About Nina Reilly
Nina’s Life
Courtroom Snapshots
Nina’s Life
The Starlake Building, 2489 Lake Tahoe Boulevard.
“The property manager, evidently glad to see her, showed her a small corner suite with a reception area where a secretary and a couple of client chairs might fit. There were two inner doors, one of which led to a long room that would make a nice combined law library and conference room. A big closet with several electric sockets could stow a fax, copy machine, and supplies, even a small refrigerator.
When she raised the blinds on the side wall in the main office, she could hardly believe her eyes. Lake Tahoe, tufted with whitecaps in the wind, less than a mile away, dominated an unobstructed view of marsh and trees. Other than a dirt road, there was no evidence of human activity in that direction…”
“Nina F Reilly, Attorney-At-law the sign on the building read in large, raised block letters.”
– Motion to Suppress
“Rising about a hundred and fifty feet above the lake’s surface, Fannette Island sat in the middle of Emerald Bay like the important central jewel in an exquisite pendant.”
– Breach of Promise
Fannette Island
Where Paul Van Wagoner stays
“He took the elevator down to the first floor of the building into the carefully controlled pandemonium of the casino, where he couldn’t resist pausing to make a twenty-dollar cash bet at one of the blackjack tables. Although it was nine a.m. on a beautiful day, busload after busload of tourists checked out the action.
She followed him up a few porch steps to the solid carved front door, but he took her arm and steered her around to the back. A pine deck about four feet above the ground, of the same warm color, encircled most of the house extending out into the yard about thirty feet in back. The forest beyond was undeveloped. Native shrubs, tall trees and a soft mat of pine needles preserved the wilderness feeling. They walked down a few steps into the yard, and found at the far boundary a dip near the fence where a creek would run in the spring.
Like waking from a dream, this whole thing felt so real and unexpected that Nina hadn’t said a word. She just followed Paul around as he went to the front door and opened it to an entry with curved wooden hooks protruding from its walls.
Nina’s house
“For skis, see?” Paul said, demonstrating how they would be hung. “Here’s where you take your winter woolies off.” But she had moved on, venturing onward into the living room. This room rose all the way to the exposed ceiling rafters. Past the wood stove a picture window at least fifteen feet high overlooked the deck and back yard forest beyond.
“The kitchen,” Paul said. Off to the right of the living room, the small and well-equipped room featured the ideal window over the sink opening onto yet another view. She stood at the window for a moment, arms folded, gazing out at the sunlight on the trees, taking in the clarity of the air that let each leaf and pine needle quiver individually in the breeze and the tranquil perfection of this artwork composed by nature.
Then he led her down the hall to a large bathroom with a claw-foot tub, sun pouring through the dust in the air, and two bedrooms beyond, lit from one angle like Vermeers, still, suggestive, and enticing.
Courtroom Snapshots from Nina Reilly’s court stomping grounds
The courtroom
“Nina stood up as Judge Curtis E. Milne of the Superior Court of El Dorado County materialized from the wall behind his dais. Or so it appeared. Actually, a nondescript, burlap-textured partition extended out in front of his personal back door to the courtroom, and he merely came out and sat down behind his tall desk, but the effect was that of a magical manifestation. A Baraka chief from the Congo would have appreciated this encouragement of superstitious respect.”
– Breach of Promise
“With nary a rustle, the twelve people chosen to shape the future of a number of other people in the courtroom filed out the door behind them, followed by the two alternates…
The wait had begun.”
– Breach of Promise
The jury room
The law library
“‘Could we talk in the law library?’ Nina asked Collier. Piling a load of papers into his arms, he followed her next door. In the small library, empty except for them, they looked out the windows toward the new community college campus across Al Tahoe and the cumulating clouds.
The rooms incandescents glowed in feeble protection against swiftly descending blackness. Windowpanes rattled and trees writhed in the gale winds outside.”
– Motion to Suppress
At the bottom of Howard, the Embarcadero and Bay Bridge buzzed unseen, angry hives of energy. The tall building glass reflected the sun’s intense beams right at her. People glowed like aliens, or so she projected. San Francisco wasn’t her city any more. The town of South Lake Tahoe had sheltered her for the last few years after she left the Montgomery Street law firm where she had begun the practice of law, and the city had become a stranger.
– Unfit to Practice
San Francisco