Garrett,” Sarah Woodruff said as soon as they were alone in Mary Garrett’s corner office on the top floor of the priciest office building in downtown Portland. The large picture windows gave clients spectacular views of the river, three snow-capped mountains, and the West Hills. The decorations were ultramodern: sheet-glass desktops, gleaming aluminum tube armrests, and abstract art that confused Sarah. Mary Garrett was just as disconcerting as her office furnishings. The attorney wore the kind of designer clothing and spectacular but understated jewelry that were found in the glossy pages of upscale fashion magazines, but her clothes and accessories didn’t look right on the diminutive, birdlike woman with her overbite and dense, unfashionable glasses. None of this discordance mattered to her clients. No one hired Mary Garrett for her looks, and Mary assumed that Woodruff wanted her in her corner because Garrett had taken Woodruff apart during cross-examination in a trial that should have been a slam dunk for the prosecution but ended in an acquittal for one of the least likable drug dealers Mary had ever represented.
