Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “I told her that you had already hired me on a separate issue, which, of course, I didn’t divulge. I urged her as a friend, not as a lawyer, to discuss her problem with you before seeking a means of legal action.”

  “She came over to my parents’ house about an hour ago. Did you tell her where I was staying?”

  “No, how could I? I don’t know where you’re staying. She asked me if I knew your mother’s address, so I’m assuming that’s where you were.”

  “And did you give that to her?”

  “No, she was so upset, I thought it best not to fan the fire. I advised her to wait until the morning to speak to you, after she’d had a chance to sleep on it.”

  Hmm. One of these women was lying, but it struck me as inconsequential either way.

  “Joanne is not....” Sheila paused. “Ever since the miscarriage, she’s—”

  “Joanne had a miscarriage? When?” I’d had a miscarriage myself, many years ago during my first pregnancy. I was painfully aware of how devastating that could be.

  “Last year. Well before you and Jim moved in.”

  “That’s sad. But I don’t get the connection between that and what’s happening now.”

  “She tends to overreact and become emotional. The Abbotts have been trying to adopt a baby. Two weeks ago, the hospital called them and told them to come in and get their baby. They drove to the hospital, and the birth mother changed her mind. They were both crushed.”

  Two weeks ago. Could this have some connection to Mr. Helen’s murder? Could he have been the baby’s father and....This was getting ridiculous. Not everything in Carlton was tied to Mr. Helen. It only seemed that way. Nonetheless, that brought to mind another puzzling incident that was tied to him.

  “Sheila, before I forget, there was a strange man who visited me at my house earlier this afternoon. Did you happen to see him or his car? A blue sedan?”

  “No, why?”

  “Frank Worscheim was an inmate in California.” Again, she looked puzzled, so I explained, “That’s the guy who’d disguised himself as Helen Raleigh, He had a partner in some jewelry heists.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d only had time to glance at the paper today.”

  “I was thinking that the two men might have met in prison. The guy who came to see me, claiming to be the reporter, might have been Frank Worscheim’s partner.”

  “What did he say his name was?”

  “Arnold something.”

  Though she showed no reaction, she repeated, “Arnold?”

  “Why? Do you know him?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You seemed to recognized the name,” I lied, merely testing her reaction.

  She leaned back in her chair. “I’m simply troubled by your theory. The last thing any of us wants is the guy who shot Helen Raleigh prowling around in our neighborhood.”

  “Which Helen Raleigh do you mean? The Helen Raleigh who lived in disguise in my house, or the original one?”

  She drew her eyebrows together as if puzzled. “Our former neighbor. Was the actual Helen Raleigh the victim of a shooting, as well?”

  “Yes. That was reported in the same article. That Frank Worscheim killed her and then assumed her identity.”

  “The police know Frank killed her?”

  Her wording bothered me. She called him “Frank” as if they’d been on a first-name basis, which they had been, but at the time, his first name had been Helen. In fact, all of her responses bothered me. I had a couple of close friends in Colorado who were lawyers. I’d known them before law school and tried not to hold their choice of professions against them. Two characteristics they had in common were uncanny memories for details, and their voracious reading of the newspaper. I suspected Sheila was playing dumb, but I had no idea why she would do so. “The paper identified him, not his partner, as Helen Raleigh’s alleged killer,” I answered.

  She gave me a sad smile. “That’s very hard for me to believe. Helen...or rather, Frank, didn’t seem like a murderer. I’ve met—” She broke off. “Is everything copacetic between you and Joanne now?”

  “From my point of view it is,” I answered halfheartedly, intrigued by what she’d almost said. My hunch was that she was going to say she’d met murderers before, perhaps while she was practicing law in California. “You went to school in California. Were you—”

  She followed my gaze to the diploma behind her. “You’re very observant.”

  “I’ve got good eyesight, too. Were you there during the jewelry heists?”

  “The ones allegedly perpetrated by Frank Worscheim?” I nodded, finding her wording annoying.

  “We moved here five years ago. When did the robberies occur?”

  Yet another item already reported in the press: “Three years ago,” I answered, still suspecting she already knew this. “Frank Worscheim had just been released from the California penitentiary. He’d done time for armed robbery. Would the court proceedings be on file in a local law library or anything?”

  She had her poker face on again and said pleasantly, “No, you’d have to know which county he was tried in and contact that courthouse for their records.”

  Thinking out loud, I muttered, “Maybe Tommy can get a copy of the transcripts and see if he mentioned the name ‘Arnold.’”

  “Tommy?” she repeated.

  “The investigating officer. Surely the police have access to trial information, don’t they?”

  She nodded. “Unless the judge had them sealed for some reason.” She pushed back her silk sleeve to glance at a gold watch. My eyes widened as I, too, stared at her wrist. Just above the watch was a spectacular diamond tennis bracelet. Why wear such nice jewelry above your watch and hidden by your sleeve?

  “That’s a beautiful bracelet. May I see it?”

  She gave me a stiff smile. “They’re just zirconias. I forgot I still had it on.” She took it off as if to give me a closer look? but dropped it into her desk drawer instead.

  “Isn’t there some professional directory of lawyers?” I asked, feeling my cheeks warm with embarrassment over what I was thinking.

  “Yes, the Hubble and Martindale Directory. Listen, Molly, I don’t mean to rush you, but I’d really like to get home to my family. It’s been a long day.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Sheila walked me to the door and locked it behind me. As I started the car, I stared up at her office window for a moment. Some Coloradoans have an accent in which the word “lawyer” sounded like “liar.” Fitting.

  I drove to the public library. Reading her listing in the directory might not tell me much, but at least I’d find out if she practiced criminal law when she was in California.

  The volume for the Hubble and Martindale Directory of Lawyers for New York State was several inches thick and weighed a ton. Lawyers for our county were listed alphabetically, and I quickly found the listing for Sheila Benitez Lillydale. At least she was licensed to practice law, as of last year when the directory was published.

  The directory listed a one-paragraph biography of the lawyer. I glanced at Sheila’s birth year and was surprised to see she was forty. She looked much younger than that. When I stopped and calculated, she’d gotten her B.A. from UCLA eighteen years ago, which was about right chronologically.

  Her entry listed that she practiced “family law,” and she had indeed been a public defender in Los Angeles for seven years.

  Suddenly my mental flags snapped to attention. She’d been a public defender while Frank Worscheim was on trial for armed robbery. Granted, L.A. was a huge city and odds were astronomical against her having represented him then. But an old saying had popped into my mind: When you eliminate the impossible, the answer must lie within the realm of possibilities, however unlikely.

  What if they’d kept in contact with each other after his trial? What if Sheila had deliberately misled me about her husband having an affair with “Helen Raleigh”—that all along, she’d been having an affair with him? If the ten
nis bracelet of hers had been a gift from him, that would explain why she kept it in her office.

  I headed home, my mind in a whirl. Should I call Tommy Newton from my mother’s house, or go straight to the police station? There was no rush. Sheila wouldn’t have any reason to suspect that I might be on course for uncovering her clandestine relationship with Frank Worscheim.

  I was only mildly surprised to see Sheila Lillydale waiting for me in my parents’ driveway.

  “I see you beat me here,” I said, lowering my voice by a notch to make myself sound relaxed.

  She didn’t smile. “I was leaving the building, just after you drove away. I saw you turn into the library.” Her tone was accusatory, and she was staring directly into my eyes. “Would you believe I was looking for a book that was already checked out?”

  She shook her head. “You were looking at the Hubble and Martindale Directory. You know, don’t you.” It was not a question.

  In general, people tend to underestimate me. I’m not sure why-perhaps because I’m a sloppy dresser, or because I’m a basic introvert, hiding behind a class-clown facade. Rather than analyze it to death, I use it to my advantage. But Sheila had not made that mistake. She had seen through me and knew I wasn’t buying her act.

  I nodded. “You were Frank Worscheim’s lawyer.”

  Chapter 17

  This Does Not Meet Our Needs

  “Let me explain,” Sheila began. “I had nothing to do with his decision to move here. I didn’t even know he’d gotten released from prison. Or that he pulled some more robberies. I moved here specifically to get away from him. I needed a new start with my family.”

  The light from the darkening sky was muted, but bright enough for me to see how tired and worried she looked. Even in the rapidly fading light, she indeed looked forty, not thirty or so as I’d assumed, having blamed the faint age lines around her eyes and lips on too much sun.

  I was gradually developing a new picture of her—an aging beauty, perhaps desperately trying to hold on to her dashing husband. Or was it Mr. Helen she’d loved and lost? What if they’d been in cahoots, but she’d hired Simon Smith to spy on him? Simon’s surveillance had revealed that Mr. Helen was set to run out on her, as he had with his former partner in the jewelry heists. So she killed Mr. Helen, and killed Simon to prevent him from revealing her crime.

  “You’d had an affair with Frank while you were his lawyer?”

  “No,” Sheila retorted as if disgusted. She sat back on the trunk of her forest green BMW. “He’d become obsessed with me. That’s why I wanted to move. I was worried about his...I was afraid of what would happen when he got his release. He used to write to me from prison. He thought I was in love with him , too, but it was this ridiculous infatuation that he’d built from nothing. Just before we moved, I went to visit him one last time. I told him there was nothing between us, that I never wanted him to contact me again. We moved here, and I didn’t hear from him for months. I forgot all about him.” She clenched her teeth. “But he must have tracked me down. He’d lived here for a couple of weeks, disguised as Helen Raleigh, before I even recognized him. Then I didn’t know what to do.”

  She paused. I prompted, “You recognized him?”

  “We were all outside, Ben, Roger, and me, and ...Helen was out front gardening, so Roger said we should go say hello. Which we did. It was the way Helen was staring at me. That smile. He twisted one corner of his lips up, in this young-punk smile of his he’d never outgrown. And I knew.”

  “Did you tell Roger right away?”

  “I never told him.” She shook her head wildly as she spoke, her eyes wide at the very thought of telling Roger. “If Roger had ever found out...he’d be so jealous. He’d think that I’d wanted Frank to move here. That we’d arranged it.”

  “So Roger never knew about Helen’s disguise?”

  “Never. Not until the story came out after Frank was murdered, that is. That’s why we were so distraught at the school party. Roger eventually twisted things around to make all of our marital problems your fault, and I felt it wasn’t prudent to try to argue with him.”

  “ My fault? I don’t get the connection. How could I have anything to do with your marriage?”

  She sighed. “You’re the one who’s been stirring the pot. Fair or not, he’s blaming you for the rancid ingredients.” Oh, baloney! Depending on which Lillydale you asked, Roger had either “left town on business” or “separated” with his wife before Mr. Helen was shot. Prior to that ghastly event, I hadn’t been near anyone’s kitchen, let alone stirred their pots. However, there was no sense in arguing with Sheila about her husband’s point of view. “So Roger knew about Frank Worscheirn being an infatuated former client of yours?”

  She pulled her barrette out and let her dark, shimmering hair cascade down her shoulders. “Roger knew he was a former client. That had been a pretty intense trial, and I’d been tied up with it for several months. But I never let Roger know about the phone calls and letters from Frank. Roger would have become incensed.”

  “So all that stuff you told me about Roger and Helen having an affair was a lie. Why?”

  She tightened her lips in a slight, momentary wince, then searched my eyes. “I was testing you. I was trying to see how much you knew about Frank. Roger is having an affair. I just don’t know who with. You seem to be his type.”

  That was a silly idea, but everything about Sheila struck me as being slightly off-center, so I wasn’t surprised, nor affronted. “It certainly isn’t me. Maybe Joanne Abbott.”

  “No, not Joanne. What makes you say her?” Sheila asked.

  “She’s the only woman left in the immediate neighborhood.”

  “She’s not attractive enough for Roger.”

  “But you think I am? That’s the nicest horrible thing anyone’s said about me. Why didn’t you tell the police about all of this?”

  “It makes me look guilty. And I didn’t kill him.”

  I stared at her, incredulous. That was too lame an excuse to swallow, even though I could almost swallow the rest of her story. Withholding key evidence in a murder investigation was stupid and risky. As a lawyer, nobody knew that better than she. “You said you had an alibi. That you were in court at the time of the shooting.”

  “I wasn’t. Roger was right. In part. I haven’t been disbarred, but my license has been suspended.”

  “So you’ve been representing me illegally?”

  “Not exactly. I haven’t charged you. And my suspension should be lifted at the end of the month.”

  At which time she planned to charge me two hundred dollars an hour for past services rendered. From her jail cell. She seemed willing to freely admit to having told me lie after lie, then expected me to believe she was telling the truth that she hadn’t murdered Mr. Helen. “Why was your license suspended?”

  She squirmed. “I’d rather not discuss this, but I guess you deserve the truth.” I had to fight back a smile at that line, as she continued, “I had a minor substance-abuse problem.”

  Oh joy. A murdering drug-abuser working illegally with a suspended license. Just what everyone wants in their high-priced lawyer. She could make most clients look squeaky clean.

  “So where were you when Frank Worscheim was murdered?”

  “Alone in my office.”

  The screen door banged open, and Karen and Nathan ran out, barefoot, otherwise wearing the same shorts and T-shirts they’d had on all day. “Hi, Mommy,” Nathan said. “We’re catching lightning bugs.”

  “Not tonight, you’re not.” I caught them as they tried to dash past me and cast a nervous glance at Sheila who regarded them with a blank expression on her face. She had no reason to hurt them, but after what I’d just learned, I didn’t want my children anywhere near her. “I thought Dad was going to put you to bed by now.”

  “He’s watching TV,” Karen explained. “There’s no school tomorrow, you know.”

  Sheila got into her car. “I’m going to the police
station now to give witness testimony. You probably don’t believe me, but you can call the police later to verify.”

  She drove off while I ushered the children inside. After almost an hour of stall tactics, the children were in bed, and I called Lauren. She told me that Tommy had gotten called out a half hour earlier and that he’d told her there’d been “a break in the case.”

  I gave Lauren my theory about Sheila killing Mr. Helen and then Simon. Lauren wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agreed that it sounded as if I’d solved the case. In the meantime, Jim had reentered the master bedroom where I was on the phone and kept interrupting with an occasional “What?” and “Hey!” He obviously felt I should have shared this information with him first before calling my best friend. That was one of those differences between men and women he should have adjusted to by now. Nonetheless, he left the room in a huff.

  “Tommy just drove up,” Lauren announced.

  “Already? Ask him if he arrested Sheila. No, wait. Don’t.”

  “Hi, darling,” Lauren said. Her voice was muffled, so she’d partially covered the receiver, but I heard Tommy ask who she was talking to.

  “Can you put Tommy on?” I asked Lauren, but Tommy growled hello so quickly I realized he must have snatched the phone from her.

  “Did you arrest Sheila Lillydale for murder?”

  “That’d be jumpin’ the gun there, Moll: Those of us who are trained and earn a living as officers of the law tend to frown on such things.”

  I rolled my eyes. He just had to get his little digs in about how he was a policeman and I wasn’t. “Don’t you think it looks suspicious that Sheila didn’t tell you she was Helen Raleigh’s lawyer? Back whim Helen was Frank Worscheim, I mean.”

  “’Course it’s suspicious. But that’s all it is at this point.”

  “He came back for her, don’t you see? Maybe they were in the whole thing together all along. I know Sheila claims Frank loved her and it was unreciprocated and he moved here unbeknownst to her. But ask yourself this, Tommy. If you were to try to convince some former girlfriend to leave her husband for you, would you do it wearing heels, falsies, and a wig?”