Greetings

Lilly Belle Rose Cleary, trial attorney and obsessive-compulsive, returns in this sequel busily defending a therapist accused of malpractice in his treatment of a Longboat Key woman who thinks she was abducted by space aliens. Then Lilly’s old love shows up with a truck load of stolen organic wine. When the old love and Lilly’s godson find a dead man in a swamp with a suitcase full of money, the adventure is just beginning. One of Lilly’s law partners, an attorney with a butterfly obsession and bad habits of stealing and bullying, is shot six times and a vintner is crushed beneath his grape harvester—and Lilly looks like a pretty good suspect to the law!


WILDCAT WINE

© 2004 by Claire Hamner Matturro
All Rights Protected

Prologue

I wasn't at all sure I had a real life anymore.

Here it was, a perfectly fine Friday night in February and instead of being out having fun, I was about the last person inside the Smith, O'Leary and Stanley law firm.

Reviewing paper. Looking through stacks and stacks of paper for just the right words in all of the words in all of the paper in all of the files for something that might save my butt–I mean, that is, technically, my client's butt.

Sometimes being a lawyer sucks.

Nursing a cup of lukewarm green tea and a bad attitude, I riffled through my files, seeking inspiration. I sighed, rubbed my eyes, and read on.

My office windows were opened so I could breathe real oxygen, not the stale refrigerated air of the law firm. The humidity of a Sarasota night drifted in, dispersing a subtle scent of orange blossoms, car fumes and fishy low-tide throughout my office. The classic bouquet of late-winter on the gulf-coast of Florida.

But I had barely settled into rereading my client's deposition when my door banged open, and critically over-chilled air rushed in. I had my mouth prepared to say something rude to whoever dared intrude when I saw Jackson Winchester Smith, the firm's founding and controlling partner, my mentor, the living, breathing reincarnation of Stonewall Jackson, standing there in my doorway, big as a mad grizzly.

“You got everything under control here? Cases all right?”

“Yes, thank you. Everything is under control.”

That was a whopper, but I held my eyes steady on Jackson and nothing in my body language gave me away.

“Good, good.”

I waited in the pause for the real reason for Jackson's visit.

“Man bought a Hummer and now he's demanding a bonus to pay it off.”

Okay, nothing to do with me and I had work to do. I blinked twice hoping that would make Jackson go away.

“That son of a bitch. A Hummer. A yellow one, color of a legal pad. Piss ugly.”

“Who got a Hummer?” Not that I really cared, but if I ignored him, Jackson would just get louder.

“Kenneth Mallory.”

Well, of course, the only partner in the firm vapid and pretentious enough to pay twice the average salary of the secretaries at the firm for a large, yellow box with wheels and an ad campaign that appealed equally to the insecure and the show-off.

Having hexed my first year at the firm, Kenneth was the one partner I studiously avoided and hoped, frankly, he would one day drop into the Gulf of Mexico, get eaten by an octopus, run over by a backhoe, or implode from too much inherent dishonesty in one life time, and leave the rest of us to the honorable task of defending hapless doctors, hospitals, and lawyers sued by their disgruntled clients.

“Kenneth is demanding that the executive committee vote him a mid-year bonus, then follow up with a larger Christmas bonus.”

“Just say no,” I said. “It worked for Nancy Reagan.”

“He's our top biller, you know.” Jackson paused to glare at me as if I should be the partner in the firm that billed the most hours.

“Son of a bitch's threatening to pull out of the firm and take his clients if we don't give him a bigger cut of the pie.”

“I'm sure you'll figure out how to handle him,” I said, and dusted off my pert smile and fluffed my hair. So okay, Gloria Steinem I was not where Jackson was concerned.

“He's got that damn sailboat and that mansion out in the sticks and now that Hummer. So we're supposed to vote him a special performance bonus at the mid-year meeting to pay for all that, or he takes his clients and starts his own firm.”

What I wanted to say was, let the bastard leave the firm. We all hate him, he leads a profligate lifestyle and rubs our noses in it, and buying a Hummer proved that at least. But I suddenly focused on the finances. If Kenneth went and took his clients, all the income he brought into the firm–and that was a lot–went with him. This wasn't a matter of Jackson's control, it was a matter of money.

At a fundamental level I understood that the trick was to get rid of Kenneth and keep his clients. So, okay, how hard could that be?

“Let's start a rumor he's on drugs,” I said, inspired by the fact one of our partners was currently detoxing in a swanky rehab center in L.A. “Maybe tell his clients he's shipping out to a rehab program. I can call his biggest clients, say I'm his partner, and explain we are transferring his files to ...me.” Then I could be the top biller.

Jackson glowered at me and I was quick to see my error. Baby partners like me didn’t get such plums.
“Transferring Kenneth's files to you, and, eh, Fred, and some, a few, to me,” I corrected.

Jackson nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lemon and reached in his other pocket and brought out a pocket knife, and he cut a wedge out of the lemon and ate the pulp down to the rind. “Want a slice?”

“No, thank you.”

While Jackson ate his lemon and pondered, I pondered too. Maybe we could actually send Kenneth to a detox center. How hard was it to Baker Act somebody? I'd put one of the law clerks into looking into what it took to involuntarily commit someone under that act.

“You might have something there.” Jackson's voice vibrated off my walls. Then he stroked his beard and pitched the lemon peel into the bottom of my potted peace lily. Then he saluted me and said, “Could've used a good trench fighter like you in Nam. You think on that plan some more, bring me the pros and cons, the mechanics.” And he slammed my door on the way out.

Mierda. He thought of me as a trench fighter. Hardly the image I had in mind.

A trench fighter in a black slip with equally black, lacy bikini panties, and Jackson in a gray uniform with gold braided trim, wearing a broad-rimmed hat with a plume, and ....

Needless to say, I didn't get very far in delving into my vats of paper and verbiage, though I did perfect the fantasy.