Murder of the Eccentric Billionaire: A Jolene Park-Attorney At Law, Cozy Mystery

by Liz Turner

  “What?” Jolene said, looking at him earnestly.

  “Well, you said this Auen guy has only lived with the Fielders for a year, right?”

  “Lucas and his wife Rebekah, yes. And not quite a year, but almost.”

  “I suppose you could develop a close relationship with someone after a year, but with their age differences, it seems unlikely. Lucy’s twenty-five with a fiancé and a vibrant social life—not the sort of person who’d bond with an old uncle she’d never met before.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Why would Lucas go to illegal lengths to protect someone he’s only known for a year? Especially when that person has allegedly killed a relative of his that he’s known much longer?”

  “You think he might be covering for someone else?”

  John nodded. “We don’t have anything to go on but…”

  Jolene took a breath. “It’s a thought. Or it’s even possible that he murdered Foster himself.” She looked around and drummed her fingers on the table. “And then, there’s Lucy herself.”

  Jolene’s mouth set into a straight line, making John wondered if Lucy’s confusion was making her doubt herself.

  That certainly wouldn’t be good in the upcoming trial.

  “Listen, Jo,” John said, “you know it’s not our job to pin this on someone, right? We just have to prove it wasn’t Lucy. That’s it. No pressure to solve it all.”

  Jolene scoffed. “Don’t you want to the truth though? That’s why I got involved in this case in the first place. It’s why I take on every case that I do. Don’t you dare tell me I just have to create reasonable doubt,” she said, practically spitting the words by the end.

  “Okay,” John said, relenting. “Let’s talk about Lucy then. She certainly thinks she did it.”

  Jolene eyed him from the corner of her eye and pushed aside her anger. “Let’s start from the beginning—what we know from her point of view.” She sat up straight with her pen positioned above her notepad.

  “Well, when we saw her at the resort that weekend, she seemed objectively happy. She had just gotten engaged,” John said.

  “And then a few days later, she’s accused of murdering her uncle because he removed her from his will. But here’s what we know for certain about what happened during those few days—her uncle disapproved of her and Jacob’s engagement, he revealed to Lucy some story about her father going crazy and murdering people, Lucy went to see Jacob and stole a bottle of cyanide, her uncle was murdered, and then Lucy disappeared for hours, presumably to toss the bottle of cyanide into the lake. Then she came back, was committed to a mental rehabilitation center, and confessed to murdering her uncle under hypnosis.” Jolene tapped her pen on the table for a moment before suddenly looking up. “Her mental state was terrible during those few days. Everybody said so.”

  “So they believe she snapped. Became capable of murder…”

  “Or,” Jolene said, “perhaps her plan was to harm herself, not her uncle…”

  “She didn’t say anything about—”

  “If she thought her life was over and that it was only a matter of time until she too snapped and killed somebody, plus thought Jacob would end things with her because of it, perhaps she thought she ought to just take herself out of the picture…”

  John frowned. Jolene’s deduction made sense, but no more sense than Lucy being the killer did.

  Chapter 7

  Perjury

  “Mr. Deblasio,” bellowed the judge, a rotund elderly man with a scowl that never seemed to leave his face, “perjury in the state of California is punishable by up to four years in prison. Are you prepared to do time?”

  Jacob froze on the witness stand, his eyes glued to the exit door at the back of the courtroom. The assistant district attorney acting as the state prosecutor was Gonzalo Campos. He stood in front of Jacob, staring kindly at the young man, who had turned a shade paler than normal.

  Gonzalo repeated his question in the same monotone that he delivered everything. “Mr. Deblasio, did you discover shortly after Lucy Fielder left your lab that you were missing a bottle of potassium cyanide?”

  Jacob blinked and Gonzalo waited a beat before looking at the judge expectantly.

  “I’m going to say this one more time, Mr. Deblasio,” the judge said, wiping a bead of sweat off his hairline. “If you do not comply, you will be found a hostile witness. Answer the question and stop wasting my time.”

  Jacob seemed to become unstuck from whatever loop his mind had been running in. He blinked rapidly, adjusted his glasses, and looked to the floor. “Yes,” he said, his voice echoing through the room.

  Creaking chairs and rustling pantsuits sounded throughout the courtroom as people either relaxed or reacted—depending on whose side they were on—to Jacob’s answer.

  Gonzalo continued. “Thank you. Do you know who took the poison?”

  “Objection,” Jolene said, standing and smoothing her cream-colored skirt. “Potassium cyanide’s primary use is not as a poison. The bottle found in Jacob Deblasio’s lab in particular wouldn’t have been considered poison. The prosecution is attempting to rattle the witness and cause the jury to draw undue conclusions.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “It’ll be stricken from the record.”

  “Withdrawn. I’ll rephrase. Do you know where that missing bottle might have gone? Do you have any idea?”

  “No,” Jacob said after another prolonged silence.

  “Let me see if I can help you out in your search,” Gonzalo said, his voice grated with every syllable falling flat.

  Jolene felt tensed just listening to him.

  “Is this the bottle?” Gonzalo walked over to his desk and retrieved an evidence bag that contained a small opaque bottle.

  Jacob glanced at the contents. “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” Gonzalo said. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this bottle has been confirmed to be the bottle stolen from Mr. Deblasio’s lab. It was discovered in the place Lucy Fielder herself claimed she threw it. Despite what Ms. Park and her team are trying to argue—that Lucy had no idea what she was saying—conveniently, the facts do match her statement. Impossible if her mind was truly out of commission.”

  Jolene called the medical examiner who had performed the autopsy on Foster to the stand. While combing through the reports, she had discovered something interesting that could help the case. “Dr. Stephens, you were the doctor who performed the autopsy on Foster Fielder, is that correct?” she asked.

  The doctor, a small man with a full head of red hair, nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”

  Jolene approached the stand, letting her heels click loudly on the floor. “And you registered the cause of death to be…let’s see, coronary thrombosis, yes? Or in other words, a heart attack.”

  Stephens halted, his mouth open. “I—I did, yes.”

  “The heart stopped from a blockage in the arteries.”

  “That’s correct, though I should say—”

  “This initial report is interesting, Dr. Stephens. There’s no mention at all of any sort of poison. It reads like an ordinary heart attack killed Foster Fielder. Was that your medical opinion?”

  “Well, yes, er…the deadly effects of potassium cyanide poisoning culminate in cardiac arrest. So you can see, how, without much other information, I could jump to the wrong conclusion and fail to investigate.”

  “I see,” Jolene said. “And when did you decide to investigate?”

  “A few days later.”

  Jolene pursed her lips, knowing she had him now. “Oh sure. And it was a few days later that you did your investigation again and realized that there were trace amounts of poison in his system that would have caused the cardiac arrest.”

  “Yes, among other signs.”

  “Dr. Stephens, all traces of potassium cyanide are metabolized once ingested by the human body within a few hours, let alone a few days. There would have been no trace amounts of the poison in Foster Field
er’s body when you examined him a second time.”

  The doctor swallowed hard. “Well, there were other signs—”

  “What was it that prompted this second investigation, if I may ask?”

  Stephens looked furtively at the district attorney. Gonzalo stared back blankly. “It was just a hunch.”

  “Was it a hunch? Or did the police, maybe Detective Simon, find you and tell you they that had someone on tape confessing to the crime? But the only thing was, the autopsy didn’t exactly align with what Lucy said she’d done. Consequently, you needed to…investigate further.” Jolene made air quotes with her fingers around the word ‘investigate’.

  Stephens stared hard at her. “The symptoms the body presented, aside from the cardiac arrest—the darkening of the skin, the near suffocation, the smell—were all consistent with cyanide poisoning. I simply had no reason to look for it in the death of an older man with a weak heart. I, frankly, assumed that the cause of death was a simple heart attack, knowing what I knew at the time. We can’t check all our corpses for traces of poison, just in case. So when Detective Simon came to me and asked me to recheck with this new information in mind, I did.”

  “And you found no traces of poison.”

  “No, but the other symptoms—”

  “Amounted to nothing without this pet theory of Detective Simon’s.”

  “I beg—”

  “I’d consider this man’s testimony pure hearsay,” Jolene said to the judge, ignoring the doctor’s protests. “Anything he has to say is tainted with the intervention of Detective Simon, and he has no medical facts to back him up.”

  The judge peered over his stand for a moment, thinking. “I agree with Ms. Park. Witness’s remarks will be disregarded.”

  ***

  An hour later, Jolene entered the judge’s private quarters, along with Gonzalo Campos. They were to present their arguments on why or why not the recording of Lucy’s hypnotized confession should be admissible in court. Jolene knew that if the jury heard Lucy confessing, she would lose the case no matter how much she argued that it had been given under duress. It’s hard to argue against what people hear with their own ears. Hence, she needed to convince the judge it was inadmissible.

  “Okay, should this recording be admissible or not?” the judge said, falling heavily into his seat. He wiped his brow. “Ms. Park, you’re up.”

  “Inadmissible. This confession, if you can call it that, was clearly given under a powerful involuntary influence. The hypnotist in question is not a medical doctor, nor a licensed therapist. We don’t know if his skills are to be trusted. Lucy might as well have confessed while being tortured or in her sleep. It was coercion. It was a confession given under duress. My client doesn’t even remember saying it.”

  The judge nodded and then gestured for Gonzalo.

  “Your honor, the fact that the accused doesn’t remember confessing is rather convenient, especially once she realized she didn’t have patient-doctor confidentiality with her hypnotist. The accused wanted to relieve herself of the guilt that sent her to the hospital in the first place. But now she’s been caught and regrets it. Plain and simple.”

  The judge fingered the flash drive containing the recording, looking back and forth between Jolene and Gonzalo. He sighed. “Inadmissible,” he said. “I can’t set this dangerous precedent, Mr. Campos. I’m sorry. Unless you have further corroborating evidence than that medical examiner of yours, I’m afraid my decision is final.”

  “I do,” said Gonzalo, a rare note of excitement having crept into his voice. He held up a finger and exited the room, returning a few minutes later with two plastic evidence bags. “Corroborating evidence,” he said simply, laying the bags on the judge’s desk.

  “Explain to me what I’m looking at here.”

  “Bottle A is the bottle of potassium cyanide weighed down with a bullet. Bottle B is the bottle of nitro-glycerin, also weighed down with a bullet. Lucy Fielder confessed to throwing a bottle of poison into the water, weighed down with a bullet. That’s bottle A. Bottle B’s existence means she must have told someone about what she’d done, and they tried to cover for her.” Gonzalo flicked a knowing glance at Jolene. “There’s no other explanation for how two bottles ended up in the same place.”

  Jolene bit her tongue to keep from yelling. She knew precisely what Gonzalo was doing. Clearly, he had spoken to Simon and was counting on Jolene to stay silent due to fearing accusations of evidence-planting. It was a power move; if she argued against this evidence, it would come out that she’d been the one to find it and the accusations against her would swiftly follow suit. In consequence, she would likely be declared unfit, and the trial would be postponed until Lucy Fielder got a new lawyer.

  Not to mention Jolene’s career would be over.

  “Ms. Park, do you have a rebuttal?” the judge asked.

  “Would you excuse me for just a moment?”

  “Very well. But make it fast.”

  Jolene hurried out into the courtroom, scanning the area until she spotted a head of wiry black hair in the fourth row. “Mr. Auen,” she hissed.

  Lucas turned around and started when he saw Jolene motioning to him. He got up and shuffled over. “What is it?” he asked nervously.

  “Are you willing to testify that it was you who threw the dummy poison bottle into the lake, and that you did this based on your own suspicions—not because Lucy told you what she’d done?”

  Lucas’s eyes grew wide. “No,” he said firmly. He put his hand up palm first toward her. “Absolutely not. I refuse to get myself more mixed up in this than I already am. I’m strictly here to support Lucy.”

  “You’d be helping her more if you’d be honest with the jury.”

  Lucas merely shook his head. His posture was straight, but his eyes were frightened. Jolene patted him on the shoulder and returned to the judge’s quarters.

  “I have no rebuttal,” she said as soon as she entered. “It can be heard in court.”

  “Are you sure, Ms. Park?” the judge asked.

  “Yes.” But she wasn’t at all. She had a hunch about that tape, but she hadn’t wanted to test it out in front of the jury while her client’s life was at stake. Holding her shoulders high, she left the room and made a beeline for Lucy, who waited for her in the hallway. The girl looked bewildered at all the commotion. Her thin arms were crossed tightly against her chest, and Jacob stood rigidly beside her, no doubt feeling guilty about his testimony.

  “Lucy, can I speak to you for a moment?” Jolene asked. She darted a look at Jacob. “Alone?” The last thing she needed was for him to get desperate again and try to make off with Lucy.

  Lucy nodded slowly and followed Jolene down the hall. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a small voice.

  “The prosecution is going to play your confession for the jury.”

  Lucy inhaled sharply. “But—”

  “It’s okay. It’s not the end. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve, but I just don’t want you to be shocked when it happens. So, prepare yourself. Do you trust me?” Jolene looked into the young woman’s eyes.

  Chapter 8

  Accusations

  Shortly, court was back in session, and Gonzalo wasted no time getting Lucy’s recorded confession to the stand.

  “Like…Chocolate. The beach. Flowers.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Takes a pill of potassium cyanide and put…It in a plastic bag. Crush. Crush. Crush. I…pours it in…to cocoa.”

  “And then what, Lucy?”

  “I took it to the study. For who’s in there.”

  “You served it to your uncle? Okay, thank you, Lucy. Can you tell me what happened next?”

  “He--I…drove to Toluca Lake. Windy and bright. Threw the pill bottle into the water. I made sure it sank because I put a shotgun shell inside.”

  There! Jolene thought wildly. She quickly scribbled her thoughts onto her notepad. At the end of the recording, the courtroom went deadly sile
nt.

  Gonzalo walked in front of the jury. “The defense will try to tell you that what you just heard was coercion. But to me, I only hear a kindly doctor trying to help his patient heal. That didn’t sound like coercion to me. That sounded like a very troubled girl confessing to a terrible crime.”

  Jolene stood and approached the jury. “I wonder if anybody noted Lucy’s language as she talked about the crime she allegedly committed?” She paused, looking at the men and women on the bench. “Let me show you what I’m talking about.” She played the section again. “You hear it? ‘Takes a pill.’ ‘Pours it in.’ The language used to describe the poisoning of her uncle is much different from the language she uses to describe things like ‘I made sure it sank because I put a shotgun shell inside.’ With the latter, she uses complete sentences. Specificity. But with the sections about the murder, she neglects to use personal pronouns and verb tenses associated with ‘I.’ Instead, she uses third-person conjugation.” Jolene paused. “I’d argue that Lucy was not the actor in these events, but an observer. She saw someone crushing the poison and later conflated that memory with a deep feeling of guilt for disappointing her uncle by getting engaged, which made her feel as though she had hurt him irrevocably. Under trauma and stress like that, she convinced herself it was all her fault—that she must have poisoned him.”

  Gonzalo stood up and clapped twice. “Thank you, Detective,” he said sarcastically. “That’s quite a theory. But unfortunately, it’s unprovable and unlikely. And a touch too convenient for my taste, but that’s just me.”

  Jolene didn’t respond, but she hoped her explanation would be enough to sway at least one member of the jury. She was sure she was right, but she was still no closer to finding out the truth of what happened that evening in the Foster household. Lucas, his wife Rebekah, and the colonel would be the most probable people Lucy could have seen mixing the poison. But which one? She needed to figure it out if she wanted to be certain Lucy wouldn’t go down for this crime.

  Next, Gonzalo presented the evidence of the poison bottles, each including a bullet. He claimed to the jury what he had claimed in the judge’s quarters—that the existence of the dummy bottle meant Lucy had confessed to someone who had tried to protect her.