‘What’s to see? What are they looking for?’
‘This will maybe sound arrogant, but it’s true that people don’t identify with two attractive women on the same side. Right now I’ve got the jury on my side – our side. If Celine comes in, human nature is going to tell the jurors that we – she and I – are natural enemies. Somebody’s credibility is going to suffer. Whoever’s, it’s bad for our side. If you question her there’s no conflict. It’s only natural she’d want to cooperate, especially looking all spiffy like you do today.’
Hardy shrugged.
Pullios put her straw in her mouth and sucked up some iced tea. ‘You’d better believe those jurors are a fairly good representation of the average man, or average woman. I couldn’t care less if I sound enlightened or liberated or anything else. I’m playing to win, and I’m telling you that if I depose Celine Nash it’s a weak move. We can probably afford a weak move, okay, but it’s a bad tactic. You don’t give anything away. Even to grand juries. You still take your best chance every time. And you’re our best chance with Celine.’
She whispered she was sorry – more mouthed it – as soon as she sat down. She was elegant in cool blue. She’d put on extra eyeshadow, and Hardy wondered if she’d slept last night. Or cried.
It wasn’t supposed to be lengthy. All he was supposed to do was nail down what Owen had said to her about going out with May on the day he was killed.
It had been the Tuesday before – the sixteenth, in the morning. She had called him at his office. Celine had intended to go away the upcoming weekend and wanted to make sure her father hadn’t made plans that included her.
‘Don’t you think thirty-nine’s a little old to be at his beck and call?’
‘I wasn’t at his beck and call. My father didn’t control me!’
He put that out of his mind. That was last night. This was today. He had a limited role and he’d better keep to it. ‘And Ms Nash, tell us what your father said regarding the day in question, June twentieth.’
She kept trying to catch his eye, give him a look that promised forgiveness, but he kept himself focused on individual jurors. He would look at her as she answered questions.
‘He said he was planning on going over to the Farralons on Saturday with his girlfriend, with May.’
‘Had he told you of such plans in the past?’
‘Yes, all the time.’
‘And in your experience, did your father tend to follow through on these types of things?’
This was shooting fish in a barrel. He kept expecting to hear somebody object to the nature and thrust of his questions, but since there was neither a defense attorney nor a judge in the room he could ask what he liked.
‘Always. If Daddy said he was going to do something he did it.’
‘All right, but just for the sake of argument, what if, for example, Ms Shinn had gotten sick Saturday morning?’
‘Daddy would have done something else. He wouldn’t have wasted a day. He wouldn’t have done that.’
‘He wouldn’t have gone out alone, perhaps, since he’d already made those plans?’
Celine gave it a moment, chewing on her thumbnail. ‘No, I don’t think so. He wasn’t a solitary man. Besides, we know he didn’t go out alone, don’t we?’
‘You’re right, Ms Nash, we do. Indeed we do.’
It took until three-thirty, but they got the indictment.
There was no immediate flurry of activity. The bail was still in effect. There would be no immediate arrest of May Shinn, but the fur would really begin to fly when David Freeman got the news, which would be very soon.
Meanwhile, Hardy packed his briefcase, hoping that Celine Nash had decided not to wait around until the jury adjourned.
Celine fell in beside him just outside the door.
‘I am sorry,’ she said. She linked an arm through his and he felt the heat of her body where they came together.
‘It’s okay, people get upset. It happens.’
‘I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen.’
‘It’s all right, forget it. We’ll just move ahead on the trial. It ought to go pretty quickly now.’
He had stopped walking, waiting by the elevators. She was standing too close and his heart was beating enough that he felt it. ‘What do you want me to do, Celine?’
‘I just don’t want you to be mad at me.’
‘I’m not mad at you. I was out of line, it wasn’t exactly professional.’
‘I don’t care about professional.’
‘That’s our relationship,’ he said, clearly as he could say it. Then, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does, it does matter. Do you know what it is to be completely alone?’
Not a professional question.
The elevators opened, jammed as usual. Hardy got in, Celine cramming next to him, thigh to thigh, arm in his. He smelled the powder she used, the same powder she’d left on him as she’d greeted him with a kiss at Hardbodies! last night – that he’d scrubbed off in the Shamrock before Frannie had come in for date night. He didn’t press the button for his floor and they rode it all the way down to the street level in silence, everyone else chattering away.
They went outside the front doors, turned east on Bryant, away from the bright sun. A cool wind was up off the Bay. They went two blocks before Hardy said he did know what it was to be alone.
Celine took that with no response. Then: ‘You must think I’m crazy.’
He grinned tightly. ‘People do crazy things. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re crazy.’
‘It doesn’t?’
Hardy walked a couple more steps. ‘I don’t know, maybe it does.’
It was a little Cuban coffee shop, unnamed, dark as a cave. The table was of finished plywood – there were seven such tables, four with people at them. A Spanish television station whispered from the back corner. The good smell had stopped their walk and brought them inside. They were drinking café con leche made with heated Carnation evaporated milk, sweet.
If you walked in and saw them sitting across from one another, aside from knowing they didn’t belong here in their Anglo clothes and complexions, you would assume many true things about them. Though they didn’t know each other very well, there was a powerful attraction between them. They had to control it by putting the table between them. They weren’t lovers; if they were they’d have moved together. Well, maybe they were in the middle of a fight, but they weren’t acting angry. No, the first call was right. They were getting to something.
The man was leaning forward, hands clenched around the wide, deep coffee cup. He was more than leaning, in fact, more like hunched over, rapt, mesmerized?
She seemed more controlled, but there were giveaways, invitations. She sat sideways to him, very well put together. Her dark suit was muted but a lot of her excellent legs showed, tightly crossed and curled back under her chair. She held her cup lightly in one hand -her other extended out, subtle enough, toward him, there if he wanted it, if he dared take it.
She was doing most of the talking. You would think this might be the day they would do it. From here they’d go to one of their places, or maybe a motel. You could feel it, even halfway across the room.
28
After Dorothy had gone, Jeff Elliot called Parker Whitelaw at the Chronicle and told him his sight had returned -he’d be back at work the next day.
This wasn’t completely true, but Parker wouldn’t have to know it. Most people were ignorant about how MS worked. They could see the results – the weakened limbs, weight loss, lack of coordination – but they had no clue about the way the disease progressed. Jeff thought this was just as well. It was actually to his advantage if Parker thought that whatever had laid him up for a day had now completely passed and he could go back to being the ace reporter he’d been before.