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billing?”
    “I’ve found that works best.”
    She laughed. “Protects you from irate litigants? Okay, I’ll authorize the check and then you can touch base with Wright and Ballister. They’re both eager to talk to you.”
    “They already phoned. I didn’t return their calls, don’t intend to.”
    “Why not?”
    “They’re going to reiterate their paperwork and try to prejudice my judgment. Also, if I spent time with them, I’d have to charge you a helluva lot more. For pain and suffering.”
    “You have no affection for members of the bar?”
    “It’s not a matter of affection, Nancy. Life’s too short.”
    The check from the court arrived the following week. I phoned Cherie Sykes’s home number, got a recorded message backed by what sounded like slowed-down, garbled Lynyrd Skynyrd.
    “
This is Ree. Leave your little message. Ex-oh-ex-oh-ex-oh.
” Giggles.
    I decided to give her a day to respond before trying her sister. She phoned my service two hours later.
    “Hi, this is Ree! You’re the psychologist!” Thirty-seven years old but the tinkly voice and singsong delivery could’ve belonged to a teenager.
    “I am.”
    “I can’t wait to meet you. To finish off with all this bull—with what my sister’s putting me through.”
    “How about tomorrow at ten?”
    “You got it! See you then!”
    “Do you have my address?”
    Silence. “I guess I’d need that. Now you probably think I’m a flake.”
    I recited the information.
    “Do you?” she said. “Think I’m flaky? I’m not, no matter what anyone says. It’s just that I’m nervous.”
    “No one likes being judged.”
    “Yeah, but that’s not the main reason, Doc. It’s dealing with my sister. She’s a wicked weirdo.”
    Not so weird you didn’t leave the kid with her for eighty-eight days
.
    I said, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow.”
    “You bet,” she said. “We’re gonna need to talk about it a
lot
!”
    She was five minutes late, flashed a smile as she apologized for “getting lost in all these crazy, winding streets.”
    My house is a white geometric thing perched atop an unmarked road that rises above a former bridle path snaking northwest from Beverly Glen. Once you’ve been there, it’s easy to find. Until then, good luck.
    First-time visitors often comment on the light and views. Cherie “Ree” Sykes stood in my living room and looked down at the floor. I shook her hand. Hers was cold and moist and she withdrew it quickly, as if afraid secretions could betray her.
    Tall and strongly built with hair dyed the color of orange soda, she looked every bit of thirty-seven, and then some. The flaming hair was long and braided. The plait reached the small of her back. Feathery bangs looped over a sun-seamed forehead. Earrings dangled from both lobes. The hard cartilage of her left ear was pierced by a black metal stud. The danglers were stainless steel; miniature chain link interspersed with miniature letters. X’s on one side, O’s on the other.
    Tic tac court battle.
    Her long, narrow face was graced by high cheekbones. Slightly down-slanted black eyes and a full wide mouth suggested a woman who’d once been beautiful. A diagonal scar across her chin, leathery skin, and deep wrinkles attested to adventurous living.
    An indigo tattoo of a snake—from the triangular head, some sort of adder—slid up the left side of her neck. It was a warm day but she had on a long-sleeved, snap-button cowgirl shirt, brown with a blackyoke, that looked brand-new. Tight jeans showcased ample hips and long legs that terminated in large, broad feet. Bright green patent-leather sandals with a medium heel added to the five eight genetics had granted her.
    Tall, broad-shouldered, rawboned woman with a weathered look that evoked the Dust Bowl photos of Walker Evans.
    Except for the body art.
    I guessed the sleeves to be a cover for additional ink. If so, they failed to do the trick: Curlicues of blue and red and green cascaded across her