Third Time Lucky: Volume 1 (The Coxwells)

by Deborah Cooke

  He got up then, shaking his head as though he was trying to dump pool water out of his ears. Or something I’d said. He got to the door, then paused. I braced myself for another round of persuasion.

  But he surprised me. “I’ll probably regret this, but do you want a lawyer?”

  “My father will be furious with you.”

  “Maybe he’ll get over it.” Jeffrey smiled.

  “I don’t have much money, Jeffrey. You’ll get in trouble over your billings.”

  “My charitable contributions are down for this year. Let me worry about the billing.”

  “Then why?”

  He frowned at his perfectly polished shoes. “Because I think you’re innocent, but I doubt that anyone will have the balls to buck your father on this. Someone told me recently about the merit of trying, even when the odds are long.” He looked up and wonder of wonders, winked at me. “And I seem to remember that justice had something to do with the practice of law.”

  I had to like his attitude. “You’re on. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” He opened the door. “Let me see whether I can make a difference or not.”

  * * *

  Nick followed O’Neill to his office, not nearly satisfied with how things were shaking out. “You can’t think Phil is guilty.”

  O’Neill turned to face Nick, his expression inscrutable. He was a tall man, built lanky and lean. The chief of police of Rosemount was dressed casually, in cords and a plain blue flannel shirt. What was left of his hair was still a ginger hue. If anything, his face had more freckles than before. He looked younger than the sixty-some odd years he must be.

  He gestured to the empty seat facing his desk. “Why don’t you come in, Mr. Sullivan.” He granted a significant glance to the hovering Beverly Coxwell. “Close the door so we can speak privately.”

  His choice of words couldn’t have been a coincidence. The invitation was verbatim with an offer the chief—then a detective—had offered Nick some fifteen years before. Nick hesitated, noting a shrewd gleam in those brown eyes that he had missed as a teenager.

  But he wasn’t a teenager anymore. He closed the door with a decisive click and sat down, refusing to be intimidated or impressed by O’Neill’s silence.

  The officer picked up a pipe from a bowl on his meticulously organized desk. “Do you mind?”

  Nick shook his head and O’Neill took his time lighting his pipe, then ensuring it burned to his satisfaction. The smell of the pipe tobacco was soothing and O’Neill eased into his seat as he puffed. “I can build as good a case against Philippa Coxwell as against anyone right now.”

  He spoke easily, as though they were discussing the weather over a coffee. “I’ve got her fingerprints at the scene, on the point of entry and throughout the house. I’ve got eyewitness accounts of her arrivals there this week, both with and without you. She was alone yesterday afternoon, at the time of the crime, by her own admission. And I’ve got a motive, in her own declaration that Lucia had stood her up for a contract. Her business isn’t profitable yet, is it? I’d think that a big contract could make or break her.”

  “She didn’t do it.”

  O’Neill smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Are you a hunting man, Mr. Sullivan?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “I am. Bow hunter.” He took a deep drag on his pipe. “It’s nearly a lost art.”

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with this situation.”

  “It has a lot to do with it. You see, I hunt with a bow because I like a challenge, I like to make the playing field level. It’s me against a buck, my ability to hunt against his ability to survive. You’ve got to get close to take down a buck with a bow, you’ve got to pick your quarry and stalk him.” He drew deeply and exhaled. “You’ve got to understand how he thinks. There’s no other way to surprise him.”

  “I’d think the instincts of a deer would be reasonably easy to figure out.”

  O’Neill smiled and wagged his pipe at Nick. “That shows you’re not a hunting man. They’re all different. Some are fighters, some are runners, some are tacticians. You’ve got to figure out which kind you’re stalking, you’ve got to put together all the little hints to make the complete picture. Where he eats, where he drops his stools, where he beds down, how he responds the first time you see each other. I like to think of it as a study in character.”

  Nick folded his arms across his chest, but before he could object, O’Neill continued.

  “And the job of a policeman in a small town is much the same. Successive studies in character. In a place like Rosemount, there are few secrets. There is time to develop an understanding of individual characters. I’ve been here my entire career. Some people think that’s because I’m not ambitious. They’re wrong. It’s because I am intrigued by the unfolding of character.”

  He tapped a bit of ash from his pipe into the bowl. “You, for example. I remember the first time you came here, although you probably don’t. You couldn’t have been six months old.”

  Nick tried to hide his surprise.

  “Oh yes. Your father was quite the proud papa and took you out to show you around.” He mused in recollection. “That was when he and Lucia had their fight. They had it, unfortunately for their privacy, in the bar of the Grand Hotel downtown. Your father was buying rounds for everyone there. He was incoherent by the time Lucia got there, but she wasn’t. She had lots to say to him about the responsibility of raising a family.”

  O’Neill smiled. “I’d just joined the force here and was sent down to straighten things out. Not that I had a chance.”

  He paused and Nick found himself intrigued by this family tale he’d never heard before.

  “Lucia wanted the bar closed down. I guess she figured that if the bartender stopped pouring, she had a chance of getting your father out of there. Of course, they were all a bit gone by then, and the bartender refused. The owner had seen the lump of cash in your father’s pocket and wasn’t about to cut in on a run of generosity. And the patrons booed her. There was a helluva fight brewing and I was pretty worried about how I alone could stop things from getting ugly.”

  He shook his head in admiration. “But Lucia did it alone, without raising a finger. I can still see her, standing in the doorway to that bar, the baby that was you cradled against her chest. Now this was one of those old long dark wooden bars, with the glasses displayed in rows, on shelves behind the bartender. I don’t know much about music, but she squared her shoulders and hit that note—what is it? High c?—and those glasses broke one after another after another.” He snapped his fingers, over and over again, in mimicry of the breaking glasses. “I’ll never forget the look on the bartender’s face.”

  O’Neill chuckled. “She told them to go ahead and keep pouring, knowing damn well that they couldn’t. People talked about that for years. The hotel owners made some rumbling about suing her, but that came to nothing. More significantly, your parents left Rosemount that night and were never seen here again.”

  “I never knew about that.”

  “No, I didn’t think you did.” His voice dropped. “You probably also don’t know, Mr. Sullivan, that your father was drunk the night he died.” He looked up, his gaze deadly serious. “Call it curiosity, call it an extension of my study of character, but I checked when I heard about the accident. It wasn’t his first infraction.”

  O’Neill smoked with obvious enjoyment for a few moments, giving Nick time to come to terms with that. Far from being a hero, his father had been the cause of the accident that left four dead. Lucia’s refusal to suffer alcohol in her house suddenly made a lot more sense.

  As did her claim that Sean reminded her of his father. For the first time, Nick understood that that might not be a good thing.

  “It could be said that recklessness was part of your father’s character,” O’Neill said finally. “And it was clear to me years later that one of that man’s sons had inherited that stunning disregard for others, that lov
e of a good time, that need to be the life of the party regardless of the cost.” He looked Nick square in the eye. “And that one son hadn’t.”

  The chief watched the smoke curling toward the ceiling. “I know that you thought you fooled me all those years ago, and to be honest, for a while you did. You were always a smart kid, smarter than average, and disinclined to tell everyone what you’d done.”

  O’Neill lifted a finger. “That’s why it made no sense that you kept getting into trouble. I expected trouble from your brother, but oddly enough, he never seemed to find it.” The chief’s gaze met Nick’s steadily.

  “But as a student of character, you figured it out.”

  O’Neill smiled. “Yes. Not that it mattered. Most of it was minor—tipped outhouses on the farms, flattened tires, boats cut loose and nets damaged, stolen bikes that magically appeared on the other side of town pristine. Annoying, but boyish pranks. Out of character for you, but not worth raising a fuss.” O’Neill nodded almost to himself. “I just enjoy knowing who’s up to what. It’s often a good precursor to the future.”

  Nick had a feeling what was coming.

  “But driving under the influence is not a harmless prank.” O’Neill leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. “And a hit and run accident is no joke, Mr. Sullivan.”

  Nick held the officer’s gaze, his loyalty and his confession under oath not readily sacrificed.

  “You gave me lots of evidence, maybe too much evidence. Your blood alcohol was up, maybe not enough to account for your erratic driving, but then, you didn’t drink by your own admission. It’s hard to guess how alcohol will affect individuals, particularly those who haven’t built up a resistance—and you were over the legal limit.”

  He lit his pipe again. “But from the beginning, I wondered who had emptied the rest of the bottles in the back seat. It sure hadn’t been you. I had a confession, I had the damaged vehicle, I had your fingerprints all over it and enough goodies from forensics to make the whole thing stick. I had an eyewitness, but you know, that case stunk. In terms of character, it just didn’t add up.”

  He shook a finger at Nick. “If you had been drunk, if you had abandoned the good sense I know you have and had still gotten behind the wheel, if you had hit a pedestrian which I believe you would have done anything to avoid, then you, you Nicholas Sullivan, would have gotten out of that car to help. I watched you grow up and you didn’t fool me. You would never have driven away.”

  It was troubling to have a virtual stranger understand him so very well. Nick refused to fidget, well aware that O’Neill watched him carefully.

  The chief exhaled a perfect smoke ring, a startling reminder of Lucia. “You certainly would not have let your brother take the fall for you.”

  Nick didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know about the pedestrian, not until it was too late.”

  “I figured as much. You only helped him because you didn’t know the stakes were that high. Another boyish prank, hmm?”

  Nick nodded silently.

  “I knew who was responsible, but the only person who could have helped me prove the truth wasn’t going to do so. It was a very loyal and very stupid choice on your part, albeit a characteristic one, and you could have paid a far higher price than you did.”

  O’Neill surrendered his pipe. “But someone was smiling down on you. I hope you offered up a prayer once it was all over. The eyewitness identified Wally Long’s boy in the line-up, though at the time of the accident, Wally’s boy had been serving up burgers under the watchful eyes of a good twenty solid citizens. The victim had only a broken leg and decided not to press charges against such a “nice young man”.

  “The whole thing was falling apart when I went ‘round to Judge Tupper and we had a little talk about personality types. Tupper and I—God bless his soul—made a good team. He kept a good Scotch and we had ourselves a number of illuminating discussions. Another thing a small town gives is the opportunity for a bit of discretion. Tupper agreed with me and threw the whole thing out. It didn’t have to go that way, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “Are you saying that I owe you?”

  “No. I’m saying that this time, I want that bastard. This time, I want the truth from you, and I want your help. This is no game. Your grandmother could have been hurt worse than she is and I’m not the only one who would regret that.” O’Neill leaned back in his chair. “But history tells me that the odds are against your confiding in me.”

  “So, you arrested Phil.”

  “Your cooperation seems more likely this way.”

  “Evelyn Donnelly blames my grandmother for the death of her cat.”

  O’Neill rolled his eyes. “Because Lucia gave Evelyn the Evil Eye after they argued about Lucia’s plans to expand her greenhouse. Everyone knows about that, Mr. Sullivan. The thing is, no one ever saw the deceased cat and frankly, who would know if Evelyn was missing one? There have got to be thirty of the suckers in that house, most of them spawned from a dangerously small gene pool.”

  He shook his head. “The fact is, she never dug a hole and she never took a dead cat to the vet, which means she either chucked it out in the trash—unlikely given how she dotes on those felines—or its little carcass is still in that house. Though you’d never be sure by the smell, I’m guessing that there was no dead kitty.”

  “On the basis of character?”

  O’Neill smiled. “Evelyn is very fond of stories. She tends to get the truth and her stories all tangled up. It’s mostly harmless, since everyone knows how she is. You’ll have to do better.”

  O’Neill thought he had Nick all figured out, but he had one thing wrong. Nick leaned forward to tap a fingertip on the desk. “You’re wrong. I’d give Sean to you on a silver platter for his hurting Lucia. But I can’t. I’ve got nothing, though it isn’t for lack of trying.”

  O’Neill’s eyes snapped. “Maybe you don’t know that your brother paid a visit to Lucia on Monday afternoon. Maybe you don’t know that they had a very heated argument that day, that he threatened her if she did not give him money. A lot of money.”

  Nick eased back and heard suspicion in his own tone. “How do you know this?”

  “Maybe you don’t know that your brother is on workers’ compensation, but that that particular free ride is coming to an end. Maybe you don’t know that he’s extremely short on cash, which is a very unhappy situation for a party boy.”

  The chief straightened. “I’m guessing that you don’t know just how big the Sullivan estate is—or that Lucia has willed it to both of you in equal parts. Or that she has put in an offer on that old theater downtown. She intends to renovate and start a company, a very very expensive proposition and one with little prospect of return. Win or lose, it will take a big chunk out of that estate any time now.”

  Nick didn’t have any troubles doing the math. It was now or never, if either he or Sean wanted to maximize their inheritance. “Maybe you don’t know that he hits his girlfriend.”

  O’Neill’s surprise was quickly veiled. “Now that’s a very good start, Mr. Sullivan.” He picked up a pencil and started to write.

  “You seem to know a lot about my grandmother’s business.”

  O’Neill cast his pipe into the bowl, his first show of impatience. “I have a conflict of interest in this case, Mr. Sullivan, but I’ll be damned if I let that interfere with my nailing whoever injured Lucia. I’m the best man for the job and I’m going to nail your brother, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  That was good enough for Nick. If O’Neill was seeing Lucia, then he had an endorsement that couldn’t be questioned. “I don’t have anything concrete to tell you, and what I do know, you won’t believe.”

  O’Neill smiled. “Try me. The truth is that since I started visiting Lucia Sullivan, I’ve become somewhat accustomed to unconventionality.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Half an hour later, Nick had told all he knew and the two of them were trying to formulate a plan. McAllister came
to O’Neill’s door, looking haggard and determined. “Philippa Coxwell has chosen me to represent her.”

  Whatever Nick had expected him to say, it wasn’t that, but McAllister continued in a flat monotone. “I want bail posted for my client immediately. She’s got no previous record, the evidence is circumstantial, she has a business to run and there’s no reason to believe that she would not show up for a hearing.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I suggest $500, tops.”

  “She should be freed on the basis of her word alone,” Beverly interjected.

  “It’s not up to me and you know it.” O’Neill picked up the phone and dialed.

  Nick realized belatedly who the presiding judge in Rosemount would be. This was not going to go well.

  “You tell that bastard...”

  Jeffrey touched her arm. “Shh, Mrs. Coxwell, please.”

  Her eyes flashed and she pointed at Nick. “You tell him then.”

  Nick smiled. “I’ll be delighted, when the time is right. Right now, it could hurt Phil.”

  Beverly beamed at him. “I’m starting to like you, Nick Sullivan. What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

  O’Neill covered the receiver with his hand, sparing Nick from answering that. “He says $25,000.”

  “What?” McAllister started to sputter, but then managed to compose himself. “That’s completely disproportionate to the offense and hardly representative of Philippa’s history...”

  O’Neill handed him the phone and he repeated his objections, albeit in a more temperate tone. His features tightened as he listened to whatever response he was given. “Yes, she is my client, sir.”

  O’Neill exchanged a glance with Nick.

  “No, it is not my intent to humiliate you publicly, sir.”

  “He seems to be doing well enough with that alone,” Beverly muttered and Nick silently agreed.

  McAllister straightened. “That’s utterly unfair, sir. My client has no record...”

  He listened again, then shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, you do have an unmistakable conflict of interest in this case and it might be prudent...”