Raising the Stakes

Gray laughed. “I’m sure he’ll love the advice, Jack. Anything else?”

“Nope. Oh. Yeah, before I forget…” He patted one breast pocket and then the other. “Here,” he said, and held out a small white envelope.

“What’s this?” Gray opened the envelope. Inside were the photo of Jonas and Ben, and the one of Nora Lincoln. “Ah. The pictures. You don’t need them anymore?”

“Not really. Besides, I made copies. I figured your client might want these back.”

Gray nodded and pocketed the photos. “You’ve done fine, Jack. To be honest, I didn’t think we had a chance of coming up with anything, but you’ve managed to find the girl.”

“Not yet. I found where she lived and who she lived with.” Ballard took a sip of his cappuccino. “She’s still among the missing.”

“Among the…” Gray looked up. “You think something happened to her? That Kitteridge did something?”

“Hell, no. Jeez, you’ve been associating with lowlife too long. No, Gray. I just mean I haven’t located her yet. But I will.”

“Fine. Call me when you do. In fact, call me after you go to Queen City and speak with Harman Kitteridge. I have to admit, I’m curious.”

Ballard grinned. “Your wish is my command, counselor. Say, is this lunch on your client’s expense account?”

“Why?”

“You think I could have another slice of that cheesecake?”

* * *

That night, Gray phoned Jonas and gave him a brief update. When he finished, there was a long silence. Then his uncle cleared his throat.

“So,” he said, “the girl really exists.”

“Yeah. So it would seem. Do you still want her found?”

“Yes, of course. Find her, talk to her, see what she’s like…” Another silence. “This husband of hers. He doesn’t sound like anybody’s idea of Prince Charming.”

“No. He doesn’t.”

“You’re gonna meet with him?”

“No,” Gray said coldly, “I am not. The investigator I hired will do that. There’s no reason for me to talk to the man.”

“You got a good way of seein’ inside people.”

Gray laughed. “Don’t try to con me, okay? If I did, I’d have figured out, years back, that the only way my father could have come up with money for my schooling was by begging it from you.”

“You know, boy,” Jonas said, his voice hardening, “maybe you ought to be grateful he did, otherwise what would you be doin’ right now? Not livin’ high on the hog in New York City, I bet.”

“I’ll call you when I know more,” Gray said, and hung up the phone.

Hours later, he gave up trying to sleep. The old man certainly had a way of getting to the heart of a thing. He’d grown up disliking Texas and despising his uncle, congratulated himself for getting free of both…and now it turned out he hadn’t actually escaped either one.

He went into the kitchen, switched on the light, took the pictures Jack Ballard had given him from the kitchen table and stared at the faces frozen in time.

There was more to this tale than his uncle admitted. Gray had suspected it. Now, he was sure of it. He’d been a lawyer long enough to sense when a client was omitting pieces of a story. Sometimes, you were happy to leave it like that. You wanted the truth, but you didn’t want to hear things that might keep you from doing the best possible job. Defending a man against a charge of murder was a lot easier when you believed he hadn’t actually committed it. There was no murder involved here but something dark and distant was gnawing at Jonas’s innards. And, like it or not, he was being drawn further and further into the situation.

He sat down at the table and stared at the picture of Jonas and Ben Lincoln. Was there a whisper of hostility hidden inside those smiles? And the picture of Nora Lincoln. He touched the tip of his finger to her face. Were her eyes cool, or were they infinitely sad? Maybe that chin wasn’t tilted in defiance but in self-defense.

“Dammit,” Gray said, and kicked back his chair. What did it matter? The story, whatever it was, dated back half a century. And it sure as hell didn’t involve him. He had better things to think about than a dead woman who might have a secret in her eyes and a granddaughter who had run away from a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

The case that had consumed his time for the past few months was winding down. Tomorrow, he’d present his closing argument to the jury. His client would walk free. Gray wasn’t foolish enough to think you could predict how a case would end but sometimes you could make a pretty shrewd guess. His client had been accused of felonious assault with intent to kill; he’d sworn that the witnesses had misidentified him. Gray hadn’t been concerned with the man’s guilt or innocence. That wasn’t his job. His duty was to convince the jury that the witnesses were wrong, that there was reasonable doubt that it was not his client who had committed the crime. Every instinct he had assured him that he’d done that.