Our statie chauffeur had been waiting outside to take us back to the office, and Martha changed tactics, joining me in the backseat. She’d angled herself toward me as we drove, almost effusive, reciting tidbits of the interview and assessing Tom’s answers.
“Did you believe Tom was telling the truth?” she’d asked. “About whether Ms. Zander came to his house? Did you know about that? Whether she did? Did he have a relationship with her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to focus. “They were out of town together. A lot. Like you said in Nina’s arraignment, remember?”
“Listen, did you think Tom’s wife suspected anything untoward? Especially on those trips? Or, say, did Logan Concannon? Do you think she’s telling everything she knows?”
I had to laugh. “Never,” I said. “Logan’s, like, the keeper of the secrets.”
“Agreed,” Martha had said. “But we’re making progress. So perfect to be working with you on this. Now, how about the…”
As she’d continued questioning me, there were times I felt like I was on the witness stand, the way she asked about the office, the security, even the trash collection. What Jack might or might not have told me. But that kind of grilling is a lawyer thing. Jack does it to me, too. I’ve learned not to take it personally. Plus Martha’d said it was perfect that we were working together. I agreed.
And now, even more perfect, because this afternoon she’d brought me to Tom. Face-to-face. I heard that voice, felt his breath on me. But no longer as pitiful, subservient Rachel. I had the power. It filled me with joy and hope and transformation. With justice. It was all worth it.
As we’d pulled into the office parking lot, Martha tapped her forefingers together. “So. What did Tom tell you when you went back for the briefcase?”
My eyes widened with a possibility. “Martha? Did you do that on purpose?”
She smiled, dismissing that. “Of course not. But I must admit, I was intrigued at leaving you two alone. You were there for a while. Did he try to pump you?”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t. It only took longer because I used his bathroom.”
“Oh.” Martha nodded. “That makes sense. But I knew you two had a history.”
“He was my boss.” All I need to say. “A long time ago.”
“You’re blushing,” she said. Then jabbed me with an elbow. “Kidding. Come on. Let’s go in.”
She’d opened the glass front door and walked into the office ahead of me. As we entered, I saw Leon was not at the reception desk, and most office lights were off.
“Might as well close up for the day,” she said. “Big day tomorrow. Thanks so much for today. It was helpful to have you there.”
“Big day?” I’d said. “Why? And listen, could I just ask about the Baltrim case? How are we doing with that? Who’s working on that? I haven’t been able to eat pizza since, I must say.” I tried for a little camaraderie.
“Under way,” Martha said. “It’s a process. I met with Lizann Wallace. Remember her? She’s a murder-lister now. But Baltrim’s a slam dunk. No bail, no worries. And that little boy, Jonah? He’s fine, I checked on him. So forget about that. It’s Danielle Zander we need to focus on. It’s time for that case to be solved. Closed. Once and for all. So we can all rest easy, including Danielle. See you tomorrow, okay?”
But by that time, we were down the hall and she was in her office and her door had closed her away. But we’d bonded, that was for sure. Martha had taken me under her elegant wing. Woman power. Sure, whatever works.
And Martha’s a good teacher. I’m using her techniques right now. In the car with Roni.
“Momo’s a piece of work,” I say, brushing a few granola crumbs from my black skirt onto the floor of her little car. “‘Momo,’ you know? All that knitting, all that granny personality? That was her misdirection. She’d look up, nail someone with perfect logic, then go back to her angora.”
Roni accelerates around a rattling landscape truck, rakes and shovels lashed to its side. “She’s no dummy.”
“Neither are you,” I say. Neither am I. “Listen. We know Deacon Davis is dead. But even so. Someone obviously lied to the judge about your daughter.”
“Yup.” Roni keeps her eyes on the road.
“And you were excused—or whatever—before the deliberations even started. So why would that be?”
“Well?” she says, when we finally stop for the red light. “What if someone was getting rid of the jurors they thought would vote not guilty? And decided to start with me? Before the deliberations even began, which is less obvious.”
“Whoa,” I say. As if I’d never thought of that. “You think Momo got excused for a bogus reason, too? Maybe to get some other juror in to the deliberations? That could only be done by…” Martha Gardiner, I don’t say.
“Parking place. Awesome.” Roni slams to a stop and pulls up behind a departing SUV. “Momo was a not guilty. She said so all the time. Like I did. Three-fifty-nine,” she points to an apartment building. “There. Looks like Manderley. Before the fire.”
We buzz Momo’s bell. The prewar elevator’s accordion doors, zigzag brass, close Roni and me in, and then the tiny car creaks us up to the third floor. Momo’s wearing a white shirt over khaki slacks, black flats with bows. She’s more spindly now than she was, and barely five feet tall.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she says, gesturing us inside.
There are no handshakes, no hugs. We’re not old pals, or long-lost colleagues. We barely know each other. We have only one thing in common. The search for justice.
Roni and I both say no to white wine, and sitting on Momo’s flowered couch I wonder if life is just a series of living rooms and secrets, and those of us who are on the hunt for answers must visit one after another like a scavenger hunt, one clue to the next. This room, white curtains open to a pink-blooming magnolia and crowded with silver-framed photos of smiling faces, families, maybe, arm in arm, on beaches and snow-covered mountains, hardly seems the place for us to consider some sinister plot.
Roni uses one forefinger to trace the curved mahogany-looking arm of a yellow gingham armchair as she sits down. “Such a good piece. Where’d you have it reupholstered?”
She laughs, at herself, it seems. “Sorry. It’s furniture. I can’t help it.”
“This one’s nice, too,” I say, sitting on cobalt blue.
“We can talk about chairs later, dears.” Momo scoops up her knitting, depositing it on the pale gray carpet, then takes its place on another chair. “But you two have me so curious.”
Roni explains, in broad strokes, that Deacon Davis was killed in a prison “altercation,” the papers called it, which Momo knew, and the deal about her sick daughter. Which Momo didn’t know. Mid-story, Momo picks up her knitting, frowning over it as she listens.
“She wasn’t sick?” Her needles keep moving.
“Not that sick.” Roni looks at me as if to confirm, but this is her story to tell.
“And you didn’t ask to be excused. Didn’t ask that Officer Suddeth, or the judge.”
“Nope.”
Momo stops, holding the needles scarf-width apart. “Wouldn’t there have to be a, some kind of a hearing on that?” She smiles, her parchment face softening. “My dear departed husband was a lawyer, did I mention that? I put that man through law school. Helped him study for the bar. We lived on canned tuna, and—” She stops herself. “Was there a hearing? With those court officers? Rachel? Does your husband remember?”
So much for doddering old Momo.
“The look on your face!” Roni laughs again. “I told her, Rach. Who you were married to. And that you’re in law school now as well.”
I laugh too. Aren’t we all one happy sisterhood.
“That explains it,” I say. “But no, Jack doesn’t remember a hearing. On the other hand, he also doesn’t remember that there wasn’t a hearing. Apparently, he didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“But you do. Think it�
��s a big deal. You both do,” Momo says.
I look at Roni so she’ll keep the floor.
“Well, we just wondered, I guess, how you came to be excused.”
Momo tells the story, exactly as I remember it, about forgetting her pills, and the son driving her to the courthouse, and being late for deliberations.
“Did they have a hearing about you, Momo?” I ask.
She nods, several times, as if retrieving a memory, or reliving something. “The Grace person, remember her?”
“The other court officer,” I say.
“Yes. She brought me in to the judge’s chambers. Your husband was there, dear, and the district attorney. In front of everyone, Grace said I talked to her about Deacon Davis being not guilty. She told the judge I’d said something to her, Grace, like—” She pauses, raising her eyebrows like she’s reciting bad dialogue. “‘He has a criminal record, but now I know he’s gone straight.’”
“Oh,” I say. “Did you hear that on TV?”
“Because you can’t do that,” Roni says. “The judge instructed us—”
“But I didn’t.” Momo’s voice hardens, no more silly granny. “I know the rules. I never said that. Ever. And I never watched television.”
“You did think he was not guilty though, didn’t you?” I purse my lips, remembering. “You said so.”
“Well, we jurors were supposed to be talking about the trial, dear. I certainly never said anything like that to Grace. But when she said so, and that I’d been late because of my pills, the judge got all—excuse my language—pissy. She asked me, in that voice”—Momo makes a prune face—“‘What are those pills for?’”
She gets her own face back. “Like I was senile.”
“Wow.” I lean forward, elbows on knees. “Listen, what did Martha Gardiner say? Did she believe you? Or Grace?”
“I was excused from the jury, wasn’t I?” Momo smooths the knitting across her lap, the multicolored stripes bright against her khaki slacks. “And I remember that day, so well, because I was almost in tears. Since then, I’d often considered writing to that poor man. But he’s dead now, and it’s all—so tragic. I feel as if I’m the one who’s guilty.”
“Oh, Momo, no. You can’t know your vote would have changed the outcome,” Roni says, trying to reassure her.
Momo shakes her head. “I never would have voted guilty.”
“I wouldn’t have, either.” Roni turns to me.
I take a deep breath, blow it out. And tell the flat solid truth. Some of it. “I’ve felt bad about it ever since.”
But it all sinks in for a moment, how one person’s actions can torpedo someone’s life, or save it. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes simply because it’s easier. Or more expedient. I’m wishing we had said yes to the wine.
“Momo?” I break our silence. I have to ask two questions. “First. In that hearing. Did my—did Jack Kirkland do or say anything? Defend you, or argue, or object?”
“Not a word.” She sighs, looks apologetic. “Maybe he did, but before I got there?”
“Maybe.” I stand by my man. “What did Deacon Davis say?”
The knitting needles stop again. “Say? Well, nothing. He wasn’t there.”
Bingo. Roni, a non-lawyer, has no idea why it’s important, but for Jack to attend a hearing about a questionable juror, during the deliberations, and not bring his client is improper. Possibly grounds for a new trial on the basis that Jack gave what’s called “ineffective assistance.” If anyone found out, that’d be disastrous for him. Why would Jack let that happen?
“What do we do now?” Roni asks. We’re on the way home, and she turns at me as we stop at the light on Beacon Street. “It’s squirrely. That Momo and I were both excused. For iffy reasons.”
“Coincidence?”
“No way.” Roni shifts into first, then second, punctuating her verdict after the light turns green. “Something’s going on.”
I stay quiet, letting her stew about it.
“Yeah.” Roni shifts into third for the Storrow Drive straightaway toward Newton. “Does it even matter, though? Since Deacon Davis is dead.”
“It might,” I lie. Because jury tampering is a big fat crime, dead criminal or not, and my holier-than-thou boss Martha Gardiner has got to be involved. “Let me think. Do some digging. I’m on the inside now, you know? Of both sides.”
I smile and turn to her. Life is strange. “Keep this to yourself for now, okay?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Roni says. “We don’t really know anything.”
“True,” I lie again. I have a lot of practice now.
The Charles River flies by on my right, dotted with white-bannered sailboats on twilight cruises, the tender-leafed weeping willows on its historic banks fluttering in the May breeze.
My brain is going faster than Roni’s little car, and we’re now getting every green light as we head toward Crystal Lake and home.
A good omen. It has to be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
RACHEL NORTH
“Sweetheart?” I slide one finger along Jack’s bare arm, the white cotton blanket over us barely heavy enough to notice. Our bedroom windows are open, the soft night air coming through the open shutters and the screens Jack showed me he’d installed tonight after he got home. Nothing else to do while he waited for me to get there, he’d semi-complained. He hadn’t even asked where I’d been. Which gave me time to decide how to introduce my new idea. My lifesaving idea. “Are you awake?”
“Hmm.” He turns over, putting his back to me, but reaches around and draws me into the curve of him.
I breathe in his citrus shampoo and the minty toothpaste, feel the shape of the muscles in his back. Six years we’ve slept like this.
“Seriously.” I have to persist or I might lose my nerve. Maybe it would be easier to let this all go, see what happens, not try to mold the world into the shape I prefer. But I can’t do that. “Can you keep your eyes open a minute more? Honey?”
He flops over, his eyes closed but facing me now. He scoots one hand under his pillow, rearranging. “I’m all yours,” he mutters. “Completely awake. What?”
“I had a thought,” I begin. I should have practiced this, maybe. It has to sound spontaneous. “You know Martha Gardiner?”
“Is this some sort of quiz?” Jack’s eyes are still closed, his voice a mumble. “Or a trick question?”
“Sorry.” I touch his shoulder, let my fingers trail down his arm. “I’m just, you know, nervous.”
One eye struggles open. “About what?”
“So you know Roni and I talked. About Deacon—”
“Deacon Davis, got it.” Jack’s eyes are closed again, and he takes in a deep breath. I can feel his mind slipping away from me, but for some reason this seems like the right time.
“And remember Momo Peretz? The juror who got—”
Jack surprises me. Extricates himself from me. In an instant, he’s sitting up, his back leaning against three plumped pillows, eyes open now. “Rachel? What’s this about? Why did you wait until one in the morning to discuss whatever this is?”
Good. He’s awake. I sit up, too, and turn myself toward him, pulling the ice-blue sheet up to my neck.
“Because I didn’t know,” I begin, “whether even to float this. But I think—you’re right about Martha Gardiner. She cheats.”
“Cheats? She’s a royal pain, that’s for sure, which is why I can’t believe you’re working there, but—”
“Did you know there was a hearing on Roni Wollaskay? When she was dismissed? Did you know she never requested to be excused? Never said her daughter was deathly ill, or anything remotely like that?”
“She didn’t?”
“Nope. Martha was there when the judge called her to chambers, and the other officer, too, the man. But they never told you about that, did they?”
Jack looks concerned, so I know I’m on the right track.
“And Momo Peretz. Same thing. When they a
ccused her of talking to Grace O’Brien about Davis’s criminal record? That’s where I was this evening, talking to Momo. She insists she never talked to Grace about that. And did you know she was a total ‘not guilty’?”
More concerned look from Jack. “She didn’t say that to the judge, Rach.”
Not the point, but it is the point. “Exactly. I think Martha’s in cahoots with maybe the court officers to get rid of jurors they think will vote to acquit. How they know, I have no idea. Maybe they listen. Somehow. Maybe Martha gets them, or someone, to interfere with witnesses, too.”
Jack is silent, so I know I have him intrigued. He hates Martha, so I know he’s open to believe the worst.
“Listen. Remember the throat-slash killer, Marcus Simmons Dorn? In that apartment building. The West—”
“Moreland. Westmoreland. Yeah.”
“Remember you were so upset because there was a missing witness? That someone didn’t show up to testify? Or couldn’t? You said”—I think I’d remembered this correctly—“he was an alibi witness?”
Yeah. He yawns, but nods yes. He’s interested, I can tell.
“What specifically happened to that person?”
“He was detained.” Jack runs his hands over his face. “Deported. I think some feds, ICE, came to his house, took him away.”
“Is it possible Gardiner could have engineered that somehow? Sicced ICE on your witness? To get rid of him and clinch the case. So she could win. No matter how she did it.”
Silence.
“She only wants to win, Jack. And she doesn’t care how she does it.”
“You shouldn’t be talking to me about this, Rachel.”
“Huh?”
“You have to report it to the Board of Bar Overseers if you’re genuinely concerned. End of story.”
“Like you reported her? That’s hardly the end of the story.” I see the surprise on his face. “Might have been the beginning of it, in fact.”
“What?” Jack shakes his head. I can feel him remembering. “Well, she deserved it. But—she told you that?”
“Oh, yeah. She—” I need to push harder. I take a deep breath, clutch the sheet and go for it. “Listen. Let me talk one more minute, and if there’s something else I should do, I will, but you’re my only hope here. I’ve been pretending to be this lawyer, all these months, but all this makes me realize I’m just a naïve—so listen. Remember the pizza guy? Baltrim? Gardiner totally made me lie about being lost to get him to identify himself. She even made me trick a little kid to confirm the ID. I mean, I’m only a law student, but I know enough rules to know what’s”—I remember Roni’s word—“squirrely. Over the line. Unfair.”
The Murder List Page 26