Judicious Murder

by Val Bruech

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Sirens screeched like caged banshees. Uniformed cops scurried from one garage door to the other like paparazzi jockeying for the best camera angle. Their plainclothes counterparts stood in small groups talking and gesturing. Oscillating red, white, and blue lights created a crazy carnival-like atmosphere that stretched from the perimeter of the homicide scene down Sunset as far as the eye could see. Two detectives hustled Brenda out of my sight. I was escorted into Benton’s house and invited to sit at the kitchen table. I couldn’t leave: a uniformed guard was positioned at the door. The kitchen reminded me of an art gallery: the lighting was a combination of indirect and track; gleaming copper pots and pans dangled from ceiling hooks. Sensuous works of pottery rested on a glass shelf that encircled the room.

  Al arrived, shot me an indecipherable look, and didn’t say a word. Ross said quite a few, at excruciating length. At his request, I told the story once from beginning to end, starting with the pool attack which seemed like days ago. His eyebrows reached new heights when I related my method of entry into Benton’s house. To explain the doctor’s hostility, I had to lay out almost everything I’d found out about the Haskins/Righetti case since Sam’s death. Ross questioned it all, skipping around like a good cross-examiner. I told him the absolute truth, as much as he asked. Al lounged against the kitchen counter, his eyes darting between me and Ross like he was watching a tennis match. Finally both cops left me alone, and I dozed off in the chair. It was not a restful interlude: rapid-fire discussions and the occasional glare of light jolted me awake. Finally Ross told me I could leave. His final words were right out of the old TV shows: “If you have to leave town, call us. Don’t go out of state.”

  I was numb with exhaustion. Al put his hand under my elbow, lifted me to my feet, and propelled me out the door. In the east, the night reluctantly surrendered to a pink lemonade dawn.

  “Do you have your keys?” he asked as if we were returning from a movie. I dug into my jacket pocket and gave them to him. Next thing I knew we were in my driveway, and Al was wrestling me out of the car. Putting one foot in front of the other was a challenge, but somehow we got into the house. Blankets were pulled over me and Fur cuddled up by my feet. It was good to be in bed. It was better to be alive.

  I came to wakefulness slowly, like morning frost evaporating from a blade of grass. The clock read 12:30. P.M.? I reached frantically for the phone, certain I had missed court. No dial tone. I followed the cord to the wall where the plug lay on the floor. Pushing my electronics skills to the max, I jammed the plastic thingie back in the wall and reconnected to the world.

  The doorbell chimed. On the other side of the peephole, Kelly shifted a small grocery bag from one arm to another. I opened the door and made a mental note to tell her how funny she looked when her mouth dropped wide open.

  “You’re here!”

  “I live here.”

  “Are you okay?” Emphasis on the last two syllables.

  “I think I missed a court appearance.”

  “I take it you…you don’t know what’s happening today.”

  I shook my head. “Just got up.”

  She brushed past me on her way to the kitchen. I followed meekly.

  “Your name’s on every news program between here and Chicago. You’ve been up to no good.” She inspected me head to foot, wrinkling her nose. I followed her glance, amazed to discover the same stunning outfit I wore last night.

  “How ’bout some coffee?”

  I made espresso while Kelly unpacked the bag. Ten minutes later we sat down to bacon, poached eggs, and buttered English muffins. Between mouthfuls, I related the events of the previous evening. The phone rang three times during the telling. She told each caller I was unavailable. The fourth time she disconnected it.

  Kelly was a good listener. I finished up by telling her I was convinced Benton did not kill Sam.

  “Susie, in the last two weeks you’ve been mugged, almost drowned, and an inch away from being shot up with some lethal drug. You have a repressed masochistic streak?”

  “I am a defense attorney.” I nibbled on crispy bacon. “Seriously, trying an aggravated murder case used to be the biggest rush in the world, but this last week…it’s been like jumping out of a plane. Life is so…vivid now.”

  “Susan, being an eyelash away from dead is not most folks’ idea of ‘vivid.’ First, I track you down in the woods. Then your friend Frankie saves you, now Brenda. Has it occurred to you that you may not have enough friends for the next time? You think Sam’s killer is still out there. What happens when you find him and ain’t nobody around to save your sorry butt? What then?”

  “C’mon, Kelly. I always thought you were a glass-half-full kind of person.”

  “I am, but I also touch base with reality on a regular basis, a little stratagem that seems to be eluding you. You’re not trained for what you’re doing. You don’t even know what you’re doing. Let the pros take it from here.” Her imperious tone booked no argument. “Did you tell the police everything?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Ross hadn’t brought up Cullerton, Malone, or Sam’s finances, and I had seen no need to enlighten him. Apparently, Tite hadn’t either. That was interesting.

  “You tell the cops the whole story,” she ordered. “With Benton out of the picture, they’ll find the killer right away.” She leaned forward as she sensed a point of persuasion. “Sam tried to prove Ellen Righetti’s innocence. He failed.”

  I winced, not enough for her to notice.

  “You just succeeded. You’ve accomplished what Sam couldn’t. Let that be your tribute, your payback to him. Go back to your law practice. Your clients need you.”

  I studied the dregs of my espresso. “I can’t. It’s not just about Sam anymore. It’s kind of about me too.” I searched her face, seeking empathy.

  She got up and soaked some pans in the sink, then turned and faced me, arms crossed. “Okay, you’ve taken up a mission here. I get that. You’re passionate about it. But passion is not crazy. Crazy is what you did last night. If you keep tempting fate by chasing Sam’s killer, I can write your eulogy this very moment.”

  Fur jumped up on the counter and rubbed against her. When your best friend reams you out and your own cat is taking her side, it gives one pause.

  “Kelly, there’s a couple things you need to know.”

  I told her about the text Sam sent moments before his death. Then I launched into a somewhat abbreviated account of my recent collaborations with Tite. Her eyes opened wide like the aperture of a camera as she processed the information.

  “I’d say your right brain is trying to throw your rational, logical left brain under the bus.”

  “I guess. And what’s really confusing is Al and I can be nuts about each other one minute, then before you know it we’re making each other crazy.”

  Kelly nodded. “You’ve been independent all your adult life, Susan. Can he accommodate that?”

  “It seems to be a stumbling block.”

  “Can you accept that he may have very deep feelings for you?”

  I pushed the eggs around on my plate. “It’s a struggle.”

  She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “What’s your heart telling you?”

  I put my right hand over my heart and held my left up to my ear like a phone. “Hi, thump-thump. Wassup today?”

  “Very funny. You’ve muzzled your heart for so long, it’s way out of practice.”

  “So how do I figure it out?”

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose the way experts do immediately before addressing inferior beings. “You find a quiet place and go there alone. Think of all the things about Tite that bother you or make you crazy. Write them down. That’s the easy part. Then next to each thing that bothers you, write down exactly why it annoys you. The first list is about him; the second list is about you. Be brutally honest, especially with the second list. You have to go beyond the superficial.” />
  “People do that?” I recoiled.

  “Then put the list aside.” She continued as though I hadn’t interrupted. “Focus on Al—what he looks like, how he moves, who he really is at the core. Maybe you’ll be able to hear that heart of yours.”

  I shook my head glumly. “What does all that get me?”

  “Insight,” she responded. “The first part is the analysis piece. The second part helps you understand your feelings.”

  I shoved my plate across the table. “Jumping into an alligator pit sounds like more fun.”

  We cleared the table. Kelly had to leave to pick up Travis from preschool, but she had a minute to help load the dishwasher.

  “Susan, your life in the last few weeks reminds me of that carnival game where the heads pop up randomly out of holes, and you’re supposed to smash them with this big hammer before they disappear.”

  I remembered that game. I loved it as a kid, always scored better than any of my peers. I smiled in acknowledgement.

  She straightened up and waited for my eyes to meet hers. “The problem is you’re not the one with the hammer. You’re one of the heads that’s going to get smashed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Where are you?” Monica bellowed into the phone.

  “Here, in my office, down the hall.”

  “The news is calling you ‘an intended murder victim.’ Is that right? Should you be here?”

  “No, I should be on a warm beach with a Piña Colada.”

  “I’m for that. Meanwhile what should I tell all these TV and radio people?”

  “Tell ’em no comment. Find me if a client sneaks through, okay?”

  “You and every other lawyer in the office. Mrs. Kendall wants to come in around four.”

  “Tell her that’s fine.”

  Mail and phone calls consumed the day. I was on everyone’s list: late on discovery requests, missed deadlines on a dozen cases. Maybe I should give my malpractice insurance company a heads-up.

  “You’re a celebrity.” Betty sat down on the other side of my desk promptly at four. “Tell me about it.”

  I gave her a sanitized version, omitting the pool adventure and explaining how the Haskins’ murder had really gone down.

  “How will this affect Ellen Righetti?” she asked.

  “Hopefully she’ll be released within a week. I’ve got to file some paperwork.”

  “Sam would be so proud of you,” she said warmly.

  “Yeah. He’d also say that’s one down and one to go. But I took a wrong turn trying to find his killer, and now I’m back to square one.” I sighed.

  “But you’ve freed Ellen. Sam would say you’ve evened the scales.”

  I rubbed my thumb across the chiseled letters of the stone from Sam, too dispirited to respond.

  “Maybe this’ll help,” she said, hoisting up a pastel-colored boutique shopping bag and placing it on the desk. “I compared bonus payments from his last years at the firm with our checking account deposits. None of the bonuses came home after January, three years ago. That’s about when I took over the checking account.”

  Anthony Cullerton was killed in September two and a half years ago; Cullerton’s first check arrived in October. Did the amounts match?

  “Betty, does the date September fourteenth mean anything to you?”

  “Our anniversary is September fifteenth. Why?”

  “It’s probably nothing. I’m wondering if Sam was in town on September fourteenth two and a half years ago.”

  “Sometimes we went away for the weekend to celebrate. I can rummage through old calendars and see what I can find,” she said doubtfully.

  “That’d be a big help.”

  She nodded, nonplussed that I wasn’t telling her the significance of the date.

  “Has Tite talked to you yet?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I expected him to come calling long before this.”

  “Me too,” I said, relieved that the details of Sam’s financial life were still unknown to the police.

  Betty wrapped her arms around the shopping bag.

  “I’ll give you this only if you promise to review it and let me know what you come up with. Then we’ll tell Lieutenant Tite together,” she said firmly.

  “What do you take me for?”

  Her smile vanished. “I’m spooked, Susan. Sam and Benton were both pillars of the community. It seems like they didn’t know each other, but they were connected by the Righetti case.” She raised her hands, clapped the palms together in a prayer-like pose. “What else was Sam involved with that I don’t know about?”

  “Betty, you told me before that whatever Sam did with the money, he did it for a good reason. I believe that, and I know you do too,” I said in an effort to reassure her. But I felt like when I give a final argument, convincing everyone but myself.

  Sam received quarterly bonuses in the last three years, twelve in total. When I compared the bonus payments and the amounts the firm paid Sam after he became a judge to the deposits into the brokerage account, they matched perfectly and totaled almost $240,000.

  I put in a call to Kevin and told him the bonus totals. “Does that sound right to you?”

  “Yep, that’s right on. The partners call it the golden age. We took on two really big clients about three years ago, a bank and an insurance company. Remember we expanded and added three associate attorneys? There were only three partners then, Sam was one of ’em, and they made out. Now we have more partners, so the pie gets split a lot more ways. But Sam was a founding partner; they had a special clause in their partnership agreement, so he was still getting a large share of the firm’s profits after he went on the bench. Funny thing is, before we picked up those two clients, bonuses were just token amounts for everyone, even founding partners.”

  “Luck of the draw,” I muttered.

  “What d’ya mean?”

  Sam had a money tree just when he needed it to pay off Cullerton. Also, Betty never missed the bonuses because there hadn’t been any before she started taking care of the family finances.

  “Just that Sam was fortunate,” I answered lamely.

  “No, he deserved it. No one here begrudges him a penny. He volunteered on boards, did pro bono legal work for charities, really built up the firm. When the gravy train rolled, no one deserved the ride more than Sam.”

  “Spare me the Horatio Alger.”

  “Sounds like you’ve turned in your membership card in the Sam fan club,” Kevin observed.

  “Just tired. And I’m swamped here.”

  I refused his offer to help out, and we hung up. I played catch-up till long after darkness pushed the daylight aside.

  The phone rang on the after-hours number that only a chosen few know.

  “Marshfield Law.”

  “How are you?”

  Tite had never before opened a phone call with a social pleasantry.

  “Dandy, thanks. You?”

  “Grand.” He sounded relieved. “Remember Judge Kendall’s file on Ellen Righetti seemed a bit thin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Guess what we found in Benton’s locked desk?”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Four volumes of trial transcripts and Sam’s file on Brenda Haskins.”

  “The originals?” I squealed. “How did Benton get hold of that stuff?”

  “We found a key with it. You told me where Sam’s file was kept down in the firm’s basement, so I matched the key we found to the storeroom key. Bingo.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “The deductive mind at work. I started with the firm. Turns out Benton was a tax client of Theodore Iverson. Iverson specifically remembered a conversation they had about old files. Benton seemed concerned about security and storage in case he lost his records. So Iverson, wanting to impress him, not only tells him, but shows him the whole set-up, including the index book. All this happened right around the time Sam went on the bench.”

  “Bu
t the key?”

  “Iverson swears he didn’t give it to him and there’s no reason to suspect he’d jeopardize the firm’s security. My guess is Benton took it without the firm’s knowledge, had it duplicated and returned it ASAP. Tyler said it wouldn’t be unusual for a client to drop by the office two or three times a week at tax time to sign stuff and drop off documents, so Benton would have plenty of opportunity to ‘borrow’ the key. From what Benton told you that night, it seems he had a locksmith in his pocket.”

  “What does all this mean?” My synapses weren’t firing tonight.

  “Benton knew Sam was zeroing in on him as Gordon Haskins’ killer and the doc had to take him out.”

  “Benton’s no hero, but he didn’t kill Sam,” I said stubbornly.

  “I trust your instincts, Susan, but I’ve got to follow the yellow brick road, and it’s leading right to Benton.”

  I doodled the words “money trail’ on a note pad in the ensuing silence.

  “What’s going on with Gillespie?”

  “You’re full of questions tonight, Counselor.”

  “Tsk, tsk. I promised to stay away from her so you could grill her to your heart’s content.”

  “So kind of you,” he said dryly.

  “Her mother swore she was too sick to go to work that morning. She signed in at a neighborhood medical clinic at ten a.m.”

  “So for her to be Sam’s killer she would have had to have taken an early morning train to Joliet, snuck into the courthouse and been back in Chicago by ten?”

  “With a terrible case of the flu, confirmed by her clinic.”

  “Not likely.”

  “You haven’t asked about the attorney, Bartley, the one on the jail list,” Al pointed out. “It’s not like you to leave any stone unturned.”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you know he was Sam’s nephew?”

  “Everybody in the firm knows.”

  “He could have been in the library just like he says, but so far we haven’t verified it.”