Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) Read online

  ADVICE OF COUNSEL

  By Debra Trueman

  Text Copyright © 2012 Debra Trueman

  Book Design and Illustration Copyright © 2012 Olga Burger

  This is a work of fiction, and the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual events or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For Phillip

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  It wasn’t the Titanic, but it might as well have been. The boat was taking in water like a dry sponge and there was no hope of saving her. It was the maiden voyage and there had been problems from the start. I watched in horror as the bow tipped down, the stern rose up, and the boat disappeared under the surface of the still water. There was a gurgling sound and little bubbles rose up from where the boat had been sitting seconds earlier. I let out a blood-curdling scream and threw myself on the ground.

  “We’ll get you another one,” my dad promised.

  But it was too late. The experience had scarred me for life. My father had stayed up all night that Christmas Eve putting together my remote control boat, and in truth, it should have been him sporting the battle scars. But it didn’t even seem to faze him.

  “We’ll get you another one,” was all he said. No “damn” or “shit” or anything like that.

  Me . . . I had to get even with the world.

  I became a lawyer.

  It wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of happened. I was never popular as a little boy, I guess because I wasn’t very nice. I picked on kids of all ages and sizes and as a result I got my ass kicked on a regular basis, so I developed a thick skin early in life. Being a lawyer allowed me to get paid handsomely for being a prick; something I had gotten really good at by the time I graduated from law school.

  I got my degree and passed the bar, and I moved back to my hometown and started what would eventually become one of the most successful law practices in San Antonio, Texas. A lot of people influenced me on my road to success, but without a doubt, no one more so than the neighbors whose territory I settled in.

  After checking out different areas of town, I bought a house in Hollywood Park, or The Park as residents call it – a municipality within San Antonio with its own police force and fire department. It’s an older neighborhood with large lots, plentiful oak trees, and a hefty population of free-roaming deer.

  I had moved into The Park at night, hoping to avoid the stares of nosy neighbors trying to check out my furniture and personal belongings as the movers carried them in from the truck. In fact, my intention was to keep a low profile and avoid getting to know any of my fellow Parkers at all. An occasional hello was okay, but I didn’t want to get stuck feeding someone’s cats when they went on summer vacation, and I didn’t want people showing up on my doorstep in their swimsuit with a towel draped over their arm wanting to take a dip in my pool. So I moved in under the guise of darkness. One evening the house was vacant, and the next morning, much to my neighbors’ surprise, there was smoke coming out the chimney.

  I was horrified when my doorbell rang at 8:00 o’clock the next morning and I opened the door to find a little old lady with a basket of warm, freshly baked muffins in her hands. Her gray hair was pinned up in a bun on top of her head, and she had little bangs that were curled under.

  “Oh! A new neighbor!” she squealed in delight. “I saw your lights on when I went out to get my newspaper this morning and went right back inside and baked these for you. They’re sweet potato. I’m Sara Howard. I live right across the street.”

  “Samuel Collins,” I said, crossing my arms against my chest.

  “Oh! What a treat to have a nice young man for a neighbor. Are you married?” she asked, trying to poke her nosy head into my foyer.

  “No,” I told her, shifting to the right to block her view.

  “Divorced?”

  “No.”

  “My husband died five years ago. I’ve lived in that house for 40 years. I’ll be 80 years old this year,” she said proudly. She handed me the basket of muffins and I grudgingly thanked her for them.

  “What do you do for a living?” she asked.

  Was there no end to her nosiness? “I’m a lawyer. And I need to be getting to my office now,” I told her.

  “A lawyer! Oh, you must be so smart!” she exclaimed. “A smart, good looking young man like you should be married.”

  “Goodbye Mrs. Powers,” I told her, closing the door.

  “It’s Howard,” she said. “Sara Howard.”

  “Oh. Okay. Goodbye Mrs. Howard.”

  Thoroughly irritated, I took the basket of muffins into the kitchen and sat down at my table. They smelled heavenly. I opened up the cloth napkin that they were nestled in and checked them out. They were those little tiny bite-sized muffins and I popped one into my mouth. It was the best muffin I had ever eaten in my life, although I could never admit that to Mrs. Howard. She’d be over every day, expecting to chat and carry on over coffee. I ate the whole basket of muffins and went back to my bedroom to dress for work.

  I was in the process of putting on my shoes when I heard a splash from outside the French doors in my bedroom. I looked out the window and there were little ripples in my pool. There didn’t appear to be anyone around, but I opened the doors and walked outside just in time to see a rock come flying over the 8-foot privacy fence I’d had installed. It landed with a splash and sunk to the bottom of my pool, joining dozens of others that were scattered along the bottom of the deep end.

  I summoned a mean tone of voice and shouted over the fence, “Hey! Cut it out!”

  I could hear footsteps running through the next door neighbor’s yard. A door opened and slammed and then there was silence. I had a good mind to march right over to the house and give someone a good chewing-out, but that would mean additional neighbor introductions, and I had already met one more than I wanted to that morning. I let it rest, hoping that my admonition would deter whatever little brat had been tossing the rocks into my pool, and I left the house for work.

  I had rented office space in downtown San Antonio, and it was impossible not to Remember the Alamo as I wound my way up and down the one-way streets named after the likes of Crocket, Bowie, Travis and Houston – just a few of the patriots to whom Texans credit their independence from Mexico. The downtown area is a mixture of old and new, with glass skyscrapers plopped in between historic buildings, and a mall jutted up next to a century-old church. And snaking its way around it all, the San Antonio Riverwalk. In a city with 26 million visitors a year, with an economic impact of $11 billion from the hospitality industry, the Riverwalk is a magnet for the old, the young and everyone in between, w
ith hotels, restaurants, bars, coffee houses, and gift shops lining the banks of the river.

  My office was less than a block from the Courthouse, away from most of the tourist activity, in a building that was too old to be modern but too new to have any historical significance. The suite consisted of two offices, a file room, conference room, large reception area, and a kitchen. The space itself wasn’t fancy, but I furnished it nicely and it looked like I was running a respectable law office.

  Those early months of my practice were slow and I didn’t have enough work to keep a full-time secretary employed, so I did most of my own typing and had a woman come in part-time to file and answer phones and get out my billings. I made sure she was old and unattractive. The last thing I wanted was some cute little secretary looking to snag a lawyer for a husband. Her name was Penny Finny, and every time I said her name, I couldn’t help think that her parents must be assholes.

  I was doing a lot of wills and divorces back then. Basically mindless work, but it paid the bills. Every once in a while a big-time divorce would come across my desk that actually involved a sizeable estate and required strategy and tactics, and those were the ones that would get my adrenaline flowing. I was at my best when I was bringing my client’s former spouse to his knees. I say his because I almost always represented the wife.

  On the day after I moved into my house, I didn’t have a lot going on at the office, so I took off early and went home to unpack boxes. I pulled into my driveway and there was some kid sitting on my front steps. I went in the back door to avoid him, but when I got inside, he had his nose pressed up against my front window, breathing all over the glass and putting his grimy fingerprints all over it. I closed the blinds and went into another room and started putting things away, but I could hear him out there talking to someone and my curiosity finally got the best of me. I went out on my front porch to see who he was talking to, but the kid was alone.

  He was a little blond boy with huge blue eyes, and he smiled and stood up when I opened the door. I guessed he must have been about four or five years old, and it struck me that he looked just like me when I was that age.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “I’m playing with your cat,” he said, motioning to the shrubs by my front door.

  He spoke so clearly that I decided he was probably closer to six and just a runt. I squatted down and looked into the bushes. There was an enormous Siamese cat crouched down with his ears plastered back against his head. He hissed at me and showed me a mouthful of sharp fangs.

  “That’s not my cat,” I told the kid.

  “But this is his house,” he said, and there was a certainty in his voice that gave me an uneasy feeling.

  “Go on home now,” I told the kid, and I went back inside and closed the door.

  I went in the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and when I went back into my living room, the cat was sitting on my hearth, warming himself by the fire.

  “How the hell did you get inside!” I exclaimed.

  He looked at me like I had some nerve disturbing him and he pinned his ears back and hissed at me again. I snatched him up by the scruff of the neck, carried him through my house, and tossed him out the front door. The kid was still sitting on my front steps.

  “I thought I told you to go home,” I said.

  “Want to hear me count to twelve?”

  The question took me off guard and I found myself momentarily at a loss for words. The kid seized the opportunity and was already up to four before I could tell him no.

  “Five, six, seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve,” he concluded proudly.

  “What happened to nine?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “You left out nine. Start at five and try again.”

  He gave me a blank look. “I only know how to start at one. I don’t know how to start at five.”

  “Sure you do,” I told him. “Five, six . . .” I looked at him to continue.

  “Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.” The kid gave me a big smile.

  “Good job. Now go on home. I’m sure your mom is looking for you.”

  The kid ignored me. “My name’s Liver. What’s yours?”

  “Liver?” I repeated in disbelief. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “For Oliver.”

  “Liver’s a terrible name. You shouldn’t let people call you that.”

  “Oh. What’s your name?”

  “Samuel Collins.”

  “Hi, Samuel. I’m almost four,” Oliver declared.

  I was shocked. The kid had better grammar skills than some of my clients. “Yeah? When’s your birthday?”

  “March 26.”

  “That’s my birthday!” I said with surprise.

  The kid’s whole face lit up. “Maybe we can have our birthday party together!” he exclaimed.

  I could see the wheels spinning in his little head, and I knew that I was creating a monster. The relationship needed to be nipped in the bud.

  “I’ve got to go now, Oliver,” I told him. “You go back to your own house.”

  “Okay,” he said happily. He got up and headed towards the house next door. When he got to the driveway he turned around and waved vigorously and yelled, “Bye, Samuel.”

  I went back in and closed the door. The cat was back on my hearth and within 30 seconds a rock flew over the fence and splashed into my pool. I grabbed the cat and tossed him out the back door, giving him a boot up the ass for good measure. He yowled and hissed.

  I yelled over the fence, “Oliver! Is that you?”

  “Hi, Samuel,” he yelled back happily.

  “If you throw one more rock into my pool, I’m going to bring you over here and hold you by your ankles and make you get every one of these rocks off the bottom of my pool!”

  Silence.

  “Oliver?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Quit throwing rocks in my pool.”

  “Okay.”

  Things were not going the way I had planned, and I was beginning to think that my move to The Park had been a huge mistake. My involvement with the neighbors had already exceeded the monthly limit I hoped for, and it hadn’t even been 24 hours.

  The phone was ringing when I got back inside. The woman on the line identified herself as being with the Hollywood Park Welcoming Committee and she said she wanted to stop by and drop off my welcome basket. Tomorrow’s headline flashed before my eyes: Local attorney overdoses on neighborhood hospitality. I told the lady a welcome basket wasn’t necessary, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her insistence prevailed, so I waited outside for her in case she was under the mistaken assumption that I would invite her in. To make use of the time, I was picking up some limbs and sticks from under a massive oak tree and when I turned back around there was a man standing in my yard. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself.

  “I’m Andy Johns. My wife and I live in the house next door,” he said, pointing to the house to the left. He must have been in his 60s, but he was in good shape. He looked like he was probably retired military. His hair was buzzed and he carried himself with an air of authority.

  “Samuel Collins,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Welcome to The Park.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You move in last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, let me know if you need anything,” he said, turning to leave.

  Finally. A neighbor who was going to leave me in peace! This one I didn’t mind speaking to. “Do you know anything about a big Siamese cat?” I asked.

  He had a funny smile on his face when he turned back around. “He’s mean as the dickens, ain’t he?”

  “Who does he belong to?”

  “I guess you’d say he comes with the house. First time he showed up was a good 10 years ago. Two owners have come and gone and every time the moving truck pulls up, he disappears. Shows up again after the new owner’s settled in.”

&nb
sp; He turned to leave again, but his wife was walking across their lawn towards my house.

  “Here comes the Mrs.”

  She made her way across my yard to where we were standing.

  “Hello. I’m Verna Johns,” she said, offering her hand. “Welcome to the Park.”

  “Thank you. Samuel Collins.” I gave her a firm handshake and her fingers kind of squished in my hand.

  “Is it just you, or do you have a family?” she said, looking around as if someone could be hiding in the bushes.

  “No. It’s just me.” I could tell she was disappointed.

  “What do you do for a living?” she asked.

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Really!” She perked up again. Mrs. Johns looked at her husband. “Maybe he can revise our will?” She turned to me. “Do you do wills?”

  “Yeah. I can do that for you,” I told her.

  “That would be great. We’ve been meaning to do it for years, and we’ve just never gotten around to it. Where’s your office?”

  “Downtown. But we can do it from here. When you’re ready, just get me a copy of your present will and let me know what you want changed.”

  The Welcome Lady pulled into my driveway and Mrs. Johns exclaimed, “Look, Andy! It’s Mildred Krally.” She waved and called out, “Hi, Mildred!”

  Mrs. Howard had just come out to check her mail. She looked in our direction and made a beeline across the street and into my driveway, and greeted the Welcome Lady as she got out of her car. The two then joined us, Mrs. Krally with a basket in one hand and a plant in the other. She presented the plant to me on behalf of the Garden Club and Mrs. Howard took the honor of introducing us.

  “Sam is a lawyer,” she said proudly. “And he’s single. Never been married.”

  I shook Mrs. Krally’s hand and accepted the basket from her.

  “I have a granddaughter about your age who’s not married,” Mrs. Krally stated, looking me up and down.

  Mrs. Howard clapped her hands. “Oh, wouldn’t they be perfect together!”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Mr. Johns nodded toward the women and shook his head. “Good luck, and let me know if you need anything.”