Fatal Judgment. Andrew Welsh-Huggins
TP, avocados, peanut butter. Soda water, dish soap—
I stopped. I read backwards up the list. Estoppel?
I looked closer. Was I misreading the word? Laura’s handwriting wasn’t the neatest in the world, but it was still a more than serviceable cursive. At second glance there was no question about it. Laura had inserted an arcane legal word I’d heard a few times but couldn’t possibly have defined into the middle of her weekly grocery list. But why? I pulled out my phone and looked up a definition. The principle that bars a person from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous deed or statement of that person or by a previous relevant judicial determination. Huh? I searched for plain English definitions and after a couple minutes decided it basically meant you couldn’t try to prove or disprove something in a legal argument whose truth had already been established.
Like, say, denying anything was wrong after you’d called an ex-lover out of the blue after five years and told him you were in trouble?
I folded the list, placed it in my wallet, stepped back, and leaned against the counter. The cat approached and rubbed back and forth against my legs. So Laura left behind a clue after all. But for who? Me? She’d dropped the hint during our call at the sheriff’s office. But how could she have known I’d show up at her condo on the basis of one missed phone call? A darker thought crossed my mind. Maybe she hadn’t been that calculating. Maybe she left a clue on her shopping list so that, no matter what happened to her, someone, someday, might be able to figure out the truth. Only by luck was I the one who earned the first shot at the puzzle.
But what was I supposed to do with this? How was I meant to handle a handwritten legal term hiding in plain sight on a grocery list like a link of German sausage nestled in a drawer of red Christmas candles? Call Detective Pinney back? “Hey, I know this sounds a little weird, but . . .”
I put myself in Laura’s position. If I was right, she’d handed me proof that something was indeed rotten in Denmark. But so what? I’d been thinking that all day, despite her subsequent denial of a problem over the phone as Pinney eavesdropped. Laura was more calculating than that. Anyone who knew her well—and I was going to count myself in that category—knew that the “Velvet Fist” nickname was the beginning of her legal reputation, not the end. She was renowned for her deliberate and thoughtful approach to cases. I knew she prided herself on rarely being overturned on appeal.
There must be more, I thought.
I walked slowly through her apartment, seeing if anything else caught my eye. Something told me that having hidden one clue in the open, she would have done it again. No treasure boxes under loose floorboards for her. I glanced at the bookshelves on either side of her fireplace, jammed with a combination of biographies, histories of various global conflicts, and a smattering of legal thrillers. Nothing that said estoppel, and nothing that made me think her plan was for me—or someone—to pull every volume off a shelf to search.
Next I went into her office. I tried the computer, but the password protection was on. I knew someone who could help me with that if it came to it, but again I wondered. Laura would have known that checking her computer files would be a chore for whoever tackled it. The chances were good that estoppel appeared frequently, adding to a needle in the haystack problem. I crossed the computer off the list as an option. The desk it sat on was clear except for a couple of bills marked “paid.” I tried the file drawers, but none of the folders was marked with the word of the day. I was about to walk out when I glanced in the wastepaper basket. Something didn’t look right. I reached in and pulled out the offending piece of trash.
It was a black frame, 8-1/2 by 11, its glass shattered. From the force of being thrown away? I loosened a couple of the shards and carefully tossed them back into the basket. The frame held a certificate. The Berman Prize. An award of some kind, I recalled, from the judge’s Ohio State law school days. I’d glanced at it a dozen times during our purported romance, pausing in the office to say hello and to attempt a seductive gesture like kissing the back of Laura’s neck. Usually a mistake. I wasn’t sure what kind of prize it was, although I assumed, with Laura’s smarts, it was an academic honor. I looked around and saw a small nail jutting out where the frame once hung to the right of her desk. For some reason Laura—or someone—had trashed the framed certificate, and not nicely. I picked out more glass shards. I thought about taking the certificate, and then remembered Pinney’s skepticism about my presence in the condo. I set the remains of the frame beside Laura’s computer and took a couple pictures of the certificate instead. Strange. But the source of her trouble? It seemed unlikely.
Next I returned to the bedroom. I lowered myself to my hands and knees and looked under the bed. I started as a pair of gleaming eyes stared back me. The cat, creeping about with no regard for privacy. But other than her—him?—there was nothing to see other than a dust bunny or two and an errant sock.
I rose on my knees and was about to stand when my eyes came to rest on her nightstand. The pile of New Yorkers. The photo of her children, who meant so much to her. The dry-as-dust book of legal definitions.
Who keeps that kind of book as bedside reading?
I grabbed it, stood up and flipped through its pages.
Ejectment, Eleventh Amendment, En Banc.
Enumerated Powers. Equitable Defense. Escape Clause.
Escrow, Estate at Sufferance, Estoppel—
A single piece of paper fluttered to the floor.
8
I LEANED OVER AND retrieved the sheet. On it were two words, in Laura’s handwriting. Mendon Woods.
I sat on her bed and pulled out my phone again. This turned out to be an easier internet search than a definition of estoppel understandable by a mere mortal. According to the very first article I read, Mendon Woods was an undeveloped plot of land on the north side of town, on the far side of the outer belt from Columbus but still in the county. A mix of ordinary Ohio hardwoods, some prairie—probably not original—and at its center, a small wetland about nineteen acres in circumference. There were probably bigger Walmart parking lots than that particular swamp. Nearly all of the few hundred acres surrounded by development. And possibly not long for this world. Mendon Woods’ future was up in the air because of a lawsuit brought by a developer against the state, which had jurisdiction over the property. A lawsuit on the docket of one Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Laura Porter.
THE FACTS WERE SIMPLE enough. A company called Rumford Realty wanted Mendon Woods for an unspecified commercial development. A few months back, a deal was brokered whereby the company would receive the property in exchange for mitigating the wetlands loss by creating a bigger artificial wetlands area adjacent to the Scioto River north of Columbus. The wetlands was self-contained, not reliant on a creek or river, so the state, not the feds, had jurisdiction, simplifying things. The arrangement was finished and on the way to the printer’s when environmental groups blew the whistle and criticized the state for kowtowing to a businessman and destroying one of the last natural wetlands inside the county. The swamp in Mendon Woods, though tiny, was classified as category III—the richest and most diverse type. It was home to numerous animals and an important stopover for migratory birds, some of them rare, including something called a coastal tanager. A mitigated wetland, no matter how big, wasn’t the same and often didn’t function properly, the argument went. The state bowed under public pressure and reneged on the deal. Rumford Realty sued. The case landed in Laura’s courtroom. A three-day trial ended a couple of weeks ago, with parties on both sides instructed to file final briefing documents. The judge was supposed to rule soon.
Was this the trouble Laura was in? Something to do with this swamp? All types of possibilities crossed my mind. A bribe on the table from Rumford? A threat from the environmentalists? Vice versa? Or maybe a mistake Laura made that could blow up in her face? Affect her Supreme Court campaign somehow?
I thought about texting her, asking her about the case. In the end I decided not to. There was no question in my mind now that when I spoke to her in the sheriff’s office something wasn’t right. The clues she dropped