“Ten-four.”
Powell collapsed into his chair and took a long sip from his beer bottle.
“You want some advice?” the detective asked.
“Not really, but I’m sure that won’t stop you.”
“Don’t worry so much. Let Tom and Bo try to make a case out of some life insurance conspiracy. We both know that there’s no physical evidence connecting anyone else to this crime but Wilma Newton.” He slapped the prosecutor on the back. “We’re in good shape, brother. Kat Willistone. Bully Calhoun. Barbara Willistone. They’re all windmills that I’m sure our good friend will chase, but we’re sitting in the honey hole with as rock solid a circumstantial case as you can have in this business.” Wade grabbed the carton of Miller High Life and headed for the door. “If your mentor wasn’t on the other side of this case, you wouldn’t have your panties in such a wad. Don’t even try to argue different.”
Powell didn’t. “Anything else, Dr. Phil?”
Wade put the carton under his arm and turned the knob. Then he looked back at his friend. “Yeah. Get some sleep, partner. These cases are marathons, not sprints.”
Once Wade had left, Powell put on another pot of coffee and resumed his review of the file. Despite his friend’s admonition, he knew that Wade was just as worried as he was. Circumstantial cases were based on a story, and the lack of the defendant’s DNA and prints in Jack’s 4Runner and Zorn’s property didn’t fit the prosecution’s version of events. Could it be explained? Yes. Would that explanation weaken the case? Absolutely. Would the Professor shine a light on these omissions at the trial in a few months? Most definitely.
Would the absence of this evidence provide enough reasonable doubt for the jury to acquit Wilma Newton?
“No,” Powell thought aloud.
The Professor would need more to win the case, but as Powell again perused the prison visitor’s list and thought about the wives of Jack Willistone, he wondered, Is there more?
34
If her ex-husband weren’t already dead, Barbara Willistone was sure that she would have killed him tonight. She pressed the joint to her lips and inhaled deeply before blowing smoke over the top of the steering wheel. Closing her eyes, she relished the taste of the marijuana as it filled her lungs and mouth. Like almost everything bad in her life, pot was introduced to her by Jack. She had her first hit in Jamaica on their honeymoon and, over the years of stress that she had endured both with Jack and without him, she’d found that marijuana was the only substance that gave her any kind of relaxation. Alcohol just made her tired. She liked cigarettes but had quit before trying to have kids. And the one line of cocaine she had done in her life—in the spring of 1973 while watching Elvis’s Aloha from Hawaii special on the tube with Jack—resulted in her waking up naked in the shower the next morning covered in her own vomit.
But a few hits of pot almost always calmed her down. Tonight, unfortunately, was the exception: she was already on her second joint and there was no relief in sight. She again snatched the letter she had folded and placed in the passenger-side seat. She had read the correspondence at least fifteen times since finding it in her mailbox upon returning home from the courthouse, hoping each time that it would say something different. That it wouldn’t confirm her greatest fear. The letter was clearly a form, with only her son’s name added to the salutation blank. In the close confines of her Toyota Camry, she read the words aloud:
“To Mr. Barton Daniel Willistone, your claim for death benefits has been denied. You are not a covered beneficiary under this policy.”
There was more mumbo jumbo in the letter and an offer to accept a phone call if Danny wanted to talk about the rejection. But Barbara glossed over that part, unable to get past the first two sentences. He told me he had changed it, she thought. He even showed me the form he had signed.
Barbara set the letter back in the passenger seat and took another hit off the joint. She raised her eyes to the third-floor loft apartment and glared at the shadow of the woman through the open blinds. From this vantage point, you could only see her silhouette. With her back arched and pelvis moving forward and back, it was clear that she was enjoying the prick inside her. Barbara flipped the latch on the glove compartment of the Camry and gazed at the pistol inside.
I ought to kill the bitch right now. If they’re gonna leave the blinds open so that all of Tuscaloosa can see them, then the door is probably not locked. I could just walk in and shoot her twice in her head. If she’s having an orgasm, I can put one of the bullets in her open mouth.
Barbara inhaled more pot and enjoyed the image, but any sense of satisfaction evaporated as she glanced again at the letter in the seat next to her.
It wasn’t fair, she thought, hating herself for such a childish sentiment. If she knew anything, the former Barbara Grace Atkins knew that life was anything and everything but fair. Her daddy had been a banker in Tuscaloosa for forty years, and her momma had taught Sunday school at the First United Methodist Church. She hadn’t had a hard childhood by any stretch, and she’d been a “catch” when Jack Willistone proposed to her in the fall of 1970. She came with a dowry, and it was her father, Ollie, who gave Jack his first loan to start his business. She still remembered helping him place the sign out in front of the work trailer on a hot July day in 1971. “Willistone Trucking Company.” Jack had chosen the crimson and white colors on purpose, saying that in Alabama those shades personified winning and “that’s what our brand is all about.” After the placard was up, they had admired it in the hot sun for several minutes, with Barbara snapping a number of Polaroids, one of which she still kept in an old shoebox at home. Then they had gone inside and had rough sex on the metal desk in the un-air-conditioned trailer. Afterwards, they had sat naked on the edge of the desk, their bodies sticky with sweat, smoking cigarettes and listening to Janis Joplin sing about Bobby McGee. Patting her thigh, Jack told her that he didn’t know what he would ever do without her.
They were twenty-seven years old, and Barbara didn’t think it was possible to be happier.
It wasn’t.
Barbara’s fingers trembled as she placed the joint to her lips. Sucking cannabis into her lungs and trying to shake off the old memories that scarred her soul, she again looked up to the third-floor apartment. The light in the room was off.
Seconds later, Kat Calhoun emerged from the front door on the ground level of the complex wearing a white tank top and purple athletic shorts. Her face, illuminated by the streetlamps on the sidewalk going into the entrance, was flushed red from the exertion of the workout she had just finished upstairs.
Barbara took a last pull on the joint and clicked the latch on the glove compartment. She grabbed the pistol and opened the door of her car. “Hey, b-bith . . . bitch!” she yelled, and she heard the lisp in her voice and knew that she was high as a kite. Barbara didn’t care. She stomped out the joint and stumbled toward the younger woman. She gripped the pistol tight in her right hand. “What did you do?”
Kat Calhoun stopped and looked at her accuser, squinting into the darkness. When she recognized who was coming her way, she continued to walk to her car.
“Stop, bitch!” Barbara yelled after her. “You whore. You like that y-y-young dick you got upstairs?”
Kat took her keys out and clicked the keyless entry. The headlights to her silver Range Rover snapped on and off. She opened the driver’s-side door, but Barbara grabbed her by the arm before she could climb inside.
“I said stop, you little b—”
A forearm caught Barbara right under the nose and rocked her backward on her heels. She felt the gun slip out of her fingers, and then a sharp pain in her right knee as Kat Calhoun’s sneaker crushed into it. Barbara fell hard on her right shoulder and felt the sting of asphalt on her cheek. Then the air went out of her chest as Kat kicked her in the solar plexus.
Barbara fought for breath and finally coughed a gasp of air and then another. She rolled over on her stomach, her right shoulder throbbing
in pain, and propped herself on her left forearm. She gazed up at Kat Calhoun.
“You’re drunk, Ms. Barbara. Or maybe high is the better word.”
Barbara blinked, remembering how Kat had called her “Ms. Barbara” as a little girl when the Willistones and Calhouns would get together. “What did you do?” Barbara managed, coughing the words out. “My son was supposed to get the life insurance proceeds. Jack”—she coughed again—“told me so.”
Kat gave her the same pitying smile she had given her when Barbara caught her screwing Jack in the office eight years earlier. “Oh, Ms. Barbara, I think Jack must have been joshing you.” She squatted next to Barbara. “You didn’t promise him a blow job or something, did you?”
Barbara ignored the jab and gritted her teeth. “What did you do?”
“I took what was rightfully mine,” Kat said, standing up and trotting over to the pistol on the ground. She ejected the bullets in the weapon and walked back to Barbara. “Nine-millimeter,” she said. “Interesting choice, Ms. Barbara.”
Despite the pain in her shoulder, Barbara felt her pulse quicken.
“You didn’t happen to use one of these about thirty days ago on my husband, did you?” She licked her lips. “Oh, Ms. Barbara, you have to feel so stupid.”
“You were at the h-hearing today,” Barbara said, pushing up off the asphalt into a sitting position. “That stripper killed Jack.” She paused. “And if she didn’t, your daddy framed her for it.”
Kat shook her head and chuckled. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Her voice was so cold that it made Barbara shiver despite the muggy heat.
“What are you . . . t-talking about?” Barbara slurred her words, the marijuana and the beating that she had just received working to jumble her thoughts. She felt dizzy.
Kat again squatted and spoke in a low voice. “The only thing that matters is all that money”—she paused and gazed wistfully at the night sky—“three million big ones. It’s all mine. My claim was approved and I’ll be receiving the check shortly. I may have to buy a new Range Rover. The new smell is wearing off that one.” She stood up and pointed the gun at Barbara. “My daddy didn’t have anything to do with Jack’s death.” She grimaced, showing her teeth. “But if you ever threaten me again, you’re going to spend the next night in a morgue, you understand? Poor Danny will have to fend for himself.”
As adrenaline pulsed through her body, Barbara made a move to get up, but youth and athleticism won out. Kat hit her with the butt end of the gun just above the temple, and Barbara fell to her knees. She never saw the kick, only felt the toe of the sneaker catch just under her nose.
She was out cold before her face hit the ground.
Once she was back in her vehicle, Kat thought about dialing 911 and reporting Barbara for stalking and trying to attack her. See how that hag liked waking up in a jail cell. Based on the woman’s smell, a possession-of-marijuana charge might ride along with the attempted assault on Kat. But gazing up at the third-floor window, she thought better of it almost immediately. She didn’t want to bring any attention to her friends-with-benefits relationship with Breck, which had started while her now-dead husband was rotting away in the St. Clair Correctional Facility.
Instead, she called her father, telling him everything but the part about having sex with Breck.
“I think you handled it fine,” Bully said, and Kat could hear the pride in his voice. “Let her complain to the police. Maybe she can get herself arrested.”
“Dad, she knows about the form. She knows Jack tried to change the beneficiary.”
When silence filled the line, Kat’s heart thudded with the first traces of panic. Then her father’s baritone filled the airways, enveloping her like a fleece blanket.
“I know, darling. Unfortunately for the former Mrs. Jack Willistone, there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. Jack is dead, and that money is ours.”
Kat caught herself about to say “mine,” but the words never came out. She knew better than to bite the hand that fed her. She had crossed her father by marrying Jack and had learned her lesson well.
So had Jack . . .
“Thank you, Daddy.”
Barbara opened her eyes to rain pelting the side of her face. As she propped herself on her forearms, a wave of nausea came over her and she vomited. Concussion, she thought as the smell of the bile hit her nostrils and she threw up again. She rolled away from the mess and sat on her bottom, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth as the rain began to pick up steam. Her nose throbbed from where she had been kicked, and when she gingerly touched it, she heard a slight crackling sound and knew it was broken. After a few seconds, her tears began to mingle with the rainwater. I am such a fool, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to stop herself from crying to no avail. She sobbed as thunder crackled above her.
Finally, her right shoulder began to ache and, using her left arm for leverage, she rose to her feet. When she did, she felt a piercing pain at her temples and, seeing stars, placed her hands on her knees and waited for the next round of nausea. When it came, she heaved several times, grateful for the darkness so that she couldn’t see the color of her vomit.
Feeling shaky but a little better, she walked gingerly back to her Camry. The driver’s-side door was still open, just as she’d left it when she had taken after Kat. “Oh, Ms. Barbara, you have to feel so stupid.” She could hear the little bitch’s voice ringing in her ears. Barbara collapsed into the driver’s-side seat. For a second, she couldn’t find her keys and wondered if Kat had thrown them somewhere. Then, mercifully, she saw them lying on the floorboard just under the accelerator. She bent down to grab them, but before she had them in her grasp, another wave of nausea hit her. Unable to move fast enough, she turned to her side and hurled a stream of bile onto the passenger-side seat of the Camry. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, waiting for the attack to pass. When her stomach finally felt stable, she opened her eyes and saw that some of the vomit had gotten on the rejection letter from the insurance company. She picked it up and wiped the residue off with her thumb, leaving an orangish-yellow smudge on the side. At least I can still read it, she thought, but then the tears came as she heard Kat Calhoun’s confident voice fill her ears again. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Barbara placed the letter on the dashboard and, more carefully this time, bent to retrieve her keys. She placed them in the ignition and prayed that the battery wasn’t dead due to the door staying open for so long. When the Camry fired to life, she said a quiet “thank you” to a God she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore.
Ten minutes later, she pulled into her driveway on Queen City and parked in the one-car garage. When the electric door had come all the way down, she got out of the car and took all of her clothes off at the landing by the side entrance to the house. As her filthy blouse hit the floor, she felt a strong sense of déjà vu. She had done this very thing almost thirty days ago, in the wee morning hours of May 9 after she had seen her ex-husband for the last time. She had immediately put the garments and tennis shoes she had worn that morning in the washer and hadn’t rested until she had washed and dried them twice. Tonight there was no reason to be so careful, and she had just had the crap kicked out of her. She left the clothes by the door.
She entered the two-bedroom house and was greeted by her white toy poodle, Coconut, who was probably starving, having not been fed all night. After putting three scoops of dog chow in the animal’s bowl, Barbara limped to the back of the house, her right knee throbbing from where Kat had kicked her. She went into the bathroom, flipped on all the lights, and looked at herself in the mirror.
Dried blood covered both of her nostrils and there was a large bruise above her right eye. Her chin looked swollen. Placing her hand to it, she winced and wondered if it was broken. Barbara turned on the shower and knew the water would sting her wounds but that she would feel better afterwards.
Gripping the counter
with both hands, she gazed into the mirror at brown eyes that had seen more than their fair share of sadness in her sixty-eight years. Despite Kat’s mockery, Barbara Atkins Willistone knew that she was anything but stupid. And when it came to her son, she would do anything to secure his future. She had proved that to herself thirty days ago. The problem now was what to do about Kat still being the beneficiary of Jack’s policy.
Barbara didn’t believe that Jack had lied to her about sending in the change form. Jack wasn’t living at home at the time of the murder, and he had to know that Kat was probably screwing around on him. He also knew that his time on earth was in short supply; he hadn’t even thought he’d be alive when he was finally released from prison. Jack was not a good man by any stretch—Barbara knew that he had done terrible things to many people on his climb to the top of the trucking industry. But she had seen something in his eyes when he had showed her the copy of the change form. Regret? Pride at doing the right thing? Barbara wasn’t sure what it was, but whatever the emotion, it felt genuine and good to her. He believed he had changed the beneficiary to Danny.
She sighed, knowing that Jack Willistone could con a con man. It was foolish to believe in him when he had let her down so many times, but she had no other choice. She had seen the copy of the form with her own eyes. She had seen Barton Daniel Willistone listed as the intended beneficiary of Jack’s three-million-dollar policy. She could not quit.
Taking a deep breath, Barbara stepped into the shower and winced as the hot water burned the bruise on her forehead and the cut on her chin. She couldn’t go to the police; too much risk. And there was no way that Greg Zorn would talk with her.
That left only one option.
Feeling better, Barbara turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the hanger. After drying herself off, she dug in one of her drawers for Neosporin and applied the ointment to her chin and forehead. Then she slipped on a bathrobe and walked to the kitchen. After fixing herself a cup of hot tea, she booted up the laptop on her table.
The Last Trial (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 3) Page 20