Clear And Convincing Proof

“A dynamic attorney.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Complex, maddeningly flawed, brilliant, and altogether believable.”

—Salem Statesman Journal

“A passionate lover of truth.”

—Portland Oregonian

“The sort of level-headed heroine you learn to like and trust.”

—Orlando Sentinel

“Something of a slob.”

—Seattle Times

“A marvelously dense and thorny character.”

—Chicago Tribune

“If I had gone the legal route…I’d want to be like Barbara Holloway—smart, savvy, wise, compassionate.”

—Mademoiselle

“A wily and sympathetic heroine.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A complex and appealing woman.”

—Library Journal

KATE WILHELM

CLEAR AND CONVINCING PROOF

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

1

The afternoon that Erica Castle drove into Eugene, Oregon, she was elated, excited at the thought that she would sleep in her own house that night. Weeks earlier an attorney had called to inform her that she had inherited her grandmother’s property; she had become a home owner. She had never met her grandmother, had never before been farther west than Indiana, but her mother had talked about the fine old mansion many times in the distant past, and now it was hers, Erica’s.

She drove with care, admiring the well-kept houses, the neat lawns and lovely landscaping with flowers everywhere. After grimy industrial Cleveland, everything here looked fresh and scrubbed, sparkling clean. It was an affluent neighborhood, not superrich, but comfortable. No more dingy apartments, inner-city filth, just her own house in a nice neighborhood where flowers bloomed.

Driving slower and slower, she watched the house numbers, then came to a stop, backed up, pulled into a driveway and braked hard, aghast at the spectacle before her. The yard had gone to weeds, knee-high or higher, and a tangle of blackberry brambles was ten feet high. There was trash strewn in the driveway, beer bottles, an oil can, a broken chair…The two-story house had peeling paint and bare wood in places. There was a broken window held together with duct tape, a broken banister on the front porch.

She felt as if for weeks she had been floating, as buoyant as a dandelion seed in a breeze, only to have a giant hand reach out now and crush her back to earth. Moving with leaden legs she got out of her old station wagon and approached the front of the house, forced herself up the three steps to the porch, across it to the door.

It was worse on the inside. The smell was so bad that she gagged and took a step back, then hurried through a hallway to the rear of the house and opened a door. Trash was everywhere, more beer cans, wine bottles, liquor bottles, pizza boxes, junk furniture, piles of newspapers, a foam mat on the floor….

She didn’t go upstairs and didn’t linger inside the house longer than it took for a hurried glance. Junk. Nothing but junk. Then she stood on the back porch and regarded the rear of the property: more blackberries, more weeds, more trash. The brambles had nearly covered a small garage.

She fought tears and made her clenched fists relax. “All right,” she said in a low voice. “So there’s no free lunch.”

The house could be cleaned up, painted, the yard cleaned and made neat. Then she would sell it. After cashing out her pension, she had eleven thousand dollars. If she had to use part of it to get the house ready for a sale, so be it.

The giant hand that had crushed her was rubbing her nose in the dirt, she thought grimly the following day, when the attorney informed her that there was also a property tax lien of eight thousand dollars. He put her in touch with a Realtor, Mrs. Maryhill, who walked through the house with Erica and pointed out what needed doing before putting the house on the market.

“See those water stains? Needs a roof. And probably the wiring needs an overhaul…Maybe there’s dry rot in that bathroom. Hard to tell with so much mold…Three windows need replacing…. That water heater’s twenty-five years old, has to be replaced…. All the oak flooring needs to be refinished. What a shame to let it go like that.”

Then, on the rear porch, she said, “I’ll tell you straight, Ms. Castle. You sell it as is, and maybe you can get fifty thousand, maybe not even that. And it might take months or even years. See, no Realtor is going to want to show it. Put in ten, twelve thousand, bring it up to par with the neighborhood and you can get $150 thousand to $185 for it. It’s really a very nice old structure, solid, good wood, but gone to pot now. Depending on how it’s finished, how it appears, maybe you’d get up to two hundred. But it’s going to take a lot of work first.”

Two weeks later Mrs. Maryhill dropped by again. “Just in the neighborhood,” she said, looking all around. “My, my, you’ve been busy, haven’t you? You’re doing it all yourself?”

“So far. I thought I’d see how much I could manage before I yell for help.”

The electricity was on; the kitchen and the downstairs bedroom were scrubbed and usable and just needed repainting; the odors in the house now were of Lysol and bleach, trisodium phosphate, ammonia and Pine Sol. Junk was high in the driveway, with more added daily. The heap looked like a rising volcano of obsidian; some of the trash bags even steamed in the sun.

To Erica’s surprise the house she was unearthing was very nice, as Mrs. Maryhill had said earlier. The first floor had four spacious rooms and a small pantry; the upper apartment had four rooms; and the basement was dry with a good concrete floor.

“Eventually,” the Realtor said, “you’ll have to hire help. If you decide to take out a mortgage, hold off as long as possible. Get the house in the best shape you can before anyone comes to inspect it. Do you plan to get a job?”

“I hadn’t given it any thought yet,” Erica said. She suspected that Mrs. Maryhill had assessed her financial position quite accurately. No one did the kind of cleaning Erica had been doing if they had a tidy fortune stashed away.

“Well, consider it,” Mrs. Maryhill said. “Banks like to think their clients can repay a loan. They’re funny that way.” She smiled widely. “And something else you might consider,” she said, “is doing some volunteer work for the time being. A few hours a week, at least. You’d meet local people who may be willing to give references, you see. You know the rehab clinic over on Country Club Road? That would be a good place for you. Close enough to walk to, but more important, you’d meet a good clientele, some of the patients, doctors, therapists, the sort of people banks adore for references.”

“The only thing I’m qualified to do is teach,” Erica said. “Fifteen years of experience. But I suppose I could work in a kitchen, something like that.”

Mrs. Maryhill shook her head. “No, no. You want to meet people. You have a lovely voice. Volunteer to read to the patients.”

All afternoon and into the night Erica considered both suggestions. Regardless of her years of experience, she knew she would not be qualified to teach full-time here. For that she would need Oregon certification, which would take time, and possibly require some classes, and she had no intention of going that route. She was truly burned out, she admitted, but perhaps she could get a temporary certificate and sign up as a substitute. Most school districts had a number of substitutes who worked all hours, even full-time, but without the perks: no medical insurance, no pension, no paid holidays.

Besides, it would be temporary. As soon as she got a loan, and finished fixing up the house, she would sell it. She didn’t want a house and a job; she wanted some money for the first time in her life. Sell it, take a long vacation, buy a new car…As she scrubbed away grime accumulated over many years, she came to appreciate the fine woodwork, the lovely cabinets, good cedar-lined closets, lead-glass-fronted bookcases in the living room. Two hundred thousand, she told herself. She could endure anything, even teaching fifth grade, for that kind of payback.

More to the point, she would need an income. First she had to spruce herself up, she decided, fingering her hair, lank and mousy brown. She was forty years old and felt fifty, and suspected she looked it. Start with the hair, she told herself; she could not volunteer for anything, much less apply for a teaching position looking like a charwoman.

The next week she put in her application with the school district and then drove to the Kelso-McIvey Rehabilitation Clinic, which turned out to be four blocks from her house. There was a large parking lot in front of the two-story building, a high hedge and a covered walk from a wide drive. A big van under the cover had a mechanism lowering a patient in a wheelchair.

Erica passed it and entered the building, which was not at all institutional. Baskets held potted plants and more plants in ceramic pots were on the reception desk. A teddy bear leaned against a pot with a basket of peppermints nearby. A pretty, blond young woman at the reception desk greeted her and, on hearing her name, said, “Mrs. Boardman will be free in a minute or two. She’s expecting you. You want to sit over there and wait? I’ll tell her you’re here.” She wore a name tag: Annie. She motioned toward a waiting room where a few other people were seated, and then smiled at the patient an attendant was wheeling in.

“Mrs. Daniels! How nice to see you. How’s it going? You look wonderful!”

Erica was not kept waiting long. Annie beckoned her and led the way down a brightly lit corridor, chatting as she walked. “Boy, can they use volunteers here. Half the people you see working are volunteers, in fact.”

“Well, I won’t have a lot of free time,” Erica said.

“Ten minutes makes a difference,” Annie said. “Here we are.”

She tapped on a door, opened it and moved aside for Erica to enter. A tall, lean woman rose from her desk as they entered. She looked to be sixty and was dressed in chinos and a T-shirt. Her hair was gray, straight and very short, almost too severe, but bright blue earrings and a matching necklace softened her appearance, and her smile was warm and friendly as she came around the desk to take Erica’s hand.

“Ms. Castle, how do you do? I’m Naomi Boardman. Thanks, Annie. Will you be around for a bit?”

“Until four-thirty. I’ll be at the front desk until Bernie gets back from the dentist. That should be any minute now.” She smiled at Erica and left.

Then, seated in two visitors’ chairs, Naomi Boardman and Erica talked. It was not a real interview, Erica came to realize very fast. Things had already been decided. Naomi made it clear that they wanted her.

“When I brought it up with Darren—he’s our head physical therapist—we agreed that it’s a marvelous idea, to have someone read to the patients. They work so hard, harder than any of the staff, and they are exhausted by the end of the day. This would be relaxing, and even comforting, we believe.”

The patients varied in age, she said, from young children to octogenarians, suffering the effects of bicycle accidents, strokes, congenital birth defects, fire, brain tumors—all kinds of trauma. Although most of them were outpatients, there was also a fifteen-bed hospital on the upper floor. Sometimes it was filled with a waiting list, other times not. At present, she said, they had eleven patients up there.

Feeling a growing disquietude, Erica asked, “But who would I be reading to? What age group? How many?”

“Well, we won’t know that until you begin. Maybe four, maybe ten. All ages. And anything you would find suitable for your fifth grade classes would work fine.” She smiled at Erica. “You’ll have a lot of latitude. It won’t be so much what you read, you see, as the fact that you will be reading to them. And you have such a nice voice.”

It was arranged. She would begin on Wednesday, starting at five in the evening. Naomi hesitated over the hour. It was best for the patients because some of them were so fretful by then, restless and exhausted, but it might be hard for Erica. Not at all, Erica assured her. Then Naomi called Annie back and asked her to show Erica the facility. “Welcome to the Kelso-McIvey Rehabilitation Center,” Naomi said.

“I’ve never heard anyone call it that,” Annie confided, as she started the tour. “It’s just the rehab clinic. Down that way are the therapy rooms. We won’t go in while they’re being used. This way to the garden. Darren thinks it’s a good idea to get people out in the open as much as possible.”

Erica saw little of the clinic that day, but later she came to appreciate the many ways the curse of institution had been obliterated. One wall held children’s art, colorful, fanciful, honest. Another displayed whimsical figures from Disney or Dr. Suess. Dorothy with her steadfast companions on the yellow brick road. Superheroes. Christopher Robin and Pooh. There was a ceiling-to-floor wall of greeting cards: Valentine’s Day, Christmas cards, birthday cards, thank-you cards. There were plants throughout, in baskets, brass planters, hanging from baskets, on wall brackets. The visitors’ waiting room had a game table, large-screen television, current magazines, a jigsaw puzzle in progress on a table. She laughed later when she followed arrows from the children’s ward to the upper lounge. The arrows began to go this way and that, a drunkard’s walk trail, and then climbed a wall, ending abruptly. A splotch on the floor was the start of the arrows from there, more or less steady to the lounge. She learned that Naomi had been the decorator, and it all worked delightfully.

The offices were like offices everywhere with the usual furnishings, but when she viewed the therapy rooms later, she caught in her breath. Medieval torture chambers, she thought, mortify the flesh and save the soul. But here the plan was to save the body. Tables with straps dangling, holding curiously shaped brackets, cups, straps. A device that appeared to be designed to support body parts—legs, arms, torsos. Several treadmills, walkways with rails, one with a contraption that was like a rescue seat she had seen on television hauling a person from a sinking ship. A small swimming pool in a room so hot and humid it was like a steam bath. A mechanism there apparently could lift a patient and lower him or her into the water, then fish the patient out again.

On that first day, she caught glimpses only as she was escorted to the garden, screened on three sides by shrubbery. It was laid out in such a way, Annie explained, that each section of the path was a particular length, a quarter of a mile, a third of a mile, an eighth. The whole thing, if you covered every path, zigzagging around, would be two miles, with a waterfall at one end and steps going up to it on both sides. There was a koi pond up there, with a couple of benches, a nice place to relax and watch the fish. Apparently it was simply decorative, but that was deceptive, she said; Darren knew that one of the hardest tasks some patients encountered was going up and down steps. Everything had been laid out by Darren, she said, and a landscape company had planted it and maintained it.

“For the most part, you can’t see one path from any other one,” Annie said. “There could be half a dozen patients out here, and they’d be invisible to one another. All Darren’s doing.”

She started down one of the paths. “This goes to the back gate, and across an alley from there is where Naomi and her husband live. He’s the resident doctor here.” She stopped and put her finger to her lips.

A woman’s voice came from ahead, somewhere out of sight. “Darren, I am trying. I really am.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Mrs. Daniels,” a man said softly. “You know I wouldn’t say something like that to you. I was talking to that lazy leg. It knows I’m speaking to it, and it’s just plain lazy. Muscles can get like that, just lay back and pretend they don’t have to do a thing. Hey, leg, you can’t fool me. I’m on to you. Stop dragging that foot! You hear me, now hustle.”

After a moment, he said, “See? It knows I’m on to it. Good job.”

Annie touched Erica’s arm and turned back toward the door. When they were out of range of the others, she said, “When she came here a couple months ago, she couldn’t even move. Now she’s up and walking. That’s Darren’s doing, too.”

She sounded boastful, smug even, but when Erica glanced at her, she looked sad and averted her face. “On to the kitchen and lounge,” she said briskly. “You’ll like the lounge. It’s like an old country house parlor.”

She was wearing a diamond-studded wedding ring, her pantsuit was expensive, her nails manicured, her blond hair styled beautifully. Erica recalled what she had said, that she would be there until four-thirty. A volunteer? It seemed so. A wealthy volunteer, from all appearances. Mrs. Maryhill had been correct; Erica would meet the right sort of people here.

2

When Annie left, it was a few minutes past four-thirty, and she drove faster than usual, knowing there would be a traffic snarl at the entrance to Coburg Road and the bridge at this time of day. Normally the short trip would take no more than five to eight minutes, but because she was running late already, it took longer. She didn’t know why that was, but it seemed to work out that way every time. It was ten minutes before five when she entered the waiting room of the surgical associates, waved to Leslie Tooey at the reception desk and took a chair in the waiting room. Leslie nodded and picked up her phone to tell Dr. McIvey that she had arrived.

That was a bad sign, Annie knew. It meant that he was not with a patient, possibly that he had been waiting for her. He hated to be kept waiting. He sometimes was ready to leave at a quarter to five, sometimes not until after six, or even later, but whenever it was, he wanted her to be there.

Leslie slid open the glass partition and said, “You can go on back now.”

Annie forced a smile and walked through the waiting room to the door to the offices, paused for Leslie to release the lock, then walked to the office where her husband was waiting for her to drive him home.

He met her at the door. “I don’t want to hear about the traffic,” he said. “When will you get it through your head that it gets bad this time of day? Start earlier. Do I have to tie a note around your neck? And take off that stupid name tag.”

He strode out as she fumbled with the name tag. She had forgotten she was still wearing it. They left by the rear door.

David McIvey was forty-seven, at the peak of his physical attractiveness. Tall, well-built, with abundant, wavy brown hair, brown eyes and regular features, he impressed strangers who often mistook him for a ski instructor, or a model, or a sportscaster—someone in the public eye. He was also at the peak of his profession—the most sought-after neurosurgeon in town, and the most successful.

“Why did you marry me?” she had demanded one night, two years earlier, the only time they had ever really quarreled. “You don’t want a lover, a wife, a companion. What you want is an indentured servant.”

“I will not be drawn into an adolescent, fruitless discussion of relationships,” he had said, rising from the dinner table. “You have everything a woman could possibly want, and what I need in return is a peaceful, orderly home.” He held up his hands; his fingers were long and shapely. “I confront death on a daily basis. That requires absolute concentration, certainty and order, and I cannot be distracted by disorder when I get home. I cannot tolerate absurd, childish outbursts of temper or foolish, female hysteria. Call me rigid, inflexible, unyielding, whatever you like, but you have to give me what I need, and that is simply peace and quiet when I get home.”

“You don’t even realize how it hurts when you treat me like a slave.”

“You know where the box is that holds all the belongings you brought into this house. I won’t try to hold you here, or restrain you in any way. You are free to take that box and leave whenever you want to, but if you stay, you will accept that my needs are to be met with whatever grace you can manage.”

“And my needs?”

“You have no needs that involve me. We will not discuss this again. You know my schedule.”

What had set off the argument that day was the fact that she had been held up at the rehab clinic, helping restrain a teenager who had had a violent reaction to a medication. David had not wanted to hear about it, and had become an ice-man with a coldness that had persisted throughout dinner.

A week after the argument, she had talked to a lawyer, had shown him the prenuptial agreement she had blithely signed.

“You didn’t consult an attorney before you signed it?” the lawyer asked in disgust. He waved away her answer. “Doesn’t matter. You signed it and you were of age, and presumably in your right mind. You agreed that if you want out before ten years pass, you will take with you no more than you brought into the marriage. No settlement, no alimony, nothing. On the other hand, he can kick you out at any time if you fail your wifely duties, commit adultery, turn into a drunk or an addict…. Very generously, he agreed that if he’s the one to end it, he’ll give you severance pay, so to speak—three months’ living expenses. Mrs. McIvey, why did you marry the guy?”

“I loved him,” she said in a low voice. In a lower voice she added, “I believed he loved me.”

It had been more than that, and less, she had come to realize. At twenty-two she had been thrilled to be noticed by the older, brilliant and very rich doctor. And she had been infatuated, blind and deaf to the advice of her parents, Naomi, a few friends. David had been devastated by the divorce his first wife had instituted; she had cleaned him out, he had admitted. His child support payments were astronomical, with access to his two children severely limited. He desperately wanted a decent home life, a companion, a wife. Two months after they met, he and Annie were married.

The lawyer gave her some advice that day. Start a journal, write down the schedule you have to maintain and what happens if you are late. Keep a record of what you do every day for a few weeks, and after that, note any changes. Keep your journal in a safe deposit box, or under lock and key at home.

She listened and later followed his advice, but she didn’t get a safe deposit box. It was impossible to imagine David reading her private journal; he neither knew nor cared what she did as long as he was not thrown off his schedule. He wanted his breakfast to be ready at six-thirty, and then to be driven to the office. He could drive but he didn’t like to; she had become his chauffeur. She returned to the surgical offices at twelve-thirty to take him home for lunch—which she prepared—and then was back to get him at four-forty-five. What she did the rest of the day he never asked.

But the attraction of a never-ending vacation soon palled. They lived in a condo complex, where it appeared that the other women were professionals who worked, or had small children, or were a good deal older than she and played bridge. David’s schedule precluded day-long shopping with lunch outings. She could not take a run up to Portland for the opening of a museum show or art gallery. She could not spend all afternoon playing bridge, which she didn’t know how to play to begin with. Invitations from other women in the complex dwindled to nothing within a year. Since a housekeeper-cook came every afternoon to clean and prepare dinner for seven-thirty, she didn’t change sheets, dust books, scrub a bathroom, learn new cooking skills. Even Saturdays were rigidly scheduled, at least the mornings were. David jogged on Saturday morning; she took him to the Amazon Trail at eight-thirty and picked him up again exactly one and a half hours later.