Anything You Can Do (6 page)

"Sure did."

Austin watched in fascination. She was moving in for the kill.

She abandoned the papers and fixed her attention on Graham again. "What time did she arrive at the club on the night in question?"

"Four minutes till nine."

"You're a very precise man, Mr. Graham."

Harold shrugged happily at the compliment. "Just part of the job."

"And what time did the alleged incident occur?"

"Around midnight."

"Can you be more precise?"

"Midnight, give or take a few minutes."

"How many drinks did the plaintiff have before this time?"

"Several.
"

"More than a couple?"

"Six, seven."

"You've testified that she had no difficulty walking. Did she not show any signs of intoxication after all that alcohol?"

"Well, she may have swayed a little, and she talked kinda slurred and laughed awful loud."

"So when you testified before that she
was
whipping around pretty good,
that wasn't completely accurate."

"Well, you know, not limping or anything. Maybe swaying a little."

"I see. What, exactly, did she say when she volunteered to help out at the bar?"

"I didn't exactly hear her say anything. I just saw her go up to the bar, pick up a tray, and start serving. "

"How many drinks were on her tray when she left the bar?"

"I couldn't see for sure. The place was crowded. A
lot, probably. She stopped at a couple of tables before she got to me.” Harold was starting to squirm.

The air conditioning kicked on, and Austin jumped
. The sound seemed as loud as thunder. He leaned back, hungry for the cool.

“How many Seven and Sevens had you had by this time?”

“A couple.”

“Mr. Graham, could you be more precise in your definition of the phrase ‘a couple’? You seem to use this term rather vaguely.”

“Two or three, maybe.”

“Four or five?”

“Maybe four. I couldn’t sit there all night and not order. They’d’ve run me out.”

“I understand. But can we assume that between the dim light, the crowd and
a couple
of drinks, you have no idea how many drinks were on the plaintiff’s tray when she left the bar?”

The man shifted uncomfortably in his chair and gave Austin a helpless look. Austin shrugged slightly. The guy was on his own.
“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Then you can only say for certain that she had one drink on her tray, namely your Seven and Seven?”

The investigator was starting to sweat. “Why would she stop at those other tables if she wasn’t giving them drinks?”

“Since you testified that she’s a regular, perhaps she was chatting with friends. Did she talk to the people at the tables?”

Harold ducked his head and mumbled something.

“I missed that, Mr. Graham.”

“I dunno. Maybe.” He straightened. “But she musta been serving drinks too.”

“How much di
d she charge you for your drink?”

Harold mumbled again.

“Please speak up, Mr. Graham. These proceedings are being recorded.”

“I said, nothing.”

“Nothing. Had you been receiving free drinks all evening?”

“No.”

“Yet the house bought that particular drink for you?”

He shifted in his chair again.
“No. Not the house. She did.”

“Did she give you a reason for that unusual act?”

Harold looked at the ceiling and sighed, an act of resignation.

Austin could have sworn he saw tiny sparks jumping from Bailey’s fiery hair.

“She said it was to cure my shyness, that she’d seen me watching her before and knew I wanted to meet her.”

“Thank you, Mr. Graham. That’ll be all. I’m sure we can dispense with any further details.”

“There aren’t any more details!”

“Thank you. That’ll be all.”

And that, Austin mused, was definitely all. So much for Harold Graham’s testimony. Austin was furious. He wanted to swear. Conversely, he had to duck his head to hide a smile. That was crazy. How could he smile when Bailey had just blown away their witness? Was it possible to admire someone’s expertise with a knife when your own throat was being slit?

“What do we do now?” Mark asked him as everyone shoved back their chairs and prepared to depart.

“We congratulate the opposition,” Austin replied and moved around to catch Bailey before she could get out the door.

“Well done,” he murmured, extending his hand.

She raised an eyebrow, shifted her briefcase and slid her long, slim fingers into his. Static electricity jumped between them, and they gasped simultaneously then laughed nervously. Austin shook her hand, surprised at the fragile feel of fingers that could probably crush an anvil.

With a shock,
he recognized a stirring in his groin that couldn’t possibly be happening under such circumstances.

"Good job," he said, releasing her hand and backing away, stuffing his own hands in his pockets to obscure the evidence. "Good-bye," he said, and bolted from the room.

"You were fantastic!" Margaret praised as they walked back to the office. "You made a fool out of that man."

Bailey stepped off the curb and frowned into the sun. "He seemed a little upset, but I certainly wouldn't describe him as a fool."

"No, Margaret's right, he looked really dumb," Candy contributed, puffing a little. "When you made him admit the only drink I carried was to him, his face got all red."

"Oh. Yes, well, I guess that's true." Bailey had assumed they were
talking about Austin. She had momentarily forgotten that anyone else had been there.

"They'll be calling us before the day's over to offer a settlement," Margaret declared, almost bouncing down the sidewalk.

"And this'll be all over?" Candy questioned.

"No way," Bailey s
aid, pushing through the revolving door into their office building.

"Why?" Candy asked, following her.

"The first offer is only an opening gambit. Don't worry. We'll go to court if they don't offer enough."

"But what if they offer enough?" Candy tripped along on her stiletto heels, trying to keep up.

"If they offer enough, we'll take it," Bailey reassured her. "But they won't."

"Let's go to lunch and celebrate," Margaret proposed.

"You two go ahead," Bailey declined. "I have plans."

She watched the pair totter away then went upstairs to find
Paula and see how she was surviving her first day. 

At the end of the office hallway, outside Stafford Morris' co
rner office, Bailey leaned over the side of the modular cubicle. Paula sat facing a computer screen, dictation earphones disappearing under her curls, fingers flying over the keyboard.

"You're still here," Bailey said.

Peeling off the phones, Paula turned to face her. "Back already? How'd the big deposition go? Was Austin impressive?"

Impressive? Yes, she thought. Austin was, to say the least, impressive. "I won," she said, ignoring
Paula's last question.

Paula
grinned. "You won? I didn't know this was a contest."

"I didn't say it was a contest, but certainly there are winners and losers in every lega
l battle. And I won this round."

"You mean your client won."

Bailey straightened up and folded her arms. "I won for our client. Look, I came back here to ask you if you wanted to go to lunch, but I'm about to change my mind. I was even going to offer to pay and we could go somewhere with a menu on the table instead of the wall."

Paula
crinkled her nose. "Thanks, but Mr. Morris has some clients in his office, and he wants me to go get sandwiches for everybody then kind of hang around while I eat mine in case he needs me."

"Good grief." Bailey cast a malevolent glance at
Stafford Morris' closed door. I'd think the old goat would cut you a little slack on your first day."

"Quite the opposite, actually. There's a backlog of things his temp didn't do that he wants me to catch up on."

"Oh, well. I guess I'll just go downstairs and get ptomaine poisoning. How's it going otherwise? Has he blown cigar smoke in your face yet?"

Paula
laughed. "Once, but I blew it back at him."

Bailey smiled
. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Paula
held her earphones out, ready to pop them into her ears. "Get out of here or I'll take your name off the list for the fiscal-year-end party next month."

Bailey grimaced. "Oh
, yes, you do have the honor of planning that mess, don't you?"

"Mess? You're spoiled. A Las Vegas party on a riverboat cruising down the Missouri River sounds like a blast to me." 

Stafford Morris' door suddenly opened and the man charged out, cigar clenched in one side of his mouth. "Bailey," he muttered by way of greeting, then thrust a stack of typed pages covered with illegible pencil corrections in front of Paula. "Get off whatever you're doing and get started on these changes. We'll have more in a few minutes."

Bailey watched the
stocky man in shirt sleeves disappear into his office then shook her head. "How you can stand to work for that man is beyond me."

Paula
pushed several keys to save her document and call up another then shrugged. "It's the old system of barter. In exchange for allowing myself to be tortured eight hours a day I receive a paycheck that enables me to spend the other sixteen in a vain effort to recuperate. Now go away so I can concentrate on deciphering these hieroglyphics."

"You have my sympathy," Bailey called, leaving to search
for Gordon and see if he had eaten lunch yet.

*~*~*

Bailey was working on Larry Haynes' lease the next day when Margaret called, her voice high-pitched with excitement. "Mark Powell just called to offer a settlement in the Miller case!"

"How much?"

Margaret named a sum within a few thousand dollars of what Bailey had expected. Bailey leaned back in her chair and smiled at the ceiling.

"It's not enough," she told Margaret. "You need to call the client and tell her about the offer, but advise her not to take it. They'll come up with more."

"What if she wants to take it?"

"If she wants to take it, that's her decision, but as her attorney, you need to offer sound legal advice."

"Do you want to call her? I think she'd listen to you."

Obligingly Bailey returned to her office and placed the call. She wasn't su
rprised when Candy's initial reaction was to accept the money. However, when Bailey emphasized that the attorneys' fees would be deducted from the amount, that the first offer was always low to allow for bargaining room, and that the company would almost certainly increase their offer, she agreed to reject it.

"I'll contact opposing counsel if you'd like," Bailey offered when she called Margaret to report the outcome of her conversation with the client.

Margaret accepted gratefully.

Bailey smiled at the
phone. It would give her great pleasure to be the one to refuse Austin. Even though Mark had presented the offer, she saw no reason to go through him; Austin was obviously in charge. However, when she called, the receptionist told her Austin was out to lunch. She left her name then decided to go eat also. Gordon was among the missing, but an educated guess told her he would likely be down the street at the deli that featured his favorite beer cheese soup on Tuesdays.

Entering the deli, she immediately spotted Gordon at
a table with a large crock of soup in front of him. Seated opposite him, Austin was talking rapidly and waving his hands, his face stormy. Bailey smiled as she ordered a sandwich. She'd caught the man in a foul mood, and her news wasn't likely to improve things. However, when Austin raised his head and saw her approaching their table, his expression lightened so noticeably, she almost lost her train of thought. He did know how to make a woman feel desirable. Damn! She shoved that idea out of her head. All he made her feel was determined, she assured herself.

"Bailey, my friend, come join us," Gordon invited.

"I just tried to call you," she said to Austin after the amenities had been observed. "I spoke with our client, and she feels the amount of your client's settlement offer is inadequate and insulting." Bailey took a satisfying bite out of her sandwich.

Austin leaned back in his chair and studied her for a minute, eyes half-closed and glittering. "It would seem," he drawled, "that you don't have much control over your client or you'd have persuaded her to take my client's generous offer."