by Kathi Daley
“The mayor was a kind man, a good man. He was such a breath of fresh air after our last mayor, who, as you know, was less than honorable. But despite the fact that he was about as fair a man as you’ll find, there were some members of the community who found fault with some of his decisions. Most of the people who stopped by to complain had petty arguments I doubt would escalate to the point where they’d try to harm him. The files on his desk would be the things he was currently working on, so I suppose they’d be a good place to start.”
Kyle began looking through the papers while I continued to speak to Harriet. “Can you think of anyone who might have come by to speak to the judge, who might have had business with him outside his role as mayor?”
Harriet considered my question. “There was one man who came by while I was at lunch one day so I didn’t catch his name. When I got back I heard them arguing. It wasn’t like the mayor to lose his cool, but that day it seemed as if tempers had been ignited on both sides.”
“Do you know what they were arguing about?”
“Based on what I overheard, it seemed as if the mayor had sent the man to prison when he was still a judge. The man had recently been paroled and was having a hard time meeting some of the conditions that had been set up before he was released. He wanted the mayor to intervene on his behalf, but it sounded like the mayor either couldn’t or wouldn’t do it.”
“And you never got his name?”
“No. But I got a look at him when he left and I remember him mentioning someone named Smith. Of course, Smith is a common name; I doubt that will help you much.”
I supposed that a disgruntled parolee could be angry enough to tamper with Judge Harper’s car, although Harriet was correct that the name Smith wasn’t going to be a whole lot of help. “Do you remember when this happened?”
“A few days before the accident. The timing seemed suspect to me, so I mentioned it to Roy. He said he’d look into it. I never heard back, but maybe he either cleared the man or was unable to identify him.”
“I’ll check with him.”
I looked around the room, which had changed very little since our previous mayor had been in office. I wondered who would take over now. I supposed the council would have to meet and put someone in place before too long. Judge Harper’s death was a shame in more ways than one. Not only had he been a gem of a man, he’d been a gem of a mayor as well.
“I found a file on Bristow’s project,” Kyle announced. He looked at Harriet. “Is it okay if I make a copy?”
Harriet looked over at Kyle. “Is Mr. Bristow a suspect?”
“At this point.”
“I guess I could look the other way while you made a copy, but I’m sure you understand that everything in that file should be treated as confidential.”
“Of course.”
Kyle started to copy the contents of the papers while I continued to look around. I noticed that the pictures on the wall had changed since the judge had taken office, and there were several awards on one wall as well. I wondered who would inherit the judge’s estate. As far as I knew he’d never had children; in all the years I’d known him, he’d never mentioned any. His wife had passed, and given his age, I was certain his parents had as well.
There were photographs on one wall of the judge with other people, including one of him fishing with my dad. I didn’t recognize a lot of the subjects in the older photographs, but I did recognize quite a few in the more recent shots. I paused in front of one in particular, of Judge Harper standing next to his wife. Mrs. Harper was standing next to Martha Wilson, who was standing beside a man I assumed was her husband. A young boy who looked to be around ten stood in front of the adults. Based on his features and the people he was with, I imagined the boy must be Sam. Judge Harper had a hand on the boy’s shoulder, who was looking over his shoulder at him with an expression of adoration on his face. I guess I could understand why Sam was so upset to learn that his mother had been in an intimate relationship with a man he’d always known as an uncle of sorts.
“I have what I need,” Kyle said to me.
“Okay, great.” I turned to Harriet. “Thank you so much for your help.”
“I hope you’ll be able to find the person who did this.”
“We’re going to try,” I promised. “If you think of anything else—anything at all—please call me. You never know when some small thing can make all the difference in figuring out a complicated puzzle like this.”
“I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
I turned to leave when I noticed the phone on Judge Harper’s desk. “Have you listened to his messages?” I asked Harriet.
“Why, no. I have never checked Judge Harper’s messages. Even when he was away, he checked them remotely. To be honest, it didn’t occur to me. I suppose he would have checked them prior to the council meeting, so any messages he might have would be after that point in time.”
I continued to stare at the phone. “I know you’re worried about overstepping, but I think we should check them. Just in case.”
Harriet looked undecided, but after a few seconds she walked over to the desk and pushed the message button.
The first message was from Sam Wilson. “Hey, Harold. I’ve thought about things and I realize I may have acted rashly. I want my mom to be happy, and it appears you make her happy, so I’m willing to get past this. Maybe we can do breakfast tomorrow. Call me after your meeting tonight and we’ll set up a time.”
I glanced at Kyle. Based on the message, it sounded like Sam wasn’t our guy.
The next message came several seconds later. “Damn. I must have missed you. We need to talk. Avoiding me isn’t going to change a thing. You know what I want. I just need to know if we have a deal. I’ll try to track you down at the meeting tonight. This really can’t wait.”
“Who was that?” I asked Harriet.
“Striker Bristow.”
I glanced at Kyle again. I couldn’t know for certain at this point, but there was a good possibility Bristow was our man.
“Do you know what deal Bristow was talking about?” I asked Harriet.
Harriet shook her head. “No. I don’t have a clue.”
“Did Bristow and Mayor Harper meet often?”
Harriet paused. “I’m not sure what you mean by often, but Bristow had been by several times in the weeks prior to the accident. When he first brought the idea of the mall project to the council, pretty much everyone was against it. But Bristow can be a persuasive chap, and over time he managed to persuade about half the council members to support the idea. Even those who continued to oppose it publicly seemed to be coming around to a certain degree. I think if Mayor Harper would have changed his position on the project, it would have been granted the support it needs.”
“Do you think the mall project will receive the green light now that Mayor Harper is out of the equation?” Kyle asked.
“Yes,” Harriet answered. “Unless, of course, Striker Bristow is actually responsible for Mayor Harper’s death.”
As we left the mayor’s office, we ran into Kate, who was approaching the building from the parking lot.
“Kate,” I greeted her, somewhat stiffly.
“Tj, Kyle. What are you doing here?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Just saying hi to Harriet.”
Kate stared at us with a look of suspicion. “Just saying hi?”
“Absolutely,” I assured her with a smile so big it felt like my face would crack. “Harriet and I are old friends and I hadn’t had the opportunity to speak to her since returning to Paradise Lake. I was in the area so we took advantage and stopped by.” I glanced at Kyle. “We really do need to be going. I enjoyed getting to know you at dinner the other night. We’ll have to do it again when we have more time to talk.”
Kate narrowed her eyes but didn’t respond. If she was trying to intimi
date me, it was just as well she found out sooner rather than later that Tj Jensen didn’t intimidate easily. I put my arm through Kyle’s and waved goodbye as we started back toward the parking lot.
“Were you trying to piss her off?” Kyle asked as we neared his car.
“Piss her off? Whatever do you mean?” I asked innocently. “I couldn’t have been nicer if I’d tried. All I did was say I enjoyed meeting her and expressed a desire to get to know her better.”
Kyle snorted. “You know you’re playing with fire, and that, I’m afraid, never ends well.”
“You worry too much. Kate is a strong woman with powerful convictions. She’s actually a lot like me. I think we both understand that it’s game on if she’s seriously going to try to tell me what I can and can’t do in my own town.”
Kyle wisely didn’t comment, so after a moment of silence I called Roy to ask him about the tip Harriet had given him. I doubted the ex-con was our guy, but it was best to leave no stone unturned. He said the man Harriet had overheard arguing with Judge Harper had indeed recently gotten out of prison and would have made a good suspect, but he had a solid alibi that Roy himself had verified. It looked like we could move on from that lead. I was really beginning to think Striker Bristow was our man. Roy said both he and Kate has spoken to Striker and he hadn’t said anything that would definitively point to his guilt, but he hadn’t said anything that would definitively clear him either. Roy considered him a viable suspect and so did I, but Roy said Bristow was out of town until after the holiday weekend, so our best lead at the moment, at least in regards to following up, seemed to be Clarissa Halloran.
“Let’s head toward Lakeshore Estates,” I instructed Kyle. “Maybe Clarissa Halloran has information that will help us either confirm or eliminate Jennifer Reinhold’s murder as a motive for the judge’s death.”
Kyle pulled onto the highway and headed east. It was another beautiful day and the town was decorated with accents related to the upcoming holiday. I really did wish we were simply on our way to the beach, or perhaps even a second official date.
“I’ve been thinking about Harriet’s suggestion to talk to the other council members,” Kyle said after we had driven for a while. “Being a council member I probably should do that anyway to get up to date before the next meeting. Tomorrow is the holiday, but if we haven’t figured this out by Wednesday I’ll set up a few meetings to see what I can find out.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Kyle pulled up to the gate and I gave him the code. “I think Clarissa Halloran’s home is on the meadow, so you’ll probably need to make an immediate right once you go through the security gate.”
“Do you think we should have called ahead to set up an appointment?”
“No. I didn’t want to give her a chance to refuse to see us. One way or the other, I intend to get the answers we came for.”
Chapter 15
Clarissa Halloran lived just a couple of blocks from Judge Harper’s home. Her house wasn’t as close to the lake as Harper’s, but it was still very nice, in a gated community where crime would be kept to a minimum. When I knocked on the door, a woman who looked to be in her mid-to-late forties dressed in slacks and a designer blouse answered.
“Can I help you?”
“My name is Tj Jensen and this is my friend Kyle Donovan. Are you Clarissa Halloran?”
“I am. And who might you be?”
“We are, or I guess I should say were, friends of Judge Harper. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”
Clarissa twisted a strand of her long red hair around her finger in a nervous gesture. “I don’t know anything about Judge Harper’s death. I heard he was in an auto accident. It was a tragedy really. I only recently met him, although I’ve lived here for over ten years.”
“We don’t want to speak to you about Judge Harper’s death,” I corrected her. “We’d like to talk about a matter he was looking into for you. We understand you asked him to take a second look at the death of Jennifer Reinhold.”
The woman frowned at us. She looked as if she might refuse to answer. “Do you work for the sheriff’s office?”
I shook my head. “No. We’re…freelance consultants who simply want to find out what happened to our friend. We’d really appreciate it if you could give us a few minutes of your time.”
She paused before stepping aside and allowing us in. As were many of the homes in the community, hers looked as if it had been professionally decorated. If I had to guess, the furnishings inside cost as much as many of the houses located in other residential areas surrounding the lake.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” she asked after showing us into the living room, where she motioned for us to have a seat on her sofa.
“No, thank you,” I answered.
She sat down on a chair across from us. “What is it you want to know?”
I sat forward and glanced gently at the woman, who still looked uncertain. “After Judge Harper died, the deputy assigned to the case and I went through some of his files and found one that detailed his investigation into the possibility that Steven Reinhold hadn’t killed his wife. His notes indicated that he began looking into the matter after meeting you.”
Clarissa nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“Mr. Reinhold has been in prison for almost eight years. My first question is, why did you ask the judge to look into the case after all this time?”
The woman narrowed her gaze. She paused, but then she answered, “Honestly, it all comes down to opportunity.”
I raised a brow. “Can you elaborate?”
Clarissa crossed her legs and her arms before answering. “When I was interviewed after the murder, I told the man in charge of the investigation that it was my belief Steven was innocent. He took my statement, but it was obvious he’d already made up his mind otherwise. When Steven was convicted and sent to prison, I thought about doing something to help the poor guy, but I didn’t know where to start, so I pretty much let it go. It wasn’t like I had proof of Steven’s innocence or anything. It was more like I had a hunch I had no way of proving. Then I met Judge Harper at a party and remembered he was the judge who presided over Steven’s trial. We got to talking about the trial and I shared with him some of the thoughts I’d had all along. He seemed interested and invited me to his home for a formal interview. I told him I was happy to share my ideas, so we met. He asked a bunch of questions and took a bunch of notes. He must have thought I’d made good points, because I know that after our talk he interviewed some of the other neighbors who were around back then.”
“You said you didn’t think Reinhold killed his wife. Do you have a theory as to who did?” I asked.
“Not a clue.”
“Then can you tell me why you think he’s innocent?”
Halloran sat back in her chair, glancing at both Kyle and me before answering. Based on the contemplative expression on her face, I imagined she was trying to make up her mind about whether to take us into her confidence. Apparently she decided to trust us. “Steven and I used to meet to go jogging a couple times a week. And just in case you’re wondering, no, there wasn’t anything between us. I jog three or four times a week and I’d run into him on several occasions. Eventually we began to arrange to meet at a specific place at a specific time and we’d jog together.”
“And you talked while you jogged?”
“We did. I knew Steven and his wife were having problems. We talked about it many times. He told me he’d contacted an attorney to discuss divorce. I don’t know why a man would kill his wife if he had already made plans to leave her.”
“Could there have been a financial reason, like a prenup?” Kyle asked.
“They had a prenup, but Steven didn’t stand to receive any money from his wife either way. He told me that Jennifer had brought a significant amount of money to the re
lationship. She was the sole heir to her grandmother’s estate, and her inheritance was set up so that only another family member could inherit the money should something happen to her. Steven and Jennifer’s prenup stated that if they divorced his settlement would be limited to ten thousand dollars; if she passed away before Steven did, his inheritance would be the same ten thousand dollars. As I said, whether she passed or they divorced, it was all the same to him from a financial standpoint.”
“Do you know who inherited her money when she died?” I asked.
Clarissa shrugged. “I’m not sure. All I know is it had to be a family member. I remember him mentioning that Jennifer had a sister, so maybe she got the money. For all I know, the grandmother could have arranged everything before she died and a cousin or someone else related to her inherited the money.”
“So the only way for Steven to have access to his wife’s money was to stay in the marriage,” Kyle clarified.
The woman tilted her head to the side. “Exactly. But Steven told me that although he enjoyed the perks that came from being married to a rich woman, their relationship had deteriorated to the point that it wasn’t worth it and he wanted out.”
“Did Mrs. Reinhold know her husband planned to file for divorce?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Steven told me he was committed to the divorce, but he was afraid to tell her what he was planning until everything was in place and he was ready to leave Paradise Lake.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
“He said he was afraid she was going to go bat-crap crazy—his words. He’d already told me Jennifer had deep emotional problems that caused her to react in a physically violent manner.”
“Such as throwing dishes and yelling and screaming,” I concluded.
Clarissa nodded. “Exactly. I think they were both passionate individuals who had a tendency toward extreme behavior. Steven wanted out of the relationship. He had a plan to leave his wife and nothing to gain by killing her, so why would he? It did cross my mind that he finally told Jennifer he was divorcing her, she went crazy, and he killed her during the course of an altercation, but he said he was innocent and I believed him. In fact, the deeper into things the trial went and the more evidence the prosecution presented, the more certain I was that Steven was being set up.”