Dead Certain

CHAPTER 1
     
    As a lawyer I’m not usually interested in the truth. I know that sounds appalling. But if it’s absolutes you’re interested in, you’d better stick to physics. At its heart the law is all about human behavior, and human behavior is by definition messy. Which not only explains why lawyers make their living in the gray spaces between differing versions of the truth, but also why there are so many of us. But, that morning I wasn’t interested in truth, physics, or the dark inner workings of the human heart. All I wanted was to make a deal.
    After six months of letters, meetings, and conference calls, after months of missteps, frustration, and false hope—it all came down to this: three days and three nights at the negotiating table and still no deal. Not only that, but I was running out of tricks. I was too frustrated to be persuasive, and after being up all night, the lawyers for the other side were too sleep-deprived to be intimidated— which was probably okay, because I was also too tired to care. All I wanted was to make a deal, take a shower, and climb into bed—in that order. Considering that I’d spent the last seventy-two hours in the same set of clothes, I, didn’t think that was too much to ask.
    It didn’t help that the air in the conference room was ripe with the scent of yesterday’s sweat and the mahogany table was strewn with the wreckage of midnight coffee and fast-food breakfast. Jackets were off, sleeves were rolled up, and with a one o’clock deal-or-die deadline fast approaching, we’d moved past the point of being polite three ultimatums ago. When one of the Armani-clad wonders for the other side started going through his list of financial sticking points for what felt like the four hundredth time, I found myself alternating between fantasies of crisp cotton sheets and ripping his head off. I had just decided on the latter when my secretary sidled into the room and tapped me gently on the shoulder.
    Cheryl was a petite powerhouse of a woman with a neat blond bob and a subversive sense of humor. She was also my rock, unflappable in any crisis and impervious to panic, which is why all it took was one look at her face for me to know that she hadn’t come to bring me good news. As she slipped me a folded sheet of paper, I tasted adrenaline in my throat and scenarios for a half a dozen different disasters sprang full-blown into my head. In my line of work it helps to have a vivid imagination and a sixth sense for disaster, but this time it turns out I wasn’t even close.
    In Cheryl’s tidy handwriting, the message was as brief as it was chilling. It said:
    “Your mother is here to see you.”
    I raised my eyes from the paper and turned in my seat to face my secretary. A look of perfect understanding passed between us. Not only was the timing terrible, but we were both thinking the same thing. There was no way my mother would ever come to my office if she could possibly avoid it.
    I scrambled to my feet and whispered something about an emergency to the lawyer sitting next to me. Then I started mentally running down the list of possible reasons for my mother’s visit.
    None of them were good.
    As I made my way down the hall I tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear and prayed that I didn’t look as awful as I felt. The weight of my mother’s disapproval is a burden under even the best of circumstances. The last thing I wanted to do today was give her fresh ammunition. Lately my personal life had been keeping her more than adequately supplied.
    The love lives of corporate lawyers aren’t usually a source of gossip-column fodder, but being Astrid Mill-holland’s daughter has always made me something of an exception. Of course, splitting publicly with Stephen Azorini, Chicago’s most visible and eligible bachelor, was hardly a move destined to avert the spotlight. Even so, I was completely unprepared for the months of lurid speculation my decision seemed to have fueled.
    Mother, accustomed to the respectful worship of the society pages, made no secret of her mortification.or the fact that she blamed me for it. In the meantime, I did what I always do, buried myself in work and prayed that someone prominent would turn up in bed with a barnyard animal, if only to give the gossip columnists something else to write about and get my mother off my back.
     
    At Callahan Ross the room where clients cool their heels is everything you’d expect from a law firm where the