Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder!

MURDER BY MEDIATION, by Jill Breslau

Rainey drummed her fingertips on the polished conference table. She looked at the clock on the wall, and then at her watch, as if that would make a difference. Her mediation partner and their clients were all late. She drummed some more, listening to the soft click of her nails against the wood, and then glancing at her right hand. The French manicure looked perfect. Actually, she thought, leaning forward to admire her crossed legs, the shoes were perfect, too-expensive cobalt blue leather with four-inch heels. They matched her silk blouse and looked stunning with her classic black, barely knee-length suit.

Her own admiration was appropriate, she thought, unlike the sleazy admiration of certain judges she knew. When she’d been a trial lawyer, before she discovered mediation, one judge actually told her in open court that he couldn’t hear what she was saying because he was so busy looking at her great legs. She wanted to use one of those great legs to kick him, hard, but she smiled sweetly and said, “Your Honor, I hope that isn’t true, because we’re on the record here, and I’ve just offered Document Eleven into evidence.” She liked to look good, but she detested the cloying, hypersexual way that some men interpreted her style.

Lawrence, her mediation partner, was different. He was a truly nice man with good boundaries-and a great ass, thanks to all his bicycling. The thought popped into her mind unbidden, and she crushed it quickly, like squashing a bug, with a brisk reminder to herself: And a wife and two children. Cute, short, round-faced. He wasn’t really her type, anyway.

She looked at the clock again. Usually Lawrence arrived promptly for their pre-session meeting to make sure they were on the same page, tuned in about the agenda. They had been a team since they’d heard of divorce mediation. It worked well for them, Rainey, who had been a tough litigator, and Lawrence, a social worker. Lawrence was gentler, more relaxed; Rainey was crisp, organized, and thorough. She enjoyed the intellectual quest for common ground as much as she had enjoyed skewering witnesses on the stand, which was saying something.

The door opened and one of the clients, Henry Linnet, stuck his head in. “Hi, Rainey. If they aren’t here yet, I’ll just pop into the little boys’ room.”

Rainey nodded and smiled, though she felt a spike of annoyance whenever adult males referred to the “little boys’ room.” For God’s sake, do they ever grow up?

“Fine, Henry,” she said.

Henry’s wife, Barbara, and Lawrence still hadn’t arrived when Henry returned. He sat in the swivel chair across from Rainey, gripped the table edge, and leaned forward, frowning. His wispy brown hair was disheveled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, as usual, and the buttons strained across his chubby torso. Rainey had privately agreed with Lawrence that wearing Hawaiian shirts was probably the most daring thing Henry had ever done.

“Rainey, can I speak to you in confidence?”

She shrugged. “Everything in mediation is confidential, Henry, unless it has to do with abuse or anticipated violence.”

“No, this isn’t about that. This is about Barbara.” He paused, and his eyes widened, as his head bobbed affirmatively. “I can’t shake the feeling that she’s having an affair.”

Rainey’s eyebrows lifted. “Barbara?”

“Don’t be deceived by her demeanor, Rainey. She may look sweet and bland, but she has a wild, passionate streak.”

Rainey struggled to keep the disbelief off her face. Barbara was the least sexy woman she had ever met. She had flat brown eyes, light brown hair, the same color as her husband’s, and very small, white teeth that looked as if she’d never lost her baby teeth. She spoke in a girlish, breathy voice, like Marilyn Monroe. Unlike Marilyn, she wore long, baggy earth-tone-colored skirts and loose tops that she didn’t tuck in, as if she had done all her clothes shopping sometime in the ‘60s. Rainey referred to her privately, and to Lawrence, as “Miss Mouse.”

“What makes you think she’s having an affair?”

Henry frowned again and looked at her. “She’s too happy. We’re in a divorce. We’re arguing about custody of the children. We’ve got to divide up all our property, and she won’t have as much money as she’s used to. She’s going to have to start tutoring, as well as teaching, to make the budget work. But she’s happy, almost giddy.”

He paused and then continued, “And she’s coming on to me all the time.”

“She is?”

“It’s confusing.”

“So, Henry, are you sleeping with her?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I am.”

Rainey felt a rush of disgust that twitched the corners of her mouth downward. She looked away, hoping he was too self-absorbed to have noticed.

“But you think there’s someone else, too?” Rainey crossed her arms as he nodded again, and then she leaned back in her chair. “Well, how can I help you?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to tell somebody. And I wanted to know if it’s a legal problem.”

“Maryland’s only a no-fault state if people can swear they’ve lived apart for a year before a divorce, without cohabitation. That means without sleeping together. So every time you sleep together after separation, you push the date for a divorce back. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t want the divorce, anyway, so if it takes longer, that’s fine by me.”

“Well, Henry, I’m not a therapist, and I can’t second-guess your feelings. But from a legal perspective, Maryland allows adultery as grounds for divorce, so if Barbara is having an affair, you could get into court whenever you want on those grounds.” Rainey had repeated similar words so many times in her career, they rolled out automatically.

Henry nodded. One side of his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I can’t prove anything. It just seems strange to me, her mood.”

Rainey leaned forward, encouragingly. “Henry, divorce is difficult. It hits people different ways. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

While she spoke, she noticed his gaze falling to her cleavage, and she sat straighter in her chair. It had been annoying enough to be the object of sexist remarks in the courtroom, but in her own conference room? She took a deep breath and set her jaw tightly.

There was a knock on the door, and Barbara opened it without waiting for an invitation. Rainey glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes late. And where was Lawrence?

Barbara settled herself in a chair, swiveling toward Rainey. “I’m sorry to be late. Something came up.” Then a red flush made its way from her neck up to her forehead. It made Rainey wonder if breasts could blush. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe Barbara was having an affair.

“It’s all right. Lawrence isn’t here yet,” Rainey said, “and I haven’t heard from him…” The door opened again.

“I apologize,” Lawrence said. He was red-faced and out of breath. “I had some bike problems. I’ll be just a moment more; I need some water.”

As he left the room, Barbara gazed after him as if he were something edible. Rainey watched the expression on Barbara’s face. She sighed. Lawrence had counseled Barbara before she decided to divorce Henry, and then he changed hats, so to speak, and brought the couple into mediation. Rainey had learned it could be a pain to work in mediation with clients Lawrence had seen before as a therapist; their therapeutic transference and silly fantasies about Lawrence didn’t make her job easier. Rainey began shuffling through the file, and Lawrence came back, holding a water glass, his hair damp around his face. As he reached across the table to shake hands with Henry, Rainey glimpsed Barbara’s expression. Her adoring look warped briefly, her upper lip curling in a silent hiss.

“Are we all ready to begin the session?” Rainey asked, taking control.

They began discussing parenting arrangements for Henry and Barbara’s two young children. Barbara hadn’t wanted to share custody, claiming they were too young; Henry, however, was terrified of losing his children. He fretted about whether his relationship with them would be healthy if he saw them infrequently, and he wasn’t reassured by Rainey’s assertion that he would always be their father. Then, to Rainey’s surprise, Barbara suddenly turned to Henry and said, “You know, I’ve been wrong. You’re a good dad, and you deserve to have the children half the time.”

Rainey found herself moved by Barbara’s acknowledgement of her husband. A tear darted to her eye, followed swiftly by a thought darting through her head. Sure, more time with the lover if Henry’s got the kids.

At the end of the session, Barbara and Henry left together, closing the door behind them. Lawrence grinned at Rainey.

“Good job, partner!”

He jumped up and headed for the door. Rainey frowned. Usually they debriefed their sessions, but maybe he needed to fix the bike? She caught a whiff of a sweaty, musky scent as he dashed out of the office, jogging toward the bicycle he always parked at a meter on the curb. The bike still had the little buggy attached that he had used to cart his children around when they were small. Five years later, he said it worked fine for carrying groceries home, even though the kids had outgrown it.

She watched him cycle away, still vaguely charmed by his refusal to drive a car (his environmental statement, he said), his involvement in transporting his children, and his willingness to go food shopping, before she turned back to the conference room. She was less charmed by the sweat that came with the cycling. Nevertheless, he’d done a lot to grow this business, she thought. It wouldn’t have happened without him. As she tucked her notes in the file, gathered coffee cups from the conference room table, and ran a cloth saturated with furniture polish over the table top, familiar images ran through her head. Pre-Lawrence, and pre-mediation, her life had been a series of infuriating events:

Rainey standing outside a courtroom, breathing deeply to lower the register of her voice. She’d realized early on that the good-ol’-boy judges tuned out their wives’ voices and, thus, the voices of women lawyers. If she didn’t speak in a deep voice, she literally wasn’t heard.

Rainey, during a party, pushing open an unlocked bathroom door in the fancy home of a big-firm lawyer to discover one of the judges snorting cocaine. Great, a cokehead was making vital decisions about people’s lives.

Rainey, coming up the courthouse inside stairwell to beg a judicial assistant for hearing time, since the judge she had been scheduled to appear before had canceled the day’s docket. Then, seeing that same judge rushing down the stairs, his robe billowing around him to disclose white tennis shorts. Clearly, he couldn’t wait to get out of the courthouse and onto the courts.

She had first been disappointed and then disgusted that these shallow, sexist, selfish men were making decisions that changed people’s lives forever. She hated being in a courtroom where they held the power. She had complained bitterly to her friends. And it was her friend Lawrence who called her one day, excited, to tell her about a brand new concept for divorcing couples called mediation, where couples worked together to find shared values and common ground. They had rushed out to California for training and set up their business. Their slogan was simple, but they believed it: “Finding Win-Win Solutions!”

Rainey chuckled to herself, remembering their talks to the ministerial association, the local psychologists, and anyone else who would listen. Even professionals were so clueless that they thought Rainey and Lawrence were coming to teach them mediTAtion, not mediAtion. Coincidentally, after observing Rainey’s short fuse (wasn’t he kind to call it that, instead of an “anger management issue”?), Lawrence taught her mediTAtion. Sometimes they would sit together, breathing quietly, until her jaws relaxed and her shoulders eased.

Given the number of daily aggravations she faced, Rainey ended up meditating a lot.

Work continued for the next week, at its usual pace. Sessions, agreements, and then Henry and Barbara were due to come in for another appointment.

Henry called a few hours before their scheduled time, sounding strained. “Rainey, I’ve got to cancel. Barbara has to go out of town to see her parents; they’re old, and she’s worried about them.”

“You sound tense or sarcastic or something. Are you?”

“I don’t know. I think she might be stalling about equal custody-buyer’s remorse or whatever. She made a commitment, and now she’s looking for ways to pretend she didn’t.”

“Henry,” Rainey said, “I don’t think you need to worry. You both seemed to be working in good faith, and Barbara agreed that the two of you would share time with the children equally. Shall we schedule for next week and focus on the last details then?”

Henry agreed, though he clearly was worried.

“I’ll speak to Barbara,” he said, “and I’ll let you know if there’s a problem. Otherwise, same day, same time, next week.”

The day before their next appointment, Henry called again.

“Rainey, I don’t know whether Barbara’s coming tomorrow or not. I kind of lost it when she got back from visiting her parents in Chicago.”

“You lost it? What happened?”

“Awww. You know, it was a hard week taking care of the kids alone. They were acting out and whining for Mommy, and Barbara didn’t call when she said she would.” He paused.

“So?”

“So she came in all bubbly and giggly, while I was putting dinner on the table, as if she’d spent the day drinking champagne instead of dragging luggage through airports after a downer visit with her parents. I told her I knew she was having an affair. Well, I kind of yelled at her in front of the kids. Then I said, ‘Tell me who it is!’ and she looked at me as if I was a worm, and she shifted gears completely from the happy, bubbly mood and said, very coldly, ‘You are scum to suggest that.’ She started to walk away, and I threw the mac-and-cheese casserole at the wall.”

“Did you throw it at her?”

“No, I just got so mad, I threw it at the dining room wall. It didn’t even splatter on her. And I cleaned it all up myself and took the kids out to eat.”

“So…is there a problem?”

“I’m afraid to ask her if she’s coming to tomorrow’s appointment. Will you call her?”

“Sure. Assume it’s on unless I call you back to the contrary.”

Thank God Henry couldn’t see her face. The thought of mild-mannered, dull Henry flinging a dish of mac and cheese at the wall had made her grin.

When she called Barbara, Rainey asked if they could work things out. Barbara said yes, that she had been relieved to get away, and she knew Henry had been stressed staying home, and he had misunderstood the cause of her euphoria.

“I couldn’t exactly tell him I was just ecstatic to have been out of his presence, could I?”

“Not really,” Rainey agreed. “But, Barbara, if there is someone else important in your life, Henry might be intuiting the presence of what we call a ‘ghost’ at the mediation table. You know, someone who isn’t there but whose presence is somehow making a difference.”

“There is no ghost at the table,” Barbara said in a firm voice, unlike her usual Marilyn Monroe whisper.

Rainey called Lawrence and told him all about the conversations, including the fact that Henry thought Miss Mouse had a lover (and wasn’t that a hoot?).

“Lori,” he said, “Give it a rest. Let’s just get this one done, okay?”

What was his problem? He never called her Lori, the other derivative of her given name, Lorraine, unless he was annoyed. He knew she hated the name.

“Okay, Larry,” she snapped back, emphasizing the Larry. She knew Lawrence thought it made him sound like a youngster, a lightweight, rather than a professional.

But when he arrived for their sessions the next morning, they were a team, as usual. They had a session with one of the local real estate moguls and his wife and sat chatting afterward about what the odds were that the husband didn’t already have a girlfriend.

“Men never get out of marriages unless they have girlfriends, Lawrence. Haven’t you noticed? It must be something psychological,” Rainey said.

“Well, pal,” Lawrence replied, “you might have noticed that a fair number of women have boyfriends on the back burner, too.”

“Nope, it’s not the same. Sometimes women leave a marriage just because it isn’t working, not because of somebody else. But men-the only issue is whether they hide the girlfriend or the wife finds out.”

The phone rang in the outer office, interrupting their conversation. Rainey went to pick it up and then transferred the call to the conference room and pressed the button for speakerphone. It was Arnold Eldridge, a former courtroom adversary. She knew Arnold all too well; he was a terrible lawyer, lacking in common sense, creating problems where none existed, just to flog the files and make more money. Worse, he was dismally unattractive, so there wasn’t even the consolation of dealing with someone inept but cute. His thin hair stuck to his skull in a bad comb-over; his face was cratered from adolescent acne, and, in all seasons, he wore lumpy brown tweed suits. After numerous confrontations with him, Rainey started to seethe at the sound of his voice. She struggled to keep her own voice level and polite.

“Rainey,” he began, and she interjected, “Arnold, I have Lawrence here in my office as well. I understand you now represent Barbara and are calling about today’s appointment?”

“Rainey and Lawrence,” he continued, with exaggerated courtesy, “I want to let you know that I have advised Barbara to discontinue mediation. Her husband got violent when she came back from visiting her elderly parents, and mediation is unsuitable in situations of domestic violence.”

“Arnold,” Rainey said, “I just spoke with Barbara yesterday. All Henry did was throw a dish of mac and cheese at the wall. That isn’t domestic violence. They were making good progress in mediation.”

“Rainey, I didn’t call to argue with you. Barbara is my client now. I have had her husband served with a restraining order, which will keep him away from her and the children. We will be litigating this case. She will not be returning to mediation.”

“Arnold, that’s not a good idea,” Rainey said, trying to reason with him. “Henry is terrified of losing his children, and he’ll be very upset. They were doing so well in mediation until she took this trip. Can’t you help us keep a lid on things and keep them in a process that’s working?”

“He’s a violent man,” Arnold said flatly. “He needs to understand that the law will not permit that kind of behavior.”

Oh, Lord, Rainey thought, and looked at Lawrence in utter frustration.

“Arnold,” Lawrence said, “please tell Barbara that if she changes her mind and wants to come back into mediation, we’ll be pleased to continue working with them.”

After they hung up, Rainey was ready to beat her head against a wall; Lawrence seemed to take the situation more philosophically. He said he thought he’d use the time freed up by the canceled appointment to go grocery shopping. After he left the office, she watched him through the window. He pulled his bike away from the meter he had locked it to and pedaled away.

Rainey called Henry. “I’m so sorry this happened, Henry! I feel sure Barbara will figure out that Arnold isn’t helpful, and you’ll be fine. You did a lot of good work in mediation.”

“Rainey, I can’t believe he did this. Barbara goes away, I get upset, and now I’ve lost my kids?” Henry was distressed but fully coherent.

“No, no, Henry, you haven’t lost them. It’s a temporary setback.”

Henry began to cry.

“Look, Henry, you have to obey the restraining order or things could get worse, and you need your own good lawyer now. Hire someone and listen to what she tells you.”

“Can’t you get Barbara back into mediation?”

“No, I wish I could. It’s a voluntary process, and if she doesn’t want to come back, no one can make her. Henry, did you hear me about getting your own lawyer?”

Henry reluctantly agreed.

Rainey was so discouraged that she couldn’t face an evening alone at home, ruminating about lousy lawyers and the cases, and lives, they made more difficult. She ordered in dinner, and settled down to paperwork.

Which is why she was still in the office when Lawrence called around ten p.m.

Unlike Henry, her friend wasn’t coherent. At least, she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He’d gone to see Barbara, (their client, Barbara?), and something about four men, and the Chicago trip had been totally fabricated, and she’d been sick in bed for a week? No, that couldn’t be what he said. Rainey told him to calm down and come to the office, and she’d make coffee.

She was watching for him when his bike wobbled down the street with its little headlight pushing away the darkness, and he climbed off and leaned it against the meter. He came in shaking, as if the weather outside were bitter and cold, instead of a balmy seventy degrees. Her desk was a mess, so she poured coffee for them both and took it into the conference room, pulled coasters out of the drawer, and set the mugs down in the usual ritual. Lawrence followed her like a dazed animal and sat at the table, his hands limp in his lap.

Then he got himself under control, looked her in the eye and said, “I’ve been having an affair with Barbara.”

“Barbara?” Her voice rose. “Barbara, of Henry and Barbara? Barbara Linnet?”

He nodded his head, now looking down, the moment of confession turning to shame. “Don’t say anything yet, Rainey. There’s more.”

She bit back the remarks on the tip of her tongue about professional ethics, the incredible damage he was doing to their collective reputations by sleeping with a client, the way he was destroying not only his own marriage but the business that was her identity, the business they had worked so hard together to build. She gritted her teeth, mastered the impulse to throw the coffee in his face, sighed loudly, and said, in her steeliest voice, “Go on.”

“I knew Barbara’s kids were spending the night with friends, so I went to see her tonight. I was worried about her hiring such a stupid, vicious lawyer. I thought it would backfire, you know, that he would drag out the divorce and make everything take forever.”

“Lawrence, how long have you been sleeping with her?”

“Since after our first mediation session. I don’t suppose you could tell that she kept rubbing my foot with hers under the table. Her hand…she had her hand on my thigh. You remember, when I nearly knocked the table over? It’s funny, nothing happened when she was my therapy patient.” He looked at Rainey, as if he actually thought she would remember and understand, or even approve of his restraint with a patient. “She was so hot, Rainey, I can’t even tell you.”

“Don’t, Lawrence. Do not tell me. Stop right there.” A surge of rage rolled from Rainey’s gut to the top of her head. She could feel her cheeks burning, as if flames would pour out of her mouth if she opened it. Hot, she thought, I’ll show you hot!

Lawrence’s face turned very red, and she realized that he wasn’t that cute when he blushed.

She took some calming breaths, then spoke slowly. “Lawrence, the other day, when you and Barbara were both late…?”

“Uh, yeah.” He nodded. “We were together.” A faint expression crossed his face that looked smug, self-satisfied, but it disappeared in a fraction of a second.

Then suddenly his face contorted, and he put his head down on the table and clutched at his stomach. “I killed her, Rainey.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about, Lawrence?”

“When she told me about Henry getting so mad, I made sure she had a gun in the house. I knew I was overreacting, but I couldn’t help myself. I went over there tonight, and she told me I had betrayed her and she would never forgive me. She said she thought I was on her side until she saw me fawning over Henry. Rainey, you know that’s not true! I’m neutral as a mediator, and I was just being professional and polite.”

Rainey closed her eyes. Her jaw was locked, as she chose not to say what she was thinking: Right, Lawrence! It’s very polite and neutral to shake hands with a client whose wife you just got out of bed with. Good job!

When she opened her eyes, Lawrence cleared his throat. “She told me she was sleeping with four different guys and I was the worst lay. She said she didn’t go to Chicago, she went to the beach and spent most of the week in bed with one of them. And then she said Henry turned her on so much by throwing the macaroni dish that she was thinking of getting back together with him. She said”-at this point, Lawrence started to cry-“she said no matter how smart I am, I don’t have a clue about sex. She ridiculed me, Rainey. I went to get the gun out of the drawer I’d put it in. Jeez, if she was going to make fun of me, I wasn’t going to let her use my gun for protection. But when I picked it up…” He looked down at the table, shaking his head, bewildered. Then he faced Rainey again. “She jeered at me. She said, ‘Oh, the gun, now that makes you a real man,’ and it went off. It shot her.”

It shot her?

He paused. “Rainey? You know I didn’t mean to, don’t you?”

He sounded like a little boy whose ball had just shattered his mother’s favorite vase.

Rainey closed her eyes again for a few minutes, working her jaw to relax it, so she could speak. Then she said, “We both better calm down. Let’s sit for a few minutes and meditate, and we’ll figure out what to do.”

Lawrence cried and cried. He was not cute at all.

Rainey sat with her eyes closed, inhaling, exhaling. Logical thoughts followed each other. The implications of Lawrence’s disclosure weren’t pretty. If he were caught, at best he’d wind up in prison for the rest of his life, his wife and the kids would be humiliated, and Rainey’s legal reputation would be down the toilet. All those scornful lawyers who claimed mediation was just a ploy to avoid being a trial lawyer, all those jealous lawyers who envied her success, they’d be snickering about her forever. “Your partner kill any clients lately? Har, har, har.” Her thriving business had just been annihilated.

Could she fix it? What if Lawrence claimed he was visiting Barbara as her therapist? She became overwhelmed with guilt about her promiscuity, threatened to shoot herself, and in the struggle for the gun, it went off?

Sure, that would work fine, except that Lawrence bought the gun. No story would fix that. No matter what else happened, Rainey was sure to get screwed now. Damn. He’d seemed so different from every other idiot male she knew. How in hell could she control the damage?

She opened her eyes.

“Did anyone else know you were seeing her? Did Sheila guess?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m sure we were discreet, and Sheila would never suspect.”

“Did anyone spot you going in or out of Barbara’s house tonight?”

He paused. “I don’t think so.”

“What did you do with the gun?” she asked.

“I wiped it down and brought it with me.”

“What?” Her voice rose to nearly a screech.

“I’ll be right back.”

She stood at the window, looking at him as he hurried toward his bike in its usual spot under the street lamp. He leaned into the enclosure behind the bike, pulled out a grocery bag, and headed back in. He’s absolutely lost it. He left the gun in the bike carriage? Moments later, Lawrence gave her the bag, which contained a solid object wrapped in bathroom tissue, and she put it into her office safe while he watched her.

“I’ll dispose of it later,” she said. “Okay, Lawrence, wash your face and go home to your family. Say nothing. Surely the cops will try to pin it on Henry, and he’ll have an alibi, and they’ll be left with a cold case. You’ll be fine.”

She paused, took a slow breath, and nodded with assurance. “I’m going to follow you to your house to make sure you get there safely.”

When she pulled her Lexus SUV around from the parking lot behind the building, the headlights illuminated Lawrence waiting in the street beside his bicycle. He jumped on and began pedaling, and she thought she could see the muscles flexing in the once-cute ass under his khakis. She kept him in her headlights as he gained speed on the dark highway, cycling fast, as if trying to outrun his thoughts.

In contrast, Rainey wasn’t thinking, for once. Shell-shocked and exhausted, she watched her business partner’s dark head bobbing in front of her as he pumped the pedals. No cars passed in either direction on the dark road, but still she focused on driving, her jaw clenched, intent on maintaining just the right distance.

Rainey followed Lawrence all the way to the right turn that would take him home, the road that swept down the hillside in sharp curves before reaching his narrow driveway. He might have successfully made the turn if she hadn’t sped up beside him and edged him to the sandy shoulder of the road. He might still have made the turn if she hadn’t then braked to clip, just barely, the carriage trailing behind him. But she did both those things, simultaneously turning her headlights off and on, off and on. At speed, unable to see in the intermittent flashes of light, he skidded out of control on the sand and slammed into the concrete retaining wall next to the roadway.

Rainey stopped the car, turned her headlights off, and waited a minute in the car, taking deep breaths. Did it work? Kicking off her elegant heels, she grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and got out of the car. She trained her flashlight on the body crumpled beside the road. His head was twisted at an unnatural angle, and his chest didn’t show even a whisper of movement.

Then she sighed a deep sigh of relief and regret.

“Larry,” she said, shaking her head, “Larry. Damned if you didn’t turn out to be a Larry. For all these years, I thought you were a Lawrence. I’ve put up with your being cute and unavailable. I could handle your being married, and I even like your wife. But killing a client is way out of line. It’s bad for our reputation, so not good for business. Dammit, Larry, you made it a lose-lose! You brought this on yourself.”

She walked back to the car, turning back one time. “And if you were going to screw around,” she shook her head again. “Oh, Larry. Miss Mouse?”

Jill Breslau is a lawyer and psychotherapist who has, indeed, worked as a divorce mediator. The major incidents in this story are unrelated to her actual experience. Some of the less dramatic events are true, though it’s to no one’s advantage to identify them. Jill lives in Maryland with her golden retriever, Mr. Jones. She has four adorable grandchildren who may find it difficult to imagine, when they grow up, that their grandmother could write about people who have wicked thoughts and do terrible things. She has written legal articles; this is her first short story.