Ladies' Night by Mary Kay Andrews Page B

meltdown, nodding and occasionally jotting some words onto a legal yellow pad.
    “So,” Grace said, when she’d finished. “What do you think? Can you help me?”
    Mitzi tapped the pen against the legal pad. “You walked away from your own home—even though your husband was the one screwing around on you?”
    “Yes,” Grace said.
    Mitzi cocked her head and a strand of gray-flecked dark hair fell across one eye. She was in her early fifties now, but when her hair started graying twenty years earlier, she’d chosen not to color it—just to give herself the look of an older, more experienced jurist. At home, she favored bright colors and clothes designed to show off the figure she worked hard at maintaining, but in the courtroom, Mitzi mostly chose expensively tailored business suits in neutral colors, with just enough feminine detailing to remind her clients—and prospective jurors—that she was a woman in charge.
    “You know, Grace, it’s supposed to work the other way around. You’re supposed to kick his butt out of the house.”
    “Sorry,” Grace said. “I’m new at all this. It never occurred to me to ask him to leave. Anyway, after I sank his car, I’d pretty much made the statement I needed to.”
    Mitzi laughed. “I’ve handled hundreds of divorces over the years, but you’re my first client to drown a car.” She half stood and bowed in Grace’s direction. “Awesome. Although probably not prudent.”
    She sat down again and looked at her notes. “How are you for money?”
    “I’m broke,” Grace admitted. “Ben froze our bank accounts. He canceled my credit cards. I had to borrow money from my mom to buy gas to drive over here today.”
    The lawyer nodded. “Nothing unusual about that. We’ll have to try to get the court to order your husband to come to a temporary financial agreement between the two of you.”
    Mitzi doodled something on her legal pad, then considered whether or not to share some unhappy news with her client. She hesitated to pile more bad news on Grace Stanton, whose life had taken an ugly turn for the worse ever since she’d drowned her husband’s sports car two weeks earlier.
    Grace caught the meaning of her lawyer’s pitying glance.
    “What?” Grace said, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear. “You’re giving me that look.”
    “What look?” Mitzi asked.
    “It’s the look doctors give their patients before they tell them they’ve got an incurable disease. The look my college professor gave me right before he announced I’d pulled a D in statistics. The look that Ben gave me right before he admitted that night with J’Aimee wasn’t the first. Come on, Mitzi. Spit it out.”
    Mitzi sighed. “Your divorce case has been assigned a judge, and we’ve got a date for an initial hearing.”
    “But that’s good news, right? The faster we get things settled, the faster I can get my life back on track.”
    “It would be good news,” Mitzi agreed. “Except that you drew Stackpole.”
    “Who’s he? One of Ben’s old drinking buddies?”
    “If only,” Mitzi said. “If we could prove he had some kind of association with your ex, that would be grounds for recusal, which would be great. But I doubt Ben and Cedric Stackpole have ever met.”
    “Then, why is he bad news?”
    “Because,” Mitzi said, “Cedric N. Stackpole Jr. is unofficial head of the He-Man Woman Hater Club.”
    “Why?”
    “Nobody knows. Stackpole just hates women in general and women plaintiffs specifically.”
    “But, he’s a judge. I mean, judges are impartial, right?”
    “Supposed to be,” Mitzi said. “Only Stackpole never got that memo. He’s a notorious misogynist. I’ve been lucky. I’ve only had one other divorce in front of him in the past.”
    “How did that go?”
    Mitzi’s eyes strayed to the row of framed diplomas on the wall opposite her desk. “Hmm? Don’t ask. My client got shafted. Her husband abandoned her and her two small children, left them basically