City of Angels (The Trials of Kit Shannon #1)

by James Scott Bell

  Hoover nodded.

  "And who knows about it?"

  "Just me, Officer Wendell, you, and of course—"

  "We do not mention that name. Ever."

  "I understand, Heath," Hoover said.

  "You may call me Mr. Sloate."

  Chief of Police Orel Hoover said nothing more.

  ———

  The cab let Kit out in front of the largest mansion on Flower Street. She let herself through the gate, walked up to the front door, and clanked the ornate knocker.

  A butler appeared.

  "Is Miss Wynn at home?" she said.

  "Whom shall I announce?"

  "Kit Shannon."

  He looked at her more carefully. "What shall I say this is regarding?"

  "A legal matter."

  "Ah, you are from Mr. Sloate's office."

  What a thought! Quickly she said, "No, I am not associated with Mr. Sloate. I work with Earl Rogers."

  The butler's eyes widened. "I . . . if you will wait here in the foyer." He opened the door. Kit entered a large tiled hall with a huge mirror on one wall. The butler disappeared, leaving Kit to regard a large portrait of Elinor Wynn. She was in an evening gown, and her gloved hands rested together on her lap. Her expression was one of studied innocence masking an inherent petulance. Kit thought the artist had captured her perfectly.

  "Miss Shannon?"

  Elinor Wynn entered the foyer. She was perfectly coifed and gowned in iced-blue silk that matched the color of her eyes. She glided, seeming to float above the ground as she crossed the room. Kit became aware of her own more modest dress. The navy linen trimmed in sedate black braid was no match for Elinor's elegance.

  "Good morning, Miss Wynn," said Kit.

  "I must say I am surprised." The look of slight contempt that the artist had managed to obscure in the portrait was now fully evident on Elinor Wynn's face.

  "Thank you for seeing me."

  "You have something to tell me about Ted?"

  "May we sit?"

  Elinor paused, then led Kit into a study. It was all done in dark browns and dominated by the mounted head of an elk over the fireplace. "This is father's favorite room," Elinor said. "He hunts, you know."

  "I gathered."

  She looked directly at Kit for a long moment, then motioned for them to sit. "Father likes to take me along on his hunting trips. We have a wonderful time. Do you shoot, Miss Shannon?"

  "No."

  "Pity. It is actually quite restful." Elinor pulled a multicolored cord near the wall. Presently the butler entered. "Coffee or tea?" Elinor asked Kit.

  Kit thought a moment. Normally she would have requested tea. But now that seemed more like Elinor's world than hers. Coffee was the brew of choice where Kit was working now. "Coffee, please," she said.

  "Tea for me, Humphrey," Elinor said.

  "Very good," said the butler, and he left.

  "Now, what news do you have of Ted?" Elinor said.

  "Miss Wynn, as you know, I am part of the defense team for Ted . . . Mr. Fox."

  Elinor stiffened slightly. "Yes, I am quite aware."

  "In that regard, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions."

  "Questions? Whatever about?"

  "Your engagement to Mr. Fox, for one thing."

  Elinor glared at Kit. "Are you quite mad?"

  "I was only seeking to—"

  "That I would remain engaged to a murderer!"

  "You seem quite certain that he is."

  For a moment Elinor seemed frozen, like a pretty statuette in a garden. "What do you . . . of course I . . . how can you question?"

  "Under the law, Miss Wynn, an accused is innocent until proven guilty."

  "You don't have to lecture me, Miss Shannon."

  "I am only saying that until the evidence is persuasive, Mr. Fox should be given the benefit of the presumption. It seems odd . . ."

  "What? Out with it!"

  "That one who is engaged to a man one day should turn around and condemn him the next."

  The coldness that passed between them was broken by the butler bringing in the tea and coffee. The two woman said nothing as he poured for them, then left the room.

  Elinor did not reach for her cup. "I am not sure I like the tone of your questions, Miss Shannon."

  "You will excuse me, I hope," Kit said. "But you can appreciate how important certain information is to us."

  "Why should that be of any concern to me?"

  "Wasn't your engagement to Mr. Fox in question before his arrest?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Is the question ambiguous to you?"

  "The question is impertinent." Elinor let the fullness of her petulant expression manifest itself.

  Kit reached for her cup. "Thank you for the coffee, Miss Wynn." Kit hoped Elinor Wynn's social graces, doubtlessly inculcated since birth, would not end the interview when only the first of the refreshments was being imbibed.

  Elinor Wynn said, "I shall answer you. It is true that Ted and I were contemplating an end to our engagement. I simply could not abide his fancifulness any longer. All his nonsense about wanting to build a flying machine! Utter and complete folly! He had no interest in furthering his career."

  "Was it his desire to break off?"

  "No," Elinor said, with what Kit thought was a certain defensiveness. "In fact, he importuned me not to."

  "When was the last time you spoke to him?"

  "I don't know. Several weeks."

  "Exactly, if you can remember."

  "Why, I believe . . . what possible need do you have for this information?"

  "Everything will help. Please."

  Elinor sighed and finally took a sip of tea. "As I said, I can't be sure."

  "Can you remember the day? Was it a Monday? A Saturday?"

  "I don't keep careful account of such things."

  "I would appreciate it if you could carefully consider it."

  Looking momentarily cornered and apparently not liking it a bit, Elinor said, "I believe it was . . . yes, a Friday, sometime in July. It was a hot night, as I remember, and I told him that—"

  "Where were you?" Kit cut in.

  "At his home, on Custer Avenue."

  "Please continue."

  "There isn't much to say. I told him it was over between us. He sulked a bit, but then faced reality. And then I left."

  "And you have not seen or spoken to him since?"

  "That is what I told you."

  Kit placed her coffee cup on the table. "I won't trouble you further, Miss Wynn." She stood and said, "Thank you for the coffee."

  Shooting to her feet, Elinor said, "What was the meaning of this visit?"

  "As I explained to you, for information."

  "Surely nothing I have said is of interest to this case."

  "Nothing is sure in the law, except the final verdict."

  Elinor's face seemed to drain of color. "If my name is mentioned in court, I'll . . . I'll sue you. I'll sue Earl Rogers!"

  "That would not be advisable, Miss Wynn."

  "And why not?"

  "Because you will lose."

  Now Elinor's face grew pink. "You are . . ." She seemed to be hunting for just the right word. Kit stood and, surprisingly, felt not the least bit intimidated.

  "Brazen!" Elinor finished. "How you can allow yourself to descend into the gutter like this? Don't expect to ever have a place in polite society!"

  "You may have my place in polite society," Kit said, "and do with it as you wish."

  Kit walked out, past a startled butler, into fresh air.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  TED FOX APPEARED singularly uninterested in his fate. As Earl Rogers questioned him in the jail, Kit took notes. She noticed that Ted's eyes had a lifeless quality to them, a resignation. Was it because he had nothing to fight with, being guilty? Kit could not figure it out, and the pressure inside her was building almost beyond her ability to bear it.

  Rogers seemed frustrated. "
Your trial is in three days," he said. "You need to prepare yourself, and help us prepare."

  "Why?" Ted said. "The trial is your job."

  "We have to decide whether to put you on the stand. A jury wants to hear the side of the defendant, though you can't be compelled to testify. If you do take the stand, you cannot give less than your best. Frankly, you don't look ready to do that."

  Ted hardly moved. "What's the use? The papers have me all but on the gallows."

  "Forget the papers! The jury is our hope, and you have got to give me something to work with. I can blast away all I want at the prosecution's case, but unless we have a plausible story for you, we are hanging on by our fingernails."

  "I'm innocent," Ted said without enthusiasm.

  Rogers glanced at Kit, as if this were some sort of turning point. "Good," said Rogers. "But that doesn't help us if you get on the stand and sound like Marley's ghost. Prove to me that you're innocent."

  "Prove? I didn't think I had to prove my innocence."

  "That's in the Constitution, sure. But now I'm talking about the heads of the jurors. What can I tell them?"

  "Tell them I didn't do it."

  "What can I show them?"

  Ted shrugged.

  "You don't have an alibi for the night in question, and in fact there is an eyewitness who says she saw you running from the place."

  "I know, I know." Ted put his head in his hands.

  Kit watched him with an increasing sense of unease. Why was he holding back? Was he hiding something? Why wasn't he more passionately concerned about his innocence, if indeed he was innocent?

  "Ted," she heard herself say. Rogers looked at her as if she had jumped, impulsively, into the middle of a busy street.

  Undaunted, Kit said, "When was the last time you saw Elinor Wynn?"

  The expression on Ted's face turned from passive anguish to scowling concern. "Elinor? What's she got to do with this?"

  "I spoke to her," Kit said.

  "Why?"

  "Because you were engaged to her. She might have had something important to add to this case."

  "And did she?"

  "That depends."

  "On what?"

  "On you."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kit saw Earl Rogers nod. She was on the right track, and her mentor approved.

  "I saw her last sometime in August," Ted said.

  "August?" Kit said. "Are you sure?"

  "Quite sure. Why?"

  "Elinor insists she last saw you in July."

  Ted's gaze darted between Rogers and Kit. "What does it matter when I saw her?"

  "One of you isn't telling the truth," Kit said, "and there has to be a reason for it."

  At that Ted stood up, his shackles clanking, and turned toward the opposite wall. "Let's just get this trial over and done with!" he said.

  "Stop it!" Kit said, standing as well.

  Ted turned around, and Kit felt both men staring at her. She forged ahead. "I will not allow you to throw your life away!"

  Ted stared at Kit, and she saw in his eyes a small glimmer of a will to fight. "I don't want to throw it away, Kit," he said.

  "Then help us."

  "How?"

  Kit looked at Rogers. He gave her a half smile and nodded at her to continue.

  Kit said, "Why would Elinor lie to me about when she saw you last?"

  Ted looked at the floor, as if the answer were there in cold cement. "Maybe she doesn't want to be drawn into this. She's that way."

  "What way?"

  "Afraid of appearances, of status." Ted looked disgusted. "She will stop at nothing to preserve her precious position."

  "It doesn't sound," Kit said, "like you are saddened by your broken engagement."

  "Saddened? It was a relief."

  "According to Elinor, you begged her to remain."

  "That's another lie."

  "Then why didn't you break off with her sooner?"

  Ted opened his mouth, as if the answer was certain, but he stopped himself. "Cowardice," he said.

  Kit did not believe him.

  Rogers said, "Fox, can you provide us with anyone, absolutely anyone, who can vouch for your whereabouts on the night of August tenth?"

  "I've told you all that I can."

  "A friend or acquaintance?"

  "No one."

  "Your mother perhaps?"

  Ted's face tightened. "You leave her out of this!"

  "A mother pleading for her son's life is a powerful witness."

  "No!" Ted slammed his manacled hands on the table. "If you bring her to court, I'll plead guilty! I swear it."

  "Fox, listen—"

  "That's final! Do you hear me?"

  Kit could tell from Rogers' physical reaction that he was not pleased.

  "Gather your papers," he told Kit. Then, rising, he said to Ted, "I have never surrendered anyone to the hangman's noose, Fox. But you are almost throwing yourself at it."

  Ted did not answer. He said nothing at all as they left.

  Outside the jail, Rogers said, "We have a big mountain to climb—an Everest. I'm going to need all your wits on this one, Kit. Are you with me?"

  "Yes, sir," she said, then smiled and added, "Yes, Earl."

  "Good. Then go talk to his mother. But keep it to yourself, and tell her she is not to say anything to anyone about the meeting. All we need is for the word to get back to Fox and have him jump in court crying 'Guilty!' "

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  THE FOX ESTATE was located two miles east of the Los Angeles River. Bill Jory drove Kit there in Rogers' buggy, pulled by an old warhorse Rogers had named Summation.

  "When old Summation gets put out to pasture," Jory said as they rode up East Street, "Earl says he's gonna get him one of those horseless buggies. Says those will be a sign of prosperity."

  "They may well be," said Kit.

  "Nah," Jory said. "Nothing will replace the good old reliable horse. Those noisemakers are just a novelty."

  "I wonder."

  "You wait. Los Angeles is a horse-and-electric town, not a gas-powered town. The city fathers won't allow too many of those gas buggies on the streets, no how."

  I wonder, Kit thought. Los Angeles, as she was coming to know it, was a delicate balance of the somnolent ease of the Southwest and the vigor of a population boomlet from the East and Midwest. Here the vital spirit of growth mixed with the steady calm of preservation, and no one really seemed to know what the personality of the final, mature city would turn out to be.

  One could see from higher elevations the electric lines that crisscrossed the city and gave it power. They wound their way along the streets of downtown, woven from pole to pole, until only single wires on skinny posts stretched out into the fields and trees of undeveloped land.

  Indeed, one could almost say there were two cities here. Stand at the corner of First and Broadway on a busy day and it might seem like New York itself, with hordes of people frequenting the stores and offices and dodging the electric trolley cars of the Yellow Line as they crackled down the middle of the streets. But this was only New York in miniature, for one could, in only a few minutes' time, ride beyond the bustle into the sedate climes of country life. Kit remembered the newspaper ad she'd read touting Henry Huntington's county line of "big red cars" that said, "Live in the Country and Work in the City!"

  One could conduct business in the morning at the City Hall, and in the afternoon picnic in the untamed hills of Laurel Canyon. On a Saturday the beaches at Santa Monica and Ocean Park were dotted with bathers who frolicked in the Pacific foam.

  That was Los Angeles, and Kit thought it offered the best of both worlds. The city could easily accommodate its population of 105,000 in both business and leisure, metropolitan energy and rustic charm. A blending of new and old in semiperfect harmony.

  But as she and Jory approached the Fox estate, a subtle sign of an uncertain future waited for them. Even from a distance it had the look of a once prosperous grounds t
hat was now, for want of care, falling on hard times. Kit knew that Mrs. Dorothea Fox was a widow, but she certainly wasn't destitute. Was this a picture of some other form of distress?

  Jory pulled to a stop at the edge of the front walkway. "I'll be waiting right here," he said. "I brought a book."

  He reached into a leather satchel and pulled out a red bound tome. Kit read the title. The Call of the Wild by Jack London.

  "About dogs," Jory said.

  Kit disembarked and approached the mansion. Its dull shade of gray must at one time have been pristine, Kit thought. She knocked on the door.

  A woman in a nurse's uniform answered. "You are Miss Shannon?" she questioned.

  "Yes."

  "Please come in."

  The nurse showed Kit to a sitting room where a large bed had been placed, out of keeping with the design and decor. In the bed lay an older woman. She had skin like paper and gray hair in braids. Dorothea Fox seemed so delicate a stiff breeze could do her harm.

  "Oh, my dear," Mrs. Fox said when she laid eyes on Kit. "Are you from the Women's Club?"

  "No," Kit said. "I'm an assistant to Mr. Rogers."

  "Rogers? Rogers? Who is that?" Her voice was thin and reedy.

  Kit sat in a chair by the bedside. "Earl Rogers is your son's lawyer, Mrs. Fox."

  Mrs. Fox's eyes rolled heavenward. "My son! Oh, my son!" She made the sign of the cross on her chest.

  Kit looked at the nurse, a gentle-looking woman, who nodded at her as if to say this is what it was like all the time. Kit could understand that her son's arrest would have a heavy toll. But for Dorothea Fox, the effect was almost lethal. She must have been a delicate thing to begin with.

  "It cannot be!" Mrs. Fox wailed. "My son could not do such a thing! Do you believe me?"

  Did she? Kit's mind reeled with all of the evidence and interviews and doubts. But then something turned over inside her, like the flick of a switch, and she said, "Yes, I believe you."

  "Oh! You are an angel." Her scrawny hand reached out and touched Kit's arm.

  Kit patted it. "Mrs. Fox, can you help us?"

  "Help?"

  "Can you tell us about your son's whereabouts on August tenth?"

  "August?"

  "Yes. August tenth."

  The woman's eyes looked left and right, as if seeking some threatening presence in the room. "I don't like August," she whispered. And she crossed herself again.