Jeopardy In July

CHAPTER 1 With lights flashing, an ambulance pulled up to the front door of La Vida Boca before screeching to a stop. Prior to their arrival, the paramedics had disabled the siren out of deference to the three hundred elderly residents, all of them in their eighties and nineties with a few centenarians mixed in. It was wise not to startle them since only one stretcher fit in the back of the ambulance at a time. In truth, the old folks never got too excited about the ambulance anymore, but if a fire engine happened to show up, that got them out of their chairs in a hurry (relatively speaking) because who doesn't love a shiny red fire engine? "Here comes the meat wagon again," Herb Lowenthal remarked, barely glancing up from his newspaper. I was sitting in the opulent lobby of La Vida Boca, a five-star assisted living facility in Boca Raton, Florida and although I'd just met Herb I already had a pretty good handle on his world view. "Welcome to God's waiting room," he added, laughing at his own joke. "Nobody in this place buys green bananas, if you know what I mean." Not sure how to respond, I nodded and smiled. This was a first for me, hanging out at an old folks' home, and it was an eye-opener. Herb laid his crumpled newspaper down so he could study me over his smudged spectacles. Although his bushy eyebrows looked like two white caterpillars taking a nap, his inquisitive eyes missed nothing. "What brings you here, Miss Jamie Quinn, is someone getting a divorce? Since when do lawyers make house calls?" I gave him a friendly smile. "I can't tell you that, Herb. It's called attorney-client privilege. Just like on TV." "Aha!" He pointed a knobby finger at me. "Someone is getting a divorce. Is it the Millers? Those two can never let go of anything. They're still arguing about whether Dewey defeated Truman. I wish I was kidding, oy vey." I glanced at my watch. My clients were late, but I didn't care, I would get paid no matter where I sat. "Before you go starting any rumors, Herb," I said, "you should know that I also prepare simple wills." But I wasn't there to prepare a will; I wasn't wearing my 'lawyer hat' at all that day. I was there as a family mediator to mediate a divorce settlement--and no, it wasn't the Millers. I had mediated hundreds of cases over the years, but never one like this. After sixty years of marriage, Shirley and Clarence Petersen had suddenly decided to call it quits. As a divorce lawyer who had seen it all I shouldn't have been surprised, but as a woman who was recently 'engaged to be engaged' I was thrown off kilter. If Shirley and Clarence couldn't make it after six decades of trying, what hope was there for me and Kip? I pushed that thought away to focus on the work ahead. My first order of business would be to establish whether both parties were competent. A basic tenet of contract law is that you can't enter into a contract if you're not in your right mind. Normally, each party would have an attorney who would've made that determination already but these two didn't want to pay for attorneys. That made it tricky for me. How could I tell? After all, a person with dementia could have lucid moments. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. "Here they come with their next victim," Herb said matter-of-factly. Two extremely buff male paramedics hustled by us pushing a wheeled stretcher between them. One of them held a portable oxygen mask over the patient's face, blocking it from view. I couldn't tell how serious the situation was but nobody seemed to be panicking. A few staff members followed them outside with paperwork and within five minutes the ambulance was on its way, siren turned back on. I looked around the lobby wondering where my clients could be. Maybe they were already there waiting for me? I had no idea what they looked like. Before I could turn around, I had the wind knocked out of me and almost fell right out of my chair. A large chocolate Labradoodle had lunged out of nowhere and was now standing on his hind legs, front paws in my lap, trying desperately to lick my face. "Marley!" I exclaimed, scratching his head. "Aren't you a long way from home?"