A Conflict of Interest

What about his aunt and uncle? Jake studied the last two adults in the Butler family. With their arms around Griff and each other, they still reached with outstretched fingers, seeking even more contact, as if they all feared a cop was going to show up and drag Griff back to his cell.

Angela Hammond had lost her sister. Were she and her husband covering for Griff because he was all that remained of his mother?

Gil hadn’t found the least whiff of violence in the Butler household. However, at the high school, the teachers and principal had described several escalating incidents, from shoving in the hall to a more dangerous infraction in the boys’ room, when Griff had shoved a freshman’s head into the toilet.

Which any kid might do if his therapist were abusing him.

Jake straightened, searching inwardly for his customary sense of justice served. Time and the law moved forward, and Jake had no choice. The jury’s decision ruled.

“Mr. Butler, you are free to go.”

Shouting and laughter clashed. A couple of groans layered in an undertone. The boy and his relatives started hugging all over again, still stunned and even happier.

Holding his gavel loosely in his hands, Jake eyed Griff Butler with Maria’s doubt, but Griff was oblivious. He wriggled toward the aisle, past his attorneys, but then he saw Maria.

She leaned toward the kid, her face vulnerable, soft with concern.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak. Jake almost lifted his hand, to warn her. Griff’s aunt saw her nephew’s confusion, and she spun, a look of chilling rage freezing her face.

Maria stared at Angela, her eyes soft with pity. Jake swore silently as Angela’s mouth straightened into a bitter slash. He didn’t have to read lips to guess at the words she spit at Maria. David, her husband, regarded his wife with the dismay of a man confronting a stranger.

Maria stood her ground—sat it—without wavering. David gathered Angela and Griff into his arms and dragged them toward the exit.

The fight seeped out of Maria. She lowered her head as if she couldn’t hold it up. Her shoulders hunched. Light glittered in the curls that framed her pale cheeks.

Her air of submission startled Jake more than any other move she’d made. He slammed the gavel onto its rest. “Court dismissed.”

He turned to the doors behind him and the bailiff, a friend since the first time Jake had defended a client in this building, opened the door.

“Over at last, sir,” he said.

“Yeah, Joe.”

“You should go out that back way, too. Those guys are going to want your opinion on the verdict.”

“I have no opinion, Joe.” It was the way he lived. Objective. As Maria had said, determined to see all sides of any argument.

Camera flashes lit up the back of the courtroom. Some of the press had come from D.C. and beyond. Griff Butler’s father had been a congressman before he’d resigned to make money building strip malls. Griff’s arrest had made big news because of his family name, as well as the depraved nature of his alleged crime.

Jake would like nothing better than to go to his chambers, hang up his robe and spit the taste of this trial out of his mouth. Instead, he had to decide whether to ruin Maria’s career and turn her into a pariah in Honesty. No one would ever trust her again if one of the town’s leading judges believed she’d seduced a patient.

“What do you think, Joe?”

“I’m with you. The jury does all the thinking. That’s our system.”

So why did Jake feel as if he were trying to find steady ground with one foot on either side of a fissure? All his assumptions were suspect.

“I hope you’re right, Joe.” He must be.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do the right thing.” The bailiff held the door and nodded before he went on to his next task.

In his office, Jake took a bottle of Scotch from his desk drawer. On a normal verdict day, it would have been celebratory Scotch. He entered a trial entirely on the fence, but he usually had a gut feeling before the verdict came in.

His gut had deserted him. He shoved the drawer shut and dropped into a leather chair that rocked backward.

He couldn’t ask Maria if she was a liar. He had her reply. Couldn’t ask her clients. He didn’t know who they were, and how could he trust their answers?

He spun his chair to face the window and the snow that had blanketed the courthouse square.

Wait a minute. He knew someone whose teenage son had seen Maria.

Jake picked up his phone and dialed Aidan Nikolas. A businessman and a friend of Jake’s since he’d moved to Honesty, Aidan had mentioned that Maria was his stepson’s therapist. She’d also worked for Aidan when he’d still lived in D.C.

Aidan answered his cell, out of breath. Behind his harried hello, a voice on an airport PA system called all passengers to board.

“Jake? I only have a second. What can I do for you?”

A second? He resisted a damn-near compulsion to back down and hang up. “I have some questions about Dr. Keaton.”

“Maria? She’s great. Remember when Eli was so depressed? He depended on her, and he still sees her occasionally for what she calls refreshers.”

“What kind of refresher? Why would she insist on seeing a kid after he was well?” Jake felt dirty and angry. He got himself under control. “Why should he still need her?”

“Insist? Did I say that? What are you talking about?”

“Just getting a little information. Why does she still see Eli?”

“He tried to commit suicide a year and a half ago, and he’s in the midst of adolescence. He’ll talk to her, even when he clams up on Beth and me.”

“Okay, but why doesn’t she wait for you to call her?”

“Sometimes she does, but depression doesn’t make a kid instinctively ask for help.”

“And she worked for you in Washington?”

The phone filled with airport noise. “What is this?” Aidan asked. “You heard that I had to fire her?”

“What?” The room closed in.

“Why are you butting into Maria’s business? Is something wrong with Leila?”

“It’s not Leila, but I need information.”

“Maria’s testifying in the Griff Butler case. What’s gone wrong?” Again, the PA voice demanded that passengers board. “Jake, did you just ease me into saying something I shouldn’t have about Maria?”

“Like what?” The years that had passed since he’d done investigative work had made him clumsy. Inconvenient attraction to Maria had nothing to do with his heavy hands.

“She does not lie. Is that what you’re asking me?”

To hell with subtlety. “The defendant made troubling accusations.”

“You mean, the guy who confessed he’d killed his parents and then decided he hadn’t?”

“The guy’s a sixteen-year-old kid.”

“Who shot both his parents in cold blood.”

“You believe her? I guess that’s an answer.” Jake took solace in the familiar law books, stacked wall to wall in his office. Nothing came before justice. Not even his own need to believe that Maria was not the woman Griff Butler and Buck Collier had painted her in that courtroom. “Why’d you fire her?”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“I have to know, Aidan.”

Heavy silence stretched between them. Jake let it go on. Aidan would answer if he kept quiet.

“I was fixing problems before they started. When I hired her, there had been several incidences of office rage in the news, and investments are high pressure at the best of times. We tried her out as someone the staff could talk to, but I have a company full of corporate types. Maria encouraged them to relax, rather than stress. That didn’t work with my people. They thrive on structure. When she left, it was more mutual than me firing her.”

“I’m not prying into your company’s business, but did she ever do anything you considered inappropriate?”

“Inappropriate? What the hell are you talking about? What’s Maria done?”

“You’re quick to assume she has done something. I thought you trusted her.” Man, he felt like a jerk. He’d rather not help Griff and Buck ruin Maria’s reputation, but what could he do, short of getting the cops to plant some undercover “client” in her office?

“I’ve known you for two years. You don’t jump to conclusions without evidence.”

“I don’t know what to—” In the background, a man spoke Aidan’s name. What the hell? There was no time. “You’re going to hear this anyway. Griff Butler says he and Dr. Keaton had an affair.”

This time, the silence from Aidan’s end of the phone damn near blew out Jake’s eardrum.

“Not a chance,” the other man finally said.

“Because you don’t want to think she might have hurt Eli?”

“She’s a beautiful woman and Eli’s a teenage boy. He developed a crush on her when he began to feel better. If she’d done anything to encourage it, Beth and I would have taken him to someone else and reported her. Maria pretended it wasn’t happening, and she kept working with him until he saw her as his doctor again.”

“She might have been oblivious with Eli. He’s younger than Griff.”

“Do you know what you’re suggesting? That she preys on certain victims?”

“I’m not.” He was. He had to, but—“It kills me to ruin someone’s career like this because of assumptions that might be lies.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You wouldn’t just be ruining her career—you’d be ruining her life. And don’t move on this until I get back.”

“What can you do for her, Aidan? If I think she might harm her clients, I have to have her investigated.”

“She kept my son alive when he wanted to die.”

“That’s why I can’t ignore the accusations I heard in court. She has other underage clients.” He had to call the Psychology Review Board. “I’m not sure she’s done anything wrong, but I have to ask someone to investigate because of kids like your son. For the sake of anyone she’s treating.”

“Don’t jump to this conclusion. Take some time to get at the truth.”

“Discovering the truth is an investigation. Have you ever been concerned about leaving Eli alone with her?”

“My God. Look, they’re going to shut the doors. I’m holding up the plane. Call Beth and tell her not to let Eli see Maria until I talk to her.”

He clearly believed in Maria, but even the possibility of abuse made him cautious.

“Jake,” Aidan said, annoyed.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t believe you want to do this.”

“I don’t, but I have a duty to this town—to the law.”

“You could bend a little. Be human.” Aidan’s voice changed again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Gotta go, Jake. Think about what I’ve said.”

Jake pushed the off button on his phone, his stomach muscles clenched.

He found the number for the licensing board and stared at it. No matter what he thought of Maria, he had to do it. His very weakness made him certain he had no choice.

At last, he dialed the numbers, but then hung up and stared at his own shaking hands. One thing he knew for certain. Maria Keaton led with her heart. He didn’t even understand that kind of person. The heart could not discern.

Jake set the phone down and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Damn it,” he said to the room and the world and his own conscience.

Shoving his chair back, he jammed his phone into his pocket. Then he grabbed his coat and made for the door. The cold air of November promised cleansing. But once he was outside, he was just cold.

CHAPTER FOUR

JAKE BURST OUT of the courthouse’s side door and ran straight into Maria. She stood as she’d sat, frozen, her hair whipping around her face. She was holding her coat, but her fingers must have been numb. The wool slipped through her fingers to the ground.

He stared from the burgundy cloth to the woman who’d managed to grab a piece of him from the day he’d first glimpsed her. He’d done the wrong thing. For the first time in his adult life, he’d chosen to ignore responsibility.

He’d really like to blame Maria for his lapse. Shouting This mess is all your fault would have felt so much better than dithering over doing the right thing.

Instead, he reached for her coat. “Can I give you a ride?”

Her eyes flickered with barely a hint of recognition.

“Let me help you.” He draped the coat over her shoulders. “You should get out of the cold.”

She reached for his hands, and the coat dropped again. He looked down. Her palms brushed his, her skin ice beneath a fine sheen of adrenaline-induced sweat. Touching her was more personal than a kiss.

Her desperation got inside his better judgment. He forgot about guilt and innocence or responsibility.

“You have to trust the jury,” he said, his voice feeling rusty.

Life came back to her face. She snatched her coat off the ground. “Whether he’s guilty or innocent, he’s in trouble, but you can still help that family. Talk to his aunt and uncle,” she said. “They’ll listen to you.”

“What is it with you and this kid?”

“Not you, too,” she said. “Caring that he gets help and no one else gets hurt doesn’t make me a pervert.”

“I can’t discuss his case with you.” Perfect. How many times had Leila suggested he come out from behind the bench and feel something? Now her wish was coming true, to a degree she never would have dreamed. Not only did he feel too much for a woman who’d thus far ducked any contact that didn’t include taking a ladle from his hand at a soup kitchen, he also sounded like an idiot—an experienced jurist who didn’t even understand the concept of double jeopardy.

“Stop saying you can’t talk about Griff. You couldn’t bring him back to trial if he hired a skywriter to confess this time.”

“We only have your word that he confessed the first time.”

She flinched and tucked her hands behind her back. “You think I lied?”

Her hair blew around her face. The wind kissed her slender, exposed neck. He wanted to pull her close and tell her he’d think anything she asked him to if she’d just let him explore that creamy skin.

Unwelcome passion could blind a person. He’d learned early in life to resist it, because it never led anyone to a rational decision.

“Jake, are you listening?” She backed away. “I feel as if I’m shouting, but no one hears me.”

“You made sure you were heard. Can’t you see everyone in that trial wonders what the hell really happened between you and Griff?”

“I’m not a liar. I wouldn’t risk everything I’ve worked for if I didn’t believe he could be saved.”

“You have to put yourself ahead of that kid and stop making me wonder whether Griff’s journal is the truth. If I wonder, so will the police and the Psychology Review Board.”

Maria sucked in a breath. Her face flushed as she struggled into her coat. “Don’t threaten me.”

“You’re in real danger.”

“Yeah.” She pushed her hand beneath her hair to free the coiling strands from her collar. He swallowed, relieved that she was too distracted to see what she did to him with a move so innocuous as pushing her fingers through her hair. She reached into her pockets and pulled out those freaking mittens, but gave up before she got one on. “A normal kid neither kills his parents nor claims he has. That’s the danger.”

Bunching the lapels of her coat in her fists, she jerked past him. A hint of sweet flowers and precious spice caught him by surprise. Jaywalking across the street, she seemed to have only one goal. To escape him.

She cut around the square, toward the Old Honesty shops. He couldn’t move and he forgot how to breathe until, finally, she was out of sight.

Slowly, he turned in the opposite direction, fighting for control. A white square on the sidewalk caught his eye. Moving toward it, he felt as if he were trying to walk on legs he’d never used before.

He should have made that call. Griff wasn’t Maria’s only underage patient, and his family wouldn’t be the only one coming after her.

The white square was Maria’s other mitten. He picked it up and glanced back the way she’d gone. Scanning the cluster of men and women easing between one another, in and out of the shopping area, he couldn’t see her. He started to put the mitten in his pocket.

Then, without thinking, he lifted the soft material to his face. Maria’s enticing scent made him want her. Bad.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. He shoved the mitten into his pocket as far as it would go. Too bad the town had no community lost and found so he could get rid of it without seeing her again.

FOR ONCE, Maria wished she’d hired a receptionist. She managed her own schedule to keep overhead down. But, on Monday morning, three days after the verdict in Griff’s trial, she opened her office door to face an answering machine that was blinking like an angry, red eye. She’d anticipated cancellations, but deep down, she’d hoped her clients would hang in with her.

Dumping her keys and coat in the visitor’s chair, she stared at the machine. Her neighbors were angry. Yesterday, she’d been waiting to pay for groceries when she’d overheard nothing good about herself from two ladies talking about her in the checkout line.

“She’s the one.” The woman clutching a quart of milk and a pineapple had nodded Maria’s way, her whisper loud enough to set off seismic detectors.

“That poor Griff. You know, he was in my class back when he was in second grade. You couldn’t find a sweeter boy.” The second woman had sniffed. “Outsiders, you know? This town used to be ours. We knew everyone. Everyone knew us. When a family had a problem, we took care of it at home.”

“The chamber of commerce insists we need growth. This should teach those young intruders about small towns.”

“You are canny, my friend.” The teacher had plunked a massive box of instant potatoes on the conveyor, choking out a cough as white powder wafted into the air.

Maria had pulled her cart closer, unsurprised by their concern for a kid from one of the town’s oldest families. But they obviously hadn’t seen Griff in years. They couldn’t guess at the truth.

Now, she walked around the office, pausing to open the blinds before she dropped into her chair and swung around to her desk. Both Gil and Jake had warned her. Time to face the bad music and work on preserving the job that had given her independence and respect.

She’d given the practice her time and her hard-won skill, and she’d powered through the days, believing she could do some good. She cared about her clients, but she was also vitally interested in eating three squares and wearing clothes. Loss of income meant insecurity.

She’d been the black sheep in her family because she was the one who accepted responsibility. Images from the past clicked through her mind like frames in a movie. Her mother’s “friends,” all male, moving into one of their temporary homes for what had amounted to extended sleepovers. Her mother’s never-ending search for a new hometown and a new friend. Maria’s sister Bryony’s progress down their mother’s blazed trail.

Maria had barely been out of middle school when Bryony had graduated from senior high. But even then, she could see that—like their mom—Bryony had never been careful enough when she gave her body or her heart.

Instead of clinging to sanity and each other, the sisters had argued constantly. Bryony wanted the same things that made their mother feel safe, while Maria had never craved security in some guy’s arms.

As Maria had worked her way through school, Bryony had crashed with her between what she termed “life episodes.” Maria had tried over and over to persuade Bryony she could be healthy and whole without a man. She had taken Maria’s concern for disapproval and often suggested she wasn’t Maria’s personal psychological lab rat.

In the end, their mother had descended on Maria’s tiny college apartment to referee the fight. The three of them had eventually forged a tentative truce that reminded them they were family, but Maria still believed a woman should only rely on herself. When Bryony had announced she’d rented a friend’s RV and had begun working as a clown at children’s parties, Maria had sincerely congratulated her on following what Bryony said was a “calling.”

If only her mother and Bryony could see Maria now. They were too kind to enjoy the last laugh, but Maria wouldn’t have blamed them. All those years of preaching caution and respectability. All that sensible life she’d lived.

A tight sob nearly escaped her throat. Panic. Before she listened to her voice mail, she sent an e-mail to her mother, begging off Thanksgiving dinner. She couldn’t face her family yet. That done, she hit the play button on her answering machine.

“Dr. Keaton? Vince Dunne, here. You know, I’ve been seeing you to quit smoking? I gotta cancel my appointments.” A female voice spoke in the background. “All of them,” he said, sounding harassed. “Yeah, I told her. My wife taught Griff Butler in second grade.” The female voice added something that sounded like, “Will you shut up.” Maria strained to place the voice of the boxed-potatoes lady from the market. “Okay, okay, I’m hanging up,” Vince said. And he did.

Maria pulled a legal pad out of the desk drawer and wrote Vince’s name. Next to it, she noted, “All.”

The next message started. “Dr. Keaton? This is Meg Lacey. I need to reschedule my appointment this week. You don’t have to call me. I’ll call you when I have some available time.”

She wouldn’t be seeing Meg anymore. She added Meg’s name beneath Vince’s.

Next.

“Maria, this is Beth Nikolas.” Maria had treated Beth’s son, Eli, a couple of years ago. They only met now for the occasional tune-up. She started to write his name beneath Meg’s, but Beth went on. “I’m just calling to make sure you’re okay. Call me. Better yet, come by for dinner. And friendship.”

Maria stopped the machine to lean her forehead on her fist. If only everyone could see she’d meant no harm. And by “everyone,” she did not mean Jake Sloane.

SATURDAY, MARIA SLEPT LATE, trying to shake the hangover of losing one client after another. Maybe vodka would have helped, or at least some Christmas mulled wine, she thought as she stepped through her front door to find hers was the only house in her modest neighborhood that didn’t sparkle with lights and wire reindeer and giant Santas in snowglobes.

She wouldn’t mind a portly Santa nodding wisely in her front window, if the budget allowed. She scooped the paper off the sidewalk. Fortunately, it still cost only a quarter.

Maria started back up the sidewalk as a car veered into her driveway, crunching snow and the sand the county trucks had spewed even onto side roads like hers. She steeled herself. Wasn’t it enough for clients to call the office to fire her?

A blond woman with a sweet smile and warm eyes waved a gloved hand through her window. Beth Nikolas parked and jumped out.

“I figured if you weren’t going to call back, I’d better come by,” she said.

Maria tried to come up with a good story, but gave up and went for the truth. “I thought you might have reconsidered.”

“I understand. The phones have been busy at work?”

“You don’t have to be my friend, Beth.”

“No one believes you seduced Griff Butler, Maria.”

“A lot of people believe. I don’t have many clients left.”

Beth crossed the yard and hugged her tight. “I’m positive my son is healthy because of you.”

“Because he worked to get healthy. And don’t underestimate what you and Aidan do for him.”

“He had that crush on you, and I never thought for a second that you’d do anything to encourage him.”

“People mistake gratitude for something more sometimes, when they’re getting better, but it doesn’t mean anything dangerous until someone needs an alternative theory at a murder trial.”

“I saw you with Jake Sloane on the square after the verdict.”

Maria’s pulse went into overdrive. She turned toward the front door, concentrating on her paper. “I was still hoping someone would see Griff needed help, and he might have been able to persuade Griff’s aunt and uncle to talk to someone.”