Courthouse Steps

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“I don’t have a police record.”

Carlos, who had exited the car as well, smiled as he leaned lightly against the front fender. “It is true,” he said. “He is not a wanted man.”

Amanda sent Carlos a look that made his smile grow. Ethan saw that while fright warred with anger in her expression, humor at the situation was beginning to dawn. Her undecided gaze returned to Ethan, and once again he felt himself physically stirred. He was aware of everything about her. The way the beige slacks fitted her slender hips and legs; the way her ribbed scoop-necked top, dyed a dusky rose and worn beneath a casually loose beige jacket, settled against small, but nicely rounded breasts. The way her bright chestnut hair shone in the sun...her flawless skin, the beautiful blue of her eyes, her soft, kissable mouth. He jerked his thoughts away from such undisciplined chaos.

“You stepped out in front of me!” he accused.

“I did no such thing! Look where I am. How did I get this far across the street if I’d just stepped out?” She was standing in front of the driver’s side, not the passenger side closest to the sidewalk. “You were speeding,” she countered.

Ethan shrugged the logic away. It was important for him to keep the upper hand. He had to stay in control. “No, I wasn’t. I never speed. Not in a town.”

“Then you admit you sometimes speed on a highway.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And if you speed on a highway, it means you might drive over the limit elsewhere...like in a town!”

“Check the skid marks,” Ethan parried. “They don’t indicate high speed. No, you didn’t look. You were in the park, probably distracted—you do have certain things to be distracted about. You decided to go back to your office...” He indicated the sign on her office directly across the street. “So you started off without looking. You were probably walking rather quickly, thinking about all the things you had to do. You didn’t see the car.”

Again, a blend of emotions crossed Amanda Baron’s pretty face. For an instant she looked as if she were about to confess, but her fighting spirit returned, and she taunted, “Prove it!”

Ethan had sensed victory, but before he could return her taunt, a series of claps came from the man who had witnessed their exchange. Ethan looked around. He had forgotten that Carlos was there.

The investigator smiled broadly. He straightened away from the car even as he continued to clap his hands. He looked first at Amanda Baron and then at Ethan, his dark eyes dancing. “Bravo!” he approved. “Magnifico! A wonderful performance! But you are both forgetting. There was a witness, a highly experienced observer—me! I saw everything, and I say you owe each other an apology.” He pointed at Amanda Baron. “You stepped out.” And at Ethan. “And you were not watching where you were going. No one wins, no one loses, no one was hurt. No debate.” Carlos shook his head. “Lawyers,” he grumbled amusedly to himself. “You will argue with a tree!”

Amanda Baron stared at him for a few seconds, then she, too, started to laugh. She was beautiful when she laughed, Ethan thought. Her entire face lighted up. He continued to hold himself stiffly. A smile never cracked his lips.

“I suppose,” she said, “since we do have a highly experienced witness, I’ll have to admit to some responsibility. I was thinking of something else, and I didn’t see the car.” She looked at Ethan, waiting for him to make a similar concession.

Ethan felt Carlos’s eyes come to rest upon him, too. Finally, he allowed, “I agree. It was my fault as well.”

Carlos approved. “Ah, that is good. An understanding!”

In the silence that followed, Amanda Baron shifted slightly and glanced again at Ethan. All Ethan wanted to do was get back behind the wheel and drive away. He was uncomfortable standing in the street with her. Uncomfortable with the unexpected strength of his feelings. All he could think of was that it was a good thing he had filed a challenge against her as defense counsel. He would have hated to go to trial and try to maintain an adversarial role. It would have played havoc with his concentration.

Because he had confidence in the justness of his argument to Judge Griffen, Ethan let a tight smile slip into place even as he maintained, “But I wasn’t speeding. I hold my ground there.”

Several cars passed them and then paused, drivers and passengers curious about what had happened. Amanda Baron returned the salute of one group and called hello to another. She glanced toward her office.

Ethan took the onus onto himself. “If you’re sure you’re all right,” he said, “we’ll be on our way. I’m sorry for any fright you may have experienced.”

“So am I,” she said. Then, surprising him—actually, surprising both of them—she thrust out her hand. She looked down at it blankly, as if the appendage weren’t hers.

Ethan took it. Her hand felt warm and capable, very feminine, very soft. He held it a moment before letting go.

Amanda Baron threw Carlos a quick smile, murmured goodbye to both of them, then hurried the rest of the way across the street and disappeared inside her office.

Ethan had no idea how long he stared at the closed door, how long before Carlos called him back to awareness. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Yet from the way the investigator grinned once Ethan had resettled in the driver’s seat, it might have been hours.

“I think you have noticed her, my friend,” Carlos teased, referring to his earlier comment.

“I tried to kill her, you mean,” Ethan corrected.

“And I think she noticed you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Even, white teeth flashed. “I only say what I see. I make nothing up.”

Ethan started the car. “She hates my guts. I’m here to send her grandfather to jail.”

Carlos’s shrug was expressive, silently holding to his statement.

“Naa,” Ethan denied.

Carlos’s answer was another shrug.

Ethan laughed shortly. “I think you’d better have your eyes examined when we get back to Madison. Now, to return to business. This Joe Santori, the building contractor who found the body and the bullet—is he willing to see us tomorrow?”

“I arranged a time in the afternoon. I thought you would want me to do a little more digging around here in the morning.”

Ethan nodded. “You’re right. Besides doing a little more probing about the ring, check into Judson and Margaret’s marital troubles. They fought about her having affairs with other men, but see if there was anything else. Also, nose around about the possible police cover-up, both then and now. Let’s see where we stand in that regard. We don’t want any surprises.”

“Do you think any evidence might be tainted?”

“It’s doubtful in this case, but witnesses might be. Who are the two ex-police chiefs? Zachary Phelps and Paul Schmidt?”

Carlos nodded.

“We may need to have both testify. If we do, I want to know which way they’ll go. Also, I’d like you to do a little checking on Philip Wocheck. See what people have to say about him. You might try your postmistress again on that.”

As Carlos nodded again, he started writing reminders to himself in his notebook.

Ethan carefully checked the street for both traffic and inattentive pedestrians before he accelerated. As he did, he glanced across the wide street toward the office that had Amanda Louise Baron, Attorney-at-Law emblazoned on the door. He had known from the beginning that this was going to be a difficult case. Forty-two years had passed since the murder occurred, the accused was a well-respected, wealthy, influential man in the community and the evidence was mostly circumstantial...all hard enough strikes to overcome. But he hadn’t counted on having to deal with someone like Amanda Louise Baron, or her unwanted effect on him.

* * *

AMANDA WATCHED the car pull away. It certainly had taken them long enough! What were they doing? What were they talking about? Her? Her grandfather? The case?

She moved away from her spy’s perch in the corner of the room, letting the vertical blind swing back into place. As usual, Tessie had made the necessary adjustments to keep the afternoon sun from interfering with her computer screen.

Tessie sat at her desk, a silent witness to her employer’s antics from the moment she’d entered the door and scurried to the corner. At last the secretary’s silence came to an end. “We had a call while you were out,” she said. “Judge Griffen wants to set the disqualification hearing for tomorrow morning. You know him—he doesn’t like to let grass grow under his feet. They want a callback as soon as possible.”

Tomorrow morning! Amanda thought of her laden desk. Could she possibly be ready by tomorrow morning? She checked her watch. She had the rest of the afternoon and tonight, and if she made judicious use of every second... “Tell him I’ll be ready,” she said. “What time?”

“Eight-thirty. He has a trial scheduled at ten.”

“Right,” Amanda said. “I guess I’d better get going.” As she started into her office, she felt her secretary’s eyes follow her. Pretending to an innocence she didn’t feel, she paused to ask, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“May I ask what that was all about just now? Or is it some kind of deep, dark secret?”

Amanda shrugged. “Oh, nothing. I just...” She stopped. Tessie would see through her in a second. “I ran into Ethan Trask,” she admitted wryly. “Literally! Well, I almost ran into him. Actually, we almost ran into each other. Neither of us was watching where we were going—him driving, me walking.”

Tessie lifted an eyebrow at her unaccustomed inarticulateness. To complete her humiliation, Amanda felt herself flush. And she was a person who never flushed.

Tessie’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard that he lives up to his reputation. Plus he’s even better-looking than his picture. Must be true,” she decided.

“It’s not that at all,” Amanda declared. “He almost ran me down in his car just now! Anyone would be upset.”

“Would anyone peek out the window to see what he did next?”

“I was merely—”

“Watching to see what he did next?”

“My behavior is strictly in the best interest of my client. Ethan Trask is the enemy. I was conducting a little surveillance, that’s all.”

“Did you learn anything?” Tessie asked dryly.

Had she learned anything? Amanda couldn’t answer truthfully. How did she explain that despite the man’s determination to prosecute her grandfather, she found him fascinating? He was so self-contained, so controlled. He barely ever smiled, and when he did, his lips made only the faintest movement, as if they were unaccustomed to the motion. His decisive intensity acted on her like a magnet, drawing her to him. When he first jumped out of the car to see if she was hurt, she had seen genuine concern in his eyes. But the hard, no-nonsense edge had soon returned. Which was the real man? she wondered. And should she care?

“He signaled properly before pulling into traffic,” she murmured in answer to her secretary’s challenge.

“That must have been a big disappointment.”

“Not really,” Amanda claimed. “Not when I’m looking for keys to his psyche.”

Tessie rolled her eyes. “That’s a bunch of baloney and you know it.”

“It never hurts to be prepared.”

Tessie snorted as she twisted back around. She hadn’t believed Amanda, hadn’t believed anything she’d said. Amanda recognized the fact and knew that she would have to live with it. Just as she knew that, whether she liked it or not, every time she went near Ethan Trask something seemed to happen to her internal balance wheel, and her equilibrium went right out the window.

So...how was she going to spend the next eight to ten hours? By preparing an argument that she hoped would allow her to continue to pit herself against him in a courtroom. Did that make sense? No. But these weren’t ordinary times. And it was her grandfather, not to mention the rest of her family, who would pay if she allowed any kind of reckless emotion to get in the way of what she had to do.

Reckless emotion! Her? Amanda almost laughed. She had always been the steadiest of the Baron crew. The middle child. The one who had never caused anyone a moment’s worry. Good, steady Amanda. Amanda, who had suffered quietly when her father had committed suicide. She still sometimes felt as if she’d never get over his death, yet she hadn’t gone off the rails like Liza and Jeff. Reckless emotion?

Amanda closed herself into the pseudowomb of her office. This was her domain. In here, she was in charge. She had hung every picture, arranged every book.

Her gaze drifted to the newspaper photograph of Ethan Trask. Since she had left the room earlier—how long ago was that, a hundred years?—the dart had fallen from his nose. Gravity had pulled it to the floor.

Gravity, magnetism...

Amanda snatched the photograph from the wall and crumpled it in her fist.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_95fbfac3-9f5f-531c-a771-5da4065c5d88)

THE CONFERENCE ROOM was quiet as all the players involved waited for the court stenographer to load the shorthand typewriter with a long, thin strip of folded paper on which he would record the hearing. The judge, the Honorable Eustace D. Griffen, sat on one side of the long table, while Ethan Trask and Amanda sat on the other.

Amanda’s throat was parched, her palms sweaty. She had talked to Peter before leaving Tyler for the courthouse in Sugar Creek, and he had assured her that her arguments had strength. Still, sitting there, she wasn’t as sure. At her elbow, Ethan Trask looked formidable and efficient in a dark suit, his handsome features serious. He had murmured her name in greeting when they met in the hall and hadn’t said anything to her since.

The court reporter nodded to the judge. Judge Griffen was one of only two jurists who presided over the judicial system of Sugar Creek County. He and Judge Bolt took turns sitting for criminal and civil suits. October was to be Judge Griffen’s month to hear criminal cases. He was a long, thin man with a deeply lined face. Heavy bags hung beneath weary-looking brown eyes, giving him the sad appearance of a basset hound. But anyone fooled into thinking Judge Griffen indolent was in for something of a shock. He tolerated no nonsense in his court, and his mind was as sharp as a razor.

His gaze took in both Ethan and Amanda. “I’ve read your briefs,” he said. “Now I want to hear your arguments. Mr. Trask, you first.”

Ethan stood, accidentally brushing against Amanda’s arm. No one except them took notice of the contact or was aware of the way both instantly withdrew, as if from an electrical shock.

“Your Honor,” Ethan began, his voice giving no hint of his being disconcerted. “It is not the state’s contention that a defendant be denied representation by the counsel of his or her choice. The right to choice of counsel is a vital part of our system of justice. It is the state’s contention that in this instance the defendant’s choice can harm the people’s ability to present their case. It is out of the norm. Amanda Baron is the granddaughter both of the defendant and of the deceased.

“As prosecutor, I am of the firm belief that this representation will place an unfair burden on the state. To have her sit in court day after day at the side of the defendant would influence the jury to believe that she, a member of the family, believes him innocent. By her mere presence she presents herself as a character witness—but a witness I cannot cross-examine.

“In no way is she unique, except as this silent witness. She is not a criminal defense lawyer of any repute. In fact, she has never before been involved in a case of this magnitude. The simple truth is that the defendant has purposely set out to gain a lawyer who would make improper use of the familial relationship, and the state requests that he be directed to choose another.”

The judge nodded and turned his mournful-looking eyes on Amanda. Shakily, she stood as Ethan sat down. She reached for a glass of water to loosen her vocal cords. She was afraid it was all over. The logic of his argument seemed unbeatable. It didn’t matter that she and her grandfather had not planned the situation as he suggested. If it looked as if they had—as it did now—the judge would rule against them. It was up to her to change his perception.