“I said, you didn’t believe me did you?”
Sandy looked down at the green bank check in her hand and blinked hard—ten thousand dollars.
She moved to her desk and sat. Still too stunned to yell Halleluiah just then. She’d do that later. “Where’d you get the money? Wait! Don’t answer that.” Better off not knowing.
“Just give me my cash.”
“I need to phone my partner to open the safe.”
“I need my cash. I thought you’d just hand it to me. Now I have to wait for someone else to come down here?”
“Sit down, relax.”
“Give me the check back. I’m going to hold it until you put my money right there on that desk.”
“Don’t push it, Margo. And stop calling it your money.” Sandy carefully folded the check, put it in her pocket, and patted it. “You know, my retainer is fifty thousand. A retainer means that’s the amount you pay me to start representing you. Well, I started defending you long ago. You told me you’d get the money. Well, it’s taken you until today, and so far, I’ve received merely ten thousand. You still need to come up with the other forty thousand, if you want me to continue.”
“I thought the ten thousand was a down payment.”
“No, I don’t offer easy time payments. You borrow from someone else and you pay me. The fifty thousand is the payment. Maybe fifty will cover all my time and expense, and you won’t owe anymore. I don’t know that yet.” Until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to Sandy to play tough. She guessed that, in the end, she wasn’t going to get all her fee out of the woman anyway. “So, where’s my forty thousand? How do I know I’m ever going to see any more?” Why was she letting this fruitcake jerk her around? “Why didn’t you say you were serious?”
Margo looked contrite, and finally nodded. “I didn’t know it was that serious.”
Geez. Dealing with this woman was as hopeless as trying to teach a cat some tricks. “Okay, so where’s Richie?” She hadn’t actually expected him to come, given that Margo had said he was illegal. Trying to deal with this Richie situation was getting old.
She was just getting ready to scold her for being unhelpful, when Margo said, “He’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“He knew I was getting out.” Margo explained she had spoken with him yesterday, and they had planned a cozy rendezvous at her apartment, but he didn’t show up.
“He wasn’t with you last night.”
“I’m dying to see him, but I don’t know where he is.”
Sandy had been frustrated trying to build a defense that included Richie. Now her patience was exhausted. “I can’t go into court and talk about a witness I can’t produce. Not only is it hearsay, the jury would burst out laughing. Using Richie as an alibi is worse than no alibi at all.” She needed to take Richie entirely out of the defense. Somehow, she’d do without him.
What was left? Well, there’s always reasonable doubt—convince the jury that a suspicious someone might have committed the murder. Such a defense didn’t put Margo in the clear, but it created doubt about her guilt. And that suspicious someone else definitely shouldn’t be boyfriend, Richie. For her defense to be successful, she didn’t care if he was missing, just so he had no connection with the murder.
She did have another thought, however. “Margo, did you ever meet any of John’s friend’s from Miami? Did he ever bring anyone home? Or did you ever go to any consulate parties down there?”
“No. Well yes, some guy from Miami drove him home one time when he had car trouble. But he didn’t get out of his car.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Didn’t really get a look at him. Why?”
“I’m looking for possible suspects. So, there’s no one locally who also works down there? He never shared a ride or anything?”
She shook her head.
“You know what I’d like to do? Would you mind going over to the morgue with me? Not the most pleasant way to spend your first full day out of jail, I know. But I want you to look at a guy, look at his body, and tell me if you’ve ever seen him before. You lived in the condo for three years. He might be from the neighborhood or something. Worth a shot.
“The guy who broke into the condo? The one you were telling me about? They still haven’t identified him?”
“Not yet. He’s been laid out in the morgue now for days. Not even the FBI can trace him. Only his mother is going to miss that guy. Let’s go. We’ll take my car.”
“Ah, another ride in your little red car,” Margo said, as she got in beside Sandy.
“Don’t slam that door.”
Five blocks later, they had pulled into a bank drive-up lane.
“Doesn’t look like a morgue to me,” Margo observed.
Sandy signed the bank check and completed the deposit transaction. It was the largest single check she had signed since getting her law license. “Let’s get this baby into the system,” she said with a smile. “Next stop the morgue.”
At the county morgue, the young attendant with a prissy beard and wearing a white lab coat looked up from his desk as the two women walked in. “All visitors must sign the log.” He pushed the log book over to Sandy. “Don’t I know you from someplace? Do you come to the morgue often?”
“Every chance I get.”
“So, a dead body doesn’t bother you?”
“Not unless it’s mine.”
“Who do you want to see?”
“The John Doe the deputy had to take down at the vehicle stop two days ago. Need the case number?”
“Oh, that one. You know I thought you sounded like a cop. You PC or Federal?”
“Plain Clothed lawyer.”
“Well, you still have to sign in.”
After they both had signed, he looked at the names. “Margo Larena. I’ve got a stiff by that name over there in number nine.”
“The other one’s her husband, you jerk.”
“Oh, sorry.” He led them through the swinging double doors into the examination room. The room of the dead was all shiny white and stainless steel, brightly lighted with fixtures hanging far down from the high ceiling. Gurneys were stacked against one wall and another wall was lined with cold chambers.
Margo rubbed her arms. “It’s freezing in here.”
“That’s the idea,” Sandy said. For her it wasn’t so much the cold as the medley of stinking chemicals. “Does this place make you nervous, Margo?”
“They’re not going to move, are they?”
“I don’t mind looking at bodies as long as they’re cleaned up and in a clean body bag.”
“We don’t use dirty body bags here,” the attendant said. He opened one of the cold chambers and rolled out a gurney holding a white body bag. He unzipped the bag down to the waist.
Sandy stepped over and stared. She recognized the face from seeing the guy shooting at her in the condo and lying dead in the street. He was all cleaned up, but still looked dangerous as hell. Even dead, she wasn’t going to turn her back on him. “If you’ve ever seen this guy, Margo, it might be a help.”
Margo stepped up to the body with her eyes closed. Then she looked. She frowned. Then she let out a loud gasp and turned away. She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing, “Richie.”
Sandy froze in surprise. Margo had identified the body as Richie Grant? Entirely unexpected. Didn’t make any sense. Sandy had interrupted the man searching the victim’s apartment for the money. Had Margo somehow known about the missing money and sent her boyfriend to find it? Sandy supposed at least that part was plausible. However, Richie could have just run away. Instead, he chased after her and kept shooting trying to kill her. Then he lost exchanging gunfire with a sheriff’s deputy making a routine stop. All of it seemed excessive for a boyfriend.
The thought that any woman would have such a repulsive type for a boyfriend, was also beyond belief. The man Margo once described as hot and sexy was dangerous and scary.
Possibly, in her need, she was confusing love and sex.
Sandy’s grandfather was wrong; there isn’t a man for every woman. Some men don’t deserve women. Some men, when you see them coming down the street, you’d better cross over to the other side fast.
Chapter Twenty
During the drive from the morgue back to the office, Sandy was silent and stared straight ahead with her hands stiffly gripping the steering wheel. Margo looked over at her several times, but Sandy didn’t acknowledge her.
It remained quiet in the car until Margo spoke. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. It’s not like Richie and I were going to get married or anything like that.”
“I’m delighted that he won’t be around for you to marry. Now shut up.” Sandy still hadn’t pieced it all together. And what she had pieced together didn’t make sense.
“What?” Margo looked at her, then turned back and watched the street for several minutes. “Richie was always good to me.”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”
“Lies? I haven’t lied to you.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Okay, I admit that after John shot at me, I went to his condo.”
“Not that, I know you did that.”
“Okay, so I didn’t make out with Dennis on his dive boat exactly like I said.”
“Did you have Richie murder your husband?”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“You knew John had stolen money hidden in his condo, didn’t you?”
“What stolen money?”
“And you sent Richie there to kill John and get the money. He didn’t find it, or got scared off, and went back to look again. That’s when I walked in on him, and he tried to kill me also.”
“I don’t know about any of that. I know Richie is nice and he wouldn’t do bad stuff like that.”
“Sure...I know the type–tall, dark, and handcuffed. When and how did you meet Richie?”
“Let’s see. Must have been about a year ago.”
“That would be while you were still living with John.”
“No, that’s wrong. It must have been only three months ago.”
“You sound as if you’re making this up as you go along. Where did you meet him?”
After a moment of thought.”I came out of the supermarket one day and found a flat tire on my car. He came along and changed it for me. We got to talking and then, you know, like that.”
“You should have started that story with, ‘Once upon a time.’ What kind of car does he drive?”
“Cars all look alike to me.”
“What color is it?”
“It’s kind of blue,” Margo answered.
“Oh, that’s right, it’s a blue SUV isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“No, that’s wrong. He drives a silver Buick. Stolen, by the way. When was the last time you were in Miami?”
“Must be over a year. What does Miami have to do with it?”
“It’s now obvious that Richie is from Miami. He’s in a drug gang down there.”
“Not my Richie.”
“Stolen car, no ID of any sort on him. Doesn’t sound too innocent to me. You say you don’t know about any of this, but you keep lying.”
“It’s your fault. If you didn’t ask questions so fast, I’d have time to think.”
“Another strange thing. Suddenly you find out your boyfriend is dead, but you have yet to ask what happened. You’re not curious? Why didn’t you ask me how he came to be dead?”
“Yeah, I was just going to ask you that. How did he die?”
“Hoodlums get shot.” Sandy tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Richie Grant is a hoodlum in a Miami drug gang, probably an illegal alien from El Salvador. You say he’s your boyfriend up here, but you can’t produce him. No one around Park Beach has ever seen him or heard about him, except for you and Claudia. You have been stringing me along. You never intended for him to ever come to my office, did you? The morning after he got himself shot, you told me you spoke to him. He was already dead. And yesterday morning, before I got you released, you said you’d spoken to him. Again, already dead. More lies. I’ve had it with your bullshit.”
Any sensible defense attorney would walk away at that point, but Sandy didn’t want it to end that way. She’d like to get some success for herself out of the situation. And Margo would just find another lawyer. Someone, somewhere, would represent her. She might go free, might get a lethal injection, or something in between. Sandy absolutely didn’t want to be out of the picture and have no influence on what finally came out of all this. Especially with her effort and success so far in getting the charge reduced and her client released on bail. And especially since she was dying to find out what was going on.
“Why are you so angry that Richie is dead? I’m the one who’s supposed to feel sad.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Sandy slapped the steering wheel. “No, dammit. I’m not sorry for your loss. You suffered no loss believe me. You received a blessing. The entire world received a blessing. Be sorry that you ever had anything to do with that lowlife, but be thankful that he’s dead. He was at the bottom of the barrel and you were scraping it.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“I know he runs around with a gun shooting at people.”
Although she was pleased the treacherous Richie was dead, a chilling thought began to come through to her; her chances for a successful defense of Margo were decreasing, if not actually gurgling down the drain.
If the drug gang murdered John to recover the money and keep him from testifying, then getting Margo off would be a piece of cake. However, her boyfriend being a Miami hood caught in her husband’s condo, strongly implied that she also was involved. She had even used him as her alibi. She had made it worse when she told Jaworski he was her boyfriend and claimed to have been with him the night of the murder. With her boyfriend caught up in this, it might be impossible to separate her from all the action. Everything seemed to be going to hell.
She pulled into her parking spot at the side of the office and took a deep breath. “Again I ask you to please tell me about Richie, explain to me about Richie. Any bit of information on him might be helpful. You refuse to even give me his address.”
“I’m embarrassed, Sandy. I don’t know his address. There is very little about him I can tell you.”
In spite of such incredible answers, Sandy had decided to stick with the situation until the end. “I’m sorry, Margo. I must think all of this through. At least you’re out of jail. Go on home, or whatever you have to do. Keep out of trouble, and don’t talk about the case to anyone. There’s an FBI agent running around, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to talk with you.”
“He did. He was out at the jail before I was released.”
Once again, Sandy put her face down in her hands. “Margo, I can’t help you, if you don’t tell me these things. The FBI guy shouldn’t talk to you without me present.”
“He said he couldn’t talk to me about what I was charged with, but that I was okay talking to him about John’s employment. He said that was an entirely different case involving the consulate in Miami.”
“The sneaky bastard, when did he meet with you?”
“Yesterday.”
Under her breath, she muttered, “After our date.” And she almost let him sleep over. No, no, there was no “almost sleep over.” No way would she have done that.
“You get a lot of action don’t you, sleeping with all those authority types? I know a security guard at Walmart. He’s a little overweight. If you’re interested.”
Geez, did Margo hear some of that? “No, you misunderstood. I meant I was going to have it out with him, since he talked to you. What did you tell him?”
“I said I didn’t know anything about John’s job in Miami. I don’t think he believed me.”
“Great, now you’re lying to a Federal agent.”
“You didn’t tell me not to lie to him. I mean you didn’t say anything about federal agents.”
“I told you not to talk to anyone about this stuff. That includes anyone and everyone with or without a badge on planet Earth or the immediate vicinity, got it?” She wasn’t certain where ignorance ended and obstinance began. “Now you drive on home. Stay there. Don’t make me worry about you.”
Back at her office desk, she had mixed emotions. Some mystery had been resolved and some created. She felt better with Richie dead. For one reason, he wouldn’t come looking for her. Obviously, he was from Miami or El Salvador, and she knew nothing about him. She certainly didn’t understand how he came to be Margo’s boyfriend. That unlikely relationship was screwing up her case. She wished he had never existed in the first place.
There was another loose end for her to tie up. His being dead gave a huge advantage to the prosecution. They didn’t know about it yet. She had to tell them. She phoned Jaworski, “How’s my second favorite detective?”
He recognized her voice. “Busy. What’s up?”
“Has anyone viewed the body of our intruder over at the morgue? The one with a John Doe toe tag.”
“Now you’re embarrassing me, Sandy. I certainly would like to know if your client has ever seen him. But you see, that meant paperwork with five copies, arranging transportation for her from the jail with body restraints, and a female deputy with her at all times. And then you’d have to be present with her at the morgue. And on and on. Just haven’t gotten to it, you going to tell on me?”
“I’ll save you the trouble.” This was going to harm her defense of Margo, but it wasn’t the type of information she could keep from the prosecution. “My client just ID’d him. The stiff is Richie Grant...the boyfriend.”
Chasing Suspect Three Page 14