The only good Lawyer

conservative, the reddish hair still pulled into a tight bun.
    Turning around, she seemed taken aback. “Mr. Cuddy?”
    “Ms. Burbage. I’m glad to see you.”
    A troubled expression as she came toward me, massaging the left wrist with her free hand. “Why?”
    I lowered my voice. “I’d hate having to explain myself to a new receptionist.”
    Burbage frowned. “Well, you should have called first, given how late it is. Mr. Neely’s attending a bat association event, Mr. Herman’s away on a trip till tomorrow, and Ms. Ling’s at a closing.”
    Being able to account for all her charges. Control, über alles. “How about Ms. Radachowski then?”

    “John Cuddy.”
    I said, “Working late?”
    With one big hand, Uta Radachowski pushed back a hank of the brown-and-silver hair, using the other to close the file on her cherry-wood desk and tap a key on her computet “Not really. I’m afraid the days of nine-to-five are but a distant and fading memory.” The magnified eyes looked at me from behind her pop-bottle lenses. “What brings you back here?” Time for the indirect approach. “I’ve been trying to come up with possible suspects, and it occurred to me that Woodrow Gant might have had some clients who weren’t part of the firm roster.”
    Radachowski blinked once. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
    “Everybody here told me Mr. Gant didn’t have any other opposing clients who had threatened him. What I’m wondering is, could Mr. Gant have had some cases he was working on outside the firm structure?” Another blink. “You mean, that he was litigating on his own somehow?”
    “Yes, where he might have made enemies you all wouldn’t know about.”
    Radachowski shook her head. “No. No, I don’t see that happening. Woodrow did divorce work, and he used a software program for tracking them.” She placed her right hand on the computer monitor. “Like the one in here I told you about last time. If he had ‘outside’ cases, as you’ve called them, he’d have been crazy to enter them on the ‘inside’ program.”
    “Why?”
    “His secretary, Imogene, is also our bookkeeper. If she were to go into Woodrow’s computer as his secretary, Imogene might see a file she didn’t recognize from her billing software. And if he’d tried to litigate a case off the tracking program, he’d have had a hell of job keeping all the commitments straight.”
    “Couldn’t Mr. Gant just have kept his own, separate calendar for the outside matters?”
    Radachowski paused a moment. “John, why is it you even think Woodrow might have done all this in the first place?”
    “How about to make money he didn’t have to share with the rest of you?”
    She paused again. “No. No, it’s just too big a risk. Even if Woodrow kept a separate calendar he’d still have to be in court for hearings on your ‘outside’ cases when his docket program said he shouldn’t be, and he’d Have to double-bill some ‘inside’ client to ‘hide’ that time for bookkeeping purposes. Plus, there’d be disbursements, like discovery costs for depositions or fees for expert witnesses. And, secretarily, he’d still need pleadings and other documents generated at the firm for those cases, because Woodrow wasn’t terribly talented at formatting formal paperwork on his computer. Not to mention all kinds of countering documents from the other side arriving here that Imogene might open first.” I thought about the typos in the deed I’d seen for the Viet Mam building. “How about if Mr. Gant had the opposing attorney draw up all the paperwork?”
    “All of it? In a business deal, I suppose that might fly, assuming no long-distance calls from here that our billing program wouldn’t find any ‘inside’ client to charge. But on a litigated case? No, the opponent would have to be crazy. Or Woodrow would have had to—”
    Radachowski stopped short.
    I said, “What is it?”
    “Nothing. It makes even less sense than what you asked about.”
    I gave her a minute, because something had crossed my mind, too, as Radachowski was giving me what I needed for confronting Deborah Ling. “Were you about to say, ‘Or Woodrow would have had to get Imogene to go along with the plan?’ ”
    No blinking at all from behind the thick lenses now. “John, you’ll have to excuse me. I really have a lot of work to do before I can go home tonight.”

    I asked the new receptionist if Ms. Ling was expected to return to the office from her