The secrets she buried t.., p.1
The Secrets She Buried (The Tony Valenti Thrillers Book 6), page 1
1
It begins on July 1st when my law partner, Penelope Brooks, leads me into her office to be introduced to a potential client. As our visitor rises to greet me from a guest chair in front of Penelope’s desk, I extend my hand and introduce myself.
“Tony Valenti. Penelope says you have quite a story to tell us.”
“Jill Clark,” she says. Her handshake is firm. Confident. She’s a striking woman: tall, only a few inches shorter than my six feet five, jet black hair that hangs almost to her waist, an exotic face of mixed ethnicity that I can’t categorize—Asian at any rate. Her deep-brown eyes study me quizzically. I’m being sized up. “People need to pay for my mother’s death, Mr. Valenti. You’re going to help me punish them.”
I shoot Penelope a questioning look. “Have we agreed to represent Ms. Clark?”
“Not yet,” Clark answers. “But I won’t take no for an answer.”
I give her a tight smile and sink into the second guest chair. Penelope seems amused by the exchange. I’m not. Something in this woman’s demeanor unsettles me. I turn my gaze to Penelope and raise my eyebrows in question.
“Ms. Clark’s mother passed away during the initial wave of COVID in 2020.”
As someone who has lost his own mother, I understand her pain. I turn to Clark. “My condolences.”
“Thank you. Please call me Jill.”
“Where do we fit in?” I ask Penelope.
Jill once again answers before Penelope can. “Rush University Medical Center killed my mother. I took Mom there when she became symptomatic. They sent her home to die. What kind of people do that?”
I think back to the first few chaotic months of COVID. Widespread panic. Overwhelmed hospitals. Corpses stacked like cords of wood in refrigerated trucks parked outside morgues and funeral homes. I’m tempted to reply, Overwhelmed people trapped in a nightmare? but I don’t. This woman has lost her mother. “Tell us what happened.”
“Not much to tell,” she says bitterly. “Mom was in a bad way that morning: fever, coughing, labored breathing. I gave her Tylenol but things grew worse until she was burning up and gasping for air—I had to half carry her to the car. And then…” Jill chokes up for a moment. “Rush had tents set up to assess people. After an hour, some bitch told me to take Mom home and keep an eye on her. ‘We have no room and others are in worse shape,’ she said. ‘Bring her back if she gets worse.’ Well, Mom got worse, all right. She was dead by the next morning!”
There’s a hardness on Jill’s face as she tells the story. Deep creases appear in the skin around her mouth and eyes that give her a weathered look. There’s some hard living etched in that face. And a boatload of pain. I suspect there are more sorrowful stories in Jill Clark’s past.
“Why now?” I ask. “It’s been over two years.”
Jill stiffens. “I didn’t wait, Mr. Valenti. I sued Rush and lost because I hired a worthless asshole of a lawyer. He’s facing disciplinary action over his misconduct and incompetence in handling my case, but I’m not done with him.”
Sounds like a dream client. I meet Penelope’s gaze and nod toward the door. “A minute, partner?”
“Sure. I’ll have Mom sit with Jill.”
Mom is Joan Brooks, our office manager, paralegal, and mother hen. She’s also Penelope’s mother. Joan bustles in with the coffeepot as Penelope and I cross the hall to my office.
I close the door. “What don’t I know?”
“From what she told me, her lawyer should be disbarred. It’s a travesty.”
“Oh, my dear, naive partner,” I say with a chuckle as I rest my butt against the front edge of my desk and cross my arms.
Blood rises in Penelope’s cheeks. Uh-oh. I’ve seen this look before. She isn’t blushing in embarrassment.
“I’ve been speaking with Jill for a half hour, Tony. You’re questioning my judgment after spending what, two minutes with her?”
My best course of action is surrender, especially given that she’s right to be annoyed with me. The bloodletting with Penelope is infrequent, brief, and always quickly forgotten. Must be that big Kansas heart of hers. But.
“I get a bad vibe from this woman, Penelope.”
She sighs. “Fair enough, but she told me some stories. Jill’s been through a lot, and life hasn’t exactly been kind to her. And that attorney of hers. Sheesh! It’s no wonder the public hates lawyers. He needs to answer for what he put her through.”
“She’s filed a complaint with the ARDC and there’s an inquiry underway, right?” I ask. Every Illinois lawyer’s nightmare is an investigation following an ethics complaint to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
“Sure, but this guy needs to bleed,” Penelope replies. “My guess is that he’ll get a slap on the wrist and be sent back out to swindle more clients.”
“Out of our hands,” I begin, then stop as a possibility I hadn’t considered pops into my mind. “Please tell me she isn’t asking us to sue her lawyer.”
Penelope nods. “Him and the hospital. Separate lawsuits.”
Whoa! Brooks and Valenti is an itty-bitty law firm. Two lawyers. One mother. One summer intern. Our current account at the bank generally covers monthly expenses and a little more. We’ve worked hard to build an ankle-deep reserve fund sufficient to provide a cushion.
“Two big liability cases,” I murmur. “Both looking for payouts from insurance companies with deep pockets and unlimited resources to fight us.”
Penelope’s eyes narrow. “We’ve handled some pretty good-sized cases, partner.”
“True, but we kind of stumbled into those.”
“You stumbled into them, Tony. I went along for the ride.”
Also true. “What kind of retainer are we asking for?”
Penelope holds my gaze. “Jill doesn’t have a lot of money. She can give us five thousand up front. The rest of our fee will be on a contingency basis.”
Has Penelope lost her mind? We’ll burn through five grand in a week, maybe two. Both cases will chew up time we don’t have, eat investigative resources we can’t afford, and let’s not even start with the cost of expert witnesses and the like. The insurance company lawyers will know that and drag things out with an eye to bleeding us dry. That won’t take long if we have a run of slow billing months. But my partner knows all that.
“I don’t know, Penelope. It’s not like you to be reckless.”
“No, that’s your role here, right?” she says with the hint of a smile.
“Well…”
“Maybe it is a bit reckless, but I want to explore it. I’ll handle it myself, maybe hand off a thing or two to Sara.”
Sara being our intern, the kid sister of my good friend Mike Williams. She just completed law school at Northwestern and will be sitting for the bar exam this fall. She’s working one day a week over the summer.
“If that’s what you want to do, Penelope, go for it. I’ll stock up on mac and cheese on the way home.”
How my daughter might feel about the revised diet is another matter. There’s also a pair of hungry hounds to consider. Maybe there’s a food bank for destitute lawyers. Nah, probably not; funding would be an issue. The general public may be a tad indifferent to the plight of attorneys forced to exist on something less than filet mignon and canapés.
She smiles. “Thanks, partner.”
“You’re welcome.” I nod toward her office. “Do you need me back in there?”
“No. I’ve got it.”
Penelope returns to her office. I get myself a fresh cup of coffee and return to my desk, put my feet up, and gaze outside. I ponder Jill Clark’s potential cases while taking in the grandeur of downtown Cedar Heights beyond the window of my second-floor office in a recently renovated heritage office building.
When I hear Penelope’s office door open, I look back to see Jill Clark walking out with a triumphant smile. She tosses off an insolent wave as she passes my open door, as if to declare, I won. Which suggests that we’ve somehow lost. I wonder what stories lurk in Jill Clark’s past—and if she harbors secrets we’ll one day wish we’d known about today.
2
Almost two weeks after my first encounter with Jill Clark, I wonder why Penelope has put her new client’s file on the agenda for our weekly partner meeting. No big deal; we’ve managed several cases this way—she probably wants to bounce a few ideas off me today. But first, I’m in a meeting with a client suing her former employer for wrongful dismissal.
Our client, Maureen, a thirtysomething accounting manager, refused several sexual advances from the vice president she reported to. When the VP didn’t stop after being asked to on several occasions, Maureen filed a complaint with human resources despite what turned out to be a prescient fear of reprisals.
“That arrogant bitch needed to be taken down a peg or two so she wouldn’t hit on the next woman who caught her eye at the office,” Maureen told us the day we first met with her.
The HR department slow-walked the investigation for a few weeks before firing Maureen for supposedly making false allegations. And so here we are this morning, exploring the employer’s receptiveness to settlement talks. We’re not off to a good start.
I take my seat at our conference table; the company lawyer does the same. Rick Humphrey is a typically slick corporate attorney: expensive deep-blue suit, this season’s power tie, starched shirt, highly p
“Your gambit to force Maureen into binding arbitration is laughable,” I tell Humphrey. “It doesn’t hold water concerning criminal activity.”
“This isn’t a criminal matter, Mr. Valenti. This is nothing more than a workplace dispute.”
Puh-lease. “Sexual harassment is more than a workplace matter,” I retort. “Mandatory arbitration is BS at the best of times. It’s a wholly inappropriate response to a criminal complaint.”
“Yet there’s no criminal complaint here,” Humphrey says airily. “We’re dealing with a cash grab from a disgruntled former employee. Nothing more.”
“No criminal complaint yet,” I counter. “We have two other women willing to go on the record about being harassed by this VP.”
“More liars,” he scoffs.
“Someone’s lying, that’s for sure, but I doubt it’s all these women. You have a problem employee, Mr. Humphrey.”
“We’re not worried, Valenti. Your client isn’t the first gold digger we’ve had to fend off.”
I can’t figure out if this guy is simply playing chicken to see who blinks first, or if his company is willing to go to trial. If so, it will fly in the face of the usual corporate aversion to risking the tiniest black mark on their carefully crafted brand image. Guess we’re about to find out what Humphrey’s game is.
I gather my notes and stand. “This is a waste of time. The deadline for you to comply with our discovery request is next week. Be sure to get it all to us on time. We’ll start scheduling depositions next week.”
Humphrey delivers a smug smile as he rises to leave. “I hope your client is ready to be humiliated, Mr. Valenti.”
So, they plan to launch a smear campaign to protect their precious VP. No surprise there. Maureen understands what’s coming and is determined to stay the course. Predators like this VP need to be stopped and held to account. This is exactly the type of case and gutsy client Brooks and Valenti exists for. We’re not known as “lawyers to little people and lost causes” for nothing. Our bread-and-butter business—wills and estates, real estate closings, and the hundred other run-of-the-mill files that come across the transom at a community law firm—occasionally tends toward the mundane, but cases like Maureen’s make me feel as if we’re on the side of the angels.
When I’m alone again, my thoughts turn to Jill Clark. Despite my initial antipathy toward her, I’m also intrigued. Her file promises to be compelling, complex, and filled with surprises—exactly my kind of case. Yet the plethora of unknowns surrounding the case and client yawn like an enticing black hole beckoning us toward disaster.
Penelope appears in my open doorway at five minutes after twelve. She’s a five-foot-tall dynamo of Kansas wholesomeness with an athletic build, shoulder-length light-brown hair with bangs, and a face as wide open as the prairies she hails from. “I’m stupid busy, Tony. Mind if we have a working lunch at my desk?”
“Yeah, I do. Let’s eat in the splendor of our conference room.”
She laughs. “Sure.”
We order sandwiches from our go-to neighborhood lunch destination, the Sandwich Emporium, then settle in to review our current cases.
“That woman belongs in jail!” Penelope exclaims after I bring her up to speed on the evil VP queen at the center of Maureen’s case.
I don’t disagree. We discuss other active cases while we eat, then dump our trash and fix ourselves after-meal beverages; coffee for me, chai tea for Penelope.
“So, Jill Clark,” Penelope says once we’re reseated in the conference room.
“What’s up?”
Penelope’s brow furrows. “I’m not sure where to go with this, partner. I filed suit against Jill’s first lawyer, Dennis Wall, citing a laundry list of generalities: failing this and that standard of care, neglect, ineffective counsel, et cetera. But I need specifics. Jill isn’t giving me much besides saying he should have done more. She thinks he was on drugs most of the time.”
“Pretty tough to prove.”
She nods. “No kidding. We’ll ask the hospital for their records, but Jill’s mother died more than two years ago at the height of the pandemic. They may not have anything useful. I assume Wall subpoenaed Rush and didn’t receive anything that helped Jill’s cause.”
“Unless he did and dropped the ball.”
She nods again. “Possible. Of course, if Rush simply turned Jill’s mother away, admissions records will probably be a dead end. What else can I look at?”
“What about the neighborhood?” I ask. “Security video from stores and whatnot?”
“I don’t know if Wall did that. If he didn’t, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything two years later. I’d love to have access to Wall’s files.”
“Like that’s going to happen while we’re suing him,” I say with a grim chuckle.
She returns my smile. “I need an investigator on this. Someone who won’t charge an arm and a leg.”
I took a private investigator’s course last year to give our firm some modest in-house investigative chops—emphasis on modest chops; I’m no substitute for a real PI. Having a cut-rate gumshoe on staff keeps costs down and affords me a little excitement now and again. I have no problem carrying my share of the load with the day-to-day lawyer work Brooks and Valenti does, but spicing things up now and again is a welcome diversion.
“Do you have anyone in mind?” I ask lightly.
“Well, now that you ask, I do.”
“Uh-huh,” I mutter. “What kind of coin are you offering for these investigative services?”
Penelope smiles sweetly. “I’ll make him a cup of coffee. How does that sound?”
“What kind of two-bit PI do you think is going to work for that pittance?”
“Maybe if I offered to deliver his morning coffee every day for a week?”
“That might work.”
She grins. “So, do I have myself an investigator?”
“I guess you do.”
“You’re such a rube, partner. I would have gone as high as morning coffee for a month. I may have even tossed in a bagel or two.”
“That works for me.”
“Too late for that, partner. A deal is a deal.”
So I’m on the Jill Clark case, after all. Sometimes the investigator’s license is a bit of a mixed blessing—especially when I already have a full plate, as I do at present. That said, I’m beginning to enjoy investigating more than lawyering, and Jill Clark’s story promises to be an intriguing onion to peel.
I just wish I weren’t afraid of what we might find at the heart of it.
3
I begin my investigation into Jill Clark where all such journeys start these days—on Google. There isn’t much. Not unusual for people who have no claim to fame. The next step is to build queries around search terms such as employers, interests, and organizations or social groups the subject is known to be active with. Still zilch. I’m struck by how little we know about our client.
I walk across the hall to my partner’s office and poke my head in. “Got a few minutes?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Can you come to my office? Bring Jill’s file.”
Penelope pulls a file off the corner of her desk and follows me into my office, where she plops herself down in one of my chrome-and-fabric guest chairs. We spare no expense on furnishings here at Brooks and Valenti, Rummage Sale Attorneys at Law.
“Did you find something that concerns you?” she asks.
“You might say that.”
Penelope glances pointedly at her watch and then looks back at me with a smile. “That was quick investigative work. I hired you what, an hour ago?”
I chuckle, then tell her my Google searches came up empty.
She shrugs. “That’s not unusual, partner. If you Google me, all you’ll find is a word or two regarding legal work, a couple of mentions of events from school, and a handful of family posts on social media.”
“But there would be mentions, Penelope. Jill? Nothing.” I point at the file Penelope set down in front of herself. “What do we know about her?”
