Left-handed Dog

Left-handed Dog

Allen Nesbitt

When the dog was very old, he liked to lie outside in the sun and sleep. When it was too cold outside, he would find a room where the sun illuminated an area of the floor and sink down there. When the man was home, sometimes he would lie on the floor next to the dog and talk softly to him. The man had heard that dogs could only understand a few repetitive words, but that they loved to hear their master talk to them. So the man told stories, spoke of recent sporting events or days long past. When the old dog heard two names, he would get excited and seem to smile.

For: Luca, Boomerang, Shy Anne, Gracie, Tar Baby and Otter

Chapter One

Love In Vain

Creighton Lee pulled into his slot in the parking garage at a little after nine o’clock on a sunny, spring morning. Although he had been parking there for several years, it seemed oddly foreign to him.

He shut off the engine and climbed out of his black Suburban. He gathered his briefcase from the back seat, locked his vehicle and walked toward the doorway that led into a hallway where the elevators were. The concrete floor seemed to be tilting under him. He slowed his pace. The fluorescent lighting seemed too bright and he felt his heart pounding.

He entered the vestibule and walked to the bank of elevators. He punched his floor on the number panel. The elevator came quickly and quietly whisked him up to the twenty-second floor. He stepped out into the hallway and walked toward his office suite. He used his key card and entered a private door to his office.

Two young, attractive women came into his office from the reception area. His paralegal, Roxy, gave him a hug as did Teresa, who was the receptionist that he shared with the two attorneys who had offices on the other end of the office suite. They both expressed their condolences, then drifted away to their areas. He couldn’t blame them. He had never known what to say when someone had died.

Lee sat at his desk and stared blankly at the files and papers neatly stacked by Roxy. He glanced at the calendar on his desk. April 29, 1996. It was already hot and humid in San Antonio that Monday morning. He felt strange. His vision seemed to waver and the coolness of the air conditioning sent shivers through his body.

He got up and walked to the window that looked out over the city. Lee was a tall man in his early thirties. He had an athletic build, short blonde hair that was almost white and deep blue eyes. He was dressed casually in khaki trousers and a dark blue golf shirt.

He spent several minutes looking out at the city of San Antonio. He knew that he needed to immerse himself in his work and hope that the memories of Marie would slip back into the far recesses of his mind as time went along, but he continued to look out at the sky and reminisce.

* * *

He had been born in the small town of Boerne just northwest of San Antonio in 1964. His father owned a small ranch and his mother worked at a bank in the town. Lee was a good athlete and a good student. When he was a senior in high school, he was named an All State halfback for the division 3-A Greyhounds. He was ignored by the big football programs, but was recruited by a few universities and accepted a scholarship to the University of Virginia for football and track. After graduation from Virginia, he had enrolled in the University of Texas law school.

Some of his classmates saw themselves becoming famous defense attorneys or crafty prosecutors. Lee quickly noticed how the area around San Antonio and Austin was rapidly growing and expanding. He concentrated on real estate law. There was property in Texas that had been conveyed by Spanish land grants. Then France had owned Texas before Mexico did. Finally, Texas had become a Republic for several years before being admitted to the United States. Due to the constitution that had been written after reconstruction, almost every step of a real estate transaction had to be blessed by an attorney. It was dull and tedious work, but fairly simple and it was lucrative.

He had hit it big when a friend from UT, Marshall Meunster, who had gone to work in the family business, had started giving some of his family’s business to Lee. One day, his friend’s father, who was a major developer in the area, invited Lee to his office. When Lee arrived, the man showed Lee a mockup of a large property that he was intending to develop.

It encompassed several acres on a corner of a new interstate highway loop and a busy boulevard. The development would contain several office buildings around a small man-made lake. Also there would be a hotel, a service station, a bank, two restaurants, a small strip of high-end shops and a swank apartment complex. And every step of the process required an attorney. The project took quite a while to be completed and Lee made a very nice sum of money which he saved and invested. He had been living a quiet bachelor existence at that time.

* * *

Lee heard someone coming down the hallway toward his office. He turned away from the window and saw Jim Flynn enter. Jim was a bear of a man in his fifties who had an unruly head of gray hair. He always had a rumpled appearance and, even this early in the work day, his collar was unbuttoned, his tie loosened and the sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up. Despite his appearance, he was a very good criminal defense attorney.

He walked over to Lee and enveloped him in a hug. Then he stepped back.

Damn sorry, Creighton. Let me know if I can do anything to help. I used to love the times when she would drop by to see you and come into my office to say hello. Even if I was having a crappy day, it suddenly became a very good one. They say that the good die young. I guess I’ll live to be one hundred and fifty.

Lee smiled. What have you got going on?

A young fellow named Ernesto Remigio owns a small auto repair shop down in the barrio. He became suspicious of his wife. He began driving by their house at odd hours during the day. One day, he spotted an unfamiliar truck parked in front. He slipped into the back door and found her in bed with a man. He took the tire iron that he was carrying and bashed the guy’s brains in. Had he stopped there, I could have gotten him off with manslaughter and probably probation. But Ernesto takes out a switchblade and proceeds to stab his wife. Not once, but thirty-two times. Now it’s going to be more difficult to get him off.

Who is prosecuting?

Deanne Brand.

I hear that she is the rising star in the DA’s office, Lee said.

She will be damn good in a few years. But I think that I can win this during jury selection. I’ll act like I want a juror that I really don’t and make her use up her strikes. I’ll strike every woman that I can and hopefully end up with a panel of twelve men, mostly Mexican. They will empathize with Ernesto and he’ll walk. Gotta go. Keep your head up, Creighton.

Flynn ambled back toward his end of the office suite. Lee smiled. He had learned very early never to play poker with Jim. He went out into the hallway, drank some water at the fountain and went to the restroom.

As Lee walked back down the hallway to his office, he thought about Deanne Brand. He had met her at a few bar association events. She was a tall, willowy blonde in her mid-twenties. She had sparkling eyes and a great sense of humor. He pictured her facing Jim in the trial. Maybe he would go over to the courthouse and observe the proceedings when jury selection began.

He settled into his chair and pulled the top file into the middle of his desk and opened it. He stared blankly at the pages and then noticed that Winfield Skinner had wandered in. Skinner was a divorce attorney who had the third office in the suite. He was a small, well-built man with a perpetual tan, carefully styled hair and dark eyes. He was dressed in an immaculate, expensive suit, a snowy white shirt and regimental tie. Skinner always looked as if he had just walked out of a barber shop and a dry cleaners. It was quite a contrast whenever he and Flynn stood together in a room.

Skinner offered his condolences and then sat down in one of the chairs that faced Lee’s desk. Skinner liked to say that one of the additional bonuses of his specialty was that he got close with women who were suddenly single and often wealthy or beautiful. If the woman had all three of those attributes, he referred to it as the trifecta. He told Lee that he had a luncheon date with one of his recent clients.

With any luck, you won’t see me in the office this afternoon, he smiled as he got up and walked back toward his office.

Lee turned back to the file, but just stared at it. His phone had not rung and he wondered if Roxy was telling callers that he was not back in the office yet. He closed the file and leaned back in his chair and began to reminisce again.

* * *

One of his friends, Dawson Ray, had built a house on Canyon Lake northeast of San Antonio. In the spring of 1992, Ray had a large gathering at the lake house. Lee had attended the party and was talking with a group of his friends when he noticed a very pretty girl in a sundress talking with a group of women. It was the first time that he saw Marie du Croix. He quickly noticed that she was one of the most breathtaking women that he had ever seen. She had long, very dark hair, a flawless complexion and bright, violet eyes. She had a fabulous figure and when he heard her laughter, his stomach seemed to be full of butterflies. He thought that she was a model or a dancer.

Soon, the groups broke up and mingled and he had a chance to go up to her and introduce himself. He asked her if she wanted to walk down to the dock with him and she smiled and said that was a good idea. He refilled their beers from the keg and they walked together down the long, sloping lawn to the water’s edge. The water in the deep lake was clear and very blue. A solitary hawk surfed the thermals high above them.

He discovered that she taught kindergarten in New Braunfels, adored her pupils and loved her work. She had come to the party with a girlfriend and didn’t know any of the others. They continued to talk and Creighton learned that she had been born deep in Cajun country in South Louisiana. Her father had been nearly sixty and her mother forty-five when she was born. She had no siblings. Her father was a trapper and fisherman and her mother cooked at a small inn. They both were dead. Marie had graduated from LSU and had moved out of Louisiana as soon as she could.

They finished their beers and walked up to the house where the food was being served. Lee introduced her to his friends and they feasted on smoked ribs, brisket, sausage, corn on the cob and beans. Finally, Marie’s friend had to leave. Lee had gotten Marie’s phone number and promised to call her. He watched her walk away.

The following Monday, he had called her and they talked for quite a while. That Friday, he had gone to New Braunfels and picked her up at her duplex. They had dinner at a venerable German restaurant and then had gone to a smoky bar were a very old Negro played the blues. Marie had kissed him as they stood on her front porch and thanked him for a wonderful time. He tasted her kiss all the way back to San Antonio. Soon they were spending most of their free time together. She loved San Antonio and they spent hours roaming the old city.

In the fall of 1992, they took a cruise in the Caribbean and he had proposed to her on a warm beach under an impossibly bright moon. They had made love the entire night and Lee felt like he was the luckiest man in the world.

He used some of his savings to purchase a large lot in a new development west of the city. It was on a hill and had a view of the city to the east and of the hill country to the west. Marie resigned her position at the end of the school year in 1993. She moved to San