Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

says—”
    “Sister’s wrong. But don’t worry. Your dad’s not going to send you back.”
    She was alarmed. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
    I must have looked flustered. She’d caught me in a conflict of interest. I had a responsibility to let her parent know that nothing was seriously wrong—nothing by adult standards, that is. Didn’t I?
    “You promised! Attorney-client privilege.”
    That settled it. My responsibility lay with my client.
    “Of course I won’t tell him. No problem. Now tell me about the white thing. You know, the law distinguishes between different kinds of stealing. There’s petty theft and grand theft, for instance. Between you and me, legally petty theft isn’t much of a crime. Of course, morally’s another matter, but I’m your lawyer, and the law isn’t allowed to get into moral questions. Now, even if they sent kids to jail—which they don’t, I can’t make that clear enough—what you did isn’t the same as stealing a car, say. That would be grand theft, and a grownup might get a few years for that, but—” I shrugged “—a random white thing probably isn’t worth very much.”
    About halfway through this speech, a change started to come over her face. I thought it was just worry, but it had congealed into misery by the time I finished.
    Her voice trembled. “What if it
is
worth a lot?”
    This was getting frustrating. “Darling, do you think you could tell me what it is?”
    “I’m not
sure
what it is. That’s why I gave it to Sadie. So she could tell me.”
    “Well, what does it look like? Besides a brain, I mean? What do you
think
it is?”
    She was very solemn. “A pearl of great price.”
    “Ah. It must be a freshwater pearl. Those are the ones with little wrinkles—like convolutions in a brain.”
    She shook her head. “My mom has a necklace made out of freshwater pearls. They look more like Rice Krispies than brains. This one’s different. It’s not very round either, but it’s more like a rock—and it’s a
whole
lot bigger.”
    “How big?”
    “A little smaller than a golf ball.”
    “It couldn’t be a pearl then, honey. Pearls don’t come that big.”
    “Oh, yes, they do. I did a report on them.” There was authority in her voice. She straightened her spine and began to recite. “The largest pearl ever found was called the Pearl of Allah. It weighed fourteen pounds. A native from an island found the humongous white thing on the inside of a giant clam. The only problem was, the clam closed both of its shells while he was looking at it, which killed him. That was in 1934.”
    She was adorable, but I had to laugh. I was utterly charmed out of my mind, and laughing my head off. I couldn’t understand why she’d stopped and purposefully furrowed the spot between her brows, disapproval personified.
    “You don’t believe me!” If she’d been standing, she’d have stamped her foot.
    “I do, I do, it’s not that at all. I’m laughing because you’re so cute.”
    She summoned every bit of her ten-year-old dignity. “I
prefer
to be taken seriously.”
    “But I do take you seriously. It’s just that my boyfriend—”
    “Your boyfriend!”
    I could see the idea distressed her. “My ex-boyfriend does exactly what you’re doing, that’s all. Only he’s out of school, so he doesn’t write reports. He’s a newspaper reporter. He writes news stories and then quotes himself. He’s very cute when he does it, too.”
    “Oh.” Still hurt. But I was touched by the way she hated the boyfriend talk. She really wanted me to date her dad. Oh, well. It was an odd thing to do for a client, but if she insisted—
    She said sullenly, “It was an
oral
report. I was
supposed
to memorize it.”
    “Could I hear the rest of it?”
    “I guess so.” She drew up her spine again. And suddenly I saw a chance to make points.
    “Hold it a minute. I’ll teach you something. Want to see how a lawyer makes the jury listen? When you talk to me, make me vibrate.”
    “Huh?”
    “
Imagine
you’re making me vibrate. It’s a trick for projecting your voice.” (Naturally, I didn’t mention I’d learned this, not at Clarence Darrow’s knee, but in my acting class.)
    “Two years after the horrible tragedy,” she resonated, “a man who came to the island cured the chief’s son of a terrible disease, so the chief gave him the pearl. The man was an American. But the chief told the man he shouldn’t ever sell the pearl, or a great