by Val Bruech
She rolled her eyes heavenward but when they returned to earth they were a shade softer. “I do feel badly about Judge Kendall. I wish it had never happened.”
I bobbed my head encouragingly.
“I’ll give you a minute.”
I pushed across the threshold. To the immediate right, the famous staircase led upstairs to where Gordon had been shot. She led me to an expansive, sun-filled living room filled with modern, sleek furniture, better suited to a well-appointed bachelor condo than a widow’s home. Everything was beige or white, including a gleaming baby grand piano. I was jolted by a sense of deja vu. The photos in Sam’s file—they were pictures of this house! Had Sam taken them? I took a deep mental breath and told myself to go slow and do whatever it took to get Haskins to talk.
“Is anyone else home?” Brenda and I faced each other amidst a lustrous leather sofa and chair arrangement.
“No.” She paused. “I live alone.”
“Sam came here to talk to you, didn’t he?”
She crossed her arms and thrust one leg out in a model’s pose.
“You should know. You worked with him on the case.”
“Maybe he promised to keep your conversation secret.”
She looked at me through calculating eyes. “Maybe he didn’t want you to know.”
I nodded.
“Brenda.”
I waited until she graced me with her full attention. “I think Sam was still working on Gordon’s murder when he died.”
She laughed derisively. “What planet have you been on? Ellen Righetti killed Gordon. She was convicted, and even you and Sam couldn’t save her.” She sank gracefully into the leather chair, drained by the memory of her ordeal.
“A minute ago, you said you felt badly about Sam. Tell me why,” I urged in my sincerest imitation of a grief counselor.
She stroked the white arm of the chair with blood red nails.
“He was…an understanding person…quite kind,” she said, clipped.
A generous perspective considering his embarrassing question during cross-examination.
“How so?”
“I need a drink. Can I get you something?” She left without waiting for a response.
“Sure,” I chirped to the now empty room.
A print the size of a refrigerator hung on one wall, wiggly green lines chasing after pastel-colored geometric shapes, all in a sea of iridescent pink. The opposite wall supported an oil painting with a lot of white space and sundry intersecting lines a hundred shades of gray. After each line hit another, its direction changed slightly. On a different day, in a different place, either one of these works would be intriguing.
Brenda came back with two cans of diet drinks, iced glasses and cocktail napkins on a silver tray. A slice of lime graced the rim of each glass.
“I just got back from aerobics,” she announced.
“Do you work out every day?”
“I used to be an instructor. Can’t break the habit.” She offered me a glass.
“Thanks. I know what you mean. I’m a swimmer.”
She nodded, and the atmosphere seemed a degree less chilly now that we had the common ground of physical fitness. She put the tray down on a hexagon-shaped glass coffee table.
“If you’re trying to find out who murdered Sam, I can tell you from first-hand experience, the police do an excellent job.”
I perched on the edge of the sofa. “They’re doing their best, but they’re having trouble coming up with a motive.”
She cocked her head at me in response.
“How did he happen to be here?”
She bent over and lifted the cover of a small ebony box sitting on the coffee table. I watched, fascinated, as she extracted a single cigarette, then picked up a thin gold lighter, flicked it expertly and touched the flame to the paper-wrapped stick of chemicals. Amazingly her half-inch long lacquered fingernails didn’t impede the production. She inhaled deeply, then sauntered to the piano and played a riff with her left hand. She held the last key down and the final note clung to the oxygen molecules in the room.
“During my testimony, Sam asked if I was having an affair when Gordon was killed.” She turned back toward me. “I was totally taken aback. I didn’t have to answer the question, but it was very rude, and I phoned him afterwards.”
“When did you call him?”
“After the hearing.” She tapped the cigarette impatiently into a crystal ashtray. “I was angry. I told him so.”
“What was Sam’s reaction?”
A satisfied smile crossed Brenda’s face. “After Gordon died, I had an encounter with Christ. I learned forgiveness. Sam apologized for his behavior, profusely. I forgave him.”
“He took pictures of your house.”
“He said he kept a photo album of his cases, not pictures of people but of places.”
News to me.
“What else happened between you and Sam?”
She shrugged noncommittally. “Nothing.”
“You told him something that made him keep working on Ellen’s case, Brenda. What was it?”
She turned away and appeared absorbed in the painting of intersecting lines. A clock ticked off the seconds. A myriad of them.
“It wasn’t important,” she said finally.
“Brenda, I really like that oil painting. It’s like each time the lines intersect that’s one person engaging another and being just a little bit changed by the encounter.” Wow; where had that come from? I couldn’t remember taking an art appreciation course in my life.
“Maybe Sam’s meeting with you changed his thinking about the case. If I knew what you told him, I might be able to figure out what he did next. It’d be a huge help,” I pleaded.
She took a final drag on her cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray and exhaled the smoke in an unbroken stream. She was quiet for a half minute, then muttered “What the hell,” so quietly I could hardly hear it.
“After Gordon was killed, I was in shock. People streamed in and out of the house like it was a train station.” She shivered, maybe from the scanty outfit or perhaps the memory of folks parading through her house. “After he was buried, I remembered seeing the key to Ellen’s house hanging from its peg in the pantry.”
I gave her statement an inordinate amount of thought. “Is that significant?”
“How do I know? The point is, I don’t remember seeing the key there, in its place, for a while before that.”
“The key to Ellen’s house was missing after Gordon’s death?”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t know it for a fact, and I certainly couldn’t swear to it under oath. I was dazed those first days: maybe it was there but I just didn’t see it. At any rate, after Ellen was arrested, the police found the key right where it was supposed to be.”
“You didn’t mention it to the cops but you thought it important enough to tell Sam?”
“Actually, I had forgotten about it. But when he came over and we got to talking, I remembered.”
I had been fibbed to by far more accomplished liars than Brenda Haskins.
“Was the key to Ellen’s labeled or identified in any way?”
“Of course. Gordon couldn’t abide messiness or confusion. Everything was labeled and had a place. The key was tagged with the Righetti name.”
Time for the $64,000 question.
“Brenda, who were you having an affair with when Gordon was killed?”
Brenda’s face melted into something from a computer-enhanced horror movie.
“You bitch!” The contents of her glass came hurtling at me. I dodged right, but it caught my shoulder. Fortunately it contained only ice and the dregs of her drink.
“How dare you come into my home and ask me a question like that!”
I scrambled to my feet and made a show of blotting my sweatshirt.
“Brenda, I’m not saying the other person is guilty of anything,” I implored. “But it looks suspicious. You had a lover and a husband. The l
atter is killed, the murder weapon’s found in the neighbor’s house, your key to that house is missing and accessible to the lover. It’s a possibility, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“No, it’s not!” She stamped her foot. “The key was probably there all the time. You’re still trying to get Ellen out of prison! You want to pin Gordon’s murder on….someone else.” She paused, breathing rapidly. “I guarantee you, he did not have a key to this house.”
That sounded like an admission to me.
“Furthermore, that…person… was out of town the morning Gordon was killed. It’s been verified.” Her tone was righteously indignant.
“By whom? Sam?”
“Hell, no. I didn’t tell him who it was either. Ms. Marshfield, you are seriously mistaken here, just like you were when you represented Ellen.”
Time to change the subject.
“Why were the police here today?”
Her eyes opened wide. “How did you know that?”
“I saw Lieutenant Tite.”
“Ask him!”
“I will. But I’m here now.”
“No, you’re leaving!” Brenda’s cooperation was history.
“The police didn’t swear you to secrecy, did they?”
She threw her hands in the air. “Get out! Now!”
“What did he want to know?”
Brenda shook her head. “You must be a helluva lawyer, Ms. Marshfield. You take the smallest opening and drive a truck through it.”
“I apologize if you find my style offensive.”
“You passed ‘offensive’ a long time ago.” She grabbed my wrist and started pulling me out of the living room. I went along as far as the vestibule then I dug in my heels.
“Brenda, I promise I’ll leave if you just tell me why Lieutenant Tite was here today.”
She threw my arm down in disgust. “All right then. He asked about Eric…Dr. Benton, the gentleman who brought me to Sam’s wake. Some kind of background check. He asked how long I’ve known him, what kind of person he is, things like that. He didn’t mention Sam. He was decent, not rude like you,” she added.
“Dr. Benton was your husband’s partner. Were they close?”
She opened the front door and waited, one hand on the doorknob, the other on her hip. “I’ve had quite enough, Ms. Marshfield. Good-bye.”
“I’m sorry if I upset you, Mrs. Haskins.”
The door slammed shut behind me.
I pulled over a block away and jotted down Brenda’s revelations, trying to determine where her story and the truth coincided, when it hit me like a falling tree. Brenda had been the cops’ number one suspect until the gun was found in Ellen’s drawer. Then she became the bereaved widow and the main witness for the prosecution. If Brenda did kill Gordon, she could have planted the gun at Ellen’s to divert suspicion away from herself. Was the story about a possibly missing key an invention to send me off on a wild goose chase?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Betty welcomed me with open arms and a tired smile. She escorted me to the den where an inviting assortment of cheese and crackers awaited.
Books of every size and color filled shelves on three walls. The fourth was a series of sliding glass doors leading to a small patio. Paver bricks surrounded a garden that dutifully sprang to life in the summer under Betty’s green thumb. The room was more than a study: it was a retreat.
“Next to practicing law, Sam loved reading best of all,” she said.
“No question,” I agreed. “The problem is, if you love the first as much as he did, there’s not much time to indulge the second.”
“Or anything else, for that matter,” she added. “But after he went on the bench he’d settle in here several nights a week, happy as a clam. He never did that when he was practicing law.”
“Did you see any other differences after he became a judge?”
She nibbled on a cracker. “I’ll think about that while I get some wine. The usual?”
I nodded. She left and I wandered the den, running my hands over leather-bound classics, biographies of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and lesser-known Americans who had a hand in framing our legal system.
Betty returned with two goblets of Chardonnay and we touched glasses in a silent toast.
“To tell you the truth, Susan, since Sam went on the bench he seemed older…more mature is a better way to put it. He wasn’t such a burning advocate anymore.”
I couldn’t reconcile the fiery trial lawyer I knew with the judge he seemed to have become.
“He actually spoke about ‘balancing the scales,’” Betty added.
Hmm. The Sam I knew spent his entire life trying to tip the scales in his clients’ favor. But when people are ready to move on, I guess they don’t wait for the rest of us to catch up.
“Any other changes?”
She reached for a cracker, and I sensed that she was debating the wisdom of continuing. “There doesn’t seem to be as much money as before.”
I smiled to myself. “When good lawyers go on the bench, there’s usually a drastic cut in gross income.”
She nodded. “Sam and I talked about that at length before he accepted the appointment. His salary is set by the legislature, and they take out for insurance, pension contributions, taxes, everything. His gross pay is two hundred thousand dollars, but what comes home is a lot less.” She cleared her throat. “It’s not difficult to live on that kind of money. We don’t have expensive taste, as you know. But…” Her voice trailed off.
“But what, Betty?”
She fingered a pearl earring. “I’m going through the books now. If there’s a problem, I’d like to…talk to you about it.”
“Of course. Just call when you’re ready.”
“I will.” She smiled in acknowledgment.
“Susan, I’ve made you wait long enough to see that file.” She noticed my empty glass. “Would you like another?”
“Whenever….”
Betty could make one or two glasses of wine last for an entire evening, a talent I failed to appreciate until the following morning.
She opened the door to a small closet, inside of which a two-drawer steel filing cabinet squatted. She crossed to the desk, took a key from the top left drawer, went back to the cabinet and unlocked it while I looked over her shoulder. She pulled out the bottom drawer and pointed to two large files. “Righetti” was written on both in Sam’s hand.
I pulled the files out and yanked off the elastic cords. The first one held the entire transcript of State v Righetti, the original trial, which Sam and I had pored over in preparation for our hearing and which was conspicuously absent from Sam’s file in the firm’s storage. The second was stuffed with manila files similar to the ones we examined at Kevin’s house, but these were in disarray. My heart skipped when I saw one marked “Brenda.”
“Could I borrow this?”
“Take it. I’d be happy to be rid of it.”
I riffled through the pages. “Everything’s a copy, even the transcript. There’s no originals.”
“I thought that was curious. I assume the originals are in storage at the firm.” She studied me. “Why are you so interested in this file, Susan?”
I told her about Tite’s request to come up with people who may hold grudges against Sam.
“Is there something in this file, then? Should I give it to the police?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Not until I have a chance to look at it,” I added hastily.
“Susan, what’s going on here?”
“Did Sam ever mention this file to you after our hearing?”
Betty pondered a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“He may have continued to work on it.” I chose my words carefully. “I think something piqued his curiosity.”
“Do the police know about this?”
“I mentioned Righetti to Tite.”
“Susan, if this file has anything to do with why Sam was killed…” Her voice broke. I retrieved a box of
tissues from the desk and handed it to her.
“You need to stay as far away from it as you can get,” she finally managed.
“I can’t.”
“I know what he meant to you, Susan.”
“He saved Ryan.” Betty and Sam were the only ones in town who knew about my brother. I took a shaky breath and almost told her about Sam’s last text but something restrained me.
Betty searched every pore of my face. “What Sam did for Ryan, he did for all his other clients, Susan. Not that Ryan wasn’t special, but Sam was just doing his job the way he saw it. And he was compensated. And Ryan’s case gave him enormous satisfaction.”
She took me gently by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she commanded. “You don’t owe Sam a thing, not for Ryan, not for anything else.” Her tone conveyed both conviction and compassion.
I blinked and turned away, meandered over to the window. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s say I don’t owe Sam. But still…I need to know why.”
She joined me and took my hand in both hers.
“I understand. But you need to promise me something.”
“What?”
“If you get the barest hint of who did this, you tell the police right away. I don’t care much for the Ross fellow that’s supposed to be in charge, but the younger one, Tite, seems very capable.”
I nodded ambiguously.
“Susan.”
I knew what was coming.
“A policeman doesn’t try a case in court. You can’t investigate a murder. Leave it to the professionals.”
“Hi, Mom, Susan,” a bright voice said from the door.
Gina was striking in dark slacks and a cream-colored blouse, auburn hair pulled back. Did I look that good in my mid-twenties? Did I ever look that good?
“So, where are you two going for supper?” As Gina approached, she noticed Betty’s moist eyes, and her exuberance changed to concern.
“Mom, have you been crying?”
“I’m fine,” Betty assured her.
Gina gave her mom a bear hug.
“I remember when Agnes lost her boy, Cooper,” Betty said when they separated. “She was devastated. Anytime something reminded her of him she’d burst into tears. It went on for months.” Betty set her lips in a horizontal line. “I don’t want to do that.”