by Diane Capri
Not long after I began reading Robbie’s column, the security guard buzzed me.
“Olivia Holmes is here to see you, Judge.”
I hadn’t told anyone that we’d hired Olivia. Judges meeting with lawyers was nothing unusual.
“Send her up,” I said.
My gaze fell upon a note from Margaret that I hadn’t seen before. It was not welcome news. Asbestos files transferred; scheduled for serial status conferences, ten a day for the next thirty days. M.
The CJ could assign me these cases. Administrative matters were his bailiwick. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“Swell,” I said, tossing the note into the trash on my way to greet Olivia at the door to my chambers.
She carried a yellow leather briefcase that would have cost me a month’s salary. Federal judges made a decent living, but nothing like successful lawyers in private practice. We didn’t take the job for the money.
Again, Olivia was dressed as the female version of the successful businessman. I wondered why that armor was so necessary to some women, particularly the diminutive ones.
She struggled to be taken seriously. She was less than five feet tall and well under a hundred pounds, not to mention beautiful. She looked like a hand-painted china doll. Perhaps the accouterments of success added stature in a way that compensated for lack of physical size in a culture where size matters and bigger is better.
I invited Olivia to sit down, my tone icy. Some ground rules had to be established. I was grateful for Olivia’s help, but we were paying more for her expertise than the price of a luxury car. Beyond that, this was our life, our case, and I was married to the client. As the minister said at our wedding, the two of us were one.
Standing on the platform that my predecessor had installed to raise his desk up above those mere mortals on the floor, I towered over Olivia by almost two feet. She had to tilt her head up to look at me the same way one might look at the stars at night.
“Olivia,” I said.
If she felt intimidated, she didn’t act like it.
“Willa,” she responded, just as professionally.
“Please sit down,” I motioned her to one of the frightful green client chairs opposite my desk and returned to the over-sized black leather desk chair, another hold over from my predecessor. The chair and the platform had the effect of making me an imposing presence, a posture I’d exploited more than once.
“I don’t want you calling me here and leaving messages with my secretary. My desk is not private. I have law clerks, the Court Security Officer, court reporters, my staff. Any of them can come in here and look at what’s in plain view. If you need to talk to me, leave your name and number only on my private line. I’ll call you back when I can.” I said this firmly, and watched her bristle.
Clearly, she was used to much more deference than I was showing her. I thought she might actually resign, and it took a while for her to decide how she wanted to handle it.
“Of course,” she finally said, defiantly. “I thought you wanted people to know I was representing your husband.”
“The fact of your representation is something I don’t mind disclosing, but that’s all. What else gets disclosed, and when, is our decision, not yours,” I said.
“All right, Willa.”
Her tone said she wasn’t used to taking orders. Often, a criminal defense attorney is so much better informed than her client that she makes most of the decisions in a case. Olivia accepted my insistence that she wasn’t in charge here, but she didn’t like it.
Surly now, she said, “But you should know that two people can keep a secret only if one of them is dead.”
Something about the way she said it sent a chill up my spine, and I shivered involuntarily.
“There’s something else,” I said.
Her face scrunched up with annoyance. “What’s the problem? If you’ve got something to say, why don’t you just say it, so we can get to work?”
“Alright, Olivia, I will,” I said, bluntly. “I did not give you permission to talk to George about his gun and I was amazed to learn from him that you had. I don’t want you to do it again.”
Her eyes narrowed and a crease appeared between her brows.
She said, “You’re suggesting that I’m supposed to defend George for capital murder and never talk with him except with your permission? That’s a little unconventional, isn’t it?”
Her face lit up as if she’d just figured something out. Her tone softened. “There’s no need for you to be jealous. George may be the last faithful husband in North America.”
How absurd.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 4:30 p.m.
January 29, 2000
I FELT MY ANGER flare and struggled to keep control in the face of such impertinence.
“I am not jealous,” I told her. “And, no, it is not unconventional to insist that someone who works for me do what I want them to do.”
I emphasized my next statement, “I’m not suggesting that you should never speak with George, only that you do it when I’m present or I’ve agreed to it.”
Olivia didn’t respond right away. Instead, she went over to the water carafe on the small server in the corner and poured herself a glass of water. She returned to her chair.
She said, “Willa, we need to get something clear here. I accepted this case because I wanted to. I don’t need the work. And you are not my client. George is. You know that.”
She lightened her tone. “When you’re charged with murder, maybe you can call the shots. Now, if you and George want to fire me, then that’s your choice. But that won’t make me stop working on this case and it won’t keep George from talking to me if he wants to do so.” Paused to sip her water. “Why don’t you think about it a minute. I need to go down the hall.”
Set down her glass and walked out. On me.
No one had ever left my chambers without my consent.
I was flabbergasted. Flummoxed. Outfoxed.
And maybe some more “f” words, but I couldn’t think of any that were repeatable.
Because, of course, she was right. George was the client, I was just the wife.
Even if he wasn’t Olivia’s client, he could talk with whomever he pleased. Something he’d amply demonstrated over the past few weeks, which was the main reason we were in this mess to begin with.
I had no leverage.
I’d chosen Olivia because I’d thought we shared a common goal that would make her easy for me to control. I could replace her, but the next lawyer would likely be worse.
When she returned sporting freshened lipstick, we were both calmer.
A response was due from me, so I said, “You’re right, of course. I apologize. This is very, very upsetting to me and I was shocked when George told me last night that you had been there to interview him and asked him about his gun.”
Graceful in victory, she said, “We have a lot of work ahead of us, Willa, and we’ll get farther if we work together. It’s pretty obvious that you and George are not communicating that well right now. He has taken care of you for seventeen years and he isn’t about to stop doing that because you’ve decided it’s time for you to take care of him,” she lectured me. “So why don’t you let me handle George professionally. Until we get this figured out?”
If I wanted George to get out of this mess, I’d have to let Olivia do her job. I didn’t like it, but I really had no choice. “The least you can do is to keep me informed of what you’re doing and your progress. So we don’t duplicate effort.”
“And you can do the same for me.” She gazed at me pointedly. Olivia might look like a diminutive doll, but she was one hard woman. If I hadn’t understood that before, I did now.
“Let’s work together, shall we?” I asked her, and stuck out my hand. She took it and we shook on our new arrangement. Time would tell whether it would work any longer than the last one.
“You first,
” I said.
She smiled; judges rarely give in gracefully.
“Can we move to your conference room?” She said as she walked through the connecting door without waiting for my consent.
She put her briefcase on my conference table and extracted a light green pasteboard file with a flexible side that expanded to hold the papers she carried in it. From the size of the file, it looked like she’d been doing more than just talking to George without my knowledge.
“I’ve interviewed several witnesses and what I’ve learned has shed a lot of light on what went on the night before the murder.”
I grabbed one of the ubiquitous yellow legal pads stacked on the conference table and picked up my pen to take notes. “In what way?”
“Well, after Tory Warwick beaned you with the crystal and George told everyone to leave, the Warwicks had a doozy of a fight on the way home. I interviewed both Tory and Sheldon separately and they told me essentially the same details.” She flipped through her notes and gave me the highlights. “When they got back to their house in Hyde Park, about a five-minute drive from Minaret, Tory went up to bed and passed out. Sheldon claims he stayed in the rest of the night and then went to bed. But there’s no one who can support that.”
She had put on a pair of reading glasses and now read from the shorthand notes she’d made with black ink from a fountain pen on a white legal pad.
I admire anyone who can take readable shorthand. I’ve wished more than once that I could do it. Usually because I’d like to take better notes myself.
But right now, my inability to decipher shorthand thwarted my excellent skill at reading upside down.
“Since Andy was killed in the early morning, does it matter whether the Warwicks can prove their whereabouts the evening before?”
“Let me finish. The next morning, Tory claims to have slept until eleven. Alone. And Sheldon claims to have gotten up and gone directly to the Blue Coat golf tournament. Again, neither one of them can support the other.” She looked at me over the tops of her half-glasses and held up two of her tiny, be-ringed fingers. “Both of the Warwicks had motive and opportunity. Of course, there’s still the problem with the gun.”
“Yes,” I said, “Let me fill you in on that.”
I told her about my trip to the gun club and what I’d figured out from George’s logs.
“I could have saved you some time there,” Olivia responded. “It’s good you did the foot work so that we can prove the facts if we have to, but I asked George about it.”
“So did I. He wouldn’t tell me.” I was peeved and she ignored it.
“Actually, George’s explanation is quite simple, as most truthful explanations are.” She read from her notes again. “He shot the gun every Wednesday at the gun club, as you discovered. The last time he shot it, Peter, George’s maitre d’, was with him. George had to leave, but Peter wanted to stay longer and keep shooting, so George left the gun with Peter, who took it with him when he left the club that day.”
She looked up at me. “For a lot of scheduling reasons that don’t matter here, Peter never gave the gun back.”
The explanation actually made perfect sense. Peter and George often shot together. Peter, too, had been in the military and liked to shoot handguns. George is not only fond of Peter, but Peter is very responsible. George would view loaning the gun to Peter as a friendly gesture, no more.
Also explained why George didn’t tell anyone what he’d done with his gun. He wouldn’t want Peter to be bothered.
“So how did the gun get from Peter to the killer?” I asked her.
Olivia tapped the fountain pen on one of her front teeth, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I don’t know that yet. I haven’t been able to interview Peter privately. But I will and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me do it my way. In other words, don’t ask him yourself just now, alright?”
I nodded, and she continued. “George wants Peter shielded. Peter has talked with George about this and George says Peter’s answer to the question is simple, too. But I told George I wanted to hear it from Peter directly and I don’t want him to repeat it to you first.”
She must have seen my resistance to her idea, because she said, “If you won’t agree to this, Willa, I’ll stop reporting to you right now. I won’t have you interfering where I think I can do better. It’s my call. You decide right now whether you’ll be working with me or not.”
What choice did I have? I agreed.
But if Peter just happened to tell me, or if I could get George to tell me first, that wouldn’t violate my word to Olivia at all.
When I was in private practice, I was a very creative lawyer.
I told Olivia about my interview with Robbie Andrews, but I skipped the part about Robbie calling 911 while I was there. I also reported my work with the Ask Dr. Andrews column. Olivia took lengthy and skilled shorthand notes I couldn’t read right side up.
When I finished reporting on my progress, I asked her if she’d done anything else.
“I’ve done a lot of things, actually. But what I think you’ll be most interested in is my interview with Robbie Andrews’s husband, John Williamson.” With this, she smiled in a self-satisfied way that made me want to slap her and hug her at the same time.
John had been with the Andrews family at George’s the night of Andy’s murder and would probably have a good idea about what happened afterward. I should have interviewed him, but I hadn’t thought of it.
I used to watch that old television series where the detective kept going back to his suspects, asking questions again and again. I thought, as the audience was probably meant to think, Why can’t this guy just ask everything at one time?
Because you just can’t think of everything all at one time, that’s why. No matter how clever you are.
“Ok. You’re very good and I’m sorry I got mad at you. What did John Williamson have to say?” We smiled at each other then, friends again, storm over.
“Jack’s a very interesting guy,” she said, using his nickname. “I’d never met him until now and I caught him at his office unexpectedly, otherwise I doubt he’d have consented to talk to me.” She looked satisfied with herself again, even though I couldn’t imagine very many men declining any request from Olivia for long. Not only was she beautiful and so petite that men would believe she was helpless and in need of assistance, but she was persistent. Jack Williamson never had a chance.
She read from her notes. “He said there was one hell of a row among the Andrews clan after George threw them all out of the restaurant, too. They started arguing before they left the dining room and continued into the parking lot. As luck would have it, they’d all ridden over together in a limousine, so they were able to keep up the fighting until the car dropped Jack and Robbie off in New Suburb Beautiful.”
“What was the fight about?”
“That’s the interesting part. It seems Deborah Andrews is a long-time alcoholic. Did you know that?” she asked me.
“I knew Deborah has had some problems over the years. Hers has not been an easy life,” I told her.
“Right. Well, she’s in a twelve-step program now and she was at the point where she was supposed to forgive everyone and ask forgiveness in return. So she scheduled the birthday dinner for Andrews, strong-armed the kids into coming, and set it all up as a surprise to him. Apparently he was surprised, but not too thrilled, so there was quite a bit of tension before the fight in the restaurant.”
“I can believe that. From what I’ve seen, that family was a tinder box waiting for a small spark anyway.”
“Right again. The fight was one of those really nasty ones that dredges up old grudges and involves a lot of screaming.” She skipped a few lines of her notes. “Jack said by the time he and Robbie got out of the car, she was in a fit of rage and crying. Of course that meant their part of the fight didn’t end, either.”
Having had a small taste of Robbie Andrews’s ire myself, I could believe that. She had been
vicious to me. I believed she wouldn’t quit until she’d drawn blood from her husband.
Olivia continued. ”The best part, for our purposes, is that these two went to bed separately and mad, too. And they woke up separately with no one to confirm what they did the rest of the night or in the morning.”
I realized that Olivia was collecting evidence, attempting to create reasonable doubt as to whether George had committed the crime, in the hope that we could take it to Drake, the State Attorney, and persuade him to drop the charges before going to the grand jury for an indictment.
It seemed to me Olivia had now identified eight other people with motive and opportunity to shoot General Andrews besides George. And I hadn’t told her about my visit to Deborah Andrews yet. Things were looking up.
Olivia opened her briefcase and took out a couple of sheets of paper, handing them to me over the table.
“What’s this?” I asked her as I began to scan the closely typed pages. I needed my reading glasses.
She saved me the trouble. “It’s the autopsy report on General Andrews. I got it from Ben Hathaway this morning when I went over there to discuss the case.”
I’d found my reading glasses by this time and started to read quickly down the first page. The autopsy was unremarkable, except for the damage to the brain and the skull done by the bullet. Andrews exhibited the expected levels of deterioration of a human body in his age and socio-economic circumstances. The cause of death was pretty obvious.
The time of death wasn’t quite so easy. The report considered rigor mortis (the rigidity that comes and goes shortly after death), livor mortis (the discoloration of the skin caused by the settling of the red cells of the blood due to gravity) and algor mortis, (the gradual cooling of the body).
Andrews was still in full rigor when they found him. That meant he’d been dead at least two hours and less than forty-eight.
Of course, we’d known he’d been dead less than two days because we’d seen him the night before. Sometimes, science was not the only answer. Which is a good thing for all us non-scientific types.