Then, apparently for the first time that night, he noticed Bonita’s white station wagon in my driveway. “Where is your automobile?” he asked, eyeing me now with suspicion instead of anger.
“Listen, do we have a client-attorney privilege here?”
“Absolutely. Now tell me, where is your automobile?”
“Bonita has it. We traded cars. Just for the night. It’s a long story.”
“Then perhaps you should tell it to me as we drive over to Bonita’s.”
Chewing my lip, I fretted over what this might mean for Bonita. Then I realized it was only a mess for Bonita if Tired found out she had my car. “So, how good an investigator is Tired?”
“Do not let that shucks and ma’am country-boy routine deceive you. Tired is a very proficient investigator.”
Oh, frigging great.
Philip opened the passenger-side door in his car for me, and I slipped in.
As we drove off, at Philip’s insistence I told him how Bonita came to have my car. Then I had to answer about six different versions of questions all getting at whether the car swap was my idea, or could Bonita have arranged it?
“Look, I know Bonita. You don’t. Trust me on this, she is not the kind of woman who would trick me out of my car and then use it as a getaway vehicle after she shot a man.”
“What kind of woman is she?”
I mulled this over a minute, wanting to get it just right. “If Bonita’s house caught fire in the middle of the night, by the time the fire truck arrived, Bonita would have all of her children safely outside and all five of them would be wearing warm clothes.”
“Would she shoot a man?”
“No. Absolutely not,” I said.
“Would you?”
Now why would Philip ask me that? Wasn’t he my alibi?
“Would you?” he repeated.
“It depends.” The most honest answer anyone can give to almost any question.
“Yes, and it often depends upon the circumstances. However, you might be surprised by how many people find themselves perfectly capable of killing someone when the right set of facts present themselves.”
“Not Bonita.”
But as we pulled up in her driveway with my cobalt blue car sitting there, I had to wonder for just that fraction of a second.
The door opened before I knocked and Armando stood there with Johnny Winter, an albino ferret, wrapped around his neck.
“They’ve been home all night. Since work,” he said and clumped off.
Well, I hadn’t asked, but that was nice to know, I thought, and then walked in, gesturing for Philip to follow me despite the technical absence of a formal invitation.
Though it was getting pretty late for a house with five children, all the lights were on and loud noises came from every corner. I followed the noise to the kitchen, where Benny, Henry, and Bonita were seated around a Monopoly board.
Bonita arose and said gracious things in a strange monotone.
“¿A que te dedicas?” Bonita asked as I introduced her to Philip, but she didn’t wait for his answer.
Henry stood up and greeted me formally. But as he shook hands with Philip, his face started blotching red.
Benny would neither get up from the table nor look me in the eye.
Mierda, I thought.
“You know Kenneth Mallory got shot tonight,” I said and watched them for reactions. Bonita reached for her gold cross pendant. Henry blotched a bit more, and Benny stared at the card he had just drawn.
“We heard. On TV,” Bonita said. “Earlier.”
As I studied her face, I heard loud squealing noises from the living room and dashed in there. The other three of Bonita’s children were running around with Johnny Winter, the famous ferret.
“Hey, Tia Lilly,” Carmen said. “Wanna pet Johnny Winter?”
No, I did not want to pet the ferret. Notwithstanding the fact that Johnny Winter the ferret had saved my life once, we hadn’t become bosom buddies. He was as apt to wiz on me as on anything else, so I shook my head no toward Carmen.
“Hey, Tia Lilly,” Javy said, and untangled his legs and got up from the floor and stood on tiptoe to kiss me on my cheek. He and Carmen at least acted perfectly normal.
Armando was sitting in a corner growling at a handheld computer-game toy thing that teenage boys seem to have glued inside their hands these days. I introduced Philip to the three kids.
“Why is Johnny here?” I asked, wondering how Newly’s ferret had come to live with Bonita and her children.
“Armando wanted a dog,” Javy said. “And Angela was afraid she might catch something from him and made Newly get rid of Johnny.”
Okay, a ferret for a dog, close enough, I guess.
Carmen insisted she must formally introduce Johnny Winter to Philip and this apparently involved shaking paws with him, but first the ferret had to be caught, and there was a whirl of motion and run, run, giggle, giggle, and then a crash.
Hopefully that milk-glass lamp wasn’t Bonita’s favorite, I thought.
“Uh-oh, busted glass,” Javy said, and sprang into action, chasing down the ferret amid the shards.
Leaving Javy to the task of preventing cut ferret feet, I went back to the kitchen, where Bonita, Henry, and Benny were waiting. They weren’t even pretending to be busy doing anything.
“Bonita, did you go anywhere in my car tonight?” I didn’t see the point of beating around the bush.
“I did not drive your car except to drive it home.”
“Did you loan the car to anyone?”
“No.”
“Did anyone borrow the car?”
“No.”
Damn, she’d be the perfect witness. Not a word more than necessary and a perfectly pleasant, but essentially poker-faced expression.
“You didn’t go to Kenneth’s house? Tonight? Today? Anytime?”
“I told you I did not drive your car except to drive it home.”
“You sure?”
Oh, like she might not have noticed she was driving fifteen miles down Fruitville Road to Oak Ford, entering through ostentatious country-manor gates, and driving up to Kenneth’s fake Gone with the Wind–type house?
A peeved expression crossed Bonita’s face, which I took for her answer.
Having irritated Bonita, I looked over at Henry and Benny. They were shadowing the doorway between the kitchen and the den. Neither of them would look at me or each other. I didn’t like the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach.
“Benny, why don’t you and me go into your room, have a talk,” I said and tried to smile.
Henry the meek, Henry the bleater, Henry the man I’d been pushing around for years stepped in front of Benny and said, “Why do you want to talk to him?”
There was no mistaking the protective stance.
“Okay, what is going on here?” I snapped. Philip made those irritating shushing noises that always make people madder. I overrode his shushing by asking again, on the off chance no one had properly processed the previous question, “Okay, what is going on?”
“Nothing,” Bonita said.
“Nothing,” Henry said, blotching more. “We’ve been home all night. Since about seven. Your car has been parked in the carport all night.”
While I assessed the rehearsed quality to that and tried to catch Philip’s eye, Carmen came into the kitchen. “Do you want to see my new ballerina doll?” she asked, tugging at my hand.
I held Carmen’s hand, but I looked at Benny. He hung his head and wouldn’t look at me.
“Philip,” I said, “perhaps you should take me home. It’s late.”
I was exhausted. I was beyond exhausted.
I was terrified.
Terrified that Benny had done something terrible and Bonita and Henry would go to jail for perjury before they’d ever back off from their story that all of them had been together since seven with the cobalt blue Honda parked in the driveway.
Chapter 22
With modest m
odifications, Saturday is as much a workday as Wednesday at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley. The attorneys wear jeans and the secretaries work only half days, but the law clerks drudge their regular eight hours in hopes of being noticed and promoted, and at one-thirty the top partners all disappear for their afternoon golf games with judges and rich men with influence. We baby partners, along with the associates, drone on till we can’t stand it anymore.
Despite the fact that one of our own had been shot six times in what the Sarasota Herald-Tribune quoted the sheriff as calling “suspicious circumstances,” a modest understatement, if you ask me, there we were on Saturday. And while the recently-made-dead Kenneth was definitely the topic at the coffeepot, work went on.
But Bonita didn’t come in.
I punched in her home number, not to belittle her for failing to show up for work, but to inquire after her and to see if I could speak with Benny. Nobody answered.
Next I tried Philip’s number to see if he was still mad over my strident refusal to return to Tired’s office and turn Bonita in as the person who had custody of my Honda, the reigning cobalt blue suspect.
Philip didn’t answer. I didn’t like the way we’d left things. He’d claimed he couldn’t be Bonita’s defense attorney because there was a conflict of interest presented by his representing me, but I said I wasn’t a suspect anymore, and he wanted to know if I’d ever heard of a criminal conspiracy, and I said I wasn’t stupid enough to conspire with someone to kill someone else and use my car as the getaway vehicle. We sniped and snapped on Bonita’s front lawn until Henry came out and offered to drive me home in the infamous Honda, and then drive Bonita’s car back to her. Jumping at the chance to get Henry alone and pry information out of him, I had agreed even as Philip insisted we leave the cars where they were.
Henry and I ignored Philip, and Henry, far from capitulating to my interrogation, was a model of discretion during the ride back to my house. All I learned was what they had had for dinner—pizza.
So my Friday night had not ended up with the romantic romp I had hoped for, but my ancient blue car sat outside my office window on a fine, bright Saturday morning, and if things weren’t entirely right with the world, at least my quick recovery of the suspect Honda surely reduced the chances Tired would discover Bonita had my car last night.
Okay, wrong again.
I hadn’t brewed my private stash of organic, fair-trade coffee before Tired was standing in my office doorway.
“You should’ve told me Bonita had your car.”
He sounded angry.
“Coffee?” I offered, adding, “Good morning.”
“Withholding evidence is a criminal offense. Did you know that?”
“Black or with milk? Sugar?”
“Black’s fine,” Tired said. “No, hell, make it sweet.” Pause. “Milk too.”
So, okay, we had that in common and I made us both the closest thing to hot chocolate you can make with coffee and generous amounts of milk and sugar.
He sat on the couch without being invited and sipped his coffee, and then we stared at each other while I wondered if we’d known each other in a prior life, or if it was just a karmic joke that we’d become so entwined of late.
“You should have told me about Mrs. de Vasquez. Having the car,” Tired said, sounding peevish. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Oh, please, like that wasn’t obvious.
“How’d you find out she had my car?” I asked.
“So you admit it?”
Oops. That was sloppy of me, I thought, launching the counteroffensive. “So who made the spurious allegation that Bonita was driving my car last night?”
“Nice try,” Tired said. “This would be a lot easier if we just cooperated with each other.”
“Oh, yes, wouldn’t it?” I gave him the full brunt of my nice, cooperative-girl smile, and then re-asked, “So who made the allegation?”
“I followed you last night. Saw where you traded cars at a house in Southgate. Got the tag off the other car, plus the address of the house. Found out Mrs. de Vasquez belonged to the house and the station wagon. Then this morning, I found out she was your secretary.”
Oh. Please, please, please don’t know that Benny is her son. It was bad enough that Tired knew Benny had called in the dead man in the swamp, but if he connected him with my car, Tired might become an Inspector Javert to Benny and Bonita.
“You followed me,” I snapped in an offended tone, hoping to bypass any Benny/Bonita two-dead-men connection.
Ignoring my indignation, Tired asked, “Who was the man who drove her car home?”
“Her boyfriend.”
“Got a name?”
“Henry Platt.” Yes, I’d sell out Henry, friend and comrade that he was, to distract attention from Benny. Especially since Tired probably already knew who Henry was, or could quickly find out in any one of a dozen ways.
“What went on last night?”
“Look, Bonita was home all night, she had a . . . a dinner party. Henry was there, and all her kids. No way she drove that car to Kenneth’s. And you have to admit, a blue Honda is a very, very common car. There must be hundreds, thousands of them in Sarasota.”
“The neighbor who saw it drive away, she described it pretty good. Sure sounds like your car.”
“Yeah, well, why don’t you just put my car in a lineup. See if she can pick it out.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Tired sipped at his coffee, sighed, and furrowed his brow. “Why’d Bonita have your car?”
“Her car was blocked in the parking lot by a client’s car. So I loaned her mine.”
“How were you supposed to get home?”
“We just figured by the time I left, the client’s car would be gone,” I said.
“So, then Bonita left early?”
“I left late. None of the attorneys leave at five.” At least none who wanted a continuing future with the firm.
“Okay, you left later in Bonita’s car. Did Bonita leave early? Before five?”
Uh-oh, this could get tricky. Presumably at some point Tired would ask Bonita the same thing. If we told the truth, he would ask why she left early, and if we told the truth on that, then Tired would know Kenneth was harassing Bonita with that still-unfiled lawsuit, which smelled like a motive. But if I lied and Bonita didn’t tell the same lie, we’d look really suspicious. Worse still, if I refused to answer, I would look like I was hiding something. Another round of change the topic was in order.
“I bet a car lineup wouldn’t even be admissible. Are you kidding? Thousands of blue Honda cars in this city, and you’re just totally fixated on mine. Why do you think that is?”
“I’ve never seen a car that color of blue before, ma’am. That’s why, and that’s what the witness lady said.”
“Well, all right, do a lineup then.” But please, please don’t ask me again why Bonita had my car until we get our stories straight.
“This afternoon. I’ll set it up. You have your car at the sheriff’s department, back parking lot, by, say, two P.M.”
“Okay, and that’s that, isn’t it?” Translation: Go, now, and don’t ask anything else.
“Once you tell me why Bonita had your car.”
When a lie is too complicated, sometimes a very carefully edited version of the truth can be twisted to serve the same purpose. “She needed to go home early, check on one of her kids. You know she’s got five children, and one of them is always getting hurt, or stranded, or sick, or something, and I don’t pay much attention to the reasons, but anyway I told her to go on home. But somebody had blocked her car in, and so I gave her my car.”
“How were you supposed to get home?”
“We figured the car that was blocking her’s would move by the time I left, after five, and I’d drive her car, and we’d switch back this morning.”
“You were gonna switch this morning? So why switch back last night?”
“It just seemed the thing to do, no reason.” Yeah, that was brilliant, huh? “Look, I have work to do,” I added, hoping to break up our party. “And you’ve got a murderer to find.”
“You told me that Benicio, the boy who called in the dead man in the swamp, was your secretary’s son. So that’d make him Bonita’s son, right?”
Oh, God, would somebody shoot me, or at least shut me up?
“Yes.” There was, of course, no way to deny what was so easy to find out.
I watched the wheels spin in Tired’s head, and the muscle spasm in the back of my neck kicked me, and I wondered if I could have done any better at making things worse for Bonita if I had set out deliberately to do so.
And then, to my profound relief, Tired thanked me for the coffee and left.
Punch, punch, punch with phone numbers, desperately hoping Bonita would answer. She didn’t. I called Henry. He didn’t answer. What? Dead men lying around everywhere, a positive karmic convergence of malevolence, and they go off on a frolic?
My fingers hit Philip’s phone number with vehemence. This time Philip answered his private office number and I blurted out, “Is a car lineup admissible in court?”
Philip fairly sputtered at the idea and more than sputtered at the fact that I had had a conversation with Tired. Yes, he was still mad, sort of, and I thought, Oh, wait till you hear all of it. So I made nice, invited him to dinner, and asked if he would escort me to the car lineup.
“Somebody needs to protect you,” he said, “so I will accompany you.”
Under the circumstances, those being that I needed him, I decided to overlook the nineteenth-century chauvinistic, snide, paternalistic, and just plain irritating nature of that response, though I had to sit silent a moment and then swallow twice to do so.
We made a date, and I hung up and booted up my computer for a Westlaw search, Westlaw being one of the two premier computerized legal-database services that allowed attorneys to search for the law without leaving the comfort of their office chairs.
Oddly enough, I couldn’t find a thing on Westlaw about car lineups. I tried LEXIS, the competing computerized legal-research service, and found a similar lack of cases or law on point, and finally I set out to work on some of my billable files.
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