Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  None of the Andrews clan had told Olivia what they were all fighting about that night. But now, I felt sure that the argument was about the affair.

  What a despicable man Andy had grown to be in the years since we’d known him. George thought Andrews had become mentally unstable and that much was clear. But Benson and Warwick nominating such a man to the Supreme Court was morally corrupt, done primarily to hide criminal conduct. Andrews was not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice. Nor was he fit to be an army general or a father and husband, for that matter. The trouble was, at this point there was nothing to be served by bringing Andrews’s participation in the entire squalid mess into the public’s awareness. Andrews was already dead. Society couldn’t execute him again.

  My mother, or George, or what Kate calls my spine, or maybe even my subconscious had already decided what I would do in this circumstance before I ever even knew the problem existed. Privacy may not actually be a Constitutional right, as many scholars insist. But I believe in the value of privacy. I believe in dignity and morality, too. There is a struggle between free speech and privacy and that struggle, when I have to resolve it, means that personal privacy wins.

  What people do with their personal lives, in sexual matters between consenting adults that harmed no one, was not going to be the subject of dinner table conversation in Tampa because of any decision that I made.

  Maybe if Andrews was still alive, the public would have had a right to know that he was a bisexual, guilty of sexual harassment, before he was settled on the Supreme Court for life. And, if those had been his only faults, he might have been confirmed anyway. It’s happened before.

  But Andrews was already dead. No public purpose would be served by revealing his sexual privacy information now. I, for one, did not subscribe to the theory that the public had a right to know everything about everyone.

  Secrets can be corrosive, but even if I do behave like Mighty Mouse sometimes, I know some secrets must also be respected. The older I get, the more I understand the benefits of just being kind.

  The Tennis Club list would not be made public. I didn’t know where Tremain had gotten it, but the private lives of consenting adults were going to stay private in this trial. If Tremain chose to ask Newton about the list on the witness stand, then Newton would admit his participation in the club or face contempt sanctions. But the list would not be released. I prepared an order sealing the list and requiring Tremain to dispose of all existing copies of it. None of which would prevent someone on the list from disclosing it again in the future.

  But there were bigger issues to resolve.

  As Olivia had said a few days ago, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 8:30 a.m.

  February 1, 2000

  WHEN THE NEWTON TRIAL reconvened the next morning and I announced my ruling on the list, there was great gnashing of teeth at the defense table. Then, both parties advised they had reached a conditional settlement overnight and agreed to a voluntary dismissal.

  Neither of the litigants offered me a reason for their decision and the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Newton’s sexual identity was never proved, but neither was the item about him retracted by The Review.

  Although the case was over, the privacy issues it raised lingered with me for quite a while. Celebrity comes with a very high price tag. If Charles Benson hadn’t been the President’s kid, his youthful drug use and stint in rehab would have passed under everyone’s radar. General Andrews would never have been given the bargaining power to demand his Supreme Court nomination, and he might still be alive.

  I crossed the Newton case off my docket, improving my statistics. I turned my attention to the rest of the asbestos cases and finished up my last status conference.

  At about two o’clock, Margaret interrupted me for a call from Olivia. She had posted a young lawyer at the Hillsborough County Courthouse to keep tabs on the proceedings.

  “I thought you’d like to know. Drake only has three more witnesses this afternoon. Then he’ll give George’s case to the grand jury.”

  Worry gnawed at my stomach. “Are they going to finish today?”

  “I’d say that’s likely,” Olivia told me. She didn’t have to say what the outcome was going to be. We both knew.

  “Okay, thanks.” I stood up and shrugged off my robe, reaching at the same time for my purse and my car key. I lifted the receiver away from my ear to hang up.

  “Willa?” I heard Olivia’s voice as the receiver was almost back in its cradle.

  “Yes?”

  “If you’ve got anything else up your sleeve, now would be a good time to get it over here,” she told me.

  I replaced the receiver and jogged out to the car.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 3:30 p.m.

  February 1, 2000

  I’D HAD A WHILE to think about how I would handle the denouement. It seemed to make the most sense to cover the matter alone. I couldn’t do it in my office, the place I felt safest in the world. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, Federal courthouses are guarded like the Crown Jewels. It would be next to impossible to get a gun, knife or other deadly instrument into my chambers.

  But I’d never get the killer to go for that, anyway. So I had to go there.

  I reviewed my props and my dialogue. I thought I had worked out all the possible snags. Even the knotty little problem of proving what I was sure I’d hear had been gone over carefully.

  One more thing to do first.

  It took Greta and me about twenty minutes to get to Jetton Street. The house was closed up tight, just like the last time. The uninitiated might think no one was home, but I knew better. I parked down the street and waited until the Gorgeous Gargoyle left. Then, I got out and walked up to the front door.

  I didn’t bother to ring the bell. I now knew it didn’t work. I just turned the knob.

  Locking the door is a habit and we only think we do it most of the time. Actually, I’d sentenced many a burglar who walked into homes where people left doors and windows unlocked.

  I wasn’t looking to steal anything and I wasn’t breaking any laws. Not really. Michael Drake wouldn’t see my actions this way, but after all, I was a family friend. At one time, anyway.

  I heard the sound of computer keys clicking and followed them down the hallway to the third door on the right, facing the back of the house. The door was open.

  She was sitting at the keyboard. Concentrating intently on the screen, she didn’t sense me standing there for quite a while. It gave me a chance to look around the room.

  The only window was closed and the drapes drawn to keep the light from reflecting off the computer screen. When I saw the couch, I wanted to laugh. Even an online psychologist has to have a couch, I guess. There were two end tables and the only light was from the two small table lamps.

  The computer desk, a tall bookcase, and the very large chair Robbie sat in completed the furnishings. Not much room for a physical struggle. Not that I thought there would be one. Anyway, I could take her. Right. She outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds.

  Finally, Robbie looked up, startled. “Did Juanita let you in?”

  If she had, she’d be looking for a new job tomorrow.

  “I knocked. No one answered and I let myself in.”

  “I guess I’ll have to talk to Juanita about keeping the doors locked, then. I’m working. And I said all I’ve got to say to you already. Please show yourself out.” Robbie turned back to her screen.

  I guess she intended to ignore me so I’d go away.

  “I’m not leaving, Robbie, until you talk to me. You can do it now or ten years from now. But we are going to talk.”

  She looked at me with such contempt that I nearly lost my resolve.

  For a while, she continued to ignore me, but eventually she must have tired of staring at the screen and pretend
ing to work.

  She finally turned around and got up.

  Even standing, Robbie was a good foot shorter than I am. “What do you want?”

  “May I sit down?”

  “No. You don’t have anything to say to me that you need to sit down for.”

  “All right. I’ll say this standing up.”

  I leaned my side against the left door jamb and propped my right arm against the right jamb, effectively blocking her exit.

  “I’ve discovered that your husband and your father were having an affair. I know who killed Andy.”

  I watched her closely.

  She was controlled. She hesitated, maybe trying to decide how to handle it. That she was deciding told me more than any instant reaction would have.

  Robbie knew about the affair. And she’d known for some time. The information was no surprise to her, which made me wonder who she’d told about it. Even though Robbie was the keeper of other people’s secrets, I thought she wouldn’t have kept this secret of her own.

  Secrets were something I now knew more than I wanted to know about. I had my own secrets, which I guarded carefully. But they were the tame variety. The kind a woman in public life has to be vigilant about. Over the past few days I’d learned that most people have secrets of one kind or another. And the lengths to which they’ll go to protect them were farther than one might think.

  “That’s preposterous. If you’re through slandering my husband and my father, you can leave now. You’ll hear from our lawyer.” Robbie came toward me and I think she really expected me to let her through the door.

  I braced my right arm hard against the doorjamb and she stopped before she ran into it. Now, she stood about eighteen inches from me.

  “Is there something else? Surely you don’t want to continue with this?” She was still forceful, belligerent.

  I had trouble keeping hold of the sympathy I’d felt for her last night. “Don’t you want to know who killed your father?”

  I asked her softly. I didn’t need to get into a shouting match with her. Besides, if you’re quiet, sometimes they listen.

  “Why would I believe you? You just lied to me and I already know you can’t be trusted. Get out.” Robbie started toward me again.

  I stood up from my slouching position and filled the doorway as completely as I could. Since she couldn’t step through unless I moved, she stopped about two inches from my face.

  To shake her up, I said, “I think I understand why you killed him, Robbie. He was a mean, vicious and vindictive man. He never loved you. He stole, in the end, the only thing you ever thought you had: Jack.”

  As the words left my mouth, I felt the crushing weight of George’s arrest for murder and his impending indictment settle on my shoulders.

  It’s simple to have principles and values when you live in a safe world, surrounded by people who love you and take care of you. Many of us never put those principles to the test. I resented Robbie and the whole damn situation for making me learn that lesson.

  As I confronted Robbie, I became so filled with resentment that I actually wanted to hurt her. My entire body shook with barely suppressed rage. I wanted her to try to brush past me, to give me an excuse to hit her.

  Since childhood, I’d never knowingly harmed another human being. The desire to do so now frightened me to my toes.

  Robbie had turned my entire life inside out and upside down. I wanted to have compassion for her, but there was none in me.

  Fortunately for both of us, Robbie didn’t try to move me by force. Instead, she just sat back down and cried, making her pathetic, the situation abominable.

  And I really believed, in that moment, that a jury might have excused her if she’d done more.

  My anger evaporated like dry ice.

  General Andrews wasn’t just a lousy husband and a lousy father. Andy had never loved Robbie and he had taken from her everyone she ever thought had loved her: he had driven her mother to alcoholism, her brothers away from home and ultimately, he’d stolen the affections of her husband.

  How much was a human supposed to withstand?

  A colleague told me once that men are animals, civility just barely keeping their hostility under the surface. I’d scoffed at the time.

  Life was just one big learning experience, wasn’t it?

  “I didn’t kill my father, Willa.” Robbie sat down heavily in the chair across from me. “Not that I didn’t want to. I would have. I went out there that night to kill him. I even took George’s gun with me.” As I’d already guessed. “Only, I didn’t know it was George’s gun until later.”

  “How did you get George’s gun?” At last, the thing I really came here to confirm.

  Her answer seemed unresponsive. “I like antiques. You maybe noticed the ones I’ve collected?”

  Her home was filled with furniture that even I recognized as valuable and quite old. I’m not a collector, but in the years we’ve inhabited Aunt Minnie’s house, I’ve learned a few things about antiques. I nodded.

  “So, that night, I was looking at the sideboard at the restaurant. It’s got a very unusual carving on the back. I’d seen a similar one a few years ago, at an auction house, but I couldn’t afford to buy it at the time.”

  I listened without interruption.

  “I wanted to know who manufactured it. Sometimes, they stamp the drawers.” She looked down now, maybe, finally, a little embarrassed. “I opened the drawer and there it was.”

  “The manufacturer’s stamp?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “The gun. I picked it up and put it in my purse. I don’t know why I did it. I guess I just wanted to see if I could get away with it. And I did.”

  Of course she did. George would never expect a guest to steal from him. No one at Minaret would have expected it.

  But Robbie’s taking the gun was a piece of information I’d never have been able to prove without her admission. This last block of the case I had built finally fell into place.

  I was still curious about a couple of things.

  “Why had you decided to kill Andy that particular night?”

  Any other time, and George would have had his usual alibi; he’d have been in the restaurant with half of Tampa to confirm his presence.

  She looked up at me as if I’d finally lost my last marble. “You already know the reason. His affair with Jack. It had been going on for years. Even when we lived in Colorado. Jack only wanted to move here to be near Dad.”

  “How long had you known?”

  “A long time. I’d tried everything. I’d threatened Jack, argued, pleaded. I’d pled with Dad, too.”

  “Made threatening phone calls?”

  It was the only explanation I had for the messages Deborah Andrews had told me she heard on the answering machine. Anonymous phone calls seemed to be Robbie’s speed more than anyone else involved in this mess.

  Her eyes widened, then narrowed.

  “I told you to stay away from my mother,” the snarling Robbie had resurfaced. She’d changed as quickly as flipping a light switch. It was hard to feel pity for the snarly one.

  “So, why that night? If you’d known about the affair for years, why kill him now?”

  She sighed and her shoulders drooped. “You already know we were all arguing that night?”

  I nodded.

  “We fought over my threats to tell the world about Andy being gay. The family was outraged with me.” She waited a couple of beats. “Families keep a lot of secrets, Willa, for a lot of dysfunctional reasons.”

  She sighed and blew out the air through her mouth. “When the limo dropped us off at home, Jack called my bluff. He told me he loved Dad. More than me. And if I told the world Andy was gay, they’d be free to be together. And he said they would.”

  I made a mistake, then, I let my pity blind me to her instability. I let my guard down.

  She continued, “I could live with a bisexual husband. But, the only way to keep him was to eliminate the competi
tion.”

  “What happened when you got to Andy’s house?” I asked her. I remembered the snakes and the gators in the back yard. There was no way Robbie would have followed Andrews out to that fishing boat in the dark, no matter how angry or threatened she’d felt.

  “I went around to his den. He was getting ready to go fishing. I knocked and he looked up and waved me in. I took George’s gun out of my purse and went in pointing it at him. I had every intention of killing him. I wanted him dead. I’m glad he’s dead.” She’d started to tremble now, remembering the confrontation.

  Robbie’s face suffused red and tight white lines stood out on either side of her pursed lips. Her emotional state was volatile and unpredictable. My pity seemed sorely displaced now.

  “But I wanted to tell him what I thought of him first. That’s where I made my mistake,” she said, defiant as any teenager.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him to leave my husband alone. I told him he was a lying, despicable person and a worse father. I said everything to him I’ve ever wanted to say. Everything I’d said in therapy for years. And do you know what he did?”

  She became even more enraged.

  Her memory of the confrontation took on a life of its own. I suspected that she had relived this humiliating scene at least a hundred times since the night Andy died.

  “What did he do?” I whispered into the void.

  “He laughed. He said, ‘Put the gun on the desk and go home, Robbie.’ Just dismissed me! Went back to his fishing tackle! I wanted to shoot him. I wanted to. I really did.”

  She started to cry, then. Huge, wrenching, uncontrollable sobs that shook her entire body.

  “What did you do with the gun?”

  I needed to know. This was perhaps the most important part of her story to George. Merely removing the gun from the sideboard and taking it to Andy’s house wasn’t enough. Someone had used it to kill.

  “I put it on the desk, like he said. I left the suicide note I’d written for him there, too. I just left. I didn’t do anything to him at all.”