Inadvertent Disclosure (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Clear Brook County Courthouse

Springport, Pennsylvania

Monday morning

Judge Paulson glared down from
the bench at the attorney opposing Sasha McCandless’s motion to compel
discovery.

“The Court will not tolerate
such behavior going forward, Mr. Showalter. Your client will produce the
electronic messages it has withheld by the end of this week in digital format
or face monetary sanctions for discovery abuses. Are we clear?”

Drew Showalter bobbed his head
but didn’t meet the judge’s eyes. “Crystal, your honor.”

The judge turned to Sasha.
“Anything else, Ms. McCandless?”

She glanced down at her legal
pad. She’d made and won all of her points. But, she saw no reason to squander
an opportunity. She drew herself to her full four feet, eleven and
three-quarters inches in height and said, “Your honor, VitaMight requests that
this Court award it its attorneys’ fees and costs in preparing and arguing this
motion.”

Maybe she could get VitaMight’s
commercial landlord to foot the bill for her prep work, not to mention the
seven-plus hours round-trip travel time they’d have to pay her for driving all
the way up to northern Pennsylvania to argue the motion. VitaMight would be
impressed.

Judge Paulson, however, was
not.

“Let’s not get greedy, Ms.
McCandless. Denied. We’re done here, counsel.”

He made no move to leave the
bench, though.

Showalter ducked his head,
tucked his lone folder under his arm, and hurried past Sasha, mumbling that
he’d forward her the files.

Sasha smiled, savoring her
victory, while she crammed her binders and legal pads back into her leather
bag.

She paused long enough to think
that, just maybe, if Showalter had placed as much importance on preparation as
he apparently did on traveling light, his argument might not have been so
laughably bad. His claim that his client, a commercial properties investment
trust with diverse holdings, lacked the ability to search its e-mails was a
pretty pathetic defense. Almost as pathetic as his client’s abrupt decision to
terminate VitaMight’s long-term lease of a distribution warehouse for no
apparent reason.

And that uncharitable thought,
she later decided, was her undoing.

If she had just shoved her
papers into the bag and gotten out of the courtroom a few minutes sooner, she
wouldn’t have been at counsel table when the red-faced old man came shuffling
through the wide oak doors. But she hadn’t, and she was.

So, when he banged through the
bar separating the gallery from the well of the courtroom, she had the bad luck
to be directly in Judge Paulson’s line of sight.

“Harry, you old bastard! What
do you think you’re doing?”  The elderly man crossed the well, waving a fistful
of papers at the bench.

The deputy leaning against the
wall next to the American flag made a halfhearted motion toward his gun, but
the judge waved him off.

“Mr. Craybill! Step back!” 
Judge Paulson leaned forward and warned him, but the old man didn’t stop.

“I’m no more incompetent than
you are. Who’s responsible for this?”

Judge Paulson caught Sasha’s
eye and motioned for the man to stop talking.

“Mr. Craybill, do you have
counsel?”

“What?”

“An attorney to represent you
in your incapacitation hearing, Jed.”

“You know damn well, I can’t
afford an attorney, you no-good . . .”

Judge Paulson spoke right over
the tirade. “Ms. McCandless, congratulations. The court hereby appoints you
counsel to represent Mr. Craybill in the hearing on the county’s motion to have
him declared incompetent and have a guardian appointed to handle his affairs.”

She opened her mouth to
protest, and Craybill wheeled around and glared at her.

He turned back to the bench and
said, “Her? She can’t be old enough to be a lawyer, for crissake, look at her.”

Sasha’s cheeks burned, but she
saw her opening and took it.

“Your honor, it sounds like Mr.
Craybill here isn’t pleased with the appointment. And, frankly, your honor, I
have no experience in elder law. That, coupled with the fact that my office is
nearly four hours away in Pittsburgh, leads me to regretfully decline your kind
offer.”

“It’s not an offer, Ms.
McCandless. It’s an order. Old Jed here’ll come around. He might even say sorry
for insulting you.” The judge stared at her over his half-moon glasses.

She caught herself before a
sigh escaped. “Yes, your honor.”

The judge turned to the old man
and said, “Now, tell your new lawyer you’re sorry, Jed.”

The man muttered something that
may have been an apology, although Sasha was sure she heard “featherweight” and
“child” in there somewhere.

Looking pleased with himself,
the Honorable Harrison Paulson unfolded his legs and stood to his full height
of nearly six and a half feet. He headed toward the door to his chambers.

“Your honor,” Sasha said, as he
walked away, “when do I need to return for the hearing?”

She figured she could get that
information from her new client, but she hoped if the hearing were less than
two weeks away, the judge would grant her a continuance right then and there.

Instead, he checked his watch,
turned back to her, and said, “In about an hour.” He pushed through the door
and disappeared into his chambers while she struggled to keep her mouth from
hanging open.

Sasha’s new client lowered
himself in the empty chair at counsel’s table and tossed the petition seeking
to have him declared incompetent on the table in front of her, while Sasha
stood staring at the space the judge had just vacated.

An hour?  How was she supposed
to get ready for an incapacitation hearing in one hour?  Sasha prided herself
on her composure in the courtroom. But her calm demeanor came because she
over-prepared. In the sort of cases she handled, the victor almost always was
whichever party’s attorney was more prepared. So her rule was to prepare her
case until she was sure she could handle every foreseeable issue, answer every
question the judge could conceivably ask, and remove any doubt about her
client’s argument and then prepare some more. An hour was barely enough time to
read and digest the petition and whatever exhibits came with it. She checked
the clock. Make that fifty-nine minutes.

She flung herself into the
empty chair and skimmed the petition’s opening paragraph to find the statute
under which the county was acting and then thumbed the citation into her
Blackberry. She scanned the statute, reading as fast as dared to take in the
gist of the act without getting bogged down in the details. Once she had an
understanding of the requirements the county would have to meet to have
Craybill declared incompetent and a guardian appointed, she powered off her
phone and looked at the man sitting next to her.

“Let’s grab a bite and you can
fill me in on what’s going on,” she said as she gathered her papers and headed
out of the courtroom. She’d left Pittsburgh before five a.m. and was going on
nothing but black coffee.

Craybill eyed her. “We don't
have any health food places in town.”

“How about a diner that serves
breakfast all day?”

He managed a small grin, like
it was a struggle to remember how to smile. “Yeah, we got a diner.”

He followed her out of the
courtroom.

CHAPTER 3

The diner sat across the square
from the courthouse. Craybill led her to a worn faux leather booth in the front
window of the building.

Through the streaked glass, she
could see the late morning sun glinting off the statue of Lady Justice that
stood atop the courthouse’s clock tower. She squinted at the clock’s hands.

“We need to be back in court in
forty-five minutes. Does this place have fast service?”

He shrugged and looked around.
“You see a crowd?”

They were the only customers.

A waitress appeared, pen
already poised over her order pad. The name tag on her white shirt read “Marie.”
She mumbled a hello and said, “What’ll it be?”

Sasha looked at the tabletop.
Napkin dispenser, salt and pepper shakers, and a plastic tower holding sugar
packets were lined up under the windowsill. No menus.

“Do you have menus?”

Marie sighed and launched into
a spiel she didn’t seem to relish. “No, honey, I’m afraid we don’t. Bob’s Diner
is about to have new ownership. The Café on the Square is having menus printed
to highlight our new, locally-sourced, farm-fresh cuisine.”

Craybill barked out a laugh. A
look from Marie cut it short.

“Uh, okay,” Sasha said and took
a shot at a dish she assumed every diner in America served. “I’ll have a feta
and spinach omelet and whole wheat toast. A side of bacon.”

Marie scribbled it all down.
Sasha felt like she’d just aced an exam.

“Drink?”

“Coffee. And a glass of water.”

Marie stopped writing. “You don’t
want the water, honey.”

“I don’t?”

“No, you don’t. Our
locally-sourced water is brown and tastes like crap.”

Craybill swallowed another
laugh.

“Oh. Then, I guess I don’t,”
Sasha agreed. “But, isn’t the coffee made with that water, too?”

“Sure is. That tastes like
crap, too, but at least it’s supposed to be brown. You want it?”

She didn’t have much of a
choice. If she didn’t get some more caffeine flowing through her bloodstream,
she’d have a pounding headache within the hour.

“I guess so.”

Craybill clucked at her
decision then told the waitress, “I’ll have oatmeal. Tell that inebriate in
your kitchen to make it with milk, now. You hear?  And an orange juice. A tall
one. My lawyer’s paying.”

Marie nodded her approval.
“This little thing’s your lawyer, Jed?  Who you suing?”

“Nothing like that, Marie. Just
a misunderstanding, but we’ve gotta be in front of Judge Paulson at eleven
o’clock, so make sure our food comes out quick, you hear?”

Marie tucked her order pad into
her apron pocket, slid her pen behind her ear, and headed off to the kitchen
without making any promises.

“What’s wrong with the water?”
Sasha said to her client.

“What?”

“The water. Why does a place
called Clear Brook County have brown, foul-tasting water?”

Craybill frowned. “Are we gonna
talk about the water or this bullshit petition?”

“Sure, okay.”

She really did want to know
about the water. Growing up, her father and brothers used to drive up from
Pittsburgh every spring to fish in a lake outside of the town, while Sasha and
her mother went to the ballet back in Pittsburgh. Her brothers would come home
with coolers full of trout and pictures of water so blue it actually glittered.
But, her client was right, they didn’t have time. She needed to walk through
the petition with him—mainly so she could judge for herself if she thought he
was mentally incapacitated, as the county’s department of aging services
claimed in its papers. Sasha took out her legal pad and looked through her
notes on the requirements to have a person declared incapacitated.

“First off, do you understand
what this petition is all about?”

Craybill nodded, “Yeah, those
rat bastards at Aging Services want to put me in a home.” He rapped his
knuckles on the Formica tabletop for emphasis.

Sasha shrugged. He wasn’t far
off.

“Well, the petition says you
live alone and have no known heirs. Is that right?”

“Yup,” he nodded, as Marie
returned and placed a tall, hard plastic cup of orange juice on the table in
front of him. A saucer holding a chipped white mug of coffee, steam rising off
it, followed.

Marie looked at Sasha. “You’re
not going to want to take that black, hon.” She set a pitcher of cream down
beside the mug. “I’ll be right back with your food.”

Craybill took a long drink of
his juice. Sasha contemplated her coffee; it looked like coffee. She picked it
up and sniffed it cautiously. It smelled like coffee. She poured a liberal dose
of cream into the mug, just in case.

“So, no kids, no nieces or
nephews, no one?” she said.

“Right,” he confirmed. “My
wife, Marla, died last year. We never had children. My brother Abe, rest his
soul, he was, you know, queer. Marla has a sister, but they didn’t talk,
because of Abe. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead or had any children, but as
far as I’m concerned, she’s no one to me. No, it was just me and Marla.”

He looked past her, out the
window and smiled to himself. Sasha scribbled a note.

“What’s her name?”

“Who?” He turned back to her
suddenly, like she’d startled him.

She tried to keep the
impatience out of her voice. “Marla’s sister.”

“I just told you. She’s no one
to me. If she’s even alive. Petty, small-minded witch that she was.”

Sasha exhaled slowly. “Look, I
understand why you and your wife cut off contact with her sister if she had a
problem with your brother’s sexual orientation. But, the county’s required to
list any known adult presumptive heirs, and they haven’t listed her. Now, did
Marla cut her sister out of her will?”

“Yup. That’s more or less an
open secret round these parts.”

“I assume she’s not named in
your will?”

“You got that right.”

“Okay, then, I guess I don’t
need to know her name, strictly speaking, but it could be useful to know if
she’s out there somewhere.”

She looked at him calmly,
willing him to just tell her his sister-in-law’s name.

He stared back at her.

She took a sip of her coffee.
It was hot and weak, like diner coffee usually was, but the cream hid anything
beyond that.

He thumped his hand against the
table again. “Rebecca. Rebecca Plover.”

She wrote it down.

“Great. Thanks.”

Marie was back, bearing a bowl
of oatmeal in one hand and the omelet, toast, and bacon in the other. Sasha
waited until the clatter of dishes had stopped then asked for some hot sauce.

Marie pulled a small bottle out
of her apron pocket and handed it to her, and then she slapped the bill face
down in the table.

“You all pay that whenever you
want, but I sure don’t want to make you late for court.”

Sasha watched her walk away
while Craybill dug in to his oatmeal.

She glanced back at the clock.
Twenty-five minutes left to interview her client, eat, and prepare some kind of
argument.

Her stomach churned. There were
attorneys who practiced this way. She wasn’t one of them.

Until just a few months ago,
she’d been practicing at Prescott & Talbott— one of the largest, oldest,
most prestigious law firms in the state. Her experience was in complex
litigation. Businesses suing each other over broken deals, companies being sued
by shareholders or customers. Big, messy, complicated cases that took years to
go to trial. She was good at that. Hell, she was great at that.

In contrast, she had no idea
how to represent the alleged incapacitated person at a hearing in Orphan’s
Court. Truth be told, she’d rather go into the kitchen and sling out breakfast
orders. Which was saying something, considering she couldn’t scramble an egg.

Fake it till you make it, her
late mentor, Noah Peterson, used to tell her. His death was a large part of the
reason that she’d left the firm and was now sitting across a sticky table in a
run-down diner four hours from anywhere.

She shook her head. No time for
this now. She pushed thoughts of Noah and Prescott & Talbott from her mind.

Craybill watched her, with a
blob of congealing oatmeal clinging to his lower lip.

She dabbed at her own lips with
her paper napkin, but he didn’t take the hint.

“You have a little, uh,
oatmeal,” she said, pointing to her mouth.

He narrowed his eyes and wiped
his mouth.

“So, what? Some oatmeal on my
lip?  Does that make me a drooling idiot?”

She resisted the urge to
massage her temples and smiled too brightly.

“Of course not. I’d want you to
tell me, though. Moving on. The petition says just after the first of this
year, the Department of Aging Services received an anonymous report that you
were unable to care for yourself. Any idea what that’s about?”

He scowled. She waited while he
rolled back through the months. It was early April now, so it’d been over three
months since the report.

“Well, shoot,” he finally said,
“I did fall out back. Can’t say for sure when it was. There was snow on the
ground. I was chopping firewood and . . .”

She cut him off. “You chop your
own firewood?”

“Yeah.”

She checked his address on the
petition. Rural Route 2, Firetown.

“You don’t live here in town?”

“No. I have a place in
Firetown.”

He said it with a short final
syllable—Firetin.

It sounded remote.

“You live alone out there?”

“Since Marla died, yeah.”

“Okay, so you fell . . .” she
prompted him.

“Uh-huh. Got distracted
watching a truck bounce down the road that runs by my place, a water truck
going way too fast for conditions. Anyway, I slid on a patch of ice, I reckon.
Bruised my hip and twisted my wrist.”

She took notes as fast as she
could, in her own abbreviated style. She’d come up with it in law school and it
had served her well in practice, too.

“So, did you seek medical
treatment?”

He shrugged. “Not really. I
mentioned it to Doc Spangler when I ran into her at the gas station. She took a
quick look, out by the pumps, and said it was probably a sprain. I wrapped it
in an ace bandage for a while and took some Tylenol for a few days, but that
was it.”

“Is Doctor Spangler your
personal physician?”

She chased the last bits of egg
around her plate with a piece of toast while he explained.

“She’s the only doctor right in
town. I guess that makes her my doctor. But the last time I went to see her for
a real appointment, was, I don’t know . . . four or five years back. I’m
healthy as a horse. She took care of Marla, though.”

Sasha looked down at her notes.
She was willing to bet the doctor, as a mandatory reporter under state
regulations, had felt she was required to report the fall to the Department of
Aging Services. Aging Services. What a name, she thought. It sounded like they
helped you get older.

She looked up at the clock
tower once more. Fifteen minutes until show time, and she had no sense of who
her client was, what he wanted, or whether he was completely out of his gourd.

“Okay, the way the statute
works is the lawyer for the Department of Aging Services will explain to Judge
Paulson why they think you aren’t competent to care for yourself. They have the
burden of proof. Now, they’ve asked for plenary, or complete, guardianship,
which would give them the right to make decisions about your finances, your
health, everything. The statute prefers a limited guardianship, which means the
Judge can appoint a guardian to help you out with specific issues, like money,
if he thinks you need some assistance but aren’t completely incapacitated. Are
you with me?”

She watched his eyes, looking
for comprehension, but all she saw was anger. And lots of it.

“Listen, girlie. I don’t want
any help. I want to be left alone. I want to die in my own goddamn house when
it’s time. Are you with me?”

Sasha nodded. She felt a swell
of compassion for the old man, but she wasn’t going to make any promises.

“We’ll see what we can do, Mr.
Craybill.”

She put a twenty down on top of
the bill and started packing up.

“Let’s go.”

* * * * * * * * * *