Secret Justice

by Diane Capri

  I went to a memorial service for a minister’s wife where a Dixieland Jazz Band played “When the Saints Go Marching In,” because both she and her husband felt that the best of life comes after death. I had put Margaret’s behavior down to similar feelings, particularly in light of Ron’s terminal illness.

  But, what if Margaret’s actions were attributable to something else? Could Margaret have killed her husband? Or at least, could she have known Ron was planning to kill himself? I had to at least acknowledge the possibility.

  Armstrong Otter’s death, from what I’d heard about it so far, could easily have been an accident. A fall, hitting his head, probably resulted in a subdural hematoma which was eventually fatal. In the Ybor City crowd Saturday night, it would have been easy for him to have been jostled to the ground, with no one ill-intentioned.

  Lying undiscovered on a side street north of all the main action for several hours wasn’t outside the realm of likelihood, either. Not on such a cold and busy night. By the wee hours, most people would have tired of the struggle to stay warm and gone home.

  So far as I knew now, Otter was a casualty of a few too many drinks and a few too many people on a busy and cold night.

  Although Dad admitted to pushing Otter down, I wasn’t about to disclose that to Hathaway as an alternative theory of death. When Dad left Otter, he was on Seventh Avenue, not Eighteenth Street. Otter yelled back at Dad from the ground. And Otter had friends with him who would have taken care of him then. No, Dad wasn’t responsible. I wouldn’t even consider that.

  If Hathaway’s investigation pointed in Dad’s direction, I’d deal with that problem when it arose. For now, I wouldn’t believe Margaret had pushed Otter to his death, either. She wasn’t physically strong enough to kill him, even if she’d wanted to.

  And I was certain Margaret had been genuinely surprised and devastated by the news that Otter was dead when Hathaway told us so today.

  Margaret didn’t kill Ron or Otter. No doubt about it in my mind.

  Well, almost no doubt.

  I had four days left to train for the Gasparilla Distance Classic. The race is one of the biggest running events in Florida, often voted the best race and among the top ten races in the United States. The Gasparilla Distance Classic Association has donated more than $2 million to local charities and sponsors other running events.

  If I finished the race, Young Mothers’ Second Chance would collect $10,000 from the corporate sponsors I’d lined up. If I won, which was highly unlikely, Young Mothers’ would get $20,000. But I could place in the first five finishers and, if I did, the moms would get a five-figure check.

  It was a powerful motivator to haul my butt out of a nice warm bed the next morning before daylight and pull on my running clothes. When the dogs and I got outside, I was tempted to go back upstairs for my polar fleece, but I resisted and started my run at a slow, loping pace to warm up. By the time I got to the north end of the island, I was freezing, so I stepped up the pace. One lap, I told myself, just one. I could do one lap. I’d have to do more in the classic, but I hoped it would be warmer.

  I struggled through the entire run and finally made it back to the house. Harry and Bess beat me back and had plunged headlong into Hillsborough Bay. They were frolicking around in the water as if it didn’t contain ice cubes. Figuratively, of course. I had to stand around, stomping my feet and watching my breath come out in huge white puffs while they worked off their excess energy.

  Margaret was up and about when I returned to the kitchen after a long, hot shower. She and George were having coffee and toast in the kitchen. It was about seven o’clock and Larry Davis would be here in a half hour. I wanted a turn at asking Margaret my own questions first.

  Looking her in the eye, I told her I’d asked Larry Davis to take on her case.

  “Thank you, Willa,” she said, surprising me by accepting my decision. “I’ve known Larry for years, of course. His parents were always kind to my mother. If I have to have a lawyer, I have a lot of confidence in him.”

  Her comment startled me. Larry hadn’t said he didn’t know Margaret well. But I’d assumed he didn’t know her because he’d acted like he believed she was capable of murder. Which I thought preposterous. I’d assumed our difference of opinion was based on his lack of knowledge.

  “I’m sure he’ll be able to make payment arrangements with you if you need them,” George told her.

  Margaret’s response was another surprise. “That shouldn’t be necessary. I’ll collect Ron’s life insurance soon and then I’ll be a rich woman.” Then she said with some quiet irony, “That is, if they’ll pay it to a woman suspected of killing him.”

  Which, I knew, the company would never do. Like many states, Florida law prohibits killers from profiting from their own actions. The insurance company would stop payment faster than a stock broker can say “profits.”

  “Since you didn’t kill him, it shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  She said, “I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t sorry that he died, though I do miss the man I spent half my life with. He’d been wasting away every day. He was weaker, he could barely walk. For Ron, it was a slow and certain, painful death.”

  She stared at her coffee and tears welled. “It was so hard for him. We talked about it every day. He was still mentally sharp as ever. He remembered things better than I did. That made it worse. I think it would’ve been better if he hadn’t known how he would eventually die. Older people aren’t afraid of death usually. We just want to die in a reasonable way. There is nothing about ALS that’s reasonable. Nothing!”

  She slammed the cup down on the table. Coffee splashed. She ruefully wiped the spill off the table with her napkin.

  “Do you know what killed Ron?” George asked her.

  “No. I guess I thought it was a heart attack. Most ALS patients die from respiratory failure, was what the doctors told us. But Ron was a long way from that. I just figured his bad heart got him. He should have had bypass surgery a couple of years ago. He was on nitroglycerine several times a day. He wasn’t a good surgical candidate. And he wanted to die of a heart attack. He always said it would be better to die quickly.” Her chin quivered at this, fresh tears glassing her eyes.

  Larry Davis came in just at the tail end of her answer. He bent down to give Margaret a kiss on the cheek. “Good morning, everyone. Willa, George. Is there somewhere I can talk privately with my client?”

  “Sure, Larry, but I’d like to talk to you when you’re finished. Would you stop by my office? And Margaret, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. Don’t feel you have to go home or come into work today,” I told her.

  Margaret looked grateful and nodded without response. Larry promised to call me after his client conference. He looked at me over Margaret’s head in a way that I interpreted as meaning he had information to share. I showed them into the den, closed the door, and prepared to leave for my office, feeling even better with the choice of lawyer I’d made.

  If anyone could defend Margaret with the kind of quiet competence and dignity she deserved, it was Larry. We have quite a few flamboyant criminal defense lawyers here in town who would have taken the case. Particularly if they knew Margaret had plenty of money to pay them with. But the best ones weren’t so well known or expensive. Although a criminal defense lawyer isn’t something you want to buy from a discount chain. One always needs the best money can buy. Criminal justice in this country is definitely more available to the rich than the poor. It’s not a fact we’re proud of, but there it is.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 8:30 a.m.

  February 20, 2001

  TUESDAYS ARE USUALLY A little slow in my courtroom, but Ron Wheaton’s bank wouldn’t open until ten o’clock and Larry would be tied up with Margaret for awhile, so I went into the office to get some things done. I don’t have any regularly scheduled hearings or conferences. When there is no t
rial going, Tuesday is a day of catching up. Reviewing orders drafted by my clerks, planning and scheduling, meeting with my colleagues, and so on. I was in no great hurry to get started, but I knew the various and sundry small tasks would grow into giant problems if left unattended.

  Waiting for Larry, I started on my work. I didn’t stop until one of my law clerks, who was sitting in for Margaret, buzzed me to say that Larry had arrived and had asked to see me.

  Larry and I settled around my conference table so we could have a conversation between colleagues—I wanted Larry to treat me as a surrogate client in Margaret’s case. Margaret had no one else to look out for her. She had no children, her husband had just died, and George and I were the only close friends who would support her. Such was my conceit at the time, anyway. Larry, who knew Margaret better than I did, soon disabused me of that notion, among others.

  “So, how does it look?” I asked him.

  “Not good. I’m talking to you because Margaret gave me permission to discuss her case. I need you to treat ours as privileged communications, though. You are a lawyer, after all. If you can’t do that, then I’ll have to censor what I tell you.”

  “I think that’s doable. Unless you tell me something I’ll be obligated to disclose. Since I’m convinced Margaret neither committed nor concealed a crime, I’m sure that won’t happen. So, let’s talk.” I folded my hands together on the conference table.

  Larry lounged back in his chair and looked at me appraisingly before he responded. “Willa, I’ve known you a long time, but I’ve known Margaret even longer. She’s lived her whole life in Tampa and she’s traveled very little since her marriage to Ron. She’s not a worldly person.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m so worried about her,” I said.

  “But, she’s not naive, either,” he warned me. “She’s been in and around Tampa all her life. Margaret knows the score on a lot of things. She doesn’t travel in the same circles you do, but she’s taken care of herself for a long time.”

  I eyed him speculatively. “It sounds like you’re warning me about something, but what?”

  “Just that you, of all people, should know that things are not always what we perceive them to be. Margaret isn’t the helpless little old lady you’ve turned her into in your mind. For one thing, she’s not that old. For another, she’s more feisty than you think. Don’t be deceived by your own assumptions. That’s all,” he said.

  I thought about Larry’s words briefly, but didn’t have the luxury of considering them fully right then. I had my own agenda. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. Tell me what you’ve learned about Ron Wheaton’s and Armstrong Otter’s deaths since yesterday.”

  He pulled out a yellow legal pad in the fourteen-inch size—the ones I had banished from my office—and flipped through pages of notes. Most lawyers don’t use the archaic long-sized pads any more since most courts will no longer accept fourteen-inch paper. Knowing Larry, he probably got the last batch in Tampa at a bargain-basement price, and would be the only lawyer in town using them into the next decade.

  “I talked with Chief Hathaway last night after I left you. I told him I was representing Margaret and asked him what he had so far.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me the toxicology screen on Ron Wheaton, and the autopsy, had revealed that Ron didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “Yes, he told me that, too. Although Ron’s symptoms would mimic a heart attack and he had prior heart problems. So, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” I allowed my voice to trail off on the thought that Chief Hathaway and the medical examiner could be wrong.

  Larry was shaking his head. “Apparently not. They’re treating the death as a homicide. Although they recognize it could have been suicide, as well. They aren’t sure it killed him, or who administered it, but they feel certain he was poisoned with insulin.”

  “Is it possible he killed himself?”

  “Yes, it is. He could have injected himself. He was depressed, and males account for more than seventy-five percent of all suicides. Suicide is also on the rise among the elderly. They’re alone, with failing health and terrified of what lies ahead. Hathaway is treating suicide as an active possibility.”

  “Where’d Ron get the insulin?”

  “That’s what they were looking for when they searched Margaret’s house.”

  “And they didn’t find it,” I told him. “I was there and I saw what they did. There’s a video tape, by the way, and you should get it.” He looked at me as if to say I shouldn’t tell him how to do his job.

  “I did ask for the video tape. Hathaway told me I’d have to get it from the State Attorney when charges were brought against Margaret and time came for him to turn over his file. That’s one of the reasons I’m talking to you, Willa. I hope you can get Hathaway to give us his file now so we can head this thing off at the pass. If that’s possible.” Larry didn’t sound hopeful.

  I wondered whether Larry knew Hathaway had done this for me before. The Florida Supreme Court had more than once held that law enforcement was not required to turn over an active investigation file before charges were formally made against a defendant. I had prevailed upon my relationship with Ben Hathaway to convince him to do me that favor once. I didn’t think he’d do it again. Nor did I plan to ask him.

  “Extremely unlikely, Larry, and you know it. If he wouldn’t give the file to you, why would he give it to me? We’ll just have to rely on my memory.” I could see how disappointed he was, so I added “And the still pictures I took of Margaret’s house afterward.”

  He was somewhat appeased. Instead of arguing with me over my decision about Hathaway’s file, he asked me for the pictures, which I’d picked up at the one-hour processing place yesterday. I handed him the second set of prints. I’d already looked at them and found nothing interesting. Maybe that was because I didn’t know what to look for. Or, maybe there was nothing to find.

  “What else have you got?” I asked him.

  “I asked a friend in the U.S. Marshall’s office to search the U.S. Government files for Ron Wheaton and Armstrong Otter,” he said, looking down at his notes.

  “Good. I intended to do that today, too. What did you find?”

  “Even less than I feared. Ronald John Wheaton was born in Tampa in 1933, three years earlier than Margaret. He’d served in Korea, receiving an honorable discharge. His social security file showed he’d worked for Tampa schools over thirty years and retired young. There was no record that he’d ever been sued or charged with a crime. In short, there wasn’t anything to help me in Ron Wheaton’s official background.” His voice carried the disappointment we both felt.

  “What about Otter?” I tried to keep my tone neutral.

  “The same non-stuff. Armstrong Eugene Otter. Applied for a passport in nineteen fifty-eight. Fingerprints on file. No convictions, although there’s an arrest and a criminal case pending on your docket,” he read from his notes.

  “I know. There’s a list of cheated customers that’s longer than your arm in the indictment,” I told him. “Of course, the case will be dismissed now that Otter is dead.”

  “Sounds like a lot of folks with a motive for murder,” Larry said. “Let me take the list and I’ll start running them down.”

  “All right, but I’ll take the ones I know personally,” I said, as I handed him the copy of the indictment I’d had ready for his review. When he was about to object, I told him, “You’ll need help, Larry.”

  He nodded. Larry flipped through more of his notes, obviously picking and choosing what he would share, unsure of the protection Margaret would have from me if I felt she was breaking the law in a way that I’d have to report. “Hathaway also said Margaret and Otter were lovers. He said he had witnesses who had seen them together at the Knight Parade on the Minaret Krewe float and afterward,” Larry said.

  “Doing what? Having sex or something? It was a little too cold for that, I can assure you.” I spoke more
crossly than I had intended, but it was just this kind of idle gossip that could get Margaret in real trouble. I remembered all too well how cold it was on Saturday night, my long underwear, the freezing wind. I doubted any legitimate person saw anything resembling incriminating behavior by Margaret Wheaton. Besides that, Margaret was from the old school. If she was going to show some man her affections, she would do it in private.

  “Of course not,” Larry said, wounded, too. “But sitting a little too close together, holding hands, talking with their heads bowed toward each other, laughing between themselves over things others couldn’t hear. The typical behavior that movies tell us is reflective of those in love while they play romantic music and cover the dialogue.”

  “Not good,” I said, in a serious bit of understatement Larry didn’t bother to acknowledge. “What does Margaret say about it?”

  “I’d rather not tell you that just now. But let’s just leave it that she’s not too happy with the facts Hathaway has uncovered so far. And it looks like Ron may have had a good reason to be concerned about someone trying to take advantage of Margaret. Have you been to Ron’s bank to see what he left for you yet?”

  I shook my head, “I’ve been waiting for you. Why does Hathaway think Otter was murdered instead of just falling down in a drunken stupor and hitting his head? Isn’t that just as likely, given the circumstances?”

  Larry considered his notes again, making decisions about what to share and what not to share, shaking his head in the negative. “The autopsy isn’t final yet. It’s a busy time in the medical examiner’s office, apparently. The cold has caused a few elderly people to die and each one has to be autopsied, I guess. But Hathaway seems to think that the wound to Otter’s skull suggests he was pushed rather hard onto that piece of concrete, harder than if he had just fallen.”