Michael A. Kahn - Trophy Widow: A Rachel Gold Novel (Rachel Gold Novels)

Trophy Widow
A Rachel Gold Novel
Michael A. Kahn

A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
www.eBookYes.com

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel

are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
TROPHY WIDOW: A RACHEL GOLD NOVEL
Copyright 2002 by Michael A. Kahn
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions

thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 0-312-70732-0

For my son Josh,
who laughs with me and cries with me

Also By Michael A. Kahn
Sheer Gall
Due Diligence
Grave Designs
Firm Ambitions
Death Benefits
Bearing Witness

A special acknowledgment to Mike and Martha Hogan

and all of the other wonderful

men, women, and families of the

Small World Adoption Foundation

member of the Chicago Bulls, two major-league baseball players, and the entire

morning drive-time crew for one of the highest-rated FM stations in St. Louis.

And that only covers contract negotiations and endorsement deals. I've sued

Riverport on behalf of an Atlanta rap group in a gate-receipts dispute. When the

case ended, the group's manager offered me a walk-on in their next music video.

I told him I'd prefer to have my fees paid in full. I've represented a Hollywood

star accused of trashing his hotel suite while on location here for a shoot and

we're not talking just any star. He made Entertainment Weekly's "20 Sexiest Men"

two years running. Alas, he's also two inches shorter than me and as I learned

while defending him in a four-hour deposition in a small conference room

afflicted with rhino breath.
But the odd thing is that I never felt the tiniest tingle before meeting any of

them not even a hint of that magical frisson that's supposed to radiate from

real celebrities like, well, steam from a baked potato. And lest you get the

wrong idea, I'm not one of those snooty types who professes to be above all that

fawning. Far from it. I once was rendered dumbstruck on an elevator in the Met

Square building when I realized that the tall man standing next to me was none

other than number 45 himself Hall of Famer Bob Gibson. For a diehard Cardinals

fan, that's the equivalent of coming around the bend on Mount Sinai and finding

yourself face to face with a Charlton Heston look-alike in flowing robes and

sandals carrying two stone tablets. I rode several floors in flustered silence

until I worked up the nerve to ask Mr. Gibson for his autograph, which he

graciously signed on a sheet from my legal pad that I have since had laminated.
And that gaga response isn't limited to baseball gods. I would kill to spend an

afternoon with Jane Austen. I would swoon like a schoolgirl before Clark Gable

especially the Clark Gable of It Happened One Night. And if Marvin Gaye were

alive and well, I might just follow him from concert to concert like a Motown

version of a Deadhead. With those folks we're talking frisson.
Cosmic frisson.
But not for my celebrity clients. For whatever reason, with them it always seems

to be business as usual. Attorney-client. Strictly professional.
Until today.
Today I was driving halfway across the state of Missouri to meet my newest

client.
A housewife.
More precisely, a former housewife. Probably the most famous former housewife in

America, and surely the only one serving thirty-to-forty in Chillicothe

Correctional Center.
Today I was definitely in the grip of that old black magic.
That's because today I was going to see Angela Green.
Yes, the Angela Green.
The same one whose murder trial came in at number 3 on People magazine's "Top

Ten Murder Trials of the 1990s," just behind O. J. Simpson (no. 1) and the

Menendez brothers (no. 2), but ahead of Timothy McVeigh (no. 4) and Jeffrey

Dahmer (no. 5). The same one whose prime-time jailhouse interview with Oprah

Winfrey drew a 41 share and ended with that shot reprinted in newspapers and

magazines around the country the one of Oprah, tears streaming down her cheeks,

her head resting on Angela's shoulder as Angela gently patted her on the back.

The same Angela Green who had Anita Hill deliver her acceptance speech in

absentia at the Ms. magazine "Women of the Year" banquet, who caused a rift

within the NAACP when she was named one of its "Women of Valor," and who was the

subject of Connie Chung's Emmy-nominated profile, which included those

extraordinary testimonials from the prisoners who'd earned their high school

equivalencies through the special tutoring program Angela helped establish at

Chillicothe Correctional Center.
Yes, that Angela Green.
And this coming year her seventh since entering prison promised to be her

biggest yet. The publication date for her long-awaited autobiography was just

six months off. A major Hollywood studio had already snagged the film rights.

According to a blurb in Vanity Fair, Whoopi Goldberg and Angela Bassett were

vying for the lead role while Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee Jones, and Michael

Douglas were in the running for the role of Michael Green. Vanity Fair picked

Bassett and Douglas as the favorites, since "it would be almost too delicious

for an Angela and a Michael to play the Angela and the Michael." Meanwhile,

Angela's criminal defense attorney, Maria Fallaci, had her own book coming out

late in October.
All of which translated into megabucks.
And where there are megabucks, there is usually a lawsuit. That's where I fit

in. My name is Rachel Gold Cardinals fan, daughter of Sarah, big sister of Ann,

and, possibly, blushing bride and mother, assuming that a thirty-three-year-old

bride isn't too old to blush or too young to become the instant stepmother of

two adorable girls. But for the here and now, the only relevant role was lawyer,

which is why I was driving through rural Missouri on this lovely Sunday morning

in late June. I was somewhere in the northwest quadrant of the state, heading

north on Highway 65 through a portion of Missouri I'd never been in before.

According to a highway marker on the right, I'd just passed over the Grand

River, although it didn't look too grand to me. Of course, when you grow up in

St. Louis, it takes a whole lot of grand before any river can claim that label.
Chillicothe was the next exit.
Two hours ago I'd dropped Benny Goldberg off at the University of Missouri in

Columbia, where he was delivering a paper on antitrust law at a law school

symposium. After my prison meeting with Angela Green, I was going to swing back

down to Columbia to pick him up. On our way back to St. Louis we were planning

to stop at a farm near Warrenton where Benny would introduce me to two new

clients, Maggie Lane and Sara Freed, who were enmeshed in a dispute so

outlandish that it had to be true. No one could make up such a story. Not even

someone with a mind as warped as Benny's and Benny's is as warped as it gets.
But Maggie and Sara could wait, I told myself as I pulled off the exit and drove

into town. Chillicothe was a typical Midwestern village chiefly frame houses,