Desperate Measures Read Online Free PDF Page B

that and accepted it, but knowing and accepting didn’t make it easier to bear. Volunteers had been in and out all afternoon and evening making cookies and punch, decorating the cafeteria for the social hour that would follow the ceremonies. Hilde had gone home to rest, and take her medicine, but when she returned, things were more chaotic than ever. Nola was a wreck; she had heard a rumor that some of the boys planned to make rude gestures as the choir sang. And the band rehearsal had been a shambles, she said. They had forgotten everything they ever knew.
    The auditorium was filling, but Hilde was in no hurry to leave her office, the only peaceful spot in the school; she was standing at her window when she saw a green sheriff’s car pull in and stop in the restricted area, not in the parking lot. A deputy got out and spoke to one of the children, who raced into the building, and moments later Leona Marchand appeared, carrying a pitcher. Hilde watched as the deputy spoke to her.
    Leona dropped the pitcher and ran to her car in the lot and took off so fast that the deputy couldn’t catch her, restrain her. He got back in the cruiser and sped after her.
    She was doing eighty-five at the worst curve before the waterfall on Old Opal Creek Road when she lost control. Her car smashed into a boulder, ricocheted, and hit another one, then flipped over and over down into Opal Creek.
    She never regained consciousness, and died at 3:45 the following morning.
    4
    The only thing Barbara Holloway hated about being a trial lawyer was panty hose. That June day when she entered her office a little after three, she was itching to shed them and put on her jeans and sandals, let her skin breathe the way nature intended.
    Her secretary, Maria Velasquez, looked up inquiringly. “Is Jonelle all right?”
    â€œShe walked,” Barbara said. “But, Maria, do your pal a favor. Tell her to knock it off, buy the things she can’t live without the way the rest of us do.” Jonelle was a petty shoplifter; everyone knew it-the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, Barbara—but this time she had been accused of lifting when she was innocent.
    Maria beamed at her. “Three messages,” she said, handing Barbara a slip of paper with the callers’ names and numbers, and her own notes about the time and purpose of the calls.
    Walking on to her own office, Barbara glanced at the names. Two she dismissed, then considered the third: William Thaxton.
    Will Thaxton was an attorney with a firm in Springfield, just across the Willamette River, or at least he had been the last she heard of him. She had known him most of her life; they had gone to high school together, where in the tenth grade he had shyly, almost fearfully, asked her to go out with him. At the time she had thought of him as having the neck of a giraffe with a monstrously big and sharp Adam’s apple that seemed to have a life of its own, moving up and down spasmodically. She had said no. Reflecting on it now, she didn’t think she had been cruel or even unkind, but he never spoke to her again. When their paths crossed, they nodded to each other politely.
    She dialed his number, which apparently was a private number that didn’t go through a switchboard. He answered.
    â€œBarbara Holloway,” she said. “Is that you, Will?”
    â€œYes. I’m glad you weren’t tied up longer; thanks for calling back so promptly. Barbara, I have a client who came to me for advice about a matter that’s really a criminal case. He’s with me now, in fact, and I recommended you. Are you free?” He sounded too eager, as if he was excited.
    â€œRelatively,” she said. “You know how that goes.” Will was not a trial lawyer—she doubted he had ever argued a case—but he had the voice for it, rich and mellow; he could do it.
    â€œWould it be possible for him to come around now? Within the next half hour or so?” Will