I got a pencil and stuck it in the barrel to lift the pistol from the dresser drawer.
“M&P Bodyguard 380,” Paul said, tilting his head to read along the barrel. I turned the gun, and he read, “Smith & Wesson, Springfield, MA, USA,” from the other side. “Is it the same gun?” he asked.
“It’s the same model. I’ll have to check with Rodney about the serial number.”
“I don’t see the serial number.”
We found it in a little slot on the right side of the gun and wrote it down. After we’d dropped the gun into a clear gallon storage bag, I got Rodney on his cell phone, and he confirmed it: This was the same gun I’d gotten in the mail the day before. Christopher Woodruff’s gun.
“Why did you think it might not be the same gun?” Paul asked. We were sitting side by side on the living room couch, him with a bottle of the dark beer he liked, me with a glass of merlot. Deacon was sitting against me on the side opposite Paul, his eyes rolled up to watch my face.
“A gun that keeps appearing and disappearing?” I said. “Why would it be the same?”
“How many M&P Bodyguard 380s could there be floating around your home and office?”
“Possibly two.” I told him about Willow Woodruff’s gun, which neither she nor the police could find.
“Same model?”
“She and Chris got them at the same time. Evidently, target practice and qualifying for concealed carry was an activity they took up as a couple.”
“I would think maybe dance lessons,” Paul said.
“All couples are different.” I turned my head to look at him. “You’d like to do dance lessons? Isn’t that too much like exercise?”
“Yes, but there’d be compensations.”
“What kind of compensations?”
“Do I have to draw you a picture? I’d be moving around pressed up against you for an hour or so each week. I could get into that.”
I patted his leg.
“And we’d have to practice. I’m not all that graceful, you know. We might have to practice a lot.”
“You’re sweet.”
“And kind of horny.”
“Well, sure. That goes without saying.” We sipped our drinks, and I stroked Deacon’s fur.
“Probably this is a bad time to bring this up, because you’ll think I’ve got an ulterior motive—but you know I’m staying here tonight.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean, what for? Somebody’s been walking in and out of your house. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I won’t be alone.” I lifted Deacon’s chin and looked from his face with its upturned eyes to Paul’s.
Paul wasn’t satisfied. “No, you won’t be alone, because I’ll be here with you.”
I nodded. There was an air of creepiness in my own house that even Deacon’s presence wasn’t enough to dissipate. “Do we need to go to your apartment to pick up some stuff?”
“I haven’t been home since the D.C. trip. All my stuff is in my car.”
“You’ve got an extra set of underwear?”
He moved his head equivocally.
“Gross,” I said.
“Or I could wear some of yours.”
My hand closed on a throw pillow and swung it across my body to catch him on top of his head. Paul flinched, but too late to protect himself. Deacon was on his feet and in my lap.
Probably I had overreacted. Certainly it seemed that way as we were blotting my carpet and one sofa cushion with a mixture of dishwashing liquid and hydrogen peroxide in an effort to clean up the spilled beer and red wine.
There’d already been too much weirdness with regard to my underwear for one day, though.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I took the stairs to the second floor of the Ironfronts, the building that housed my office. When I pushed through the glass doors of The Executive Suites, Matt Tarrant stood up, and Tom McClane turned away from the big painting opposite the receptionist’s counter.
“It’s got a frame on it, so it must be art,” McClane said.
“What’s up?”
“Got a search warrant for your office. Our instructions were to serve it on you personally.” His sneer showed me his upper teeth. “Some kind of claptrap about attorney work product or professional courtesy or something.”
Matt Tarrant said, “We weren’t gonna wait forever, though. We just called in for further instructions, and Biggs said at nine o’clock just serve it on your receptionist and go on in.”
I looked at my watch. It was eight forty-five. “I’m glad I got here fifteen minutes short of forever,” I said. “Saves us all a bit of trouble.” I put my briefcase on the arm of the sofa and reached into it for the plastic baggie with the handgun.
McClane’s eyes widened when he saw it. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “You had it all along.”
“Unfortunately not. Whoever took it from my office yesterday broke into my house and left it in my underwear drawer.”
Tarrant looked from McClane to me. “Do you believe this? Why not just tell us the tooth fairy left it under a cabbage leaf in your backyard?”
It seemed to me he was mixing his folk tales, but I just gave him a perfunctory smile as I handed him the baggie.
“Did you call in the burglary?” McClane asked me.
“No, I didn’t see the point. Whoever broke in staged it so it looked staged.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“A glass pane was broken, but the glass was on the outside of the house.”
“Matt’s right. You tell the damnedest stories. Don’t think we’re buying any of it.”
“I’m not asking you to buy it.”
“Good, because we’re not.”
In the end they took the gun and left. Rodney’s door was open and Brooke’s wasn’t, I noted as I unlocked the door of my office. I dumped my purse and briefcase, grabbed my coffee mug, and went to the kitchen to pour myself a cup.
Carter Fox came into the kitchen behind me, also with a mug in his hand—a black, red, and yellow mug shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head. Somehow it didn’t surprise me.
“Sounded like the cops were giving you a bad time,” he said.
“Oh, not really. They like to pull my chain from time to time.”
“They were here about thirty minutes before you got here, demanding to see you, calling in for instructions and everything. It was a lot of excitement for us ham-and-eggers.” He laughed. Since I was holding the carafe, I poured his coffee before putting the carafe back on the burner. When I headed back to my office, he followed, his head bobbing agreeably.
“You had a gun they wanted, evidently. It sounded like you’ve been playing hide-and-seek with it.”
“Where were you that you were able to hear all that?” I asked.
“I was in the kitchen awhile, walked back and forth to my office a couple of times. That one officer has a voice that really carries.”
“He certainly does.” I sat behind my desk despite a vague concern that Carter would take it as an invitation to take a seat himself. He did just that, kicking back in one of my client chairs.
“McClane, isn’t it?” he said. “And this time he got what he came for.”
“What kind of law do you practice?” I said. “Real estate, wills and trusts, something like that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around the courthouse.”
“Oh, a bit of this and that. Paperwork, mostly. I’m not a gladiator like you. I consider you in the upper echelon of criminal defense attorneys.”
The high praise was undeserved. I’d been out on my own a few months and was only just beginning to feel like I could make a go of it. “I think of myself as a trial lawyer. Criminal defense is what’s come through the door lately.”
“You’ve burst on the scene like a shooting star.”
I smiled, a little sourly. Carter Fox was a man who could make a compliment feel like a tongue bath.
“I don’t suppose you’d care
to fill me in on this latest imbroglio. I’d love to hear about it.”
Imbroglio. There was a word you didn’t hear every day. “Better not,” I said. “Client confidentiality and all that.”
“I understand. We’re their champions in the joust. Their interests come first.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. In the end I had to get rid of him by heading for the ladies’ room. He followed me down the hall.
“Are you and Brooke Marshall going to lunch again today?”
“Maybe. Us and a couple of others.”
“Guys or gals? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. It’s not really any of my business.”
“Guys probably,” I said. “Both our menfolk are back in town.”
“Ah, yes. Brooke has that fiancé, and you’ve got the boyfriend. Perhaps not as serious as Brooke’s relationship with her gentleman, but there it is all the same.”
It was a long hall, and we were only halfway along it, Carter Fox still trailing after me.
“Do you see other people occasionally, or is it more serious than that?” he asked.
Good grief. “It’s pretty serious. I tried going out with another guy once, but his body was found in a dumpster the next morning.”
“Ah ha ha! Like that, is it? Serious as a heart attack! Jealous boyfriend. I understand that. I actually do.”
We had at last arrived at the door of the ladies’ room. “So to keep Paul out of prison and other men out of dumpsters, I’ve curtailed my social life a bit. It’s not so bad.” And I escaped through the door into the smell of disinfectant.
Carter Fox, to his credit, didn’t follow me in.
I did eat lunch with Paul and Brooke and Mike McMillan. It was a beautiful spring day, already in the seventies by lunchtime. We bought sandwiches and carbonated limeades in the basement of the Capitol building and ate on the grounds, sitting on a blanket Brooke had brought. “You engaged people are always thinking up nice occasions like this,” I said to Brooke.
She gave me a look that Mike noticed.
“Or was this your idea?” I asked him.
“We talked about it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where my ideas leave off and hers begin.”
“Oh, please,” Brooke said.
“She’s almost giddy in love,” Mike said. “You can tell.”
“The only thing that makes her grouchier than having a man in her life is not having one,” I said.
Paul stood up and sat down again, which distracted us from our observations about Brooke in love.
“What was that about?” I asked him.
“I just thought it needed to be done.”
“Either he wasn’t getting enough attention, or he had a wedgie,” Mike said.
Paul ignored him. “So,” he said. “The police came and got the gun.” Despite what I’d said to Carter Fox about client confidentiality, all three of them knew all about the migratory handgun.
“Yes, and I’m glad to be rid of it,” I said. “Next time it goes missing, it’ll be someone else’s responsibility.”
“So you’re in the clear now. It’s over.”
“Well, maybe. There may be a trial at some point. In the meantime, it looks like I’ve been playing hide-the-ball with the evidence in a murder case. I doubt Aubrey can prove anything, but I’m sure he’ll think the worst.”
“I don’t know how these things keep happening to you,” Mike said. “I’ve been practicing law as long as you, and no one’s ever threatened to bring me before the Disciplinary Board. I doubt Aubrey Biggs even knows my name.”
“I can't imagine how it keeps happening. It just does,” I said. “And I practice law as conservatively as anyone.”
There was a silence.
“What I mean is, I don’t try to push the boundaries of professional ethics,” I said.
I got some nods with that one. “I’ll give you that,” Mike said. “That’s why I really don’t understand it.”
“She’s a lightning rod,” Brooke said. “I think it’s because she’s utterly fearless.”
I rolled my eyes. “Here, let me strike a pose for you.”
“I think it’s because of her looks,” Paul said. “She’s like a Valkyrie. She’s got the height, the long blonde hair, the athletic build. . .”
“Oh, come on,” I said, dropping the pose. “Stop being ridiculous.”
“You don’t think your looks attract trouble?” Mike asked.
“Let’s go back to talking about you and Brooke. It was a lot more fun.”
“No, I like this,” Brooke said. “Could you strike that pose again for us? I think we have a few more comments to make about your athletic build. Between the three of us, we might even out-do Carter Fox.”
I felt myself turning red, so I took a bite of my sandwich and chewed without looking at anybody.
“Robin Starling speechless,” Mike said. “That’s a first.”
So lunch turned out to be more of an ordeal than it should have been. Afterwards, we all walked back to the Ironfronts. Brooke and I went up; Mike and Paul went on. Once in my office, I looked over what I had to work on, pushed the files aside, and began a vicious game of Spider Solitaire on my laptop.
I lost. I pushed back in my chair, staring blankly at the intransigent columns of cards, my mind back on Willow Woodruff and her problems. The current lull was only temporary. The police would do a ballistics test to confirm that Chris’s gun was in fact the murder weapon. They would check for fingerprints, and if they found Willow’s, they’d arrest her. Even if the gun had been wiped clean—which I expected—the odds were they’d arrest her anyway. I should be getting a call by the end of day. I ought to warn her.
I picked up my phone and dialed her cell. Just when I thought the call would go to voicemail, she answered.
“Hi, Willow. Robin Starling. Have you seen the police today?”
“No. Should I expect to?”
“There have been a few developments regarding your husband’s handgun.” I told her about them.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why does this gun keep coming back to you? What have you got to do with anything?”
“Nothing until a couple of days ago. Now, of course, I’m representing you.”
“You know who’s behind it, don’t you?”
“Peyton Shilling?”
“I don’t know how she’s doing it or why, but she’s involved some way,” Willow said.
“You may be right.” Cherchez la femme, Paul had said, and maybe I hadn’t been cherchezing enough.
Rodney was in his office. He was kicked back with his Edgar Allan Poe mug clasped in both hands, steam rising from the mug, a look of placid contentment on his face.
“I know you don’t do that gumshoe, shadowing people kind of stuff,” I said.
“What do you mean? I can shadow people. This is a full-service detective agency. What do you need?”
“Do you do it all yourself, or are there people you use for various kinds of work?”
“I mostly do it myself, but I’ve got friends I can call on if I get stretched too thin.”
I hadn’t really thought of Rodney Burns as a man with friends, but I guess we all had them. “Friends in the detective business, or just friends who are willing to pick up a few extra dollars for a job here and there?”
“Both. If it was a sensitive matter, I wouldn’t use anybody I hadn’t used before.”
“I’m thinking I’d like to know a lot more about Peyton Shilling,” I said. “Not just background stuff. I think I’d like to track her movements for a while.”
“That can be done.” He pulled over a legal pad. “So. You want her shadowed 24-7, you just want to know how she spends her evenings, what?”
“Evenings might be enough. That would be cheaper, wouldn’t it?”
He nodded vigorously. “A lot cheaper.”
I stopped short as I came out of Rodney’s doorway. The curly headed hobbit who served as Richmond’s district attorney was standing in the
archway of exposed brick that opened out into the reception area.
“Aubrey,” I said, surprised.
“I think we need to talk.” Tom McClane was there, too, standing just behind him.
“The three of us?” I got no answer, shrugged. “Come on in.”
I walked around my desk, gesturing to the client chairs. Aubrey sat. McClane closed the door and took the other chair.
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re a young lawyer,” Aubrey said. “A very promising young lawyer with some excellent courtroom skills, but a young lawyer all the same, one without a lot of experience in criminal defense. Is that fair?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“It’s why I’m here. Criminal cases, murder cases especially, are very serious matters. A life has been taken, the accused faces the possibility of life imprisonment, maybe even execution.”
“I kind of understand the general nature of a murder case,” I said.
He took a breath. “When your client gives you a murder weapon, you can’t just make it disappear.”
“No, of course not.”
“You can’t juggle it around, dumping it out of a Priority Mail box, putting it in a drawer, taking it out again, carrying it around in your briefcase.”
“Look. Every time I’ve seen that gun, I’ve tried to unload it. I don’t mean unload it. I’ve tried to give it to the police. It shows up in my morning mail, I call the police. It shows up at my house, I put it in a baggie, and I bring it to the police. When. . .”
“You can’t switch guns,” Aubrey said heavily.
I looked back and forth between them. “Switched what guns?” I said.
Aubrey’s eyes cut toward McClane, then came back to me. “Don’t play the innocent,” he said. “We know what happened.”
“I don’t.”
“The gun you gave us is Christopher Woodruff’s gun.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the gun that keeps showing up.”
“We want the gun that fired the bullet that killed Christopher Woodruff.”
“Chris’s gun wasn’t it?”
“The playacting doesn’t become you.”
McClane said, “Willow Woodruff and her husband purchased identical handguns two years ago last May. You knew that.”
Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 6