Laughing Heirs (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “I’m here,” I breathed into the phone. “In the bathroom.”

  “Good. There’s a patrol car in the neighborhood now. Someone’s already called about a prowler. We’ll just talk a few moments, and everything will be all right.”

  I remembered the screwdriver tucked into my skirt. I pulled it out, wiped it quickly on my blouse, then tossed it into the cabinet under the sink. I crouched to wipe the handle of the cabinet door with my untucked blouse.

  The bathroom door rattled. “It’s locked,” a voice said, then continued more loudly: “Police. Is someone in there?”

  They shouldered it open. Still crouched on the floor, I cried out and wrapped my arms around my head as two uniformed officers entered the bathroom, first one and then the other.

  “It’s all right, miss,” one of them said. “We’re the police. You’ll be all right now.”

  I looked up. I still had my phone in one hand. “They’re here,” I told the dispatcher. “The police. Thank God.” I suppressed the twinge I felt at invoking the Lord Most High in my little deception, pressing End as I got to my feet.

  There were not one, not two, but three police cruisers outside the house when we came out, two in the driveway and one in the street. Two cops were in the driveway along with a seventyish woman with short, henna-red hair. Another cop came out of the house just behind me and my two escorts.

  “That’s her,” the woman said. “The woman I saw breaking into the house.”

  “I walked all around the house,” I told the cops nearest me, trying hard to sound like a tremulous female. “I noticed the open window at the end of the driveway, but I went through the front door. It wasn’t locked.”

  “She did spend some time casing out the house,” the woman said, a bit dramatically in my opinion. “But she didn’t go through the door. She went in through that window down there.”

  “I did lean in to try to get a look inside. The man who lives here, Jack Packard, hasn’t been picking up his mail or answering his phone, but his car’s here. I was worried about him.”

  “Something happened in the kitchen,” said one of the officers who’d come out of the house. “There’s something that looks like blood on the floor.”

  “Do you know what happened to Jack Packard?” I asked the woman, who was wearing a man’s coat over her housedress and what looked like army boots on her feet. “Are you a friend of his? Is he all right?”

  “I keep an eye on his house like any neighbor would,” she said, more to the officer standing next to her than to me. “Same as I’d like to think he does for me.”

  “When did you see him last?” I asked her.

  “Who is this woman?” she asked the cop. “And what is she doing here? That’s what I’m wanting to know.”

  “My name is Robin Starling. I’m a lawyer here in town.”

  Evidently, none of them had heard of me, which I thought was a good thing. The cop I took to be the senior person present, the one who’d been standing with the old woman, came up the sidewalk and pushed past us into the house.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of Jack Packard for several days now,” I announced to all and sundry. “He doesn’t even answer his cell phone, and it looks like something may have happened to him in his kitchen.”

  “His car’s right there,” the old woman said, “and he only has the one. You keep looking, and I’m betting you find him.”

  I was getting tired of talking at cross-purposes with Jack Packard’s intrusive neighbor. “You need to check the area hospitals,” I said. “Maybe get your forensic unit out here to go over the house.”

  “What I think,” the woman said, “is that you ought to take this young woman’s fingerprints, see where she’s been in that house and what she’s been touching’.”

  The senior cop came out of the house. “I don’t know what’s happened here, but I think we’ll need you both to come down to the station to make a statement,” he said.

  Great, I thought. There goes my afternoon.

  I went home straight from the police station, but didn’t make it any earlier than my usual time. It was too late to take Deeks on our usual two-mile run through the neighborhood. I fed him, wrestled with him, and then, having upset his little tum-tum too soon after eating, cleaned undigested kibble off the living room floor. Deeks helped with that, re-eating most of it despite my efforts to scoop it up. I mixed a solution for my Little Green Machine—very useful if you have pets—and spot-shampooed the carpet while Deeks circled me and barked at the noisy little vacuum.

  “Okay,” I said when I was done, eyeing the still damp carpet. I looked at Deeks. “Ready to go back to Dr. McD’s?”

  He wagged his tail, but a little uncertainly, I thought.

  “I guess I could shower before I walk you over,” I said.

  Deeks barked, which I took as approval of the new plan, and dusk was falling as I walked Deeks back across the street.

  When Dr. McDermott opened the door, Deeks trotted past him into the house like he owned it.

  “Good evening, Deacon,” Dr. McDermott called after him.

  Deeks’ tail wagged, but he didn’t look back. He disappeared into the kitchen and began lapping from his water bowl.

  “Probably thirsty after his gastro-intestinal upset.” I told him about the messy aftermath of our wrestling match. “I can’t seem to remember to give him time to let his food settle.”

  “If cleaning throw-up doesn’t teach you, you’re pretty hopeless.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “About an evening with Deacon? Not at all.”

  Deeks came back into the living room and lay down where he could look at us.

  “You didn’t have plans?” I asked.

  “I’m a lonely old man. Why would I have plans?”

  I must have looked stricken, because he smiled.

  “I was going to read, but this is better. I hid some of Deacon’s toys about the house. I thought I’d see if he could find them.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “No, I reread all those last year after I saw some episodes of the new series on PBS. Now I’ve started working through his other stories.”

  “Good?”

  “I think so. Entertaining in a cerebral sort of way.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Chapter 14

  Brooke was already in the parking lot at Enrique’s, her car running. I parked beside her. When I got out of my car, I could hear the bass notes of whatever song she was listening to. She opened the door as she killed the engine, and I recognized “Ace of Spades.”

  “Motorhead,” I said. “The others here?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. It’s cold. Let’s wait for them inside.”

  We got a table for four, and Paul and Mike came in just as the waitress was filling two ice-filled glasses from the pitcher of margaritas.

  “You look good,” Brooke said to Paul.

  “Meaning I don’t look as bad as you expected after hearing about my episode this morning?”

  Mike smiled at the waitress, a pretty, twenty-something slip of a girl. “Could you bring us two more glasses?”

  She smiled back, ducking her head and flushing, and went to get them. I noticed Brooke watching.

  When the waitress got back, we ordered. Paul had an enchilada plate with potatoes instead of spanish rice. More concerned about maintaining my girlish figure than about passing out at work, I had a chili relleno a la carte, forgoing the beans and rice altogether.

  “So how did your breaking-and-entering go this afternoon?” Paul asked.

  They all looked at me as I sipped my margarita. “Not well,” I said, wiping the salt from my mouth with the back of my wrist. “The police showed up. For a few minutes there I thought I’d be calling Mike about bailing me out.”

  “I don’t really do that kind of work,” Mike said.

  “S
ometimes you just have to get in there and figure it out.” I told them the story.

  “So what do you think happened to Jack Packard?” Brooke asked when I was done.

  “I have no idea. Nothing good, I think.”

  Paul said to Mike, “Since you started practicing law, how many crime scenes have you stumbled on?”

  “Zero.”

  “Robin doesn’t practice law like other people. There’s not another lawyer in Richmond who would go climbing in someone’s window because she wanted to talk to him.”

  “You wouldn’t expect there to be,” I said. “There’re not a million lawyers in Richmond.”

  “What?”

  “With just three or four thousand lawyers in Richmond, the odds aren’t in your favor.”

  Paul looked at Brooke and Mike.

  “She’s saying she’s one in a million,” Mike said.

  Paul rolled his eyes and reached for his mug.

  The pitcher of margaritas proved to be good for about five mugs. We each had one with the chips and salsa and were pouring out another quarter mug for each of us when the food arrived. The waitress served Mike first, and we ordered a second pitcher.

  “Did you ever meet Rupert Propst?” I asked Mike as the waitress was clearing our plates.

  “I’ve met him. I did some research, too, after you asked about him. Several of his clients have filed complaints with the state bar, and a couple of years ago he actually had his license suspended for six months.”

  “He came by my office today.”

  “Ooh,” Brooke said. “I want to tell it.” And she did, her face flushed and increasingly animated, Mike watching her with apparent appreciation.

  “So he pretty much fled your office,” Paul said to me when she was done.

  “Brooke made me sound better than I was, but pretty much. I lost my temper.”

  When the waitress came back by to check on Mike and his needs, I ordered a platter of sopaipillas for our dessert. When we got them, I made sure Paul ate his share.

  “I know we’re fattening Paul up,” Brooke said, “but what about the rest of us?”

  “I skipped the rice and beans,” I said. “I’m good.”

  “I guess I should say, What about me?”

  “You’re perfect,” Mike said. He held up his mug, giving her the same sort of smile that had melted the waitress.

  She opened her mouth and hesitated. “Thank you.”

  “Peaches and cream,” he said, a hint of dreaminess in his voice. “And just a dash of spice.”

  Brooke turned pink and looked down at her plate.

  “Tomorrow,” I said to Paul, “you can go back to counting calories.”

  He held up his own mug. “Yippee.”

  “Just make sure you count high enough.”

  “Can do. One of the advantages of a good grammar school education.”

  I’d never had one of Enrique’s sopaipillas, and probably I should have kept it that way. These were hot and flaky and crusted with sugar. With a drizzle of honey they made for a treat that would be hard to resist on my subsequent visits to the restaurant.

  “I’ll have to step up my running,” I said.

  “What?”

  I looked around. Paul was licking his fingers like a starving man, but Brooke and Mike were looking at me. “Sorry. I was just thinking I was going to have to pay for these. I’ve noticed you don’t talk much about your legal work,” I said to Mike.

  “Well, no. I figure part of what people pay me for is my discretion.”

  Paul elbowed him. “Oh, stop pretending you’ve got professional ethics. What he means to say is that nobody wants to listen to stories about some arthritic old coot who’s applying for Social Security Disability.”

  “It gets a little more exciting than that,” Mike protested. “Only last week, I represented a fifty-year-old woman who weighed in at a morbidly obese 450 pounds, and the week before that I had a 29-year-old client who was suffering from syphilitic anal warts.” He looked around at our startled faces. “Or maybe that’s not such a great story for dinnertime conversation.”

  “Not a great one, no,” Paul said.

  “Probably the most exciting part of my job is cashing checks drawn on the U.S. Treasury,” Mike said. “And on that note, I’ll try to make amends for my conversational offense by picking up the check.” He signaled the waitress.

  His picking up the check actually did go a long way toward making amends.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when I walked across the street to retrieve my pup. Dr. McDermott’s lights were still on, and I felt bad about being so late. He was an old guy who was usually in bed by then.

  He answered the door wearing pajamas and a bathrobe, and Deeks came out past him and jammed his nose between my knees.

  “Sorry we kept you up,” I said as I scratched his head.

  “Not at all. I was just about to take him potty in the back yard.”

  “If I’m ever really late, you can go on to bed, and I’ll come see Deeks in the morning.”

  “I know. I was going to give you until ten-thirty or so and then turn in.”

  “Glad I caught you.”

  He bent to put a hand on Deeks’s head, and Deeks’ wagging picked up speed. “See you tomorrow, buddy. We’ll have us some fun.”

  “Got anything special planned?”

  He straightened. “No, nothing special. Deacon always has fun.”

  “He does that,” I agreed.

  My cell phone woke me at 6:45 the next morning. It was Whitney Foster.

  “Robin? Hi. It’s Whitney.” Deeks, on the bed beside me, stretched and yawned. “I’m afraid maybe I’ve done something I shouldn’t have.”

  I pulled myself into sitting position, pushing a pillow into place between me and the headboard. “Tampered with evidence,” I suggested.

  “Not exactly.”

  Not the most confidence-inspiring disclaimer I’d ever heard. “What exactly?”

  “I talked to the police last night. They dropped by my apartment, and…I thought maybe it was my last chance to help Brian.”

  I felt a creeping coldness, but it may have been just that my headboard buts up against the window. I pulled up the covers and tucked them under my arms. “What did you tell them?”

  She took a breath. “That Brian and I spent the day together last Friday, the day Macy Buck was killed.”

  “What about you going to see Macy?”

  “We went there together. I showed them the note she left me.”

  “What time did you tell them you went to see her?”

  “I was kind of vague on the time.”

  “Don’t say anything else,” I said.

  “The time was a bit of a problem, you know, because of course—”

  “Shut up. Stop talking now.”

  “Oh.” She sounded taken aback. “I thought you meant not to say anything else to the police.”

  “That, too, but they may be listening to this call. Of course I’m your lawyer, and everything you’re telling me is for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.” If they were listening, there was no harm in letting them know they were violating attorney-client privilege. “Where are you?”

  She was at Carytown Joe, getting ready for the morning crowd. “I can leave, though, if I need to. Jennifer’s here. She helps us out mostly on weekends, but she’s here today, and she can handle a weekday crowd by herself if she has to.”

  “I’ll swing by. We need to talk.” I clicked off and threw back the covers, inadvertently burying Deeks, and the mound of blankets began to roil immediately. I flipped the covers off him.

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  He looked at me reproachfully, but he couldn’t hold the expression. His mouth opened, and his tongue came out, and he panted at me cheerfully.

  “You’re a great guy, you know that?”

  His tail swished back and forth across the comforter. Evidently he did know that.

  “I’ve got an early morning
, I’m afraid.” And God bless Dr. McDermott, I thought. Deeks would be miserable if he had to rely only on me for companionship.

  I couldn’t forgo my morning routine completely, though, not after the meal I’d eaten the night before. I lay on the floor by the bed, my hands extended over my head to grasp the footboard. My legs in the air, crossed at the ankles, I raised my hips off the ground, concentrating on shortening the distance between my hip bones and ribcage: lower, raise, lower, raise. The first ten were easy, the next ten were hard. I tried to squeeze out five more, but the last one proved impossible. I rolled onto my side to relieve the burning in my abdomen, and Deeks was there to bathe my face with his slobbery tongue. I pushed at him, spluttering. “You’re a nuisance,” I said, getting to my feet.

  In response he gave me a happy bark. It’s nearly impossible to insult a dog, I’ve found.

  I dragged a Bosu ball out of my closet, set it flat side up, then stepped up onto it to see how many air squats I could do before I hit the shower.

  It was eight-fifteen before I found a parking spot on Cary Street and got out of my Beetle. I could see my breath on the air as I walked, but the clouds overhead were no more than ornamental, white bits of fluff in a china-blue sky, and the sun on my face was a kiss from heaven. I opened the door of Carytown Joe, and Whitney gave me a nod as she filled a coffee mug. She came around the counter with it.

  “I see you’re wearing sneakers,” she said, handing me the mug. “Can we walk?”

  “Sure.”

  I held the door for her, and we went out onto the sidewalk. “I blew it, didn’t I?” she said after half-a-block.

  I paused in my stride to take a sip of the coffee she’d given me. “Because you talked to the police?” I said.

  She moved her head.

  “Because you lied to the police,” I said.

  “I just can’t stand the thought of Brian locked up in jail. We’ve got to get him out.”

  “I know. We will.”

  “When?”

  “That’s harder to say. What I’m afraid of right now is that the police might charge you with something.” I kept my eyes on the shifting surface of my coffee as I walked, thinking that a to-go cup would have been more convenient than an open mug.