Page 75 of Pro Bono

“Blucher Lake,” Mary said. “It’s kind of ugly, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t do it justice, but maybe it’s the name of that poor family who built the ruined house.”

They walked the rest of the way down the path to the road, and then the house. The front door was locked, but Mary had her key, so they entered. Linda could see Wendy through the tall window on the lake side of the house. She was sitting on a long chair with a drink in one hand and the other hand holding a cell phone to her ear. As soon as she heard them come in, she quickly lowered her hand and the phone disappeared. She got up and set her drink down, then went to join them at the door from the living room onto the deck. “I was just having a little drink, now that the sun is sinking below the yardarm.”

Mary said, “Houses don’t have yardarms, but I think I’ll make myself an ice-cold martini.”

“I think I’ll get a quick bath and come back for the drink,” Linda said. She turned, went back inside, and climbed to her room on the second floor. Wendy had looked as though she felt guilty for making a phonecall. Linda hadn’t heard anything about an agreement not to use their phones, so she laid out some clean clothes on the bed, slipped her phone into her pocket, went into the bathroom, and dialed her son Charlie’s number. The phone rang a couple times and then went to voicemail. She said, “This is your mother. We’ve arrived safely at a place called Blucher Lake and two of us took a hike. I don’t see any other houses, and it’s very pretty. There’s one road that rings the lake. I’m going to send you a Google map, and it should show my exact location. I’m going to get a bath and a drink, and I suggest you do the same if you ever close your office. Love to Vesper. I’ll talk to you in a day or two.”

She sent the image to his phone and started the bath. In a few minutes she was feeling better than she had all day. She dressed in clean clothes and then looked at her phone. She had set it on the floor by the tub in case Charlie called her back right away. She had an odd feeling about it. She was almost sure the others must have an agreement that they wouldn’t use cell phones on their trips to enjoy nature. She wasn’t somebody who liked rules, but she could see the point of trying to keep a trip like this nonelectronic. She turned the sound of her ringer off, stopped the sound notifications, and then slid it behind two books in the bookcase at the head of her bed so she would hear it vibrate but nobody else would.

She went back downstairs and out to the deck. Mary held up her martini and then pointed to another stemmed glass on the bar across the deck. “I made one for you too.”

Linda walked over to it and took a sip. “Perfect. Thank you very much.” She sat on one of several empty chairs near the others. “And thank you both for inviting me to tag along. It’s really a special spot. The walk we took was exactly the right thing.”

“I agree,” Mary said. She looked at Wendy. “You should have come.”

“In a little while you’ll be glad I didn’t. The halibut is defrosting, the spinach and the baking potatoes are washed, and the peach cobbler dessert is already in the oven. I also unpacked, did an inventory of the meals for the next few days, got a bath, and locked the car in the garage.”

“Thank you,” Linda said. “That doesn’t leave much for us. I’ll clean up and do the dishes tonight, and cook tomorrow night.”

Later, when they’d had the dinner that Wendy had prepared and Linda and Mary had cleared the table, done the dishes, and cleaned the kitchen, they turned on the gas fire in the center of the conversation area on the deck and talked while the flames coming up through the sand warmed them. The sky was as clear and cloudless as it had been during the day, and they could lean back in their chairs and see thousands of stars that were invisible in the city lights of Los Angeles. The other two women talked a lot about their children, but she noticed that they had little to say about their husbands. After an hour or two Wendy asked Linda about her husband. She said simply, “I don’t have one. I’m a widow.”

“I think I remember you saying you had children,” Mary said.

“Just one. He’s the reason I came back to LA for a while.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“What kind?”

“Civil. The boring kind. It’s good, because I don’t have to worry that he’ll starve, but his job is to make sure nothing exciting happens to any of his clients, so he never has much to talk about.”

They all seemed to Linda to be tired beginning around tenP.M., but the talk persisted for another two alcohol-fueled hours. She managed to avoid talking too long or specifically about herself or her past life by laughing when something one of them said was funny or particularly clever, and by reliable strategies she had picked up over a lifetime, suchas mirroring the speaker’s expressions. At midnight she gave herself permission for a sincere yawn. “I’m afraid it’s past my bedtime,” she said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

She climbed the stairs, went into her room, turned down the covers of the bed, and climbed in. She moved the two books hiding her phone and looked at the screen. Her message to Charlie was there, and the notation said,Received. She plugged the phone in to charge, and slipped it under her pillow.

30

Charlie Warren’s life had been much better since he had finished Vesper Ellis’s case. He slept later in the mornings. The final hour of sleep on most days was spent in dreams that were thinly disguised versions of reality in which he studied problems and tried to devise solutions to them. This morning a motorcycle roared past on the street behind the house and he sat up.

Vesper turned in his direction and squinted at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I just had a dream about my mother.”

“It might be worth taking an ambulance to the psychiatrist’s office.”

“A good idea, but I think not this time.” He took his phone off the side table, looked at the screen, scrolled down, and read his way through it. “She sent me a Google map showing her GPS location. I think I’ll fly up—I guess Reno is probably closest—rent a car, maybe check on her, just to be sure.”

Vesper studied him. It was understandable that some deep-seated memory of the con man marrying his mother and taking her money might have been shaken loose by the unexpected appearance of the two old convicts with the rest of the story. He had just spent time tracking downand filing claims to the crook’s bank deposits. There was also the fact that he was probably experiencing a natural reaction to the violence that they had just been through during her own case. She said, “Buy two tickets.”

“You want to go too?”

“Yes,” she said. “This is probably an unnecessary trip. If it is, then I promise that you will have a better time in a Reno hotel with me than without me. If it turns into an emergency, I will try to be helpful. I’m really good at things like calling the police.”

He looked at her and shrugged. “Two tickets it is.”

---