Confessions Bundle

“No.”

Mary Jane slid down, carried her bowl to the sink, turned on the water.

Juliet grabbed an orange for later. Looked in the freezer for dinner ideas and decided to just order pizza.

“Is it about that guy that died?” The little girl stood beside her at the freezer, her eyes full of that extraordinary mixture of empathy and childlike innocence.

God, how was she ever going to make this work?

Just as she didn’t ever want her daughter to keep secrets from her, she didn’t keep secrets from Mary Jane. But the little girl hadn’t been herself lately, refusing to go to Brownies until the father-daughter banquet was over and she didn’t have to hear about it anymore. And she’d brought home only an average grade on her math test the previous week.

Fine for many kids. A first for Mary Jane McNeil.

Any mention of her father—or any father—upset her. She was becoming obsessed with hanging on to the partnership she and Juliet had formed over the years.

She’d climbed into bed with Juliet twice in the past week.

“Yes,” she finally said when her daughter’s curlframed face started to pucker with worry. “It absolutely does have to do with all of that.” Completely true. If not complete.

The validation didn’t seem to reassure the little girl. At least not immediately. Mary Jane continued to study her for several more seconds. Juliet’s heart ached with the things she couldn’t change, a world that was going to hurt her little girl no matter how diligently she tried to prevent it. There were just some things a mother couldn’t do.

And she’d thought she’d already learned all the toughest lessons.

THERE WERE FOUR COUNTS of theft, four counts of fraud due to misrepresentation and one count of conspiracy—all class-two felonies. Maximum sentence fourteen years for each. And if the judge ruled that the sentences were to be served consecutively, that could mean one hundred and twenty-six years behind bars.

“I’m going to beat this.” Blake sat on the edge of the upholstered chair in front of Juliet’s desk in her office at Truman and Associates. Forearms on his knees, he looked down at his clasped hands. Looking for strength. He could do this. He just had to figure out how.

Juliet sat back opposite him, her olive green skirt and jacket a complement to the not-quite-pink chair.

Sliding the official notice into the back of a padded leather binder, she glanced over at him, pen poised above an empty legal pad. If not for her lipstick and skirt, she could have passed for the president of the United States, he thought, with that regal and confident bearing.

He was lucky to have her representing him.

“First things first,” she told him, her voice even, all business. “The arraignment Friday morning. How much do you know about the process?”

Blake missed the warmth, but calmed in the wake of her professionalism.

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Okay.” She nodded, fire-lit curls falling over her shoulders. Blake would give almost anything to be back nine years, losing himself in those curls, instead of sitting there facing possible imprisonment. “It goes like this…”

Blake fought to remain calm and attentive as she spent the next ten minutes describing the actual procedure of the upcoming hearing. As each second passed, a sense of calm grew more elusive. More than anything, he needed to be out on the beach. Running. As fast and as far as he could.

“I’m assuming, from all you’ve said, that you intend to enter a not-guilty plea.”

“Absolutely.” There was a measure of peace in just saying the word. Of having even this minute bit of control—this one thing about which he was completely certain.

“And another thing.” He could be cutting his own throat, but there was no room for compromise on this one. “We do this honestly.”

Juliet’s face hardened. “I always tell the truth.”

Where were all the years’ worth of people skills he’d acquired when he needed them most?

“Listen,” he said, rubbing his hands together as he leaned forward. “I don’t mean to offend you at all. I just know one thing about my life and particularly now, it’s all I have to stand on. I am always honest. I don’t play with the truth, or tell parts of it. I can lose my business, my health, my loved ones. In the end, all I have is my integrity and if I waver now when I’m facing the biggest challenge ever, then whether I beat the charges or not, I’ve lost everything.”

The words renewed his strength. At least for the moment.

“I understand.” Juliet crossed one leg over the other. “And I feel just as strongly about integrity as you do. I also happen to know that there are many levels of truth and sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious to get to the part that counts.”

A logical justification for living life in shades of gray? Or one of those mysterious understandings that made life rich and full?

He had no idea. And a lot to think about.

Juliet spoke then about release conditions.

Blake’s skin grew cold. Clammy. After his meeting with her in his office, he’d immersed himself in work. He hadn’t given any more thought to what happened next. “What does that mean?” He’d assumed when they hadn’t already arrested him that he was free, at least until after the trial.

“The judge will determine at the arraignment whether or not you should be held on bond and, if so, how much it will be. With these charges, it could be as much as a million dollars. You’ll be taken into custody until the amount is paid.”

God in heaven, take me now. Even he couldn’t scrape up that amount all at once. He’d be arrested. Sent to jail.

A pen tapping lightly on his knee brought his mind back from the abyss he’d been repeatedly falling into since Schuster’s visit five days before. Juliet leaned down, bringing her face directly in front of his. “We don’t want that,” she said, her glossy lips giving him something to concentrate on. “The other option is to release you on your own recognizance. That’s what we want.”

His own recognizance. Blake liked the sound of that. He could handle that.

Still bent over, he looked up at her. “How does that happen?”

She sat back, her eyes steady as she watched him. “Hopefully the prosecutor will recommend it.”

“Schuster?”

She nodded. “I suspect that’s what will happen. Considering the facts, it should. If for some reason it doesn’t, then it’s up to me to convince the judge that it would be appropriate for you to be released without bond.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Can you do it?”

He’d feel a lot better if she’d smiled right then. “I’ll do my best, but we could be hurt by the fact that you left the country for four years without a single visit. To counteract that, I need to know everything there is to know about every single tie you have to this community. Your address, whether or not you own your home, for how long, your exact job title and where you stand with Ramsden Enterprises, any other property you own, employees you have, local family, friends.”

Blake sat up. Finally something to do. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

And he did. He owned his home, had been in residence there—camping at first—since construction began five years before. He was owner and CEO of Ramsden, which was a nonstock company with an impressive year-end bottom line. In addition to his own home, he owned several properties that were being developed, he had more than one hundred employees, many more subcontractors he knew well and trusted, many acquaintances, no living relatives anywhere, not many close friends. Except Donkor and Jamila Rahman.

“They’re here, locally?”

Blake shook his head. “Egypt.”

Sighing, Juliet said, “The idea is to convince the judge you’re going to stay here, not flee to friends on another continent,” she told him. And then, looking up with the familiar warmth in her eyes, asked, “When was the last time you saw them?”

“A little over three weeks ago. At Amunet’s funeral.”

“And before that?”

“A few years. But we’re in touch regularly.”

“Once the trial gets going, would they be willing to testify on your behalf?”

Fly across the world to come to his aid?

“Yes.” Another certainty.

Blake hadn’t even thought about Donkor finding out about all of this. His employees, customers and business associates didn’t even know yet. But they all would. Soon enough, too soon, everyone was going to know that Blake Ramsden was on trial for nine counts of felonious crimes. Even if he was able to prove his innocence, that stigma would never completely go away. There would be some who wouldn’t forget.

Some who would always have doubts about him.

He’d done nothing but work hard, pay his bills and tell the truth. Yet, in the space of a few days, his image, his reputation and his life had been irrevocably changed.

“MY MOM ALWAYS tells the truth!”

Pumping as hard as she could, Mary Jane tried to get high enough not to hear what that stupid Jeff Turner was saying. She shoulda’ picked the monkey bars for recess instead of the swings. No one was on the monkey bars.

“She does not.” Jeff’s face, almost as high as hers, whizzed past. “She says stuff…” He passed again.

“…in court that gets criminals…”

“…out of jail.”

She was too high to let go of the chains to put her hands over her ears.

“Shut up, Jeff!” She hollered so loud it made her throat sting.

“It’s the truth,” Jeff yelled right back.

Mary Jane looked the other way when he passed. “I asked my dad,” he said.

She heard his words anyway. The girls she wished were her friends were playing four square on the blacktop. She could hear them calling to each other. And laughing.

“Then your dad lies,” Mary Jane screamed, just fed up with…everything. Human beings were just too hard to know. Putting her feet down in the dirt, she took the initial bump from fast to slow with only a small jerk at the back of her neck.

Jeff was slowing, too. Oh, no. If he was going to follow her around and say stuff that made her mad then she was going to go inside even if she wasn’t allowed to at recess. Maybe she could go to the nurse and get her temperature taken.

Mary Jane’s feet slid in the dirt, sending up a cloud of dust onto her favorite white jeans with the little blue butterflies stitched all over them. She wouldn’t tell the nurse she was sick, because she wasn’t. But she could ask to have her temperature taken.

And if that didn’t work, maybe she’d have to skin her knee on the blacktop. That had gotten her out of recess once at her other school before this one.

“Mary Jane’s mother is a liar!” the mean skinny freckle-faced boy said as they both came to a stop.

Mary Jane stood up, her face hot. “My mother does not lie!” She screamed even though she was stopped now.

“Does too!”

“Does not!”

“Does too!”

“You take that back, Jeff Turner.”

“She lies and lets criminals go free and then they hurt people.”

“Take that back!”

“No way,” the boy said, grinning in a really mean way that made Mary Jane want to hit him in the face. “Your mother lies!”

Stamping her foot, her tennis shoe kicking up more dust, Mary Jane gritted her teeth. “She does not lie.” She had to get away from him. She was afraid she was going to cry.

Because she knew her mother didn’t lie. Ever. But she was very scared there was something her mother wasn’t telling her. Something big and important and bad. She’d been acting weird for days and then got that call the morning before, during breakfast, and then she was even weirder last night.

“She does, and so do you!” Jeff said, putting his face so close to hers, some of his spit landed on her chin.

“Gross! Get away from me,” she hollered at him, pushing at his shoulder.

Jeff’s hand flew out, pushing back. Hard. Mary Jane landed on her bottom, hands out behind her. Jeff walked past just leaving her there, and Mary Jane kicked him. She didn’t mean to. But he was mean, and too close and he was just going to get away with saying all those horrible things.

When he turned around and kicked her back, she grabbed his foot and he fell.

And that was when Mrs. Thacker came out and saw them.

Mary Jane froze, her shin, where Jeff had kicked her, stinging. Waiting in fear, she watched her teacher approach. She was going to be sent to Mrs. Cummings again. Maybe even get kicked out of school. And all she’d wanted to do was swing and have recess be over so she didn’t have to watch those girls play four square.

All she ever wanted to do was be good. So why was she always in so much trouble?

DRESSED IN HER red power suit, as Mary Jane had called it ever since hearing her mother say it one time on the phone to Marcie, Juliet showed up at the California Superior Court Building in San Diego at eight-twenty Friday morning. She’d hoped to be there sooner but had had another meeting with the intimidating Mrs. Cummings.

Surprisingly enough, this visit had not been so one-sided. Mr. Jeffrey Turner had been made to apologize not only to Mary Jane for pushing her down, but to Juliet for the slur on her good name.

And Juliet felt sick. Her once joyful, easygoing daughter had been in a fight at school with a boy. The fact that the boy had been slandering Juliet was no explanation. Mary Jane had always been gifted with an ability to let things slide off her too-skinny shoulders.

The child was holding far too much tension inside, if something as unimportant as an obviously inaccurate slur against her mother could trigger such uncontrollable behavior.

“Hi.” Surprising how he could express such relief with one word. Or maybe it was the look in Blake’s eyes as he approached her in the foyer outside their courtroom that told the story.

“Good. Brown suit, beige shirt, sedate tie, just like I asked,” she said, looking him over from a purely professional standpoint. Brown was an earth color, and instilled feelings of dependability and solidity.

“I shined my shoes, too,” he said, his attempt at a grin falling only a little short.

“And a fine job you did,” she said, taking a breath deep enough to distance herself from the trouble with her daughter, as she stared down at the brown leather wingtips.

Blake sighed, shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “I guess we should go in.”

She squeezed his elbow. “Relax, we’ll be fine. The most important thing is to appear cooperative while emanating confidence in your innocence.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. And then, with a look of quiet concern, “Is there a reason why, if you’re so certain this will go well, you’re so tense yourself? This has to be all in a day’s work for you.”

She was going to have to do better than this. The first day and already he was reading things she didn’t want him to see. “Just came from arguing another case with another judge—so to speak.”

He frowned. “You’ve already been in court this morning?”

“No,” Juliet guided them toward the heavy wooden door of the courtroom. “I was in her office.”

Blake held the door for her, allowing Juliet to enter before him. She passed beneath his arm, close enough to feel the heat from his body, and in that second, the worry of the morning settled into something more manageable.

Which worried Juliet. A lot.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BLAKE TOOK IN the courtroom with one glance. It was smaller than he’d expected. Or perhaps just too close for him.

She’d told him there’d be anywhere from thirty to ninety people—defendants, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Arraignments were done all at once on certain mornings, ten to thirty at a time, and the court distributed a press release so at least there’d be no reporters. Each arraignment would take approximately two minutes. He was prepared.

Juliet motioned him to take a seat in one of the back rows and he gladly obliged. He preferred to have everything in front of him, where he could see it. And he appreciated that she’d somehow known that, or at least stumbled unknowingly on his first choice.

The judge’s bench was empty. Too bad it couldn’t remain that way. For a moment, Blake was back in fourth grade, maybe nine or ten, sitting in a chair in the waiting room of the dentist’s office, waiting for his name to be called. He’d been there to have a cavity filled and the idea of having a needle poked into his mouth had been traumatizing him for days. He’d tried to speak with his father about his fears, about the risks of leaving the cavity unfilled. The old man had laughed at him. Told him it was merely a case of mind over matter and as a son of his, Blake would master that in no time.

Just think about baseball, his father had told him.

Blake hated baseball.

“They’ll do any ‘in custodys’ first,” Juliet leaned over to whisper. She smelled heavenly—an artistic cross between seductive and innocent. She’d obviously switched to a much more expensive perfume than the simple musk she’d worn nine years before.

Registering what she’d said, Blake looked over the thirty or so heads in front of them. “In custodys?” he repeated.

Paul Schuster walked in, pretended not to see them and took a seat on the opposite side of the room, one row up.

“The defendants who’re locked up,” Juliet said, pulling his attention back to her.

He looked around but didn’t see any handcuffs. Or guards, either.

“If there are any, they’ll be done via conference call. We’ll just listen,” she said. He nodded and wished she’d just keep talking to him. As horrible as the morning was, Blake was glad to have her there beside him. Her presence calmed him.

Some people at the front of the room stood. “All rise.”

After being announced, the judge entered and sat. So did Blake. And he had the thought that he’d like to keep right on sitting there, feeling Juliet’s warmth, until it was time to go home.

The ocean beckoned.

HIS LEGS STIFF, Blake sat straight as yet another twosome—attorney and client—filed out of the room. This time the accused had been a woman in her mid-thirties, accused of drug and child abuse. He wasn’t sure he believed her not-guilty plea. Judging by the impersonal look on her attorney’s face, he wasn’t sure that man did either.

He, Juliet and Schuster were the only ones left in the room. At least he’d been spared an audience to his humiliation.

Blake’s nerves hummed. He itched to run. Never, in all the years living under his father’s rule, had he felt this trapped.

“Blake Ramsden,” the brown-haired judge called, looking over a pair of reading glasses to the almost-empty room.

Juliet was slightly in front of him as Blake approached the bench and stood. After obtaining a document of several pages from the court clerk, Juliet rejoined him. Schuster came up last, standing on the other side of Juliet.

Just as he had for every other defendant before Blake, Judge Henry Johnson read Blake his rights. The man looked friendly enough, not more than forty or forty-five, very few frown lines.

Pulling off his glasses, Judge Johnson looked straight at Blake, his expression serious. “How do you plead?”

Blake stood silently, as he’d been told to do.

“My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.”

Judge Johnson wrote something down, then lifted some papers and looked over at his clerk, who was glancing at the computer screen in front of her. She jotted something on a little piece of paper and handed it to the judge. Just as she had for every other case they’d watched that morning.

“Trial is set for July twenty-third, 8:30 a.m.,” he said. Almost three months away, just as Juliet had predicted.

The judge glanced up again, his gaze skimming over Blake and Juliet to land on Schuster. “Let’s talk about release conditions.”

“Due to the fact that the defendant spent four years out of the country without so much as a visit to his elderly parents, added to the fact that he has no local family, the state recommends that the defendant be detained, Your Honor. And because there is at least one million dollars sitting in an account in the defendant’s name in the Cayman Islands, we are asking that Blake Ramsden be held on a million-dollar bond.”

A razor-sharp pain shot through Blake’s chest. He’d been prepared, done what he could, but most of his money wasn’t liquid. They were going to take him away from that room and lock him up. He’d been telling himself all morning that he just had to get through two minutes and then he’d be on his way to the beach. And back in his office, working, by noon. Juliet hadn’t expected them to hold him.

Ignoring Blake, the judge turned to Juliet. “Ms. McNeil?”

She ignored Blake, too. Did that mean she wasn’t going to be able to help him out of this one?

His first time up to bat and already he was striking out. He’d always struck out when his father had dragged him off to Little League practice, too.

Track had been his sport, not that his father had ever noticed. It wasn’t nearly as much of a spectator sport. Due to Blake’s grandfather’s requirement that Walter work after school from the eighth grade on, spectating was the only kind of athletics Walter Ramsden had been able to participate in.

Dad, if you’re around anywhere, keeping that watchful eye on things, I could sure use some help, just this once.

“Your Honor, with all due respect, I believe that Mr. Schuster grossly underestimates my client’s ties to this community,” Juliet said. She moved one step closer to Blake and his breathing came just a bit easier. She might not be able to get him out of this, but she was here. Supporting him.

“He owns a home, sir, on a cliff overlooking the ocean in La Jolla. He’s resided there for five years and it is his only residence.” Juliet spoke as though her client owned a portion of heaven and could therefore be trusted.

The actual facts didn’t sound like much to Blake, but it was all he’d given her to work with. She’d do everything she could. And she was the best.

“He is also the sole owner of a very successful company here in San Diego, with more than one hundred employees and subcontractors all over the state. And while he has no local family, sir, he has no family anywhere else, either, to whom he might be tempted to return.” Her voice didn’t rise or get dramatic, yet maintained a note of conviction.

“Mr. Ramsden has many, many acquaintances and friends in this city, sir, including the mayor, with whom he was scheduled to have breakfast this morning. San Diego is where he was born and raised. Other than an educational stint abroad, encouraged and, in part, funded by his father, he has never left this city for more than the duration of a family vacation. His life is here, sir. I believe that, in light of these ties to his community, Mr. Ramsden should be released on his own recognizance, sir. I can personally guarantee that he will be present and ready to face charges at eight-thirty in the morning on the twenty-third of July.”

Blake stared.

She was a woman. Beautiful. Soft. Compassionate. And she was a barracuda, daring anyone to disagree with the obvious. Blake imagined she’d intimidated many people over the years.

He didn’t figure Thomas for one of them.

The judge looked him over. Put on his glasses again. Read something in front of him.

“Very well, Counselor, I will take your word that Mr. Ramsden will appear as ordered. Please advise your client that he is not to leave the state. And Ms. McNeil, if he does not appear back in this court on the date and at the time designated, you’d better not ask this court to take your word for anything—ever again.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Juliet didn’t crack a smile.

Blake did.

JULIET SET ASIDE the entire weekend to spend with her daughter. From the time she picked her up from school on Friday—as she did most afternoons unless she had a late day in court, when Duane Wilson’s wife, Donna, did the honors—until she dropped the child back at school on Monday morning, she was going to lavish every bit of attention she had on Mary Jane McNeil.