She sat and was sworn in.
“Mrs. Mills,” Stash said, “could you tell us where you live?”
“Well, normally we winter in Sarasota,” she said. Her voice was pitched high, her diction pretentious. “But Douglas, my husband, Mr. Mills, he’s been ill this year, so we stayed in Michigan for the operation. Our home here in Pickeral Point is at 223 Riverside Boulevard.”
“And where is that in relation to Miles and Diana Dane’s house?”
She raised her chin slightly, as though not wanting to admit the fact that she lived in the vicinity of lesser personages than herself—though whether it was writers or accused murderers she found so distasteful was not clear. “Next door.”
“How close are your homes?”
“I should say two hundred feet at most.”
“Close enough to hear anything from their home? Television, stereo, conversation, anything like that?”
“It’s not my custom to listen in on the affairs of neighbors. But ordinarily we are far enough that one can’t hear much of anything from the Danes’.”
“On the night of October 21, did you have occasion to hear anything unusual?”
“As I say, it’s not my custom to pay attention to other people’s private matters. Unfortunately, my husband was in some discomfort due to his, ah, condition. And he couldn’t sleep. It was our nurse’s day off, so I was forced to help him with his . . .” She flushed slightly. “Well, there are some medical matters, personal hygiene matters I suppose you could say, that required my assistance. He wanted water, this and that. Suffice it to say, I got not a whit of rest that night.”
Stash tried to look pleasant. “Right. But did you, while you were up tending to your husband, hear anything out of the ordinary?”
The chin tipped upward a little, but she didn’t answer.
“I think we’ve established that your neighborhood is a quiet one and that you’re not the eavesdropping type. Nevertheless.”
“Yes. Well. I did hear something.”
Stash, I’m sure, was ready to strangle the woman. He smiled genially. “And that was . . .”
“Yelling. I had exerted myself somewhat in the course of moving Douglas from one place to the next and had gotten rather warm. So I stepped outside very briefly, just to feel the air on my face. That was when I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“The yelling.”
Stash nodded. “The yelling. Tell us more.”
“There was someone yelling. I heard a man and a woman yelling. Some sort of altercation or disagreement. The sound was coming from the direction of the Danes’ house.”
“An altercation or disagreement. How far away were you?”
“As I said. At most, two hundred feet. It must have been quite loud, too, because there are any number of bushes and trees between our homes that would have deadened the sound.”
“And what time was this?”
“Just after midnight.”
“You sure it wasn’t later? Couldn’t have been around, say, three o’clock?”
“No. I had just started watching a movie on the television. Spartacus.”
“The old Charlton Heston picture?”
“Kirk Douglas,” Mrs. Mills said disdainfully.
“Oh, right, right. I always get them confused.” Stash grinned at the jury. “I’m going to proffer—thank you, Mrs. Wilson—I’m going to show you what has just been marked as Exhibit 64. Could you identify this?”
“It’s the TV Guide for the week dated October 18 through 23 of last year.”
“And if you could tell us when Spartacus was playing that night?”
“Here it is. It’s on Turner Classic Movies eleven until two in the morning.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mills.”
Stash sat down, and I stood up.
“Just a few brief questions, Mrs. Mills. How long have you and the Danes lived next to each other?”
“Since 1975 or thereabouts. Whenever they moved in.”
“And in that time have you ever heard yelling coming from their house?”
She looked up at the ceiling, took a long time to think. Finally she spoke in her high, firm voice: “Never.”
“Let me be clear. Arguments, disagreements, screaming, anything of that nature?”
“Never.”
“Anything to indicate the Danes were at each other’s throats on a regular basis?”
“Never.”
“Never ever?”
“I said never. Never ever, I believe, is what they call redundant, Mr. Sloan.”
“You’re absolutely right. Never is quite clear enough. You never heard an argument out of the Danes in the whole twenty-five years you lived next to them. Thank you so much for your valuable testimony.”
Forty-five
“We’ve got to find this guy,” I said. Lisa and I were sitting around the office that night eating pizza. The mood was glum. “We’ve got to find Blair Dane, and we’ve got to put him on the stand.”
“How?” Lisa said.
“Well, we know where he is, right?”
“We know where he was.”
“We’ve got no choice. We subpoena him, we send a couple of burly deputies out there, and we bring him back under court order.”
“And if he’s at the store buying milk or hiding in a storm drain?”
I sighed. “Then we’re out of luck.”
“So there must be a better way.”
“Name it.”
We sat in silence for ten minutes.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said. “Draw up a material witness subpoena. That will give the sheriff the authority to hold a witness in custody. It’s usually used by law enforcement, but there’s nothing in the statute that says we can’t use it ourselves. I’ll call Evola and see if he’ll sign it tonight. Then we’ll see what happens.”
Evola grudgingly signed the document that night, standing out in the foyer of his house in slippers and a bathrobe covered with Michigan State logos. He didn’t speak to me, just signed the document and walked back down the hall, his slippers slapping against the floor, leaving his exceptionally pretty wife to close the door behind me.
At just before six in the morning, accompanied by two sheriff’s deputies, we arrived at the Brothers of Christ compound and knocked on the door.
The man named Jack answered the door, his hair wet from the shower, looking a great deal more chipper than I felt. “Well, hello, Mr. Sloan. Back again?”
The senior deputy said, “Is there a Blair Dane here?”
“You have a warrant, I assume?”
“A subpoena.”
“Ah. May I?” He held out his hand. The sheriff’s deputy handed it to him. Jack read it with great care.
“You know, guys, this is a subpoena, not a search warrant. Without a warrant, I don’t believe you have the right to actually enter this building.” He paused a beat. “But because we’re friendly and cooperative citizens with nothing to hide, I’d be happy to invite you in. Conveniently all of the brothers here are seated at the breakfast table as we speak. Then have a look through the house. Take your time. Feel free to ask for identification from anybody. They’ll be perfectly happy to oblige. Unfortunately you’ll find that there’s nobody by the name of Blair Dane living here.”
He then opened the door, and we went in.
Our search uncovered nothing. Blair Dane was gone.
Jack stood at the door and waved pleasantly as we drove off toward the rising sun.
It had been a thin, thin thread, and a distant hope. But at this point, distant hopes were about all we had.
Forty-six
First thing next morning, Stash put a local lawyer, Tony Merritt, on the stand.
“Mr. Merritt,” he said after the usual preliminaries, “have you ever performed any work for Diana Dane?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And what did that work consist of?”
“I prepared a will for her.”
Stash handed him a small stack of paper, recently marked by the clerk. “I’d call your attention to Exhibit 38. Can you identify this?”
“This is the will I prepared for Ms. Dane.”
“Could you read that line, yes, right there, that my lovely assistant Miss Genovese has marked with the yellow Hi-Liter?”
“It says, ‘I hereby leave my entire estate to my husband, Miles Dane.’ ”
“My entire estate. That would include the proceeds of her trust if it were liquidated?”
“I wasn’t involved in the trust. So I can’t really speak to that except to say that from her verbal representations to me, she said there was a trust and that it would be liquidated when she died, and that if she predeceased her husband, then the proceeds were to go to Mr. Dane.”
“Did she indicate the size of that trust?”
“No, she did not.”
“But as long as she died before him . . .”
“Right. He got the whole shooting match.”
The next witness was a tall attractive woman of about forty, who wore the sort of clothes that managed to look both casual and terribly expensive at the same time. I know all about that kind of wardrobe: My second wife, whose tastes ran toward the same sort of garb, left me with a credit card bill of seventy-one thousand dollars and change when we split up, virtually all of it spent on clothes.
“Would you state your name and occupation for the record?” Stash Olesky said after she was sworn in.
“My name is Sharon Molina, and I’m an attorney at the law firm of Shearman & Pound in New York City.” She looked almost frighteningly at ease in the witness box, a hint of smile on her face, black hair glossy, tasteful bits of gold at the ear and throat.
“What is your legal specialty?”
“I’m in the firm’s trust department. Trust work involves managing the legal and business affairs of trusts.”
“And if you could explain what a trust is, Ms. Molina?”
“Technical mumbo jumbo aside—” A flash of bright, white, straight teeth to the jury. “—a trust is a legal arrangement, a contract basically, by which one person’s assets are controlled by another person to accomplish a specific end laid out by whoever established the trust. My practice primarily involves trusts established by high-wealth individuals who wish to preserve their wealth for future generations, to minimize taxes, or to accomplish various charitable purposes. There are quite a few complexities involved—legal, financial, and tax-related—and so a good deal of thought and experience are required to construct and maintain trusts so that, in fact, they do what they are intended to do.”
“I see. And was Diana Dane a client of yours?”
“Strictly speaking, no. The other thing I failed to mention is that once a trust is established, it must be maintained. The assets of the trust must be managed and the wishes of the founder of the trust—as set down in the written trust—must be executed. The reason I bring this up is that, again, strictly speaking, Shearman & Pound is a trustee—meaning that we actually hold title to the assets which are held in trust as per the instructions by the late Diana Dane’s grandfather under testamentary trust.”
“Let me get this straight . . .” Stash biting his lip in mild puzzlement, playing country lawyer to the hilt. “So you don’t actually work for a living person?”
“Correct.”
“No boss, no nothing? Must be nice.”
A brief, not entirely warm smile. “Legally speaking, our boss is the language of the trust itself. Naturally we are required to account for our actions to the beneficiaries.”
Stash handed her a document. “Could you identify this?”
“This is the deed of trust that establishes an entity known as the Testamentary Trust of Albert Goodwin van Blaricum. It’s dated 1961 and is signed by Albert van Blaricum, Diana’s grandfather, as well as by a predecessor of mine at the firm.”
“You say every trust has a purpose. What is the purpose of this trust?”
“To provide the late Mrs. Dane with income throughout her life.”
“So when people talk about somebody having a trust fund, that’s what this is.”
“Exactly.”
“How much money did this trust provide for her?”
“Well, it’s rather unusual actually. It’s typical to structure a trust in the following manner: You put a big pot of money into trust. That pot of money is known in the law as your res. In layman’s terms, that’s what you might call your principal. The trustees invest the principal. Some reasonable proportion of that income goes to the beneficiary of the trust, and the rest is plowed back into the principal. That way the principal grows, income grows, and, one hopes, over time the beneficiary will continue to maintain an income that keeps par with inflation or perhaps even outpaces it.”
“Okay.”
“But as I mentioned, Diana Dane’s trust was unusual. It provided a fixed income. An annual check in the amount of thirty thousand dollars was to be written, irrespective of the size of the principal. Every decade, that amount was to be increased by three thousand dollars.”
“Why was it structured this way?”
“Bear in mind that in the early 1960s when the trust was established, thirty thousand dollars was a fairly significant income. But, that said . . . This is, of course, not written into the deed of trust—but my understanding from the previous trustee at Shearman & Pound is that Diana’s grandfather didn’t wish his granddaughter to live a life of complete ease. He was a sort of old school Puritan type who believed that an excess of spending led to bad character.”
“So the current income that Ms. Dane was getting from the trust?”
“Thirty-nine thousand dollars, payable each year on the first of January.”
“So what happens to all that money—the res, the principal, whatever you want to call it—when she dies?”
“According to the original trust instrument, the res or principal was at that time to pass to any natural issue of Ms. Dane.”
“Natural issue. That means children. Children she bore from her own body.”
“Exactly.”
“So if she died without having children?”
“The trust assets were to be liquidated and the proceeds would flow to her estate. As such, she could then dispose of it in her will in any way she chose.”
“And to your knowledge, Ms. Molina, does Mrs. Dane have any children, natural or otherwise?”
“I’m not aware of any.”
“Okay. So how big a trust is this? How much principal is there?”
“I don’t have the exact figure in front of me . . .”
“Let me hand you a document that the clerk is marking as State’s Exhibit 67.” Stash waited on the clerk, then handed a two-page photocopy to the trust lawyer. “Are you familiar with this document?”
Sharon Molina favored him with a large smile. “Yes I am.” Behind the smile was a certain amount of tension. I gather there had been a fair amount of legal wrangling on Stash’s part in order to compel Ms. Molina to reveal the size of the trust. She, of course, knew what the ultimate outcome would be, but fighting Stash had given her firm the opportunity to bill the trust for a great many hours at four hundred bucks a pop. “This is an asset report as of September 29 of last year for the Testamentary Trust of Albert Goodwin van Blaricum, deceased, Diana Dane, beneficiary.”
“And referring to page two of this document, could you tell me the size of the trust?”
“As of September 29 of last year, the trust contained assets with a total value of twenty-eight million, four hundred and twelve thousand, two hundred and eleven dollars and ninety-one cents.”
There was a loud stirring in the courtroom as the size of the number sank in.
Stash stood there as though thunderstruck. “Twenty-eight million?”
A smile of amusement bordering on condescension. “Twenty-eight, as they say, and change.”
“Wow! All Mr. Dane has to do is murder his wife and he gets t
wenty-eight million bucks?”
Up I came from the chair. “Objection, Your Honor!”
“I’d like to answer that question, Judge,” Sharon Molina said. “I believe it bears on the matter at hand.”
“That’s outrageous!” I said.
“No, I think I’d like to hear the answer,” Evola said.
“Murdering his wife would not be enough to secure him the money.” She showed us her fine teeth. “He’d have to get away with it.”
“No withering cross-examination?” Stash said to me after Sharon Molina’s testimony. We had planned on lunching at Edna’s Café, so we were coming down the stairs together.
If I’d asked too many questions about how the existence of “issue” would affect the trust, it might have tipped my hand about Blair Dane. Dane was on my witness list, but so far as Stash knew at this point, he was just some distant relative of Miles’s—a character witness, maybe.
“No profit in it,” I said. “The harder I go at the trust, the worse it looks for Miles.”
Stash frowned and studied my face. I had a hunch he was getting a funny read from my expression, so I said, “Oh, about lunch . . . Something came up with another client that I need to tend to. I’m going to have to beg off on lunch. See you in court.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and headed toward my car.
Forty-seven
It’s traditional for prosecutors to wrap up their case by putting a member of the victim’s family on the stand who can be safely predicted to bawl their heads off, leaving the jury with a sense of outrage and a thirst for vengeance. At the end of the afternoon, after a number of minor witnesses, I had noted that Diana’s brother, Roger van Blaricum, was the only witness left on Stash’s list, so I expected him to be called in the thirst-for-vengeance slot. This pleased me. He was such an irritating fellow, I felt he would do as much good for Miles’s case as for the state’s.
But apparently Stash, on meeting him in the flesh, came to the same conclusion that I did. After a brief, whispered conversation with his chief assistant, Stash stood, and said, “Your Honor, the state of Michigan rests.”
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