by Dave Daren
“I didn’t want to go along with it,” he blurted as soon as he saw me.
“Wait,” Clare told him. “He doesn’t know anything yet.”
“What’s going on?” I asked as I critically scanned their faces and the room for clues.
“Christ, Clare.” Jim rubbed his face. “Are you really going to do this? Is it worth it all, really?”
“Honey, just, shhh,” she said.
Jim threw up his hands. “I can’t do this. Enough is enough.” Then he got up and left the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked Clare as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Please sit,” she sighed and motioned toward a chair.
We were alone in the hotel room, and I didn’t like it. Apparently, her husband didn’t either.
“You know what?” I said. “I would love to hear what you have to say, as I’m sure it relates to Jerry Steele, but let’s step outside.”
I gestured toward the door, and she raised an eyebrow.
“Sure, sure,” she said before she grabbed a manilla envelope.
We moved onto the porch and sat on the steps of the cabin.
“I know you know,” she muttered as she fingered the envelope..
“I do,” I lied. “So, I guess it’s time to get it out in the open. You want to tell me exactly what’s going on?”
“Okay,” she sighed as she averted her gaze. “I’m sure by now you’ve called Southern Life Insurance.”
“Mmm.” I nodded. I hadn’t, but I kept the charade going.
“They will have told you all about the rules,” she muttered and continued to avoid my eyes.
“Yep,” I said with finality. “So, why?”
I figured that was a general enough question.
“Why does anyone?” she mused, and her voice choked up. “I didn’t expect it to happen this way. You should meet Thad. He’s got all the good parts of his dad. And,you … you would love him. You know he’s on the debate team? He’s ten, and he can argue either side of the death penalty.”
I was never in debate. I hated the debate club. I preferred the gender bending theatre buffs with their colored hair, piercings, underaged tattoos, and off brand music. But I was used to the preconceived notion that all lawyers must have been on the debate team in school.
“But,” Clare continued, “I knew he should have the best life possible.”
I nodded as I calculated what mental gymnastics she would have to perform to conclude the best life for Thad was offing his father for the insurance money.
Which, I presumed, must have been the topic we were talking around.
“So,” she sighed, “I hid it for a long time. Brian was the first.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, even though I wasn’t entirely sure yet what “it” she was hiding. I knew it was better to give non committal responses. That way, she would just keep rambling, and she’d give me all the answers I needed without me having to ask any questions and potentially make her clam up.
“Brian was this gorgeous model from Phoenix,” she murmured as her eyes went hazy, “and oh, he had this six pack.”
She grunted and whistled, and I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.
Did I need to hear this?
“And he was hung like… ” She shook her head at the thought. “Anyway, that’s not my point.”
God, I hoped not.
“Things with Brian didn’t last long,” she went on. “The thing about Brian was that no one loved Brian quite like Brian. Except maybe the slew of ex-girlfriends he had all over the state.” She rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. Anyway, he ended up going back to one of them. I don’t know which one. And that was that.”
I was thoroughly confused. So, this guy who was apparently five reps away from a porn star was her first homicide?
“But,” she sighed, “after that, I couldn’t do it, you know. It was too much to ask of anyone. Why would they write it like that? It was so cruel.”
Write? Was this one of Jerry’s news stories, or a film? What was she talking about?
“So,” she said, “then I met Jim. I met him at a show. I play live music sometimes at coffee houses and bars. You should come see us sometime.”
From prison? The thought ran through my head, but I just pursed my lips.
“It was a couple of years ago now,” Clare continued. “I played at this little bar downtown. It’s not even there anymore. But, afterward, Jim asked if he could buy me a drink. Everything went from there. We started hanging out more, and then, you know.”
She sighed and fingered the envelope.
“It got complicated,” she blurted out. “How could Jerry expect that from me? I mean, he’s got … well, you know, his little twenty year olds, what’s that one? Starts with ‘A’? Uh … ”
“Allison?” I supplied.
“Yeah!” She snapped her fingers and nodded. “I mean, he’s stringing her along with all of this stuff about, ‘Oh, yeah, baby, I’m going to take you to L.A., make you a big movie star.’ Such bullshit. He knew like two people in L.A.” She laughed and shook her head. “That was Jerry for you. Master of bullshit. He could sell it, too. That’s why I stayed with him for so long.”
She leaned back against the railing and looked out into the distance.
“I’m going to miss him, you know,” she went on. “He was an asshole. Complete jerk. Couldn’t live with him. But I loved him. A part of me still does.”
“Then what happened?” I prodded. I was so completely lost. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Well,” she shrugged, “I mean, what do you think? I fell for Jim. And, we couldn’t be together, because of you know, the whole thing. So, we started sneaking around.” She paused and played with her hair. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this. I am ruining any chance I have to … but it’s not like you don’t already know.”
“Right,” I said with a nod. “I just want to know why.”
Clare looked at me quizzically. “You keep saying that. What do you mean, why? Isn’t it obvious?”
“I want to hear you say it,” I replied.
She looked scared. “Are you recording this or something? I mean you have to tell me, legally, if you’re bugged or something. Because I don’t consent to being recorded--”
“Calm down, Clare,” I cut her off. “I’m not recording anything, and you’re right. I can’t record you without your consent or it’s not legally admissible, so I would never do that.”
“Okay.” She calmed down a little, but still looked nervous.
“But you called me out here,” I pressed gently. “You wanted to tell me something. What do you need to get off your chest, Clare?”
Suddenly, she started to cry. “What am I doing? What am I doing?”
Jim showed back up and jogged up to the cabin. He saw Clare and I sitting outside, and he shook his head.
“Did he take it?” he asked flatly.
“Take what?” I question with a frown as I glanced between him and Clare.
“I couldn’t do it,” she sobbed. “It’s not worth it.”
“Good,” Jim grunted. “Fuck the insurance money.”
Then he grabbed the envelope out of her hand, tossed it back into the cabin, and stood on the stoop with his hands on his hips.
Clare wept relentlessly.
“Honey,” he told her. “Why don’t you go inside? I’ll finish up here.”
Clare was such a mess she was completely useless, so she went inside, and I stood on the stoop with Jim.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I was ready for some answers.
“You know,” Jim sighed and stared out past me into the distance, “I’m glad this all came out. Because this is getting out of hand. It needs to stop. I make good money. And if we lose the settlement, well, we lose the settlement.”
“You want to tell me what the jig was here, Jim?” I questioned and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Clare was going to bribe you not to s
ay anything about our marriage,” he blurted out.
I blinked in surprise, but schooled the rest of my face into a stoic expression.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because of the insurance,” he explained as he rubbed his face. “She’s got a generous payout coming for both Thad and herself, so long as she stays single. She gets remarried, either legally or common law, she loses her half, and the payout goes from two million to one million.”
“That’s insurance fraud,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he replied morosely and shook his head. “I went along with it for a while, but it’s getting out of hand. Like I said, I’m glad it came out.”
“So, wait, she didn’t kill Jerry?” I asked with a frown.
“Kill Jerry?” he repeated incredulously as he snapped his head up to stare at me with wide eyes. “No. She wouldn’t never do that. She’s a little neurotic, but she’s not that crazy. Is that what you thought she wanted to talk about?”
I raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head.
“Oh, geez,” he sighed. “You mean you didn’t know about the insurance?”
“No,” I replied. “I knew there was a policy and a big payout. But I didn’t know about the stipulation.”
He laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. So, look, you’re not going to report us or anything?”
“No,” I admitted, “but I’m not going to protect you if it comes up, and I would suggest you retract your insurance claim.”
“That’s fair,” he murmured before a broad grin broke across his face. “Man, it’s so good to be free of this. We’ve been sneaking around for so long.”
“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “how much was she going to bribe me with?”
“You don’t want to know,” he laughed.
“You’re probably right,” I chuckled, but my humor faded as the million dollar question continued to nag me. “So, then who killed Jerry Steele?”
Jim shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”
Chapter 15
“So, she tried to bribe you, really?” AJ asked incredulously.
Vicki, AJ, and I sat in the conference room over Fifth Street Bistro and Jitters and listened to Hindu techno. I paced the room in a mixture of caffeine and adrenaline. Our impending deadline was eating away at me.
“She didn’t actually do it,” Vicki said. “To her credit, she stopped just short of it.”
“What does it mean, though?” AJ questioned as she tapped her pen on the table. “For our case?”
“It means nothing,” I replied as I pivoted and began to pace the opposite way again. “It means Clare is a dead end. Now, we have an explanation for all of her shady behavior. The trips, the sneaking off. Leaving the kid everywhere. We’re back to square one.”
“I think we need to find out more about the Morales angle,” AJ mused and sipped a coffee cup.
“Go ahead,” I waved at her absently, “whatever angle we can.”
“Got it,” AJ murmured and ducked her head to make a note on her laptop.
As I reached the opposite end of the room, I leaned against the window pane and watched the empty sidewalk like the answer to the murder would suddenly appear in the concrete.
I ran my hands through my hair and sighed. “Geez, this music is making me nuts.” A headache was forming behind my eyes, and the pain was pulsing to the beat of the techno music playing through the speakers.
“Hey,” AJ chuckled, “it’s not all for nothing. Earlier I found out the cure for cancer.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Yeah,” she went on, “Jerry had a two hour rant on this guy who found out all about how to cure cancer--”
I rolled my eyes and smirked. “Cyanide and arsenic?”
“Yeah,” she frowned, “you knew about it?”
I winked. “I’ve heard about it. A time or two, or five hundred.”
“Well, apparently, cancer is such a big business that makes so much money, that they can’t release the cure,” AJ continued as she held up a yellow legal pad and flipped through a few dozen scrawled pages. “Jerry was going to do a big expose on it. See, I’ve got all these notes.”
I just shook my head. Great. This was what we were using The Count’s billable hours for.
“I had to stay awake,” she laughed.
“Something to tell Landon about,” I teased her.
AJ’s face fell, and her thin mouth pursed into a scowl. “Landon and I aren’t speaking,” she said indignantly.
“Oh, no,” Vicki said and leaned forward in her chair. “What happened?”
“He told me I’m a sellout,” AJ replied in a flippant tone, but I could see in her eyes it bothered her.
“How are you a sellout?” I asked as I settled into a chair and propped my feet up on the table.
All we were finding were dead ends. We might as well catch up on gossip.
“Apparently,” AJ drawled sarcastically, “by writing with a traditionalist view of U.S. history for the play, I’ve somehow become a conformist. But I told him, the play wouldn’t get published with an alt-history angle. He thinks I should have tried it and been true to ‘the message,’ is what he called it.”
Then she slammed down her notes and aimlessly clicked around on her laptop.
“But,” Vicki said, “that’s what Jerry was doing, and it was a piece of trash.”
“Thank you!” AJ exclaimed and threw her hands up in the air. “See that’s what I told him. But then he went on this whole thing about how I’m perpetuating lies by writing from a traditionalist viewpoint, and that I should put out something edgy that makes people think.” She rolled her eyes and mocked Landon’s voice. “‘Make people question their reality. Everything they know is wrong.’ Ugh.”
Vicki and I stifled laughter at her fairly accurate impression.
“There’s no time to write something that multi-faceted,” I replied.
“That’s what I said, too,” AJ groaned and raked her hand through her hair. “And then, the whole thing escalated out of control. He’s all like telling me I should put myself out there and try to make a difference in the world. And that’s why he’s in Chicago, and I’m still here.”
“Ooh,” I winced. “What a jerk.”
“So,” she continued, “I told him my work here is doing a lot more good for the world than him sitting on his ass in school, playing with a computer mouse.”
Vicki and I laughed at the burn.
“The truth hurts,” I snickered.
“And then,” AJ went on and shook her head, “then it just got insane. I don’t even know what was said anymore. I can’t keep track.”
“It sounds like he’s jealous,” Vicki remarked with raised eyebrows.
“See, that’s what I think.” AJ nodded. “So, I texted him and told him I was totally supportive when he wanted to do that stupid documentary.”
Landon had done a documentary on our team when we defended a murder case not too long ago. He was convinced the Illuminati was behind the murder of a nude dancer.
“And you know what,” AJ continued, ”just between us … I knew the idea was crap. But I went with it anyway to be supportive. And now, I start to get just a tiny, little thing for my writing, and it becomes, ‘oh yeah, your idea is crap.’ You know? I don’t need that in my life! And where is he right now? He’s not here! He’s off in Chicago eating authentic Japanese sushi with … sorority girls named Jemma and Stona, and they sit around and tell stories about the summer they spent at the Playboy Mansion. I mean, really. Who names their kid Stona? What kind of a name is that? They even sound like porn stars!”
I cleared my throat and scratched my head. She was clearly at the end of her rope here. We had all been running on fumes and pressure over the last few days, and it was getting to her.
“AJ, it’s been a long day,” I said gently, “and an even longer night before that. Why don’t you go home for a bit?”
“I’m fine,” she slammed down a stack of spreads
heets, “I’m too busy selling my soul to the devil of American elitist dogma to care about sleep.”
I sighed and ignored the fact that this was probably a veiled dig at our firm being part of the “system.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to get away from all of this for a while? We can take over.”
“Totally,” Vicki agreed and nodded vehemently. “At least go get some coffee. You’re losing it.”
“Fine,” AJ huffed and threw up her hands. “Anyone need anything from Jitters?”
“No,” I replied as I flashed a quick smile. “Just go read a book or something. Or go home and take a nap. We can hold down the fort for a while.”
“Thanks,” she sighed before she shuffled out of the office like a zombie.
Then Vicki took over her post at the hi-fi terminal where AJ had spreadsheets full of notes and stickies.
“Verb tenses?” Vicki mused as she fingered a sticky note on AJ’s laptop.
“He had so many languages in those tapes,” I commented with a shrug. “I guess she was trying to piece it all together.”
“Geez,” Vicki muttered and shook her head. “This is a project.”
I nodded. “I need to find out where the police are in their investigation.”
“Great,” she clapped her hands together, “I’ll man the battle station here. See if I find anything.”
“Other than a migraine?” I snorted as I took a sip of coffee.
“I think AJ already found that one,” Vicki laughed. “We’re good on migraines.”
I chuckled and left Vicki to take over the recordings. Then I pulled out my phone and called Officer Durant.
“Officer Durant,” he answered after several rings.
“This is Henry Irving,” I replied. “How are you doing?”
“Irving,” he said slowly. “Yeah, good to hear from you. I’ve been uh … meaning to call you.”
“Oh yeah?” I said as I leaned my chair back on two legs. “Why is that?”
“Look,” he sighed, “we’re out of time on this Steele case. We’re moving forward.”
“What do you mean?” I asked with a frown.
“Chet was supposed to call you this morning,” he said. “We’ve ended the investigation on the Steele case and are charging Alfred Dumont. The paperwork has been filed.”