Courthouse Steps

“Not fair?” Ethan Trask repeated, pouncing on the word. “What you and your grandfather are trying to do is what’s not fair, Miss Baron. The law does not play favorites.”

Amanda blinked again. She took a step back toward Peter. What was the man talking about? She was the one who had resisted representing her grandfather. She was the one who had done everything in the world to avoid her appointment.

Peter spoke for her. “The accused has a right to the counsel of his choice, Mr. Trask.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But this is not an ordinary case.”

“It’s a fundamental right,” Peter insisted.

“We’ll see what Judge Griffen has to say.” Ethan Trask’s attention shifted back to Amanda. “I’m filing the motion,” he said levelly, scorching her with the intensity of his gaze. Then he motioned to Carlos Varadero that they should continue on their way. After a brief nod, Carlos fell into step at his side.

Amanda was still speechless once she and Peter were alone again. She watched the progress of the two men. After consulting what had to be diagrams and photographs pulled from an envelope Carlos Varadero carried, they proceeded to the spot where she and Peter had stood earlier—the site of Margaret’s one-time grave.

Amanda’s emotions were a jumble. Shock and amazement warred with affront.

Peter took her arm and continued to trudge up the hillside. “A rather intense young man,” he pronounced.

“He’s got to be six or eight years older than I am, and I’m almost thirty!” Amanda protested.

“I’m speaking from the great advantage of my years. Once a person passes sixty-five, nearly everyone seems young.”

Amanda stopped, anger having overtaken all her other emotions. “What did he mean, Peter? What does he think Granddad and I are trying to do? My only goal is to mount a successful defense, to be sure that my grandfather doesn’t go to jail for the rest of his life for a murder he didn’t commit!”

“Obviously Mr. Trask thinks you’re placing an unfair burden on the state, and he’s giving you fair warning of what he intends to do. I wondered if he’d latch on to that.”

“You mean you had an idea that he might?”

“If he’s as good a lawyer as everyone says, yes.”

“You might have warned me,” she complained.

Peter smiled. “I didn’t want to frighten you unduly.”

“I’m not afraid of him! At least, not anymore.” Amanda threw a look back over her shoulder toward the two men, who happened, at that moment, to be looking up at them. “Humph,” she sniffed, then she jerked her head around and walked proudly on.

The man had two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. He was just an ordinary human being, nothing more, nothing less. All she had to do over the next weeks was to keep telling herself that!

* * *

CARLOS NUDGED Ethan’s arm and pointed to the two people making their way slowly up the hillside. A slender young woman with bright chestnut hair and a portly man dressed in a rumpled suit, who walked as if his knees hurt.

At that moment, the woman turned, and for the space of a second, the distance between them evaporated. Ethan again saw those huge, dark blue eyes that seemed to fill her face. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was something about her that was arresting. A small, straight nose, firm rounded chin, delicately carved cheeks—her features were a blend of feminine strengths. It was the look in her eyes, though, that had stopped him, forced him to notice her. Besides quick intelligence and a certain pride, there was a freshness about the way she looked at the world. A sweetness and generosity of spirit that Ethan was unused to in the people he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Then she turned away, and he was released.

“Mmm,” Carlos murmured. “It seems this Amanda Baron is everything we were told she would be.”

“Keep your mind on your work, Carlos.”

“Can you, my friend? Are you able to do that?”

“Easily,” Ethan claimed.

The investigator shook his head. “A man must have more in his life than work. A woman, a child...”

“I don’t see you with a woman or child,” Ethan parried.

Carlos smiled. “It is something I dream of, and one day—one day—I will have it.”

“Which will be a great moment for us all,” Ethan returned sarcastically. “Now, do you think we can get back to the business at hand?” He lifted the police photos he had been studying. “The body was found right about here, and Margaret Ingalls’s room was on the lower floor of the lodge.” Ethan shuffled other photos until he found the ones he wanted. They showed a room empty of furniture and adornment, except for a painting of a woman, a wall mirror and a fireplace. On the far wall, leading outside, were French doors.

Ethan handed the photographs, one by one, to his assistant. Both had studied the glossy prints last night, staying in the Sugar Creek office until well past midnight as they tried to digest as much information as they could about the case.

Ethan said, “It’s a short trip from the bedroom to this point. The gardener—this Philip Wocheck—claims to have picked her up and carried her down here. He says he ‘helped her go.’ Wasn’t that his testimony before the grand jury?”

Carlos nodded. “He also said he saw someone run from the room. It might have been Judson Ingalls and it might not. Do you think he is covering for his old boss?”

“Considering his sudden bouts of forgetfulness brought on by intensive questioning...yes, I’d say he’s covering something.”

Carlos shook his head. “The man is seventy-five years old, my friend. People that old—”

“Can’t be allowed to evade telling the truth! Age is a fact of life, not an excuse. Look at what’s already happened. The local D.A. didn’t press charges against him when, by every count, he should have—for obstruction of justice at the very least, if not for acting as an accessory.”

“He did volunteer the information,” Carlos reminded.

“Yes, but did he tell the whole story or did he evade?”

“The D.A. believed him.”

“I know. But something just isn’t right. I believe he’s hiding something—like the fact that Judson Ingalls ordered him to dispose of the body. Otherwise, why would he—”

“He has no immunity. He did not ask for it.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Ethan agreed. “And when we talk with him, I’m going to remind him of that fact.”

The men moved down to the lake. This was a preliminary visit to familiarize themselves with the murder site. Each knew that they would return, probably more than once. As Carlos looked out over the water, Ethan studied the resort perched on the crest of the hill. The account he had read last night was prominent in his mind. It was a story of wealth, excessive behavior and passions gone awry, the kind of story that Ethan had seen repeated many times. He hunched his shoulders, impatient with delay.

Carlos skipped a rock across the water. “It is very beautiful here,” he said, his accent as soft as his words. “It reminds me of a place I knew in Cuba, not far from my home. I was just a child, of course, but my father would often take me to the water and we would sit and talk. About nothing in particular...just talk.”

Carlos lapsed into a silence that Ethan didn’t break. He, too, remembered a time spent by the water, along the wharves of one of the two great rivers that formed a confluence at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Only for him there had been no father to sit and talk with. He’d had no father—at least, none that he knew. And the time he’d spent on the wharves had not been idyllic.

Ethan wrenched his mind from the past—from the scruffily clothed boy who’d stood out from those around him, the boy who had never fit in because he couldn’t act as irresponsibly as the others did, the boy who in the end had held himself aloof even though he’d ached to belong.... “Let’s go check out the lodge,” Ethan said in a clipped tone. “And this potting shed we’ve heard so much about.” Then he turned away, from the lake and from his memories.

* * *

AMANDA WORKED through her lunch break. Peter had given her a few helpful directions and then had gone back to Lake Geneva. He was expecting a call from his literary agent that afternoon and didn’t want to miss it. When she had questioned him as to whether he was trying to sell another volume of his memoirs, he had avoided a direct answer and escaped as quickly as he could.

With a mystified smile, Amanda had set to work, and soon was immersed in sorting through the precedent-setting cases and rules of law that she would use in writing her brief for Judge Griffen on the defendant’s right to counsel. She hadn’t expected to be doing this. She hadn’t expected an objection to her relationship in the case.

Margaret’s granddaughter. She didn’t feel like Margaret’s granddaughter. She didn’t feel as if Margaret deserved to be any relation at all. For the family, the woman had been nothing but trouble.