The muscles in Lucas’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed slightly, but he took her counter and parried smoothly, expertly. “My point exactly. If Dale Robards hadn’t seduced an innocent sixteen-year-old girl, the entire tragedy could have been avoided. Robards should have been the one on trial for crimes of moral corruption.”
Mari polished off her mushroom and flashed him a smile, enjoying the sparring match, enjoying the idea that she could mouth off to an attorney and no longer have to worry about him ruining her career for it. “Dale’s moral corruption didn’t pull the trigger. Sweet little Lana did that all by herself.”
“I guess I should be glad you weren’t on the jury, Miss-?”
“Jennings. Marilee Jennings. We’ve met, actually. A couple years ago. I used to be a court reporter in Sacramento. I did some work for one of your partners once. State of California versus Armand Uscavaro. He claimed voices from hell compelled him to murder his parents in their sleep, then make it look like a robbery so he could inherit two million dollars. Poor kid. Turned out they wouldn’t let him listen to heavy metal. I suppose they deserved to die.”
Lucas ignored the bite of her words. Her sarcasm slid off him like oil on Teflon. “Small world.” He flashed her a bright smile. “I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember our meeting. I like to think I never forget a pretty face.”
“You probably remember my friend better. She used to do quite a bit of work with your firm. Lucy MacAdam?”
He blinked at the mention of Lucy’s name, as if some invisible hand had slapped his face. Mari catalogued the reaction and turned to the young woman with an apologetic smile. “In the midst of all that weirdness and macho stuff going on this afternoon, I didn’t get your name.”
Samantha looked down on the little blonde with the husky voice and curvy body and felt like a giant wooden totem, oversize with exaggerated features, big and clumsy. The beautiful teal silk blouse and slacks she had chosen from the wardrobe suddenly felt garish and huge on her, the makeup she had so carefully applied, clownish. She wished fervently she could become invisible or wake up and discover this had all been a dream, that she was really in bed beside her husband and not standing at a posh party chatting with one of his mistresses. But she didn’t become invisible and she didn’t wake up, and Marilee Jennings and Ben Lucas were staring at her, waiting.
“Samantha,” she mumbled, clutching the stem of her wineglass as if she expected it to snap and fall with a crash to the blue tile that edged the pool. “Samantha Rafferty.”
It was Mari’s turn to blink in shock. “Rafferty? Are you Will Rafferty’s wife?”
“Yes.”
The answer came complete with a stony look Mari didn’t immediately interpret. She was too busy putting together the pieces of the afternoon’s little drama. Suddenly Will’s reaction made some kind of sense. J.D.’s remark to his brother played over in her mind-We got a big problem here, little brother. Will’s estranged wife in the company of Evan Bryce, the man who would be king of the Eden Valley. Oh, boy.
She cut a glance across the pool at Bryce. He was laughing, pinching the bimbob’s pecs as Uma Kimball shoveled another cheese puff into her mouth. In her mind’s eye she imagined him suddenly levitating above the crowd, shooting lightning bolts down from the tips of his fingers. He had that air about him, that he was a warlock who had taken human form just for sport. Was it really all a game to him-playing with people’s lives? Was that why he had brought his little retinue to the Stars and Bars-to watch the drama of human life unfold before his eyes? The thought gave her a chill.
The feeling of Samantha’s petulant gaze on her brought Mari’s attention back to the matter at hand. The source of that look booted her mentally. Jealousy. God, the poor kid probably thought she was one of Will’s many conquests. She called him half a dozen slanderous names in her head. He’d gotten her into enough trouble already, the jerk.
“J.D. invited me to watch the branding,” she lied. “He’s been helping me out with Lucy’s animals. My animals, now, I guess. I can’t quite get used to that idea.” She turned back to Ben Lucas, who seemed as well composed as a Mozart quintet. “I suppose you heard about Lucy’s accident?”
“Yes. It was a terrible tragedy for all concerned. Graf-Dr. Sheffield-was beside himself with grief.”
“Too bad he wasn’t beside himself while he was out hunting. One of him might have seen it was a woman he was shooting at.” The words came out as sharp as knives, as sharp as her resentment. Mari knew she should have tempered them, but the feelings weren’t dulling with time. Just the opposite. The shock was burning off like fog in the face of a strong morning sun. Every day the irony and the stupidity came a little clearer into focus, a little brighter, a little more painful.
Lucas was frowning at her.
“You know Dr. Sharpshooter?” She took a swallow of champagne, hoping in vain to cool her hot tongue a little. She wished fervently for a cigarette.
“I’m his attorney.”
Oh, God, what have you stuck your foot in this time, Marilee?
All around her she could hear the noise of the party like the distant sound of bees swarming. The music boomed out of hidden speakers, all thumping and discordant static. The light from the pool flickered and rippled across Ben Lucas’s handsome features in bars of bright and dark like moonglow through a venetian blind. His mouth was moving. Mari could barely hear him above the pounding in her temples. Something about having a second home across the valley and belonging to the Montana bar.
“How convenient,” she said tightly. Lucy had worked for Lucas. Lucas had been her lover at one time. Lucas worked for Sheffield. All of them knew Bryce, the puppet master. Wasn’t that nice and cozy? All the bits and fragments of information swirled around inside her head like colored glass in a kaleidoscope. “You must be proud of yourself, pleading the value of a human life down to a misdemeanor and pocket change.”
His dark eyes took on a flat quality. Like a shark’s, she thought. How apropos. “It was an accident, Ms. Jennings.”
“Yeah, I know the drill,” she said bitterly. “No malice, no premeditation. If he wasn’t innocent, he should have been.”
She glared up at him, hating him, hating his kind. He was the breed of lawyer who made a mockery of the system. He played the courts like an elaborate game of Let’s Make a Deal. The only thing that mattered was his record of acquittals. Not the law. Not justice. Not innocence or guilt.
“Pardon me, but I’ve had it up to here with lawyers,” she said, slashing a hand across her throat.
She flung her glass into the pool and strode for the house, ignoring the curious looks that turned her way.
A pair of French doors stood open, leading into a huge room in the center section of the house. Mari waded across a sea of champagne-colored carpet, taking in only peripherally the white leather sofas and earth-tone pillows, the Georgia O’Keeffe prints on the walls, the Native American artifacts displayed in tall lighted glass cases.
Stepping up into a foyer area of glazed Mexican tile, she took a left and headed down a wide hall, looking for a bathroom. She needed a few minutes alone and she had the most overwhelming need to wash after her conversation with Lucas. Beneath the male-model looks, inside the $1,500 suit and the Cole-Haan loafers, he was an eel, a slimy, ugly, beady-eyed eel. He was the kind of man who billed his clients $300 an hour for thirty-hour days and refused to pay his court reporter until the final gavel had fallen on a litigation that had taken eighteen months to complete.
A door swung open in front of her, nearly smacking her in the face, and Uma Kimball staggered out, giggling and glassy-eyed, a demented pixie in sackcloth. Her skin had a translucent quality, as if it were stretched very thin and very tight over her small, fine bones. Her red hair was short and ragged, looking as if rodents had chewed it off while she slept. She wiped her collagen-plumped mouth on the back of her hand, smearing her lipstick.