A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

can’t believe it,” the widow cried, and everyone within earshot stopped and turned.  “I can’t believe you had the audacity to come here today.”

“Why wouldn’t I have?” Lily asked, perplexed.

“Oh my God, what a hypocrite you are!” Lauren shrilled from behind her heavy veil.  “How can you possibly show your face here?  How can you pretend to be my friend and mourn my husband -- and at the same time defend his killer?”

Lily didn’t know what to say.  Word certainly did have a way of getting around.  She had had the Lightfoot case for barely more than twenty-four hours.  She opened her mouth to say something -- anything, and closed it again.  There was no point in telling Lauren that defending the Indian had certainly not been her choice.  Besides, all around them, people were beginning to stare at her with curiosity -- in some cases, mixed with resentment.

It was at that moment that Randy Hitchens stepped out from beside the widow.  “It would probably be best if you left,” the dead detective’s partner said softly, putting his hand firmly on Lily’s elbow.  “She’s already on the edge, and this wouldn’t be a good time for a scene.”

“No, of course not,” Lily demurred.  “Tell her I’m terribly sorry for her loss.”

“Wow,” Amanda breathed as the two women exited the cemetery and headed for Amanda’s car.  “Are you really defending the guy?”

“Looks like it,” Lily replied with an unhappy sigh.

“Not exactly the best way to make friends and influence people, huh?”

“I didn’t have any choice in the matter -- the damn case was dumped in my lap,” Lily snapped, really not appreciating having to defend herself, much less Jason Lightfoot, especially to her best friend.  “Would you prefer if I walked home?”

“Don’t be silly,” Amanda said with a chuckle.  “If the truth must be told, I never really cared for Lauren all that much.  And to be honest, I don’t think I particularly liked her husband, either.  So, come on, let’s go have a drink.”

. . .

Lily let herself into the Morgan Hill house just before six.  She could hear Diana Hightower in the kitchen, humming to herself as she went about preparing supper.  Nothing seemed to faze the live-in caretaker, housekeeper, cook and bottle-washer.

“Hi Sweetie,” she said, seeing Lily.  “You look cold and out of sorts.  But that’s all right, because you’re just in time for supper.  We’re having yummy crab bisque tonight.  I know it’s one of your favorites, and I have a big bowl right here that’s got your name on it.”

Diana was fifty-four years old.  Given to her husband at the age of thirteen, as was the custom of her tribe back then, she was the mother of five and the grandmother of nine.

Despite some pretty stiff resistance from her husband and the tribal elders, she had seen to it that all five of her children graduated from high school, even when she had to drive them to and from the white school herself.  And then she had made sure that all of them acquired a trade.  Most of all, it pleased her enormously that neither of her two sons or any of her three daughters wed before turning eighteen.

She had come to work for Carson Burns four months after he had had his stroke, and eight months after her husband had been killed in a drunken brawl outside the tribal center on the reservation.

To be honest, she didn’t know what she would have done without Carson and Lily Burns.  In turn, Carson and Lily didn’t know what they would have done without Diana Hightower.

“That sounds great,” Lily said, and she meant it.  Despite two glasses of wine with Amanda, she was still irked by her encounter with Lauren, and Diana’s delicacy would more than help take the edge off.

“Your dad’s in the library,” the caregiver told her.  “And supper is in fifteen minutes.”

Nowadays, Carson passed most of his hours in the library, a large mahogany-paneled room with a great stone fireplace, a giant-screen television, and floor to ceiling shelves crammed with a collection of books, forty years in the making.

“At least I’ve still got my eyesight,” he would say out of the left side of his mouth, his tone light.  There was never a shred of self-pity in Carson Burns.  His body may have betrayed him, but his mind was still as sharp as ever.

“How was it?” he asked, after she had changed out of her funeral clothes and joined him in the library.

“It was fine until we got to the cemetery,” she replied, kissing him lightly on the top of his full head of white hair, and choosing the chair that was closest to the crackling fire.  “Then Lauren just about up and had a seizure when she saw me.”

“Word does get around in a small town, now doesn’t it?” he observed.

Lily made a face.  “I can’t believe anyone in his right mind thinks I took this case because I wanted to,” she declared.

“Doesn’t matter why you took it.  All that matters is you’ve got it, and now you have to do right by the fellow, guilty or innocent.”

“Guilty,” Lily muttered.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t represented her share of guilty clients over the years.  She certainly had and, sometimes, quite effectively, too.  But none had involved as blatant a crime as this, or a client as unpopular as Jason Lightfoot.

“Well then,” her father said, “you do whatever you can for him.”  It was what he always said when she had a case she knew she wasn’t going to win.

“Yes, well, I might not keep him from hanging, but there is one thing I can do,” she said with a sigh.  “I can get him a sponsor.”

“A sponsor?”

“He’s a drunk,” she explained.  “And I suspect he was so drunk that night, he just doesn’t remember what he did.  But he’s going to be sitting in that jail cell, detoxing, for eight months.  I saw what he looked like after four days.  I’m not sure he