An Imperfect Spy by Amanda Cross Read Free Book Online Page B

it be known that her qualifications were as good as mine, in fact better, and that I was willing to join her in a suit claiming so. They decided the easiest way out of that was to give it to us both. She was the first tenured woman in the place, if you can believe it. And they thought once she had joined the club, so to speak, she would shut up and go away. But she didn’t.”
    “And you think they killed her; shoved her undera truck and brushed their hands, saying ‘That takes care of
that
!’ ” Kate put down her fork. “Have you any evidence,” she said, “apart from motive, opportunity, and your deep suspicions?”
    “It’s not circumstantial evidence, god knows. She landed in front of the truck, one of those high babies, and the driver never saw her. She wasn’t a very big person.” He paused for a moment.
    “Is there any evidence that she was pushed?” Kate repeated.
    “People waiting with her for the light think she must have been, because of the way she sort of collapsed all of a sudden. But no one saw exactly what happened. All eyes were on Nellie and the truck; all anyone remembers are the screeching brakes after she was hit. The police have done their best, but there’s damn little evidence really, apart from the fact that there’s no reason on earth why she should have fallen like that. They did the usual autopsy and there were no obvious health problems—heart attack, liquor, drugs, nothing like that.”
    “I hope Reed and I aren’t expected to find out the truth about her death,” Kate said. “I know I’ve investigated things from time to time, but I want to make sure that we’re coming to teach a course and run a clinic. We’re not expected to run an investigation, are we?”
    “Certainly not. My only hope is that in this course we may be able to spread a little basic feminism around, and suggest that if law and literature can speak to each other, so can law and life. As it’s lived, I mean, not as it turns up in the final publishedopinion. That’s why I want to go back and look at the cases we teach from the beginning, look at the depositions and the stories, not just at the briefs and the opinions. Maybe we can do a case one week and a novel the next. Something like that.”
    “Well,” Kate intoned, “ ‘I’m more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society.’ Hannah Arendt said that; wrote it, in fact, to Jaspers. I’m inclined to agree. And a revolution at Schuyler Law sounds as near to the fringes as I can get without leaving academia altogether.”
    “Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to talk about schedules. What day of the week are we going to do this?”
    “It’s up to you,” Kate said, “seeing as how you’re taking it as part of your usual schedule. I can probably make it any day, as long as it’s the afternoon, or at least very late in the morning.”
    “Good. How’s Wednesday?”
    “The very day I would have preferred,” Kate said. “Wednesday is such a nice, middle day, so neatly balanced on both sides of the workweek.”
    “Wednesday afternoon it is. If it’s all right with you, I’ll arrange the hour and the room. Now, shall we have an exam or a paper?”
    “Oh, let’s have an exam,” Kate said. “I never give exams, and I read too many papers in my line of work. Besides, if we word the questions carefully, we may actually find out what they’ve learned from us.”
    “I warn you, that may be a shock.”
    “I’ve said my prayers. It’s too late now to worry about shocks. Are you planning to give me all those papers?”
    “If you can bear it. They’re the cases I thought we might use, around which I hope you will drape the proper literary texts. Literary critics are allowable, if they can be read without a French dictionary.”
    “Well,” Kate said, taking the stack of paper from him, “I’ll do my best. What are we calling the course?”
    “ ‘Women in Law and