?” she says. “How’s practice? You’re looking good.” She is uneasy with the topic of Ben’s death, anxious to move on to another.
“It’s going well,” I tell her.
“Yes, I see you on television,” she says. “That shameful thing with Talia, Mrs. Potter. They should have their heads examined. She could no more kill Ben than I could.”
“I agree,” I say. “But circumstances make victims of us all at times. I’m afraid we’ve got our work cut out.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it. They can’t have a case?”
“I wish I could say no.” I tell her without getting into the details that the evidence against Talia is not a happy sight.
“Then they’re wearing blinders,” she says.
“I wish I could put you on the jury,” I tell her.
She laughs. Then mirth fades from her face. “This whole thing makes no sense. The suicide.” She utters a fleeting profanity to herself under her breath, like this is utterly unbelievable.
She shakes her head. “I’ll tell you,” she says, “if they’d talked to me, I’d have set them straight.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say.
“What?”
“They never interviewed you?”
“No.” She says it with some indignation. “How about a cup of coffee. I’ve got some already brewed.” It’s an invitation to exchange more dirt.
“If it’s no trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Do you mind the kitchen? It’s just so much more comfortable than out here.”
“Lead the way.”
It’s a cheery room, yellow wallpaper, little flowers on the diagonal above white, wood wainscot. A copper teapot on the stove, a dozen photographs of grandchildren, nieces, and nephews litter the walls along with a series of plaster-cast geese.
“Regular or decaf?” she asks.
“Regular-black.”
“Good,” she says. “None of that sissy stuff for you.” She reaches for the carafe in the coffee maker, still piping hot. Jo Ann is a coffee hound. There were always three cups in various places in the office, half full, with her name on them.
There’s a certain organized clutter in this room, the kind that neat people engage in. There is a sense that everything can be swept into an out-of-the-way cupboard or closet on a single sortie. The kitchen table is a tangle of heavy brown twine laid out in the loose weaving of a hanging macrame flower-pot holder, the knots not quite tight. An unfinished landscape with twisted tubes of acrylic paint sits on an easel in the corner, near the window. Jo Ann, by either choice or necessity, has become a woman of leisure.
“Please sit down.” She pushes the twine toward one corner of the table. It disappears into a drawer that she slides closed underneath. I pull out a chair and sit.
“It’s good to have company,” she says. “Breaks up the day a little. Here.” She puts a mug of steaming, dark mud in front of me. Now I remember her coffee from the firm. Ben wouldn’t touch it, said it was her way of telling him she didn’t do coffee-except for herself. She brings her own cup and takes a chair catercorner to mine.
“So how’s retirement?” I ask.
“Has its moments.”
“But you miss the office?”
“Is it that obvious?”
I make a face.
“Well, I suppose it gave my life a certain structure, some purpose, especially after Jim passed away. Though I have to admit, it would never have been the same after Ben died.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’ve seen the place.”
“Don’t go back myself. I don’t think I’d be welcome.” She says this leaning back in her chair smiling a little, like there’s a secret she’s ready to impart.
“Why did you leave?”
She laughs, not hearty, but cynical. “It wasn’t by choice. Had to hire a lawyer to get my retirement,” she says. “Skarpellos-the guy’s lower than the nipples on a snake.” She bites off the words. “Ben wasn’t cold yet. He called me in and told me to clean out my desk. Had a security guard stand over me while I did it. The kind of trust you get after twenty years on the job.” She says this with bitterness.
I don’t say anything, but give her a look, like “Tell me more.” The aroma of the coffee is making its way to my senses. I haven’t tasted it, but the smell is a little like hydrochloric acid.
“I forgot, you weren’t there,” she says. “Most of it happened after you left. The place was an armed camp.” Jo is describing the firm in the days before her departure. “Tony knew where my loyalties rested.”
“He and Ben were at odds?” I say it matter-of-factly, for I saw these pitched battles between them.
“An understatement,” she says. “The partnership was coming apart at the seams.”
That surprises me. While they had a history of fighting, none of it ever lasted more than a day. They could scream at each other at the top of their voices and forget the reason by the next morning.
“Jealousy,” she says. “Skarpellos was green. It was bad enough that Ben was leaving, but it set like a burr under Tony’s saddle that he was going to all that glitter in Washington. He’d been complaining for a year that Ben wasn’t carrying his share. All the partners told him it was gonna be a gold mine for the firm. A former partner on the U.S. Supreme Court. The prestige alone would bring in a dozen new clients. Tony at high tea with the Court. Can you see it?” This brings a little chuckle from both of us.
She takes a sip of coffee and lets it flow like molten lead down her throat. The pack of cigarettes was on the table now.
“Mind?” she says.
I shake my head. I have become the stand-in for a thousand carping coffee breaks that Jo has missed since leaving the firm.
“Anyway,” she says, “the bottom line was getting the clients. And Tony was petrified that with Ben gone the clients would slowly drift away. Everybody knew it was Ben who kept the traffic coming through the door. Skarpellos had taken a free ride for years. It was about to come to an end.” She’s lighting up.
I know that this was true. Though Tony did his share of milking money from corporate clients, it was Ben who kept the cash cow in alfalfa.
“When Ben got back from Washington, his last trip, they had a lulu,” she says.
Between words she emits a stream of forced smoke from one side of her mouth toward the ceiling. A little hardness.
“It was a humdinger,” this argument between Skarpellos and Potter, she says. “You could hear ’em yelling all the way out to reception.”
I’m all ears.
“Funny thing,” she says. “While Tony had his nose in a snit”-smoke followed by little bits of tobacco stripped from her tongue punctuate this monologue-“Ben leaving and all, it was Ben who started the whole thing, the argument.”