Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller

by Rachel Sinclair

  “I see.” I put my hand on my chin as I studied her. She was a wily one, that was for sure. She came off as a subservient woman, all smiles and submissive posture. But she had a great deal of intelligence, I could tell. I wondered if the Sanders family knew just how intelligent she was. “Anita,” I said. “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You can ask me anything. I can tell you most things that you want to know.”

  “The first thing that I would like to know is whether or not the Sanders family knows that you speak very good English.”

  She shook her head, but she had an amused look on her face. “No. I got this job through a referral, whose name is Alejandra Hernandez. She worked for the Sanders for fifteen years, but had to quit because she got married and started a family of her own at home. Before I applied, she told me to act like I could only speak broken English. Mrs. Sanders, Alejandra said, prefers authentic Mexican women to work in the home, and that would mean Mexican women who do not speak good English.” She smiled and shrugged. “Who knows why? I suspect that it has something to do with her showing off for her friends that she’s open to diversity. That’s very important for her – to be seen as somebody who has all different types of people around her.”

  That was odd, but not that odd. Mrs. Sanders could very well have been just a little bit eccentric. I was going to have to speak with her to get a read on that.

  “So, as far as the Sanders knew, you only speak limited amounts of English?”

  “Right.” She smiled and laughed. “Silly. They’re very silly people.”

  “Sounds like it. It also sounds like you probably heard a lot of dirt over the years coming from this house.”

  She nodded her head. “Yes. That was what I was saying. I was always around – cleaning, cooking, serving. They spoke freely around me, because they didn’t know that I could understand what they were saying. And ay caramba. This is one rich family that has many skeletons in their closet.” She touched my forearm for emphasis. “They always say that the wealthy people are crazy, and this family is probably crazier than most.”

  Crazier than most. That sounded interesting, to say the very least.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, let me see. Judge Sanders apparently has a different family. Had a different family. They live across town, in Parkville. Mrs. Sanders found this out several years ago. Mr. Sanders would leave the house for days at a time. He told Mrs. Sanders that he had to go to Washington DC three days a week, and Mrs. Sanders believed him for years. Christina knew better, but she never told Mrs. Sanders that Mr. Sanders didn’t actually have to go to Washington DC all that often.”

  I wrote down what she was telling me, wondering how it was relevant. If it was relevant at all.

  “A different family. By that you mean a parallel family, or it was a family that he had before he was married to Ava Sanders?”

  “Parallel. It wouldn’t have been much of a scandal if it was simply a family that he had before he married Mrs. Sanders. But this was particularly scandalous when this came out. And Mrs. Sanders was furious, to say the very least.”

  “Scandalous,” I said. “Tell me about this other family.”

  “He has three kids with this other woman. Her name is Carmela Adams. She’s Latina, although she was married to a white man, which is why her first name is Latina and her second name is not. That made it that much worse, of course – that Mr. Sanders was having a long-term affair with a Latina woman, and he was having children with her as well.”

  “Three children.” I sighed. “Michael never said a word about this to me. He never told me that there was another family that the Judge had across town.” I wondered about this. Maybe he never thought that I would find out about it, but why was he hiding this other family? That was peculiar, to say the very least.

  Anita shook her head. “I don’t know, but that whole thing blew up several years back. They could never get a divorce, though, because Mr. Sanders likes to live here in this palace, and he never could if he divorced Mrs. Sanders.”

  That struck me as odd. “You mean Mrs. Sanders was the person who has the money in this family? Not Mr. Sanders?”

  She nodded her head. “Right. Mr. Sanders makes around $200,00 per year. That’s a good salary, of course, but it’s not enough of a salary to live here in this house in this neighborhood. He grew up poor, too, so he doesn’t have family money. Mrs. Sanders’ family is old money from the East Coast. She’s an heiress to a shipping company.”

  I narrowed my eyes and wrote things down on my paper. “Mr. and Mrs. Sanders have been married for how long?” I had access to that information, but not at my fingertips, and I was too preoccupied to look it up.

  “Fifty years. They got married when they were both 17.”

  I closed my eyes, suddenly realizing that there was yet another suspect to look at – Mrs. Sanders. “When did she come into the money? Do you have any knowledge about that?”

  She shook her head, and I was going to have to look into that.

  I could feel the case slipping away. With every revelation, it became more and more clear that Michael probably wasn’t guilty after all. That knowledge made me sick. I wanted so badly to be able to sink Michael, but I couldn’t do it if I knew that somebody else was guilty.

  A part of me wanted to quit. Not to dig any further. To try to come up with some concrete evidence that Michael did it, any evidence at all, and ignore all the exculpating facts I found out. Yet I couldn’t do that. I ethically couldn’t do that. I morally couldn’t do that.

  I was probably going to have to find closure some other way.

  I made notes to find out more about the Sanders’ finances. I specifically needed to find out when Mrs. Sanders came into her inheritance, and if she somehow converted her inheritance money into joint assets. If she took the inheritance money and put it all into a separate account, with only her name on it, then she was entitled to keep all that money. It would be considered to be separate assets and Judge Sanders wouldn’t be entitled to any of the money in the event of a divorce. But if she got her inheritance and put it into a joint account, or joint stocks and bonds, or real estate that the two held jointly, or even if she took that money and put it into any kind of assets at all, the inheritance would have been converted into joint property. And that would mean that Judge Sanders would be entitled to half of that if they got divorced.

  I knew enough about property division in dissolution of marriage cases to know that Mrs. Sanders had reason to kill Judge Sanders. I would imagine that she would have been angry enough to do it. I had to put myself into her shoes – she finds out that her husband, the man that she had loved since she was 17 years old, was having a long-term affair with another woman. He had three kids with this other woman, and he lied to Ava by telling her that he was going to DC three days a week. She finds out the truth, and feels not only betrayed but stupid and played. She believed his lies and apparently never bothered to check to see if he really had to go to DC each week.

  And what if he asked for a divorce? What if Ava told the judge that it was her or the other family, and he chose the other family? What then? If there wasn’t a prenuptial agreement, then Ava was faced with the prospect that she was going to have to give Judge Sanders half her fortune. That would be insult added to injury, to say the very least. That was the bad part of no-fault divorce, which was the law in Missouri – even though Judge Sanders apparently was acting atrociously, running around on his wife, he still would be entitled to half of what she had in the event of a divorce.

  If I were in Ava Sanders’ shoes, I probably would have killed Judge Sanders. Nobody could blame her for doing that.

  “Okay,” I said. “Do you know that happened after Mrs. Sanders found out about Mr. Sanders’ affair?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing, really. They had a huge argument, but Mr. Sanders told Mrs. Sanders that he couldn’t stop seeing Carmela. He told Mrs. Sanders that he had a family with Carm
ela, and that he couldn’t just abandon the three children that they had together.” Anita shook her head. “And, oh Lord, that didn’t go over well. There was a lot of screaming going on for many weeks. Weeks of constant fighting and screaming and throwing things at each other. Well, Mrs. Sanders threw things at Mr. Sanders, although Mr. Sanders never threw anything at her. Every time Mr. Sanders left the house and did not come back for days on end caused another huge fight. He would come back in the house and Mrs. Sanders would violently scream at him to get out.”

  “Did he get out?”

  “No. He told her that this was his home, too, and that she couldn’t force him out.” Anita shook her head. “Oh, boy, but that was a problem, too. I heard Christina talking to Mrs. Sanders, and what she was saying was that Mrs. Sanders needed to divorce Mr. Sanders. Mrs. Sanders said that she couldn’t divorce him, although I never quite understood why. She did say things like she wanted to stay with him because her friends looked up to her because she was married to a federal judge. But I think that there were other reasons, too.”

  Yes, there were other reasons why Ava could never divorce Judge Sanders. I had a feeling that I was probably right – her inheritance was converted into marital property, and she wasn’t about to give him a thin dime.

  “So, there was that,” I said. “The other family he had. What else can you tell me about this family?”

  Anita shook her head and started to speak in Spanish. She didn’t know that I could understand every word, but, from what I could tell, she was cursing and not really communicating anything important.

  She lowered her voice. “His daughter. Christina.” She shook her head. “Oh, my. Mr. Sanders had been doing inappropriate things to her since she was 12 years old.”

  I bowed my head. I had a hunch about that. I thought that might have been the reason why she was anorexic and had been in and out of psychiatric facilities. Maybe there were other reasons why she would have so many mental issues. I was going to have to ask Anita about that.

  “And Mrs. Sanders didn’t suspect this, either?” What was this lady’s problem? Her husband had another family and he was sexually abusing his daughter, and she never suspected a thing. Really?

  “Oh, no. Mrs. Sanders knew all about what was happening with Christina and her father. But she pretended not to. I overheard conversations between Mrs. Sanders and Christina, and Christina was trying to tell her what her father was doing to her. Mrs. Sanders shut her down every time Christina tried to say a word about it. Now, I do truly think that Mrs. Sanders had no idea that Mr. Sanders had another family or that he was having an affair with Carmela. I don’t know how she could have been so naïve, but she was.”

  Maybe not naïve. Maybe she was willfully blind.

  I cleared my throat. “And what about you? Did he try to make any indecent approaches to you?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “He never made any indecent approaches to me. I would have quit if he did. I don’t play that, mamacita.” She smiled and shook her head again. “No way.”

  I mentally cleared Anita as a suspect in my head. But both Christina and Ava were looking more and more likely.

  And if Ava did it, that cleared up another aspect that was nagging at me. I wondered how it was that somebody could have poisoned Judge Sanders without also poisoning Ava. They both probably drank from the same milk jug. Probably drank from the same pitcher of tea. If they drank wine, they probably shared the bottle of wine. It would be highly unusual for a married couple to not share the same drinks.

  Then again, maybe not. Perhaps they lived separate lives, ever since the Judge was found to be messing around with Carmela Adams.

  But that was probable – they shared the same milk jug and tea pitcher etc. If somebody else was surreptitiously poisoning Judge Sanders, then there was going to be a good chance that Ava was going to be poisoned as well. But if Ava was the one who was administering the poison…

  “Tell me about how they lived. Did they live separate lives after Judge Sanders was found out?” I looked around, seeing that this house was a good 6,000 square feet. It had different wings. It would be extremely easy for a married couple to live completely separate lives in this home. If that was the case, then anybody could have poisoned the judge, because he might have his own separate refrigerator full of his own separate food.

  “Of course,” she said. “Mr. Sanders was banished to the east wing. He moved out of their bedroom and that wing is an entire other house, really. It has its own kitchen, its own living room, three entire bedrooms. It’s a house within a house. That was where Mr. Sanders had to live.”

  Back to square one. That meant that anybody who frequented this house could have poisoned Judge Sanders. That included Anita, Ava Sanders, Christina Sanders and Michael. All of them visited the house on a regular basis. Any one of them could have done it. Anita and Ava had the most access, because they were there every day, but there was also the chance that Christina or Michael could have done it.

  “How often did Christina Sanders and Michael Reynolds visit this house?”

  “Every week. They came over for dinner once a week.”

  “Did Mr. Sanders have anything in his own special refrigerator that only he drank or ate? Did he buy milk by the gallon, or make pitchers of tea, or did he have bottles of unopened wine? Something that he drank every single day?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes. He made a pitcher of tea every week. A new pitcher of tea. He drank two glasses a day, sometimes more. He also drank milk in his coffee every morning.”

  Bingo. That seemed to be the best vehicle for poison. He had his own milk and his own pitcher of tea.

  What was good was that, in my mind, Michael was still a suspect. I didn’t quite know what motive he had to kill Judge Sanders, but he still might have killed him. He still might have. I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle just yet, but I was going to.

  “What kind of relationship did Michael Reynolds have with the judge?”

  Anita shook her head. “Not good. Not good at all. I served all their meals, and, just about with every dinner, there was some kind of fight between Mr. Sanders and Michael. Michael would yell at Christina, would curse her out and insult her, right there at the table, and Mr. Sanders would yell at Michael. They always brought their children here, too, and they had to witness Michael say horrible things to Christina. He took pleasure, it seemed, insulting her right in front of everyone.”

  “What kind of insults?”

  “He called her fat, Miss Piggy, said that she shouldn’t take extra servings of food. He called her stupid, bitch, stupid bitch, told her that she was a bad mother, accused her of having sex with his best friends. You name it, he said it to her, right in front of everyone.”

  I thought about Christina, who appeared to weigh about 120 lbs. She had problems with anorexia in the past, too. And he was digging at her right where it hurt her the most – she apparently had a dysmorphic body image to begin with, so he knew that if he called her fat in front of everyone, he would be harpooning her right through the heart. Maybe she also was insecure about raising her children. If he said things about her being a poor mother, then that, too, would be putting a dagger right into her core.

  Michael apparently hadn’t changed since college. He was still just as sleazy. Still a bad, bad guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still raping women, too.

  “What did Judge Sanders say to him when he was saying these cruel things to Christina?”

  “They almost came to blows just about every week. But Michael and Christina would always be back the next week, because Mrs. Sanders wanted them to visit and bring the grand-kids.” She sighed. “There was always a lot of tension whenever Michael and Christina came to visit. I dreaded their visits for that reason.”

  “What else can you tell me about the relationship between Michael and Judge Sanders?”

  “Well, Mr. Sanders knew that Michael was cheating on Christina. I heard many conversations between
Mr. Sanders and Michael, where Mr. Sanders was telling Michael that he knew about Michael’s affairs. He told Michael, in no uncertain terms, that if Michael didn’t come clean, he would tell Christina all about what Michael was doing.”

  That was more promising. It was duplicative of what Judge Johnson had told me in Judge Sanders’ chambers. That gave me more of a motive for Michael to have killed the judge.

  That gave me another idea – I was going to have to figure out exactly what Michael had to lose if he was forced to divorce Christina. As with Ava and Robert Sanders, perhaps Christina was the one who had the money. I was going to have to figure out if there was a trust fund set up for Christina, one that maybe Michael didn’t have access to. That would mean that Michael would have much to lose if Christina divorced him. He was an executive at an ad agency. He was highly paid, but he certainly wasn’t paid enough to live the kind of lifestyle that he was living. His house was also in one that was in one of the ritziest parts of town – he lived in the Hallbrook area, which was where business owners, CEOs, sports stars and major drug kingpins lived.

  So, there was yet another theory of the case that I formulated – one that was as plausible as any other. Michael killed Judge Sanders because Judge Sanders was threatening Michael with telling Christina about his affairs. If Christina divorced him, he would be forced to come down in his lifestyle, and he had no desire to do this. So, he killed the judge.

  While this was a good idea, it wasn’t a sure thing. It wasn’t even that good of a theory. I had to have something more solid, something that was more of a smoking gun. Only then would I feel comfortable undermining Michael in his case. Only then would I feel right about sinking him.

  It certainly wasn’t a sure thing in comparison to everything else. Christina had reason to kill the judge. Ava certainly had reason to kill him. All three of these people – Christina, Ava and Michael – had means to poison him.

  But, even if I figured out who poisoned the judge, I couldn’t figure out one thing – why was the judge shot? Why wasn’t the poison just allowed to run its course? And why was Michael so open about telling me about the symptoms the judge exhibited? That made zero sense to me, if Michael was the culprit. I would think that he would keep quiet about the fact that the judge was sick, if he was the one who poisoned Judge Sanders.