by Gin Jones
Her whole body spun with the force, and she had to release the branch to keep from falling over. Still, she felt validated. She had been able to swing it. She might not be able to do it again until she'd recovered from the jarring effect the first swing had had on her hip, but as far as she knew, one blow had been enough to kill Melissa. Helen could have done that much.
She retrieved the branch from where it had fallen, deeper in the woods, and then picked her way carefully back to the police line and onto the grass of the back yard. Even here, where it looked as smooth as a golf course, there were little hills and valleys that could trip her up if she weren't careful.
She glanced over toward the taped-off grass. The ground looked perfectly smooth there, sloping only a few consistent degrees toward the woods, so water would run away from the cottage. If it was anything like the ground under her feet, though, it wasn't as even as it appeared.
Helen placed her Exhibit A, the branch, on the back deck and returned to the blood-stained spot. She lowered herself onto her hands and knees and then lay down on the grass, getting an ant's-eye view of the ground. The area was definitely not as smooth as it had looked from a standing position.
She held the camera just high enough that the closest grass wouldn't obscure the image, and examined the area through the camera's display. From this vantage point, she could see that there was another area of trampled grass, closer to her back deck, but away from the path she'd taken with the her murder-weapon replica. They were probably just from the forensics crew or emergency personnel, but she was trying to be more thorough than the detective had been and not make any assumptions.
Struggling back to her feet, Helen contemplated the next step in her investigation. She had her photographs of the crime scene. She had her stand-in for the murder weapon. What else could she do?
Tate would know. He had to have learned about crime investigation in the course of representing criminals. She'd ask him about it if he was at the law office tomorrow morning. There had to be a way to casually slip in the question, "How can I prove I murdered someone?"
CHAPTER SIX
Jack arrived promptly at a quarter to ten the next morning.
"I heard about what happened to Melissa," he said as he held the door for her to enter the back of the luxury car. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
He waited until they were heading down the driveway before asking, "Do the police have any leads on who did it?"
She snorted. "They think a burglar did it. They're not even considering any other options."
"A burglar?"
"Used to just steal things, but apparently he's turned violent," Helen said. "They wouldn't even consider me as a suspect."
"You?"
"Why not me?" Helen said.
Jack glanced at her in his rear-view mirror. "You probably have an alibi. When was she killed?"
"I have no idea." She hadn't thought to ask, and she didn't know enough about head wounds to make any sort of educated guess. "I doubt the police will tell me. I didn't exactly bond with the detective."
"Melissa wasn't here when we came back from the courthouse around 6:00," Jack said. "If she died before that, then you've got me and Tate and even the judge to confirm your alibi. Plus there's the log I file with the company. It would confirm when I left here."
"She could have been here, and we just didn't see her." She shivered. The body could have been lying out there all night, a few feet away from where Helen was sleeping. "It was dark when we got home, and her body was in the side yard, away from where you parked."
"We'd have noticed if her car was still here," Jack said. "I don't remember seeing it."
"You're right. It was gone then," Helen said. "She had to have been alive then to drive it away, but then how'd she get back here later? The car wasn't here when I found her body."
"The killer must have taken it, so you wouldn't notice anything was wrong," Jack said. "Give himself more time to get out of town. You'd have been suspicious if Melissa's car was here last night, and she wasn't, and you'd have gone looking for her and found the body."
Melissa really could have been dead since the previous afternoon, Helen thought. She hadn't heard a car coming or going at any time during the morning before she'd found the body, and it was hard to miss the sound of tires on her gravel driveway. The only time she might not have noticed a car arriving this morning was while she was taking a shower. But it seemed unlikely that Melissa could have arrived, been killed, and then had her car stolen by her killer, all in the ten minutes or so that Helen had been unable to hear anything outside.
"It doesn't make any sense," Helen said. "If the killer drove Melissa's car away, how did he get to my house in the first place? She's never brought anyone with her before, and it's not exactly walking distance from anywhere. I doubt anyone hires a taxi or limo to go to kill someone."
"True."
"And there were still a couple cans of her Diet Pepsi in the refrigerator this morning. She usually finishes all of them before she leaves," Helen said. "Something had to have happened to make her leave without finishing them all on Monday."
"Like realizing you'd flown the coop?"
"That's about the only thing that would tear her away from her soda and radio," Helen said. "I wonder if she told her boss. He didn't say anything about my having escaped from Melissa's care."
"She probably tried to find you first, and then got killed before she spoke to the boss."
"If Melissa did leave on Monday afternoon to look for me, and was gone when we got home, then it narrows down the time of death to somewhere between 6:00 that night, and 10:00 Tuesday morning." That was the exact time when Helen had no alibi for yesterday. She really deserved to be a suspect. "But why did Melissa stay outside in the yard, instead of letting herself into the cottage to bug me, like she normally does? She couldn't have known that I barricaded the doors against her, and I would have heard her if she'd tried to come in."
"Lost her key?"
"Maybe." Helen tried to recall if there had been keys in Melissa's hands. She didn't think so. Melissa never carried a purse, presumably because it interfered with lugging her Diet Pepsi supply into the house. The brightly-printed smocks she wore had large pockets in them, and she might have tucked the keys in there. "I wish we could see what personal effects the police found on her."
"If anyone can get that information for you," Jack said, "Tate can."
"That's what I'm counting on." That, and the fact that Tate might be tempted out of retirement by the novelty of a client trying to prove she did commit murder, instead of trying to prove she was innocent.
* * *
Jack parked outside Tate & Bancroft, and settled in with his video games while Helen limped into the building. The reception area was vacant, like the first time she'd been there. She heard a man's voice talking, though, so she headed down the hallway in that direction. She wasn't sure if it was Tate or his nephew. Their voices were as similar as their looks. The same height and lean build, the same dark hair, except for the gray strands that Tate had earned. The only real difference in their appearance was that Adam seemed a great deal more tense than his laid-back uncle, with tension lines already forming in his forehead.
Adam was seated behind a clutter-free desk, talking on the phone. He gestured that he'd only be a moment, and that she should come in and take a seat.
As Helen stepped forward, the ache in her hip warned that she was not ready to sit just yet, so she pretended to be fascinated by the law books lining his walls. From the sticky notes poking out from some of the books and the gaps where the occasional volume was missing, it appeared that Adam actually used his set, unlike her ex-husband who kept them for show. Her ex had always had minions with their own libraries to do the actual research for him.
Adam hung up the phone and stood to greet her. "My uncle isn't here right now."
"I didn't expect to see him. I understand that he's retired, so I came to see you. I hope you d
on't mind that I stopped by without an appointment, but it was something of an emergency."
"What can I do to help?"
Adam politely remained standing until Helen reluctantly folded herself into one of the client chairs. It would take too long to explain why she'd rather stand. "You know the nurse I tried to get a restraining order against?"
He nodded.
"She's dead. I found her bloody body this morning."
"That does sound serious, but not the type of legal work I do." Adam rose from his seat. "Let me see if Uncle Tate can talk to you. He's out back, in his workshop."
A few minutes later, Adam returned and sent her out back to the garage where Tate maintained a small woodworking shop. "Just follow the sound of the lathe. I can't promise he'll turn it off to talk to you, but he didn't threaten to report me to the Board of Bar Overseers if I told you where he was, so I think he's willing to listen."
The garage doors were the old-fashioned kind that swung out, rather than lifting into the ceiling. They were both propped open, but even so, the interior was poorly lit. The walls were lined with stacks of banker's boxes containing old legal files, leaving what would have been just about enough space to park one subcompact car, if it weren't filled with Tate's woodworking machinery and a rickety table cluttered with wood scraps and several elaborately detailed wood lamp stems, awaiting wiring and a shade.
Tate was standing at the lathe, patiently turning a three-foot length of wood into what appeared to be another lamp stem to match the ones on his work table. He was good at his hobby, she thought. And it was good for him. He looked peaceful. Happy, even, although he wasn't the sort to laugh out loud.
She needed a hobby like that. Something she could be good at, unlike scrapbooking and photography, and that would be so engrossing she wouldn't notice when other people were invading her space, like Melissa had done at the cottage, or, Helen thought with some guilt, like she was doing herself by entering Tate's workshop uninvited. The least she could do was wait quietly until he turned off the machinery to take a break.
Finally, Tate seemed to notice her presence and turned off the lathe. "Adam told you where I was, didn't he? Why won't anyone believe that I'm retired?"
"Probably for the same reason no one will believe me when I say I want to be left alone."
"It's too easy for clients to find me here." Tate glanced pointedly at his wrist, except there was nothing there. He jerked open a drawer in his workbench and rummaged through it. "I know I have a watch here somewhere. Don't think I won't charge you for this conversation, just because it's happening outside my office. In fact, I ought to charge double for the inconvenience."
"Go ahead. There should be something left from yesterday's retainer." Helen looked for a place to sit, but apparently Tate always worked standing up, and there wasn't room for any spare furniture. "You won't have to appeal the restraining order, at least. Melissa is dead."
He snapped around, surprise evident in his eyes. He quickly schooled his expression into its usual inscrutability, and leaned against his workbench to study her face for several seconds. "I thought we agreed you weren't going to kill her."
"I didn't, and you know it," Helen snapped. Even Tate wasn't taking her seriously. He wouldn't have joked about her guilt if he'd thought it might have been true. "I could have killed her, but I didn't."
Tate absently picked up a scrap of sandpaper and began applying it to a section of the lamp stem he'd been turning. "Then who did?"
"I don't know," Helen said. "The police think it was a burglary gone bad."
"If they change their mind and arrest you, I'm going to need a bigger retainer."
"I won't be arrested. No one believes I'm capable of murder."
He looked up from his work. "Then why are you bothering me?"
"A couple things." Helen retrieved Pierce's business card from her purse. "I need you to terminate the contract with the nursing agency. I am not going to have another visiting nurse's death on my conscience."
Tate took the card. "I thought you didn't kill the first one."
"I might kill the next nurse if I can't stop the agency from sending them out," Helen said.
"Adam can handle the contract cancellation for you," he said. "Why are you really here?"
"He doesn't do criminal cases," Helen said. "I need to know everything you can tell me about burglary."
"You running out of cash?" he said. "Considering a new career in crime so you can pay my bill?"
"I'm just wondering about Melissa's killer."
"You don't strike me as the type who indulges in pointless intellectual exercises. You've got a plan." He stared at the card in his hand for a few moments before nodding to himself. "You want to find the burglar before the police do, so you can thank him for getting rid of Melissa?"
"Not to thank him. Just to prove that he didn't do it, so the police will have a reason to keep looking and find whoever really did do it."
"You'll get arrested for interfering with a police investigation." Tate pocketed Pierce's business card. "Adam can take care of cancelling the nursing agency's contract. I've got better things to do than represent you when you haven't even been charged with a crime."
"You said you'd consider taking on an interesting homicide case," Helen said. "A patient killing her nurse isn't the routine murder."
"You didn't kill her."
"I could have."
"You aren't going to drop this, are you?" He leaned against the table where his lathe was set up. "Give me the basics. How was she killed?"
"Okay, that part was pretty standard," Helen said. "She was bashed over the head."
"Her significant other did it, then," Tate said. "Forget about the burglary angle."
"I don't think she had a significant other," Helen said. "Her boss said she didn't have any family."
"Bosses don't know everything about an employee's private life."
"I think he was right, though," Helen said. "Melissa was trying to impress me with her dedication, and told me she'd always worked such long and irregular shifts, it didn't leave any time for a personal life."
"I know how that can be," Tate said. "Do you believe the burglary theory?"
"Not particularly," Helen said. "But the police do. They think some local burglar was trying to break into my house, and Melissa got in the way."
"Sounds logical enough," Tate said.
"But shouldn't they at least consider the other options?" Helen said.
"Options like you?"
"For one," she said. "But I'm sure there are others too."
"It's not unusual for the police to jump to conclusions," Tate said. "They develop a theory, get attached to it, and then interpret the evidence in the light most favorable to the theory. It's human nature to see what they want to see and not see the inconsistencies. Makes it hard for defense counsel to convince them their case isn't as strong as they think it is."
"If I understood more about burglary, I might understand their theory better," Helen said.
"I knew it was a mistake to set up shop back here. Too damned easy for clients to find me." Tate dropped the sandpaper. "You're not going to leave until I answer all of your questions, are you?"
Helen shook her head.
"Might as well make yourself comfortable, then." Tate crossed the room to retrieve two folded director's chairs. The navy canvas was riddled with holes and coated in sawdust. He set them up across from each other, gave one a quick swipe with his hand and gestured for Helen to have a seat.
"I can't get into any specifics," Tate said as he settled into the other chair without bothering to remove even the surface layer of sawdust, "but over the years I've represented a few people charged with burglary."
"Were any of them guilty?" Helen perched on the edge of the chair.
"Let's just say none of them were convicted," Tate said. "The thing is, they're never master criminals like the ones on TV and in the movies. Most burglaries are just a matter of opportunity and despe
ration, not some long-planned-out heist."
"The local burglar seems pretty good at what he does," Helen said. "Apparently he's been breaking into houses around here for the last couple years, and the police don't know who he is."
"It still doesn't mean he's planning everything in advance," Tate said. "He could just be lucky. He sees a place, it's empty, figures he'll poke around and see what he can find. As long as no one sees him, and his prints aren't in the system, there's not much for the police to go on. Besides, I doubt the cops were trying too hard to find him before now."
"They don't care that houses are being broken into?"
"They're just being realistic," Tate said. "Unless it's an obvious situation of a family member stealing for drug money, break-ins are hardly ever solved. And the cops aren't going to spend too much time on a situation they're not likely to solve, especially if no one got hurt."
"I heard a knife was involved in one case."
"Not as far as I know," Tate said. "The guy they have in mind has just stolen some little stuff. No one's even caught a glimpse of him. Never seemed like much of a risk."
"Still, people feel scared after a break-in. Vulnerable."
"You don't seem to be a bundle of nerves," he said, "and you found a dead body."
"I worked in politics for twenty years. Nothing fazes me." Besides, a dead Melissa was a whole lot less scary than what the living Melissa had represented: the loss of Helen's independence.
"They'll find the burglar eventually," Tate said in what was about as close to offering compassionate reassurance as he ever came. "Probably step up the search now that they think he's turned violent."
"And then he'll hire you, and you'll get the charges dismissed."
"Not this time," Tate said. "A string of minor burglaries wouldn't tempt me out of retirement, even if the last one did escalate into murder."