by Diane Capri
No lawyer would stand for it, wouldn’t even believe a judge would suggest such a course. Interference in the progress of the investigation, making the spouse a potential witness when her testimony could otherwise be protected by the marital privilege, second guessing by the client. Enough to make even a bad lawyer run, not walk, in the opposite direction.
I wouldn’t have allowed me to investigate the murder, even informally, if I had been in her shoes.
But I was in my shoes and I would leave nothing to chance. Making sure that George came home to me, safe and whole and as soon as possible, might have been the most important thing I’d ever done in my adult life.
I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it better.
Kate believes the Universe handles all the details; I know that it doesn’t.
Finally, Olivia drained the last of her tea and asked if we could take a walk down on the beach. To my mind, we hadn’t gotten all the issues resolved yet.
“I think we need to get to know each other a little bit before we make a commitment, don’t you? Let’s have a talk,” she said.
Like everything else she’d done, it was unconventional. But then, the situation was unconventional, too.
I led her down the back stairs and let Harry and Bess out ahead of us. We walked around the island, away from the house and, hopefully, any reporters who might be out there with telephoto lenses.
Olivia is as unusually short as I am unusually tall. Standing together, we must have looked like the female version of Mutt and Jeff. Her impeccably tailored suit reminded me of the fancy lawyer trying his case in my courtroom, but hers must have been custom-made. Nowhere could she buy such beautiful suits in size zero.
Finding shoes must have been even more impossible. Her feet were smaller than my hands. Standing next to her made me feel freakishly large and gawky. I moved away a few paces, hoping for perspective.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 2:35 p.m.
January 27, 2000
OLIVIA KICKED OFF HER four-inch heels and left them on the beach, walking just out of the water line where her feet only got wet when a larger wave came up, which was rare. There’s no such thing as surf in Tampa, except during storms.
We walked quite a while in silence, occupied by our own thoughts.
Eventually, still looking straight ahead as she put one foot in front of the other, Olivia said, “My parents were so happy when my brother, Thomas, was born. They’d waited over ten years for a boy and they feared they’d never have him.”
The topic came out of the blue and I had no idea where she was going with it, so I just said “hmmm.”
Olivia continued, “Not that they weren’t happy with me, but my dad wanted a boy.”
Still puzzled, I said, “Not an unusual desire.”
“No, it wasn’t. We lived on a plantation in Louisiana at the time,” she said. “The old farm place. Been in the family for generations, but the taxes and maintenance were making it impossible to keep.”
Every time she paused, I felt like I needed to respond, but I didn’t know what to say. “That’s happened a lot, I understand,” was the best I could muster. It seemed lame, even to me.
“Dad was about to sell the old home place when Mom got pregnant. He was so sure there’d be a boy to inherit, he waited.” She stopped again, but I kept quiet this time. “The struggle to keep the place going nearly killed Dad, but he knew his son would want to live there.”
I wondered what the point of this story was, but this was a chance to practice learning to trust Olivia a little bit. I simply waited during the silence, as we continued to walk.
She continued after a time. “Thomas was a wonderful child. I loved him as if he’d been my very own present from God. To my parents, he was a miracle.”
“Was he?” I asked her. “A miracle?”
”Well, unlike some kids who get that kind of adulation early in life, Thomas wasn’t wild or spoiled really. He loved everyone and everything.” Her voice had taken on an almost dreamlike quality now. “He was a gentle soul who really could have been the model for Margaret Mitchell’s Ashley Wilkes, you know?” she said, referring to the rather spineless character in Gone With The Wind.
I laughed out loud at that. “Ashley Wilkes has captured the hearts of generations of women. I can’t imagine why, though. I always liked Rhett Butler better.”
She laughed, then, too. “Well, Rhett was a take-charge, get-it-done sort of fellow. I probably liked him the best, too.”
Then, she returned to seriousness. “The point is that Thomas never should have been in the army. But he joined because generations of Holmeses had served in the army and he was steeped in tradition, the family heritage and so on.”
I nodded again.
“So, he joined up. Actually, he got into West Point and he came out an officer. A second lieutenant.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved her car key.
When she handed it to me, I saw that she carried her brother’s dog tag. It was like so many army id tags I’d seen over the years, but it was worn and bent. She’d been carrying it around a long time.
I handed the key and the tag back to her.
She walked in silence for a while, then bent down and picked up a pretty good size conch shell that had washed up since this morning.
She took up her story again. “Anyway, Thomas was just starting his career. He served under General A. Randall Andrews.” Ah, I thought, beginning to see where this was going. Some personal reason made her willing to defend George. That was an unexpected blessing; a personal agenda might make her easier to control, later, when she figured out that I was investigating behind her back.
She stopped then, unexpectedly. “Thomas died. There aren’t many American casualties in peacetime, but Thomas was one of them.”
The information shocked me. I wasn’t expecting it. But then, this entire encounter had been completely out of the ordinary. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “How did it happen?”
Olivia threw the conch shell, then, so hard that it hit a live oak tree and shattered. “General Andrews killed him, that’s how it happened.” If you’ve ever tried to break a conch shell, you know how much force it takes. She had a lot of strength for a little woman. Something to keep in mind.
I tried to reason with her. “In the military, these things happen, Olivia. Tough decisions have to be made. You can’t just blame General Andrews for your brother’s death because he was the commanding officer at the time.” Maybe she was mentally unbalanced. Maybe I’d made the wrong choice.
She turned then, and looked at me steadily. “You misunderstand me. General Andrews literally shot Thomas. Andrews killed my brother.” Her tone was quiet and firm; her look challenging me to disagree with her. “The official version is much different, of course. But that’s what happened.”
I nodded and said nothing while I gathered my wits. What could I say? You’re crazy? There’s no way such a thing could happen? “How do you know all of this, Olivia?”
She watched me a bit longer, more intently. “Someday, when we have more time, I’ll tell you.”
I could have asked for more details, but I didn’t think she’d elaborate. Besides, I didn’t need to know her motives. All I wanted was for her to help George.
Then, maybe satisfied that I accepted her story, Olivia turned to continue her walk.
We were about half way around the island by now. I could no longer see downtown from where we stood; we’d reached the northernmost point of Plant Key and started around the other side. She took almost three steps to every one of mine, but she didn’t seem to rush.
“Not long after Thomas died, Dad sold the plantation. Then he and Mom just seemed to give up.” She continued her story in pieces and I stopped trying to respond every time she took a break. “They’re in a nursing home, their room a shrine to Thomas. Both of them live completely in the past. There’s nothing that can be done. They’re in kind of a living deat
h brought on by grief.”
She stopped walking again, and turned to face me. “I owe the man who killed General Andrews quite a lot. I want him to get the best defense possible.” She wasn’t tall enough to look me in the eye, but she turned up her chin and tried. “If George killed Andrews, I want him to go free, just like General Andrews never answered for killing Thomas.”
By now, I found her account bewildering. What motivates people is never what I think obvious.
She finished her thought. “If George didn’t kill Andrews, I don’t want him convicted just because the public wants to paint this as the murder of an American war hero.” She almost spat out the last few words.
I didn’t know what to say. I walked on toward Minaret and Olivia came along. She was still silent, giving me a chance to digest what she’d told me, I guess.
But I wasn’t thinking about her story.
What I thought about were the strengths and weaknesses of having someone with such an emotional stake in George’s future at the helm of his defense. Retaining Olivia might have been as bad as doing the job myself.
But, Olivia’s personal vendetta would make her more malleable as we went along, and I intended to be sure George never went to trial. I needed the aura of innocence around George that Olivia’s reputation would give him, and there was no one else who could supply that protection.
Right at that moment, I felt confident that I could control her, at least long enough to accomplish my goals.
“I see why you want the job,” I said. It was a good time to test the waters, a little. “But I will be doing whatever I think is necessary to prove George did not kill Andy.”
I’m not sure she understood me. Maybe she thought I meant I would do whatever the wife of a criminal defendant normally does.
“If you can’t live with that, you’ll have to wait and volunteer to represent the real killer, when he’s charged.”
She nodded her agreement, then stated her own conditions.
“I won’t take a fee for my work right now,” she said. “You can make a donation to the Thomas A. Holmes Foundation for the value of my services. I’ll be a volunteer. You can’t fire a volunteer.”
We both laughed at that, even though I caught the veiled threat that she would be on the case whether I wanted her there or not.
Maybe we did understand each other, because that was exactly the message I’d delivered to her.
We returned to the point where she’d left her shoes. She bent down to pick them up and shake out the sand. She forced her bare feet into the pumps. Then I walked her back to her car.
“One more thing, Willa.”
“Yes?” I was cautious now.
“I won’t let you surrender Andrews’s killer to Chief Hathaway. Andrews got what was coming to him. I don’t intend to see anyone punished for it.”
She got into her Ferrari and sped off over the bridge, leaving me to wonder if she wasn’t the one who had killed Andy.
She was certainly capable of it.
Revenge is an excellent motive for murder, especially since she believed a heinous wrong had been dealt her by one truly evil man.
As I watched her car make its way across our bridge, I realized that I might not care whether she’d done it, and that bothered me more than knowing there was a real chance that she had.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 3:20 p.m.
January 27, 2000
I CLIMBED UNDER THE wing chair and retrieved the journal I’d thrown there in a fit of pique. Not, as Kate suggested, to dialogue with my inner self. If I was going to investigate murder, I needed an easy way to keep track of what I did, to keep the details straight and quickly available. Something I could carry with me.
From long experience I knew there were few people I could rely on in the world. George and Kate.
And me.
I am always more confident when I control my own life. I could do things quickly, and make sure they stayed done.
I see the hidden relationships others don’t see. Many, many times I’ve received a file of seemingly unrelated facts and put the puzzle pieces together when others before me had failed. I’d never needed to use that skill on us, but now was certainly the time.
Job One: get George out of trouble and get our lives back on track. Soon.
We were playing beat the clock, now. Under Florida criminal procedure, a person can be held up to ninety days without a formal indictment. George’s unusual release on bond didn’t alter that rule. Still, after twenty-one days, we could demand that Drake produce his evidence. That meant I had a narrow window of opportunity to convince State Attorney Drake not to indict George. No time to waste.
I grabbed a Café con Leche and my journal and began to list everything I knew so far about General Andrews, Olivia Holmes and George’s recent activities. My thoughts developed slowly and appeared on blue and white, unlined, recycled paper.
Without George to talk to, I carried on a conversation with myself in writing. But some gremlin, or maybe what Kate would call my spirit, was talking back. It was energizing, in a strange way. Is this what it felt like to be schizophrenic? Is the only difference between me and them that my voices don’t talk in my head, but rather write in my penmanship, in my journal pages, in response to my questions?
After a while, I realized I was out of facts and merely musing.
Everybody has enemies. As peaceful as I am, there are at least a few people who cross the street to avoid me. On any given day, the CJ and I might actually come to blows. And Michael Drake would gleefully lock George in a cell and throw away the key.
Everybody loves somebody sometime, but no one is loved by everyone all the time.
Thomas Holmes’s family couldn’t be the only personal enemies General Andrews had made in the past sixty-five years.
The list of Andrews’s enemies had to be a long one, even if I discounted all of the faceless, nameless multitudes that attended Andrews’s confirmation hearings. Those people were the best and most desirable choices for Andrews’s killer because I didn’t know any of them.
But what if there were countless others, too? Some of whom I did know?
One way to get George out of this mess was to find other likely suspects, creating reasonable doubt of George’s guilt and assuring he’d never be convicted.
Drake, being the political animal he was, would not want to fail. No certain conviction would mean no indictment. That was my goal. I put a dark blue box around it.
But how to get there?
If I could look at the police file, find out what they had, where they’d been, then I’d know what to do next.
It would have been helpful to discuss this with Olivia. But as long as she was on my list of suspects, I couldn’t really do that. Besides, she’d tell me to leave the investigating to her and the police, something I would not do.
For a few minutes, I considered using Frank Bennett. He’d have a lot of information to share. But working with him would be like trying to ride a tiger. He’d want the story, and he’d want to air it as soon as the news happened.
Maybe I could make a deal with him that wouldn’t come back to bite me. It was a decision I couldn’t make yet, but I’d think about it.
I looked at the plan I’d so carefully thought out and written down in the past few hours. Some revisions were in order and I made them.
Then I left for Ben Hathaway’s office. He’d be there. The man had no life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 6:05 p.m.
January 27, 2000
BEN, WHO HAD BEEN sort of a friend of mine until he’d arrested my husband, was at his desk when his secretary ushered me into his messy office. You’d think the Tampa Chief of Police would have better quarters. His office was in the exceedingly ugly blue building on Madison and Franklin, right in the heart of downtown Tampa, where the Tampa Police Department had moved a couple of years ago. Local r
eporters called it the Cop Shop.
Ben stood up as I entered and came around the desk to greet me. I tried not to physically recoil and sat down before he got the chance to touch me, making it awkward for both of us. He nodded and leaned up against his desk.
“What can I do for you, Willa?” He asked me gently, sounding like the friend I once believed he was.
“I’ll come right to the point, Chief.” His eyebrows went up a little at my tone. He crossed his arms over his chest. His pure physical bulk was foreboding, and the power he now held over George’s life was more intimidating. I began to feel sorry, just a little, for some of Tampa’s more sensitive criminals, if that’s not an oxymoron.
I drew in my breath and phrased my outrageous opening request as a demand. “I want to see your file on the Andrews murder investigation.”
Ben stood up a little straighter and walked back around to his chair, putting as much official distance between us as the cramped quarters would allow. “I’d like to help you. You know George is one of my favorite people. But I can’t break the rules, even for George. Or for you.”
“I’m not asking you to break the rules, Ben. I’m only asking you to bend them. You know we’ll get the file eventually.”
We both knew that once George was indicted, Drake would be required to turn over anything that’s exculpatory.
I said, “The evidence against George was on the six o’clock news. So where’s the harm?”
This last part came out a little more sarcastically than I’d intended. It still pissed me off that Ben Hathaway had come to our home to get George instead of allowing him to come downtown for questioning. It was one of the many things I’d never forgive him for, when this was all over.
But I couldn’t let that influence me now.
“That may be,” he said. “But whether or not to release the file is not my call. That one will be made by Drake, when and if it comes to that.” He gave me the official line. “This office doesn’t open its investigative files to the families of accused murderers. And the Florida Supreme Court will back me up on that.”