The Divine Appointment Page 2

  Everything about Rory’s appearance—and particularly his swagger—irritated Eli. The man was as slick as his hair. Eli had learned during the course of this case that George Thornton wasn’t the first person Rory had swindled. It was just that, this time, he’d been caught. Helping a victim like George Thornton get justice against a swindler like Rory Driscoll was one of the reasons Eli enjoyed being a lawyer.

  “Eli, Mr. Thornton,” Merrick said crisply as he entered and sat at the end of the table opposite Eli. He didn’t shake hands with either man.

  Eli and George nodded in the direction of the enemy to acknowledge its presence.

  Rory didn’t speak.

  “I suppose you know why I asked you to come to this meeting,” Merrick continued. “Mr. Driscoll and I would like to discuss a possible settlement.”

  Eli and Merrick haggled for the better part of the afternoon. Offers, counteroffers, and coy gamesmanship were all part of the negotiations. Two hours after the meeting began, Merrick said the words Eli had waited to hear.

  “We can pay one million dollars,” Merrick said. His face was rigid and firm. “And that’s our final offer.”

  Eli relaxed back into his chair, stroked his chin thoughtfully, and exhaled. “Let me speak with my client in private.”

  He and George excused themselves from the room. Once they were safely where Merrick and Rory couldn’t hear them, Eli spoke to George in a tone that was barely above a whisper, but forceful. “I think you should take it, George. My sources tell me that Rory is completely out of money, and may even file for bankruptcy. If he does that, then you can kiss good-bye all hope of recovering any money from him.”

  “I know.” George looked dejected. “It’s not as much about the money anymore as it is about punishing Rory. You can’t imagine the times I’ve dreamed of my hands around his throat.”

  “A million dollars is pretty good punishment.” Eli raised his eyebrows for effect. “I’ll bet he despises the day the two of you met about as much as you do. Because of you, the federal authorities are investigating some of Driscoll’s other businesses. And I can assure you that nobody likes having the FBI after them. Let’s take the million and call it a day.”

  Eli could sense that George wasn’t quite convinced, so he leaned in closer. “I know Merrick Armstrong, George. He may not be the best lawyer in the state, but he didn’t get to be third on the letterhead at Chandler and Spivey because of his good looks. If we don’t take this offer, he’ll strike the best deal he can for Driscoll with the U.S. attorney, then Driscoll will file for bankruptcy. You’ll be left out in the cold.”

  “All right,” George conceded reluctantly. “But I want the money wired to your office this afternoon, before we leave. I don’t want to risk his being able to renege on us.”

  In agreement, Eli and George reentered the conference room and announced that a settlement had been reached. By 4:00 p.m. Eli had obtained confirmation that his bank had received the money and that it was deposited in his escrow account. He and George signed the necessary settlement papers prepared by Merrick’s office and departed.

  As they left, George thanked Eli and genuinely appeared satisfied and relieved that the whole ordeal was finally over. Although Eli would receive a handsome fee for his efforts—one third of the total recovery—the appreciation from George meant as much or more to Eli.

  Chapter Two

  En route to Jackson, Tennessee

  Eli exited the parking garage behind the Omni Office Center in his charcoal gray BMW 760Li and merged into the westbound traffic on West End Avenue. Several cars and trucks and a handful of city buses cluttered his lane, so he zigzagged his way through the traffic. His BMW responded with little effort. Soon he was on the I-440 loop around Nashville, then headed west on I-40 toward his office and home in Jackson, Tennessee. Because he was slightly ahead of the afternoon rush-hour traffic, he hoped to be home by 6:00 or 6:30 p.m. at the latest.

  As Eli drove, he loosened his necktie. His suit coat was already on the rear seat. He allowed his mind to relax. Finding a radio station that played songs from the 1980s, he sang along, off-key, with a few. After a couple of treasured minutes of solace, his wireless rang. The caller ID indicated that the call was coming from his office, and he activated the BMW’s hands-free device to answer it.

  “This is Eli.”

  “Eli, this is Barbara.”

  Barbara Lewis had been Eli’s assistant for the last five years. In her midfifties, she was dependable, loyal, and a hard worker. She arrived at work on time, stayed late if Eli needed her to, and he paid her well to make sure she didn’t look for another job.

  “Did Mr. Thornton’s case settle?” she asked.

  Eli had spoken to Barbara on his way to Nashville that morning and had told her that a compromise was a real possibility. He knew she wouldn’t be surprised by the outcome.

  “The money’s already in our escrow account. I’m on my way back to Jackson now.”

  “That’s good news. I hoped it would be, and I bet Mr. Thornton is relieved.”

  “He needed some coaxing,” Eli said. “But in the end he realized it was the best result we could hope for. Anything going on at the office?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “What’s my calendar look like in the morning?”

  “It’s clean. I scheduled an appointment for tomorrow afternoon with Ms. Hawkins about her case, but the morning is clear.”

  “Good,” Eli responded. “I’ll be in later than usual.” He liked taking some time off after a successful day.

  “I guessed as much. Have a good evening.”

  The Faulkner residence, Jackson, Tennessee

  Eli ended the call, and continued his trek toward Jackson. It was 6:15 p.m. when he pulled into the double garage and parked beside his wife’s XJ7 red Jaguar convertible. Their house was a stately colonial in a gated neighborhood in north Jackson.

  Eli put the car in park and grabbed his suit coat from the rear seat. The garage was immaculately clean, as always, and the reflections of the two automobiles glistened off the glossy concrete floor.

  The aromas of pasta, Alfredo sauce, and garlic bread met him when he entered the house.

  “How was your day?” Sara asked as Eli entered the kitchen where she was preparing supper.

  “It went well. Finally got George Thornton’s case settled.”

  Eli draped his suit coat over one of the kitchen-table chairs and walked toward Sara. She rose up on her toes and gave him a welcome-home kiss, and the two embraced.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. There was love in her voice.

  “Me, too. It’s been a long day.”

  He smiled at her, and she returned the warm gesture. He took pleasure in holding her close. “You’re still as beautiful as you were the first time I saw you.” He brushed Sara’s blond hair away from her face and gazed into her blue eyes.

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I mean it.” He held her for two or three seconds longer, until she gave him another kiss.

  “You better let me go.” She pushed at his arms, which were locked around her narrow waist. “Or we might burn dinner again.”

  Another quick kiss and Eli reluctantly released her. Sara resumed stirring the pasta noodles that were boiling on the stove while Eli began to set the table.

  “George Thornton,” Sara said.

  Eli could tell from her probing tone that she was searching for the name.

  “Is that the man who had the clothing-manufacturing business?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You’ve been working on that case for some time, haven’t you?”

  “Three years. I’m glad it’s over, and I know George is. He really needs the money with two kids in college…but enough about George Thornton. What did you do today?”

  “I went to the gym this morning,” Sara replied, “and worked out until ten. I met Anne for lunch at the country club. After t
hat I ran a few errands. I’ve been home most of the afternoon.”

  “How are Anne and Tommy?”

  “They’re doing fine. Anne was already lamenting how busy their spring will be with both Jack and Harry playing Dixie Youth baseball. And to top it off, Tommy is coaching both teams.”

  Eli removed a glass pitcher from the refrigerator and poured some sweet tea into two glasses he had filled with ice. “Better him than me,” he commented honestly as he set the glasses at their appropriate places on the kitchen table.

  Anne and Tommy Ferguson were the prototypical helicopter parents. They poured themselves into whatever their kids did. Baseball. Piano lessons. School plays. It didn’t matter. If Jack or Harry was involved, so was Anne, or Tommy, or both. Eli could never see himself in that kind of life.

  “Anne says he enjoys it.” Sara shrugged. “I know she wouldn’t miss one of the boys’ games for anything in the world.”

  Sara removed the pot of noodles from the stove top and poured them into a metal colander in the sink. “Can you get the bread from the oven? Dinner’s just about ready. The last thing is the tossed salad.”

  Eli slipped on an insulated mitt and opened the oven. The heat blasted him in the face. He removed the pan containing a small toasted loaf of French bread and set it on the counter.

  “Eli, when are we going to have kids?”

  Sara talked to his back. Her voice sounded timid, as if she were afraid to broach the subject.

  Eli understood her reticence. He hadn’t been very receptive in the past when the subject of children had been discussed.

  “I’m ready for baseball games and parties at school and all those fun things Anne and Tommy do with their kids.”

  It was a running discussion between Eli and Sara. She wanted to have children. He wasn’t ready. Sometimes the discussion was more intense than other times. They’d been married thirteen years, and she wasn’t getting any younger, she often reminded him. He was in the prime of his career, he retorted. And he liked being able to go anywhere they wanted to…whenever they wanted to. Children would tie them down too much, he argued each time the subject came up.

  “Don’t start on that again, Sara.” Eli pivoted and held his palms up toward her. “I’ve had a hard day, and I’m tired.”

  Sara abruptly turned her back to Eli and resumed preparing the tossed salad. “Why do you despise the thought of having children so much?” she demanded.

  “I don’t despise the thought of having children,” he fired back. “I like kids. I’m just not ready to have any of our own right now.”

  Sara spun to face him and glared at him piercingly. “I don’t think you’re ever going to be ready.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Our friends’ kids are already in elementary school. Some are even in middle school.”

  Eli knew how much Sara wanted children. It was growing harder to look into her eyes and say no. But he did. Time after time, he did. Their marriage was nearly perfect in every other way. They were regular attenders and faithful supporters of their church. They had no financial concerns. This one issue—whether to have children and when—was practically the only one on which they disagreed. Any other differences had been minor and were resolved without difficulty. This issue lingered.

  Sara didn’t bring it up often. It wasn’t as if she focused on it daily. But Eli knew how important having children was to her. Yet time and again he cut her off without fully discussing the issue…all the while knowing that his refusal to consider the possibility hurt her.

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he said firmly. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat supper, and talk about this later.”

  Sara dejectedly spun away from Eli and placed the pasta Alfredo and the salad on the table. Eli had just closed the oven door when an image from the twenty-inch flat-screen television that sat on the kitchen counter caught his eye. He could barely hear the audio, but the image above the female news anchor’s right shoulder was that of Lady Justice. Below were the words Supreme Court. He took the remote control from the kitchen counter and increased the volume.

  “We have sad news to report tonight,” the female anchor announced. “After a three-month battle with pancreatic cancer, Supreme Court Justice Martha Doyle Robinson has died. Justice Robinson was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Mitchell eight years ago and has been one of the most liberal justices to sit on the High Court…”

  Eli decreased the volume and muttered, “That doesn’t happen very often.”

  “What did you say?” Sara demanded from across the room.

  “The news is reporting that Justice Robinson died today from cancer,” he said defensively. Then he softened his tone before replying further. He knew Sara was still in a combative mood, so why agitate her further? “And I said that it doesn’t happen very often that a new Supreme Court justice gets appointed.”

  Eli sat down at the end of the table and Sara sat to his left. The pasta was delicious, the iced tea refreshing, but the conversation between the two of them was nonexistent during dinner.

  After dinner Eli changed into blue jeans and a T-shirt. He sat in his leather recliner in the den, surfing between baseball games. Marlins versus Cubs. Twins versus Orioles. Nothing too interesting. His favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, had the night off. He switched to Fox News and viewed several minutes of a segment about Justice Robinson.

  Sara gave Eli the silent treatment all evening and retired before he did. When he finally went to bed after the late news, she was asleep. Her back was to him, but he could see enough of her face through her sleek, shoulder-length hair to notice the redness around her eyes. She had cried herself to sleep, he realized.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. A feeling of guilt washed over him. Am I being too selfish? They had argued over whether to have children on numerous occasions, but he had never known her to be this upset. He bent over and gently kissed her on the cheek.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Avenue of the Americas, New York City

  It was nearly 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Stella Hanover boarded the elevator and pressed the button for the twenty-seventh floor of the forty-floor building. The three other people on the elevator never made eye contact with her, and it was a good thing. She wasn’t in the mood to be courteous to anyone. She tapped her foot anxiously as the elevator made stops at five separate floors with people exiting and boarding before it reached her destination. When the elevator finally arrived at her floor, she stomped off in a huff even before the doors had fully opened. It was time to finalize battle preparations.

  She knew it had to happen sometime. The justices on the Supreme Court were getting older, making a vacancy inevitable. She just hadn’t thought it would be Justice Martha Doyle Robinson’s seat. She was one of the younger members of the court, and one of Stella’s favorite jurists.

  Stella had hoped there would be no vacancies during the Wallace presidency. Even now she still couldn’t comprehend how he had been elected eighteen months earlier. She detested Richard Wallace. He represented everything she opposed, and since the day after he was elected, Stella had been working day and night to ensure that he wouldn’t be reelected.

  But fate—and pancreatic cancer—had handed President Wallace an opportunity to change the shape of the Supreme Court, and Stella was determined to thwart him at all costs. Had one of the four conservative justices died, it wouldn’t have been an issue. President Wallace could have appointed whomever he wished and Stella wouldn’t have raised a hand. But Justice Robinson’s seat was a different story altogether.

  No legal scholar needed to speculate about how Justice Robinson would vote on certain cases or issues. Her opinions were very predictable—always to the extreme left of every issue. And Justice Robinson stood, unwavering, on the one issue that was of paramount importance to Stella—the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion. That’s why Stella admired her so much.

  Pushing her red-
rimmed bifocals farther up from their resting place at the end of her nose, Stella dared anyone to cross her, particularly on this day. The National Federation for Abortion Rights—the largest pro-choice organization in the country—carried tremendous weight, and she was president. Her Avenue of the Americas office was the main war room for the campaign to defeat any conservative Supreme Court candidate nominated by President Wallace.

  Stella made her grand entrance at 10:00 a.m., just as she did every day. Her employees scampered to hiding places when she entered, but she caught a couple in the break room before they could escape. She barked instructions at one of them and yelled at the other. After they ran scared from the room, she smiled to herself and poured a cup of hot coffee. Then she strode off to her office. She loved the power. Aides and staff all scurried to satisfy her demands. The NFAR office buzzed with the same noise and energy as a campaign headquarters during the last few days of an election. Justice Robinson had been dead less than twenty-four hours and Stella had her office ready for battle.

  Once inside her personal office, Stella plopped down in her chair, reviewed her battle plans, and began making phone calls to senators’ offices and news outlets. She demanded to be interviewed on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox so she could spew her venom at President Wallace and any nominee he submitted. Executives with every network and cable news station cowered and agreed immediately to whatever she wanted. Nobody dared to cross the heavyset, midforties redhead who was known for her cutthroat politics. Next Stella called the newspapers and demanded op-ed space in the New York Times, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few. By noon all her demands were met, and she checked the media off her to-do list.