Page 74 of EverGreene
“There you two are.” Conrad’s voice made my blood boil. A sentiment seemingly shared by Loche, as well as a notable chill fell over him. “I wondered when the hell you were going to get here.”
“We’re fifteen minutes early, Uncle,” Loche pronounced the word uncle like he’d just taken a swig of curdled milk.
“I expect you both to be here earlier tomorrow. Loche, I need your notes on the jury pool. Ever, I need you to run across the street to that coffee place and grab me a black coffee with a couple of those small containers of creamer.”
“Isn’t that something Kim can do?” Loche asked, venom lacing each word.
I whipped my head to look at him so fast, I became momentarily dizzy. It was one thing to speak to his uncle like this when it was just the two of them. To do it in a public setting was going to land Loche in a meeting with the partners.
“Kim is indisposed at the moment.”
“I bet she is.”
Well, if Loche wants to light this candle, who am I to extinguish it?
“With all due respect, Mr. Harrison. If I’m going to be here, I would prefer to do more substantive work. Otherwise, I could have just stayed back at the office.”
Conrad turned his attention to me, a hint of surprise overtaking his face. From my peripheral vision, I thought I could make out a slight smirk from Loche.
“Very well. Loche, you go grab the coffee. Ever, you go find Loche’s juror notes. I need them in five minutes.” In what could only be described as a dignified huff, Conrad turned around, storming back inside the courtroom, leaving us in the hall.
“Thank you,” I said, suddenly feeling a little on the nauseous side. “But you shouldn’t have done that. He’s going to make our lives a living hell throughout the trial now.”
“Yeah, well, he’s been making mine a living hell since childhood.”
“Since I’m down to about four minutes and forty seconds to find them, where are those jury pool notes?”
“They’re in the third box down on the dolly in an aptly-titled manila folder. Potential jurors are listed alphabetically. And if I were you, I’d try to find them in two minutes.”
“Noted.” I grabbed the dolly from Loche. A slight shudder went down my body when our hands briefly connected during the hand-off, and I looked back to see Loche glancing over his shoulder at me before heading down the hall to fetch Conrad’s coffee.
I opened the stately solid wood double doors to the courtroom, walking down the aisle lined with wooden benches that made up the gallery. At the front, seated at the attorney’s table, were Conrad and Blaine Hawley, second-chairing the trial.Next to them was our client Rebecca Sawyer, representing her parents’ estate and, of course, Kim, who would be moving to a seat on the bench behind Conrad. It was no surprise Kim was able to weasel her way here. And the firm was footing the bill for their rendezvous.
At the table next to them were the attorneys and representatives of the automotive manufacturer whose defective gas tank led to an explosion that normally would have been a minor fender bender, which led to the deaths of Roger and Peggy Sawyer.
Working with an imaginary clock ticking away in my head, I removed the boxes from the dolly, neatly arranging them beneath the bench behind Conrad and Blaine, folded the dolly, and proceeded to dig through the box, finding the file Loche had prepared. I had to hand it to him; he was thorough.
“Is that it?” Conrad asked, turning around in his chair.
“Yes, Mr. Harrison.” I handed the file to him with a smile on my face, knowing he was still seething from our interaction in the hall.
“What crawled up his ass this morning?” Caroline whispered.
“That’s a question for Kim,” I whispered back to a response that was nothing short of a snort-laugh.
Minutes later, Loche returned with the coffee, setting it down on the table in front of Conrad and taking a seat next to me on the bench just in time for the potential jurors to stream in, filling the gallery seating behind us.
“You didn’t happen to find an apothecary specializing in arsenic on the way back, did you?” I whispered.
“What I have planned for him is far better than a quick and easy out,” he muttered.
I gasped under my breath. As much as I didn’t exactly wish for death to befall Conrad, the way in which Loche articulatedthat statement was, well, kind of hot. Had he said something like that in the car yesterday while sporting the erection he tried to hide from me, maybe… Shit. What was wrong with me? Was I broken? Did I care whether I was broken?
Loche passed a small steno pad to me, nodding at me to take notes along with him during voir dire as one by one, members of the jury pool were called to the juror box, a process that could take a couple of hours or the entire day, depending on how the questioning went, what jurors were dismissed, what challenges were made. If we noticed anything that Conrad or Blaine didn’t or had any other observations that may be helpful, we were to write them down.
Balls deep into the process, Loche passed a note to me.
This guy should be booted for cause.
