Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “Don’t you think we’d better…?” Lynn trailed off.

  “Wait for the police?” I smiled humorlessly.

  Matt, too, seemed disinclined to take the lead in going down to the basement apartment, so I took the lead myself. They followed. When I stopped to pull the front door open the rest of the way, Lynn was so close behind me that I almost hit her with it. Behind her, Melissa and Matt were holding hands.

  We went out onto the porch and down the steps. The sidewalk was deserted. The occasional car was parked along the curb, mine closest to the house. Charles Rogers and his dog had disappeared into the shadows.

  “Is that yours?” Melissa asked, and I glanced at her.

  “The Beetle? Yeah, it’s mine.”

  “I’ve always liked those.”

  “Me, too. Lots of headroom for a little car.” I wondered whether she was a space cadet or merely trying to be friendly. Leaving the sidewalk, I went down the steps to a single, solid door. There was a copper lamp fixed onto the brick beside the door, lighting the steps well enough that Charles Rogers might have noticed a short-skirted woman lying on them, even without the help of Rex the canine detective. On the door itself was a brass plaque that carried the name Derek Nolan and, below it, the single word “Factor.” The door was locked. There was no window, illuminated or otherwise.

  “I’ll get the key,” Matt said, and disappeared back up the steps.

  “What’s a factor?” I asked Lynn.

  “A money lender.”

  “A loan shark,” Melissa said. She flushed when Lynn looked at her. “That’s what Matt calls him.”

  “Specifically, it’s someone who lends money to businesses,” Lynn said. “Manufacturers and dealers.”

  “He can compete with the banks?”

  “Sometimes he’s willing to make loans a bank wouldn’t.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  Matt came back with his mother’s purse. “The key by the door’s gone,” he said as he handed the purse to her.

  “Did you forget to put it back?”

  “I never use it. No one does, except in emergencies.”

  Frowning irritably, Lynn fished out a set of keys, sorted through it one-handed, and gave me the set with the appropriate key extended.

  I twisted the key in the lock and depressed the latch.

  The apartment was as dark as a cave. I felt for a switch and found it. A floor lamp with a Tiffany shade came on, revealing a well-appointed office, though the chair behind the large walnut desk had been overturned. Stepping forward, I saw that a man was on the floor by the chair, lying on his back with one arm out-flung. His face seemed distorted, his ear dark with blood that ran down from his temple to an irregular stain on the Oriental carpet.

  Behind me someone gasped. I think it was Lynn, but when I looked back all three of them seemed to have retreated into the doorway beside a smaller desk, which was set at a right angle to the front wall. My own heart was hammering, and when I spoke, my voice seemed to have a hollow quality. “Derek?” I asked.

  Lynn nodded. She had a knuckle pressed to her mouth, and the skin around her unblemished eye looked slightly pink.

  “Is this the man who hit you?” I asked Melissa.

  She shrugged, wide-eyed.

  “When you say you saw a light on down here, did you mean the outside light?”

  She was looking at me like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “Or did you see a line of light under the door or something?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember.” She turned away from me and pushed through the door.

  “You don’t need to cross-examine her,” Matt said, before going after her.

  I looked at Lynn and shrugged. “Occupational hazard,” I said by way of apology. I took a step back toward the door and saw Matt and Melissa sitting together on the steps. He had his arm around her.

  I turned and walked back to the desk to look over things more carefully. Though I had practiced law for only six years and criminal law was not my specialty, I was a lawyer at a crime scene with her client. I could feel the weight of responsibility.

  One of the file drawers in the desk was open. It was fitted with hanging folders and was crammed to capacity. Lynn, beside me, asked, “What do you think happened?”

  “I think somebody shot him in the side of the head,” I said. It was a crass way to put it, but it didn’t seem to faze her. She moved around me and stood looking down at her dead husband.

  “Why would anybody do that?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “It could have been suicide,” she said in a hopeful tone.

  “No gun,” I said. There was something clutched in the man’s out-flung fist, but it wasn’t that.

  “He has one in his desk.”

  “Who put it back for him?”

  She looked confused. “What?”

  “If Derek had killed himself, the gun would be there on the floor beside him.”

  “Unless someone moved it afterwards.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who knocked Melissa down?” But her voice was uncertain.

  “If he found the body, what motive would he have for making it look like murder?”

  Lynn took an awkward step sideways, her eyes fixed on her dead husband. I thought for a moment she was going to fall.

  “We need to back out of here,” I said, taking her arm. “We’ve got to call the police, and it would be better not to use the phone on the desk.”

  Lynn nodded. “I know. I just can’t…” She bumped against the credenza. A file folder fell to the floor, spilling papers, and a computer screen came on. “I can’t…”

  “You just put your left hand on the credenza,” I said. “Let’s try not to touch anything else.” A Word document had appeared on the screen. It looked like a promissory note made for the signature of someone named Turk.

  Seeing my focus, Lynn turned to look, too. Her attention shifted to the printer. She picked up the single page before I could stop her.

  “Look at this,” she said, and she turned the page so I could read the printing: Matt, Lynn, I’m sorry. I haven’t been much of a husband or a father. I’ve become something I never intended to be. I’m sick of myself and everything around me.

  There was no signature, not even a typed one.

  After a moment, Lynn said, “A suicide note.”

  “Still no gun,” I said. “And anybody could have typed this. It would be nice if your fingerprints weren’t on it.”

  She put the paper back on the printer just as a new voice sounded from the steps outside. “Is everybody all right here?”

  Matt said something in response, but I couldn’t make out the words. I went around the desk to the door. A uniformed police officer was on the steps with Matt, his partner standing above him at the top of the stairs.

  “We’ve got a body down here,” I said.

  “A body.” He didn’t look as if he believed me, but he gestured to his partner. “What kind of body?”

  “A dead one.” I stepped aside to let them past me into the apartment. “Where’s Melissa?” I asked Matt.

  “In the house. She was feeling kind of sick.”

  I nodded. “How about you? You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He smiled at me, but he looked grim. I turned back into the apartment, and Matt came after me. Already one of the cops was on his cell phone, and the other stood over the body.

  The crime scene had changed. Dread settled over me as I walked closer, noting the differences. The promissory note no longer showed on the computer screen, only a picture of Lynn and Matt and a few icons along the left side. The file drawer in the desk was now closed. More significantly, a small automatic pistol lay on the carpet by the dead man’s left shoulder, just outside the bloodstain. My eyes went to Lynn’s face, and she looked back defiantly.

  A wave of anger surged through me.
r />   The cop flipped his cell phone closed. “Who are you people?” he asked me.

  “Robin Starling.”

  “Lynn Nolan. I live here. This is my husband.”

  “I’m Matt Nolan,” Matt said.

  “You live here too?”

  He said he did.

  “You?” the cop asked me.

  I shook my head. “I just got here. I’m a lawyer.”

  The cop’s eyes went to Lynn. “How come you called a lawyer?”

  I said, “I was talking to her about a divorce. We didn’t know her husband was down here until about three minutes ago.”

  “Huh. Look, we’re going to ask all of you to wait outside until homicide gets here.” He locked eyes with his partner and jerked his head in our direction.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” the partner said to us.

  “May we wait upstairs in the house?” Lynn asked.

  “Sure. Upstairs is fine.”

  My red Beetle was pulling away from the curb as we went out. I took the remaining steps two at a time, but I was too late. By the time I reached the street, my car was turning the corner half a block away.

  “What the hell,” I said as I came to a stop.

  Matt Nolan was looking at me as if I’d gone berserk on him. “What is it?” he said.

  “That was my car.”

  “Your car. Who was driving it?”

  “Your girlfriend, I think. I left my keys on the coffee table upstairs.”

  “Melissa.” He was sprinting up the steps into the main part of the house as his mother reached the sidewalk. Both cops were still down in Derek’s office.

  Lynn and I went up the stairs toward the door of the house, which Matt had left open. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said to Lynn as the front door closed behind us, leaving us alone in the front hall. “What you tell me is privileged communication. What I see is something else again. I can be made to testify about that.”

  “It has to look like suicide,” she insisted.

  “Unless the gun in the desk is the gun that fired the fatal bullet, it’s not going to look like a suicide.”

  “If the scene’s convincing enough…”

  “Had the desk gun been fired recently? It’s an automatic. Is there an ejected casing somewhere in that office?”

  She looked dismayed.

  “Why did you close the document that was open on the computer?”

  “Because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Derek start work on another document after typing a suicide note?”

  “Why would a murderer print the suicide note, then open another file?” I said. “It’s not up to us to manufacture evidence that makes sense. We have to deal with the facts as they exist.”

  “Do you think the murderer brought the suicide note with him?”

  “If so, you’ve done your best to keep the police from considering the possibility. They're going to assume it was composed and printed right here.” A thought occurred to me. “You’re not covering up for someone, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your husband’s dead, and you seem to have surprisingly little interest in what happened to him.”

  “I don’t care what happened to him,” she said bitterly. “He’s dead, and I just want everything resolved as soon as possible.”

  “You may not have helped your cause any.”

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  “I guess we will.”

  Matt was coming down the stairs from the floor above. “She’s gone,” he said.

  “Gone? Who’s gone?” Lynn asked.

  “Melissa. She’s gone.”

  “Evidently, she just drove away in my car,” I said.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “How should I know? She’s your son’s fiancée.”

  “I just met her couple of days ago myself,” Lynn said. “After they became engaged.”

  I looked at Matt. “You were dating her secretly?”

  “Not exactly. I just haven’t brought her around the house much.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “At a coffee shop up by VCU. She’s a waitress.”

  “VCU where you go to school?” A siren was audible on the night air and growing louder.

  Matt nodded.

  “Where does Melissa live?”

  “She has an apartment in the Fan, not far from the university. Why?”

  “Just trying to get a handle on where she might have taken my car.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re kind of stuck, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am, and under the circumstances, I’d like to get out of here before the police can ask me too many questions.” I wondered suddenly if Melissa might have had the same motivation.

  “What circumstances?” Matt asked.

  “Ask your mother.”

  Chapter 3

  I called my roommate Brooke to come get me. Before she got there, though, a homicide detective I knew came in the front door and stopped in the archway to the living room.

  “Robin Starling,” he said, sounding surprised.

  I looked up. “Hi, Jordan.”

  “Not a good sign,” he said. “Murder cases becoming your specialty?”

  “Let’s hope not.” It was, I reflected, the second murder scene at which he’d found me.

  Lynn said, “This wasn’t murder, though. It was suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “Doubtful,” Jordan said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  The corner of Jordan’s mouth lifted. “It’s what I always say.”

  “So you don’t have any specific reasons for thinking it wasn’t suicide?”

  “That’s not what I said.” He came into the living room and sat in a large square chair, pushing the ottoman out of the way with his foot. “Tell me about it,” he said, his eyes on Lynn Nolan.

  “About finding the body?”

  “That will do for starters.”

  She told him, starting with Charles Rogers ringing the doorbell and about finding Melissa Butler on the steps outside. Jordan wrote the names in his notebook, but seemed to be relying on his memory for the rest of it.

  “So she saw a man fleeing the scene,” he said. “Did she describe him?”

  “Well, no,” Lynn said. “Not really. We all just assumed it was Derek.”

  “Derek is your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “And that’s whose body is downstairs.”

  Again the quick nod. “Derek has a history of violence,” Lynn said. “And he’s been in a bad mood lately.”

  “He do that to your eye?”

  Lynn nodded.

  “Where is Melissa Butler? I’d like to talk to her.”

  They all looked at me, and Jordan’s eyes followed their gaze.

  “She’s driving around in my car,” I said.

  “Just driving around, or is she going somewhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look. This woman saw the murderer. You can’t just bury her.”

  “I didn’t bury her.”

  “But you sent her off in your car.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He shifted in the chair. “You see, the problem is I know you, Robin. You do whatever the hell you want, and you depend on constant motion to stay out of trouble.”

  “Well, I didn’t send her off in my car. I left my keys in the house when we went downstairs. We discovered the body, then the police came. When they shooed us out of the downstairs apartment, my car was pulling away from the curb.”

  “With Ms. Butler at the wheel.”

  “I assume so. I didn’t actually see her. She was up in the house, though, and my keys are missing.”

  “Along with Ms. Butler herself.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I want to talk to her,” Jordan said. He looked at Lynn, then Matt, then me.

  “Join the club,” I said.

  “Why was she up in the
house anyway? Was she alone?”

  “She was alone. Finding the body seemed to upset her.”

  “And after the police came, she left with your car.”

  I shrugged, then nodded.

  “Without your knowledge or permission.”

  “Without my permission. I knew about it, because I saw her doing it.”

  “No particular reason you want to keep her from talking to the police,” Jordan said.

  “Of course not.”

  “So you want to report your car stolen?”

  I shook my head.

  His mouth stretched. “I thought not.”

  “I don’t want to prosecute, at least not until I hear what she has to say for herself. I don’t have any objection to you putting out an APB or whatever it is and having the car picked up.”

  “Okay, then.” Jordan looked at Matt. “Can you give me her address?”

  Matt moved his head, but looked unwilling.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Jordan said. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Okay, okay. She lives in an apartment building on Franklin Street. 1313 Franklin, apartment B.”

  Jordan got up and left the house, leaving the front door open. Lynn and Matt and I looked at each other. “You don’t have any idea why she ran off?” I asked. “Either of you?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Lynn said. Matt shook his head, looking unhappy.

  “Could she have killed Derek and fallen on the steps on the way out?”

  “She didn’t know Dad. Why would she kill him?”

  Lynn said, “The door was locked, and she didn’t have a key.”

  A cold draft from the open door swept across me, and I shivered. “Didn’t Matt say the key by the door was missing? It’s why he brought you your purse.” If Melissa had had a key, I thought, she now had the time and the whole city of Richmond in which to dispose of it.

  Jordan came back in, pushing the door shut behind him. He went back to his chair and sat down again. “Okay,” he said to Lynn. “Go on with your story.”

  “There’s not much left to tell. We went downstairs and found the body.”

  “Before or after you dialed 9-1-1?”

  Lynn’s gaze started to slide toward me, but she stopped it. “After,” she said.

  “What made you think your husband had knocked down Ms. Butler?”

  “I don’t know. She said it was a man coming out of the downstairs apartment. I didn’t know who else would be down there.”