Unlucky in Law Read Online Free PDF Page B

Nina stayed here in Carmel with Paul, she would lose Sandy. Sandy was rooted to Tahoe deep as the white pines and ancient oaks on her property. The idea made Nina quake. She needed Sandy.
    “How did it go with Wyatt this morning?” Sandy asked.
    “It's a long story.” Nina gave her an abbreviated version. “Could you get my interview notes into the computer today?”
    “Sure. Guilty or not?”
    “Don't know.”
    “Didn't you form a first impression?”
    “He looks harmless.”
    “But then so did Jeffrey Dahmer. I heard Stefan Wyatt went to school at CSUMB for a while before he got arrested,” Sandy said. Her son, Wish, had also attended California State University at Monterey Bay that summer, picking up more credits toward a degree in criminal justice. “You know their thing, right?”
    “No,” said Nina. She picked up the top file Klaus had left and scanned it.
    “Holistic studies,” Sandy said, her voice passing stern judgment.
    “Okay.”
    “Good place for kids with bad attitudes who can't cut it in the real world.”
    “Wait a minute. Your own son goes there. Wish says he has terrific teachers.”
    “He's not doing that holistic stuff. He's on the vocational side.”
    “I think it sounds interesting. And it sure fits Wyatt's style. He's young, loose, in the tearing-down phase politically.”
    Sandy, shifting in a borrowed chair, black eyes narrowed, expressed the mood of the displaced and dispossessed, saying, “Other people have to be practical about what they study so they can get along after college. Other people settle down, pay a mortgage, keep a business going . . .”
    “Without gallivanting around the Monterey Peninsula, grabbing diamond rings, when they should be back practicing law at Tahoe with their long-suffering secretary. Is that what you're saying?”
    Sandy put on her poker face.
    “I'm not sure I need a hard time from you this morning, Sandy.”
    “You call this a hard time? Where's the groom?”
    “Paul's due in a few minutes. I called him on my way in from Salinas and told him about my interview with the client.”
    “That Dutchman's a bad influence on you.”
    “Yeah?” Nina said, putting one report aside and picking up another. “Seems like you always used to promote him as the solution to my problems.”
    “Did not,” Sandy said.
    “What are you working on there?”
    “Paperwork, to do with your temporary employment here, health insurance forms, tax info. As usual, you generate more stuff to be assembled than a four-year-old at Christmas. Meanwhile, take a look at this.”
    Nina took the file. “What have we here?”
    “When Stefan Wyatt first retained the firm, Klaus hired a detective. This is his report. Read it and weep, while I finish copying the rest for you.”
    Nina went into her temporary office. Yellowing oak bookshelves covered three walls, mostly full of California codes. The stately blue leather compendiums of yore were quickly becoming obsolete in law firms. She could rely on her computer for most of her research these days.
    One wall held a big window to the courtyard with its beach fog, bees, and weeds. She sat down at the unfamiliar desk, into a chair molded to fit some other body. She opened a drawer in the desk she had been loaned for the duration. Inside, lint, dust, and moldy mints had accumulated. Not allowing herself to think of her bright and pleasant office at Tahoe, now in the hands of a young lawyer friend, she shut the drawer, picked up the file, and began to read with concentration this time.
    “So?” Sandy asked from the doorway a few minutes later.
    “Aside from its brevity,” Nina said, “what surprises me most about this report are Klaus's notes about it.”
    “What notes?”
    “Exactly. There aren't any notes. No follow-ups. No signed witness statements. The report itself—this investigator interviewed witnesses, but he gave Klaus a couple of no-content paragraphs on each interview. I question whether he talked to these