Murder Among Us (A Kate Austen Mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “Fine,” I said. I was tired of worrying over the possibilities alone. I waited through a series of clicks while the call was transferred.

  “Gates here,” barked a new voice.

  Just what I didn’t need. I groaned silently, then forged ahead, explaining about the computer disk and the newspaper clippings and as much of the background as I could squeeze in before I was interrupted.

  “Tidbits from the society page, you say? And routine news articles?”

  “But they were all about Judge Burton.”

  “Nothing that hinted at scandal or controversy though?”

  “Not that I could find, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Mrs. Austen, we can’t go charging off to question a public figure just because a high school girl may have been writing a paper about him.”

  “A high school girl who turned up dead,” I reminded him. “Besides, it’s not just that. There’s the connection with her mother, don’t forget, and—”

  Gates interrupted again. “I’ll make a note of your call,” he said in a voice devoid of any warmth. “We’ll get back to you if we need further assistance. We appreciate your interest.” The phone clicked in my ear.

  Frustration boiled in my veins. While part of me still agreed with Sharon that I’d gone off the deep end, somewhere in the recesses of my mind was also the specter of doubt. What if I hadn’t?

  There seemed only one way to find out. I called Steve Burton and asked if we could talk.

  “Sure,” he said, sounding rather uncertain. “Is there a problem? Something about Skye?”

  “No. It’s about Julie Harmon.”

  If my response took him by surprise, he didn’t let on. “Why don’t you come by the courthouse, say around four-thirty. My calendar is fairly full this afternoon but things should be winding down by then.”

  It wasn’t until after I had hung up that I thought to wonder if I’d given in to a lapse of good sense.

  Chapter 28

  Judges don’t have offices in the usual sense. A judge’s chambers are accessible to members of the public only through the courtroom and only after they’ve been cleared by the court deputy. When waiting to see a judge who is otherwise occupied, as I was, you either wait in the courtroom or in the hallway outside where the benches are few and far between, and not very comfortable.

  I’d started out in the hallway, but when court adjourned, I moved into the newly emptied courtroom, introduced myself to the deputy, and told him I had a four-thirty appointment. He made note of my arrival and explained that Judge Burton was in conference. I took a seat near the front of the visitors’ section and waited. The buzz of voices from the hallway outside grew fainter as the crowds thinned and the judicial process wound down for the day.

  I checked my watch—four-fifty. The deputy shrugged. “Lawyers like to talk,” he said. “Sometimes these sessions go on for a while.”

  Finally, at five-fifteen Steve Burton appeared. “I’m sorry, Kate. I thought for sure I’d be finished before this. Some days take on a momentum of their own. There’s no predicting when that will happen.”

  He led me through a short hallway, where he stopped to confer with the court clerk and pick up a handful of message slips. Then he turned back to me. “Would you like some coffee or a soda?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Come in and have a seat. I just have to make a couple of quick calls, people I want to catch before they leave for the day.”

  While Steve made his calls, I tried my best to appear engaged in something other than eavesdropping. Given the tedious nature of the conversations, it wasn’t difficult to tune out. The most interesting call was to the veterinarian who needed to clarify some point relating to gum disease, a malady from which Skye’s horse apparently suffered.

  Steve’s office was good-sized, and lined on three sides with heavy, leather-bound volumes. The wall without bookshelves held a credenza on which a silver-framed picture of Yvonne and Skye was prominently displayed. On the wall above were various degrees and certificates along with a smattering of photographs depicting Steve with prominent politicians. I recognized the portly gentleman with his arm around a much younger Steve as Steve’s former father-in-law, who was a former California senator and current Washington official. It had to have been taken about fifteen years earlier, before Steve’s hair had begun to go gray and the lines of his face deepen. He’d been handsome as a younger man, but I thought he’d grown even more attractive with age. Softer in the best sense of the word.

  Finally, his calls completed, he turned to catch my eye. “So, what can I do for you? You said it was something about Julie Harmon.”

  I nodded, finding my mouth suddenly dry. I’d had all afternoon to prepare for this meeting, plus the hour I’d been waiting here at the courthouse, and I still wasn’t sure how to best approach the matter.

  “It’s awful what happened to her,” he said. “Just terrible.”

  I nodded again, licked my lips. “I don’t know if you were aware of it,” I said at last. “Julie was writing an article about you.” I couched the words in a smile, keeping my tone conversational.

  Steve shook his head. “An article? No, I didn’t know.” So much for my theory that she’d arranged an interview at the reservoir. “I thought she might have talked to you about it, tried for the personal angle.”

  He shook his head again, smiled stiffly. “She never mentioned it.”

  There was an awkward silence while we each waited expectantly for the other to continue. His secretary knocked on the door and stuck her head inside. “Is there anything else you need before I leave?”

  “No. Have a good evening, Betty.”

  “Oh, I will.” She chuckled. “My husband and the boys have a Scout meeting tonight. I get the house to myself. Shall I lock the outer office on my way out?”

  “Good idea, given the hour.” Steve looked at me and explained. “This place empties out fairly quickly once court is no longer in session.”

  The door of Steve’s office clicked shut, and then the outer door. The room seemed suddenly smaller, the surroundings quieter.

  Steve folded his hands. “You were saying.”

  I swallowed. “A friend of mine saw the two of you by the reservoir a couple of weeks ago, talking. I guess I assumed Julie was interviewing you for her article.”

  His eyes locked on mine. They were the color of autumn haze. “I’m having trouble following what it is you want to know.”

  “Well, I thought, uh, about the article, that she might have mentioned it.” I knew I wasn’t making a lot of sense, but I didn’t want to hit him over the head with my suspicions either.

  “Did Julie show you the article?” Steve asked, leaning back.

  “No. I’m not sure she’d even written it yet. But she’d put together a fairly thorough biography, as well as a bibliography of news stories about your career.”

  Steve pressed his fingers together steeple fashion. His face was expressionless. “I see.”

  “She had some news clippings too, some of them from a number of years back.”

  “Anything else?”

  My mouth felt like sawdust. “What else would there be?”

  Another moment of strained silence. Steve’s chin rested against his fingers. “Perhaps a letter,” he said at last. “Or a book of poetry.”

  “Poetry?” The word was so soft I barely heard it myself. “D. H. Lawrence?”

  He nodded.

  My stomach took a dive, like a kite on a string. A romantic liaison, something I hadn’t wanted to consider.

  Political scandal would have been preferable. “It was yours? The inscription—”

  “So you have seen it.” He rocked back in his chair and looked away. “Utter foolishness from one who should have known better. Melodramatic and overdone, as well.” He seemed embarrassed but not ashamed, as though the melodrama was worse than the rest of it.

  “You and Julie . . .” My voice had an unpleasant sque
aky quality.

  Steve’s expression was hard to read. There was the faintest trace of a smile. “All these years, and I never dreamed ...”

  I dug my nails into my palms, forced myself to breathe normally. I was appalled. How could he treat what he’d done so casually?

  “When Leslie said she needed to see me again—”

  “Leslie?”

  “Julie’s mother.” His gaze settled somewhere over my shoulder. “It’s funny, I can remember the day I gave her that book as plainly as though it were yesterday. We’d taken a drive down the coast, toward Monterey. It was one of those clear, picture-perfect days where everything is so beautiful you want to etch it forever in your memory.”

  “You gave the book to Leslie, not Julie? That’s who it was inscribed to?”

  Steve recoiled. Embarrassment flooded his face. “You thought that I’d inscribed the book to Julie?”

  I nodded, feeling my own face grow flushed.

  “Oh, Lord.” He laughed nervously and then fell silent. “So that’s what this was all about,” he said after a moment. “You thought Julie and I . . . that we had a . . . romantic relationship?”

  “That was one possibility. I mean, I knew about the book of poetry but I didn’t know it was from you until just now when you told me. But I suspected that Julie was involved with someone. And she was so secretive about it . . . Or rather, I thought she’d been secretive. It never crossed my mind that the book had been her mother’s.”

  Steve pushed back his chair. “I think I need a drink. How about you?”

  I accepted, more as a gesture of congeniality than out of need. Anything to soften the brunt of my foolishness. “Scotch or sherry?”

  “Scotch, lots of water.”

  He opened the credenza and poured two glasses, adding water to mine from a pitcher on his desk. Instead of returning to his chair, he leaned against the edge of his desk, smiling self-consciously.

  “So you didn’t know about me and Leslie Harmon?” he said. “I assumed that’s what you were leading up to.”

  I shook my head, took a small sip of my drink. “Leslie had an envelope from the law firm in San Francisco where you used to work. I thought maybe she’d been following a trial you worked on, or even that she’d been a client. It never occurred to me that you and she might have been lovers.”

  Steve swirled his scotch before taking a sip. “My affair with Leslie Harmon is not a facet of my life I’m particularly proud of. She deserved better than I was willing to offer, and my wife deserved better than I was giving at the time. It happened before I really stopped to think about it. I had great difficulty explaining that to someone as young as Julie.”

  “She knew then?”

  Steve nodded.

  “How did she find out? The inscription wasn’t signed.”

  “There were some letters tucked inside. A couple from me, one that Leslie had written and never mailed.”

  “So Julie found them and figured out that you’d known Leslie? And then came to you to learn about her mother.” Just as she’d gone to see Claudia Walker and Dulcey Haggerty.

  Steve sucked on his cheek and nodded. “More or less.” He took several long swigs of scotch. “Guess I’m still confused, though. If you didn’t connect me with the book until a few minutes ago, what was it that brought you here?”

  “I was curious why Julie would be writing an article on you. At least, that’s what I assumed her interest was. The journalism teacher has assigned a term project, something to do with investigative reporting, and Julie seemed to be working on it so intently. She was so secretive about it...”

  I trailed off, wondering if I hadn’t just stumbled across a skeleton in Steve’s past after all. Not political scandal but an illicit affair.

  His first wife was no longer alive, but her father, an eminent political figure, was. Could Steve Burton have killed Julie to keep the fact of his affair quiet? But then why had he just now freely admitted it to me?

  I sat forward. “Where are the letters now?”

  “I have most of them. Or had them. They’ve since been destroyed.”

  A sour taste rose to my mouth. “Something that happened so long ago, it’s not really the kind of scandal that could hurt you now, is it?”

  He looked at me oddly. “It depends on what you mean by ‘hurt.’ ”

  “You think it might cost you the election?”

  Steve took another swallow of scotch. And then I caught a flicker of something in his eyes, surprise maybe, mixed with a degree of sadness. He set the glass down on the desk.

  “Ah, Kate. I think now I finally understand the purpose of this visit of yours. You think that I might somehow be implicated in Julie’s death. Is that it?”

  I sat back. “Well . . . not that you . . . but when you think about it.. .” That was it exactly, but I couldn’t find the words to agree. My stammering seemed to go on forever.

  He shook his head sadly. “Don’t apologize. I can see how you might jump to that conclusion. Personally I’m very sorry that you would, however. This project of Julie’s, her secretiveness, our meeting by the reservoir, the old clippings—you thought she’d discovered some fiasco or shady dealing from my past. Perhaps simply my involvement with Leslie. You suspected that I might have killed her to silence her.”

  I tried the kind of dismissive shrug Diane Keaton does so well, but in truth I was appalled to hear my own musings stated so succinctly. “You didn’t?” I asked.

  “I did not.” He looked me in the eye. “I hope you believe me.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure whether I believed him or not, but since we were alone, maybe the only two people left in the entire building, I decided it was best if he thought I did.

  Steve gave me an odd look. He stood and refilled his glass. “You’re a lousy liar, Kate.”

  I back-pedaled. “It wasn’t that I necessarily suspected you.”

  “But you had your doubts.” His smile was thin. “Have them still, I imagine.”

  “It was so clear to me that Julie had been up to something. I simply assumed this journalism project might have been the key.”

  Silence stretched between us, taut as an arched bow. Steve looked at me, then away. He sighed.

  “It was a personal project,” he said, draining his glass. “Julie used the journalism assignment as a cover.”

  I nodded vigorously, not at all sure what I was agreeing to. “She was interested in talking to people who had known her mother in the past, right?”

  Steve picked up a pen from his desk and rolled it between his palms. “What she really wanted was to find her father.”

  “Her father? Did she?”

  He walked to the other side of the room. “Yes,” he said. “She found him.”

  “Where? How?” And then it hit me, broadside. “You?” He nodded.

  I was stunned into silence.

  “Julie was a lovely girl.” There was a ragged edge to Steve’s voice. “I wish now that Leslie had told me earlier.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Not until a couple of years ago when Leslie needed some medical history. She asked me not to contact Julie. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted any contact. Yvonne and I had been married less than a year at that time, and Julie was already twelve years old. It seemed best just to let things be.”

  I’d barely touched my drink. I took a sip now and sorted through what Steve had told me. “You really had no idea?”

  He seemed to retreat into himself for a moment. “My affair with Leslie was brief, lasting only a couple of months. I was married at the time, happily—believe it or not. But I loved Leslie too, in a very selfish way. She left abruptly to move to New York, ostensibly because of a promotion. I never knew she was pregnant. I doubt I’d have done anything differently if I had. I would never have left my wife. Leslie knew that.”

  “What did Julie know about you?”

  He sat at his desk. “She was told her father had died before she was born
. A few years ago she discovered her birth certificate. It listed the father’s name as unknown. Julie confronted her mother, who apparently told her that she didn’t have a father, that she should forget about it. But of course she couldn’t. Who could? That’s when Julie began her search. But she didn’t get serious about it until after Leslie died and she went to live with the Shepherds.”

  It was an amazing undertaking for one so young. “How did she ever figure out that it was you?”

  He smiled with a hint of pride. “Brains, hard work, and luck. Julie tried to learn about her mother’s life during the time preceding her birth. She tracked down old friends and associates of Leslie’s, but she’d probably have gotten nowhere without the box Dulcey Haggerty gave her.”

  “You must have been astonished when Julie actually contacted you.”

  His smile held the shadow of sadness. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “Does Yvonne know?”

  “She does now. As I’m sure you’re aware, Julie was unhappy living with her aunt and uncle. She was unhappy, period. Lonely and scared and hurt. I realized that this would be my last chance to get to know my daughter.” He paused. “Julie was going to move in with us, become part of our family.”

  I swallowed. “Yvonne was okay with this?”

  “Not thrilled, but she has a daughter herself. She understood that I couldn’t simply turn my back. We both knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we also felt it was the right thing to do.”

  So that was Julie’s surprise, the big change that was going to make her life so much better. She wasn’t going to be stuck with the Shepherds after all.

  “But why the delay? Why keep it secret?”

  “That was Julie’s idea. She thought we should wait until after the election. It’s only a couple of weeks away. I didn’t think the news would have much impact on voters, but you can’t predict these things. And you never know what media will do with a story. Then, when she was killed, well, there didn’t seem to be any reason to bring it all out in the open.”

  I sat back and took a moment to let the information settle. Julie’s project, Julie’s secret—a father, not a lover. A story of reconciliation rather than political scandal. I had been chasing my tail after all, just as Michael had predicted. None of what I’d been worrying over had anything to do with why she’d been killed.