“Can’t you get Barbara back into mediation?”
“No, I wish I could. It’s a voluntary process, and if she doesn’t want to come back, no one can make her. Henry, did you hear me about getting your own lawyer?”
Henry reluctantly agreed.
Rainey was so discouraged that she couldn’t face an evening alone at home, ruminating about lousy lawyers and the cases, and lives, they made more difficult. She ordered in dinner, and settled down to paperwork.
Which is why she was still in the office when Lawrence called around ten p.m.
Unlike Henry, her friend wasn’t coherent. At least, she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He’d gone to see Barbara, (their client, Barbara?), and something about four men, and the Chicago trip had been totally fabricated, and she’d been sick in bed for a week? No, that couldn’t be what he said. Rainey told him to calm down and come to the office, and she’d make coffee.
She was watching for him when his bike wobbled down the street with its little headlight pushing away the darkness, and he climbed off and leaned it against the meter. He came in shaking, as if the weather outside were bitter and cold, instead of a balmy seventy degrees. Her desk was a mess, so she poured coffee for them both and took it into the conference room, pulled coasters out of the drawer, and set the mugs down in the usual ritual. Lawrence followed her like a dazed animal and sat at the table, his hands limp in his lap.
Then he got himself under control, looked her in the eye and said, “I’ve been having an affair with Barbara.”
“Barbara?” Her voice rose. “Barbara, of Henry and Barbara? Barbara Linnet?”
He nodded his head, now looking down, the moment of confession turning to shame. “Don’t say anything yet, Rainey. There’s more.”
She bit back the remarks on the tip of her tongue about professional ethics, the incredible damage he was doing to their collective reputations by sleeping with a client, the way he was destroying not only his own marriage but the business that was her identity, the business they had worked so hard together to build. She gritted her teeth, mastered the impulse to throw the coffee in his face, sighed loudly, and said, in her steeliest voice, “Go on.”
“I knew Barbara’s kids were spending the night with friends, so I went to see her tonight. I was worried about her hiring such a stupid, vicious lawyer. I thought it would backfire, you know, that he would drag out the divorce and make everything take forever.”
“Lawrence, how long have you been sleeping with her?”
“Since after our first mediation session. I don’t suppose you could tell that she kept rubbing my foot with hers under the table. Her hand…she had her hand on my thigh. You remember, when I nearly knocked the table over? It’s funny, nothing happened when she was my therapy patient.” He looked at Rainey, as if he actually thought she would remember and understand, or even approve of his restraint with a patient. “She was so hot, Rainey, I can’t even tell you.”
“Don’t, Lawrence. Do not tell me. Stop right there.” A surge of rage rolled from Rainey’s gut to the top of her head. She could feel her cheeks burning, as if flames would pour out of her mouth if she opened it. Hot, she thought, I’ll show you hot!
Lawrence’s face turned very red, and she realized that he wasn’t that cute when he blushed.
She took some calming breaths, then spoke slowly. “Lawrence, the other day, when you and Barbara were both late…?”
“Uh, yeah.” He nodded. “We were together.” A faint expression crossed his face that looked smug, self-satisfied, but it disappeared in a fraction of a second.
Then suddenly his face contorted, and he put his head down on the table and clutched at his stomach. “I killed her, Rainey.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about, Lawrence?”
“When she told me about Henry getting so mad, I made sure she had a gun in the house. I knew I was overreacting, but I couldn’t help myself. I went over there tonight, and she told me I had betrayed her and she would never forgive me. She said she thought I was on her side until she saw me fawning over Henry. Rainey, you know that’s not true! I’m neutral as a mediator, and I was just being professional and polite.”
Rainey closed her eyes. Her jaw was locked, as she chose not to say what she was thinking: Right, Lawrence! It’s very polite and neutral to shake hands with a client whose wife you just got out of bed with. Good job!
When she opened her eyes, Lawrence cleared his throat. “She told me she was sleeping with four different guys and I was the worst lay. She said she didn’t go to Chicago, she went to the beach and spent most of the week in bed with one of them. And then she said Henry turned her on so much by throwing the macaroni dish that she was thinking of getting back together with him. She said”-at this point, Lawrence started to cry-“she said no matter how smart I am, I don’t have a clue about sex. She ridiculed me, Rainey. I went to get the gun out of the drawer I’d put it in. Jeez, if she was going to make fun of me, I wasn’t going to let her use my gun for protection. But when I picked it up…” He looked down at the table, shaking his head, bewildered. Then he faced Rainey again. “She jeered at me. She said, ‘Oh, the gun, now that makes you a real man,’ and it went off. It shot her.”
It shot her?
He paused. “Rainey? You know I didn’t mean to, don’t you?”
He sounded like a little boy whose ball had just shattered his mother’s favorite vase.
Rainey closed her eyes again for a few minutes, working her jaw to relax it, so she could speak. Then she said, “We both better calm down. Let’s sit for a few minutes and meditate, and we’ll figure out what to do.”
Lawrence cried and cried. He was not cute at all.
Rainey sat with her eyes closed, inhaling, exhaling. Logical thoughts followed each other. The implications of Lawrence’s disclosure weren’t pretty. If he were caught, at best he’d wind up in prison for the rest of his life, his wife and the kids would be humiliated, and Rainey’s legal reputation would be down the toilet. All those scornful lawyers who claimed mediation was just a ploy to avoid being a trial lawyer, all those jealous lawyers who envied her success, they’d be snickering about her forever. “Your partner kill any clients lately? Har, har, har.” Her thriving business had just been annihilated.
Could she fix it? What if Lawrence claimed he was visiting Barbara as her therapist? She became overwhelmed with guilt about her promiscuity, threatened to shoot herself, and in the struggle for the gun, it went off?
Sure, that would work fine, except that Lawrence bought the gun. No story would fix that. No matter what else happened, Rainey was sure to get screwed now. Damn. He’d seemed so different from every other idiot male she knew. How in hell could she control the damage?
She opened her eyes.
“Did anyone else know you were seeing her? Did Sheila guess?”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m sure we were discreet, and Sheila would never suspect.”
“Did anyone spot you going in or out of Barbara’s house tonight?”
He paused. “I don’t think so.”
“What did you do with the gun?” she asked.
“I wiped it down and brought it with me.”
“What?” Her voice rose to nearly a screech.
“I’ll be right back.”
She stood at the window, looking at him as he hurried toward his bike in its usual spot under the street lamp. He leaned into the enclosure behind the bike, pulled out a grocery bag, and headed back in. He’s absolutely lost it. He left the gun in the bike carriage? Moments later, Lawrence gave her the bag, which contained a solid object wrapped in bathroom tissue, and she put it into her office safe while he watched her.
“I’ll dispose of it later,” she said. “Okay, Lawrence, wash your face and go home to your family. Say nothing. Surely the cops will try to pin it on Henry, and he’ll have an alibi, and they’ll be left with a cold case. You’ll be fine.”