Page 27 of Sunset Beach
She turned and herded her grandchild toward the sitting area, heaving herself down onto the sofa with a grunt. Aliyah sat down too and waited expectantly while her grandmother pawed through the contents of a backpack, handing the girl a juice box and a container of animal crackers. After the child was settled, she plucked a book of crossword puzzles from the backpack and attacked it with a pencil.
Drue picked up her headset and plugged it into the back of the phone.
“Oh hi, Wendy,” she said softly. “There’s a, uh, client here who would like to see Mr. Campbell.”
“Itoldyou, Brice is out of office today,” Wendy said. “And he doesn’t see walk-ins. You know that. Just tell her to call and make an appointment.”
Yvonne Howington was staring at her, listening in.
“I suggested that, but she’s pretty adamant about seeing Mr. Campbell.”
“Who is it?” Wendy asked.
Drue swiveled the desk chair around so that her back was to the sitting area. “It’s Ms. Howington,” she whispered. “She says her daughter was murdered? At the Gulf Vista? And she’s got her granddaughter with her.”
“Her again? Jesus H.,” Wendy said. “That woman does not give up. Brice has explained the settlement to her numerous times, but she just doesn’t want to hear it.”
“Maybe you could come out and talk to her? She’s pretty worked up.”
“No, I can’t come out there. I’m busy. Do whatever you need to do, but get rid of her. We don’t need a disgruntled client out there scaring off new business.”
“What if she doesn’t want to leave?” Drue was starting to feel nervous. She hadn’t signed up to be the law firm’s bouncer.
“Speak to her firmly. Suggest that she leave, or otherwise you’ll call the cops. And then do that.”
“Call the cops? On a woman whose daughter has been murdered? A grandmother?”
“Handle it!” Wendy snapped. The phone went dead.
Drue swiveled the chair back around. Her fingers raced over the computer keyboard, accessing the firm’s case management database. She typed in the name Jazmin Mayes and waited for the files to download.
She glanced up at Ms. Howington, who was glaring at her again. “I’m on hold with Mr. Campbell’s assistant,” she lied.
“I don’t wanna talk to that heifer,” Ms. Howington said, waving away the suggestion. “Mr. Campbell is the one promised me we’d get four million, five million easy from those hotel people. Now I want him to look me in the face and have him tell me how I’m supposed to raise Jazmin’s daughter with that little bit of money I can’t even touch.”
As she read the file Drue kept glancing up at the little girl, who sat placidly looking at her iPad.
Drue arrowed down the intake report, condensing the facts in her mind as she read. Yvonne Howington had called the Justice Line for the first time eighteen months earlier, on October 30. She was forty-six, single and livedin a neighborhood on the city’s south side. She’d listed a sister, Francine Meeks, as her emergency contact, and according to the form, Yvonne had viewed one of the firm’s television commercials, which is where she’d seen the firm’s distinctive 777-7777 Justice Line phone number.
On the line where the form asked “Relationship to Injured Party” someone had typedMOTHER.
Drue glanced up at Ms. Howington, who was penciling something into her crossword book. Aliyah, finished with her juice, was folding the plastic straw into segments, and her iPad lay closed in her lap.
The reception desk’s bottom drawer yielded a stack of white printer paper. In the top drawer she found red, blue and yellow highlighter pens, and pads of the neon-colored self-stick tabs used to designate where clients signed documents. She took the tabs, paper and markers over to the girl, squatting down beside her.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Looks like you finished your book. Do you like to draw?”
The girl’s face lit up. “Yeah, I like to draw.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Yvonne Howington corrected, not looking up from her book. “We say ‘yes, ma’am’ when we are talking to grown-ups.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Aliyah said.
Drue handed her a few sheets of paper and put the stickies and markers on the carpet beside her. “I’m sorry we don’t have any crayons, but I think markers are way cooler, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she agreed.
“What do you say to the lady?” Yvonne asked, nodding her head at Drue in a reluctant show of gratitude.
