Murder Under the Desert Moon

by Maria Grazia Swan

  As long as Helen had a car and driver for the next two hours, she might as well do something useful. Mostly, she just needed time to think about how to get Melissa to leave her alone without upsetting her nieces unnecessarily. There had to be a way to offer her nieces some peace of mind, without having to endure Melissa.

  She used to have people who could take care of this sort of thing for her, with a single phone call. A brief word with her ex-husband's security staff, or one of the lawyers he kept on retainer, and the problem would have gone away.

  That was the answer, Helen thought, suddenly energized. Lawyers. She didn't need a whole fleet of them, like her ex-husband did. A single competent lawyer ought to be enough to handle one highly caffeinated, overly enthusiastic nurse.

  A black Lincoln Town Car crunched along the gravel in the driveway, stopping with the passenger door directly lined up with the front path. A bald, wiry, dark-suited man emerged from the driver's side and headed for the cottage's front door.

  "I'm going to see my lawyer," Helen said on her way out of the cottage. "Lock up when you leave."

  * * *

  "Quick, quick." Helen gestured for the driver to return to the front seat without waiting to usher her into the back. "I can close my own door. We need to get out of here before she comes after us."

  "Most folks choose a less conspicuous vehicle for a getaway car, you know, but you're the boss." The driver climbed into the front. "For the next two hours, at least. They did tell you it was a two-hour minimum, didn't they?"

  "No problem." Helen pulled the door shut behind her before checking over her shoulder at the door to reassure herself Melissa couldn't possibly stop them now. Melissa could call Lily to complain, but it was too late to do anything more than that. "Just start driving."

  The driver put the car into gear and started down the driveway. "The dispatcher didn't tell me where we're going."

  "To see my lawyer."

  "Not planning on suing me, are you?" the driver said with a nervous chuckle.

  "I'm not suing anyone at the moment," Helen said, "but it never hurts to be prepared."

  The driver reached the end of the driveway. "Which way?"

  Instead of answering him, she leaned forward to read his identification card on the dashboard, and said, "Are you from around here, Mr. Clary?"

  "Call me Jack," he said. "It's too confusing otherwise. The Clary name is more common around here than Smith or Jones. You'll see, once you get to know the area."

  She'd been spending summers here in Wharton for fifteen years now, and it was only now that she realized she didn't know much about the town. She'd always been delivered to the cottage by her husband's staff and then picked up a few weeks later, without ever leaving the property. It was different now. Wharton was her home, not just a vacation spot.

  "Do you know any good lawyers?"

  "My cousin Hank used this guy named Tate a couple years ago," Jack said. "He must be good, because he kept Hank out of jail, and if anyone deserves to be in jail, it's Hank. Along with his brothers. They'd probably be locked up, too, come to think of it, if they hadn't also hired this Tate guy."

  A criminal lawyer wasn't what she'd had in mind—Melissa was a minor nuisance, not a criminal—but if the alternative was going back and being referred to as sweetie or honey or something equally saccharine, she might as well check him out. "Tate it is, then. Take me to his office, please."

  Helen watched out the side window as the thick woods of the acreage around her cottage gave way to neighborhoods of large houses and only a few strategically planted saplings, and then finally to urban lots with more paving than grass. She recognized the approach to the center of town, and, while she'd never paid much attention before, it was probably where the local attorneys had their offices.

  A few minutes later, Jack parked the limo in front of a weathered-looking Cape, not unlike Helen's own cottage, except that it was on a tiny lot in a more urban zone and no trees. There was a small paved parking area in front, a long handicapped ramp leading up to the main entrance, and a discreet sign on the building that read Tate & Bancroft, PC, Attorneys At Law.

  The car door swung open, and Jack was standing there, offering Helen his hand to help her out of the back seat. He probably did the same thing for all of his customers, but it only reminded her that she wasn't the same person she'd been before the lupus had started to really act up. Before then, she'd have been out of the vehicle and halfway to the building's entrance by the time the driver could have unbuckled his seatbelt.

  It didn't matter so much what Jack thought of her abilities, but lawyers worked in a world where image was everything. Their own image, their client's image, and even the judicial system's image. They knew it, but few realized how much they, themselves, were taken in by appearances and failed to see reality. Chances were that this Tate guy wasn't going to see Helen as the strong, smart, attention-grabbing person she used to be; he was going to see the decrepit, slow, and easy-to-ignore person she'd become. If that was all he saw, he might dismiss her as not worthy of his time.

  Jack bent down to look inside the car. "Do you need help?"

  "No." The lawyer might not have time to see her without an appointment, but if she didn't at least try to see him, she'd have to find somewhere else to go. She wanted to be sure Melissa would have left before they returned to the cottage. Being rejected by an attorney wasn't as bad as being accepted by Melissa.

  Helen slid to the edge of the seat. "I can get out on my own, thank you."

  Many people, especially in the service industry, would have insisted on helping, but Jack took a step back. She made a mental note to leave him an extra-large tip, as a thank you for respecting her wishes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Helen left Jack to wait for her in the limo, where he was happily playing video games on his phone. She'd also left her cane behind, so her weakness wouldn't be the first thing her new attorney noticed about her.

  The small reception area was unoccupied. To Helen's right were a couple leather-upholstered arm chairs that had all seen better days and a faded plaid sofa on the adjoining wall. Directly in front of her, its back to the third wall, was a heavy wood desk that was just large enough to hold the bare minimum needed for a receptionist: multi-line telephone, clunky computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, and phone-message pad.

  The chair behind the desk was unoccupied, the computer wasn't humming, and the phone console didn't have a single line lit up. The surface of the desk was so tidy it looked abandoned, rather than temporarily unoccupied while the receptionist went to lunch. Helen looked closer and noticed a light coating of dust on everything.

  A loud thump off to her left startled her. She turned to explain that she wasn't snooping or stealing, but had just been looking for some indication that the office was occupied, so she could arrange a consultation. There was no one to explain to, though. No one in the room except herself.

  Next came the softer, more protracted sound of a box being slid along carpeting. Helen followed the noise down the hallway that led out of the reception area, hoping that no stairs would be required. Finally, she came to an open doorway. Inside the room, a tall, lean man in a dark blue t-shirt and faded jeans stood with his back to her, emptying desk drawers into moving boxes.

  She knocked on his door, and he looked over his shoulder at her. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'd like to talk to a lawyer."

  "I was one," he said. "The name's Tate. But I'm retired now, so you want to talk to my nephew Adam Bancroft."

  He didn't look old enough to be retired. There was a bit of gray in his hair, but he couldn't be any older than she was. Of course, that didn't mean anything; her career was over too. "If you're retired, why is your name still on the sign?"

  "Tradition." He pulled another thick pile of papers out of a drawer and tossed them into the remaining space in the box on top of the desk.

  "False advertising," Helen said.

  "Whatever." He sealed the to
p of the box. "I'm no longer in the business of arguing, and I never did it unless I was paid. You should talk to my nephew. He's at a closing right now, but he should be back soon."

  This whole thing had been a mistake. She should have taken the time to do some real research on the local legal community, instead of coming here on a whim. "It's not that important."

  "Interesting." Tate stopped packing and turned to face Helen, leaning back against the desk and peering at her suspiciously. "In my experience, by the time a client gets around to talking to a lawyer, it's already a crisis, not something that can wait. Why don't you tell me what you think isn't so important? If it's that simple, I can probably answer your question right now. If not, I'll pass it on to my nephew for you. He's looking for new clients."

  "I'm not ready to hire an attorney yet," Helen said. "I'm just at the point of interviewing candidates."

  "One surprise after another." Tate folded his arms over his chest. "Twenty years in practice, and I've never had a client interview me before."

  "Who would make an important decision like hiring a lawyer without first getting some background information?"

  "Pretty much everyone," Tate said. "They just pick a name at random from the phone book."

  "Not terribly businesslike." But, she had to admit, probably no worse than choosing a lawyer based on a stranger's recommendation.

  "You're a businesswoman, then?" he said. "And you need a business lawyer?"

  "More a general practitioner, I think."

  "My nephew's the right person for that. He does corporate, real estate, and probate work." Tate reached behind him to grab a sticky note and pen, clearly no longer intrigued by her situation. "Want me to leave him a message to call you?"

  "It really isn't that important."

  "At least tell me your name."

  Helen opened her mouth to snap at him, to let him know she didn't think that was funny. And then she realized he wasn't joking. For the last twenty years, it had seemed as if everyone had known, if not her first name, at least her last name and her status as first lady of the state. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had to introduce herself to someone who didn't already know who she was, at least in relation to her husband and his political status.

  She'd wanted to stand on her own, and now she could. If a prominent local attorney didn't recognize her face, her newly official name wasn't likely to enlighten him, since only the most avid state-politics junkie would connect her maiden name with that of the governor's ex-wife.

  "I'm Helen Binney."

  She watched him carefully, but Tate wrote down her name with no indication he considered her anything other than the average woman on the street. It was just what she'd wanted, but not as satisfying as she'd expected it would be.

  Helen checked her watch. She'd been gone less than thirty minutes so far, probably not long enough for her babysitter to run out of soda. Besides, Helen had already paid for the next ninety minutes of limousine rental. Might as well get her money's worth. "You said business law is your nephew's specialty. What's yours?"

  "These days, it's woodworking," Tate said, reaching for another box and throwing things into it at random. "Before I retired, I did criminal defense work and general litigation."

  "I don't need a criminal defense lawyer, and I can't imagine I ever will."

  "You never know," Tate didn't pause in his packing. "I'm the best around here."

  "You might have been once," Helen said. "But you're retired now."

  He spared her a glance. "I'd be willing to come out of retirement for an interesting case."

  "Like what?"

  "The right homicide might do it." Tate closed the box and gave it a push toward the doorway. "There hasn't been an interesting murder around here in decades."

  "I'll keep that in mind. If I decide to kill someone, I'll make sure it's an interesting kind of murder." Curious despite herself, Helen asked, "What is a boring murder, anyway?"

  "The usual," Tate said, starting to fill another box. "Someone loses his temper over something trivial, bashes a spouse or significant other over the head, and regrets it right away, but then panics and runs away while the victim bleeds to death."

  "If I killed someone, it would definitely be an interesting case," Helen said. "I don't have much of a temper, and even if I lost it, I can think of lots of other people I'd rather bash over the head than my ex-husband. At the top of the list right now is my visiting nurse."

  "Let me give you some free legal advice, then." Tate turned to face her, abandoning his packing for the moment. "If you've got a hit list, don't write it down. And don't tell me your plans ahead of time. I'm still an officer of the court, and I'd be obliged to turn you in."

  "You're just like everyone else I know." She shook her head in fake disappointment. "Always warning me against every little plan I make, never letting me do anything fun."

  "Yeah," Tate said with as much sincerity as she'd shown. "Life's unfair like that. I'd never have gone to law school if it weren't for family pressure. I could have been a homeless drifter for the past twenty years, and instead I wasted them practicing law."

  "I won't waste any more of your time, then." Helen turned to leave. "I've got a visiting nurse to dispose of. In an interesting manner."

  "I appreciate the thought," he said, "but I'm still obliged to advise you not to kill anyone."

  Helen retraced her steps to the front door, vaguely disappointed that she couldn't hire Tate. He wasn't like any of the lawyers at her husband's beck and call, but he seemed every bit as competent as they were. If she had him on her side, Melissa would be gone before she could drink another can of soda, and her nieces would be too amused by him to be upset. If Melissa continued to be a problem, Helen would just have to convince Tate to come out of retirement. Preferably without having to kill anyone.

  * * *

  Over the course of the next two weeks, Helen tried scrapbooking, like she'd told her nieces she'd planned to do. Melissa, a political junkie, helped sort the hundreds of pictures, fascinated by the candid shots of famous politicians.

  Helen found them depressing, a reminder that she had nothing to show for twenty years of hard work except a box full of pictures of people she no longer cared about. Thinking she might find scrapbooking more interesting if she actually took the pictures instead of just organizing and embellishing them, she purchased a camera and figured out the basics for using it before her nieces made their regular Saturday lunchtime visit.

  Helen had opened the front door to let them in, noticing that her cane wasn't hanging on the doorknob. She must have left it in Jack's Town Car when he'd taken her to the camera shop. She'd have to ask him about it later.

  For now, she needed to convince her nieces that Melissa really wasn't working out. Helen snapped pictures of them while explaining how annoying the visiting nurse was. It turned out to be more difficult to put into words than she'd expected. She told them about how Melissa was showing up on days when she wasn't scheduled, letting herself into the cottage with the key that had been given to her only for emergencies. And then there was the blaring of the local talk radio station throughout her entire visit. Helen could have been lying on the floor, slowly dying from internal injuries, having fallen the night before, and she'd have been a goner before Melissa finished adjusting the radio and deigned to notice her patient. Helen had taken to hiding the radio after each visit, but the nurse managed to home in on it with the speed and precision of a GPS tracker.

  Laura wavered, but Lily held fast, insisting that those were trivial nuisances, and any replacement would have similar foibles.

  There was also the matter of Melissa's clumsiness, but Helen was reluctant to mention those incidents. She couldn't entirely blame the nurse for inadvertently drowning an entire bottle's worth of expensive pills. It had been an accident, after all, something that could have happened to anyone. Never mind that it had been the one drug Helen couldn't ever skip, not even a single dose, without the risk of a
serious flare-up. Fortunately, she kept an extra two-week supply in an emergency bag, a habit she'd picked up from the time she'd had to evacuate the governor's mansion once, due to a bomb threat, and they hadn't been allowed back in for a week. And then there was also the time that Melissa had bumped into Helen, knocking her onto the floor. It wasn't exactly Melissa's fault, even if it had caused Helen some bruising and a strained muscle as she struggled to get back to her feet.

  Melissa's clumsiness had had more serious consequences than the noisy radio, but Helen was reluctant to mention it. Her nieces might consider the fall, in particular, as proof that she needed round-the clock care. The only thing worse than Melissa's current visits was Melissa visiting even more often.

  Laura and Lily had left after lunch, unconvinced of Melissa's evils, and Helen had braced herself for the next unscheduled visit from the nurse. Melissa apparently believed in a day of rest, and didn't show up at the cottage on Sunday, but by Monday morning, the return of the nurse and her soda supplies was inevitable.

  Helen put her breakfast dishes into the dishwasher and then puttered around the cottage, tidying it up. Not that there was any real cleaning to do. The place was small enough that it didn't require much maintenance, and a cleaning crew came in once a month to do the things that required mobility or strength.

  Finally, Helen tossed aside the dusting cloth, and headed over to her computer to view the pictures she'd taken yesterday. She opened the pictures folder to the first shot: Lily glaring into the camera.

  It made her smile, but it wasn't a great picture. It wasn't even a good one. She scrolled through the other shots, and they ranged from out-of-focus to mediocre. What was she doing wrong?

  She was still mulling it over when she heard a car in the driveway. A moment later, Melissa was pounding on the front door and shouting, "It's me, Melissa. Come let me in. My hands are full."

  Helen pushed herself onto her feet, only then realizing how long she'd been sitting there, poring over the photographs. Her joints had stiffened, and it took a few moments before she was ready to walk across the room. When she finally opened the door, Melissa brushed past her on the way to the refrigerator with the three six-packs she was carrying. The push sent Helen off-balance, and she grabbed the door, desperate to keep herself from falling over while Melissa was there to witness her weakness and make it more difficult to stand back up. Once she had her feet under her again, she considered heading on out the open door and down the front steps, but she still hadn't found her walking cane. Besides, it was a little too chilly to sit outside for the duration of Melissa's visit.