Glass House by Patrick Reinken

doesn’t have
anything to do with what’s being said in this case, but he’s an
ass. Top to bottom. Side to side.”
    “That’s not a crime, and it’s not grounds
for a multimillion dollar claim or verdict.”
    “It doesn’t help, either.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” Megan agreed. “Do you
think he did what Landry says?”
    “Truth?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ve no idea.”
    “The settlement demand suggests at least
someone thinks he did, and that someone is Paul McCallum,” Megan
said. McCallum was Landry’s counsel. “You and I both know Paul.
We’ve seen him inflate cases before, but we also both know he
doesn’t play too loose. He knows good cases when he sees them, and
a three million dollar demand makes me guess Paul thinks he’s got a
good one here.”
    “It’s high,” Quinlan said in response. “Too
high certainly, but I agree with the point – he obviously
believes there’s something there.”
    “So what’s that something?”
    “I wish I knew. I wanted Jeremy to settle
this, and I wish I could tell you exactly what it was that made me
push him to do it. But I can’t. I can’t say it any better than
telling you that the case just felt slippery, like I was building a
house on sand.”
    Megan didn’t know the case well enough yet,
but she did know Waldoch and the difficulty of dealing with him.
Natalie may have been right, there might be something there, and
the case might be slippery like she said. Or it could also be that
dealing with Jeremy Waldoch always meant you were paddling a little
more than usual, so you constantly felt you were waiting for
trouble even when it didn’t exist.
    “What do I need to know right away?” Megan
asked.
    “His depo’s a few days away,” Natalie
replied. “Jeremy said he mentioned the dates to you, and that’s the
first one. We haven’t done the prep for that. I was gonna start
tomorrow, but that’s off, obviously.”
    “Discovery’s up to date? Nothing
outstanding?”
    “No. Just the deposition, maybe a couple
evidence motions, then you’re off to trial.”
    “Wish me luck?”
    “In spades, because you may need it,”
Natalie replied. “For what it’s worth, though? I think he can win.
I’m pretty sure there’s some way to do that, actually. But better
you than me in trying to figure out how.”
    _______________
    “He took them, right?”
    Paul McCallum was stirring sugar into his
iced tea. The spoon clinked against the glass.
    “I’ve told you this story before,” she
replied.
    “Tell me again. What do you mean when you
say took them ?”
    “I mean took them,” his client answered. She
shifted in her seat. She’d seemed comfortable before, very
matter-of-fact and focused, a little angry. But her eyes darted
away now. She narrowed her shoulders and crossed her arms, hugging
her elbows.
    “A big guy. Someone I hadn’t seen before. He
came up to me in a parking lot on Twenty-Third. A little strip mall
where I was getting my dry cleaning. It was later in the day, not
too dark but dark enough that a guy just showing up as I was
unlocking my car scared the hell out of me.” She looked over at the
attorney. “I’d have run if I could. I should’ve tried. Would have
been the right thing to do. Isn’t that what they tell you to do in
those self-defense classes?”
    McCallum ignored the question. “What’d he
say again?”
    “He said, ‘He wants them back.’”
    “He wants them back?”
    “Yeah. He wants them back. I didn’t
understand that. Not at first. I’m sure I got a confused look, and
I just said who . ‘Who wants what back?’”
    McCallum set the spoon down. “And?”
    “He said, ‘Those,’ and he pointed to my
ears.” She reached to touch them by impulse, one hand on each side
of her head. “The earrings,” she said. “He wanted the earrings
back. Then I understood. And I was angry. I said, ‘You tell him he
can…’.”
    She didn’t finish. McCallum waited a
moment.
    “Go ahead,” he said.
    She