THE CUCKOO'S EGG
by Galen Hardesty
Chapter Thirteen
SERVING HER FELLOW MAN
~*~
It was morning in Lawndale. The birds had cheeped and twittered in the new day, and were now bringing home the worm bacon for the hungry little mouths back at their nests. The gentle peachy rays of the early morning sun were brushing away the last of the night's mists.
Jane Lane approached Lawndale High, alone. She remembered how she'd felt, coming to school alone, in the days before Daria had come to Lawndale. Lonely. This morning, though, Daria had called her and told her that she had something to do, and would be along later.
Jane slowed to a jog, then a walk. No need to get sweaty, she had time. She could see other students trickling in through Lawndale High's doors, or standing around outside in small groups, talking. She wondered how long it would take Daria to do whatever she had to do before coming to school, and whether it had anything to do with the legal action that was apparently being prepared against Dr. Drake.
As Jane crossed the street and stepped onto the Lawndale High grounds, a Carter County patrol car swept into the semicircular drive in front of the main doors, followed closely by a fire engine red SUV, scattering a few students. The two vehicles halted and a uniformed deputy dismounted from the patrol car, put on his hat, and hitched at his gun belt. Out of the SUV stepped… Daria Morgendorffer. As Jane and the other students stared, the two fell into step and marched into Lawndale High.
Without really thinking about it, Jane ran to catch up. Daria and the deputy marched side by side down the middle of the hall, students meekly moving aside to let them pass. Jane followed a couple of steps behind. Daria pointed to a door and the deputy nodded. Daria opened it, and they both entered Mrs. Manson's office. Jane shamelessly planted herself at the door, determined to miss nothing.
Manson looked up and was startled to see the deputy. Then, catching sight of Daria, she scowled and demanded, "What is this?"
"This is for you," Daria replied, handing Manson a summons. "You are required to produce all documents in your possession relating to monies paid to you by Dr. Millard Drake."
A noticeable pallor washed over Manson's features. "I… I don't know what you're talking about. I have no such documents."
"In the bottom drawer of that file cabinet," said Daria, pointing. "In a folder marked 'referrals'."
A look of shock and perhaps guilt joined the pallor on Manson's face. "How do you know th… what's in my files?" she demanded?
"I saw you put it there," Daria replied evenly.
"When did you see th… I never…"
"Ma'am," the deputy interrupted, "If you don't produce the specified documents, you can be held in contempt of court, and be charged with obstruction of justice."
Jane badly wished she could see Daria's face. Manson looked furious. She glared at Daria as if she would like to physically attack her, but then took a key from a small box in her desk drawer, turned, squatted, and opened the bottom drawer of the leftmost file cabinet. She removed a file folder and placed it on her desk. Daria flipped the folder open and removed several sheets of paper from it. She examined them briefly, then nodded to the deputy and slipped the papers into her backpack. "Thank you, Mrs. Manson," she said. "See you in court."
"In court?" Manson repeated in an unsteady voice. "What for?"
"For this," Daria replied, handing Manson another summons. "Have a nice day."
Jane backed up as far as she could as the deputy pushed past her, but found that quite a crowd of students had gathered in the hall behind her. But the crowd parted almost magically ahead of the deputy, and Daria followed in his wake. As she passed, Jane saw that her expression was a ferocious predatory smirk.
When they reached open hallway, the two fell into step again, and Jane could not tell who had fallen into step with whom. She followed them back out the doors, and watched as they got into their respective vehicles. Daria waved to Jane as she pulled out behind the deputy, and they disappeared down the street at a rate at least ten miles per hour in excess of the posted speed limit.
~*~
Jane entered Mr. DiMartino's classroom and looked around. No Daria. She hadn't been at her locker, and Jane had been hoping she might be here. Jane shrugged off her book bag and reached into it for her battered, worn history text.
Jodie ended her conversation with Mack and moved nearer to Jane. "Hi, Jane. Where's Daria? I heard that she was arrested before first period and dragged out by the sheriff." At his desk, Mr. DiMartino briefly glanced up at the two girls, then returned his eyes to the day's lesson plan, but kept an ear tuned.
Jane stifled a laugh. "Daria will get a kick out of that one. Actually, she's serving subpoenas today, and she has a sheriff's deputy helping her."
Jodie stared at Jane for a few seconds, then said, "Yeah, right. What really happened?" Just then, Daria entered the room and politely squeezed herself in between Jane and Jodie to get to her desk.
Jane brightened when she saw Daria. "Hey, amiga! Glad you could drop by! Wassappenin?"
Daria slipped out of her book bag and set it on her desk. "Well, you might say that today is the beginning of the preliminary stage of the butt kicking phase," she said. "Or you might say that I've cried 'havoc!' and let slip the beagles of legal."
The angry entrance of Ms. Li interrupted Jane's next question. "Miss Morgendorffer! I don't know what sort of stunt that was that you pulled this morning, but I'm going to find out! I do know that you left the school grounds and missed your entire first-period writing class. You seem to have the idea that you can just leave school and skip classes whenever you feel like it, Miss Morgendorffer, but I intend to see to it that you never...
Carefully maintaining her deadpan non-expression, Daria stepped forward, invading Ms. Li's personal space until she involuntarily took a step backwards. "Ms. Li, are you aware that it is a misdemeanor to interfere with a process server in the performance of her duties, and a felony in some circumstances?"
"What do you mean, process server?"
Daria pulled a subpoena out of her jacket and handed it to Li. "See? Like this. A subpoena is a process, and I am a registered process server."
"Well, you don't seem to be 'performing' any duties currently, so…"
"Ah, but I am. You have just been served."
Jane's smirk got bigger, as did Jodie's eyes, and the beginnings of a scary looking smile formed on DiMartino's craggy face.
Ms. Li looked at the subpoena in her hand and saw that it had her name on it. "Awp!" she sputtered. What is the meaning of this?"
"The meaning is printed on the inside, Ms. Li. I recommend that you read it very carefully, and if you have any questions, consult your attorney."
Just then, as Ms. Li was taking a deep breath to say something, the bell rang. Anthony DiMartino seized the opportunity and said, "Ms. Li, if you will kindly excuse us, I will make my doomed but obligatory attempt to teach these young miscreants something."
Li looked from Daria to DiMartino, to the class as a whole, then back to Daria. Her expression was not in the least inscrutable. She was pissed. "You haven't heard the last of this, Miss Morgendorffer!" she hissed.
"Oh, I agree. I expect to hear much more from you, Ms. Li," Daria smirked. "From the witness stand. Under oath."
DiMartino wisely waited until Ms. Li had departed before grinning wickedly and rubbing his hands together. "Thank you, Miss Morgendorffer, that was… very educational. And now for something completely different. In 1926 when the Emperor Hirohito ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, he took the official name of Showa, which means 'Peace and Enlightenment." The student of history, present company excepted, cannot fail to perceive the irony…"
~*~
As Daria paid for her lunch and followed Jane to their table, she saw Jodie and Mack in line, just getting their salad. Jodie saw her and waved briefly. "Well, look at that. That's three days in a row Jodie has managed to work lunch into her schedule," she observed.
"It's probably a working lunch. She's on the Lowdown, and you're probably going to be page one, two, and three this week," Jane observed.
"Oh, sure. Go ahead, ruin my appetite," Daria groaned as she slid onto the bench.
"Ha. Since when have you had an appetite for mystery meat chop suet?" Jane retorted.
"I have to eat a few bites of something to get me as far as Pizza King. Well, better to talk to Jodie than to let the rumors propagate totally unchecked, I suppose." So saying, Daria began cautiously ingesting her daily ration of government-supplied nutrition.
"Hey, Daria," Jodie said as she and Mack sat down at the table. "Well, Jane, I guess you weren't kidding about Daria serving subpoenas today. But, Daria, why did you come with a sheriff's deputy this morning, and then take off again, and then serve Ms. Li in Mr. DiMartino's class without a deputy? I have to admit, it was great theater, but did you really set it up like that?"
Daria smiled a bit as she finished chewing a gristly bit of chop suey. "I wish I was that good. No, Li was a target of opportunity this morning. I was going to serve her after school if I didn't see her sooner. The deputy was just for the document subpoenas I served on Manson and Drake. Mom thought he should be there for the extra intimidation value."
"But why didn't you go on and serve all your subpoenas while he was here?" asked Mack.
"Because he charges forty bucks a pop, for one thing," Daria replied.
"You had to pay him? Isn't that part of his job?"
"Don't hold me to this, because I'm not a lawyer," Daria said. "For certain kinds of subpoenas, it would have been, like in criminal cases, and if the recipient is thought to be dangerous. In the case of Manson and Drake, we couldn't show that they had or should have had the documents we subpoenaed, so we couldn't get a deputy assigned. But we thought there was a danger that they'd just deny having them, and then shred them later, so we hired an off- duty deputy to 'scare 'em straight', so to speak. It's a fairly common practice. And it worked. I got the documents from both of 'em, and delivered them to Mom's law firm, and came back here."
"Do you have any other subpoenas to serve?" Jodie asked.
"Just one." Daria removed a subpoena from her inside jacket pocket, handed it to Jodie, and took a bite of chop suey.
Jodie looked at the document, and her eyebrows rose. "Mr. O'Neill?"
Daria looked troubled. "Yeah. I didn't want to involve him, but the sharks think we may need him for the case."
Jodie was reading through the subpoena. "But this names him as a defendant. That can't be right."
"I think that's just a tactic to get him to cooperate."
"But what grounds do you have?" Mack asked.
"Well, he was the one who sent me to Manson, and you guys haven't seen any of the letters he's been sending home with me. He really seems to think I have a warped, twisted mind because of some of the assignments I've done in his class. Mom wants to know the details of any conversations he may have had with Manson. I think she intends to get me to help her run a variation of "good cop, bad cop" on him."
"But Daria, we're talking about Mr. O'Neill here. You know he never intended you any harm." Jodie handed the document to Mack, who'd been trying to read it over her shoulder.
"Sure, I know that. He's just a sweet, mushy-headed, born-too-late flower child. But he doesn't have to intend harm to cause harm. Remember when he labeled me a political extremist and a right-wing propagandist in the Lawndale Sun-Herald?"
Jodie frowned at her chop suey. "Oh, yeah, the first time he closed the coffee shop. Hmm. You have a point there. But do you really think he did anything bad enough to be sued over?"
"No I don't, personally, but it's in the hands of the lawyers now. Mom says it was a tactical decision, and that I'll just have to trust her on things like that." Daria tried ineffectually to spear a piece of lettuce with her spork. "Intentional or not, his actions had the effect of putting me and, it's turning out, several other students, in the hands of people who were only interested in money rather than our welfare. I don't like seeing him thrown to the sharks, but I didn't like being thrown to the pigs either."
The four ate in silence for a minute. Then Mack said, "Well, I hope they get what they deserve, whatever that is. But I'm kind of worried about you, Daria. You haven't been yourself lately, to say the least. These last couple of days you've been almost… ferocious. I hope it's just because of circumstances, and you'll be back to your usual sweet self as soon as this is over."
Daria smiled a small smile and briefly met Mack's gaze. "Thanks. It's nice of you to say so."
"Albeit totally inaccurate," Jane added.
Three pairs of eyes turned to Jane. Mack asked, "What do you mean?"
"Daria has been herself lately, except for that twelve hours or so after she took the pill. She just seldom has occasion to let her ferocious side out. It's well restrained, but it's there."
Jodie and Mack exchanged glances and then looked back at Jane. Daria sighed and said, "If you were my friend, you'd let me hang on to a few illusions." She smiled a small lopsided smile.
Jane smirked back. "Naah. Friends don't let friends drive deluded."
"So when are you going to give it to him?" Jodie asked.
Daria pondered briefly. "Well, taking an educated guess at how much it's likely to upset him, and not being a big fan of bloody car accidents, I think I'll wait till after he gets home this evening." The other three likewise pondered briefly, nodded, and returned to prospecting their chop suey for edible bits.