“I know that.” He looked up at the building again. “She’s at that age where there’s a fork in the road, you know what I mean? She’s either gonna end up like you or end up like Maude. Or, hell, end up in jail, she don’t watch what she’s doing. Especially with that Oliver fella. Kid’s just as crooked as that father of his—if he swallowed a nail he’d end up shitting out a corkscrew.”
Charlie decided to take advantage of Leroy’s expansive mood. “I could go back to my office right now and draw up the paperwork relinquishing your parental rights.”
“Not gonna happen, baby doll.” Leroy stubbed out his cigarette in the coffee can. “She’s my grandchild, my own blood. I’m not gonna let anybody take her away from me.”
“Surely you can see she’d be better off not living here.”
“I would be, too. So would Maude. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Flora’s only got two years left before she’s legally an adult anyway. If you let her go now, that fork in the road is going to turn into a straight line to college.”
He laughed. “You Quinns always know how to turn a phrase.”
“Are you hurting her?”
Leroy’s head snapped around. “Is that what she said?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“And I ain’t never gonna.”
Charlie tried to give him a way out. “You need to let her go, Leroy. You don’t want me asking you these questions in a courtroom, under oath, in front of a judge.”
He looked at her, maybe for the first time. Or maybe leered at her was a better description. His gaze traced down the V-neck of her shirt, then rested squarely on her breasts. He caressed the scar on his face with the tips of his fingers. He licked his lips. “You’re a good lookin’ woman. You know that?”
Charlie fought the urge to cross her arms. She had a sudden, nervous, shaky feeling, like she was trapped.
Leroy sensed her unease. This was the creepy guy at the bar who didn’t know how to take “no” for an answer. This was his true nature. He leaned in closer, openly looking down her shirt. “I like a gal got a little fight in her.”
Charlie felt her jaw clench. If he was trying to intimidate her, he had picked the exact wrong words. Her fear evaporated, replaced by anger—at herself for almost letting him get to her, at him for being such a bastard. She wasn’t trapped. She was a grown woman with a degree from one of the top ten law schools in the country.
She leaned in closer, too, her face inches from his. “Hey, asshole, a fight is exactly what you’re going to get. I’m helping Flora with this case. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she gets away from you.”
Leroy was the first to break eye contact. He looked back at the building. Maude had come out of the apartment. She was standing on the stoop, watching them.
He said, “Whatever you got planned for me, that’s me. You’re gonna have to pry that girl from Maude’s cold, dead hands, ’cause she ain’t never letting her go.”
Charlie recognized the sleight of hand. “Do you really think a judge is going to buy that your wife didn’t know what was going on in the next room?”
“You’re going down a bad road there, missy. You can fuck with me all you want, but you try to take on Maude—” He shook his head. “You remember this moment when I warned you.”
“You remember this moment when I call you to the stand and the bailiff tells you to put your hand on the Bible and swear that you never touched your granddaughter.”
He kept his gaze on his wife. “You got proof of what you’re saying? You gonna ask Flora that same question after she swears on the Bible?”
Charlie couldn’t tell if his certainty came from knowing that he was innocent of the crime or if it came from knowing that Flora would protect him at all costs.
There was only one more card that she could play.
She asked, “What if I go to the police and tell them you’re a junkie and your wife’s been embezzling money from Flora’s trust fund?”
Leroy gave a sharp laugh. “I’d tell you to go to the graveyard and ask your mama what happens when your daddy’s clients feel threatened.”
3
Charlie took the long way back to her office, which added an extra but much-needed five minutes to her trip. The moment she’d left Leroy Faulkner at the picnic tables, her hands had started shaking. The morning queasiness had returned. She’d been forced to pull over to the side of the road and hang her head out the door as she waited for the Doritos to make their return. Only luck and force of will had kept them down.
Charlie had been threatened by clients before. It came with the job when you were defending criminals. Most of the threats thus far had been of the idle variety, usually from a client who felt desperate about his possible prison term. Many more had been of the stupid variety, usually from a client who was on a recorded payphone line at the detention center.
This was the first threat that had actually made Charlie scared.
Her mother.
Murdered in front of Charlie’s eyes.
A disgruntled client of her father’s holding the shotgun.
Charlie shuddered so hard that her teeth rattled in her head.
She could still see Maude standing outside the open door to her apartment, swilling another beer, smoking another cigarette, as her beady eyes followed Charlie to her car. Or at least toward her car. Charlie had forgotten where she had parked, so she had to double back before finding her Subaru at the end of the lot. Sweat had dotted her upper lip as she cranked the engine. A glance in the rear-view mirror as Charlie had pulled onto the road had shown Maude still tracking her progress.
Meemaw made the Culpepper girls look like amateurs.
Thankfully, Charlie’s stomach had settled by the time she pulled into the parking lot behind her father’s office building. The additional five minutes on her drive had brought her some calm if not clarity. She still needed to talk to Nancy’s parents. It was almost three thirty. The Pattersons would probably be home from work around five. Charlie would have to find the strength to go talk to them in person. A phone call would’ve been easier, but that was the coward’s way out. She needed to see the home, assess the parents’ willingness and ability to take care of Flora so that she could honestly tell the judge that the girl had a safe place to land.
That Charlie still wanted to help Flora despite the danger was a congenital defect, likely passed down from her father. Over the years, Rusty Quinn had represented defendants from every side of the spectrum, from abortion clinics to the zealots who tried to blow them up, from undocumented workers to the farmers who got caught hiring them under the table. The blowback on the family had been substantial. When Charlie was thirteen, their house had been firebombed. Eight days later, both her mother and sister had been shot by clients of Rusty’s who thought they could make their outstanding legal bills go away.
Charlie should have taken a lesson from her father’s losses, but if anything, they had made her want to fight harder.
As Rusty often said—