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“Uncle Dave’s been sick,” Chelsi said, taking her cue.

“Hmm,” Nina said. “Well, I understand you were going to bring me the court papers to look at,” she went on neutrally.

“Right.” He reached inside his wool shirt and pulled out a battered envelope. He set it on the desk, the hand revealing a slight tremor. Nina looked at him carefully, noting the thin burst of broken capillaries in his ruddy cheeks, the tangle of red veins around the edges of his eyes.

He hasn’t had the hair of the dog this morning, she thought, and he misses it. No wonder Sandy had given her a warning eyebrow. Sandy didn’t like drinkers.

On the other hand, wasn’t it a positive sign that he had held off to talk with her? Maybe there was still hope for him.

She opened the envelope and pulled out several legal documents in the Wrongful Death and Negligence case of Ha

The complaint Bruce Be

Chelsi had displayed a good grasp of her uncle’s legal situation. He was about to have his case dismissed on the motion of the Ace High Lodge, because he had done nothing to bring the matter to trial for almost two years.

Be

There, according to the dry legalese of the complaint, “they observed an armed robbery in progress.” And, in what seemed to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, at thirty-eight, third-grade teacher Sarah Ha

There were few traces of the gunman or other witnesses. The motel clerk, Meredith Assawaroj, had heard the shots from an adjoining property. She had missed seeing the killer but had provided the South Lake Tahoe police with a fair description of the three motel guests who had been held up, young people who had packed up and left before the police arrived.

The clerk’s descriptions of these three led nowhere. The gun hadn’t been left at the scene. The witnesses had paid in cash and the description provided had been inadequate to find them. Nina made a note to find out more about that.

Now the Ace High Lodge wanted out of Ha

Puckett’s work looked good. Her law was solid. Statutory limits restricted the ability of plaintiffs to file a lawsuit and then do nothing, as Dave Ha

Puckett had apparently advised the motel owner well-to lay low for as long as possible and then attack Ha

She looked up. Ha

She cleared her throat. Setting down the motion to dismiss, she said, “Your wife seems to have been the classic i

“Did you know she was expecting?”

“Yes.”

He shifted in his chair, like the seat hurt him.

“What do you plan to do now?” Nina asked him.

“Slink away, I guess.”

“The Lodge wants attorney’s fees.”

“I might get socked with their lawyer fees?”

“Perhaps.”

Dave Ha

“I don’t know. I could guess, from the amount of work I see here, possibly several thousand dollars.”



“If I do nothing, what will happen?”

“You’ll probably have to pay their fees.”

During a long silence Ha

“Well?” he asked finally.

Nina raised her eyebrows.

“What do you think?”

“It isn’t hopeless,” Nina said.

“There isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop them, is there?”

“You can fight the motion. The Code of Civil Procedure does require that a suit like yours be dismissed two years after service on the defendant with no action. But it hasn’t been quite two years. It’s still in the discretion of the court.”

Ha

“We’ll take care of the money, Uncle Dave,” Chelsi said.

“I will need a retainer,” Nina said, thinking of Sandy, who would hold her accountable. She came up with the lowest amount she could manage. “Two thousand, billed against my hours. I also charge a hundred fifty an hour. There may be expenses. If we manage to keep the case going, those expenses could mount up fast.”

“Done,” Chelsi said, whipping out her checkbook. Ha

Nina nodded. She pushed the button as though Sandy hadn’t left the door open a crack and been listening the whole time.

After Ha

“You think we can make money on this?” Sandy said. She reposed like a Buddha in her Aeron chair, detached, hands folded calmly on the desk over Nina’s notes.

“I do. Fast money. That’s if we can get past this motion to dismiss. The motel clerk should have been in the office. The area should have been less of an ambush invitation. There may have been other incidents-this kind of crime occurs in clusters. Maybe the motel should have been on notice.”

“The client’s unreliable.”

“Yes. But his relatives seem to have him in line. I think some money might help him, Sandy. Rehab. Grief counseling. Whatever. I trust Chelsi to steer him right.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“Let’s get the police reports and check to see if there were similar crimes reported in the area over the past ten years. File a notice that I’m in as Ha

“Betty Jo Puckett?”

“You know her?”

“I met her. She has a problem in the tact department.”

Nina smiled, saying, “Report anything else you hear.”

“Before you go, what else do you need?”

“Get the file made up. I’ll get going on drafting the Response to the Motion to Dismiss after court. There is a long line of precedents regarding i

“The singer? Nineteen-sixties. ‘Lipstick on Your Collar.’ That wasn’t even her biggest hit. But even now it strikes a chord with me.” Sandy ’s husband, Joe, and she had broken up for many years and only recently remarried.