A Midnight Clear

by Libby Howard

  The detective leaned back, a satisfied expression on her face. “One more question—do you remember seeing anyone in particular on the dance floor?”

  Slowly I shook my head. “No, just a lot of men and women. About half the men had their jackets off, but that’s really all I noticed. I was more concerned with getting to the elevator and the restroom at that point.”

  Detective Burgess scribbled a bit more in her notepad, then stood. “Thank you for coming down, Mrs. Carrera. We’ll let you know if we have any more questions.”

  I followed her out of the room and to the entrance of the station, then walked through the parking lot to my car. I was no closer to solving the mystery of who killed Judge Reynolds than when I’d come in. And I got the impression the police weren’t any closer either.

  Chapter 10

  “Is this Kay Carrera with Pierson Investigations?” A woman asked, her voice vaguely familiar.

  “Yes, it is. How can I help you?”

  I had the phone on speaker, but pulled over to the side of the road when I realized this was a work call. I didn’t have a work cell phone and had taken to giving my personal number out to any of my clients. I was guessing that J.T. must have given the woman my number. He hadn’t told me of any new cases this morning though. It was a bit irritating that he was giving clients my number without briefing me first. Actually it was irritating that he wasn’t paying my cell phone bill or providing me with one for work. That was definitely a conversation we needed to have sometime soon.

  “This is Irene O’Donnell. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but I met you last night at the holiday party?”

  I would have been a horrible investigator if I hadn’t remembered the woman who tried to hire me to dig up dirt on a judge even if I hadn’t spent the last hour being grilled about that conversation by a police detective.

  “Yes, I remember you.” I looked around, feeling as if I were in a forties film noir and wondering if there were plainclothes detectives nearby, waiting for me to lead them to their suspect.

  “I think…I think they’re going to arrest me for Judge Reynolds’ murder.” Her voice raised in octave.

  From the interview I’d just had at the very least they were going to question her, but I doubted the police were at the arrest stage of their investigation.

  “You’re not the only one with a broad motive, Irene,” I said. “Just because Judge Reynolds ruled against some of your cases doesn’t make you a top suspect for murder.”

  “It was a lot of cases. I’ve complained about him before, even made comments about how it would be a shame if he got run over by a bus or fell off a tall building. Everyone knew I had issues with the guy.”

  “And I’m sure others had issues as well.” I tried to think through what I knew about the victim. “There was that affair he was having Helen Dixon. And he was known for controversial opinions, speaking his mind, and ruffling feathers. Irene, you’re probably down near the bottom of a very long list of people who made their dislike of Judge Reynolds publicly known.”

  “I was at the party. And I’m sure my fingerprints are all over that bathroom.”

  “Because you work there?” Why had she called me? I’d just met her last night, and hadn’t seen her at all after her drunken offer to hire me.

  “I work on the third floor. Why would my fingerprints be in a second-floor restroom?”

  “Because you were meeting another lawyer in his or her office, or in a conference room, or on your way up from the lobby and suddenly had to pee badly? Irene, none of this makes you a murder suspect.”

  It didn’t, but I remembered how intent the detective had been in her questioning and wondered if there was something she knew that I didn’t, if there was something more than the circumstantial stuff Irene was telling me.

  “I don’t have an alibi,” she blurted out. “I drank too much and didn’t want anyone to see me puking my guts out in the bathroom, so I headed up to the third floor where my office is. I was at the party. I was gone the whole window of Judge Reynolds’ murder. I’ve got no alibi, I’ve got motive, and my prints are in the restroom.”

  I thought back to the conversations I’d had with Judge Beck, the boring law books I’d been reading at night, my experience both as a journalist and a generally nosy person. This was all certainly enough to put a spotlight on Irene, but no jury would convict based on this alone. It all could be explained away by a good lawyer. Which was what Irene needed if she truly felt she was about to be arrested.

  “If they want to talk to you again, have your lawyer present,” I warned. “And don’t represent yourself. Get someone else to look after your interests.”

  Irene snorted. “I’m not such an idiot as to represent myself in a possible murder case. I’ve got a lawyer, but I want to hire you. I know you refused before, but this time it’s not just about my career. I need you to dig up everything you can so that if they charge me, my lawyer can show that one, or a dozen, people have the same means, motive, and opportunity as me to do Judge Reynolds in.”

  Ah. So that was the reason J.T. had given her my number. Yes, she’d probably asked for me, but any client I brought on myself was mine through our agreement. And I’d get a finder’s fee as well.

  I went over my rates, well aware that Irene probably knew all about the fees and incidental expenses involved in hiring an investigative service. Then I took down her e-mail address, letting her know that I’d forward her a contract and would begin as soon as I received the signed copy back.

  “Consider it done,” she replied.

  I climbed into my car to head back to the office so I could send over the contract and go ahead and get started, because I had a new client. And the case I’d been interested in as a curious onlooker had suddenly become work.

  J.T. and Molly were both out of the office when I got back, so I got right to work on my newest client. Irene sent the contract right back along with her credit card number for the retainer fee and the name and number of the attorney that would be representing her if what she feared happened and she got arrested or called in for additional questioning.

  I eyed the background checks and skip traces on my desk realizing it might be another evening where I was working from my dining room table. Molly had enough to do on her own, and some of these were a bit more involved than she was ready to handle. I sorted through them, gathering up the ones with a deadline of tomorrow and putting them in my briefcase. Then I got to work on the more interesting case.

  Figuring I needed to know as much as I could about the victim, I started with Judge Reynolds, adding his ex-wife as well as his daughter Ruby to the search. The only documents on my public case search that included Rhett Reynolds were about his divorce, which seemed to have been fairly quick and painless, and child support for Ruby.

  Ruby was squeaky clean aside from a speeding ticket four years ago. I had to pull the former Mrs. Reynolds’ name from the divorce record and search for both Elizabeth Reynolds and Elizabeth Crum in our state as well as Washington. Her record in both states was equally bland, but online case search only went back so far and both Elizabeth and Rhett were my age. That meant there was a good bit of their life on microfiche and not on my handy-dandy case search databases.

  But where the courts mostly didn’t bother to scan and add old cases to the database, newspapers tended to do so. Many of them only pulled up a teaser sentence or two on a search with the rest behind a paid archive firewall. I had a retainer and a nice allotment for expenses, so I went ahead and dug around, finding out where Ruby and her father went to college, where they both had worked and lived. Elizabeth seemed unlikely to be involved in this case, so I put her search to the side and concentrated on the two Reynoldses who hadn’t been living in Seattle for the last ten years.

  By the time I got ready to leave the office, I’d discovered that Rhett Reynolds had been outspoken about human rights issues, ethics, conflicts of interest in politicians, and campaign finance reform. He’d p
ublished op-ed pieces quite a bit in local papers as well as his college journal. He entered law school just as Ronald Reagan was entering the White House and was a progressive liberal at a time when the country was tilting toward the right. None of that seemed to hurt his prospects and he’d landed with a prominent firm right out of law school.

  From there, I found chamber of commerce articles on his public service right alongside newspaper articles about his high-profile cases. He was the people’s lawyer, taking on clients that no one else would take, often on a pro-bono basis. He went on the record scolding politicians for what he considered to be a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility, and became known as the no-nonsense, straight-talk guy who looked out for the little guy.

  It seemed he was destined to a career as a litigation attorney taking class action lawsuits and appearing on television ads telling viewers he’d fight for their rights, but instead an opening occurred at the Polefax County Court. The citizens staged a massive write-in campaign and petitions demanding Rhett Reynolds be appointed, and it being an election year and all, the governor acquiesced.

  Ruby had grown up in her father’s shadow and seemed happy to follow in his footsteps from what I could see of her academic and job history. But where Rhett had a cult-of-personality thing going, Ruby worked more behind the scenes, tackling cases with the ferocity of a dog with a bone. She’d left the post-graduate big law firm after a few years, joining a smaller firm that was affiliated with several non-profits and focused on civil liberty and human rights cases. Just before I left the office, I pulled her credit report and saw that she managed to live on a modest salary, keeping her expenses well within her means.

  I drove home, mulling it all over as Dire Straits sang “Sultans of Swing” on my radio. A person like Judge Rhett Reynolds would have bruised a lot of egos, probably made quite a few enemies before he’d even walked into his judge’s chambers. But I couldn’t see how the killer would have been anyone outside of that party. With all the judges, half a dozen city councilmen and women, and the lieutenant governor, the security had been tight.

  Well, except for that elevator upstairs.

  There had been nearly a hundred people at that party. Figuring out who might have had motive to kill Rhett Reynolds would be a herculean task if I looked at the entirety of his career. This had to be something recent—within the last few years recent. And it had to have been something that was escalating in the recent month or two. Searching the background of Judge Reynolds and his family would give me a good foundation for my investigation, but it wouldn’t lead me directly to the killer. No, to do that I’d need a list of the party attendees as well as the cases the judge had ruled on in the last few years.

  Plus there were a few other avenues to explore. One was Rhett’s relationship with Judge Dixon’s wife. The other was his nomination to the appellate court opening. Yes, everyone including his own daughter had said he wasn’t likely to get the position, but something made me think the nomination might have been a factor. Maybe it had been a last straw, one final affront that made the killer snap and bludgeon Judge Reynolds to death in that upstairs bathroom.

  It was a bit sad coming home to an empty house after a week of Judge Beck and the kids arriving right after school or sports practice. Still, Taco welcomed me, meowing loudly and jumping up to grab my leg with soft paws. I picked him up and he rubbed his face against mine, as he purred loudly.

  “Yes, yes. I know you’re hungry.” I laughed and let him outside, knowing he’d be around at the back door in half an hour demanding his dinner.

  Unpacking my briefcase on the dining room table, I went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, sorting through the mail before pouring some kibble into Taco’s bowl. It was shaping up to be a long night of work, and Judge Beck’s absence hinted that he’d be facing the same whenever he walked through the door. I rummaged through the fridge, slicing some cheese and putting it on the dining room table along with a box of crackers. That was going to be the extent of my cooking skills tonight.

  Letting Taco in, I poured myself a cup of coffee and while the cat ate, I headed into the dining room. I really needed to get to work on the background checks and skip traces, but the attendee list from the party was sitting in my e-mail box courtesy of Irene’s attorney, and I couldn’t help but keep working on the case.

  As I pored over the articles, my notes, and the list, a few things stood out as significant as it pertained to SMS&C. Stuart Dixon had worked for them twenty years ago and had been the lead attorney on the Cresswell class action suit. He’d been married to Helen for three years at that point and her brother had been an attorney there when the two had met. Sonny Magoo had also worked at SMS&C nearly thirty years ago, although the firm had been SM&S at that time. Announcements in the business section of the paper showed that he’d left them for another large firm across town and had been his firm’s lead attorney on the Cresswell settlement for their clients.

  Another name that frequently came up was Horace Barnes. Even though he never worked at the same firms as Magoo and Dixon, he did seem to be involved in several of their cases, and was pictured in the company of both men at several business functions from articles in the paper over the last thirty years.

  I made a note to go visit Horace Barnes tomorrow, hoping he could shine a light on all this. Then I looked over to the corner of the dining room where the ghost of Rhett Reynolds stood quietly.

  “Who killed you?” I asked again. The dining room window frosted over, but once more the ghost only drew a dollar sign.

  Clearly the ghost was going to be of no further help, and my eyes were beginning to blur from the sheer volume of information I was trying to sift through. Reluctantly, I put the Reynolds murder aside and started in on the background checks and skip traces that I absolutely had to complete before I went to bed tonight.

  I’d just finished and had turned back to the murder case when Judge Beck came in and plopped a box of folders on the table.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d still be up.”

  I held up a notepad full of scribbles, arrows, and sideways notes. “I’ve been hired to do some work on the Reynolds murder.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “By his daughter? I can see where she might not trust the police to do a thorough job, especially after the roasting Reynolds gave the capital police department this year over corruption allegations.”

  “Really?” I made a quick note to check out the security detail and see if any of them were current, retired, or related to any capital police. More work for me, but with all the potential suspects, Irene’s defense attorney would be thrilled.

  “No, I’m working for Irene O’Donnell and her attorney. She’s concerned that she might wind up under the bus given her openly contentious working relationship with the judge.”

  Judge Beck eyeballed my notepad. “You’ve color coded it?”

  How embarrassing. “It was the only way I could keep everything straight,” I confessed. “Highlighted yellow means they had motive. Orange underline means they had substantial motive, in my opinion. Red check mark means I’m fairly certain they would have known about the upstairs bathroom, although if Judge Reynolds had arranged to meet someone there for a private conversation, then he might have told them where it was.”

  “And the blue?”

  “That’s if they were unaccounted for during the window I’m assuming the murder to be in.” I tossed the notepad onto the table in frustration. “This would be a lot easier if I actually had access to the police notes and evidence. I’m guessing if Irene actually gets arrested her attorney will get those and pass them along. Until then I’m kind of in limbo with almost one hundred suspects, not including the security guards, and no real way to whittle the list down.”

  “Well, you can take yourself off the list.” The judge grinned, lowering himself into a chair next to me.

  “Maybe not.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “I could have killed him then called you upstairs to act as my alibi.”
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  “First, you didn’t even know Judge Reynolds before the party, and I doubt he would have done anything in the half hour you spent talking to him to drive you into a murderous rage. Secondly, there is no way you could have bludgeoned a man to death and walked out of that restroom with your white dress just as pristine as if you’d just picked it up from the cleaners.”

  “Ah, you must not have noticed that barbeque sauce from the shrimp I somehow managed to drip on myself.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Liar. That dress fit you like a glove. There is nowhere a drop of barbeque sauce, wine, or blood could have hidden that I wouldn’t have seen it.”

  My breath strangled in my throat because that sounded very intimate, very…sexy. I knew he’d thought I’d looked “nice” in the dress, but hadn’t realized that he’d taken quite so much notice of every single inch of me in that perfectly fitting gown.

  “Maybe I wore a garbage bag over my dress to keep it clean.” I laughed, and it sounded more breathless than I’d intended.

  He laughed as well, and the pair of us dissolved into near hysterics at the thought of me with several Hefty Lawn and Leaf bags taped over my formal gown, Ziploc bags protecting my shoes as I whacked a grown man to death with a…something heavy.

  “We shouldn’t be laughing like this,” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “A man has been murdered.”

  “But it’s so funny,” the judge insisted. “You in your plastic bags, lying in wait for Reynolds to enter the restroom. Springing out to surprise him from a stall and killing him with the toilet tank lid.”

  My laughing ended abruptly. “How’d you know it was a toilet tank lid?”

  Judge Beck shrugged. “If I were going to kill someone in a restroom, a toilet tank lid would certainly do the job. Do you know how heavy those things are? Just try to wrestle one off in a hurry when a toilet is overflowing, and you’ll realize what a great weapon they’d be in a pinch.”

  He'd had the same line of thought I had. I was already wondering how the killer could have left the restroom without dripping blood all over the carpet and the doorway, plus how they’d managed to blend into the party crowd with blood on their tux or uniform. Now I was also wondering how a killer with blood-covered clothing had managed to carry a blood-covered toilet tank lid down a hallway with beige carpet. And where the heck the killer would have stashed such an unwieldy murder weapon?