Res Judicata

res judicata

Vicki Grant

Text copyright © 2008 Vicki Grant

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Grant, Vicki
Res judicata / written by Vicki Grant.

Sequel to: Quid pro quo.
ISBN 978-1-55143-940-2

I. Title.

PS8613.R367R48 2008      jC813'.6      C2008-903051-6

First published in the United States, 2008
Library of Congress Control Number
: 2008928570

Summary
: Cyril MacIntyre is on the case again, working for his eccentric mother and
giving new meaning to the term “legal aid” in this sequel to
Quid Pro Quo
.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs
provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and
the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council
and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Design by Teresa Bubela
Cover image by Dreamstime.com/Bruce Collins

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Printed and bound in Canada.
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11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to you, Jeannie Richardson, because

1. You threatened me and

2.
Te valde amo ac semper amabo
.

Mudge

I could never have written a book about the law without help from my friends in the legal business. I'd like to thank Joy Day for setting me straight about what deputy sheriffs do in Nova Scotia. I owe my old buddy Phil Campbell a couple of vacation days to make up for the time he spent on the dock at Stony Lake explaining the intricacies of criminal law to me. My husband, W. Augustus Richardson iii, answered my endless questions (including “How do
you
know?”) and hardly ever looked irritated. It is in thanks for this and his many other roles in keeping me on the straight and narrow that I have recently elevated him to the bench.

Needless to say, any mistakes that slipped through into these pages are entirely mine, not theirs.

V.G

The guy had his hands around my neck and was slamming my head against the floor. I guess he couldn't decide whether he wanted to strangle me or bash my brains in.

Either that or he'd just got tired of killing people the usual way.

I tried my best to fight him off, but what a joke that was. Me, Cyril MacIntyre,
AKA
Mr. Puniverse, was going to take down a tank like him?

Right.

SpongeBob would have had a better chance against Mr. Clean. To tell you the truth, I was kind of impressed that I even made his eyeballs bulge. At least it showed I wasn't a total wipeout. At least I made him work that much.

Any other time, one swat upside the head would have flattened me. The only reason I was holding my own this time was because I was so mad.

Not at him. I mean, I kind of expected it of
him
. What was he supposed to do? I was asking for it.

The person I was really mad at was my mother. This was her fault. All her fault.

As usual.

If Andy—that's her name—wasn't so hard to get along with, she wouldn't have ended up on the street when she was fourteen.

If she wasn't so—let's say—careless, she wouldn't have had me when she was fifteen.

If she wasn't so competitive, she wouldn't have had to prove she could go to law school when she was twenty-five.

If she wasn't so cheap, she wouldn't have dragged me to all her night classes. (I mean, would it have killed her to spend ten bucks occasionally for a babysitter? She spends more than that every day on her French fry habit.)

If she wasn't such a worrywart, she wouldn't have made me stay up every night helping her study.

If she hadn't been all those things, if she'd just been a normal boring person like mothers are supposed to be, I wouldn't have known anything about the law.

And if I hadn't known anything about the law, I wouldn't have said anything.

And if I hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have had a big greasy pair of hands around my neck. My brain wouldn't have been ricocheting off the back of my eyeballs. I wouldn't have been seeing that weird white light and hearing one of those deep manly angel voices calling, “Come home, Cyril! Come home!” I'd have been down at the skateboard bowl, just hanging out, doing what your average fifteen-year-old likes to do: nothing.

Frankly, I'd had enough of Andy messing up my life. I wasn't going to let her get away with it again. Suddenly I could hardly wait to get my hands on her.

I guess that's what I needed. A goal. Something to look forward to. I got this burst of strength. It wasn't superhuman strength or anything handy like that, but it was enough. I bent the guy's thumbs back a millimeter or two. My wind-pipe popped open. I sucked in this little whistle of air, looked him right in the eye and said what I needed to say.

“
Res judicata
.”

Factum
A statement of the facts and law to be referred to, which is filed
by each party in a legal application, appeal or motion.

Five months earlier

The first time I saw Dougie Fougere with Andy, I figured he was arresting her.

That's not as crazy as it sounds. I bet everybody was thinking the same thing. I mean, who wouldn't be? You see a cop run down the street and grab some skinny emo chick in army boots, you naturally expect him to cuff her.

If you're the kid of the emo chick, you then naturally expect her to elbow him in the teeth and add “resisting arrest” to whatever other charges she's facing.

What you
don't
expect is for the cop to put his arm around her neck, lean his big, water cooler head right into her face and then—I'm not kidding—nuzzle her ear.

My faith in reality could have been saved at this point if Andy had hauled off and smoked the guy, but she didn't.

She
nuzzled
him back.

By the time I recovered from the shock, I was ready to arrest the both of them. “Nuzzling” might not be covered in the criminal code, but it should be. After all, there are laws against public indecency, not to mention cruelty to children. (If watching two adults—one of whom is your
mother—nuzzle in public isn't cruelty to children, I don't know what is. Frankly, I doubt the emotional scars will ever heal.)

Luckily, Andy came up for air long enough to see me standing there glaring at them. You'd swear her dad had just caught her necking on the front porch or something. She hurled herself away from the guy and then tried to do this blinky baby bunny thing with her face. Like that was going to make her look innocent. I just shook my head. How gullible does she think I am?

She got all fake and vice-principally on me. “Oh. Why. Hello. Cyril. I didn't expect to run into you here.”

“You didn't?” I said. “You mean, that little performance wasn't for
my
benefit?”

She tried to say “What?” as in “Whatever do you mean?” but I just kind of coughed out this laugh. No way was she getting away with that, and she knew it. She adjusted the rip in her T-shirt and tried to smile.

I could practically see her brain racing around, opening up drawers, checking under cushions, rummaging through pockets, trying to find a new tactic to try on me.

She finally just turned to the guy and went, “Ah...Dougie, this is my son, Cyril.”

The guy's eyes sort of popped, as if he was trying to hold down a major burp or something. “Son?” he said. “You didn't tell me you have a son.”

Clearly, the old truth tactic wasn't working so well either.

She gritted her teeth into a smile. “Of course I did!” She turned and stood in front of the guy. I couldn't see her face, but I know her well enough to be pretty sure her eyes were doing that voodoo thing to his brain. It's the ultimate
submission hold. She can pull people's fingernails out with that look. In the end, everyone talks.

The guy started nodding and went, “Oh, right,
that
son! Of course!” He reached out to shake my hand. “How you doin', Sport?”

Sport?

I mean, seriously.
Sport
?!

What am I—a beagle or something? I can't believe these big guys. You'd think it would be enough that they get to block our view with their beefy, well-defined physiques. Do they really have to treat us like we're cute too?

I just let his hand hang in the air. After a while he shrugged, put it on his hip (as if he'd been planning to do that all along) and said, “Well, I guess I better take off if I'm going to be ready for that...ah...you know...
thing
tonight.”

Andy didn't even look at him. She just went, “Yeahokayseeyagoodbye.”

They both sort of raised their hands as if they were going to recite the Boy Scout pledge or something. Then Andy turned and walked away. I could still smell the guy's cologne coming off her. What did he do, roll in the stuff?

Andy grabbed me by the arm, all perfect little
PTA
mother, and said, “So-o-o...how was school today?” Apparently I'm cute and easily distracted too.

I acted all forgive-and-forget. I smiled. “Really interesting,” I said. “We discussed some of the unexplained mysteries that have baffled scholars throughout the ages.”

“Coo-o-l. Like what?” She loves thinking she produced some brilliant little sit-in-the-front-of-the-class brainiac kid. You wouldn't know it from the “nuzzling” incident but, generally speaking, she takes this whole mothering stuff
way
too seriously.
It's like I'm her big term project or something, and she's going to get an “A” on me even if it kills one of us.

“Oh, you know,” I went. “Mysteries like how the pyramids got built...or what happened to the dinosaurs...or how some radical left-wing wacko like Andy MacIntyre ended up dating a cop. You know, that kind of stuff.”

She dropped the whole
PTA
thing so fast you could practically hear it smash on the sidewalk. She sucked her lip up into her nostrils and snarled at me. “He's not a cop!”

“Sure looks like it to me.”

“He's a deputy sheriff!”

“Ooh. Big diff.”

She bugged her eyes out and sighed so loud you'd swear she was launching a blow dart at me. I almost ducked. She went, “Cyril...Floyd...MacIntyre! Surely you've spent enough time in courtrooms to know the difference between a cop and a sheriff!”

Here it came. The lecture. Another one of her favorite diversionary tactics. I made myself comfortable and let her get it out of her system. It wasn't as if I could stop her.

“
If
you'd been paying attention, you'd remember that in Nova Scotia at least, sheriffs and their deputies are peace officers, not police officers. They work in the court system. They carry out judges' wishes, keep order in the court, escort prisoners to and from the holding cells—that kind of thing. Cops, on the other hand, investigate crimes, make arrests, fine traffic violators, patrol the streets, issue noise violations, etc., etc., etc.”