The Bitterroots (Cassie Dewell #4) - C.J. Box Page 0,7
Mitchell-Estrella sent the first monthly retainer check to Dewell Investigations. Cassie weighed the decision but cashed it. She needed the money to get started. By doing so she acknowledged her obligation.
Which was why the phone call the night before had thrown Cassie off her game. She knew at the time that Rachel was calling to collect.
*
Rachel Mitchell stood up from behind her desk as Cassie entered her office. Rachel was slim, stylish, and graceful—everything Cassie was not. The attorney had auburn hair, a sly smile, and green eyes. The credenza behind her desk was filled with framed photos of her teenage boys white-water rafting, fishing, and skiing at the local mountain called Bridger Bowl. There was a large shot of Rachel and her handsome husband waving from the basket of a hot air balloon taken somewhere tropical. A black-and-white still showed a much-younger Bull Mitchell astride a horse guiding a long string of pack horses into the Yellowstone Park wilderness.
“Cassie, you look tired,” Rachel said after grasping both of Cassie’s hands in hers in a firm greeting. Right to the point.
“You don’t,” Cassie replied. She knew Rachel either ran or swam every morning before coming to work to stay healthy and fit.
“I was up late on a case,” Cassie said as she sat down in one of two leather-bound chairs across from Rachel’s desk. She dropped her handbag on the surface of the other.
“Anything I should know about?”
“I don’t think so. A skip trace in Big Timber. He’s back home with his family for the moment awaiting trial.”
“Sounds like one of our clients,” Rachel said with a smile.
“I can’t say.” Cassie knew that Antlerhead’s attorney had been assigned through the public defender’s office for his new trial and that Rachel took fewer and fewer of those kind of charity cases. Either way, it was unprofessional for Cassie to discuss her clients.
“Well, I’m glad you’re in one piece,” Rachel said. “It can’t be fun going after desperate people.”
“It isn’t. But it’s part of the job.”
“You’re doing well for yourself,” Rachel said as she glided into her chair. “I’m very pleased to see how well you’ve done here.”
“Thank you.”
“I think it’s important that we stick together as much as we can, you know?”
Cassie nodded her agreement. They’d had this conversation before. Like her own small private investigations firm, Mitchell-Estrella was owned solely by women. Rachel seemed to be more concerned about the fact than Cassie ever was, but it was certainly a bond between them and something Rachel often brought up. This was Montana, after all—the land of big skies, Gary Cooper, ranches the size of small countries, and barely a million people. Cassie had grown up there and was pleased to be back. But there was no doubt that prejudice and misogyny lingered in backwards pockets.
A criminal defense firm run by women was a rarity. Rachel had once told Cassie that when she got together with Jessica Estrella to form their partnership, they were both known by their middle name of Angela. Angela Estrella and Angela Mitchell. They’d agreed to change their professional names to avoid being marginalized and lumped together in the legal community and law enforcement as “the Angelas.”
“And how is Ben?”
“He seems to be doing all right,” Cassie said. “It’s hard for a teenager to fit into a new place and a new school but he seems to be doing fine.”
Rachel nodded her approval. She’d remembered Ben’s name and Cassie couldn’t recall any of the names of Rachel’s boys. She felt her neck flush red. Rachel had a way—whether intentional or not—of making Cassie feel inadequate. Cassie thought it might be one of Rachel’s techniques for getting what she wanted out of people, and it likely served her well with witnesses in the courtroom.
“Jake, Van, and Andrew are doing well,” Rachel said breezily as if to bail her out. “They grow up so quickly, but I’d be lying if I said I wanted all my little boys back. Jake and Van have discovered girls and I’m lucky to see them at all. Andrew, though, is like a young Bull. All he wants to do is go up into the mountains to fish and kill animals. He’s been hardwired like that since he was a baby.”
“Ben’s a wrestler,” Cassie said. “He’s not very good but he’s trying.”
In fact, he’d lost every match thus far in the season. She hoped he’d stick with it. Isabel disliked sports and encouraged Ben to “find his passion,” whatever that was. It was one