At least he had the good grace to look sheepish. "You know, moral support and all that."
"Well, you missed on that one," Ali said. "Paul didn't show."
Helga emerged from the courtroom wearing a grim smile. "Thursday morning. Ten A.M. again." Then, looking at Jake, she added derisively, "Oh, Mr. Maxwell, you must be Mr. Grayson's cheering section. I'm afraid the match has been rescheduled for next weeksame time, same station. See you then." Dismissing Jake, Helga turned back to Ali. "Is that all right with you?"
"Thursday is fine," Ali said. "I can stay that long if I have to."
Ted Grantham entered the hallway. Jake quickly gravitated in his direction.
"Why isn't Paul here?" he asked.
"Beats the hell out of me," Grantham replied heatedly. "He blew off our court appearance, and now the judge is pissed at me."
"Did you check with April?"
"Of course I checked with April. She has no idea where Paul is. He never came home last night."
The glass doors closed behind the two men, taking the rest of the conversation outside with them.
"So he didn't come home last night," Helga observed. "Not good. Not good."
"It sounds amazingly familiar to me," Ali said.
"Well," Helga said, "if Paul Grayson knows what's good for him, he'll cancel his wedding and make the cancellation a media event all its own."
"Why? The bigamy thing? Would Judge Tennant really put him in jail for going through with the wedding?"
"Absolutely," Helga replied. "Alice Tennant takes a dim view of those kinds of marital shenanigans. Her ex, Jack, did the same thing, you see. Got married while the divorce decree was still warm to the touchthe same day, in fact. It's lucky for Pauland for Ted Grantham, toothat we've already hammered out a property settlement."
Ali was astounded. "Why on earth did Paul agree to use her as a judge?"
"Because he was in a hurry," Helga answered. "Like I told you, I got to choose."
Just then, the glass entry doors swung open and a very tall black woman, clad in sweats and tennis shoes, entered the building. She paused briefly while going through the security checkpoint then came trotting down the hall toward Ali and Helga.
"Am I too late?" the newcomer asked breathlessly, smothering Ali in a bone-crushing hug. "Sorry. I went to the courthouse and looked everywhere for the right courtroom before someone finally pointed me in this direction. Is it over already?"
"Not over over," Ali replied. "But it's over for today."
"Who's this?" Helga wanted to know.
"My cheering section," Ali replied with a smile. "My friend Sister Anne. And Sister Anne, this is my attorney, Helga Myerhoff."
At six foot seven, Sister Anne towered over both Ali and the diminutive Helga. She was dressed in blue-and-white UCLA insignia sweats and high-end Nikes and looked far more like the NCAA championship basketball player she had once been than the Sister of Charity she was now. Jamalla Kareem Williams had left college with a degree in business administration, plenty of basketball trophies, and a permanently damaged knee. Rather than going into business, she had become a nun. For years now, she had managed My Sister's Closet, a Pasadena-based clothing recycling program that helped provide appropriate, low-cost attire for impoverished women hoping to get into the job market. That was where Ali had dropped off her newscaster duds when she had left town months earlier.
Sister Anne held out her hand in Helga's direction. "Glad to meet you," she said with a gap-toothed smile while her beaded cornrows clicked and clattered around her head.
"Sister Anne and I met years ago at a charity fund-raiser and just hit it off," Ali explained. "In fact, if it weren't for her, I probably wouldn't know about you. Marcella Johnson was one of Sister Anne's basketball teammates at UCLA. When I was looking at filing a wrongful dismissal suit against the station, Sister Anne pointed me at Marcella, and when I needed a divorce attorney, Marcella sent me to you."
Sister Anne turned back to Ali. "What do you mean it's not over over?"
"My not-quite-ex didn't bother showing up for the hearing," Ali told her. "The new court date is set for Thursday of next week."
"Well, then," Sister Anne said briskly. "Let's go have some lunch."
Helga begged off, so Ali and Sister Anne drove to Beverly Center and had lunch in a Mexican restaurant where one of Sister Anne's recent clients from My Sister's Closet had hired on as the hostess. Over a shared plate of fajitas, Ali reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope, which she handed to Sister Anne.
"What's this?"
"Money," Ali said. "It's one thing to donate clothing, but this time I decided to give you something that would help pay the rent and keep the lights on."
Sister Anne counted through the bills then looked up. "You can afford this?"
"Helga's a very good attorney. I'm going to be fine."
Smiling, Sister Anne slipped the envelope into a zippered pocket on her pants. "This couldn't come at a better time," she said. "We've been right on the edge of having to close the place down. You have no idea how much we needed this."
The hostess, a young Hispanic woman dressed in a stylish black dress and sling-back high heelsclothing that had been someone else's castoffssmiled shyly at Sister Anne and Ali as she led a group of diners to a table.
"Glad I could help," Ali said. And she was.
After lunch, feeling a strange sense of letdown, Ali returned to her hotel. First she called her mother, who was still at the Sugar Loaf.
"Well?" Edie Larson said. "Are you free as a bird now?"
"Not exactly," Ali said, and then went on to explain the situation.
"My word," Edie said. "If that doesn't take the cake! After you had to drive all that way! It's inexcusable for him to not show up like that. Did you try calling him?"
"No," Ali admitted. "Under the circumstances, that didn't seem like a good idea. His attorney called, though. From what he was saying, it sounded like Paul stayed out all night."
"And he hasn't even married the poor girl yet?" Edie demanded. "Seems like it's a little early for him to be up to his old tricks."
Ali didn't exactly agree with the "poor girl" part. But the "old tricks" reference worked. "Yes," Ali said. "It does seem early."
"You stay there as long as necessary in order to get this all straightened out," Edie said. "Everything here is under control. Chris stopped by last night before he headed for his seminar in Phoenix tomorrow. We invited him to come to dinner Sunday night when he gets home, so he won't starve to death. As for Sam? She's fine. She took to your father the way most strays do. In other wordslove at first sight. What are you going to do with this extra time, hook up with some old friends?"
What old friends? Ali wondered. Other than Sister Anne, she didn't seem to have any real friends waiting for her. The ones she did have were people who were primarily friends of Paul's. In the aftermath of her blowup with Paul and the abrupt ending to her television career, Ali had been surprised and hurt by the number of people who had simply vanished from her life the moment her face had disappeared from the evening news. It had been hard to accept that people she had considered close friends had been drawn by her celebrity rather than anything else. Coming to terms with the reality of those lost relationships still hurt, but Edie Larson didn't need to know that.
"Already handled, Mom," Ali said as airily as she could manage. "Not to worry."
But it wasn't. When Ali got off the phone with her mother, she slipped out of her new Nordy's "court dress" and changed into a T-shirt and jeans. There were, of course, people she could have called, some of whom were bound to be in town. But she didn't call any of them. There was something so trite and Holly-woodyso whiny and patheticabout gathering a group of pals around to hold your hand during stalled divorce proceedings that she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, Ali pulled out her computer and turned to Babe of Yavapai's new friendsthe ones who were only a mouse click away.