by D. L. Wood
“But,” Holt reiterated, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his temples as if fending off a tension headache, “you agreed to throw a case.” He punched each word, every syllable a staccato indictment of her failure.
“No,” she blurted, leaning into the desk as if trying to physically draw him into her perspective on things. “That’s the thing—I didn’t. I never gave Donner an answer. I’m not even sure he was waiting for one. I think he just expected me to capitulate. I was trying to buy time to think it through and also hoping for a miracle. I thought, if I got lucky, maybe Sims would drop the suit, or maybe, I don’t know, Donner would move on, before we ever had the first hearing. But that didn’t happen, and I knew I couldn’t do what he was asking. So I went to the hearing and did what I was supposed to and represented Sims to the best of my ability.”
“And Donner wasn’t going to let that go,” Holt surmised.
Cecilia shook her head. “No. He threatened me again, right there on the courthouse steps after the hearing. We didn’t get the temporary injunction, but it wasn’t because I didn’t try my hardest. I’d done a good job and he knew it. But I flat out told him I wasn’t going to do what he wanted. I was going to let the chips fall where they may. After that I just hoped that maybe he wouldn’t follow through. That maybe he had bigger fish to fry or something. And then…he got shot.”
“And just like that your problem disappeared.”
Weak relief enveloped her. “I know. I couldn’t believe it.”
“But Cecilia,” Holt sighed in frustration, “you see the problem, right? It’s a textbook motive for murder.”
She recoiled in disbelief. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m defense counsel for a client accused of the murder of the man that you also have a motive for killing. Frankly,” he added, gesturing vehemently, “a better motive than my client has. So, yeah, I’m serious.”
“You can’t use this, Holt. It’ll end me.”
“You know as well as I do that if I can give the jury an alternative theory to the one the prosecution’s pushing, it could help secure a not-guilty verdict. I’ve got an obligation—”
“No! Just—just get off the case. Let someone else handle it,” she argued, her pitch rising, spurred by growing panic.
“What difference would that make? That lawyer would still have to use it. I can’t keep this to myself. I hate that you’ve put me in this position.”
“Please,” she begged, wetness gathering on her eyelashes. “I didn’t kill Phillip Donner. You know that. Just don’t, Holt. Just let it go.”
“Oh come on, Cecilia! And ruin my career too?” Holt rose and stood back from the chair. He ran a hand through his hair and heaved a sigh. When he looked up, there was something softer about his eyes. “You know that the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you. But this is out of my hands. You and I both know that this is coming out one way or another.”
“I didn’t kill Phillip Donner!”
“It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t. You had a reason to do it and that’s enough. At least maybe enough to give a jury reasonable doubt in Kurt Sims’s case.”
“For heaven’s sake, Holt, they’ve got evidence that Sims’s gun was the murder weapon,” she said with a note of pleading.
Holt sighed resignedly. “Yeah, and you’re his lawyer—who has been to his house where he kept the gun before it disappeared and became the murder weapon.”
They locked eyes for several moments, Cecilia’s expression growing increasingly callous when Holt failed to yield.
“Get out,” she finally muttered miserably. “Get out, now.”
FIFTY
“Are you okay?” Chloe asked, as Holt sped through the square, horns honking to their right as he cut off a Bronco in the outer lane so as not to miss their exit.
“Yeah. Fine.” His clipped speech offered evidence to the contrary.
“I know that was hard.”
“It’s impossible. I’ve looked up to Cecilia Tucker as an attorney for as long as I can remember. And now, I’m in the position of having to sacrifice her and her family on the altar of my duty to represent Sims.” He exhaled. “And it’s more twisted than you think.”
“Why?”
He swiveled to look at her. “All of that,” he swirled his index finger in circles, “back there? That doesn’t just mean that Cecilia presents an alternative suspect theory. Think about it. What are the primary reasons people commit murder?”
“I don’t know…what…money? Revenge. Jealousy. To protect themselves—”
“Exactly. Cecilia arguably could have killed Donner to shut him up, to protect her career and marriage. Who else might have wanted that same thing?”
“Her husband? That is, if he had actually known about the affair and that Donner was using it as blackmail.”
Holt nodded. “Exactly.”
“But he didn’t know about the affair. He didn’t know what Donner was threatening.”
“As far as Cecilia knew. But what if she was wrong? Or what if she’s lying to protect him? What if he did know about Roberts? Donner found out about him somehow. What if D.B. did too?”
“But that doesn’t make sense. If D.B. knew about all of it, why would he kill Donner? Why wouldn’t he have just left Cecilia like she said he would?” Chloe clenched the arm rest when Holt braked unexpectedly to avoid running over a couple of millennials who had decided to cross in the middle of the street.
“Geez, people. Come on,” Holt groaned, waving them across, his eyebrows raised in condemnation. “Maybe he would have. Or maybe he would have envisioned that leaving would have destroyed his kids, just like Cecilia believed it would.” He pressed on the gas. “Imagine—D.B.’s bent on keeping his family together, but knows that Donner’s out there, waiting to drop a bomb on the public that will embarrass and humiliate his already emotionally struggling kids. Not to mention ruining the career ambitions of his wife, which would likely crumble Cecilia, gutting any stability they’ve managed to achieve in their relationship. But take Donner out of the picture, and whoosh,” Holt waved a hand across the windshield, “the slate is clean.”
“That’s a stretch, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But my job is to hand a jury as many options as I can. A guy deciding to avoid the demolition of his marriage and his kids with one bullet? I could sell that.”
“You’re serious?”
“It’s all about options. The more options the jury has, the less certain they can be about Sims.” He scowled. “Normally, this kind of alternative theory would really get my blood pumping. Two other people with a motive, and one, if not both, with access to the murder weapon and the ability to frame Sims? It’d be Christmas come early.” He paused. “But these are my friends.”
“So…not great.”
“Yeah. Not great. And it will kill Reese.” He rocked his head back and forth, considering something. “On the upside, now we’ve also got Roberts.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Roberts? Really? As a suspect? I mean, I know that what he did would look bad professionally, but is that a reason to kill someone?”
“He’s a counselor who had an affair with a client mid-treatment. I can’t imagine the licensing board would just let him off scot-free. Even if they didn’t take his license, they would make sure he was sanctioned. And the sanction would be public information. Searchable. Roberts would be finished in the counseling arena. Who’s gonna seek treatment from a guy who has affairs with the wives he’s supposed to be helping? If Donner had lived to tell his tale, Roberts’s career trajectory would take a nosedive.”
“But there’s no real proof that any of them—Roberts, Cecilia or D.B—are involved.”
“I don’t have to prove it, Chloe. I’ve just got to plant a seed.” When she pressed her lips together tightly and narrowed her eyebrows in response, he smiled sadly. “You’re disappointed.”
“No, I…” Her words tapered off, and she shrugge
d. “It just seems a little—”
“Wrong?” he offered, helping her out.
“Yeah, maybe.”
A wan smile crossed his mouth. “Welcome to the juxtaposition of being a criminal defense lawyer. Wrong in this situation would be ignoring what we’ve learned in the last couple hours. Wrong would be not doing everything I can to secure a not-guilty verdict for Sims. You’re mistaking me for a truth-teller, Chloe. I’m not.”
“So what are you?”
“I told you—I’m an option-presenter.”
“Still, officer of the court and all that.”
“Look, I’m not going to lie or put on evidence I know to be false. That, most definitely, would be wrong. Under any paradigm. I’m going to lay out possible versions of what happened to counter the one version the prosecution is pushing. It’s up to the jury to weigh them all and cull the truth from it. It’s the only way the system works.”
Chloe fidgeted. “I started helping you because I wanted to find the person responsible for the attack on Reese and all the threats against my family. I wanted to make sure that they’re safe.”
“And?”
“And you think this is the way to do that?”
“Well, I think I have an ethical obligation to represent Sims. And I think as we do that, as we keep rattling cages and following bread crumbs, hopefully, we’ll shake out the guilty party. That is, if the assault and threats against your family are, in fact, actually connected to this case. I told you when this started, it’s possible they’re not.”
“But, it makes the most sense that they would be.”
Holt nodded. “It does. After everything that’s happened, that’s where my money would be.”
“And what if we’re just confusing things. What if it turns out Sims is guilty? That he’s responsible for it all?”
Holt exhaled laboriously. “Why would Sims attack Reese and demand that we stop helping him when we’re all he has going for him?”
“You said it yourself. Misdirection.”
“I said the prosecution would argue that as a possibility,” Holt said dismissively, “but I don’t for a second believe Sims would actually do that. If we just keep doing our job, and we do it well, hopefully, the truth will come out. And if it does turn out that the threats against your family aren’t related to Sims’s case, then we’ll just keep digging till we figure it out.” His eyes locked on hers, his expression carrying the gravity of one making an oath. “I promise you that.”
She let that sit for a few moments, marinating in the sound of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” playing quietly over the speakers on one of the satellite stations. “So what happens now?”
“Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to move fast,” he declared, braking a little too hard at the light and jarring Chloe forward again.
She eyed him dubiously. “How about I drive next time?”
He didn’t respond to her jab, though a brief smile, appreciative of her sarcasm, flashed across his face. “Look, we can’t let this sit. I’ve got a feeling Cecilia isn’t going to wait for this to just explode in her face. If she really thinks I’m going to use it, she’ll break the news to D.B. first. If that happens before we get to him, we won’t have a chance to feel him out and see what he knows, if anything, before he’s aware of what we’re doing. I’m guessing she’ll wait a couple of days in the hopes that I’ll change my mind.” He turned into the office driveway. “So we’re going to have to figure out a way to get you in front of him by then without tipping off either of them.”
“Me?”
“If I do it, he’ll know something’s weird, even if he isn’t involved in this. He and I wouldn’t have a reason to chat like that. But you? Pretty journalist? Doing an article on Franklin? It would be right up his alley.”
“Why?”
“Well, one—pretty journalist. Two—free publicity. Record producers love free publicity. His studio recorded a song this year that almost made the Billboard Country Music Chart. He’s on his way up and looking for exposure. You show up with a camera and he’ll talk for hours,” Holt said, shifting the car into park and rotating towards her. “Think you can handle that?”
She nodded, thinking that if he knew about the car that had run her off the road that morning, he wouldn’t be letting her anywhere near D.B. Tucker.
“I also heard back from my private investigator. He’s making headway on the names they gave us at Claire Donner’s house and on this Joe Bellamy person, as well as Banyon’s situation.” Before leaving for Cecilia’s office, Holt had explained to Chloe the information Pax had shared about Bellamy and the possible mob connection. “He said he would have a report for me soon. If we get lucky and find a link between Donner and any of it, we may have another potential suspect.”
“I really don’t get how that fits into all this. I have a hard time seeing Cecilia Tucker being involved with stuffing a body in an oil drum.”
“Yeah. Well, I have a hard time seeing her doing any of it, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe they’re connected, and maybe not, but we don’t know enough at this point to make assumptions about anything.”
Chloe nodded.
“My gut says that Bellamy is part of the reason Vettner-Drake and Banyon didn’t want us looking too closely into their relationship with Donner. But if we want to know what’s really going on, we have to keep digging.”
“So for now we just follow the bread crumbs?” Chloe asked.
“Exactly. And hope they lead us right to the witch’s front door.”
FIFTY-ONE
“Hey, hold still!” Chloe laughed, leveling the camera at Emma one more time. “I can’t get the shot.”
Emma had left school early as planned, and now stood about ten feet in front of Chloe in a vintage clothing booth at the Franklin Antique Mall, modeling a 1930s charcoal-gray cloche. The mall was twelve thousand square feet of home decor, vintage pieces, and antiques housed in a stand-alone brick building on Second Avenue, just a couple of blocks off the square. The nearly two hundred-year-old structure once served as Franklin’s ice house, and before that, a flour mill, and was dripping with the kind of charm that would fit perfectly in Chloe’s article.
“What do you think? Is it me?” Emma teased, puckering her lips and tossing a dramatic runway look at Chloe’s lens, tugging on the bell-shaped hat just beneath the felt magnolia blossom that adorned its lower edge.
Chloe snorted. “You’re a natural. Not sure the hat goes with your jeans, though,” she said, casting a nod at the half-dozen fraying rips in Emma’s black denim.
Emma wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, probably not,” she agreed, replacing the hat on the cherry hall tree she had taken it from.
“Here, grab that,” Chloe said, gesturing toward the tripod that held her strobe flash. “I saw a grouping of grandfather and cuckoo clocks in one of the booths down that left side when I scouted this place. I think I could do something with that.”
“So is this what you do?” Emma asked, lifting the tripod. “Travel around taking photos of places other people want to go?”
“Well…sort of. What I’m actually trying to do is find new places for them to go. Places they might not have considered. They see my article in our magazine, and then maybe they decide they want to go there.”
“And you get paid for that?” she asked, following Chloe as she moved down the aisle.
“In a manner of speaking,” Chloe said, thinking of her meager salary. “It’s not the best paying job in the world, but I do get to travel for free.”
“What’s the farthest place you’ve ever been?”
“New Zealand. Hands down. Twenty-three hours on flights and in airports.”
“It’d be worth it to travel like that. I’d do anything to get out of here.”
“Really?” Chloe challenged as they walked between the rows of treasures. “I kind of like it here. Seems like a cool place to grow up. Wait, it’s right here,” she said, as they reached the booth with the clocks. Chloe p
ointed to a spot in the aisle. “Set it up there.”
Emma followed Chloe’s directions, talking while she worked. “Franklin’s fine,” she conceded, securing the tripod legs. “I just don’t ever get to leave. I’m stuck in this town, Dad’s busy all the time, I’m always babysitting my little brother. It’s brain-numbing.”
“See, this interests me,” Chloe said, lowering her camera and momentarily pausing from determining her shot angle, “because when I was a teenager, Reese wasn’t around at all. I have no idea what he’s like as a parent. Take…I don’t know…dinner. Is he ever there? Or does he always miss it for work?”
“No, he’s there, but it’s all last minute, you know? Rolling in at six o’clock with whatever he’s picked up on the way home.”
“Okay, what about weekends?”
Emma huffed, lowering herself onto the edge of an old steamer trunk. “Completely boring. We don’t do anything. He sits in that dining room he calls an office and works pretty much non-stop, unless Tyler’s got a game or something.”
“And what about your stuff? Your games or whatever. Does he go to that?”
“No. I mean, he did, when I was younger and had events—dance and stuff. I’m kind of not into the whole ‘organized activity thing’ right now.”
Chloe considered Emma, clearly trying to decide how to navigate the next bit of their conversation. “See,” she started, “here’s the thing. The Reese I knew when I was a kid was never around. There was no dinner. Not at six. Not at seven. Not ever. And he sure never thought about us enough to care whether we had dinner made or to bring anything home. And he didn’t have an office in our house. Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing him work on anything at home, because he left for his law office before I woke up and always got back home after I was in bed. I was in dance class from the age of three, and he never came to a single recital.”
