Marc Kadella Legal Mysteries Vol 1-6 (Marc Kadella Series)

by Dennis Carstens

  “Redirect, Ms. Kyle,” Carr asked.

  Danica and Heather whispered back and forth trying to come up with a way to rehabilitate Paige’s testimony. They quickly realized anything they did would likely make it worse.

  “No, your Honor,” Danica finally said.

  Paige was excused and Carr called for a break. As Paige walked toward the gate, Maddy shifted around in her chair in case Paige attacked Marc. Maddy wanted to be in a position to counterattack, if necessary.

  During the break, Heather and Danica hurried back to their office to confer with Shayla Parker. This being an election year, the Black Widow trial was closely monitored by Shayla. The media was still making veiled references to justice for the rich and Shayla desperately wanted a guilty verdict for the upcoming election.

  Parker called Judge Carr on his private phone to let him know she needed thirty minutes with her subordinates. Her special friend, Judge Carr, quickly agreed with the request.

  For the next half-hour the three prosecutors went over the case and came to the conclusion they were still in good shape. The damage done by putting Hailey and Paige on the witness stand did not harm the question of Mackenzie’s guilt. The circumstantial evidence still pointed to her and only her. The consensus was that the case was closer than they thought at the beginning but they still had it won, especially if Heather put on a typically terrific closing argument.

  “We’ve got Adam Sutherland sitting in the hall outside the courtroom,” Danica reminded them.

  “You want to put another one of these out-of-control idiot Sutherland’s on the stand?” Heather asked. “God only knows what dirt Kadella has on him that he didn’t tell us about.”

  Shayla dialed her phone and Judge Carr answered right away. She told him they were done and would be along in a little while.

  “Judge,” she said using his formal title in front of her employees, “we need a favor. We’ve decided not to put on another witness today. At least, not the one we had planned. Could we get you to adjourn early?”

  Shayla listened for a moment then said, “Thank you and um,” she wheeled around in her chair and whispered, “I’ll be sure to remember it at an appropriate time.”

  A very curious Marc Kadella looked up at the clock when Heather and Danica finally arrived. The mid-afternoon break had lasted forty-five minutes while everyone waited for them. A minute later, Carr entered the courtroom and motioned for the lawyers to come up to the bench.

  “How long will your next witness take?” Carr asked Heather.

  “I won’t be able to finish him today unless we stay late.”

  “How about we give the jury a break and knock off early? I hear the weather could get bad later with three or four inches of snow to drive home in. Marc?”

  “I have no objection,” Marc said wondering where this came from.

  The lawyers returned to their respective tables and Carr adjourned until Monday morning.

  While they were waiting for the courtroom to empty a thought occurred to Marc.

  “I was expecting Adam Sutherland to finish the day,” Marc said to Mackenzie and Madeline. “I’m thinking, after the problems they had with Hailey and Paige they decided not to put Adam on. Maddy, he’s on my witness list but we need to drop a subpoena on him.”

  Marc retrieved a subpoena from his trial case, filled in the blanks and gave it to her.

  “Get him this weekend. I’m guessing they will finish up Monday with Cooper Thomas. I want Adam in the hallway first thing Tuesday morning. We’ll start with him.”

  “Why is Adam so important?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Another spoiled disgruntled offspring of William Sutherland,” Marc said. “Plus, you’ll see.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Saturday afternoon Mackenzie was out on a walk for the first time in almost two weeks. Probation services had agreed to remove the ankle bracelet with her word to Judge Carr that she would stay within a one-mile radius of her home. Anything farther than that she was to call in and leave word as to when and where, even if it was a trip to her lawyer’s office in Minneapolis.

  After spending all week cooped up in court or at home, it felt wonderful just to be outdoors for a while. The early March weather was miserable. Temperature in the low-thirties and a wet, sloppy snowstorm was in progress that would drop five inches before nightfall. Mackenzie didn’t care a whit. In fact, the cold and even the wet snow felt refreshing and reminded her of her childhood. Of course, she was dressed for it; winter boots, a fur-lined, hooded parka and jeans.

  Mackenzie slopped along in the street in a wide circle staying just inside the one-mile radius. Even though no one was watching or monitoring her, probably, she would strictly adhere to the rules.

  While she walked along she could not prevent her thoughts from wandering back to the trial. It was beginning to look like the biggest problem they had, the lynchpin that they needed to remove, was the computer access.

  Ever since the prosecution was allowed to bring in the testimony about the searches on both Wendell’s computer and Bill’s for heart attack inducing drugs, the computer access had hung over the trial. Only Mackenzie had access to both computers at the times of the searches. And Marc was sure Heather Anderson was going to drive a stake through Mackenzie with that during her closing argument.

  Half-way through her walk, Mackenzie decided to put it out of her mind. Shortly after reaching the turn to head back, she passed a small pond. The ice was mostly gone and she stood in the street for ten minutes watching the ducks and geese calmly swim around. A rotten day that the waterfowl seemed to enjoy. She made a snowball out of the wet snow and threw it toward the pond. It landed in the water and several of the ducks squawked, jumped out of the water and flew a few feet away. She felt good just to be alive and outdoors.

  Mackenzie returned home, punched the numbers into the front door keypad and let herself in. While removing her boots and coat in the foyer, a thought occurred to her. She hurried up the stairs and into what was Adam’s bedroom.

  Searching through several boxes of the junk Adam left behind, she finally found something that might help. A yearbook from Macalester College in St. Paul.

  Sitting on the floor in Adam’s closet, she paged through it and found what she hoped she would. “Maybe,” she quietly said out loud to herself.

  “Marc,” Mackenzie said into her phone after calling her lawyer. “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Hey, Mac. How are you?” he pleasantly answered her.

  “Could you come over for dinner? I’d like some company and I have something to show you. I’ll cook up a couple of steaks and…”

  “We’re not going to get involved while this trial is going on,” he reminded her.

  “I know. Believe me, you’ll want to see what I have. Six o’clock?”

  “Sure, see you then.”

  Marc was seated at the breakfast island in Mackenzie’s kitchen sipping at a glass of some kind of red wine. Marc didn’t know or care enough about wine to bother to ask. Mackenzie handed it to him and he took it.

  “Okay, what do you have to show me?”

  “In a minute,” Mackenzie said as she handed him his plate. She sat down on a stool on the opposite side of the island from him. “You remember we are having a problem with the access to both the computers?”

  “Thanks for reminding me, yes,” Marc said.

  “We’ve been trying to come up with a plausible other person who might also have access. Well, while I was out walking today, it occurred to me that it could be two people. One who had access to Wendell’s and one who had access to Bill’s.”

  “We could find a list of those,” Marc said while chewing his ribeye.

  “Let me finish. I remembered a couple of days ago, when we were talking about Adam, that when I was with Wendell, I heard Phillip mention a friend of his named Adam that Phillip said lived in Minnesota. He was talking to Wendell and I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

  “Are you serious? Do you h
ave proof?”

  Mackenzie opened a drawer on her side of the island, removed the yearbook she found and slid it across the granite countertop to Marc.

  Marc held it up and said, “Macalester College. Good school, if a bit pricey. This is Adam’s?”

  “Yes,” Mackenzie answered him.

  “Phillip’s in here?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they went to the same school. I’m not sure that’s enough to…”

  “Open the front cover, upper left-hand corner. Read the salutation.”

  “To my best bud: ‘Partners forever’. And it’s signed Phillip and what looks like Cartwright. Holy shit, they knew each other. God bless you, Mackenzie!”

  “There’s more. I started thinking about the times I overheard Phillip talking to Wendell about his friend, Adam. Each time, it was at least three and maybe four times, as soon as I walked in and they noticed me, they stopped. You know, like they were talking about me and I caught them. And once, I definitely heard Phillip use the word crystal before they knew I was there.”

  “Crystal meth?”

  “I think so. I know Wendell was using. I didn’t care as long as he didn’t use around me. And Phillip was a total junkie.”

  “Died from a heroin OD,” Marc said.

  “I wish you could spend the night,” Mackenzie softly said. “I’m so damn lonely and…”

  “I know,” Marc said. “Sorry, no. I can’t stay.”

  “Madeline thinks I’m guilty, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t know what she thinks,” Marc said.

  “Liar,” Mackenzie said with a weak smile. “Do you?”

  Marc reached across the table and took her right hand in his left. “No, I don’t,” Marc sincerely told her.

  Marc finished his meal, pushed his plate aside, picked up his phone and said, “Speaking of Madeline,” and speed dialed her number.

  “Did you get Adam Sutherland served?” he asked her.

  “No, but I have a line on where he’ll be tonight. I’ll get him. You know, it’s Saturday night and I should be on a date, not chasing your witnesses.”

  “Tell him I want him at 9:00 A.M. Tuesday morning,” he said ignoring her complaint. “I think they’ll wrap up their case Monday with Cooper Thomas. I’ll start off with Adam.”

  “I know, you told me this before. Are you listening to me? You’re destroying my social life.”

  “Call Gabriella, see if she’s not doing anything,” Marc suggested.

  “I did, she’s coming with me,” Maddy admitted. “I’m going to serve him at First Avenue later.”

  “You two in that place. I should call ahead and warn them. Call me and let me know you got him. Behave yourselves.”

  “Yes, Dad, we will.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “State your name and occupation for the record, please,” Judge Carr’s clerk politely told the witness as he took his seat on the witness stand.

  “Cooper Stuart Thomas. I’m a licensed attorney at law here in St. Paul.”

  It was Monday morning, shortly after 9:00. Cooper was the state’s last witness and Heather Anderson was counting on him to put the final nail in Mackenzie’s figurative coffin. Heather hoped, more than believed, that when the jury heard Mackenzie knew about William Sutherland changing his Will, they would draw the correct conclusion and come back with a guilty verdict. In fact, Mackenzie not only knew about the new Will she coerced William into doing it.

  Cooper Thomas was not a litigator and it showed. It took him the better part of an hour to settle down. Knowing this ahead of time and having dealt with hundreds of nervous witnesses over the years, Heather brought him along with soft easy questions to get him comfortable and talking smoothly. Mostly background things about him leading up to when he met Mackenzie Sutherland. Before Cooper began his testimony about how he came to know her, Judge Carr called the morning break.

  While the people in the gallery were crowding through the exterior door, Maddy Rivers somehow managed to squeeze through coming into the courtroom and make her way to the defense table. As she passed through the gate, Maddy smiled and said good morning to Heather and Danica Kyle. The two prosecutors politely, even sincerely, returned the greeting.

  “I think I hate her,” Heather whispered to Danica. “That’s not fair, what she has.”

  “No shit,” Danica very quietly replied. “And on top of it she’s so damn nice all the time. If she was a bitch that would actually help to hate her.”

  “And smart,” Heather added.

  “Hey,” Maddy said to Marc. “Hi, guys,” she said to the bodyguards, Butch and Andy. “Morning,” she smiled giving Mackenzie a reassuring pat on the back.

  “Got him,” she said to Marc. “I caught him at his apartment about an hour ago and told him if he wasn’t here at 9:00 tomorrow I’d send the sheriff to lock him up until we need him.”

  “Did he believe you?” Marc asked.

  “Yeah, he did,” Maddy said. “How are you?” she asked Mackenzie.

  “Good,” she answered. “Be sure to bill me for the time it took you to catch up with my worthless ex-son-in-law.”

  “Please tell the jury how you first became acquainted with Mackenzie Sutherland,” Heather told Cooper when everyone was back from the break.

  “As I recall, she was a reference from a mutual acquaintance,” Cooper said.

  “Before this had you ever done any representation for any of the Sutherlands or Sutherland’s grocery stores?”

  “No, I had not nor did anyone in my firm. As I said, she came to me for a prenuptial agreement. She was engaged to William Sutherland and they both had substantial non-marital assets to protect in the event of a divorce.”

  “How much was Mackenzie worth at that time?” Heather asked.

  “Objection,” Marc stood and said. “Relevance and attorney-client privilege, your Honor.”

  “This is already public knowledge, your Honor. We could present numerous newspaper articles that accurately reported her net worth.”

  “Overruled,” Carr said.

  Marc figured beforehand that Carr would overrule him. In fact, he wanted him to. Since Mackenzie had more money than William, a significant part of the defense was she had no financial motive to kill him. Marc objected to make sure all of the jurors were paying attention. He wanted them to hear this.

  “I found out shortly after the prenup was signed that she was worth roughly forty million dollars,” Cooper said.

  Strangely, this revelation did not faze anyone in the courtroom.

  “Why didn’t you find this out before the prenup was signed? Isn’t that supposed to be included in the prenup? Full disclosure of assets?”

  “Normally, yes. There should be an addendum in which both parties list everything. Instead, as part of the prenup, they signed a separate section agreeing they were satisfied that full disclosure was made.”

  “So, Mrs. Sutherland could have withheld something and…”

  “Objection,” Marc jumped up again. “Speculation, assumes facts not in evidence, lack of foundation, take your pick, your Honor.”

  “All of them. Sustained,” Carr ruled.

  For the next half-hour, Cooper testified generally about what other things he had done for Mackenzie. Marc was able to keep most of the specifics out by using the attorney-client privilege objection. Most of it was for financial matters she needed her own lawyer to handle. Nothing of consequence concerning her relationship with William or any of the Sutherlands.

  “About fourteen months ago, early December, Mackenzie came to me to discuss a divorce. William was cheating on her. She told me it wasn’t the first time and she had had enough of it. She wanted to know if the prenuptial agreement could be broken.”

  “Why?”

  “The prenup allowed for five million dollars in the event of a divorce if one of them was unfaithful. Mackenzie believed she could get more in a divorce without the prenup in place.”

  “What did you tell her?�
��

  “I told her we could try but I didn’t see any reason for a court to throw out the prenup. I didn’t think we had sufficient grounds.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She told me to hold off on the divorce. About a week later she called and told me they were going to work on saving the marriage. It was a week before Christmas, the Christmas that was William Sutherland’s last one.

  “The next time I saw her was at our firm’s Christmas party, the one we have for favored clients. She came alone and told me she was bringing William in right after New Year’s day to have William do a new Will. She also told me they wanted a postnuptial agreement to invalidate the prenup.

  “On Monday, January fourth, both William and Mackenzie came to my office. Mackenzie waited in the reception area while I met with William to go over what he wanted in the new Will.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Basically he wanted to leave everything to Mackenzie except for a specific bequest of one-hundred-thousand dollars to each of his children, Robert, Adam and Hailey.”

  “Did he make any arrangement for his grandchildren, Robert’s children?”

  “No, not a dime.”

  “Nothing for college or…”

  “Asked and answered,” Marc objected.

  “Sustained, move along.”

  “Mr. Cooper, did you draft the new Will and the postnuptial agreement?”

  “I did,” he answered. “William told me he wanted it done right away. He admitted he was anxious to save his marriage and this was his way of showing his wife how much he wanted to do that.”

  “Did he indicate whose idea it was?”

  “Yes, he did,” Cooper quietly admitted.

  “And whose idea was it?”

  “Objection, hearsay,” Marc said.

  “Overruled, the witness may answer,” Carr ruled.

  Cooper hesitated for a moment, looked at Mackenzie as if to say, “sorry” then said, “William claimed it was Mackenzie’s idea. But he said…”

  “Nonresponsive, your Honor.”