Laughing Heirs (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “I’m asking you to trade with me.”

  “Okay.” He stepped into the kitchen out of my line of sight, and a moment later the shorts he’d been wearing hit the wall beside me. I picked them up, then, with my eye on the corner he’d disappeared around, let the over-sized shorts drop to the floor and stepped into the new ones. When I let go of them, they slid down a few inches, but my hips caught them and they stayed. I let the shirt drop over them, then stepped back into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I was decent now.

  “Hey,” Paul called. “It’s getting a little drafty in here.”

  “Sorry.” I retrieved the big shorts from the hall. “Deeks!” I said, squatting beside him.

  Deeks didn’t get up, but his tail thumped the floor.

  “Take it,” I said.

  He extended his chin over the sock-covered bottle and took the shorts tentatively.

  “Go to Paul,” I said.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Go to Paul.” I gave his bottom a push, and he scrambled to his feet, his eyes on me.

  “What’s going on over there?” Paul asked.

  I tilted my head in the direction of his voice. “Go to Paul,” I said again.

  Deeks looked at me uncertainly, then walked around the corner, his toenails scraping on the polished wood floor. “Good boy,” I called after him.

  “Hey,” Paul said. “Did I put dog slobber on your shorts?”

  “Get over it. I’ve got man cooties to deal with.”

  Paul came around the corner, one hand hooked in the waist of his shorts to hold them up. “Men don’t have cooties,” he said. “That’s a female thing.”

  “Didn’t those shorts used to fit?”

  “I’ve been losing a little weight.”

  “You’ve been losing a lot of weight.”

  “You can tell a difference? It’s hard for me to see it. I still have the same shape, really, just on a smaller scale.”

  I nodded, eying him critically. “You look like a teddy bear that’s lost half its stuffing.”

  “Well that hurts.”

  He stood in the doorway, his hand on the light switch, as I slipped under the covers on his bed and Deeks hopped up beside me.

  “You don’t mind Deeks sleeping on your bed?” I said.

  “What’s a little dog hair between friends?”

  “Dog hair, dog slobber, man cooties…”

  He was shaking his head as he turned out the light. “Good night, sleep tight.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” I said.

  He laughed. As he went down the short hall, he said something to himself that I couldn’t make out.

  “What was that?”

  “I said, ‘All great things start from small beginnings.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s Cicero. You were an English major. I was poli-sci.”

  “I mean, what does it mean in this context?”

  “You’re a smart girl,” he called from further away. “You’ll get it.” There was a creak that might have been his sofa.

  I turned over in his bed, making a face in the darkness. I was a smart girl. And I got it.

  Chapter 10

  We didn’t make it to the IHOP the next morning. We intended to. We got dressed, fed Deeks, and went to the door, where I turned and told Deeks, “You stay here. We’ll be right back.” Deeks understood the term “right back.” It’s what kept him in the car when I ran into the store for something.

  The problem was that Paul’s apartment was neither Deeks’ home nor my car. Wherever Paul and I were going and however long we were going to be away, Deeks knew beyond the possibility of any doubt that he was supposed to go with us. When the door opened, he darted at the opening. Paul closed it quickly, but incompletely, and Deeks wedged his nose into the opening and tried to force the door open. I dragged him back.

  “Deeks,” I said, squatting to be at eye-level with him. He turned his head to look at the door. “Deeks,” I said again, turning his head toward me, but he pushed against my hand and rolled his eyes toward the door. “Deeks, it’s all right, buddy.”

  To Paul I said, “You go on out. I’m coming.”

  Paul opened the door, and Deeks lunged for it. I held on and maneuvered myself between Deeks and the door.

  “Deeks, you stay here. I’ll be right back. Okay?” I straightened my legs, but stayed bent over to keep my hands on his head.

  “Maybe we could take him with us, and he could wait in the car,” Paul said through the door.

  If the day was cold and cloudy enough, that would be okay, but I thought we’d feel rushed. “Open the door,” I told Paul.

  He did, and I backed through, my hands on Deeks’ head to keep him inside the apartment. Paul closed the door until it was touching my arm.

  “I’ll yank out my hands, and you close the door,” I said.

  “You don’t think he’ll tear up my apartment?”

  “He’s never been destructive before.”

  “He chews on stuff.”

  “Just because he’s bored.”

  “Great.”

  “Here goes.” I gave Deeks a push, sending him sliding back a pace, and jerked my hands out, falling back against Paul as he pulled the door shut. Deeks was too quick for him. Paul stopped the door against Deeks’ nose, which was already in the opening, nostrils flaring. I had slid down Paul’s leg onto my keister.

  “He knows he’s supposed to go with us,” I said, still sitting on the floor. “He thinks we’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “We could go to Sonic instead of IHOP and eat in my car.”

  I smiled over my shoulder at him and pushed the door open with my foot. Deeks was instantly in my lap, giving me great doggy kisses of reconciliation. Looking past him up at Paul, I thought Paul looked resigned.

  “You brought this puppy into my life,” I reminded him.

  “And you wouldn’t change that if you could.”

  I pushed Deeks away and stood up. Paul was right, I wouldn’t.

  Anyway, we ate at Sonic that Saturday morning. While we were there, I got a call from Brooke.

  “You didn’t call me last night.”

  “I thought with any luck you’d be asleep. And…” I took a breath.

  “And the news isn’t good.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m sorry. Brian’s in jail on a three-quarter-million-dollar bond.”

  “They think he killed her?”

  “They think he killed her, and they think they can prove it.”

  I could hear her breathing. Finally, she said, “Where is he? Can I see him?”

  “Yes. He’s in the Richmond City Jail, and there are Saturday visiting hours. He is limited to one visitor a week.”

  “How about you?”

  “I can see him more often. Every day if I need to. It doesn’t count against his one-visitor limit.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “Not much.”

  “He didn’t do it, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me the truth. Do you think you can beat this?”

  “Sure.”

  “How?”

  “It’s early. I have no idea.”

  Her breathing was becoming audible again.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I never have any idea. The cases I’ve won, I just muddled around until suddenly I saw my way through.”

  After a pause she said, “It does make me feel better. A little.”

  “I’m sorry, Brooke. I really am.”

  “I like it better when you’re representing people I’m not related to.”

  “Me, too.”

  I disconnected and looked at Paul.

  “She gonna be okay?” he said.

  I shook my head. “I guess she’ll have to be.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Okay,” I said, but I didn’t want the rest of my croisSONIC breakfast sandwich. I took another bit
e, chewed, swallowed, then held out the rest of it to Paul.

  “I’ve had plenty,” he said.

  “You’ve had one junior breakfast burrito.”

  “It’s enough. You know who does want it.” He jerked his head, and we looked at Deeks, whose eyes were locked onto my sandwich like a missile guidance system, a line of drool running from one side of his mouth.

  I felt a pang of guilt. “I’m sorry, Deeks. Would you like my sandwich?” I held it out, and his mouth closed on my sandwich and three of my fingers. Fortunately, he seemed to know what was breakfast and what was Robin, and I kept all three digits.

  Afterwards we went back to Paul’s apartment, and I didn’t get home until midafternoon. Deeks and I were out on our evening walk when Brooke called again.

  “I got in to see him, but he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “What, not at all?”

  “Well, hello and that sort of thing, but he wouldn’t tell me anything about what happened yesterday.”

  “I told him not to talk to anyone.”

  “You didn’t tell him not to talk to me.”

  “No. I didn’t mention you specifically.”

  “I’m his sister. I love him.”

  “You’re not his attorney. Anything he says to you, you can be made to repeat.”

  “Not with a hot poker and a cat-o-nine-tails.”

  “With what?” Try as I might, I couldn’t get a handle on that image.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I guess. If they couldn’t make you talk, though, they could put you in jail, which would at least be inconvenient. Anyway, the main thing is that he’s keeping his mouth shut, and that’s a good habit for a criminal defendant to develop.”

  “Don’t call him a criminal defendant.”

  “Sorry. A man falsely accused?”

  “Don’t mind me, I’m just upset. Also, I think he’s hiding something.”

  “Because he won’t talk to you?”

  “It’s not just that. There’s something in his manner. I don’t like it.”

  “Huh.” I wasn’t going to discount Brooke’s intuition. There was blood on Brian’s jeans that was completely unaccounted for. And I had found a glasses case in his apartment, almost certainly Whitney’s. It might be a spare case she had left there some time ago, but it had her sunglasses in it. Suppose it was the one she always carried. Suppose Brian found it at Macy’s house and carried it away, then panicked when he found the bloody jeans and left it behind when he fled.

  “Robin?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking. Can I call you back?” My thoughts weren’t proceeding linearly, which was okay at this stage when I wanted to keep stirring up facts and ideas to see if they fell into any interesting patterns. I felt, though, that for a while I needed to stop thinking consciously about Brian and Macy and Whitney and the whole Walsh clan, so I called Deeks to me.

  “Deeks! Deeks, old buddy.”

  When he appeared out of the darkness, I told him to heel. He was walking beside me looking up at me when I said it, and he kept doing it for another fifteen or twenty seconds before he started to run ahead of me. I just managed to catch his tail.

  He looked over his shoulder at me inquiringly.

  “No,” I said. “Heel.” I tugged him back to the appropriate position. “Heel,” I said again, walking slightly bent with a hand on his head.

  This time when he took off he went to the side. I grabbed at him and missed. “Deeks!” I called in exasperation. When he didn’t reappear immediately, I shoved my hands back into the pockets of my jacket and kept walking. If I was going to teach him to heel, I was going to have to use a leash.

  That night I was back in my own bed, alone except for Deeks, who was curled up against me, back to back, him on the outside of my covers and me underneath. I thought about Paul. It wasn’t hard to imagine him in bed beside me. It was a little harder to imagine sleeping with him in bed beside me, but with a little effort I could sense him beside me, could feel the rhythm of his breathing and hear the whisper of air moving through his nose and mouth. He took a big breath and exhaled noisily…No, that was Deeks.

  Sleepily I reached out to give him a pat. “You’re a good dog,” I murmured, and he licked my arm.

  The next morning was Sunday. Deeks and I walked and ate oatmeal—actually, he had kibble—and my doorbell rang just as we were finishing up. It was Brooke, there on my front doorstep at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Did you figure it out yet? What Brian’s covering up? Hello to you too.” That last was to Deeks, who had run past her and was piddling on a bush next to the front porch. He kept an apologetic eye on her as he peed, then ran back to the house.

  “Brian thinks Whitney killed her or at least thinks she’ll be accused of it,” I said as Brooke scratched Deeks’s head. “Come inside.”

  “You sound really positive,” she said. “Are you, or are you just talking?”

  “Oh I’m just talking. Look at this though.” I opened the door of the coat closet and patted the pockets of the coat I’d been wearing Friday night. When I found what I was looking, I pulled it out. “Here. Whitney’s glasses case.”

  She took it, but her eyes were on me. “What are you doing with it?”

  “It was in Brian’s apartment. How do you think it got there?”

  “Whitney left it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe she left it, or maybe Brian found it somewhere.”

  “At Macy’s house?”

  “It would go a long way to explaining Brian’s panicky behavior, don’t you think? That, and finding blood on his clothes he hadn’t even been wearing.”

  “You’re saying Whitney killed Macy.”

  “She doesn’t have to have killed her. It just has to look that way. You up for a cup of coffee?”

  “At Carytown Joe?”

  “It’s really good.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Probably I should have walked Deeks across the street to Dr. McDermott’s, but it was cold enough to see your breath outside, so I didn’t have to worry about him overheating in the car. I got a beef rib out of the cabinet as we headed through the kitchen to the garage. It was wrapped in plastic, but Deeks followed close at my heel with his nose in the air.

  When we got to Carytown and I’d found a parking spot on the street, I unwrapped the rib for him. We left him on the back seat with it clamped between his paws as he started gnawing at it.

  “Getting that dog has changed your life,” Brooke said as we headed down the sidewalk in the direction of Whitney’s coffee shop.

  “Reorganized it anyway, maybe as much as a husband would.”

  “A husband?”

  “Okay, probably not as much as a husband would. I’m overstating.”

  “Are you and Paul…?”

  “No, no. I don’t think either of us has even thought about it. We certainly haven’t talked about it.”

  “The lady doth protest too much.”

  “Hamlet,” I said, and there must have been surprise in my voice.

  “You English majors think you’re the only people in the world who are halfway literate,” Brooke said.

  Whitney and another girl were behind the counter in Carytown Joe. I ordered a vanilla latte and, after a brief inner struggle, a pumpkin-cinnamon scone. Brooke got the latte and skipped the scone, which made me feel bad about giving into temptation so easily. I had, after all, already had my oatmeal that morning.

  “We’d like to visit with you a bit when you get the chance,” I said to Whitney as I paid for my second breakfast and got change for my ten.

  She gave a nod. “If I get the chance.” But it was only twenty minutes later that she joined us at our table, scooting in beside Brooke on the bench that ran along the wall.

  “I’ve only got a minute,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind one ear.

  I took out the glasses case embossed with the cat-eye frames, and I set it on the table
next to the paper plate that contained the crumbs of my scone. Whitney looked from it to me, then picked it up.

  “It is yours, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Where did you find it?”

  Her answer was nonresponsive, but I let it go. “At Brian’s apartment. Friday night.”

  “Oh.” She turned the glasses case over in her hands. She snapped it open, glanced at the sunglasses inside.

  “Do you know where he picked it up?” I asked.

  Her gaze flicked to mine. “I can guess.”

  I waited.

  “You can guess, too, I imagine,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “I was at Macy’s house Friday afternoon,” she said.

  “You didn’t say.”

  “Brian said not to. He wants to protect me—and I didn’t see what good it would do to tell.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “She left a note at my apartment, tucked between the door and jamb. She said she needed to see me right away, that if she didn’t hear from me she’d be back.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In half of a duplex on Grove, just about three blocks from here. The address isn’t in the phonebook, but somehow she found it.”

  “It’s strange she didn’t look for you here.”

  She gave a brief, humorless smile. “She was looking to have a private conversation.”

  “Did you try calling her?”

  “Yes. She said she’d be right over.”

  “And you forestalled that by going to her house?”

  “I sure didn’t want her coming to mine. Macy’s not a big girl, probably no bigger than I am, but she’s way scary. Was way scary.”

  “She strikes me that way, too,” I said, nodding. “And I am a big girl.”

  “You’re not big. You’re just supermodel tall.”

  “That was the phrase I was looking for.”

  After a pause, Whitney said, “Anyway, I met her at her house. I tried to stay on the porch, but she didn’t like that. She got me inside, offered me a beer, tried to make out like it was some kind of social occasion.”

  “Did you take the beer?”

  “I don’t really like beer. I asked for some water, and she got me a glass.”