Free The Ditto List by Stephen Greenleaf Page B

Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the death of Doctor King. Her lips pursed at the distinctly residential furnishings, possibly because they had been donated to D.T. by a client who, after a long period of living alone, had remarried at age fifty and acquired a spare set of almost everything and who seemed to believe that wood should be veneered to look as much as possible like cream sauce. Her nostrils narrowed because among and around it all were the piles of old briefs and current case files, Racing Forms and Sporting News , legal newspapers and bar journals, a fishless aquarium, a broken bust of Brahms, and the thises and thats of twenty years of talking to people about troubles that were so bad they were willing to pay a slender stranger to solve them. And then the full lips smiled, and Rita Holloway stood up and went to inspect the stimulus more closely.
    It lay atop a file cabinet, a small diorama, exquisitely crafted, a western town, laden with detail from the Silver Dollar Saloon to the tiny horseshoes in the tiny forge in the tiny blacksmith’s shop at the end of the tiny street. Michele had found it at a model railroad show and had presented it to him on the first anniversary of their divorce, adding only one detail to the extant perfection. At each edge of town she had placed a sign, and on it in the tiniest script decipherable she had written two words: Split City. When Rita Holloway read the words she laughed.
    â€œSouvenir?” she asked as she sat back down.
    â€œE Pluribus Unum.”
    â€œWhat are the others?”
    â€œI have a drawer full, most of them unmentionable.”
    â€œOh, go ahead and mention them.”
    He matched her grin and shrugged. “A pair of panties ripped off to reveal a legally irrelevant contusion. A wrist bandage unwrapped to reveal the scabs of a bungled suicide. And, let’s see, a pencil drawing of the distinctly peculiar conformation of a husband’s penis. A purposely punctured diaphragm. Pornographic snapshots. Love letters. Suspiciously stained handkerchiefs. Credit card receipts from Nevada whorehouses. And all kinds of other stuff that one client or another thought had something to do with why they were in my office.”
    Rita Holloway was chuckling happily when he finished. “An interesting life.”
    â€œOccasionally.”
    â€œWhat made those little holes in the floor?” She turned back to look at them.
    â€œGolf cleats,” he said, stimulated in spite of himself by the interest she seemed to take in what he supposed was his life.
    â€œBut you shouldn’t have done that. It’ll cost a fortune to replace that parquet.”
    D.T. shrugged. “At the time it was indispensable to my immediate well-being to hit a nice crisp wedge shot. Not being at a golf course seemed an inadequate deterrent.”
    Her black eyes widened. “Did you hit it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œThe ball lodged between Volumes 238 and 239 of the Pacific Reporter .”
    â€œDo you always do impulsive, destructive things like that?”
    â€œOnly on my good days.”
    She frowned and considered his remark more closely than it deserved. An earnest person, apparently one of the rare ones who believed there were things to be learned in the world if you paid attention. When she started to say something D.T. put up a hand to stop her.
    â€œWhy have you come to me, Miss Holloway? I assume you’re married, in which case you shouldn’t be calling yourself Miss. Not yet. Creditors don’t like it.”
    â€œI’m not married,” Rita Holloway said simply.
    â€œThen how long have you lived with him?” he asked, exasperated because it was only a palimony case and Miss Holloway seemed smarter than that. There were good reasons to live with someone out of wedlock, but not if you expected some sort of financial settlement at the conclusion of the relationship. And since such relationships