Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  I couldn’t bring myself to leave the safety of the house to go jogging, though. I tried. I got dressed for it, started out the door, saw that old Caprice still parked against the curb half-a-block away, and stopped. It now looked like someone was sitting in the car, though from my sidewalk I couldn’t have even said male or female. I went back inside.

  I did my workout to a videotape, using a stepper I’d gotten at Wal-Mart, keeping the volume on the TV low so that if anyone tried to break in, I would hear it. Afterwards, I showered, but briefly, not wanting to become involved in any real-life reenactment of the famous scene from Psycho. Instead of my customary T-shirt and panties, I put on a pair of shorts and a running bra I thought might be comfortable enough to sleep in. Just as I finished dressing, the phone rang.

  I picked it up. “Hello?”

  There was no one there.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  Breathing. Not heavy breathing, but breathing nonetheless. I listened to it, not saying anything else, and after about half-a-minute the connection ended.

  Frowning, I put the receiver back in its cradle, then picked it up again and dialed star-69 to call back my unknown caller.

  A man answered. “Hello?” he said uncertainly.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” He sounded scared, so to press my advantage I let him hear me breathing. He took it for about ten seconds, then hung up.

  Serves him right, I thought, turning away from the phone, but it rang before I’d gone more than a couple of steps. I stopped and stood looking at it. After the fourth ring, my machine picked up, and my recorded message played. “Hi, this is Robin. Leave your name and number, and I’ll call you back.”

  I winced when I heard my name. I was going to have to change the outgoing message.

  My caller’s breathing came over the speaker. He left me about a minute’s worth of it, then hung up. Son of a gun, he got me back.

  I strode to the kitchen, where my phone had Caller ID. I expected the number to be blocked, but it wasn’t. The breather’s name was Eddie Unger, who was no one I knew. His phone number had the same first three digits as my cell phone, which meant he was calling on a cell phone himself. On a cell phone he could be calling from anywhere. He could be right outside my house.

  I turned out the lights and went to the window, but it was dark outside and the shrubbery limited my field of vision. Flipping the light back on, I got out my phone book. Eddie wasn’t in it.

  “I don’t like that,” I said aloud.

  I put the phone book back in the drawer, then, turning out lights as I went, I walked around the perimeter of the house, looking out the windows, checking the locks, making sure the deadbolts on the doors were engaged. As a substitute for the alarm system I didn’t have, I stacked a couple of saucepans by the front and back doors.

  A thought occurred to me. I went to the bedroom that served as my office and turned on the computer. After it booted, I went to the web site of the central appraisal district and did a search for E Unger.

  There it was. Eddie Unger owned a house on Darby Street, not far from my own house. The picture showed a small ranch house with a brick front.

  “Holy cow,” I breathed. Eddie Unger was the guy whose nuts I’d mangled when he grabbed me from behind.

  A smile twisted my face. Eddie Unger had looked me up and was exacting his revenge. It was a small, warped sort of revenge. Most people would have just hired a lawyer. But it was something I thought I understood.

  Some fifteen minutes later, I was walking through the dark house one last time in preparation for bed when the phone rang again. For a moment I froze, then I ran back to the kitchen and flipped on a light so I could see the number of the incoming call. It was Eddie.

  I let it ring again, then lifted the receiver to my ear. I didn’t say anything.

  Neither did my caller.

  “You need to stop this, Eddie,” I said.

  He hung up.

  I found myself grinning. Now I could go to bed with some hope of sleeping.

  And that’s what I did, my cross-trainers by my bed, my keys on the floor beside them.

  Chapter 12

  A voice by my bed sent me lurching awake, but it was just my clock radio going off, as it did every morning at six o’clock. Today, Lady Gaga was singing about the girl she’d met in East L.A. I lay and listened, and gradually my heartbeat returned to normal.

  I got to work by seven-thirty and found myself doing catch-up. It was about ten-thirty before I had the chance to place another call to McCormack Labs on my cell phone.

  “Yes, this is Robin Starling with the law firm of Northcutt Hambrick. I’m supposed to meet Wendy Walters in accounting, but I can’t find the right building. Could you…”

  “It’s the second one on the right as you come in the main entrance.”

  “And I’m in the right place? You’re just off West Broad Street out near Goochland?”

  “That’s right. If you’re coming from town, turn right onto McCormack Drive.”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up.

  John Parker was standing in the doorway, his jacket off and the cuffs of his sleeves turned back a couple of times. He was holding a file folder.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “I’m going out to McCormack Labs on my lunch hour.”

  He came in and sat in one of my client chairs. “I suppose you know Wendy Walters is dead,” he said.

  “I found the body.”

  He took a moment to digest that bit of information. “I saw it in the paper,” he said finally. “The article didn’t mention you.”

  “That’s something anyway,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where were you the other night, when you saw Wendy at my place? We didn’t see you.”

  “I wasn’t waving a flag.”

  He sighed. “I was just curious. I’m sorry as hell, you know.”

  “Yes, you are,” I conceded.

  “Though we didn’t actually, uh, complete the transaction. After you saw us, it was all over.”

  “Unh huh.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I don’t care.”

  His head went back. “Oh, wow.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  He took a deep breath and started to get up, then dropped back into the chair again. “You don’t think her murder and the attack on you were related, do you?” he asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot happening suddenly.”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t disagree with him there.

  “Well,” he said, levering himself out of the chair again. He went to the door.

  “Where did you leave her?” I asked him, my eyes on my pencil holder. “Did you walk her up, or leave her on the sidewalk, or what?” I raised my gaze to his.

  “I thought you didn’t care.”

  “John, I found her on the couch with a bloated face and a clothesline around her neck. I’d like to know how such a thing came about.”

  He was silent.

  “Okay, don’t tell me,” I said. “The police fingerprinted the whole apartment, though. If you were in there, it might be prudent to say so — at least if you’re asked officially.”

  “I walked her up.”

  I nodded. “She was in her underwear when I found her.”

  “She had more than that on when I left her.”

  “Unh huh.”

  He came back into the office a step. “What did you tell them about me?” he asked.

  “Tell whom?”

  “The police.”

  “I didn’t tell them anything about you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why should I? What do they care about you cheating on your girlfriend?”

  He was silent for maybe half-a-minute. “Thanks.”

  “If they knew about you,
” I said, “you’d be the major focus of their investigation. They need to be focusing on McCormack Labs.”

  “Wendy’s employer?”

  “Yesterday, she told me they’d been doing some funny bookkeeping — earnings management or maybe outright fraud.”

  “And so you like them for murder?”

  “It’s what I’ve got. She talks with me about funny business at McCormack Labs. That night I’m assaulted and she’s murdered. That seems like quite a coincidence if there’s no connection.”

  He nodded.

  “And if you did it, what was your motive?” I went on. “At worst, you were upset because you didn’t get a piece. I don’t see that turning into a murderous rage. You never attacked me when I turned you down.”

  “Did you ever turn me down?”

  I made a face at him. The truth was I couldn’t remember whether I ever had or not. “Work with me here,” I said. “I’m trying to do you a favor.”

  Chapter 13

  Having places to go and people to see, I left early for lunch. I took the Downtown Expressway to I-64 and exited I-64 onto West Broad. Three point two miles later, I turned right onto McCormack, where a wrought-iron fence marked the perimeter of the McCormack Labs complex. A guardhouse sat just inside the open gate. I slowed as a man in a security uniform came out, but he only stretched his back and swung his arms and watched me as I rolled past.

  I was in, and the most disturbing thing so far was that the song “Secret Agent Man” kept playing in my head. This just wasn’t the kind of thing lawyers did, not any of the ones I knew. For one thing, it was hard to see how I was going to bill anybody 300 dollars an hour for it.

  At 11:45 I pulled into a parking space facing the second building on the right, which evidently housed accounting. It was a flat-roofed, two-story affair. About ten minutes later, people began to exit the building in ones and twos — a tall, thin man with a full head of silver hair, a couple of young men wearing shirts with open collars, a heavy-set black woman. Any or all of them might have worked with Wendy, but I didn’t feel like any was a good prospect for developing a quick rapport with.

  I waited until a woman about my age came out and chirped open a Camry three cars down from me. She was dressed in what I think of as a little-man suit, a skirt and matching jacket over a cotton shirt buttoned to the throat. She was evidently some kind of professional, so, when she pulled out of her parking space, I started my own car and followed her.

  She got onto the interstate and off again, then pulled into the parking lot of Regency Square Mall. I parked three rows away from her and hurried after her toward the Dillard’s entrance. Her thick red hair was like a flag bobbing ahead of me. She went to kids’ clothing, and I loitered near her, poking through a rack of tops for prepubescent girls while she picked out a natty little outfit for what I figured would be about a four-year-old boy. She paid for it and went out into the mall.

  In the food court, she bought a deli sandwich, a bag of chips, and a drink, and she sat down with her tray at a table by herself. The food court was crowded, but I picked a vendor with no line and ended up with a plate of shrimp lo mein and an iced tea. There were a few empty tables, but none right around my target, which was good. I approached her with my tray, and she looked up. She was one of those redheads with a peaches-and-cream complexion and no trace of freckles.

  “Hi,” I said. “Kind of crowded, isn’t it? Do you mind if I sit with you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.” Her smile was perfunctory.

  I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Robin Starling,” I said.

  It took her several seconds to decide whether she was going to talk to me. “Brooke Marshall,” she said finally.

  “Work near here?” I took an energetic sip of my tea.

  She nodded. “You?”

  “No, I’m downtown. Northcutt, Hambrick and Larsen.”

  “Is that…a law firm, or a group of CPAs, or what?”

  “Law firm. We do mostly commercial litigation, but a bit of this and that.”

  “And you’re a lawyer,” she said carefully, as if the label might insult me if she got it wrong.

  “That’s right.” I forked shrimp lo mein into my mouth and chewed vigorously. “You?” I had her now, I thought. Once she began asking questions, she could hardly refuse to answer a few of mine.

  “I’m a network administrator.”

  “Computers?”

  She nodded. “McCormack Labs. I’m here on my lunch hour buying a present for my nephew.”

  I had her volunteering information. “McCormack’s the pharmaceutical outfit, isn’t it?” I said. “I have a friend who works there. Wendy Walters. I think she’s in accounting.”

  Her face had gone still.

  “You know her?”

  She nodded soberly. “I’m in accounting, too.”

  “She and I went to college together. We played basketball.”

  She seemed stricken.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You haven’t seen the paper,” she said.

  “The newspaper?”

  “Wendy Walters is dead.” Her voice was soft.

  “Dead!” I exclaimed.

  “Strangled in her apartment. They found her yesterday.”

  I stared at her.

  “She didn’t come in yesterday,” Brooke said. “Then today everyone was talking about it.”

  “But I just tried to call her. I was going to be out this way, and I called to see if she’d meet me for lunch.”

  Brooke shook her head. For a while we sat in silence, our food forgotten. Then Brooke took a sip of her drink and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Robin.”

  “I just can’t believe it.”

  “For what it’s worth, I can’t either.”

  “Did you know her?” I asked.

  “Well enough. We’ve been to lunch.”

  “I saw her two days ago,” I said. “She dropped by my office, and we had smoothies.”

  Brooke didn’t say anything to that.

  “She was upset,” I said. “I guess maybe she had reason to be.”

  “She was upset?”

  “She seemed to think she’d uncovered some kind of accounting problems there at McCormack, and no one would listen.”

  “Who wouldn’t listen?”

  “I don’t know. Who would she tell? You?”

  “Not me. Martin Nolen, maybe. He’s the controller.”

  “Is he a good guy?”

  “I understand he’s a good accountant.”

  “That’s a careful response.”

  She laughed, but the pitch seemed off to me. “Martin’s all right,” she said. “He’s kind of intense sometimes.”

  “So if there were accounting problems, he’d be all over them.”

  No response.

  “She was nervous as a cat when I saw her,” I said. “It was as if she thought someone might be watching her. Has she been like that at work?”

  Still nothing, but her own eyes had shifted on me. Her head didn’t move, but she seemed to be scanning the people behind me and on both sides of us.

  I leaned forward. “She said,” I said in a low voice. “She said she had uncovered a second set of books.”

  Brooke’s face jumped as if I’d touched an electrode to her.

  “What did she say specifically?” she asked.

  “That’s just it. She didn’t say anything specific.”

  “Did she give you any details at all?”

  I shook my head. “Would it matter? Would details mean anything to you?”

  “They might.”

  “You’re an accountant?”

  “I was a double major in college, accounting and information systems. I haven’t done much with the accounting, except…”

  “Except network administration for the accounting department of a major corporation,” I finished for her.

  She flushed slightly. “Except that.”

  “How many of you are
there? Network administrators.”

  “In accounting? I have an assistant, a new hire that started in June.”

  “And you yourself don’t know anything about accounting irregularities or a second set of books,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “All of my conversations tend to devolve into cross-examination. Occupational hazard.”

  She studied me. “Your running into me here wasn’t by chance, was it?” she said.

  “I don’t think anything happens by chance, really. Do you?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.” She stood up and walked away, leaving her tray on the table, her food unfinished.

  I watched her go, realizing I had blown it. For a few minutes, I’d had the perfect contact inside the accounting department at McCormack, and I had blown it.

  “Crap,” I said.

  Chapter 14

  I got some work done that afternoon and didn’t knock off until seven. When I did, I went by the Y and joined a pickup game of basketball with a couple of guys I’d played with before and one I hadn’t. They were all taller and heavier than I was, and they tended to move me around under the basket, but I did all right for myself. Teamed with the new guy, I scored six of our eight baskets before the other team got its tenth and the game was over.

  When men play basketball, I’ve noticed, they produce sweat like fire hydrants produce water, and I was no summer daisy myself. We split up, going to our respective locker rooms. I think there was a Yoga class going on that night. Women all around me were putting on Spandex as I changed out of my gym shorts and my sleeveless T.

  The old Chevy Caprice was parked across the street from my house again, and there was someone behind the wheel. I pulled up beside it and triggered the window on the passenger side of my Beetle. The man in the Caprice glanced at me and then looked away, shielding his face with his left hand. I waited. Finally, he lowered his hand, and his window went down. He had a round face and limp black hair. I thought he might be twenty-five.

  “Are you Eddie Unger?” I asked.

  He shook his head almost violently, but what he said was, “How did you know?”