The only good Lawyer

style popular fifteen years back. There was matching but also aging furniture, all the wooden surfaces shining as though freshly polished. Spaeth laid the book on an end table and waved me toward a chair while she took the sofa, sitting straight up rather than leaning back into the cushion.
    A lot like Helen Gant, once you noticed it.
    From the chair, I said, “Just so you know where I’m heading, I think there’s some possibility your husband didn’t shoot Woodrow Gant.”
    “I don’t,” she said, stonily. “But ask your questions.”
    I thought back to my talk with Alan Spaeth at Nashua Street . “You’re a teacher, correct?”
    “Sixth grade.” She named a district three towns away. “Not exactly a great job, either.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “All I do is try to keep track of the students, not really teach them anything that might be considered academic. The courses are supposed to get them ‘in touch with their feelings’ so they can ‘develop to their fullest potential.’ ”
    “Glorified day care.”
    “More like horrified night-ware. But, it pays the mortgage and gives us medical coverage, thank God. And Terry’s old enough that I don’t have to worry too much about him when I have parent-teacher meetings at night.”
    I remembered her husband telling me that Terry was the son. “So, your job provided the bulk of the family income?”
    “All of it.” Spaeth seemed to hesitate again. “No, that’s not really fair. Before he got laid off, Alan was a good provider. I must even have loved him, once upon a time.” She sounded as tired as she looked. “But since Alan lost his job and started drinking, Terry and I have been on our own in more ways than one.”
    “Mrs. Spaeth, other people described the way your husband behaved at Mr. Gant’s law firm the day of the deposition.”
    “I hope that means you don’t have to ask me.”
    “It’d be a help to hear your version.”
    “My version.” She closed her eyes. “My version is that Alan was—and is—crazy. Maybe not legally, technically crazy, but functionally. He imagines things, then blows even the things he imagines way out of proportion.”
    “Could you give me some examples?”
    “You name it, Alan overdid it. The drinking, the hunting stuff with Terry.”
    Her husband had told me that, too. “He took your son hunting?”
    “After deer, without discussing it first. No, that’s not fair to my side of things. Terry was excited about going, but I said no, and Alan took him anyway.”
    “How old was your son at the time?”
    “It was last year, so only thirteen. Can you believe it?”
    Didn’t seem completely “crazy” to me, but then I’m neither for nor against the sport. “Mrs. Spaeth, witnesses at a restaurant say a woman was with Mr. Gant the night he was killed.”
    Her eyes narrowed again. “So?”
    “So I was wondering if maybe he mentioned something to you about who he was seeing.”
    The eyes now became slits. “Why in the world would Woodrow do that?”
    “As a matter of small talk. You were a client, he would have spent time with you.”
    “No. No, Woodrow never said anything about his personal life to me. All we ever talked about was my divorce. Which is another headache.”
    “Headache?”
    “Now I need to find somebody else to finish the case.”
    Frank Neely and Imogene Burbage had said they were referring Gant’s clients to other attorneys. “Can’t the law firm help you with that?”
    Spaeth drew herself up a little straighter on the couch. “Mr. Cuddy, Woodrow was a fine man.” Her voice began to crack. “He helped me through the hardest time of my life, divorcing a husband who flew off the handle over every little thing. And I don’t think it’s fair to make his firm relive its own loss by trying to help me anymore.”
    “Especially since it was a member of the firm who put you in touch with Mr. Gant in the first place.” Spaeth grew stiff this time, reaching up a finger to wipe away a sudden tear. “That’s right. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

    “Hey, like, what were you doing in my house?”
    It was the kid with the Padres hat and eyebrow ring. He stood on the sidewalk at the end of the flagstone path, his friends nowhere to be seen.
    I finished coming down the path. “Terry, right?”
    A jaundiced look. “Who are you?”
    I showed him my identification, which he had to angle up to the streetlight to read. “A private detective?”
    “Investigator. Detectives