“I guess this affair would have been at St. Catherine’s,” I said.
He looked at me sharply.
I said, “Who was the teacher, do you know?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Did he teach math or history or—”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t know whether he lost his job over it?”
“I’d think he would have, but I really don’t know the details. I wouldn’t know anything about it if Mark and I hadn’t been having a few cups of warm saké with dinner on a trip overseas last year. In vino veritas, you know.”
We were at the bank. David pulled the door open and held it for me. It’s hard to deal with people on an equal footing when they’re solicitously holding doors for you, but I don’t know what to do about it other than meekly accept the proffered courtesy. It’s hard to deal with people at all once you’ve marked yourself as a feminist bitch.
It took about fifteen minutes to get the check. David signed the necessary paperwork, took it from the teller, and handed it to me. I tucked it into my briefcase.
“I’m going to show you something,” David said when we were on the street again. “I’ve been debating it ever since you showed up this morning, but I’ve decided the thing to do is to put it all in your hands and let you deal with it as you think best.”
Another uh-oh moment. I felt the weight of the pending disclosure. “What?” I said.
“It’s in the back of my car.”
Already we were almost back at Stevens Imports, and the trunk of a navy-blue BMW popped as we approached it. I held back. Though I had no reason to believe David was a crazy kidnapper, there was something about the opening maw of the car trunk that made my heart rate kick up a notch.
David bent to lift out a plastic grocery sack. He handed it to me.
“What is it?”
“Take a look.”
Reluctantly, I held open the sack. Inside were a leather wallet and a key ring with a half-dozen keys on it.
“I found the sack in Natalie’s bathroom, tucked behind the rolls of toilet paper in the cabinet. Unfortunately, I missed the gun under the mattress.”
My eyes cut toward him. There was no way this was anything but bad.
“You want to look inside the wallet?” he asked.
“You already have, I take it.”
“Yeah.”
“Wearing gloves?”
He shook his head. “By the time I thought of it, it was too late.”
“Whose wallet is it?”
“There’s no driver’s license, but judging by the credit cards and whatnot, I’d say somebody named Larry Smith.”
“You don’t know him?”
He shook his head. “There’re four in the Richmond phone book, plus an L. Smith and an L.M. Smith. I haven’t called any of them.”
“There are probably a dozen more in the rest of Virginia.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “At least.”
Chapter 12
I didn’t go straight to the jail. Once I bailed Natalie out, I was going to have to talk to her, and before I did that I needed time to assimilate the latest bomb blast. Back at my office, I took David Stevens’ cashier check from my briefcase and squared it neatly on the desk. It would be good for less than twenty-four hours. Even if Waldo couldn’t get bail revoked, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay at seventy-five thousand.
One handle of the grocery bag with the effects of the late Larry Smith protruded from my briefcase, and I pulled it out, too. Larry Smith wasn’t necessarily the late Larry Smith, I told myself. The wallet and keys didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the man Natalie was accused of killing.
Who was I kidding? She was going away for life.
Or maybe not. Maybe not. Don’t let despair beat you before the facts do, I told myself. I fished my gloves out of the pockets of my coat. They were thin, close-fitting gloves with a special fabric on the index fingers that allowed me to use my smart phone without taking them off. More bulky and awkward than surgical gloves, but they were what I had. I reached into the grocery sack for Larry’s keys and set them on the desk. Five keys, none of them a car key, which was consistent with the original homeless-man-hit-and-run theory of the case. And why shouldn’t’ it be? In her brownie-induced stupor, Natalie could have run over a homeless man. The resulting panic sobered her up enough for her to think about taking his wallet and keys to delay identification. No need for me to envision her bouncing a corpse down the stairs at the Best Western.
On the other hand, two of the keys were marked Schlage and had the same distinctive, roughly diamond-shaped bow as my house key, and what did a homeless man need with house keys? Four of the keys could be house keys, in fact: house keys or office keys. The fifth was a smaller key that might have worked with a locked cabinet or a padlock. I pushed the key with my finger to turn it over and saw the word Master printed on the bow. I inhaled, exhaled, then bent to take out the leather wallet, which was dark brown, worn lighter in places. A little square in the corner said Salvatore Ferragamo, Made in Italy, and it looked expensive, but what did I know? Even if it was expensive, it could have been donated and resold in a Goodwill store for pennies on the dollar.
I flipped the wallet open. There was money in it, but of more interest were the credit cards, one American Express and one Visa, the SunTrust cash flow card, the Starbucks gift card. The name on the bank cards was Larry Smith, just as David had said. The cash came to eighty dollars in four crisp twenties. Digging deeper, I found two business cards, both of them Larry Smith’s. There was a phone number on the card, but it looked like a cell number, and the address was a P.O. Box.
Larry Smith wasn’t looking like a homeless man. I called the number on the business cards and learned that the wireless customer I had called had a voicemail box that had not been set up yet, which seemed to be what everybody had these days. Having a working voicemail box just showed that, at thirty, I was as behind the times as an old lady wearing a cloche hat.
“No driver’s license,” I said aloud. “No Sam’s Club card.” Nothing at all with a picture on it, not even a grainy, indistinct one, nothing to give any clue what this Larry Smith might have looked like. In that, Larry Smith bore an eerie similarity to the man Natalie was accused of hitting with her car and might soon be accused of shooting. His face too had been all but obliterated.
Brooke stuck her head in. “Lunch?”
My eyes went to the cashier’s check on my desk. “I shouldn’t.”
“Oh, come on. Just a quick bite.”
I went with her, tucking the check into my briefcase and taking it with me, but I wasn’t much company. I wasn’t ready to talk about Larry Smith, and I couldn’t think about anything else. When we got back to the Ironfronts, I didn’t go up with Brooke. “Why don’t we meet at Enrique’s for dinner?” I said, stopping on the sidewalk.
“Are you going to be as talkative as you were at lunch? It’s hard for me to keep up.”
“Sorry. I may have a surprise for you. Will you call John, see if he wants to come?”
“Not Paul?”
“Paul is out of town until tomorrow.”
It reminded me of the furry little forget-me-not Paul had left me on his way out, and I called Dr. McDermott on my walk to the parking garage. “If I was to be a little late getting home this evening, could you…”
“He’s right here. Not a problem.”
“Ah. Well, thanks. It may be eight or so before I get there.”
“I got Deacon a nice bone with some dried meat on it. He can work on it while I watch TV.”
I felt a pang of jealousy at the amount of time he was getting to spend with my dog. “You’re the best,” I said.
“That’s what they say.”
I took East Main to North 18th and turned left. The Richmond City Jail was no more than ten minutes from downtown. It looked a bit like the high school I’d gone to, except that my high school wasn’t surrounded by a chain
-link fence topped with razor wire. The gate was open, though, and unmanned, so I drove into the parking lot and parked.
There was a short queue inside the administration building, and a young woman and a middle-aged couple occupied the two benches. After ten minutes the guy in front of me, who’d been glancing at me off and on, said, “The line may not be long, but at least it doesn’t move.” I was a little put off by his wild hair and torn shirt and the tattoo of a green monster tearing through his flesh in an apparent effort to get out, so I smiled at him perfunctorily. He didn’t follow up.
Fortunately, the line did move, just not very fast. In thirty minutes I had presented my cashier’s check and was filling out paperwork. In another ten, I was sitting in a waiting room off the main lobby, waiting for Natalie. That’s where time stopped. I sat, I paced, I looked at my watch. Finally, I got my phone out, touched the icon for a game app I had, and ran over zombies. I’d killed hundreds of zombies by the time Natalie came in.
I half-expected her to be in an orange jumpsuit, but when the matron led her into the waiting room, Natalie was wearing the same torn jeans she’d been wearing when I saw her last, and the same flannel shirt. She was carrying a plastic bag with a cell phone, keys, and a wallet in it.
“You made bail for me?” she asked.
“Your Uncle David did.”
A smile touched her face. “Uncle David.”
“Your father called me Tuesday morning.”
“Is he…”
I nodded. “Still in China.”
She lost the smile.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked when we were on the road.
“Home?”
“Home to Chloe?”
“Good point. How about the Best Western on Chippenham?”
She looked at me quizzically. “I guess it is Chloe or a hotel.”
“The Best Western is actually a motel.” The light turned green, and I turned right.
“Why would I go to a motel on Chippenham? That’s on the Southside.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why would you?”
“You’re the one who suggested the Best Western on Chippenham.”
“I had a reason for suggesting it.” I took the ramp onto the Downtown Expressway, heading out toward the West End.
“What was that?”
“You don’t know?”
She made a frustrated sound.
“You checked into it last Sunday.”
“I did not.”
“Somebody named Natalie Stevens did.”
“So? What does that have to do with me?”
“She paid with your credit card.”
“Not my credit card.” Natalie pulled out her wallet, showed me her MasterCard. “See? It’s right here.”
“Do you just have the one card?” I asked.
“Just the one.”
“And you weren’t at the Best Western.”
“I wasn’t there,” she said.
I got off at the exit for Wyndam. When I turned onto Magnolia, the Stevens’ street, a white Lexus was coming toward us, and Natalie slid lower in her seat.
“Chloe,” she said.
It was indeed. She went past us with her hands on the steering wheel at two and ten and her eyes on the road.
“I don’t think she saw us,” I said, watching the rearview mirror as Chloe turned the corner.
“You never know what Chloe sees.”
“She didn’t react anyway. I don’t think she’s coming back.” We drew to a stop in front of the house. “You and Chloe have the same model car, don’t you?”
“No. Hers is an IS-250. Mine is a size smaller, the CT-200.”
“Catchy names those Japanese come up with.”
We got out of the car. Natalie stopped at the end of the sidewalk, her eyes on the house.
I said, “You don’t have to stay here, you know. If you want, we can pack up a few changes of clothes, then go to my place.”
“You’d be willing to put me up?”
“It’s probably just for the one night. Your arraignment’s tomorrow at nine.”
“I don’t understand. I thought I was out on bail until…until whenever.”
“Let’s go inside.”
We went into the foyer, circled the crystal artwork at its center and passed under the painted eyes of a dazzling Chloe.
“That must be hard to live with,” I said, nodding at it.
“You have no idea.” She led me into the kitchen. “Want a beer?”
“All you have is Bud Lime, I think.”
“It’s not so bad.”
Evidently, at nineteen she was a more experienced drinker than I’d thought. “Okay, I’ll take one.”
She got them out of a small refrigerator in the bar area that separated the kitchen from yet another living area.
“This house is incredible,” I said as I twisted off the cap. “I may have to give up law and get into the import-export business.”
“Daddy seems to do all right. So. What do I need to know about the arraignment tomorrow?” She stepped up onto one of the bar stools that stood in front of one long counter and settled her weight on her elbows, the beer bottle held in her right hand between thumb and forefinger.
“They found the gun.”
“The gun?”
“The Glock 32 tucked under your mattress.”
She straightened on her stool. “What Glock 32 tucked under my mattress?”
I sighed. “There’s attorney-client privilege between us,” I said. “Nothing you say here goes any further.”
“What Glock 32 tucked under my mattress?” she said again.
“The police searched your bedroom.”
“And they found a gun under my mattress?”
“Do you own a Glock 32?”
“I’m nineteen. I don’t even know if I can own a gun.”
I moved my head. “Actually, I don’t either.”
“Daddy owns a Glock. I don’t know what kind.”
“Is it a big gun?”
“I don’t think so. Kind of smallish I think. He’s got a couple of pistols, but it’s been a few years since I’ve seen either of them.”
“The police have come up with a new theory of the case against you. It adds up to more than felony hit-and-run.”
“Tell me.”
I did: One Natalie Stevens had checked into a motel room on the Southside and was joined by a man at some point. That man was shot dead inside the motel room, dragged out to a waiting car, driven a couple of blocks and dumped. “This woman then did what she could to delay identification of the body, removing the wallet and keys and running over the man’s head a few times. That was when a man came out of a nearby house and saw her. He gave the license number of her car to the police. The police found the car belonged to a Natalie Stevens who lived right here in this house. They found her car had a broken headlight, blood on the bumper which at this point may or may not match the blood of the victim…”
“This is incredible.”
“Isn’t it?” I said.
“So why did they charge me with hit-and-run?”
“I’m not sure. The bullet passed through the body, so it wouldn’t have shown up when they x-rayed the body bag. What with all the carnage, the M.E. might have missed the bullet track—though as far as I know nobody’s seen an autopsy report yet. It may be that the M.E. missed the bullet wound at the scene, but picked up on it as soon as he got the body on the table.”
“And they found the gun in my room.”
“A gun. They found a gun and dug a bullet out of the wall in the motel room rented in your name. If the two match, we’ve got trouble.”
Natalie stood abruptly, went around the counter into a casual den, then turned onto a staircase that ran along one wall. She took the steps up two at a time.
I followed. At the top of the stairs was a room that overlooked the den. It had a TV and a couple of bean bags eight feet across. On the other side of the room was a short
hall with a bathroom on one side and an open door at the end. Natalie was in the doorway, standing with her hands in fists. Her bedclothes were piled in the middle of a bare, queen-sized mattress. Books and clothes were in heaps on the floor.
“Evidently they didn’t clean up after they searched it,” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry.”
She jerked her head in acknowledgement.
“I’ve got something else to show you.”
She followed me back to the bathroom, where one of the doors on the cabinet below the sink stood open and the lid on the toilet tank sat crookedly.
“It’s like they were trying to be ugly about it,” she said.
There was no toilet paper under the sink. I opened the cabinet above the toilet and found the toilet paper neatly arranged. “They were in here, too. I know they took some towels and wash cloths, but at least they didn’t find anything incriminating.”
Her eyes cut toward me.
“Because the police weren’t the first to search,” I said.
“I don’t understand. Who was?”
“Your Uncle David. He found a man’s wallet and a ring of keys.”
“What? Whose?”
“The wallet belonged to someone named Larry Smith.”
“I don’t know a Larry Smith. His wallet and keys?”
I nodded, and she reached up to shift the toilet paper around in the cabinet.
“There’s nothing here now,” she said.
“No. He took them. Gave them to me actually.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid they belong to the man you’re accused of running over.”
“Who is now the man I shot in a motel room.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, crap.” She went back out into the upstairs TV room and flopped onto one of the enormous beanbag chairs. I hesitated, then dropped into the other one. For a while we just sat and looked at each other. It was Natalie who broke the silence.
“So what now?”
“You still don’t have to stay here.”
Dog Law (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 10