Mavis Zachary sat quietly in the law offices of Messina and Facinelli, her hands folded in her lap. She emanated a fresh shocking grief. Helen Fultz had offered to come with her that day in spite of the pain in her legs. She walked to the car, very slowly, leaning on a walker.
“I’m so sorry about your loss,” Peter Facinelli said to Mavis.
“Thank you,” she said. The sympathy shook what little composure she had, and she slumped in her chair. She looked barely functional as she struggled for calm.
“Helen has offered to loan me the money for a retainer,” she said.
Helen lifted her head. “It’s not a loan,” she said. “I want to do this for Marianne,” she said. “Let me help you.”
“No. I don’t like to owe people. I’m paying every penny of it back,” Mavis said. “Even if I have to work double shifts forever.”
“I’m not people. I love Marianne like my own and I loved Shelby. Just take the money for her sake, for my sake. For once, forget your Goddamn pride.”
They argued until Mavis exploded into tears.
Instantly contrite, Helen put her arm around Mavis shoulders. “I’m sorry I made you cry. After all you’re going through! Please forgive me.”
Mavis shoulders shook slightly. She fished for a tissue at the bottom of her bag and dried her eyes.
“Of course, I’ll be completely grateful for anything you can do.”
And so it was settled. Peter Facinelli sat quietly behind his desk, hands folded, while they worked out their differences. His mind had been on the attack on the little girl. A single stroke had killed her. Her skull fractured and the brain within her skull so badly damaged that it had shut down the rest of her body within a very short time. It hardly seemed possible a twelve year old could do that sort of damage with a single stroke, but still...
“You can save her. I know you can,” Mavis was saying now.
“I’m not a savior.” Peter had learned that the hard way. “I will do everything I can to help her but you need to know there are no guarantees. The outcome may not be what you want. There is too much evidence against Marianne.”
“I can’t lose her too,” Mavis said as she wiped her eyes on a wadded tissue. “Not after Shelby,” Mavis said. “I couldn’t stand it.”
Peter leaned forward and looked directly at her. “She may have done it and if she did, I can’t save her.”
“I just want you to get her off. She’s only twelve. She’s so impulsive. She does things that even she doesn’t understand.”
“You do understand that we might lose?”
“Yes. Of course I realize that we might lose! We can’t! I couldn’t stand it.” She was getting upset again.
Helen Fultz put an arm around Mavis shoulder. “Everything will be all right.”
Directing herself to Peter she said, “I wish this situation could work out. I’m afraid for Marianne. I’m afraid for all of them.”
She gazed past his shoulder, out the window to an azure sky, splashed with luminous white clouds. “Too many things have already happened to imagine anything but more tragedy.” Reaching over, she touched Mavis’s hand. “I just hate a defeatist attitude. I have as much hope for the situation as anyone can.”
She dug in her bag for her checkbook. She stood and leaned over Peter’s desk and began to write. “Is ten thousand dollars enough to start?”
“Uh, yes. That’ll be fine.”
He placed the check in a blue zipper pouch in a desk drawer and turned back to them.
“All right.” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Mrs. Zachary I know this is a tough time for you but I will need your cooperation.”
“Of course,” she said in a low voice.
“Can you think of anyone else that might have been at your house that day? Anyone at all?”
She looked confused, as though she hadn’t given that any thought at all. She took a minute to answer. “No. No one.”
“I will need to come out to look at the house. Was anything missing from the house?”
“No. Nothing missing.”
“You do know about the recent thefts in the neighborhood?”
“Yes,” Mavis said. “But it seems absurd to think anyone would come to our house to rob it, the smallest and shabbiest house on the block.”
“Did the police hint at whether they thought this event could be linked to that series of crimes?”
“I know they are looking at other possibilities. That’s all they said.”
“Good.” Peter glanced at his notes.
“Isn’t it unusual for a girl of Marianne’s age to have the strength to hit someone so hard as to kill them?”
“Marianne is strong. She’s big for her age. They were always fighting and Marianne hit Shelby many times.”
Mavis put her head into her hands and started weeping again. This time inconsolably.