She closed her eyes tightly for a minute to block it all out, then shook the umbrella and went inside the Bardner house. She would weep later.
For the next hour and a half, Lester Bardner, with Sandy at his side, sat in his spacious Florida room facing questions from Detective Jaworski and Mel Shapiro. When the officials had left, Lester made himself a drink from the sidebar and sat on the couch across from Sandy. He continued to be distressed, not with the death, but from their questioning.
“I thought you were supposed to protect me from such questioning. They burst in here and started ordering me around. Turn off the TV. Don’t mix a drink. Sit down. Do this. Do that. It’s appalling to question me at a time like this when they should know how upset I am. Sparkle meant a lot to me and now somehow I must go on without her.”
She wasn’t going to yell. She’d try to ignore his attitude. “You told the detective you had no idea why Charlene came here tonight. Now let’s hear the truth.”
“You think I’m lying.”
“Why did she come over here anyway? Did you call her? Did you ask her to come over?”
He shook his head. “Don’t I have certain rights in my own home? Can they order me to turn off my own TV like that?”
“When did you last speak with Charlene?” She didn’t like the look on his face. With eyes narrowed, she said, “You called her didn’t you?”
He gave her a shrug, casually picked up a small remote from a side table, clicked it and music instantly filled the room. “Bolero, you like it? That beat and rhythm is almost hypnotic. Sparkle’s favorite—a real turn on.”
“Turn it off.”
“She liked to listen while—.”
In a flash, her hand shot out—slapping his hand and sending the remote flying against the far wall. “You bastard!” He cringed back on the couch. “You asked her to come over, didn’t you? You had the drinks out and the music ready. She was through with you, wasn’t taking your calls. She had moved on. What did you say to her that made her drive through a storm to be here?”
“Just the truth… only the truth. That I was in bad shape and really needed her. Stuff like that. We were together a long time. Didn’t she owe me something? ”
Her hands involuntarily clenched into fists, and she fought back a strong impulse to take a swing at him. For an instant, she saw an image of him writhing on the floor trying to protect his face as she kicked at him mercilessly.
“She yelled at me, told me to drop dead… hung up on me. I called back, but she wouldn’t answer. That’s all I did. Honestly. That’s all I did.”
“Apparently it was enough,” Sandy said, trying to compose herself. She didn’t want to speak to him; didn’t want to even look at him. “Charlene might be alive if you hadn’t called her.” After a minute, her breathing had calmed. She needed to leave before she lost it again.
She wished she could blame him for Charlene’s death. Then she could slug him, or at least shout at him and tell him where he could stick his legal problems. Then her eyes could dry up, she could run and never see him again. Of course, if Lester and Charlene had never met, she’d still be alive. If he hadn’t phoned her, she might still be alive. Any of that might have contributed to her death, but the person who fired the shot was the one responsible.
Lester had mostly recovered from her tirade. “I was incredibly lonely and besides Julia wasn’t going to be around.”
Again too much, she shouted, “Give it up, Lester. This isn’t about you, you pompous ass!” When she yelled, his cocktail glass slipped from his hand and broke on the hardwood floor. She had no intention of apologizing.
“You see how you are! I don’t deserve to be attacked like that.” He kicked the pieces aside with his foot. “Anyway, they were ruthless with me. They asked all about our affair. Some lawyer you are letting them pry into my private life like that.”
She took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly, “For starters, you were kneeling next to her, when the police arrived. You had her blood on your hands—literally. The GSR test they performed on your hands was negative, but a technician claimed the test was inconclusive because gunshot residue could have been destroyed by the rain. I insisted they put in their report the GSR was negative. They wanted to take you in for questioning. I objected and demanded they do the interrogation right here, right now. I was certain you were innocent, so I told them to go ahead and interrogate to their heart’s content, as long as they stuck with Charlene and kept off the subject of Coleman’s death. True, they came at you pretty hard. But I succeeded. As a result, you’re not under arrest for a second murder. You’re free to stroll around your comfortable home, drink as much as you wish, watch TV or however you decide to spend the rest of this bothersome night and will sleep in your own bed tonight.” He didn’t respond, no slight smile, no softening of the eyes, so she added, “Don’t bother to thank me. I can’t stand all that gratitude stuff.”
“What?” He was deep in his own thoughts. “As I told them, I was watching TV when I heard the shot and at first thought it was a clap of thunder. I looked outside. The motion detector yard light was on and I could see her car. When she didn’t ring the bell right away, I got an umbrella and went out. But all that didn’t satisfy them. They were asking me about everything under the sun, and you never stopped them. Aren’t you supposed to jump in and tell me not to answer a question or something?”
“The questions were about your actions today and your relationship with Charlene. You’ve nothing to hide in that regard. I did object twice when I thought the interrogation was getting too close to the Coleman case.” She walked to the outsized front window, parted the drapes with her hands and looked out into the night. Then back at him. “Why are you even here? My staff is hiding and riding in police cars, and you were sitting here watching TV. When we last spoke, I told you Leo might be following you and to go into hiding at some hotel. He could have followed you here. Probably did follow you here. You could have been the one in the body bag.” She sighed heavily. If she could go back she’d trade his life for Charlene’s in a flash.
“I’ve got the latest satellite TV here. I didn’t know if I could watch the Dolphins game in a hotel. Important game, I didn’t get to see the end of it. Anyway, I assumed you were being overly dramatic and exaggerating.”
“Well, you can assume you’re safe here for the rest of tonight, there’s a cop outside watching over the crime scene. Even so, you should leave here before that yellow tape comes down and CSI leaves tomorrow.”
Charlene was worth getting upset over—not this jerk. She would try to get back to being a professional. She wouldn’t yell at him again.
He fixed himself another drink. “What do you think happened? Hard to believe Julia shot her just because she was my lover. What will they do to her?”
“You’ve got it wrong. The police suspect you shot Charlene to keep her from telling your wife about the affair. You’ve always been afraid Julia would divorce you if she found out. Your entire lifestyle was at risk. That was the first thing out of your mouth when we first met.”
“I wouldn’t kill Charlene to keep her quiet. I need her around. I know for a fact Julia already knew about Charlene—because I told her. That night, after I had met with you in your office, I came home late. Julia was waiting up for me, sitting in the kitchen with her gun in front of her on the table while we were talking. She accused me of seeing someone. I denied it of course, and we went back and forth. I was no match for her. I finally confessed. After she calmed down, she asked me what I intended to do.”
“Meaning what?”
“That’s exactly what I asked. She said I have to choose between her and my girlfriend. You could have knocked me over, I couldn’t believe it. Although she was upset, it sounded as though she was willing to forgive me, and we could go on with our marriage. I told her I wanted her, that I couldn’t live without her. I had strayed only because the sex was so exciting with a young woman like that. I didn’t even need a pill.”<
br />
“You didn’t say that—I mean about the sex?”
He nodded.
“Not smart to say that to an angry wife with a gun.”
“What are you talking about? She’d never shoot me.”
“Believe me, she was thinking about it… go on.”
“She became agitated again and screamed that she also had a lover who she had been seeing.”
That made no sense to Sandy. Why would Julia admit to her affair with Grant Keller? Perhaps in the heat of the moment she said it just to get back at him. Even if she didn’t intend to reveal the name, it still wasn’t wise to bring it out in the open.
“I tell you, I’ve never been so surprised in my entire life. My Julia screwing someone else? How could she do that to me? I’d trusted her, and she cheated on me. She said her lover had two things I lacked, money and virility. And he didn’t need a booster pill with her. What a terrible thing to say to me. She added that about the pill just to hurt me further.”
“How thoughtless of her.”
“I wanted his name, of course. At first, she wouldn’t tell me and asked for my girlfriend’s name. I said tell me his name first. We argued, she won, and I admitted it was Charlene. Then I said, okay, so who’s the man? She said she’d decided not to tell me after all. Said she was lying about any reconciliation and was going to divorce me and marry him. I kept begging her for his name. She was afraid I’d scare him away if I knew his name.”
Sandy couldn’t visualize Lester scaring away the neighbor’s cat. Grant Keller would eat him alive. “Did she tell you to scare him off… take care of him… get rid of him? What words did she use? What words exactly?”
“I don’t remember what she told me exactly, but I know what I heard. She was saying that if she told me his name, I’d probably go find the guy and threaten him to scare him off. I lied and told her I wouldn’t do anything. And finally, she gave me his name.”
Sandy stared at him in disbelieve. “She told you his name!”
“Yes, and I’m not telling you his name, so don’t even ask.”
“I already know his name,” she said.
“Oh, then I might as well tell you the rest. I meant to only frighten him off, so he’d stay away from Julia. So I found his room number at the Holiday Inn in her appointment book. I was going to knock and confront him in the doorway, but when I got on his floor, he was just coming out of his room and walking away from me. I wondered if he was on his way to meet Julia. I followed him from there to Frankie’s and then downtown—.”
Holiday Inn? Frankie’s? He wasn’t talking about Grant Keller. He was talking about Coleman. He finally gets the name of her lover out of her, and she tells him it’s Ben Coleman from Miami Beach. Didn’t make sense. She slumped back in her chair to think about that one. Something was amiss. Her affair was with Grant Keller, at least that’s who Sandy thought they were talking about all along. Everyone in her office thought Keller was Julia’s lover—the pair were caught making out in his car. But Lester apparently didn’t know about Keller. Why did his wife say, Coleman? Why did she want him to go after Coleman? “When she told you her lover was Coleman and to go after him, had you ever heard his name before?”
He shook his head. “And she didn’t tell me to go after him. She said she was afraid I would go after him.”
“Okay, but Julia knew exactly what you’d do if you knew his name. And while she’s telling you, she’s playing with the gun. She probably gave it a little nudge toward you.”
“She left it on the table, I took it later.”
“Why’d you take it? Did you intend to shoot him?”
“Why did I take the gun? Hello! Do you think I’m some tough guy street fighter? I’m not going to confront the guy who’s messing with my wife with my bare hands. He might hurt me.”
“Go on. You told me you meant to only frighten him, so he’d stay away from her.”
“When he parked on the street, I walked up. We exchanged a few words, and then I couldn’t believe how fast he reacted. When I saw his gun come out, I fired.”
A gun! There it was—for the first time he admitted he shot Coleman, and he saw a gun! For the first time, he mentioned the victim had a gun. Nigel had been correct, there was something in the victim’s hand—and indeed, it was a gun.
“Lester for chrissake, why have been withholding all this from me? This is what I need. This is what I’ve been trying to get out of you all along. What is wrong with you?”
“I didn’t want to admit any of this because I was afraid of getting Julia in trouble.”
“So you weren’t helping me with your defense because you were protecting her?” He was right about part of it. Julia would be guilty of conspiracy or accessory before the fact, if she had set him up to kill Coleman.
“I thought with him out of the way she’d take me back, even though she said she was going to divorce me and marry him. I didn’t want to lose her.”
Didn’t want to lose her money was more accurate, Sandy thought. “Okay, try it again. You just wanted to frighten him to save your marriage. You walked up, his gun came out and you fired.”
He nodded.
“I need to talk with Julia immediately. Where is she now?”
“I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. She didn’t come home again last night.”
“Your wife’s been missing for two days? Doesn’t that concern you?”
“She’s done it before. I never questioned her because I didn’t want her questioning me.”
She shook her head while she studied him. With his admission that he did in fact kill Coleman, his reason of jealousy seemed believable. Shooting your spouse’s lover wasn’t unheard of, still it just didn’t seem that simple to her. All suspicions aside, she was thrilled he was finally talking. And she realized he had handed her the jewel in her crowning defense. “Lester, back up again. You said you were following Coleman when he parked on the street. Then what?”
“Yeah, I saw him park on the street in front of Mahoney’s Restaurant.”
“Then what?”
“I’ve already told you all this. I walked up to him.”
“Go on, damn it. What did you mean when you said you couldn’t believe how fast he reacted?”
“Oh that, yeah, when I saw his gun come out, I fired.”
“Say that again!”
“When I saw his gun come out, I fired.” Lester was becoming annoyed and shouted, “When I saw his gun come out, I fired!”
She stopped and thought. “Did you speak to him before his gun came out?”
“I asked him if he was the man who was seeing my wife. He told me to get the fuck out of his face. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out the gun.”
That sounded as though Coleman was trying to scare Lester off by flashing his gun. “Lester, where was your gun as you were walking up to his car? In your pocket?”
“No, in my hand.”
“Damn. Where was your hand holding the gun?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did you hide the gun behind your back because you didn’t want anyone to see it? Were you holding the gun down at your side?”
“I guess I was holding it up.”
“But he was seated behind the wheel of his car. You were standing in the street a bit back, according to the video, so he couldn’t have seen your gun.”
“Maybe he could have seen it. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
She needed to consider this new angle. After all that had happened, was it possible Lester was technically innocent? Of course, it was premeditation to get the gun and stalk Coleman in the first place, but not if he had no intention of killing the guy. He said he meant to frighten him off, so he’d stay away from Julia. He didn’t just walk up to his victim and fire. The video showed them exchanging words. The guy was a glob of emotional putty in his wife’s hands to get himself into that position, yet if he fired with Coleman’s gun pointed at him, she could argue self-defense.
Now that he’d stopped with all the denials and was cooperating, a viable defense was emerging. It now sounded like self-defense. A definite case of Stand Your Ground. For better or worse, she was excited that now she had something tangible to work with.
She said, “Okay. Maybe he did see your gun or maybe not. Whatever. You fired only after Coleman took out his gun.”
“Yes, yes, yes! When I saw his gun come out, I fired! How many more fucking times do I have to say it?”
“Maybe only one more, fucking time—on the witness stand.”
Of course, all of this was just his version. Who knows what actually transpired between Lester and Julia? She needed to find Julia and talk with her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Sandy thanked the officer who drove her back home from the crime scene—Charlene’s death scene. He explained an officer would be stationed in front of her house all night. Once inside, she phoned Martin immediately, “Sorry it’s so late. I was thinking of Nigel. I imagine he’s upset.”
“We were playing Gin Rummy, laughing and listening to the storm, when you called earlier with the news. Nigel broke down when I told him. Almost collapsed. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The shock of it more than anything, I suppose. I told him to lie down on the couch, and he was okay for a few minutes. I asked if he knew of any reason she’d have gone over to the Bardner house. Possibly trying to be helpful, was all he could think of. Then he broke down again went up to the guest room and stayed there. Unbelievable Charlene shot dead.”
“They were seeing each other, weren’t they?”
“That certainly would explain it,” Martin said. “You told Nigel you didn’t want him to socialize with her. Even if he had, I can’t imagine a couple of dates putting him in this much distress.”
Into The Heat (Sandy Reid Mystery Series Book 6) Page 16