Page 105 of A Dead End Wedding

I looked at Max. "What is he doing here? Isn't this Saturday?"

She shrugged. "I didn't call him."

We both looked at him. He stuck his hands in his orange and white plaid pants. As if the smirk on his face weren't bad enough, the pants were giving me a migraine. "You could just ask me why I'm here," he said.

I sighed. "I know I'm going to regret this, but why are you here?"

"Because Stella always calls me when she fixes tuna casserole. She makes the good kind, with green pea soup, not that nasty cream of mushroom that looks like phlegm."

I blinked. "Um, what does tuna casserole have to do with anything?"

He rolled his eyes and looked at Max. "For a big-city lawyer, she's not all that bright, is she?"

Max started sputtering, but he'd turned his attention back to me. "She's in the casserole brigade on its way down here to bring lunch and help. When she said your name, I figured you were in some kind of big trouble for the casserole brigade to mobilize. So here I am to bail you out."

I stood up, brushing paper dust off my shorts and wondering when my poor teeth would crumble into tiny bits from all the grinding I'd been doing to them lately. "Mr. Ellison, why – how – oh, forget it. Just tell me how you're bailing me out, please. Let's start there."

He preened for a minute longer, then waved for me to follow him. I looked at Max and shrugged. "Let's go. It's not like we're getting anywhere on our own."

I followed the glow of Mr. Ellison's pants into the kitchen, where another dozen boxes were piled. He'd opened them all and written on the sides in a dark green chicken scratch. There were neat stacks of paper lined up across the counter and all over the small card table and one of the two folding chairs.

Mr. Ellison stopped and swept an arm out. "Vowala!"

"Vowala?" Max asked.

"I think he meansvoila. But, anyway, what? Tell us already," I said.

"Don't you mean, 'tell us, already,please'?" he asked.

"Tell us already, or you're fired."

"Hah! Not very grateful, are ya? But out of the goodness of my heart, I'll tell you, anyway. The code is on the boxes."

Determined not to say another word that might draw this out any longer, I folded my arms across my chest and waited.

He walked over to the table and picked up a sheaf of papers stapled together. "These are the original requests for production. And, by the way, talk about a lot of useless gobbledygook."

He started reading from the page. "'A copy of every document, correspondence, writing, communication, memorandum, handwritten note, typed note, worksheet, investigative material, report (including drafts), record, summary, test, study, chart, diagram, drawing, design, photograph, film, blah blah blah for three more lines, which convey any information relating to all tests performed by you, oron your behalf, for the purpose of determining the effectiveness of the warnings issued and the placement of the warnings.'"

He stopped to suck in a huge breath. "This is what is wrong with you lawyers. Why couldn't you just say 'Give us everything that has to do with any warnings on that no-good insulin that killed Faith Deaver?' I'm guessing some poor sap charged a thousand bucks to write up this crap."

"More like several thousand," I muttered, thinking of my years of discovery management at True, Everett.

"What?"

"Never mind. And, not that I need to defend the entire legal profession to you, but there are reasons to be so careful. We lawyers, as you like to say, are careful not to leave loopholes that can harm our clients. Not that I drafted those, anyway. That was Charlie's previous attorney."

I realized I was defending the entire legal profession to him.

"Argh! Enough, already. Either tell me your miraculous discovery, or I'm going to find us some lunch," I said, as my stomach growled again.

"It's simple. Sheesh, hold on to your panties. See the one one on this box?" He pointed to one of the open boxes, labeled "box eleven."

"Yes, that was box eleven out of ninety-six, right?"

"Wrong," he said, grinning.

"Wrong?" I looked at the numbering on the other boxes, since I hadn't paid that much attention to the outsides before. "I'm not wrong. See, here is box twelve, box thirteen, box . . . twelve hundred and twelve?"

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