Evidence of Guilt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “Why don’t you tell me about finding the bodies,” I said finally.

  “What’s to tell? I opened the door and they were there. Hard to miss ’em.”

  “This was Sunday morning, about ten?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What were you doing at the Cornell place?”

  “Looking for my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “My brother Kevin.” Bongo shaved the wood with short, quick strokes.”Turns out he was home, but I didn’t know that then. I thought he might be over talking to Mrs. Cornell.”

  “And you just happened to look inside the barn?”

  “I heard a noise, like a cat. I thought maybe it was trapped or something.” Bongo didn’t miss a beat, but something about his manner rang false.

  “Let’s get something straight. I know you and your friends used the barn as a place to hang out. That’s not what I’m concerned about right now. But I do want the truth.”

  Bongo glanced over at the house.

  “She can’t hear us,” I said. “And I’m certainly not going to tell her. Now, were you really looking for your brother?”

  “Just leave me alone. I already told the police everything I know.”

  “Were you meeting a friend?”

  He shook his head, eyes on his whittling.

  “Is the noise part true?”

  Silence.

  “You went in there to have a cigarette, didn’t you?”

  More silence.

  “Or maybe to look at magazines. The kind you don’t want your mother to see.”

  The knife scraped against the wood furiously.

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “Not that I saw. But I didn’t stick around to find out. As soon as I saw ’em, 1 was out of there.”

  “As soon as you saw the bodies?”

  He nodded.

  “How long are we talking about here? Five minutes? Ten minutes?”

  “Probably less than a minute. One look at them was enough.”

  I stood and rubbed my butt. The bench was not only hard and rough, but uneven. “Besides the two bodies, was there anything else that caught your eye that morning? Gum wrapper, matchbook, loose button? Anything at all.”

  “I tol’ you, as soon as I saw ’em, I tore out fast.”

  “And then what?”

  He looked perplexed.

  “What did you do after you left the barn?”

  “I came home and told my mom.”

  “And she called the police?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Did the police think you might have?”

  A shrug. “They asked.” He peeled off another long piece of wood with the knife.

  I watched him work for a moment. “What do you know about a man called Granger?”

  The knife stopped in midair. Bongo looked up. “I know who he is. Why?”

  “I understand he hung out around the barn, too. I was thinking maybe he saw something.”

  “Granger’s a fool. You can’t believe anything he says.”

  “I’d still like to talk to him. Any idea how I’d go about finding him?”

  “No.” Bongo’s vehemence surprised me. “You’d be wasting your time anyway,” he added, turning his attention back to his whittling.

  I picked up one of the smooth wood shavings from the ground. It had a sharp piney smell I remembered from my youth. “When you saw the bodies in the barn did you know right away who they were?”

  “I just assumed it was Mrs. Cornell and her little girl. I didn’t get too close.” Bongo stopped whittling and looked up at me, briefly, then turned his gaze away. “It was gross. Totally. So much worse than the . . .’’His voice faltered. “It was the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in my whole life. Makes me want to puke just thinking about it.”

  I could imagine how the memory might haunt him. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find them,” I said gently.

  His eyes grew teary and his bottom lip quivered. He kicked at the dirt and pine shavings with his toe. “Yeah, me too.”

  Maybe there was some truth to this “delicate” business after all.

  “Almost every night I dream about them. Still. They come out of nowhere, grinning at me, teasing me. Their touch is cold and clammy, like the trail of a slug. Some nights my whole body feels that way, and I have trouble breathing.”

  Indeed, talking about the event seemed to have the same effect. Bongo’s words were short, shallow stabs of sound. “They chase after me,” he said, wiping the corner of his eye with a dirty sleeve. “I try hiding from them, I try screaming. But they won’t leave me alone. No matter what I do, they’re there.”

  “Is there someone you can talk to about your dreams? A minister maybe, or a doctor?”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “It might.”

  He went back to his whittling. His skin was drained of color. “I don’t think so,” he said flatly. “I really don’t.”

  Chapter 9

  By the time I made it to the Hardings for dinner that evening, I was feeling more than a little burned out on the whole business of murder and its many repercussions. The last thing I wanted was to spend another three hours or so in the shadow of Wes Harding.

  But I’d promised Sam I’d be there, and I knew Jake and Grace were expecting me — although I suspected they weren’t any more excited at the prospect of the evening than I was. Having a child charged with murder had to be painful, and sharing that pain with a stranger, even an attorney, couldn’t be easy.

  My knock was answered by a young woman I took to be one of Wes’s sisters, probably the eighteen-year-old, although these days it’s hard to tell. She held a phone to her ear, punctuating the conversation on the other end with a strategically timed “Really?” and “What did he say?” She used the intervening stretch to motion me inside.

  The front foyer was large, with a high ceiling and a light oak floor. Off to the side, an ornately carved table held an arrangement of yellow roses and a large crystal bowl with three artistically placed ceramic pears. On the wall above was a portrait of three young women. I recognized my friend with the phone, and assumed the other two were her sisters. They all had fair complexions, pert noses and straight white teeth. Their features had nothing in common with Wes’s.

  “Mother’s in the kitchen,” the young woman mouthed, pointing me down the wide hallway. “The door straight ahead.”

  The young woman herself turned off into the den, leaving me to navigate my way to the kitchen on my own.

  It was one of those gourmet kitchens you see in the Sunday supplements, with a center island, professional- quality stove, brass hood, and counter tops of polished marble. Even though I hate to cook, I’d give anything to have a kitchen like that.

  “Mrs. Harding?” I said, pausing at the doorway. “I’m Kali O’Brien.”

  The woman looked up from the cake she was frosting, finishing the job with one smooth stroke, then removing her apron. She wore slacks and a silk blouse. Both looked to be expensive in that understated way that meant they probably carried a designer label as well as a hefty price tag. Her diamond jewelry had a similar simple elegance.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” She offered me her hand and a smile, but both seemed rather tentative. “Sorry I had to send Andrea to the door. This frosting sets up too quickly to leave it, even for a moment.”

  “No problem.”

  “And call me Grace. Under the circumstances, we can hardly stand on formality.” This last was said with a measure of embarrassment.

  At first impression, Grace Harding had appeared to be only a few years older than her daughter. Her hair was a frosted blond, cut to chin length and styled with an experienced hand. On closer inspection, I noticed the slightly uneven coloring of her skin and the network of fine lines around her mouth and eyes. She was an attractive woman nonetheless, and considerably younger than I’d expected. Maybe fifty at most. Which
meant she had to have been fairly young when Wes was born.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Grace asked. “The men are out back. I was just about to join them.”

  I accepted a glass of white wine and she poured another for herself.

  Her hands gripped the stemmed glass tightly. “This is a bit awkward, having your son’s attorney in for dinner.” She laughed nervously. “I don’t imagine Emily Post ever laid out the proper etiquette for a situation like this.”

  “Probably not.” As one who gave more weight to common sense than etiquette, however, I was hardly the last word on the matter.”This whole thing must be extremely difficult for you.”

  “My husband thought it was important that we all get to know one another.” Grace studied me silently for a moment, then sighed. “Well, I suppose we should join the others.”

  Holding my drink steady, I followed her out the French doors and onto a wide redwood deck where Sam and Jake were guffawing over some tale of political stupidity.

  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” Jake said when we’d been introduced.

  Jake Harding appeared to be in his late fifties, with a finely chiseled face, crinkly eyes and a full head of hair, silvered at the temples. His manner was relaxed and easy, like someone central casting would pick to play the compassionate doctor in a commercial for health coverage. “Sam’s been singing your praises for quite awhile now.”

  “I hope he put in a good word for himself as well.”

  “No need for that. Sam and I go back a long way. Did he ever tell you how we met?” Jake chuckled, pumping more levity into the situation than it seemed to warrant. “Our fishing lines got tangled. There wasn’t another soul for miles around, and we ended up not ten feet from each other without knowing it.”

  Sam smiled as he passed me a platter of chips and dip. “Let’s not bore her with the details.”

  “You’re just worried word will get out that you couldn’t cast a straight line.”

  “It wasn’t me and you know it.”

  Grace smiled, a strained tweaking of the mouth that never reached her eyes.

  I scooped up a handful of chips, settled into one of the comfortably upholstered deck chairs, and gazed at the canyon beyond. The Hardings’ house was set on the ridge, one of a number of houses that had raised the ire of environmentalists and old-time townsfolk over the past dozen or so years.

  Generally, I tended to side with the slow-growth people. I liked my hills dotted with trees rather than houses, and I’d take a pasture of cows over a strip mall any day. Nonetheless, if you were one of the lucky ones who could afford to live up here, I could understand how you might see things differently. The setting was hard to beat. And from what I’d seen of the house, it was nothing to sniff at either.

  “This is beautiful,” I said, genuinely impressed.

  Jake nodded. “We spent a lot of time designing the house to reap the full benefit of the site.”

  “We put the pool on the other side of the house,” Grace added. “When the girls were younger their play area was over there, too.”

  I reflected, briefly, on the many ways Wes’s childhood had differed from that of his half-sisters. Even, I imagined, after his mother had married Jake.

  “What was Wes like as a boy?” I asked, finding myself genuinely curious.

  Grace laughed self-consciously. “Goodness, that was quite awhile ago.”

  “I’m just looking for a general impression.”

  “Well, he wasn’t an easy child, even as a baby. It seemed like he was always wound up as tight as a top. He kept it inside, though, so it was hard to know what he was thinking. Wes was shy, too.” She took a sip of wine and frowned. “Maybe that’s not the right word, but he was never comfortable with new situations or with people he didn’t know well. He didn’t make friends easily.”

  Jake reached for a corn chip. “Wes was ten when I married Grace, fourteen when Andrea was born. He never had half the advantages the girls have had.”

  “You tried,” Grace said with emotion. “You gave him a home and loved him like your own son.”

  “He had a way of finding trouble in spite of it. Maybe if we’d—”

  “We did the best we could.” Grace’s voice was sharp. “And he’s never seemed to appreciate any of it.”

  Jake’s jaw tightened.

  Grace touched her husband’s hand, offering an apology for her snappishness. She turned to me. “As you can tell, this is something of a sore point between us.”

  “I imagine raising children is never easy.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Jake said with a laugh. “Let me get more wine.” He went inside and returned with the bottle.

  “I take it Wes didn’t grow up in this house,” I said as Jake refilled my glass.

  “We moved in the year he left home,” Grace explained. The year Wes was sent away, I amended silently.

  Jake finished refilling the other glasses. “When I started my practice here I lived in that little place on Elm that Wes has now. Used to make house calls in those days. A terribly inefficient way to practice medicine, but you do get to know your patients.”

  “How did Wes end up in the house on Elm?”

  “We moved to Pine Hills right after we were married, but we kept the old house as a rental property. It came vacant again just when Wes moved back to town. The place needed work and he agreed to fix it up in lieu of rent. He’s done a good job too.”

  “As far as it’s gone,” Grace amended.

  From Jake’s expression it was clear they’d been over this ground before. “Grace thought we should hire a professional,” he explained. “Get the whole thing fixed up quickly and sell it.”

  “With Andrea headed off to college, we could use the extra money.”

  “We’re doing fine without it. Anyway, Wes has been taking his time with the renovation — sanding the wood, stripping the old wallpaper off before painting, re-plumbing the fixtures, that sort of thing. No question it’s slow going, but he was doing it the right way.”

  “I suppose I should be glad he found something to do right. Lord knows there hasn’t been much of that.” Grace raised her glass to her lips, then set it down abruptly. “I think I’ll check the roast. It should be about ready by now.”

  “Wes’s arrest has been hard on her,” Jake said, when she left. “She’s worried about what will happen to him, worried about what it will do to the girls. She’s even afraid that it might affect my medical practice. Although I must say that so far people have been very understanding.”

  “I should hope so,” Sam humphed. “Anyone who’s raised a kid knows you don’t have a damn bit of a say in how they turn out.”

  Just then a lanky, barefoot and bare-legged girl appeared in the doorway.

  “Speak of the devil,” Jake called out good-naturedly. “Pammy, come meet Ms. O’Brien.”

  “Kali,” I amended, hoping he wasn’t one of those parents who insisted their children address every adult by surname.

  Pammy wasn’t particularly interested either way. She murmured a “Hi,” stole a quick sip of her father’s wine, gave him an impish grin when he started to protest, then grabbed a handful of chips and headed back inside.

  “Mom says dinner’s about ready,” she called over her shoulder.

  Jake laughed. “Case in point. The girl has a mind of her own. You can be sure that whatever I say to her goes in one ear and out the other.” He stood. “I’ll go see if I can give Grace a hand.”

  I started to follow, but Sam cornered me and we hung back for a moment.

  “How’d it go yesterday with Wes?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “The man has an attitude.”

  “Wouldn’t you, if you were looking at murder one?”

  “I guess it would depend on whether or not I was guilty. In either case, the last person I’d want to piss off is my attorney.”

  “Got to you, did he?” Sam’s bushy white brows pulled tight above his eyes. “If yo
u’re going to survive in this business, Kali, you’ve got to develop a thick skin. Concentrate on building your case and don’t let Wes, or anyone else, get to you.”

  “How are we going to build any kind of decent case when all the evidence lines up on the other side?” I told him about the lab report Curt had shown me the evening before.

  “I got a call about that myself, yesterday afternoon.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  He sighed. As I had predicted, his response was philosophical. “I think we’re going to have to find a way to deal with it.”

  Inside, Grace was busy with the salad, Jake with the wine. Andrea was no longer clutching the phone to her ear, but she held it in her hand as she put the finishing touches on the table. I seized the opportunity to slide down the hall to the bathroom. Only I suppose in this instance, powder room would be a more apt description. Marble floor and vanity, polished brass fixtures, large mirrored walls and a display of fancy soaps and lotions. It was the sort of place where you end up wiping your hands on your slacks because you don’t want to dirty the towels.

  By the time I rejoined the others, we were ready to sit down for dinner. Andrea had detached herself from the telephone but looked as though she’d rather be clutching it than her dinner fork. When Grace introduced us, she forced a smile, then looked away.

  Except for the expression of utter boredom, Andrea was a pretty girl, with shoulder-length hair, blond like her mother’s, and a clear, pale complexion. She wore the black leggings she’d worn earlier, but she’d changed the oversized tee for a silk shirt. She lifted a brow at her sister’s loose-fitting cutoff overalls.

  “You’re coming to dinner like that? You look like you should be milking cows.”

  Pammy mooed in her face.

  “Girls, please. We have company."

  “Which is exactly,” Andrea huffed, “why she should make an effort to look presentable.”

  Pammy gave us a silent but dramatic version of “who? me?” Not as pretty as her sister, Pammy had a mouth full of braces and hair that was neither blond nor brown. Although it had been permed at some point in the past, it was now more unruly than curly, and would probably have obscured half her face without the barrettes that held it in place. But there was an appealing perkiness about her that Andrea was lacking.