Woman with a Gun

by Phillip Margolin

  “Not a one. I’ve always been surprised by that. Frank Janowitz did say that the stamps and coins would probably be sold to private collectors who weren’t bothered by the fact that they were stolen goods, so I could see how they might simply disappear.”

  “You’d think some item would have surfaced by now,” Stacey said.

  “Maybe not. Kathy Moran shot Gary Kilbride soon after the robbery. If he and Crouse were crime partners and Kilbride killed Crouse and took the stolen items, Kilbride might not have had a chance to get rid of the loot before he was killed. The stolen stamps, coins, and antique firearms could be languishing in a storage locker or another cache no one has been able to discover.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Stacey made some notes. “Have you kept track of Megan Cahill and Kathy Moran?” she asked when she was done.

  “I did try to keep tabs on everyone who was involved in the case for a while but I lost interest when it became obvious that there were no new leads. I do know that Kathy Moran still lives in Palisades Heights.”

  “Didn’t she have problems with drugs?”

  Jack nodded. “She became famous overnight because of the Woman with a Gun photograph and got caught up in the celebrity lifestyle. She was in and out of rehab before moving back to the coast.”

  “What about Megan Cahill?”

  “Her life was pretty hectic, too. Advantage Investments was sued by Armand Tuttle. An investigation showed that Raymond Cahill had cheated several investors. Kevin Mercer claimed he knew nothing about it. There were lawsuits, and the investors were paid back. Settling the lawsuits drained away a lot of the money Raymond had accumulated and his other wives and children tied up the estate in litigation, so Megan didn’t come away with much.”

  “Didn’t she have her fifteen minutes of fame, too?” Stacey asked.

  “The publicity from the case landed her a spot on a reality TV show but it only lasted one season.”

  “Do you know where she’s living now?”

  “She still owns the Palisades Heights house, but she married Kevin Mercer and she was living in L.A. most of the year.”

  “She married Cahill’s partner?” Stacey said.

  “They got to know each other during the litigation over the stock fraud.”

  “What happened to Mercer?”

  “Advantage went bankrupt, but I read that Mercer started a new company that’s doing well.”

  “Are Megan and Mercer still together?”

  “I think they are, but I’ve also heard that they’re separated.”

  “Did you ever think Kevin Mercer was the third man?” Stacey asked. “He could have hired Crouse to kill Cahill and he knew about Cahill’s collection.”

  “That’s an interesting idea. You have a good imagination. I think your book is going to be pretty good.”

  Jack looked at his watch. “I hope I’ve been helpful but I’m going to have to kick you out now. I have to be in court this afternoon and I need some time to prepare.”

  Stacey closed her laptop and stood up. She smiled at Jack. “You’ve been a terrific help. Thanks for taking so much time to talk with me.”

  Jack returned the smile. “Good luck with the writing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Two days after her interview with Jack Booth, Stacey tossed a suitcase into the trunk of a rental car, pushed a CD into the player on the dashboard, and set off for the coast. During the drive to Palisades Heights she felt like she was cruising through an art gallery that specialized in landscape paintings. Above her, puffy white clouds drifted through an azure sky. On both sides of the highway, farmland, divided into squares of yellow, green, and brown, stretched out until it met rolling green hills. This pastoral scene soon gave way to towering evergreen forests, and bends in the road suddenly revealed white water bouncing along fast-moving rivers. Then the highway wound out of a low mountain range and joined a coastal highway giving Stacey her first glimpse of the rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean through the veil of a low-hanging fog.

  Stacey was in a great mood when she parked at the Oceanside Motel. As soon as she unpacked, she walked onto her balcony. Stacey had seen the Atlantic during a weekend excursion to the Hamptons with some of the women from Wilde, Levine and Barstow. The Pacific’s rocky coastline seemed more violent and untamed.

  Stacey’s stomach began to growl. She was going to ask at the motel office for a restaurant suggestion when she thought of the perfect place to eat. Ocean Avenue was mobbed with raucous children, harried parents, and happy, hand-holding couples. Almost everyone was dressed in jeans or shorts and T-shirts and Stacey felt overdressed in the tan suit and sky blue, man-tailored shirt she’d chosen for her interview.

  Stacey found the Seafarer at the end of a block populated by art galleries, clothing boutiques, coffee shops, and a bookstore. Her pulse quickened as she walked into the tavern where Kathy Moran had tended bar before fate sent her to the beach beneath Raymond Cahill’s vacation home. The hostess showed her to a table near a large fieldstone fireplace. As she walked across the dimly lit room, her eye was drawn to photographs of ocean scenes that hung on the wall among the nautical paraphernalia. She didn’t need to read the captions to know who had taken them. Stacey ordered a cup of clam chowder, a plate of fried oysters, and a Coke. While she waited for her food, she jotted down a description of the Seafarer.

  By the time Stacey finished lunch, the morning fog had burned off and the sun was shining on the crowds on Ocean Avenue. There was no breeze to cool the air and she was perspiring by the time she found the address for Baker and Kraft. Stacey had called from Portland to set up an appointment with Henry Baker, but Mr. Baker’s secretary had informed her that Mr. Baker had suffered a stroke and only came to the office infrequently. When Stacey explained why she was calling, the secretary had suggested that she talk to Mr. Kraft, who had also worked on the case.

  The law firm was on the second floor of a building three blocks north of the tavern. A narrow entryway opened into a stairwell between a store that sold fudge and a store that sold kites. Stacey walked up to the second floor and into a waiting room. A middle-aged woman looked up from her computer and smiled.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “My name is Stacey Kim and I have an appointment with Mr. Kraft.”

  The smile widened. “Oh, yes, the writer. He’s expecting you. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Stacey sat on a couch across from the reception desk and looked down a hallway that stretched along the length of the second floor. A few minutes later, a door in the middle of the hall opened and a young man in jeans and a faded Amherst T-shirt walked into the corridor. He had wavy brown hair, kind brown eyes, and a welcoming smile. From a distance, Stacey took him for a twenty something. When he drew closer she saw a few gray hairs and some lines on his tanned face and upped her guess by ten years.

  “Hi, Stacey. I’m Glen Kraft. Henry wasn’t well enough today to come to the office, so you’ll have to make do with me.”

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Stacey said as she got to her feet.

  “Your project has me intrigued. Come on back.”

  Kraft’s office looked out on Ocean Avenue. The walls were decorated with Kraft’s law and undergraduate degrees and certificates attesting to his admission to federal and state bar associations, but the thing that drew Stacey’s eye was a photograph of Kraft standing next to a huge fish. The attorney saw where she was looking and smiled.

  “That’s a blue marlin I snagged in Australia. Do you fish?”

  Stacey was tempted to say, Not if I can help it, but she thought it was more politic to simply say, “No. Is it dangerous?”

  “Not if you know what you’re doing and have the right equipment. But it sure is exciting. You should try it sometime. If you’re here for a while you should go out on a sports fishing boat and try to catch some salmon.”

  “Thanks, that sounds like fun,” Stacey said, trying her hardest to seem excited.

/>   Glen laughed. “You’re not much of an outdoors type, are you?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Well, you turned green when I mentioned deep sea fishing. That was a clue. And you’re not exactly dressed for the beach.”

  Stacey blushed. “I grew up in the Midwest. We don’t have a lot of beaches where I come from.”

  “I don’t usually dress like this at work but I thought I’d take you on a walk along the shore to the Cahills’ house so you can see where Kathy Moran shot her famous photo.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Did you pack shorts or jeans and sneakers?”

  “I did. I was planning to go to the beach after we talked, but I’d appreciate a tour.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  Stacey told him.

  “That’s only a few blocks from here. Let’s go to your motel so you can change and I’ll tell you what I remember about the case while we walk.”

  Glen told his receptionist that he would be out for a while and they went down the staircase to the street.

  “So, how did you get interested in the Cahill case?” Glen asked as they headed toward Stacey’s motel.

  “I moved to New York from the Midwest after I got an MFA. My plan was to expand a short story I’d written into a novel, but I ran into a brick wall. Then I went to MoMA and saw Woman with a Gun and it was . . .”

  Stacey stopped talking. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it. But I just knew I had to find out the story behind the photograph, and that I was meant to write a novel inspired by it. So I quit my job and moved to Oregon, and here I am.”

  Stacey stopped, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but I get excited just thinking about the book. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I’ve never had the urge to write a novel but I get it. You don’t have a book deal, right? You’re writing the book on spec?”

  Stacey nodded.

  “I admire your guts, just packing up and leaving everything behind to follow a dream. It’s very romantic. Although you should be in Paris, France, instead of Palisades Heights, Oregon.”

  Stacey laughed.

  “So what can I do to help?” Glen asked.

  “I guess the best thing would be for you to just talk about the case—how you got involved, what you remember about it and the people who were mixed up in it.”

  Glen waited on the landing outside Stacey’s second-floor room while she changed. There was a beach access behind the motel and Glen told Stacey about his and Henry Baker’s involvement in the Cahill case while they walked along the shore.

  “Then Mrs. Cahill claimed that some of her memory had returned,” Glen concluded. “She told the police that her ex-husband, Parnell Crouse, was the man who attacked her and Raymond Cahill.”

  “Why did you say that ‘she claimed that some of her memory had returned’?” Stacey asked. “Did you doubt her?”

  “Not really.”

  “You didn’t have any second thoughts?”

  “Personally, no, but it was convenient for Crouse to be the killer.”

  “Why do you say that?” Stacey asked.

  “Shortly after Megan accused Crouse, he was found in his car on a logging road. He’d been shot to death and a coin from Mr. Cahill’s collection was found in his car. With Crouse dead, there was no one to contradict Megan when she said that Crouse had killed her husband. And Megan was in the hospital when the ME said Crouse had been killed so she was off the hook for her ex-husband’s murder.”

  “Jack Booth told me that Mrs. Cahill could still have been involved in both murders if she had an accomplice who gave her an alibi by killing Crouse while she was in the hospital.”

  “That was one possibility,” Glen conceded. “But there was another. While Raymond Cahill’s murder was being investigated, a paroled convict named Gary Kilbride was shot and killed when he broke into Kathy Moran’s house.”

  “Mr. Booth told me all about Kilbride.”

  “Okay. Then you know one theory the police had was that Kilbride had learned about Raymond Cahill’s collection by reading an article in the Gazette and hooked up with Crouse to pull off the job.”

  “I’d love to read that article. Do you know where I can get a copy?”

  “I had our file in Megan’s case brought up from storage when you told me you were coming. I’m pretty certain that there’s a copy in it. You can read the article when we get back to the office.”

  “Thanks. What did Mrs. Cahill do once she was in the clear?”

  “She flew back to L.A.”

  “Did she ever regain all of her memory?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Do you think Mrs. Cahill is innocent?”

  “She insisted that she was, but being objective about the facts you could go both ways based on what the investigation uncovered.”

  Glen stopped and turned toward the sea.

  “This is it,” he said.

  Stacey was confused for a few seconds. Then she understood that Glen was telling her that she was staring at the same eternal ebb and flow that had hypnotized the woman with a gun. Stacey’s heart beat faster. This was the moment she had been waiting for ever since her fateful visit to the museum. She took a deep breath to calm herself and let her imagination take her back in time until she was Megan Cahill standing in the moonlight, holding the Smith & Wesson revolver that had been used to kill her husband.

  Stacey turned her back to the ocean. The Cahill house loomed above her. Weathered gray wooden stairs led up to a deck. She could see part of a picture window, a chair, and an umbrella. Stacey had brought a steno pad in case she needed to take notes. She jotted down her impressions of the house, the way the sun felt and the way the sea looked.

  Finally, Stacey looked down the beach in the direction of the Seafarer and tried to imagine that she was Kathy Moran, searching for a shot she could use in her one-woman show and stumbling on the opportunity of a lifetime.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Glen brought the Bankers Boxes containing the Cahill files to an empty office at the end of the hall and left Stacey with her treasure trove. Stacey rifled through each box quickly to get a feel for the contents, making notes as she went. The edition of the Palisades Heights Gazette with the article about Raymond Cahill was in a box with miscellaneous items. She set it aside and read the police and autopsy reports of the Cahill murder, Crouse’s murder, and the Kilbride shooting.

  The sun was starting to set when she finally opened the Gazette to the society page and the article about Raymond Cahill and she was almost finished reading it when Glen walked into the office.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Great! The stuff in the files is going to help me make my book very realistic. I was worried about writing a scene with a medical examiner, but I can take the autopsy report and rewrite it as a conversation.”

  “I’m glad the stuff is useful.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Look, I’m done for the day and I was going to get something to eat. Do you want to join me?”

  Stacey looked at her watch. “Seven o’clock! How did that happen?”

  Glen smiled. “So?”

  “Just let me straighten up.”

  “I’ll meet you in the reception area. Do you like seafood?”

  “You sort of have to in Palisades Heights, don’t you?”

  Glen drove to a restaurant overlooking the ocean and made sure they were seated next to a picture window so Stacey could see the sunset.

  “The view is so beautiful,” Stacey said when the waiter left with their order for cocktails.

  “That’s one of the perks of living in Palisades Heights,” Glen answered.

  “Do you like practicing law here?”

  “I do. I didn’t at first. When I graduated from law school I wanted to work for one of the big Portland firms, but the market for lawyers was really bad and I was having trouble getting any kind of
job. My dad knew Henry and he mentioned my dilemma. By a lucky coincidence, Henry’s associate had just quit.

  “I wasn’t very enthusiastic about coming back to my hometown and I definitely didn’t look forward to a small-town practice. But a funny thing happened. After a while I started enjoying representing real people instead of faceless corporations. I don’t make the money I’d make in a big Portland firm but I do okay and it feels good when you can help someone out of a jam or ease them through a tough divorce. Now I consider myself lucky to have my job.”

  “You are lucky. When I moved to New York to write my book I got a job as a receptionist at a big firm in Manhattan. No one seemed very excited about what they were doing and the hours the attorneys worked were deadly, twelve- to sixteen-hour days. I was there less than a year but there were serious drinking problems, one suicide, and several divorces.”

  “We aren’t immune from stress in Palisades Heights.”

  “Oh?” Stacey said, wondering if Glen was divorced.

  Glen shrugged. “We’re like anyplace else. People in small towns get divorced and drink too much. In Palisades Heights we just feel bad in a beautiful setting.”

  Stacey laughed just as the waiter arrived with their drinks. She took a sip of her cocktail and watched the sun complete its voyage below the horizon. She wanted to forget why she was in Palisades Heights for a few moments, but thoughts about the Cahill case kept intruding.

  “Do you think Raymond Cahill’s murder will ever be solved to everyone’s satisfaction?” she asked Glen.

  “You can solve it while you’re working on your book. Think of the publicity you’d get if you figure out whodunit.”

  Stacey smiled and Glen raised his glass.

  “To your best seller.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  “You know, if you ever get a movie deal, Megan could play herself,” Glen said. “She looks like a movie star.”

  “Do you ever see her?” Stacey asked.

  “Once in a while. She still owns the house.”

  “Jack Booth told me that. Isn’t it odd that she held on to it? You’d think she would have sold it because of the bad memories.”