Defiled

by Mike Nemeth

  “I didn’t mislead you, lieutenant. I gave you factual answers to the questions you asked, but you scared me with talk about the prosecutor’s theories, so I thought I should save the tapes for this session.”

  He cocked his head, considering that. “Can I have them now?”

  “Not without a warrant,” Tony said.

  But I handed the phone to the cop. “I’ll get a new phone, and I’ll only give my number to people who want me alive. And I have another present for you—those papers on the food tray.”

  With a question on his face, Frumpy picked up the papers and perused them.

  “They’re emails,” I said. “I sent them to my lawyer and shadylady44 intercepted them and then cmt1117 passed them along to my wife. In response, my wife wrote that angry note to ‘Mae,’ which is what she calls her sister. Connie stole my mail, as shadylady44, but sent Carrie a note from her personal account to be sure Carrie read the emails. If you get a warrant for Connie’s computer, your techs will prove I’m right. Connie used the emails to entice Carrie to come to the boat. At the same time, Connie convinced me that Carrie wanted to kill me. Connie hoped I would kill Carrie, because she was the sole heir to her will.”

  There was more to it: revenge for a lifetime of playing second fiddle to the favorite daughter; revenge for being ostracized; and the compulsive need to be the family’s queen bee; but you have to keep things simple for cops.

  Frumpy took a long time to digest all of that, paged through the emails, and took a deep breath. “You aren’t copied on the emails, so how did you get them?”

  “Sorry, lieutenant, I have to plead the fifth and trust that you’ll do the right thing.”

  He shook his head in disgust, folded the papers in half the long way, and stuffed them into his inside jacket pocket. Returning to his list of questions, he said, “When you had your stepson on the phone, you intentionally insulted him. Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t like my stepson, lieutenant, but I regret being mean to him. At the time I thought he’d be coming with his grandfather and I wanted to scare him.”

  “That kind of backfired on you. He told Dickson to rescue your wife.”

  “And he told my daughter to rescue me.”

  Frumpy wore a look of small respect. The technician finished packing his gear, gave me a thumbs-up, and carried the equipment out the door.

  The lieutenant waited for him to leave before saying, “Did you steal your wife’s jewelry?”

  If he thought he could catch me off guard, he was wrong. “No, lieutenant, I had no way into that fortress. She must have stored the jewelry at her momma’s house.”

  “It’s not there. We already checked.”

  “I was in Atlanta that weekend, lieutenant. I’m sure you’ve verified that. Maybe the redneck yardman—Pardeaux—stole it. Have you interrogated him?”

  Frumpy threw up his hands and said, “We’ve interrogated everyone, and no one did it.”

  “Maybe it didn’t happen, lieutenant. My wife is a pathological liar.”

  He nodded, started for the door, and then called over his shoulder, “Good luck with that leg.”

  When the cop was gone, Tony said, “Would have been nice to know all of that.”

  “I didn’t know I had an attorney.”

  Tony puffed out his chest and said, “We made a great team, just like you said we would. Beat the pants off ’em.”

  I meant it when I next said, “Thanks for being a good partner, Tony.”

  He beamed. “Okay, buddy, get well. When your wife is indicted, I’ll submit a motion for a directed divorce decree.” He nearly ran Julia over as he walked through the door.

  Julia came to my bedside and said, “The redhead is still waiting. Do you want to see her?”

  “Yes, Julia, I hoped she’d wait. Do I look okay?”

  “You look like a pimp.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  For more than a month, I had wondered when they would come. I wasn’t fearful exactly, but I wasn’t relaxed either. I was living in limbo. When the guard at the front desk called for permission to let three visitors ride up in the elevator, I knew it was them.

  The visitors turned out to be Lieutenant Callahan, a younger, hardboiled cop in a black suit that looked like it had been borrowed from the Blues Brothers’ wardrobe locker, and a reincarnation of Ichabod Crane, who introduced himself as an assistant DA for Cortes County.

  As I held the door for them, I said, “Where’s my buddy, Mr. Eastwick?”

  They all looked sheepish. “He’s decided to go into private practice,” Ichabod said.

  Bug-Eyes got himself fired. I did an about-face and hobbled down the Mexican tile foyer, past the French doors leading to my book-lined office and into the living room. The three visitors traipsed along behind, then halted in the middle of the sunken-floored, cathedral-ceilinged living room to stare through the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows at the majesty of downtown Atlanta twenty-one floors below.

  Callahan—or Frumpy as I liked to think of him—called out to me, “What are we looking at here?”

  I turned back around as Frumpy swept one arm from horizon to horizon to punctuate his question. I decided to be nice.

  “To your right is the Georgia Tech campus, all the way down to the Georgia Dome. Straight ahead is what we call Midtown. The tall building with the gold filigree and phallic symbol on top was the Southeastern headquarters of a national bank, but they sold the building and moved out during the market crash in 2008. Beyond that are the convention hotels that make Atlanta a great place to work if you’re a call girl. Looking down Spring Street, right below us, the beige stucco building is our most famous gentleman’s club. And over there to your left is the main drag—Peachtree Street. As you look to the south you can see the Fox Theatre, which is a national landmark.”

  “Quite a place,” Frumpy ventured, referring to the condo. “The carpet is so thick I can’t see my shoes.”

  I limped toward my recliner in the family room. After a long look at the skyline, they followed me. I didn’t offer them anything to drink or anywhere to sit, so the three men gathered around my chair like family around a sick relative in a hospital bed.

  “This view must cost a fortune,” Frumpy said.

  “I traded two homes in Florida for this place,” I said testily. “And my boat if you ever release it.”

  “Sure,” said Frumpy. He turned away from the windows and pointed to my bandages. “Still healing?”

  “One more surgery scheduled here at Emory in two weeks.”

  “You’re lucky, but Dickson wasn’t. Your daughter shot him center mass, severed his spinal cord. He’ll be in a wheelchair the rest of his life.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Frumpy said, and I caught the sarcasm. “His wife is divorcing him too. Apparently, he fooled around on her for years, and she was tired of it. We checked with his employer, a company in Plant City, and that was his reputation—ladies’ man. We never had any evidence that he fooled around with your wife, but who knows?” Frumpy cocked his head, hoping to get a reaction.

  Carrie made a call to the company in Plant City, but it was just one call. I remained stoic, but the gears in my mind began spinning like a roulette wheel. Dickson had been an automatic addition to the witness list because he was an ex-husband, and that turned out to be a lucky guess. “Obviously he was part of the conspiracy; he shot me.”

  Frumpy shook his head. “Your wife convinced him to take his son’s place on the team. Told him you were going to name him a corespondent in the divorce trial.”

  Hoping my eyes weren’t bugged out like a cartoon character’s, I said, “Was the other ex-husband involved?”

  “Simmons? Nah,” Frumpy said. “That guy hates your wife as much as you do.”

  “I was more suspicious of Simmons, but I suppose Dickson was better trained to commit murder. What about Harlan?”

  “Well, he’s happy you had ste
el-jacketed slugs in your gun. Bullet went through and through and just broke his clavicle.”

  “I should have aimed better.”

  Frumpy gave me a dirty look. “He said he was just trying to stop you from raping his daughter, but your wife’s friend”—he consulted his notepad—“Jerilynn Wilson, said that the old goat was the one who wanted to pull the trigger if the women could come up with a plan.”

  “And Carrie came up with a plan.”

  “This Jerilynn person said your mother-in-law …”

  He started flipping pages in his notebook again, so I filled in the blank for him. “Annabelle.”

  “Right. Annabelle was the one with the ideas the one time she was part of it.”

  Again, with emphasis, I said, “But in the end, Carrie plotted my murder, right?”

  He shrugged. “Ms. Wilson says it was just a bunch of nervous women blowing off steam. It never came up again because your wife got what she wanted from the judge.”

  I remained still as a stone statue. Black Suit, acting bored, wandered over to the bar that separated the family room from the gourmet kitchen and surveyed the Sub-Zero appliances he’d never be able to afford on a cop’s pay.

  “Lieutenant, it went down exactly like Connie told me it would. Carrie had a plan, and she carried it out.”

  “Your wife testified that her sister convinced her to go to the boat, told her what to wear, and had her bring a change of clothes.”

  My eyebrows shot up like a space shuttle launch and collided with my hairline. Connie drove Carrie to the boat too. “Okay, so Carrie and Connie conspired together, but Carrie called Dickson and told him to come murder me.”

  Callahan shook his head. “She wanted him to get her off the boat ‘cause it wasn’t going well. When you didn’t let her son talk to her, they were sure you had kidnapped her and they would have to use force to board your boat.”

  Thinking aloud, I said, “You know she called them before I locked her up.”

  Frumpy nodded. “Sure, we worked out the timing. She got scared.”

  A disgusted snort forced its way out of my nose. “It’s beginning to sound like nothing bad happened at all. I must be imagining the bandages on my leg.”

  Frumpy shrugged nonchalantly. “We didn’t charge the old man, couldn’t get anyone to corroborate Ms. Wilson’s statement.” Of course you couldn’t corroborate her statement; everyone else is a part of the Tomkins clan. “Harlan never got onto your boat and got himself shot for his trouble. The fat kid backed out before it was too late and then tried to stop the violence. Dickson we downgraded to assault with a deadly weapon and let him go with probation in exchange for his testimony. Green Beret, war hero, and all that. He’ll have to live with his disability now.”

  Lady Justice isn’t blind; she wears corrective lenses. Black Suit pushed away from the bar and strolled into the living room. I followed him with my eyes.

  Frumpy regained my attention by saying, “We gave your daughter a pass, of course. She acted in her capacity as an officer of the law, and the shooting of Dickson was righteous. You were damned lucky she can handle that gun of hers. As for you, the law was on your side. Whether you knew it or not, you were the poster child for the ‘stand your ground’ law. Florida is a ‘no duty to retreat’ state.”

  My patience had been exhausted. “Is anyone going to be charged with a crime?”

  “You familiar with the KISS principle?”

  “Keep it simple, stupid.”

  “That’s what we did, nothing fancy. At your deposition, you said we should concentrate on the crime that actually happened, not some farfetched conspiracy theory. That struck a chord with me. Your wife has been charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.”

  “That’s it? She conspired to kill me!”

  That got a reaction from Ichabod. “For Christ’s sake, Marks, your wife never even pointed her weapon at you!” He flapped his spindly arms in disgust like an ungainly cormorant taking to the air.

  “I’ll be damned. She got away with it.”

  Frumpy said, “No, no, it’s a serious charge, a third-degree felony, and carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine. Her trial starts next week.”

  “She deserves a life sentence.”

  Frumpy seemed to enjoy the repartee, wanted to see my reactions to his revelations, but Ichabod was exasperated, wanted to get back on a plane to Florida. He said, “You don’t get it, Marks. We charged the one person we can convict of the one crime for which we can get a conviction.”

  A jagged, cold rock sank to the bottom of my stomach. “Sure, conviction statistics are important,” I said sarcastically.

  Ichabod ignored the sarcasm. “We are closing the investigation and will not file any further charges with regard to the incident on the boat. As the lieutenant said, we have completed the investigation of your ex-wife, and no one else merits an indictment.”

  Frumpy was happy to have the help. He said, “Yeah, that’s the way it works.”

  Ichabod moved over to the bar separating the kitchen from the family room and took a seat on a barstool.

  “I suppose I should be glad you’re not charging me with getting in the way of a lawful shotgun blast. What about Connie? If it wasn’t my wife’s conspiracy, it was Connie’s. She wanted me to kill her sister because she was her sister’s heir. In Carrie’s will.”

  Frumpy and Ichabod traded looks, deciding who should tell this part of the story. Frumpy got elected. “Now you’re the one with the conspiracy theories. We charged Ms. Tomkins with a violation of the Florida Computer Crimes Act, for tapping your email.”

  “That’s all? She describes the plot on that tape I played for you.”

  “Inadmissible, just like Eastwick said.”

  “She convinced Carrie to come to the boat. Gave her a ride to the marina. Told her what to wear.”

  Now Frumpy was exasperated. With some force, he said, “That’s not evidence of a conspiracy, Mr. Marks. Ms. Tomkins says she was helping you get a settlement. That one time at dinner, on your tape, she was speculating about what could happen, trying to scare you so you wouldn’t harm her sister. On the tape, she says, ‘They could do this” and ‘They could do that.’ You took it the wrong way.”

  I don’t remember it that way. “So I made it up?”

  Frumpy pursed his lips. “It was a misunderstanding.”

  I was lightheaded and close to fainting. “What does she get for computer crime? A vacation in the Caribbean?”

  “Her violation is also a third-degree felony and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine. Her accomplice, the Simmons kid, will testify against her in exchange for probation.”

  “He installed the snooper software for Connie?”

  “Sure. He’s going to testify that he used Ms. Tomkins’s key to get into your house and routed your email to one of Ms. Tomkins’s accounts, shadylady44.”

  I may have fainted. “So I should pat you on the back for a job well done?”

  “We’re not done quite yet.” Frumpy snapped his fingers, and the cop in black walked back toward us pulling a pistol from under his jacket. He grabbed it by its barrel and handed it to me butt first. I could tell by the weight that it wasn’t loaded.

  “Your gun,” Frumpy said. “It’s never been used in a crime. We checked.”

  “Who had it?”

  Frumpy recoiled as though dodging a rattlesnake strike. “No one,” he said. “It was under the bed in the master, ah, stateroom. We confiscated it the day of the incident.”

  I laughed, the way you laugh when you’ve been a sucker. “Carrie broke into my beach house and stole it so I wouldn’t be armed when she came to kill me. She must have stashed it on the boat when she was belowdecks.”

  Frumpy laughed too, but it was a dismissive laugh. “We found the stolen weapon report, but the Dolphin Beach police closed the case. It was the only item reported missing, but then it isn’t, is it?”

  I tho
ught he was playing a game, testing me. “Did Officer Williams tell you about the bloody glass from the broken window?”

  All too casually, he said, “Sure. They were on the lookout for the gun, but they didn’t spend the money on lab tests. Missing weapons always turn up at another crime scene, and there it was.” He pointed to the Glock in my hand.

  “Did you check it for fingerprints?”

  “Sure, they’re all yours.”

  “There was a break-in, lieutenant, and you have the glass to catch the perp. It’s your job, dammit, and you owe me for the video and the emails.”

  “Hey!” Ichabod said.

  Frumpy held up a hand for Ichabod, like a school crossing guard.

  I said, “It will get you another conviction, raise your average.”

  Frumpy looked at his companions as though he had just heard a terrific idea. I held the gun out to him, but he wouldn’t take it.

  He said, “I can’t prove the gun was in your house at the time of the break-in.”

  “The burglar will tell you why he was there and who sent him. Then you can reopen the conspiracy case against Carrie. Or Connie. Or both.”

  Frumpy shrugged. “I’ll see what Dolphin Beach wants to do.”

  In a desultory tone, I said, “Thanks. Can I go back to recuperating now?”

  “You remember that cop show with the guy in the trench coat?” Frumpy looked around at his colleagues for a reaction, and they nodded in unison.

  The hard, black-suited cop chimed in with “Columbo,” proving he hadn’t just been a mule toting my gun.

  “Yeah, I feel like Columbo in the trench coat, saying, ‘Oh wait, there’s one more thing.’” He turned back to face me. “See, the jewelry case is still on the books, but I’m gonna close it today.”

  “Congratulations. Was she lying, or did you actually find the jewelry?”

  In a self-satisfied voice, Callahan said, “Oh, we found the jewelry, Mr. Marks. On your boat.”

  “What?”

  “It’s funny ’cause we had your boat impounded for several weeks before we got the idea to have a marine expert do a search insteada the regular detectives. He knew that the hatch to the engine room was under the carpet in the salon.” He chuckled. “I’ve learned all these nautical terms. The padlock on the hatch tipped him off there might be something valuable down there. We figure you padlocked it to keep your wife from finding it when she was on the boat.” Crystal clear. “Down in the engine room there’s a little compartment to store tools. The freezer bag fulla jewelry was in there. Most of it, anyway. We’re still missing a yellow-diamond pendant and earrings.”