At last, the laughter subsided, and Marcus opened the door and came back in. “I’m very sorry,” he said, and I could see he genuinely meant it. “You caught me off guard with that one. I mean, I’ve heard some stories, but I’ve never heard one quite like that.”
“Not one of my finer moments.”
Another giggle escaped Marcus’s lips, and he cleared his throat to cover it. “Is that the end of the story?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, not exactly.”
Marcus made a hand gesture and said, “Lay it on me.”
“Milo—that’s the best friend of my brother-in-law whose car I wrecked . . .”
“Yes?”
“He was a detective with the Royal Oak Police Department.”
Again, Marcus’s eyes widened, and he pressed his lips together tightly, but another round of giggles made him stand up and exit the room.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, waiting for him to return. He did in a matter of moments, and I could tell he was really trying to hold it together. “Catherine, please accept my apology. That was unprofessional and discourteous of me. I can only say that you have surprised me like no other client ever has.”
“It’s okay. There were plenty of people in the Royal Oak P.D. who found it pretty hilarious too.”
“So, charges were brought against you?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. I paid for the car, of course, and Milo was a close friend of my sister and her future husband, so after we all calmed down and Milo had his brand-new car, all was forgiven.”
“Then there’s no record of you destroying the BMW?”
“None that I know of.”
“That’s good. We don’t need that to come up today in court.”
“It shouldn’t. No one here knows about it—well, besides my dear friend Gilley, but he wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone.”
Marcus tapped his pen on his legal pad. “You said last night that you were recently divorced, is that correct?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Does your ex know about you running over the BMW?”
I tensed. “He does.”
“If Shepherd called him to get some dirt on you, would your husband share that story?”
I thought about that for a long moment, and then I said, “No. If Tommy were going to use that against me, he would’ve brought it up at any number of custody hearings we had over who should get the boys. Of course, he knew that if he mentioned the bulldozer, then I’d tell the judge all about the time he rammed his golf cart into a parked car at the country club because the owner had purposely coughed during a critical moment at the tournament Tommy was playing in. Oh, and then there was the time Tommy threw a set of golf clubs into the lake on the course because he said that the owner was taking too long on each hole and wasn’t allowing Tommy and his buddy to play through.”
“So your ex has a temper as well?”
“Yes,” I said. Isn’t it funny that I had a half a dozen stories like the two I’d just told Marcus about Tommy and I’d never really considered that Tommy had an anger-management problem too?
“Good. That’s good.”
“It is?”
“Yes. I just want to be prepared for any scenario where we could be surprised this morning. Is there anything else you think I should know?”
“Nothing I can think of.”
“Good. Okay, then let’s get to court. I can promise you—I will be bringing my A game, and if all goes well, you won’t have to say a word and you’ll be home very soon.”
* * *
True to his word, Marcus brought his A game, and I didn’t have to say a word. I sat in my seat looking as innocent as possible, but it turned out I didn’t even need to do much of that. The judge seemed to be very much on my side.
“I must say,” she said, looking over her reading glasses at Detective Shepherd, who sat behind the prosecutor, “I expected better from you, Detective.” Shuffling the crime-scene photos and tossing them aside, she added, “Counselor Brown is correct. This is the flimsiest evidence I’ve ever seen for an arrest. One photo of a broken punch bowl that has Ms. Cooper’s fingerprints on it and a few witness statements about a threat Ms. Cooper may or may not have issued to the decedent do not a murder case make.”
“Your Honor—” the prosecutor said.
“I do not want to hear it, Counselor!” the judge snapped. “You’ve got no eyewitness, no confession, no sign of forced entry, and not one shred of evidence linking the accused to the death of Mrs. Holland except for a punch bowl that got left behind at a party!”
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor tried again.
She put up her hand and glared hard at the man at the table next to ours. “Don’t even with this, Dashiell. Seriously. Your ace detective here arrested Ms. Cooper before the M.E. could file his official findings and issued only a preliminary report, calling the death of Mrs. Holland ‘suspicious’ without citing an actual cause of death in lieu of the toxicology report, and while noting that the wound to the back of her head was most likely delivered postmortem. Are you serious with bringing me this nonsense?!”
This time, the prosecutor remained mute, but his face reddened to near purple, and I could tell he was equal parts furious and humiliated.
Meanwhile, Detective Shepherd looked as if he was trying very hard to become one with the chair he was sitting on and disappear from view.
“This is nothing but a waste of the court’s time and a possible civil case for you if Ms. Cooper chooses to sue, and I might even be inclined to encourage her,” the judge said before raising her gavel and adding, “Defendant’s motion for dismissal is granted. Ms. Cooper, you are free to go.”
My heart swelled with adoration for the judge in that moment. She saw the truth!
I got up as she did, and after she left the courtroom, I turned to Marcus and hugged him fiercely. “Thank you!” I said. “Thank you, thank you!”
He gave me a quick pat on the back and released me. “You’ll have to sign some paperwork and be processed out from the jail, but you should be on your way home in an hour. Two at the most.”
“I have to go back to the jail?”
“Yes,” he said, packing up his briefcase. “But it’s only to collect your personal items and have them process you out. It should go smoothly, but if it doesn’t, call my cell.”
Marcus handed me his card, and I stared at it. “You’re leaving me?”
He chuckled. “Yes. Which is a good thing. But, Catherine, you should understand that we won here today only because the police rushed their case. The prosecutor was also humiliated, and he’s not going to take that lying down. My concern is that they will want redemption, and they’re going to be working hard to build a case against you.”
I put a hand over my heart and felt suddenly queasy. “So it’s not over?”
“Probably not,” Marcus said. “The good news is that they’ve already tipped their hand, and I still can’t understand why Shepherd—a seasoned detective—would do that. Dashiell Tanning is the new boy on the block, and he obviously didn’t know any better when Shepherd brought him the case and pushed for the arrest warrant, but I can tell that our young prosecutor over there isn’t going to take this lying down. He’ll push Shepherd to find better, more damning evidence just so he can haul you back into court and shove it right back in the judge’s face.”
“So, no matter what, you think I’m coming back here?”
“Yes. Unless they find the actual murderer, which, given how quick they were to peg you for the crime, I doubt they’ll be motivated to look elsewhere for.”
“Cat!” I heard behind me. Turning, I saw Gilley approach. “Ohmigod! You won!” he said, smiling from ear to ear.
I sat down heavily in the chair. “Hardly,” I told him.
Gil looked from me to Marcus. “What’s happening? What’d I miss? Didn’t the judge dismiss the charges?”
“She did,” Marcus said. “But it’s likely only a delay.” Turni
ng back to me, he said, “Try not to worry, Catherine. We beat them once. We can do it again.”
With that he began to walk away, and I called out to him. “Wait, Marcus, don’t I owe you a check or something?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Not this time. It’s been covered.”
And then he was gone.
I stared at his retreating back for a long moment, wondering what the heck that meant. Had someone else paid him? Had he been working pro bono?
As I was trying to figure out an answer to that cryptic question, a uniformed guard stepped up to me. “Ms. Cooper, I’m here to walk you through processing. Please come with me.”
I stood, but before I left with the guard, I said to Gil, “Meet me at the police station in an hour. And have Sebastian order me another Caesar salad for when I get home, would you?”
“Will do,” Gil promised.
* * *
I don’t know that I’d ever been so happy to walk through the door of the guest house as I was that day. Sebastian even greeted me as I entered. “Hello, Lady Catherine. Did you enjoy your time away?”
“No, Sebastian,” I said to him, heading straight for the couch. “I definitely did not!”
“Sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Sebastian said. “I have taken the liberty of ordering your usual lunch.”
The doorbell rang at that moment, and Gilley opened the door to the young man delivering our meal. Gilley took the food, tipped the kid, and brought everything to the couch.
Sebastian chimed in again with a helpful “There is a chilled bottle of Pellegrino in the refrigerator. Would you like me to play some music?”
I sighed. “No. Thank you, Sebastian. I think I simply want to sit and talk to Gilley for a while.”
“As you wish, ma’am,” Sebastian said.
Gilley waited on me like the sweet, lovable, doting friend he is, and after handing me my salad, he set his own lunch aside to take the time to lift my feet into his lap and massage them.
“You’re an angel,” I said, feeling weary down to my bones.
“I’m so sorry you’re going through this mess.”
With a long sigh, I said, “And the nightmare doesn’t seem to be over.”
“Maybe Shepherd will find someone else to pick on?”
“That’s not likely.”
“You never know,” Gil insisted.
“I may not have my sister’s intuition, lovey, but I know enough about men to know that Detective Shepherd has no intention of looking anywhere else but in my direction when it comes to identifying suspects.”
“Why do you think that is?” Gil asked.
I shrugged. “Who can say? But I do think we shouldn’t take it lying down.”
“You mean, ’cause we’re sitting here basically lying down?”
I chuckled. “Yes.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“I think we’ll have to take a page out of Abby and M.J.’s books and turn ourselves into amateur sleuths.”
Gilley stopped rubbing my feet. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Cat, I was part of the M.J.’s super-sleuthing team for almost a decade. It was a lot harder than you might think.”
Undeterred, I asked, “How many mysteries did you guys solve?”
Gilley looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Eight? Ten? Something like that.”
“So, basically, you’re telling me that you’re a subject-matter expert, right?”
Gilley scrunched up his face. “Um . . . I guess . . .”
“So all we have to do is rely on your expertise and my can-do attitude, and we should be fine.”
“See, now when you put it like that, you make it sound easy, and, Cat, you should know, I almost died! Like, several times! Nearly. Dead . . . me!”
I grinned winningly. “But you didn’t. In fact, you look none the worse for wear, my friend.”
Gilley rolled his eyes. “I’m serious!”
“So am I. In all those cases, weren’t you also battling some sort of evil demon? And weren’t they the reason you were in danger?”
Gilley frowned. “Not in every case. Some were just spooks, and the people were the ones who wanted to murder us to death.”
“Well, no one wants to murder you to death in this case. They just want me to go to jail for the rest of my life. But if helping me out would be such an inconvenience to you, then, I guess we know where our friendship stands.”
Gilley glared at me. “Really, Cat? You had to pull out the friendship card?”
I glared back. “Yep.”
He sighed dramatically. “Fine! Have it your way. We’ll poke around and see what we can see, but if things get dicey, your Sherlock will be less one Watson.”
I reached out and took his hand, squeezing it with relief. “I can live with that. I just want to live, Gil. I don’t want to go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit. I don’t want to lose my sons. I don’t want to lose my life. I don’t want to . . .” My voice trailed off as the emotional toll caught up to me, and I had to settle for ducking my chin and shaking my head because I couldn’t go on.
Gilley patted my hand, then got up and headed toward the bedrooms, arriving back by my side carrying what looked like a thick comforter. “Here,” he said, draping it over me.
I was shocked by the weight of the thing. It felt like it weighed about fifteen pounds. “What’s this?”
“It’s a gravity blanket.”
The weight of the comforter surrounded and enveloped me, and in an instant, I felt a sense of incredible calm come over me. “Oh my God, what’s happening?” I asked. Was this some kind of mind trick?
“How do you feel?” he asked.
My eyes misted at the immediate effect the gravity blanket had on me, and I looked up at him and said, “I feel . . . safe.”
He grinned. “Right? Isn’t it crazy?”
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“Michel gave it to me a few months ago. For some reason, I’d been having panic attacks. I think it was a latent effect of all the scary stuff that M.J. and I used to do. For as long as we were both working on the Ghoul Getters set, I was able to keep all that stuff from affecting me, but then a few months after M.J. and Heath moved to Santa Fe, I started to wig out a little.”
“Oh, my goodness, Gil. I had no idea.”
“Yeah. I was able to keep it a secret from everyone but Michel. He encouraged me to start seeing a therapist, and I did, and it helped, but that blanket was the game changer. Michel discovered it on a blog he read about natural anti-anxiety methods. I would’ve never known about it if he hadn’t read that blog, and I think that blanket just about saved my life.”
“I’m so glad,” I told him. “And I wouldn’t have believed you if I weren’t actually under this thing right now and feeling its effects. I can’t believe the difference.” I snuggled farther under the blanket. “I mean, one minute I was almost in a panic, and right now I feel like I could doze off.”
“Go for it,” Gilley said, tucking the blanket around me.
“But we have to come up with a game plan,” I said, adding a yawn.
“Later,” he assured me. “For now, sleep, Cat.”
And I did.
Chapter 7
“Where do we start?” I asked Gilley. It was Sunday morning, and I was feeling much better. I’d caught up on my sleep, I’d gone on a long walk that had bolstered my resolve, and I’d spent the evening cuddled with Gilley on the couch, huddled under the gravity blanket, watching old movies and eating popcorn.
We’d both worn tiaras.
Life is just better wearing a crown of jewels.
But by Sunday, I was anxious to get the super sleuthing started, so I’d woken early, made Gilley and me a delicious basket of raspberry scones, and was now seated at the table with my tablet and stylus, ready to crank out a game plan.
“Good Lord, woman, can I finish my coffee?”
“Sip while you talk,
” I said impatiently.
“Mamehminiffmybrmfst?” Gil replied, his mouth crammed full of scone.
I sighed. “Fine. Eat, chew, swallow, then talk.”
“Thank you. This scone is divine.”
“My grandmother’s recipe. She left all her recipes to me, actually. Which is good, considering that had she left them to Abby, they probably would’ve burned up in a kitchen fire.”
Gilley giggled. “M.J. can’t cook either. Well, I shouldn’t say that. She’s gotten better since the baby came along, but I swear, Heath is a saint for choking down some of the gruel she serves up.”
“At least she’s not on a first-name basis with the local firemen.”
“I’d like to be on a first-name basis with our local firemen,” Gil said, smiling wickedly.
I rolled my eyes. “Can we get back on track here, please?”
“Yes,” Gil said, popping another large piece of scone into his mouth before reaching for his own tablet. Swiveling it around, he showed me the screen. “I managed to worm my way onto this page this morning.”
I squinted at his tablet. “That’s Heather’s Facebook page?”
“Yep. She had it set to private, and I couldn’t crack her password, so I spent an hour combing through her friends’ accounts until I finally found one that had an easy password, and I was able to hack into that account, then log onto Heather’s page to see what we can see.”
“Wait, you hacked into someone else’s Facebook account?”
“I did,” Gilley said. “And I’m not sorry. We need information, and the best way to get that info is through social media.”
“Whose account did you hack?” I asked nervously. “Seriously, Gilley, we could get in major trouble for that!”
“Joyce McQueen.”
I blinked. “Who’s Joyce McQueen?”
Gilley rolled his eyes. “Some eighty-two-year-old woman who has twenty-six friends—total—and she hasn’t posted on Facebook in over a year. I’m not sure she’s even still alive. We’re not gonna get caught, Cat.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. “You’re sure someone won’t catch on that we’ve hacked into a private account?”
Coached to Death Page 11