Secret Justice

by Diane Capri

  I looked around in the bushes for a pair of surgical gloves, but found none. If the killer had worn gloves, he took them with him when he left.

  But if Ron Wheaton had injected himself, his prints would be on the barrel of the syringe. I put the syringe in my pocket and went back out to my car, where I stored it in Greta’s glove box.

  It took me ten-minutes to drive back to the old federal courthouse. I parked Greta in my customary spot, across two spaces, and walked pensively through the courthouse to the ancient elevator.

  I could have taken the stairs, but my spirit was dragging, so I just waited. The elevator took longer to arrive than my drive in from home. Another interminably slow ride up to the third floor reminded me why I never used this elevator. I’ve seen entire pregnancies come to full term in less time.

  I pushed the buzzer seeking entrance to my chambers rather than dig out my keys. No one answered the door. When I looked at my watch, it was only four-thirty, so I kept buzzing.

  Eventually, all the way back in the library, one of my clerks heard me and came to let me in. I thanked him and made my way into my office, expecting to see Margaret in exhausted sleep on my couch. Which is just where she was.

  Before waking her, I made us a pot of hot tea, rattling the cups to create some noise at the same time so that she might wake up by herself and not be startled. When I brought the tea back to the couch, she was sitting upright, a sleepy face still, and seeming quite bewildered.

  I handed her the tea, liberally laced with lemon and a dollop of whiskey, for fortification. She was able to hold the cup in both hands. We sipped in silence until I thought she was gaining composure.

  “Margaret, Ben Hathaway wants to arrest you for murder. He’s been searching your house. It’s time to let me help you. Will you do that?” I spoke gently to her because she looked so small and fragile and just plain old, sitting there with the afghan she’d made me wrapped around her small shoulders.

  Without her glasses on, her eyes seemed smaller than usual. She blinked at me as if she didn’t quite understand what I was saying.

  “Margaret.” I touched her on the arm this time and said, still gently but more insistent, “Do you understand what I’m saying? You need a lawyer.”

  Ignoring the warning bells going off in the self-preservation section of my own mind, I told her, “You need to let me help you. If you don’t, you’re going to be in jail soon. Ben Hathaway thinks you killed Ron. And Armstrong Otter, too.”

  She continued to stare at me with eyes that widened to the size of saucers, completely bewildered. Then, she began to cry again, but more controlled tears this time. I put my arm around her and we sat there for quite a while until the tears finally stopped.

  “Let me take you home with me for tonight. I’ll call a lawyer to come over and talk with you in the morning.” She didn’t resist.

  When I got her home, I gave her a sleeping pill and put her to bed in the same guest room she’d occupied before. For the second time in as many weeks, and the only times in all the years I’ve known her, Margaret Wheaton spent the night at Minaret.

  Once I got her settled, George and I moved into the den with our drinks and my first Partagas of the day. It took about an hour to explain everything but, afterward, George furrowed his brows and suggested I call Olivia Holmes, the lawyer who had successfully defended him on a murder charge.

  I had mixed feelings about hiring Olivia for Margaret’s case. For one thing, I doubted Margaret could afford to pay Olivia’s fees and I didn’t think it was appropriate for George and me to pay them.

  Besides that, Olivia was a little too flamboyant and self-assured to deal with Margaret, who had been quite intimidated by Olivia when she was representing George.

  We considered a few other possible choices and decided to discuss it with Larry Davis, especially since I’d completely forgotten about my appointment with him today. Besides, Larry had a temperament closer to Margaret’s, as well as a large firm that could afford to wait for Margaret to pay her legal bills.

  And Larry was unusual in that he specialized in both probate and criminal law. Margaret would need a lawyer with both of these specialties. Larry might decline to represent Margaret because he had represented Ron, and Margaret was a suspect in Ron’s death. But since I didn’t believe Margaret had killed Ron, I was hoping Larry would agree to do the work.

  I placed the call to Larry Davis myself. After I’d outlined the situation briefly, he agreed to stop by Minaret on his way home. Dad came into the den with Suzanne and his evening beer and joined us.

  Suzanne looked at our somber faces. “Somebody die in here, or what?” she asked.

  Larry Davis has rapidly disappearing brown hair and a portly build. He wears thick glasses that conceal his hazel eyes. A piece of tape wrapped several times around the bridge of his glasses kept the two halves together. One of his five kids must have broken this pair, too.

  He’s got bad feet, so he wears Rockport shoes that get replaced every ten years, whether they need to be or not. They rarely, if ever, get polished. His suits are always old and brown or green. He told me once that brown and green suits don’t sell as well as other colors so he can buy them marked down at the end of the season.

  Tonight, Larry held his jacket by one finger over his shoulder and too-short shirt tails had crept out of his trousers in the back. His tie acted as a bib and revealed the contents of several meals by the spots all over it, which we could see even in the dim light of the early evening.

  In short, Larry looked the same as always: dumpy, happily married, happily poor, and a loveable father of five.

  We told Larry the limited information about the deaths of Ron Wheaton and Armstrong Otter, Chief Hathaway’s comments about Margaret as his most likely suspect, and the results of the search of her house today.

  Larry had a few questions of his own, which forced me to tell him what I’d told George earlier: exactly how Margaret had behaved after she learned that her husband of thirty years had died as opposed to how she’d taken the news of Armstrong Otter’s death.

  The contrast was obvious and supported Hathaway’s assumptions. We all saw that. But I refused to believe Margaret was a killer.

  “Things are not always what they seem,” I said, to the room at large.

  “But sometimes they are,” Larry replied, quietly. “It’s not smart to overlook the obvious, especially if you’re a police officer. Most criminals are just not that smart.”

  “You’re telling me,” Dad chimed in. “Did you hear the one about the bank robber who passed his hold-up note to the teller written on one of his own bank deposit slips, including his name and address? Or the guy who called in to report the theft of his heroin stash? I could keep going, but the tales of dumb crooks are legendary. They could make a good stand-up comic routine.”

  “But we’re not dealing with a criminal. We’re talking about Margaret,” I said. Only George seemed to understand me, but he and I were the only ones who knew Margaret well.

  I could see from Dad and Larry’s response that someone who didn’t know Margaret at all might believe she had killed two men in the past two weeks. That was a bad sign. It meant Hathaway could probably arrest her and the State Attorney could easily get a grand jury to indict.

  I had been right to insist that Margaret needed a lawyer. I just wasn’t sure how much Larry was going to be able to help her under the circumstances.

  “Let’s not panic yet.” Larry was talking to all of us. “All they have right now is opportunity. They’re having a big problem with means for both deaths and motive on Otter. Even the motive Hathaway hypothesized for Margaret killing Ron is weak.”

  “I thought you said it was believable,” I scolded him.

  “It’s believable,” he replied. “But it’s not likely. I’ve defended mercy killers before. Usually, the killer is the husband.”

  “See?” George said, giving me a poke in the side.

  I ignored his attempt to cheer me
up and Larry continued. “Most wives don’t feel as desperate when faced with the care-giving responsibilities. They’re still a ways from arresting Margaret. But we do need to get some facts from her and get ahead of the police. Do you think we can wake her up and talk to her now?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. As much as another twelve hours will put you behind, Larry, I think you’d better wait until in the morning. Why don’t you come over here early, say around seven-thirty? We can talk to Margaret then,” I suggested.

  “All right. In the meantime, I’ll call Hathaway and see if I can get him to tell me anything else. Are there any witnesses I can interview?”

  Larry didn’t sound pleased at the forced delay in his investigation, but Margaret hadn’t even agreed to let him represent her yet, and I wasn’t completely sure that she would do so gracefully. Particularly if she couldn’t pay his bill.

  We talked about everyone who participated on the Minaret Krewe float during the Knight Parade. We told Larry that neither George nor I had spoken with Armstrong Otter that night because we were stationed on the front of the float and Otter was on the back.

  “I talked to him,” Dad offered, surprising us all.

  “When was that?” Larry was taking notes.

  “Probably about midnight, I guess. He was with a group of people over on Seventh Avenue. The group included the Kelleys.”

  “Was Margaret with them?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never met Margaret, have I? If I saw her, I might remember. There were probably six or eight folks. Men and women.”

  “What did you talk about?” Larry asked.

  Here, Dad looked down at the floor and I saw the color rise in his cheeks. He turned to Suzanne, who was being blissfully quiet for a change, and asked her if she’d mind making coffee. When she’d left the room, he turned back to Larry and answered the question.

  “I wanted to return some jewelry he’d sold me last week,” Dad said. He went on to explain that he’d bought Suzanne a gift from Otter’s studio after George introduced them. It was a diamond and emerald slide for her Omega necklace. Then, when they were in Miami this week, Dad saw the same slide in the window of a costume jewelry store.

  “So I had the slide appraised and the appraiser told me the stones weren’t real,” he finished. Dad was embarrassed. The fraud buster should’ve known better. He would consider it a personal failure that he’d been duped.

  “What did Otter say about it?” Larry asked him.

  Dad cleared his throat. His complexion assumed a darker hue and he cast his eyes down. When he answered, his voice was steel.

  “He said no. We got into a shoving match. I pushed him down and would have continued the fight, but his friends broke us up and I walked away while the jerk was still laying there.”

  I felt as if I’d just landed in a strange movie. I’d never seen Jim Harper even raise his voice. How could he have gotten into a fight? With Armstrong Otter?

  “Did you say anything else to him?” Larry insisted.

  More embarrassed now, Dad said, “I shouted that I’d sue him.”

  “Did he respond to you?”

  Dad cast his eyes down and looked chagrined.

  “He said, ‘Take a number.’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tampa, Florida

  Monday 7:00 p.m.

  February 19, 2001

  ARMED WITH HIS LIST of potential witnesses to contact this evening, Larry prepared to leave, promising to return early tomorrow to interview Margaret. He asked to see me for a minute, privately. We moved into the den, alone, and closed the door, leaving the others having cocktails without us.

  Larry got right to the point. “I need to discuss Ron’s will with you, Willa. I’ve got to tell Margaret about it in the morning and you need to hear it first.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t get to your office today, but I had just a little bit of distraction,” I said wryly. “Let’s do it now.”

  “I was hoping you’d suggest that, so I brought things with me.” Larry pulled out a thin file and began to tell me about its contents. “I’ve known Ron and Margaret Wheaton for a long time.”

  Larry explained that he had prepared wills for the Wheatons when he first started his practice. Then, about a year ago, when Ron was diagnosed with ALS and they knew he would die before Margaret, the Wheatons came to see him for financial planning advice.

  “We drafted Ron a new will and helped them arrange their financial matters so that Margaret would inherit everything they had as simply and reasonably free of taxes as we could make it,” he said.

  “I’m confused. I thought you said Ron had named me as his executor?”

  Larry nodded. “About two months ago, Ron came back to see me. Alone. He said he was worried about Margaret. He was afraid that, after he died, someone would try to take advantage of her. Take her money. He wanted to restructure his estate so that Margaret would have someone else looking after her best interests.” He looked at me directly now. “Ron specifically wanted you.”

  “But why? Margaret has a good head on her shoulders. She’s been handling everything very well, I think. Why would he do that?”

  “That’s all he told me.” Larry had tried to talk to him further about it, especially since he knew Ron was depressed. “Ron never suggested that he might commit suicide, Willa. He wouldn’t say anything more except that he knew you would take care of Margaret.”

  Larry reached into his pocket and pulled out his hand, which he held out to me, palm up. “And he left this safety deposit box key for you. He said to give it to you after he died.” Larry handed me the small envelope containing the key. “The downtown branch of AmSouth Bank. I’ve arranged it so that you can go over there and open it whenever you’re ready.”

  I took the envelope from him, opened it and shook the small key out into my hand. “Okay, Larry. I’ll check it out.”

  “Do it soon. Margaret probably has a few thousand dollars in her checking account and not much else. She’ll need money. And she needs to have this all resolved.”

  Larry left me, bewildered, holding the key and its little cardboard envelope.

  Had Ron Wheaton been worried about something in particular, or was he just being overly protective of Margaret when he changed his will? I had known that Margaret was somehow involved with Armstrong Otter before Ron died, and I didn’t like it, then or now.

  Maybe Ron had known, too. If Otter had been Ron’s concern, it was not something we had to worry about any longer, now that Otter was dead.

  I would go to the bank as soon as I could get there and hope that Ron had left me some explanation for his actions in that safety deposit box.

  After Larry left, George and I discussed the facts as we knew them for a while longer before my growling stomach led me to suggest that we go downstairs for dinner. Dad and Suzanne joined us.

  “Just what do we know about this Otter character, anyway?” Dad asked, when Suzanne left to powder her nose. After George had given him the thumbnail sketch of Otter’s credentials, I told them both about my visit to his gallery in Pass-a-Grille on Saturday.

  “According to the CJ, almost everyone in South Tampa except us had dealt with Otter at one time or another,” I said.

  “But I dealt with him, too, Willa,” George responded. “He was recommended to me by several of our friends. I took some of Aunt Minnie’s estate jewelry over to him for cleaning and restoration once. I thought he did a good job. That’s when I saw his studio and first became familiar with his work. Then, I bought your anniversary gift from Otter two years ago. The platinum Minaret pendant with the tourmaline and diamonds in it.”

  “Really? I had no idea. Was he reasonable to deal with?”

  “Well, the cost of the restoration work was not out of line, based on what I’d had done before. I can’t say the pendant was cheap, but I thought it was reasonable at the time,” George said. “Our insurance agent didn’t demur when I told him to add the pendant
to our home-owner’s policy at the price I paid for it. But I’ve never had it appraised.”

  “Based on my experience, maybe you should,” Dad told him. “Maybe you should have all of the jewelry Otter touched appraised.”

  George’s beloved face took on an alarmed appearance. “Why would I do that? Otter had a sterling reputation. Everyone we know has bought from him at one time or another. I feel terrible about what happened to you, Jim. I even recommended him to you. I had no idea.”

  I told them about the Fitzgerald House case, how Otter had sold fakes to the widow and passed them off as “Jewels of the World,” and collected a million dollars from her. I also told them about the allegations in the criminal case. I thought the civil cases might proceed against Otter’s estate, but the criminal case would now be dismissed.

  After hearing about the claims against Otter, George was champing at the bit to go to his own safety deposit box and get Aunt Minnie’s old jewelry out for appraisal. Of course, the bank was closed.

  George stood left to call another jeweler to schedule an appraisal appointment while Dad and I finished our coffee.

  “I thought this was such a sleepy little town. In all the years I’ve worked in New York, there’s never been a murder in a place I was sleeping. What kind of a city have you moved to here, Willa?” Dad teased me, but weakly.

  In truth, I was more than a little shocked myself. We have relatively little crime here in South Tampa. The police blotter is printed in the South Tampa News every week and it’s usually a few petty burglaries, one or two “throwing deadly missiles” and three or less “criminal mischiefs.”

  Deaths happen all the time around here. Indeed, the second highest volume of export from the Tampa International Airport is dead bodies, after tropical fish. All those retirees who come here to live their last days in the sun return to their northern homes to be buried in the cold when they can no longer feel it. I guess the theory is that if the departed are close by, the loved ones will take better care of the graves and remember them longer.

  Ron Wheaton’s death in George’s restaurant had upset me more than it seemed to upset Margaret at the time. I had to acknowledge that. She’d returned to work two days later and seemed to be almost lighthearted. I’d thought she was just putting on a brave face, but maybe she was happy that Ron had passed out of the way.