Back from the last camping trip of the season!

CHAPTER 8

"I know I should have told you about the Commission investigation, Perry, but Laura insisted that we keep it quiet."

"Why?" He could name a half-dozen reasons Laura wouldn't want him to know about her husband's business problems, but he wanted Max to tell him the real reason.

"If something like this went public I could lose my business."

"Max, the prosecution is going to expose it at the preliminary hearing." He had a headache. Della was being cool and non-committal about her time spent with Laura Parrish earlier in the day, and he suspected that things had been said he should know about, but would not be told until after Kaitlynn's troubles were over – if then – and Max wasn't helping things by not being forthcoming about the investigation. He should have been a dentist. He certainly had pulled a lot of proverbial teeth today. "Tell me about the investigation."

Max blew out his breath, a long-standing habit. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is missing from my personal client accounts. The Commission is claiming I embezzled it."

"Do you have any suspicions about who took the money?"

"I hate to think any of my employees would stab me in the back like that. I'm willing to make restitution from my private holdings, but the Commission would prefer to investigate the matter."

Perry looked Max Parris straight in the eye. "Will that be a problem?"

Max blew out his breath again. "The records are gone – wiped out by a computer error. Whoever took the money must have done it. There is no way of finding out who." Computers stymied him. He would have preferred all of his dealings be on paper and locked in filing cabinets, but his assistant had convinced him that computers were a thousand times more secure. In over twenty-five years no records kept in locked filing cabinets had been accessed, but in less than two years of converting paper files to electronic his business was on the precipice of ruin.

"Has your business been suspended?" He knew from Della's report that Max had indeed been suspended, but again needed to hear it from the man himself.

Max studied his shoes. "Eight days ago I was suspended from personally dealing with clients and subpoenaed to appear before the Commission. Direct contact with my clients is being handled by other agents in my employ."

Perry reached out his hand. "Let me see the subpoena."

"It's at home."

Perry nearly groaned aloud. "In your study...where Lt Brock found it the day of the murder. Damn! That's what he meant when he said he was working on a motive. Have you seen it since that day?"

Max shook his head, a stricken look on his face. "How could the Commission's investigation have anything to do with a motive for Lon's murder?"

"All the wedding guests witnessed it – Lon Hawkes brandishing an envelope and saying its contents would show everyone what kind of man you really are. Brock probably added two and two and came up with twelve."

Sweat beads appeared on Max Parrish's forehead. "Lon was drunk. Who knows what he meant?" Lon wasn't sophisticated enough to come up with such an elaborate scheme for money by himself...had he been used as an operative of someone more conniving?

"Max," Perry responded impatiently, "that envelope wasn't found on Lon's body."

Max Parrish jumped to his feet and crossed to the window. "What are you saying?"

His old friend's visible discomfiture was an ominous sign he knew more than he would admit. Damn clients who wouldn't tell him the truth! "I'm saying the prosecution is going to claim that envelope contained incriminating documents about the embezzlement. They're going to suggest that Kaitlynn killed Lon Hawkes and hid the envelope to protect you."

"That's ridiculous! Kay would never do anything like that – not even to protect me. She knows I can take care of myself."

"She was found with the murder weapon in her hand, Max. She was alone in the room with the dead man. Is that ridiculous? People have been convicted with less circumstantial evidence than that." Not his clients, but Max needed to be scared. He drummed long fingers on his desk blotter. "Who aside from you has access to your personal business accounts?"

Max let out another breath. Perry had never noticed how much Max resembled a horse when he did that. "Anyone using the main terminal has to go through me to log in. So basically, only I have access."

Perry fought back the urge to let out his breath in exasperation. "That's not an answer. How many people do you employ?"

Max slumped against the window frame. "I employ twenty-seven people. Twenty-seven people at my own firm could have broken into my computer files."


Perry took a sip from his coffee, while swirling the snifter of cognac in his other hand. "Are you going to tell me what you and Laura talked about during my meeting with Kaitlynn and Gary this morning?"

Della pondered his question for a moment. "I don't think so," she finally replied, taking a sip of her own piping hot coffee. No reason to upset him about Laura Parrish when he was so upset about what the woman's daughter was going through.

"Della..."

"Perry..."

"Darling, I know this is difficult for you. The last thing I want is for Laura to upset you. We have a lot of work to do and don't need any distractions."

She batted long eyelashes at him. "Why, this isn't any more difficult or distracting than Laura Robertson's case, or Ellen Payne's, or Janice Barton's, or Dorothy Fenner's, or..."

Perry held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Point made. I just don't want anything Laura says to interfere with..."

"Kaitlynn's defense?"

He reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. "No. I don't want her to interfere with us."

She blinked back tears. Finally. "She admired my watch." And noticed I wasn't wearing the emerald...

"Because by an unfortunate coincidence she has the same one." And she probably noticed you aren't wearing the emerald...

Of course he would have noticed they wore the same watch. "I noticed things and she noticed things."

The pressure of his fingers surrounding hers tightened. He should ask her about what she noticed tomorrow. "I'm sorry you have to put up with...everything. We were supposed to attend the wedding and then have a day all to ourselves in wine country, not rush home early to defend the daughter of my..."

"Friend," Della finished firmly. She refused to acknowledge Laura Parrish as what she actually was.

"Friend," he agreed softly.

She studied him, the man she had loved for two-thirds of her lifetime, and was nearly overwhelmed by her feelings for him. At seventy he was still vibrantly handsome, lethally charismatic, and to her extreme delight, capable of pleasuring her as if he was forty. "She said I was self-assured."

"Of course you are."

"She thinks she has reasons to be self-assured as well."

He sighed inwardly at Laura's stubborn refusal to accept what he said as truth after all these years. "You understand why I have to defend Kaitlynn?"

Della nodded. "Because she's innocent."

He could barely speak over the lump in his throat. What a spectacular woman she was. "Laura Parrish has nothing to be self-assured about in regard to me. I love you, Della Street."

"Not nearly as much as I love you, Perry Mason."

"I could argue with you about that," he replied, just as he had years ago to her reasons why marrying him would be doomed to failure.

"You could. But you would lose."

"The one case I would gladly lose."

She drained the cooled cognac and pushed her coffee cup away toward the edge of the table, never letting go of his hand. "Are you going to pay the bill and take me home, or do I need to drop several not-so-subtle hints until it gets through your thick skull that in losing you win?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He opened the door to her apartment after ringing the doorbell, took three or four steps, and stopped abruptly as a shiver coursed up and down his spine.

Hi honey, I'm home!

This is what could have been all these years: coming home after a long day in court to a cozy home touched by the chaos only a child could generate.

The apartment was a disaster zone. Toys scattered over almost every surface; lampshades askew; pillows tossed on the floor; remnants of grilled cheese sandwiches and tater tots doused in ketchup congealing on paper plates next to half-drunk glasses of milk; a blaring television.

It was a lovely tableau: she sitting on the couch with eyes closed, an exhausted little boy straddling her lap facing her, head propped on her shoulder, arms limp at his sides, deeply asleep. He would remember it always.

He should have gotten here sooner. He should have gotten to a lot of places sooner. There should have been three grilled cheese sandwiches on paper plates, three glasses of milk, three people cuddled up on the couch. But the work, his profession, wouldn't let him.

He tiptoed to the television set and turned it off, then took two quiet steps toward her, and she opened one eye. "Hi," she whispered. "You missed dinner."

"Hi," he whispered back, even though he couldn't understand why they were whispering. If the kid could sleep through the noise of the doorbell ringing and the television, he could sleep through normal conversation. "It looks like you two had a good day." He surveyed the untidy apartment again, avoiding glancing at the evidence of the dinner he'd missed.

She brushed a blonde curl from the little boy's forehead. "We had a great day. How did it go in court?"

"Good." I missed you, the Assistant D.A. missed you, and Judge Taylor actually asked after you. But I can't tell you those things because you'll feel guilty about staying home with the kid, and I won't do that to you. "Our client was acquitted."

"Of course he was."

"It was dicey for a while, but..."

"But you had a hunch," she interrupted, with a smile of pride. His hunches, unorthodox interpretation of facts, and a firm belief in his client's innocence were the roots of his unparalleled success in the practice of criminal law. No attorney was as dogged as he in the pursuit of the true facts of a case, and no attorney cared as much about obtaining a fair trial for his clients. That those hunches often developed during court proceedings only added to his mystique and legend.

His grin was dimpled and self-satisfied. "Yes, I did. A doozy." Today his client was cleared of dire circumstances resulting from bad decisions made by a good person. That was what really mattered, since he actually liked this client, and victory for a deserving person was a better reward than a successful defense for an unlikable client. Unlikable people deserved competent representation too, but he didn't enjoy seeing that type of client exonerated am much because usually they learned nothing from the experience and continued to spread their particular brand of unlikableness around the world. Prodigal bad pennies, they also tended to pop up in the news or back in the office from time-to-time, disrupting life for a few tense days, which was why there were only two grilled cheese sandwiches on paper plates.

"You'll have to tell me all about it when I'm not in the arms of another man. By the way, where is this little man's daddy? Wasn't he in court with you?"

He picked up a couple of toy trucks from the coffee table, set them on the floor, and sat down. "He was finishing up another job. He'll be here soon."

"If Myrtle finds out he leaves Junior with babysitters..."

"She won't find out. No one will tell her. And you're not a babysitter." You, my darling girl, are more of a mother to your 'little man' than his real mother is.

"Junior could tell her. We can't tell him not to say anything to her about what he does when he visits his father. He's only six. Trust me, he talks about everything."

Usually when Paul Drake had visitations with his son he handed off whatever cases he was working on to trusted agents Faulkner, Johnson, or Inskip. Unfortunately, this particular visitation landed smack in the middle of Faulkner's family vacation and Inskip was down with a bad case of the flu, which left only Johnson to cover a multitude of cases. To complicate matters even more, Paul refused to hire actual babysitters, especially since he worked on Perry Mason's case involving the kid who shot his step-father with a gun the babysitter allowed him to play with. The PI trusted only Della and his agency's night operator Ruth with his son's welfare, and since Ruth was now married and expecting her first baby any day, only Della remained.

Despite the fact they were in the middle of a fifth major trial case in eight months, he could tell she wanted nothing more than to spend the day with Junior, and whatever she wanted he would give her. He had briefly considered requesting a continuance, but realized 'my secretary is babysitting my private investigator's kid' probably wouldn't be accepted as legitimate grounds, so he had reluctantly attended court without her. "You worry too much about what Myrtle might think."

"Someone has to worry about it. She's already ticked off that Paul won't consent to a divorce and argues with him about the most ridiculous things."

"What's got her ticked off is that Paul's crack legal team keeps thwarting her schemes."

She snorted derisively and Junior jumped in his sleep. "That woman wants whatever will get her the most money, and right now a big settlement looks pretty good to her. Remember how she reacted when we went fishing and Junior jabbed his finger with a hook? She took him to the emergency room, for Pete's sake!"

He chuckled, remembering how Junior had insisted that all three adults kiss his tiny wound so it would feel better faster. "But worms are dirty."

She made a face at him. 'Worms are dirty', had been Myrtle's reason for rushing her son to the hospital, ostensibly out of fear he had contracted a horrible disease from baiting a rusty fish hook. Frank Heartwell, one member of Paul Drake's crack legal team, had to step in and quash accusations of negligence made to doctors at the hospital with a few documented reports regarding similar commonplace injuries the boy had sustained while in the care of his mother. No one felt good about the situation or the game plan for Myrtle and Paul Sr. to stay married until Paul Jr. turned eighteen, but it really was the only way to keep Myrtle from ruining her husband with a divorce settlement and absconding with their son, which Paul was certain she would do no matter what a judge instructed her to do.

"When did you get out of court?" She didn't want to talk about Myrtle Lamar Drake anymore. The day had been too nice to be ruined by that scheming package of duplicity and greed.

He glanced at his watch. Yikes. It was after eight. "About three. I went back to the office, returned some calls, dictated those letters you've been bothering me about...and then had a meeting with Janice Barton."

"Oh," she said flatly, rubbing her cheek against Junior's curly head. "How is Janice?"

"Janice," he said very deliberately, "is no longer our client. She's a...bad penny."

An eyebrow shot up in surprise. "What brought on that epiphany?"

He looked at her with apology in his eyes. "Someone has been telling me for a couple of years. I finally listened."

She didn't know whether to be upset that he had met with Janice Barton tonight when they had plans, since meeting with her had started the downward spiral of their personal relationship so many months ago when they had plans as well, or relieved that he might finally be seeing Janice Barton for what she really was. "Is she in trouble again?"

He nodded. "She married a louse and wants me to get her out of it."

"I thought she divorced the louse already." It was a sad story. Never married and over thirty, no longer responsible for the care of her sister twenty-four hours a day, Janice Barton eloped with the first man who paid attention to her. Within a couple weeks it was apparent he was only after money, and when he found out Janice had no money of her own, had become threatening and abusive. Janice turned to her hero Perry Mason, who had saved her from the gas chamber, to save her from her new predicament.

"Believe it or not, this is a different louse. Seems she married the attorney who arranged a quickie divorce from the first louse. Louse number two was just discovered to be carrying on with the nurse hired to care for her sister."

Della's eyes widened. "You didn't refer her to Harvey, did you?"

Perry laughed out loud, which startled Junior again, but Della rocked and shushed him before he woke up completely. "No, I didn't refer her to Harvey." His childhood friend Harvey Sayers was a successful divorce attorney, no doubt due to extensive personal experience: he had been divorced three times himself and was currently separated from wife number four. Harvey had difficulty cleaving to his wives after the wedding. "Janice didn't contact who I recommended. She found this shyster all on her own."

"Wow. A marriage, an annulment, and another marriage all within the span of a year. That's quite an accomplishment for a shrinking violet."

He stared directly into her eyes. "She's not a shrinking violet. She's...helpless, the most helpless human being I've ever met."

She stared right back at him. "I thought that's what you found so seductive about her."

He lowered he head. This is where it had all started, where he had made such wounding miscalculations about Janice Barton and took unforgivable advantage of Della's loyalty to him and to their clients. "Nothing about her was seductive or helpless during her trial. I was frustrated by her refusal to help herself, upset at my failure to successfully defend her, and when I figured out what she was hiding and why, I was...infatuated."

"For three loooong weeks."

His head snapped up. "She was in my mind, Della, but I never wanted her the way I want you. It was...she was lost and fragile and no one seemed to care about her, so I had to take care of her."

"Perry," she said gently, "you aren't responsible for saving everyone who touches you."

"But I have to try."

They locked eyes for several seconds again, impassioned blue and mercurial hazel. "Yes, you do," she agreed with a quiet sigh. It was one of the things she admired most about him as his secretary and the thing she admired least about him as his lover.

"I never meant to hurt you. I had every intention of being there for your big event. When Janice called...I thought I could deal with her quickly and still get there in time. She needed help."

Ah yes, her 'big event'. She had been so angry when he skipped out on the grand opening of Estelle Luddy's new design house to counsel Janice Barton. The event was important to her and she wanted him to finally see exactly how she could afford the clothes he admired so much, how she worked as a model and bookkeeper for her designer friend in her precious spare time to please him.

The event had been a full runway show to introduce Estelle's latest collection, and Della was to model several outfits designed specifically for her. She wanted Perry to be there, to share in her excitement, to see her walk the runway like a professional. She was proud of herself, proud of Estelle, and wanted him to be proud of her, too.

Instead, he was with Janice Barton instead of driving her to the event, and still with Janice for the six times she travelled down the runway, the six times she scanned the crowd for his unmistakable physique and didn't see it anywhere, the six times she blinked back tears while design assistants helped her change outfits. He had missed it all. He had missed it all because tragic, helpless Janice Barton, the only client he had failed to get acquitted (at first) needed him and the woman he referred to as Miss Independence didn't.

She took a taxi home after downing four martinis while hobnobbing with celebrities and various fashion industry dignitaries, fighting off subtle and not-so-subtle advances made by several admirers; and he was there, waiting for her, wanting her, oblivious to how much he had hurt her because after all, he had been working. Surely she understood that.

She told him to leave. And he left.

A month later he went to Georgetown for that ten week lecture series and she missed him too much to be mad at him. The three weekends she flew out to visit him were magical, just the two of them together away from the practice, away from clients who needed him, away from everything.

The day he returned to Los Angeles Janice Barton called in hysterics from the hospital where she was being treated for a split lip and multiple contusions inflicted by her husband of sixteen weeks because she had no money to give him. Della refused to accompany him to the hospital, and he left her at his apartment, promising to be back in an hour.

Four hours later he returned to his dark, empty apartment. He called her apartment, and the conversation could only be called incendiary, culminating in her telling him she was done being a convenience, that she didn't want to see him, and he should just stay away from her.

So he stayed away from her while she spent five days at the lake house.

When she was ready to see him again, to apologize and talk about why she was so upset, she interrupted his encounter with another woman.

"Maybe we shouldn't dredge all of this up again, Perry," she suggested, afraid he was about to admit that Janice Barton had been the woman in his apartment that night. She had repeatedly told him she didn't want to know who the woman was, because in fact SHE DID NOT WANT TO KNOW WHO THE WOMAN WAS, and spent no time dwelling on her identity. It wasn't denial, it was self-preservation. "The last time we tried to talk about it we said things we shouldn't have."

"We do need to dredge it up. We aren't communicating the way we used to, baby. It's my fault." He had accepted blame a lot these past months and would gladly accept blame for a lot more if only she would trust him again. "My priorities were mixed up and I shouldn't have met with Janice Barton when you needed me."

"I did need you." Her eyes filled with tears. "I do need you."

"I promise to never put a client before you ever again." He reached out and placed his hand on her knee. "I need you, too. More than you can imagine."

"I have a very fine imagination, Mr. Mason."

He smiled and squeezed her knee. Such a sassy girl. "Yes, you do, Miss Street. I'm going to push that imagination to its limits..."

The doorbell rang and she quickly placed her hands over Junior's ears. "That must be Daddy."

"I'll take Boo-Boo." He helped her to her feet and took the sleeping little boy from her arms. Junior snuggled naturally against him, thin arms wrapping around his neck in a tight hug.

The youngster yawned. "Hi, Pare."

"Hey, Boo-Boo. Ready to go home with Daddy?"

Junior yawned again. "Uh huh. Bye, Del."

"Bye, little man. I had fun today."

"Me, too. We must do it again."

She laughed softly. He was certainly a chip off his father's block. She opened the door just as Paul Drake Sr. rang the bell again. "Hey, there are sleeping children here."

"Sorry, I didn't know Perry would fall asleep so quickly." Paul held out his arms to his son. "C'mere and give your tired old dad a hug, Deuce."

"I'm not Deuce, I'm Joon-yore." Junior yawned again as he was passed from Perry Mason to his father.

Paul slapped his forehead. "That's right. Why can't I remember?" He looked past the attorney to his secretary. "Thanks, Beautiful. I owe you."

"Give Del a kiss goodbye, Daddy."

Paul turned his son upside down, dangling him by his legs, and backed out of the apartment, the little boy clinging to his father's knees and giggling. "Ew! I don't kiss girls. But Perry does. We should go now so he can kiss Della."

"He kisses her all the time. You never get kissed."

Paul Sr. rolled his eyes. "That, folks, is the sad state of my love life as observed by a child. Thanks again for watching this mongrel."

She closed the door and leaned against it, smiling from ear-to-ear. "So we kiss all the time? I thought we were very modest in front of Junior."

He pulled her close and sought her eager lips for a long, sensuous kiss. "I have a desire to be not-so-modest right now." The fingers of his right hand traced from her hip to her ribs, then splayed across her back while his left hand cupped her face.

She brought his head down to hers and for long moments their lips parried and danced with one another. "Maybe you should go home," she whispered against his insistent lips. "I have a lot of cleaning up to do." Plus you dredged up Janice Barton when I didn't want you to and my imagination is beginning to run away with me.

He leaned his forehead against hers, disappointed. "But I have..."

She kissed him again and laid her head on his chest, not wanting him to go but knowing that tonight was probably not the night he should stay. "Call me when you get home."

He drew her to him and captured her lips for more long moments. "Della...we aren't done."

No, they weren't done. They were far from done. "We'll talk, darling. Just not right now. And definitely not on the phone. Special good nights only on the phone."

He reluctantly let her go and opened the door. "I love you. Only you."

She kissed the first two fingers on her left hand and pressed them to his lips. "I love you, too."

She closed the door slowly on his hangdog expression, turned her back, and took several steps into the room. Soon. Soon she would let him stay. After they talked more...damn it, why was she crying? She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and stared at the glistening wetness.

Through everything these past months she hadn't stopped loving him, which made coming to terms with her convictions about unfaithfulness, her belief in him, and what he'd done painfully difficult. It had also shown her the emotion she'd based those convictions on hadn't been love, at least not what she now knew everlasting love could be. The emotion from that time with Michael Domenico her best friend Amy had been anger – anger that people who claimed to care about her could hurt and betray her at such a base level, because what she had felt for Michael and what she felt for Perry were worlds apart.

There would never be another man she could love as completely as she loved him, and despite a confusing, infuriating sense of obligation toward a disparate collection of women who intrigued him in ways she couldn't fathom, and would immediately stop trying to understand, she was certain he would love her forever. He had said so.

And Perry Mason never said anything he didn't mean.

So why in hell was she still pushing him away?

She spun on her heel, lunged for the door, and yanked it open. "Perry!" she cried, before literally running headlong into him.

"I was going to give you exactly two more minutes to open that door before I broke it down," he growled, before swinging her up in his arms and kicking the door shut behind him.