Paige nodded. “It got even uglier when Dane found out that Bert had betrayed him. He fired him, of course. I felt responsible, but with Torg so sick I couldn’t do anything. Then he passed away.” Defiance crept into her voice. “I couldn’t handle it all on my own, and Bert was out of a job, so . . . it’s worked out well for both of us.”
Claudia knew she should tell Paige to stop. If the Sorensen children’s attorney asked in open court whether she had any knowledge of the family relationships, she would have to answer truthfully. It might appear to be a conflict of interest.
What was it her grandmother used to say?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
At this point it probably wouldn’t make much difference.
“Did he cut the children out of the will altogether?” she asked.
“Neil got a small trust fund. He’s the youngest, and he’s disabled, so Torg made sure he’d be taken care of. The twins got some family heirlooms they don’t care about.”
“I see.”
Claudia sipped her coffee, trying to keep an open mind while Paige sat there looking sweet and pretty, perfectly turned out. But her next words were neither sweet nor pretty.
“I hate the fucking bastard,” she blurted.
“I hate him!”
Chapter 4
On the morning of the Sorensen probate hearing Claudia allowed an hour for the seventeen-mile drive to the L.A. Superior Courts building on Hill Street. MapQuest had optimistically promised a twenty-minute trip, but the five lanes of brake lights she encountered upon entering the Santa Monica Freeway told her that even an hour wouldn’t cut it.
She popped a couple of Rolaids, forced herself to uncurl her knuckles from around the steering wheel, and navigated to the newly renamed Rosa Parks Freeway, then the Harbor to the Hollywood.
Exiting at the Temple off-ramp, she made her way through the confusing maze of one-way streets to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, across the street from the courthouse complex.
The Dorothy Chandler provided subterranean parking for those about to enter the hungry maw of the L.A. County legal system. On any other day, Claudia would have parked in an uncovered lot on Olive, south of First, and walked back to the courthouse, but the clock had run out ten minutes ago and she was too late for the pre-hearing briefing she’d hoped for with Stuart Parsons. It felt like a bad omen.
Turning the Jaguar into the garage she made a rapid circuit of the street level, her hopes of easy parking soon dashed. The roof seemed to press down on her and awakened an old fear of being trapped as she drove down the ramp into the cement bowels of the earth.
Level two,
zip.
Three,
zilch.
On level four she spotted backup lights near the end of the next row over. She turned the corner, braking halfway down the row, leaving the driver plenty of room to back out.
From behind came the sudden sound of squealing tires turning too fast on the slick cement floor. Claudia instinctively hunched her shoulders, tightened her grip on the wheel, waiting for the impact.
A streak of silver filled her rearview mirror for an instant, then a small car roared past and slipped into the newly vacated space. Claudia stared at the vintage MG in disbelief, then anger, as a man in a tweed jacket climbed out of the car.
Tall, broad shouldered, his hair was a tawny mane that brushed his collar. A tie hung loose around his open-necked shirt. She lowered the window and leaned out.
“Hey, dickhead! What the hell?”
The man took off at a jog toward the elevators, throwing a contemptuous grin over his shoulder. “Tough shit, babe. You snooze, you lose.”
Claudia made a mad dash to join the long line of courthouse visitors waiting to get through security. Twenty or so people ahead, some idiot’s pocket change set off the metal detector.
Goddamn it!
Had the hearing started yet? She was scheduled to be the first witness. She checked her watch—twenty minutes late. The judge would be pissed; the attorneys would be pissed. She could imagine Paige biting her expensive acrylics to the quick.
The line shuffled forward like slugs on the sidewalk; then it started to rain.
An omen? How about a prophecy of doom?
Cursing the jerk in the MG who had stolen her parking space, she blamed him for the dark spots staining the tan leather of her briefcase and her lank hair. If she hadn’t had to spend extra time looking for parking, she would have missed the rain.
She made it through the metal detector at 10:15.
Any reasonable person would understand that traffic snarls were beyond her control, Claudia assured herself, pressed behind a half dozen other silent riders in the stale coffee-and-cigarettes-smelling elevator. She’d even left early. She dabbed her hair with a tissue, wishing she’d taken the stairs, wishing she’d swallowed a tranquilizer, wishing this day were behind her.
Judge Harold Krieger glared right at her as she entered the courtroom. At the counsel table on the defendant’s side, Paige Sorensen and Stuart Parsons turned to look at her. Relief registered on both faces.
“Is this the witness we’ve been waiting for, Counsel?” Judge Krieger inquired pointedly as Claudia took a seat in the back row.
“Yes, Your Honor. We’d like to call Claudia Rose.”
With a deep inhale, Claudia gripped her briefcase and rose. The theater-style seat uprighted behind her with a loud
whup-whup
.
A woman seated in the front row of the gallery twisted around and scowled at her. Smoldering, hooded eyes in a broad, square face. This had to be Diana Sorensen. She was seated next to a wheelchair that was parked at the end of the row, and Claudia remembered Paige saying that Neil, the youngest Sorensen, was disabled.
Diana Sorensen jerked around to face the judge. Her black crepe jacket strained at the seams as if animosity bulged against her skin, struggling to break through her clothes. Her father’s widow, Paige, was the enemy, and by extension, so was the handwriting expert she had retained to represent her.
Claudia could feel the woman’s gaze burning into her as she maneuvered around the wheelchair. She pushed through the swinging gate that separated the gallery from the counsel table, her nerves twanging like an overstrung guitar.
The bailiff stood up and faced her. “Face the clerk and raise your right hand,” he said after Claudia ascended the two steps to the witness stand.
She spelled out her name for the record and promised to tell the truth. Then she sat down and placed her briefcase on the table. She took out the exhibit books she’d made over the weekend for the judge and the attorneys, and arranged her notes in front of her, using the time to calm herself.
Inhale deeply through the nose. Hold for a count of six. Breathe out slowly, silently through the mouth for a count of four. Ball the hands into tight fists until the tension travels all the way up to the shoulder muscles, then let go. In, two-three-four-five-six. Hold it. Out, two-three-four.
Claudia swung the microphone closer to her mouth, waiting for Stuart Parsons to begin
voir dire
. Her eyes roamed around the courtroom, taking in the half-dozen spectators and the parties occupying the counsel table.
On the plaintiff’s side, a man was whispering to his attorney. He looked up at her and Claudia realized with a shock that he was the jerk from the parking garage. The man in the MG was Dane Sorensen.
She stared at Dane, who stared boldly back. She doubted he even realized she was the driver of the old white Jaguar whose space he had stolen.
The Sorensen twins’ facial resemblance was strong, yet their coloring was quite different. Diana’s face was pale, her hair straight and dyed jet-black, giving her a Morticia Addams look. Dane was ruddy; untidy wisps of his gray-flecked hair flew in all directions as if his comb had attracted static.
He looks tough. As if he grew up in a bad neighborhood, hanging out on street corners picking fights, not in a mansion off Sunset Boulevard.
It was easy to see why Paige was afraid of him.
Claudia glanced at the occupant of the wheelchair. He had the face of an aesthete. Translucent skin, sad eyes that were trained on the back of Paige’s head. Limp blond curls, forehead beaded with sweat. Despite the mild fall weather a blue and red plaid blanket covered his legs and he was bundled into a cable-knit fisherman’s sweater. His hands gripped a dark blue Dodgers cap, twisting it around and around.
Stuart Parsons rose and took a moment to fasten his coat. He was about seventy with sharp blue eyes and thick, sensual lips in a pudgy pink face. Dandruff flecked the lapels of his dark pinstripe suit and his shoes were scuffed, not spit shined, as one might expect from a lawyer in the five-hundred-buck-an-hour range. But that was his personal courtroom theatrics, and Claudia knew from past experience that he was far sharper than he might appear to the casual observer.
Parsons smiled at her and nodded. “Good morning, Ms. Rose. Would you please begin by telling us your occupation.”
“I am a handwriting examiner.”
“Thank you. And were you retained to examine some handwriting in the matter before the court today?”
“Yes, I was asked to compare known signatures of Torg Sorensen to the signature on a will that is being challenged.”
“Ms. Rose, were you paid for your appearance in court today?”
“Yes.”
“Were you paid to express any particular opinion in this matter?”
“My opinion is not for sale. I’m paid for my time and expertise.”
“Okay, good. Now, let’s talk about how you became a handwriting expert . . .”
There was no jury to impress at this hearing. The judge alone would decide the outcome of the proceedings, and it was up to Parsons to show him why his expert was credible.
He walked Claudia through her qualifications. The list was long, and he was meticulous. They covered her education and training, publications and research, papers she had presented at conferences, media appearances.
When he asked about awards she had received, the Sorensens’ lawyer, Frank Norris, interrupted. “Your Honor, we’ll stipulate that Ms. Rose is an expert. Let’s get on with it.”
Judge Krieger, already looking bored, nodded. “Fine, so stipulated.”
Parsons had informed Claudia that the judge was retiring at the end of the month. Sorensen versus Sorensen would be one of the last cases he heard in his courtroom and it showed.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Parsons said. He walked over to the lectern and placed his notes on the book stand. “Ms. Rose, would you please tell us what a questioned document is, and explain to the Court your method of examining one.”
Claudia turned and addressed the judge. “I’ll be glad to. In this case, a questioned document means that the authenticity of a signature is in dispute.” She went on to explain all the steps she had taken in her examination of Torg Sorensen’s handwriting and the questioned signature.
Norris’ pen flew furiously across a yellow legal pad as she spoke and Claudia wished she could see his handwriting. He stood six three, and even seated he was imposing in his sober gray suit. His dark hair was slicked back, a little too heavy on the gel.
Claudia had seen Norris in action before and knew he used a condescending style of cross-examination that made him a good candidate for prick of the month. She did her best to ignore him and not wonder what he was writing, or what it would mean for her. Lawyer jokes started buzzing in her head like a swarm of annoying gnats:
What’s ten thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.
What’s the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? One’s a bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking scavenger, the other’s a fish.
She forced her attention back to Stuart Parsons, who had been searching his notes for something but was now asking her a question.
“How many of Mr. Sorensen’s actual signatures did you examine?”
“A total of fifty-seven signatures, which were represented to me as genuine.”
This was the easy part. She was beginning to relax, hitting her stride now. Reading through her notes, she described in detail the handwritings Paige had supplied for her examination.
“And what did you discover regarding the way Mr. Sorensen signed his name?”
This was her chance to give the judge a mini lesson in handwriting examination.
“No person signs his or her name exactly alike twice, so it’s important to first establish a range of personal variation. In other words, we need to know how many different ways a writer forms his signatures by examining a large number of them. I did this with Mr. Sorensen’s signatures and found that he maintained a high degree of consistency over a long period of time. Under microscopic examination, it was clear to me that even in the signatures made
after
his stroke, where there was tremendous deterioration in the writing, his personal writing characteristics remained largely the same.”
After that, Parsons got down to the nitty-gritty, asking her to demonstrate her findings. Claudia handed the exhibit books to the bailiff, who distributed them to the attorneys, their clients, and the judge. She had made a series of enlargements of the signatures, both the genuine ones and the questioned one on the will, illustrating the differences she had found with colored arrows and circles.
She did her damnedest to keep her explanation snappy and interesting, but about ten minutes into her testimony, Judge Krieger yawned pointedly, and she could hear his stomach grumbling from behind the bench. It was no surprise when five minutes later he suggested that Parsons wrap up his direct examination. Claudia had been on the stand for the better part of an hour.
The lawyer’s bushy brows drew together into a frown. “Well, okay, Your Honor. I do have one last thing, if I may.” He paused for a long moment, glancing over his notes and then at Claudia before asking his question.