The only good Lawyer

hiding in the kitchen during Gant’s lunch with Deborah Ling.
    Spaeth said, “So we ate, and since I wasn’t driving, I drank a little too much wine—partly to cover the food, partly to cover the residual guilt, I suppose. I was aware we were back in the BMW, heading... I think about it now, we must have been heading to his place, but it was a school night, and getting late enough, Woodrow should have been taking me home. Anyway, I guess I passed out in the car, because after asking Woodrow to roll down the windows, I don’t remember him stopping on that road.”
    “What do you remember?”
    Spaeth sat back in the couch, hugging herself. “I was having a dream. About being seated on a plane, going to the Caribbean for a vacation. My first real vacation in a long time. And then I must have heard the shots or something, because the dream went screwy and somebody dropped an anchor in my lap.”
    “An anchor?”
    “In the dream. But I stumbled out of the car because I was feeling sick and didn’t see Woodrow. Well, the ‘anchor’ fell on the ground, and I could see it was a gun.”
    “Somebody had dropped a gun into your lap?”
    “Through the part of my window that was open, I think, because the door was still closed.”
    “And this was the gun that killed Mr. Gant.”
    “I didn’t know that—never even touched it—but Woodrow was lying on the ground, with his eyes —” Spaeth rubbed her forehead, trying to erase the image, I thought. “Then I just started running, and the few times I saw headlights, I’d hide.”
    “Hide?”
    “Get down on the ground or behind a tree, so the drivers couldn’t see me. The way I looked by the end of that road, I was surprised a cab would even stop for—”
    “But why hide at all? Why not flag somebody down to help you and Mr. Gant?”
    Spaeth gave me a withering look. “Because Woodrow was dead, Mr. Cuddy. And it was pretty obvious who’d done it.”
    “Meaning your husband?”
    “Of course my husband. Alan was ripshit at Woodrow, suspected he and I were lovers. And on top of that, the gun looked like one of the two Alan kept in our nightstand here before we separated.” Spaeth shook her head. “I knew it was Alan, but I also didn’t want him convicted of murder:”
    “Why not?”
    Another withering look. “Terry deserves a college education, Mr. Cuddy, and Alan promised in the set-dement agreement that he’d pay the freight. How’s he going to do that from a prison cell?”
    I tried not to shake my head. “Mrs. Spaeth, you said a minute ago that the gun looked like one your husband had.”
    A sigh. “Right.”
    “But you didn’t examine it to be sure?”
    “No. I didn’t have to.” Spaeth leaned forward. “Look, I was obviously there when Woodrow was shot. Unconscious, maybe, but right in his passenger seat. And the killer knew I was there, because he dropped the gun in my lap. Now tell me something, Mt Cuddy. I could have been a witness to Woodrow’s murder, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Okay. Then who else other than my loving, cloying husband would let me live?”
    I tried very hard to come up with someone, but Nicole Spaeth had stumped the band.

    * * *

    Driving back from West Roxbury, I thought of the hurt I’d caused Karen Herman, the cynicism I’d seen in Jenifer Pollard, the fear I’d found in Nicole Spaeth. And then I thought of Nancy , and how much I’d have liked to get her take on those things.
    But, if I couldn’t talk about them with Nancy , there was still someone I could talk with about her.

    The people who run the cemetery on the hillside overlooking the harbor are pretty good. About leaving the gate open for people who visit at night, that is. There’s always the risk of vandalism to a headstone, but in a neighborhood as tightly knit as Southie, somebody would know whoever did it. And that somebody would tip a relative of the decedent involved, which would end that vandal’s career.
    And maybe even the vandal’s own life as well..
    I shook that off as I reached her grave. The lettering chiseled into the marble was beginning to show the harsh frost of winters and the acid rain of springs.
    “Beth,” I said, a hitch in my voice.
    John. A pause. You sound ... cold.
    “More tired than cold.”
    And more depressed than tired?
    “With some reason, I think.”
    Tell me?
    I did.
    Another pause. And this... “fling” of Nancy ’s with Woodrow Gant was before she met you.
    “Years before.”
    A third pause, then, I