Judicious Murder

by Val Bruech

  “No fooling.” She hoisted her feet up on a coffee table that was supported by three legs and a stack of comic books.

  I sat on the sofa and rubbed the plastic covering. “You know, my mom had this stuff on all the furniture in her house.”

  “Mine too.” She broke into a smile revealing teeth the color of daisies. “I asked her one day why we had a sofa, and she said, ‘so we have a place to put the plastic.’” Navarro convulsed with laughter, slapping her thighs so hard the cigarette ash cascaded to the floor.

  “Lisa, I’ll level with you.”

  She didn’t blink when I said the name, though she had not yet identified herself. “The file, the one your number was in, concerned a young mother who was accused of killing her neighbor. Sam and I lost the hearing. The mother is still in the pen, and her kids are God-knows-where. I’m trying to track every possible lead.”

  She gave me a long, penetrating stare. A clock boldly ticked off the passing seconds. With no warning, Lisa heaved herself up and clumped to the back of the room. She closed a door which presumably led to the kitchen, then returned and settled next to me on the sofa, so close that our knees touched.

  “I’m Lisa,” she admitted. “Ain’t no big secret. You could have checked at the post office or with the neighbors. But I don’t like welfare folks and the police coming around bothering me. I got more’n enough to worry about, just paying the rent and taking care of my kid.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, exhausted by the thought of her responsibilities.

  “I got my rights.” She sat up straight and jabbed my arm with a stubby forefinger for emphasis. “The cops know I know my rights. I had Sam dress ’em down once after they hassled me.”

  Pay dirt, I thought.

  “Were you a client of his?” I tried to keep the elation out of my voice.

  “Not exactly. When he came to see me he left his card and told me to call him when I needed some help.” She leaned toward me. The scent of garlic was unmistakable. “You a lawyer?”

  I nodded. At that moment, a young girl in short shorts and a sweatshirt burst in through the door Lisa had just closed. “Ma, where’s my big heels?” she hollered.

  “Top shelf in your closet, honey,” Lisa yelled back. “That’s my daughter, Cheryl.”

  I stared at the doorway through which the girl disappeared, dumbfounded. Cheryl had been a witness in the Righetti case, the baby-sitter who tipped off the police about the gun in Ellen’s linen closet.

  “Cheryl Daniels.”

  “I never married her dad.” Lisa shrugged by way of explanation.

  “Cheryl found the gun…”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She waved her hand in the air to cut me off or perhaps in frustration at her daughter’s involvement.

  “Can we start at the beginning?” I asked.

  She stubbed her cigarette out in a bronze ashtray the size of a barbeque. “Beginning? Someone better than me knows where all this began. But I’ll open the door and let you have a peek.” She leaned back and stared at the ceiling, gathering her thoughts.

  “Cheryl babysat for the Righettis, off and on, for quite a while. After the divorce, when Ellen had to go back to work, Cheryl would watch her kids after school.” Lisa shook out a new cigarette from the pack and lit it with a gold Zippo, a storyteller warming to her tale.

  “One day, not long after Doc Haskins was murdered, Cheryl comes home and tells me this business about finding a gun at Ellen’s house, right where the kids could get ahold of it. Now Cheryl may fib about curfew, but she’s not going to make up a story like that.”

  “Did you call Ellen?”

  “Hell no! I ain’t gonna shove my nose in her business.”

  “Ellen denied ever seeing the gun before.”

  “Yeah, I read that in the paper, all right.” Lisa frowned.

  “The serial numbers were filed off the gun. It was impossible to trace. The cops took Ellen’s photo to all the local gun shops—no one could remember her buying it or even being in the store. But the jury didn’t find that very persuasive.”

  Lisa snorted. “You can get a gun anywhere. Gun shop’s the last place you’d go if you want to keep it a secret.”

  “But if she wanted to keep it a secret, why did she keep the gun in the house, accessible to the kids, after she supposedly killed him? Why not wipe it clean and throw it in the river?”

  Lisa’s bit her bottom lip as if this was a question she hadn’t yet addressed.

  “Lissen, you want some coffee?”

  “Sounds great,” I said, wondering if my health insurance was paid up. She shuffled to the back.

  “Instant okay?” she called out.

  “Sure,” I lied shamelessly.

  She lumbered back in. “Water’s on.”

  “If you have such a dislike of the police, how come you called them when Cheryl found the gun?”

  “I didn’t call ’em. Cheryl did. Then…” Her hands flew skyward. “BOOM. Ellen gets arrested, the kids go to the dad, wow.” She shook her head as if the pace of events was too much.

  “You didn’t know she called the cops?”

  “Not till afterwards. Then the state made Cheryl testify, and it’s all over till the re-trial with your friend Sam.”

  “Did he call you?”

  “Yep, out of the blue, and starts talkin’ about this new Righetti hearing. I don’t quite understand it all, but he’s nice on the phone, and everything’s hunky-dory, and he asks if he can come over and talk to Cheryl, and of course I say no. He says it’s only fair since Cheryl’s talked to the cops and she already testified and everything. I say no again and I hang up. But then I got to thinkin’ about how he said it wasn’t fair, her talkin’ to one side and not the other. I know lotsa people doin’ time cause they couldn’t find no witnesses to help ’em, so I called him back and told him he could talk to Cheryl as long as I was there.”

  “Was that in January?” I asked, remembering the date on the phone message.

  “Dunno.” She shook her head.

  An urgent whistling sound emanated from the kitchen and she struggled to her feet again.

  “Be right back.”

  Lisa returned with two steaming cups on a red lacquered tray that spelled out “Las Vegas” in glitzy script.

  “Cream or sugar?”

  “Neither, thanks.” I stirred the beverage cautiously.

  Lisa remained standing, both hands wrapped around her cup, lost in thought. “I don’t know that Ellen Righetti’s got it in her.”

  I wondered if I’d heard right. Parallel universes are tricky.

  “You mean to kill someone?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean.” She took a gulp of coffee and gave me a sly look. “I know something that never came out at the trial.”

  I cocked my head. “What might that be?”

  “Brenda Haskins…she was doin’ some other guy when her old man was killed.

  “I don’t mean at the ’xact same second,” she hastened, apparently taken aback at my expression.

  “You mentioned that little tidbit to Sam.”

  “Well, we got to talking when he came over. He was nice, for a guy, like you nice for a lawyer, and yeah, I told him.”

  “How do you know Brenda was having an affair?” The thought of Brenda and Lisa exchanging confidences while volunteering at the hospital gift shop taxed the imagination. “Do you know who the guy was?”

  She grinned at me like a cat playing with a stunned mouse. “I’m goin’ to tell you just what I told Sam. I’ll lay it .a…l …l out for you.” Lisa settled herself back into the chair, wiggling with anticipation.

  “First, you gotta understand that I knew Brenda before she was Brenda Haskins. We both grew up on the East side and went to Main. She graduated before I got there, but we knew each other, and we knew a lot of the same people. She went off to college somewhere, then got married and had a baby. I found out through the grapevine later that she was divorced, and then everyone in town knew wh
en she married that doctor.”

  I nodded, remembering that a stepson of the Haskins’ was away at school or on a camping trip when his stepdad was killed.

  “So you’ve known Brenda for quite a while.”

  “Yeah, like that. I never held it against her that she married that rich dude, and she didn’t care that I lived over here by the tracks.” She nodded to herself. “Brenda never did me no wrong.”

  “So what makes you think she had an affair?”

  Lisa sipped her coffee thoughtfully.

  “When Cheryl was babysitting for Ellen, before Dr. Haskins was killed, I picked her up a lot. Ellen would call me when she was leaving work, and we’d both get to her house about the same time. We’d chat about this and that, you know. Turned out we both knew Brenda Haskins: Ellen showed me where she lived next door.”

  “A couple times I had to wait for Cheryl. I didn’t want to go into Ellen’s house so I waited in my car. It was late, between eleven and midnight. Both times, a man came out of Haskins’ house next door and got into a big car parked about a half block down the street.” She nodded at me conspiratorially.

  I waited. “And?”

  “And what?” Lisa was indignant.

  “It was probably a friend, or maybe it was a business meeting. Docs have a finger in every pie in town and they can never meet during business hours. Maybe it was Gordon you saw, going out to the hospital for an emergency.”

  Lisa laughed. “Honey, you’re a tough sell. Maybe I couldn’t prove it in court, but this here’s real life, and I don’t need no avalanche fallin’ down on me before I run for cover. Sam, he was kinda skeptical too. But when I told him about the car, he said it weren’t none of theirs. Besides, Dr. Haskins wouldn’t park his car a half block from his house.”

  “Do you remember what kind of car it was?”

  “Sure. It was a new Lincoln, dark color, blue or black. One of the pushers in the hood drove one just like it. And I knew what Dr. Haskins looked like. He was a short man—way under six feet, I’d think. And the man that came out of the house was tall for a man, very tall.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “Nah, it was too dark and he was walkin’ on the other side of the street. I just saw his body. He had a coat and a hat on and walked real fast.”

  “Same man, same car both times?”

  She cracked her knuckles. “Yep.”

  “Did you ever tell this to the cops?”

  “Cops.” She spit out the word. “I don’t tell cops nuttin’.” She eyed me keenly. “Kessler came over here last week. You know Kessler?”

  “Of course,” I said wearily. When Kessler pinned on his badge, he started at aggressive and could go all the way to psycho. The guy made more busts than any other two cops combined.

  “He wants to talk to Cheryl. I ask if she’s under arrest. He says no, just a routine investigation. I say no, ’cause I won’t let him near her if I don’t have to. You know what he says then?” Lisa bounced off the chair and started pacing. I hoped she didn’t have blood pressure issues.

  “He says Cheryl’s involved in a drug thing at school, maybe sellin’ it. I seen how cops twist what you say and make it come out the way they want, especially with a kid. Then he said sometimes he does favors for the guys he busts so they owe him one when they get back on the street. And he runs his filthy hand along my doorframe, right there on the porch, and says things about my house and people being careless with matches.” Her tone was belligerent but her voice caught at the end.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “Are you afraid?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to know where mad stops and scared begins.” She crossed the room in three steps and took a quick look out the peephole. “All I know is he’s the biggest shit I ever seen, and I seen some big ones.”

  “Lisa, I’ll give you my card. Next time Kessler hassles you, you tell him I’m your lawyer and I’m keeping a file on all his contacts with you. That might chill him out.”

  Emphasis on might.

  I received a super-size grin. “That’s awful good of you, Miss Marshfield.”

  I wrote my unlisted home number on the card and gave it to her.

  “I hope they catch whoever done your friend. He seemed like a nice guy.”

  I nodded. “He was the best.”

  The Rugrats were on the TV now. Tommy was chasing some girl with blue hair down the street. Lisa’s attention wandered to the screen and stayed there.

  “Thanks for the coffee and the help.”

  “Anytime.” She waved me off, grabbed the remote and powered the volume up to rock-concert level. I let myself out. Something was radically different. I stopped and sniffed: fresh air.

  On the ride back downtown, I reflected for the umpteenth time on the novelty of my adopted community. Joliet’s population exceeds 100,000, and every day I run into people who shouldn’t know each other but do, like Brenda Haskins and Lisa Navarro. Sometimes the ties go back generations, other times only months. The burg looks like a little city, but it acts like a small town. By and large, the people here matter to each other.

  Lisa’s story added strength to the theory that Brenda was cheating on Gordon Haskins. If she was a two-timing spouse, was she also a murderer?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tite’s message as relayed by Yolanda seemed to signal a willingness to share information. I had misplaced his card so I called the police station but he was out. I left my name and the unpublished number that rings in my office, not at the firm.

  The phone was as quiet as Wrigley Field when the Cubs are down by ten. I decided to pay a call on my neighbor.

  The Blane, Kendall and Montgomery law firm encourages its associate attorneys to put in a half day on Saturday mornings. The partners didn’t need encouragement: they had been coming in on Saturdays for so long they had forgotten there were other options. It was almost 1 p.m. but Griffen Bartley might still be cranking out billable hours. The oversized double doors were unlocked and the half-moon reception desk was deserted. Two hallways angled back to a Dilbert-like secretarial pen ringed by attorneys’ offices. The legal talent pondered the conundrums of the day from their second floor windows where the quality of the view depended on the status of the occupant.

  I chose the hallway on the right. The first two offices were vacant. In the third, two waffle-soled running shoes rested atop the desk, almost obscuring Griffen Bartley as he reclined in his chair, head resting on fist, eyes closed. I tiptoed across the room. The screensaver on his computer monitor was an image of the young associate and a very attractive blond in swimming suits. They appeared to be joined at the hip.

  “Hello, Bartley,” I said brightly. “Catching up or getting ahead?”

  “Wha…?” His elbow slipped and his head came up with a start. “Marshfield?”

  “The one and only.” I circled to the front of the desk. “May I sit down?”

  “Yeah, sure, yeah.” He scrambled to his feet, grabbed a half dozen files from the client chair and dumped them on the floor.

  “You gonna bill for the time you just spent napping?”

  He rubbed his eyes, then stopped mid-stroke. “Did you come here to give me an ethics lesson?”

  Bartley used a gel that made his hair do exactly what he wanted. I was willing to bet he worked the same magic on most women.

  “No. I’m here to find out how you got to the hospital so quickly after Sam was attacked.”

  His eyes widened in understanding. “Information doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Really. What’s your price?”

  He screwed up his face as if the question taxed his resources. “A glass of your favorite beverage at your favorite hang-out.”

  “Griffen, it’s a simple question.”

  He leaned back, arms crossed, blue-green eyes searching my face. Being the center of his attention wasn’t the worst thing that had happened today.

  “Okay, simple answer.” He shrugged off his bantering attitude for the moment. “I
had to research some law journals so I got to the library about eight. I went to the john a little later and one of the bailiffs grabbed me and told me what happened. Most of them know Sam and I are… were related.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I drove right to the hospital and got there just before Aunt Betty arrived.”

  “Was anyone else in the law library?”

  He shook his head. “It was deserted. The librarian doesn’t get in till nine.”

  “What were you researching?”

  “Constitutionality of a new provision of the Domestic Abuse Act.”

  “In law journals?” I asked skeptically. These scholarly publications contain articles on esoteric points of law written by ivory tower law review staffs and are capable of being understood only by other ivory tower law review staffs.

  “What?” he protested. “The legislature copied the statute from other states and I was looking for a discussion of its history.”

  A plausible explanation, but only barely.

  “Which lawyer were you researching for?”

  He sipped from a designer water bottle. “I was under the impression we were having a cordial conversation, but suddenly one of us is in cross-examination mode.”

  “Not me. I’m still having a friendly conversation.”

  “I was afraid of that. Is this how you charm the rest of the world?”

  “I’m not here to charm you, Griff. I’m here for a little information.”

  He crossed his arms across a chest that had done its share of bench presses and pouted. “Charm me first, then information.”

  I couldn’t stop a giggle from spilling out.

  “Made ja laugh.” He pumped his fist in mock celebration.

  “Are you ever serious?”

  “Let me think. Was it nineteen ninety-seven? Once back then, maybe.”

  “Pardon me for asking, but how did you get into law school?”

  “Ah, the lady questions my sincerity, the high purpose of my life.”

  “Who wrote your letters of recommendation?”

  The boyish impishness faded.

  “Sam.”

  “The name is not spoken with great affection,” I observed.