Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  Warwick’s face flushed full with color now. He clenched his teeth and his nostrils flared. The short fuse, especially for ridicule, that had triggered his murderous impulse toward Andy was obvious. For the second time, I was glad there were lots of people around.

  Then, he laughed again, wickedly this time. “The trash truck picks up in our neighborhood on Saturday morning, Willa. Isn’t that convenient?”

  I remembered a trash truck behind me as I sat at the curb after the golf tournament that Saturday when I’d first heard about Andrews’s death on the radio, and my heart sank. If I’d known about the jacket then, maybe Ben Hathaway could have found it. Now, locating the jacket in the landfill would be impossible. And Hathaway’s search pursuant to the warrant would turn up nothing in Warwick’s closets.

  “Then I’ll testify,” I said, belligerent.

  “I doubt it,” he replied, smugly. His confidence was unshakable. He never expected to be called to account. Not for any of it.

  “How are you going to stop me? Shoot me, too, right here on the golf course? That would be a little awkward wouldn’t it?” I taunted him.

  I learned another lesson at that point. It’s best not to be sarcastic to a murderer sitting in a golf cart when you’re on an injured foot.

  He gave me a narrow-eyed glance that quelled my sarcasm.

  “Think about it,” he said.

  Then, he sped off in his cart toward the clubhouse. By the time I caught up with him, he’d left the cart with the bag boys and escaped into the men’s locker room. I couldn’t very well chase him in there, so I leaned up against the wall near the entrance and waited.

  After a while, he came out. With the mayor, Michael Drake, the CJ, and two other politicians. CJ looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I had time to play golf, with my heavy caseload. The others nodded at me, said hello, and went out to their cars. Drake gave me a smug look. He held up his pager and waved it at me to let me know he’d be called the moment the grand jury returned his indictment, any minute now.

  I wouldn’t have spoken to Drake on a bet. But I couldn’t separate Warwick without accusing him of something we both knew I couldn’t prove. I’d look like an even bigger fool if I tried and failed.

  As I stood there deciding what to do, Jason drove up in a Mercedes sedan, Warwick got in and Jason waved at me as they drove off toward the airport.

  By the time I found Greta and followed the car, both Warwick and Jason had entered the Senator’s private plane. I watched it taxi down the runway, probably on its way to Washington.

  I’m not sure how a woman looks with her tail between her legs, but that’s exactly how I felt. Full of impotence, I fished around in my bag for my cell phone and dialed Chief Hathaway. He still wasn’t in.

  What a mess.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 5:35 p.m.

  February 1, 2000

  WHEN I GOT HOME, George was there. I decided to come clean and tell him the whole story, including my confrontation with Warwick, the botched attempt I’d made to get a confession out of Robbie and that I now did not know where she was. He was, as always, a lot of help.

  “Call Ben Hathaway,” he suggested.

  Not knowing what to do next, I ignored him and went in to the shower. The water stung my scraped elbows and my ankle had begun to throb again. The pain was a reminder of how badly the day had gone.

  When I returned, he’d poured me a Sapphire and tonic. After I lit my cigar, George casually mentioned that Ben Hathaway had called and was on his way over. I was sitting there with my hair wet, no makeup on, in my bathrobe. Great. Hathaway knocked at the door and George went to let him in.

  I heard George lead Ben into the living room and offer him a drink. Always the consummate host, even to a man who has accused him of murder. When they made my husband, they definitely broke the mold.

  We only had one chair big enough for Chief Hathaway to sit in, so I knew where they were. When I walked into the room, George got up, as he always does when a woman enters. Ben, not to be outdone, heaved his bulk out of the chair. I’m sure he expected me to excuse him from the courtesy. He’d have to think again.

  “Good evening, Ben,” I said, not shaking his hand but taking my customary seat near George on the sofa. I had already warned George that I would do all the talking. The last thing we needed was him making admissions we’d have to deal with at trial if I couldn’t persuade Hathaway to convince Drake.

  We hadn’t asked Olivia to join us.

  Hathaway sat back down with a thump, settling his big butt on the delicate seat. I wondered how long that chair would last. Aunt Minnie’s mother had owned it, but the spindly legs wouldn’t survive if Hathaway continued to visit us.

  “Well, Willa, suppose you tell me what you’ve been up to. I understand you have some theories about who killed General Andrews. Besides George, here, I mean.” He turned his head and winked. And George actually laughed. Men are so impossible.

  I gritted my teeth and drew my bathrobe together. It was hard to maintain my judicial dignity with wet hair and no clothes on.

  I told Hathaway almost everything, ending with a description of my encounters with Robbie and Warwick this afternoon. He raised his eyebrows a few times during the telling, but maintained his silence until the end. When I’d finished, he pulled out his notebook and made me tell it all again.

  Our conversation lasted several hours, well into the night. Hathaway naturally had a lot of questions. It took him a while to accept my answers, but when I could respond to each objection he raised, he finally began to piece the puzzle together for himself.

  It helped, of course, that he knew me. He already realized that I was what lawyers called a credible witness.

  I shared almost everything I knew, but I didn’t tell either of them about the Men’s Tennis Club. Andrews’s affair with Jack Williamson, which Jack had admitted to Robbie, established that Andrews was bisexual and helped to explain why he’d killed Thomas Holmes. Still, I didn’t need to disclose the tennis list of partners to get the point across. After all, I had Dottie’s eyewitness account of the love nest, as she’d described it.

  When I explained what happened to George’s gun, why Robbie had taken it and left it at her father’s house, and how Warwick had used it to kill Andrews, I expected it to be the final blow to Hathaway’s skepticism.

  Chief Hathaway could interview all the witnesses himself to confirm the stories I told him, before he took the evidence to Drake. I didn’t care how he got Drake to agree to drop the charges against George, only that he got the job done.

  Yet, Hathaway wasn’t totally convinced. Maybe because my husband’s life was at stake and I wanted so desperately for someone else to have killed Andrews. He made me no promises, other than to “look into it.”

  I told him he had until tomorrow morning. Then, I’d call Frank Bennett and tell him everything.

  But would I? With Andrews dead and President Benson in the last few months of his last term, would I set Frank Bennett on a course that would cause so much personal pain to the Benson and Warwick families as well as public pain to the entire country?

  I’d told George about Charles Benson’s drug crimes and his father’s criminal cover-up. George had shared my outrage. But what we would do about it now, neither one of us had decided before Hathaway arrived.

  Hathaway frowned now. “It’s amazing what kind of mischief people will get into,” he twirled his hat in his hand. “I can’t believe none of Andy’s enemies got him. Why does it always have to be a friend or a member of the family?”

  “Let’s not speak ill of the dead, Ben,” George admonished. “Andy was a good man once. Life dealt him some harsh blows.” I was about to interrupt when George held up his hand to stop me. “I know he did some despicable things. But judgment is not for us to make, Willa. That’s someone else’s job.”

  “Actually, I am a judge and I make judgments all the time. Forgiveness may be divine
. I’m not.” I turned to Ben Hathaway and suggested that he might want to get started finding those surveillance tapes, since they were the only hard evidence that remained to support my theories.

  “What about George’s fingerprints in Andrews’s den?” Ben asked us both.

  “I’m sorry I can’t answer that,” George said, making me want to strangle him. “I gave my word.”

  But the question stirred my memory. Something I’d seen or heard was buzzing around, just out of reach. The fingerprints. In the den.

  “There were other fingerprints in Andrews’s home office, weren’t there?” I asked.

  But I was still preoccupied. What had I seen there? What was I thinking?

  “All of which are accounted for, Willa, including Robbie Andrews and Sheldon Warwick.” Ben replied. “George’s are the only fingerprints that remain unexplained.”

  George and Ben debated George’s refusal to prove his alibi and I barely listened. Something about Andrews’s den. What was it?

  Unable to persuade George to say more, Ben prepared to go. Before he left, Ben said, “Warwick’s out of the jurisdiction now, Willa. And he’s right that we have no evidence to connect him to the murder. You’ve seen the forensics, just as I have.”

  Ben held his hat in his hand.

  “I’ll testify against him,” I said again, the tone of my voice rising of its own volition. “This is outrageous. The man is guilty of murder and he has to stand trial.”

  Ben shook his head. “Warwick will deny the murder, pitting your credibility against his. With no corroboration, it’s just he said/she said. The despicable nature of Andrews’s character will come out and tarnish Andrews’s reputation further and hurt his family.” He stopped a couple of beats. “Is that what you want?”

  Of course, he was right. But I couldn’t let it go. My whole life was about serving the judicial system. I did my job every day, as best I could, under a caseload so heavy it sometimes seemed as if I was drowning in sludge and would never, ever find my way to the top of it all.

  “Well?” he asked me again.

  The problem was that I knew all the reasons why Warwick would never be convicted. I saw all the holes in the evidence, all the missing proof. Hathaway was right. Warwick would keep going right on with his life, no matter what. I could simply accept that, or I could go down swinging, causing a lot of pain to a lot of people in the process.

  So, after one more weak protest, I gave in. For now.

  “I don’t want to hurt Deborah and her family any more than they’ve already suffered. But I want George out of trouble and I want his name cleared. How are you going to do that if you don’t arrest Warwick? And we can’t leave the man in the Senate, for God’s sake!”

  “I’ll talk to Drake, tell him your story,” Hathaway started. “It’s not my story, Ben, it’s the truth,” I interrupted him, hotly. “We’ll check it out. Drake will need some political favors from Warwick one day, if he doesn’t owe some already. The investigation will remain open, the case unsolved.” He looked at me squarely now. “Assuming I can get enough corroboration to get George’s indictment dismissed, will that do it for you?”

  At the words George’s indictment, my stomach twisted with those same maggots that seemed to have taken up permanent residence since George was arrested.

  I hadn’t realized the indictment had been returned by the grand jury. Ben probably had it in his pocket right now. The knowledge took the last of the fight out of me.

  Ben’s solution was far from perfect, but it would take care of most of our problems. “That doesn’t clear George’s name, though. I want you to release a statement saying that George’s gun had been stolen before the murder occurred. I want you to say George is no longer a suspect and you made a mistake. I want you to say you’re sorry.”

  Ben sighed. “Ok, Willa. If Drake approves, I’ll do that.”

  George said, “That’ll be fine, Chief. We appreciate your help.”

  Ben turned to the door. “I’m really sorry for all the trouble this has caused you,” he said, in our general direction. “You understand I had no choice but to arrest George. I knew the real killer would turn up sooner or later.”

  I resisted the urge to throw something at him as he left the room.

  And then I remembered the dirty fireplace. Where Warwick must have burned the old surveillance tapes showing Thomas Andrews, Charles Benson, and Shelly Warwick snorting cocaine.

  If they were still there, the residue would provide corroboration for my testimony.

  EPILOGUE

  IT WASN’T EASY TO tell Olivia about what had happened to Thomas. She’d already expected the worst and she’d gotten most of it right. I think telling her about Thomas’s real relationship with Charles Benson, Shelley Warwick and their drug use was the right thing to do, but I’m not really sure. Before I told her, Olivia thought her brother was a wonderful young man who had been murdered by a cold-hearted General. Tarnishing the image of the dead in the name of honesty may not always be the right choice.

  The charges against George were dismissed after we explained the facts of life to Drake ourselves. What made Drake do the right thing was the certain knowledge that he’d never have gotten George convicted at trial and he didn’t want to face the public humiliation or ruin his perfect record. If he’d openly opposed Warwick and Benson to pursue who I thought was truly guilty, his career would have been over.

  I’d told Drake my hunch about what happened to the surveillance tapes. Whether he checked it out or not, I didn’t know. We waited for Warwick to be indicted, but that never came. Nor was President Benson ever exposed. Whether Drake owed Warwick any political favors was a question I didn’t want answered.

  Frank Bennett was still sniffing around the story. He might put the puzzle pieces together for himself, eventually. I stashed my journal away in our safe deposit box, in case I ever needed a contemporaneous record of my investigation.

  I’m a judge and a lawyer. I know that in a court of law, if you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.

  After the charges were dropped, George and I had several long conversations about the investigation and the events leading up to his arrest. He finally admitted that he’d been at Andrews’s home the night of the murder and that’s how his fingerprints came to be in Andy’s den. He’d joined Warwick and Benson there, trying to convince Andrews to withdraw his name from the confirmation process. Of course, Andrews had refused.

  George left before Robbie arrived that night, so he hadn’t known what happened later. His mere presence in Andy’s study on the night of the murder would have given Drake more ammunition anyway. George had refused to reveal his whereabouts because he’d given his word to keep the meeting confidential, to the President, the leader of the free world, a man I now thought of as a common criminal.

  During the morning hours, when I was at the Blue Coat, George told me he’d met with President Benson, Senator Warwick and Jason to discuss how to defeat Andrews’s confirmation and the President’s sabotaging emissary. As I suspected when I first heard about it, the President had fully intended his actions to be revealed after Andrews was rejected by the committee. He planned to prove that he’d withdrawn his support for Andrews once Andrews was rejected.

  What George told me was information I’d never have obtained any other way, and I’d promised not to reveal. With these revelations, George and I began to communicate better and I felt happy that I’d regained some of my marital privilege; I now knew things I couldn’t be forced to reveal. But I was still shaken by the magnitude of the secrets George had kept from me as well as the secrets I’d learned about the marital relationships of others.

  Even after I told him that Warwick was a murderer, Jason continued to work for Sheldon Warwick because he claimed Warwick was going to retire and endorse him for the next senate race. I thought there was still more to the Benson, Warwick and Andrews story than I knew and I suspected something was going on with Warwick that I hadn’t discovered. />
  I doubted any promises Warwick made to Jason could be relied upon and I was sorry to hear that Jason’s ambition was as great as I had feared. Ambition is like electricity: it can be helpful or destructive. It looked like Jason was going down the destructive path, but he wouldn’t listen to me or to George when we tried to dissuade him. All we could do was hope for the best.

  George moved back into our house and things pretty much returned to normal between us. By normal I mean we went back to our usual routines. We ate together, slept together and were our joint best friends. I knew he was grateful that I’d helped him, but if he admitted it, then he’d have had to acknowledge how close he’d come to prison and destroying our marriage. Both of us tiptoed around that.

  But our relationship had changed. It would be some time before we found our way around each other again. Now, picking up the pieces and reassembling our life would take time. As Kate said, one privilege of marriage is handling the surprises.

  THE END

  For Ophie

  CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS

  Judge Wilhelmina Carson

  James Harper

  Suzanne Harper

  Margaret Wheaton

  Ronald Wheaton

  Armstrong Otter

  Dr. Marilee Aymes

  Gilbert Kelley

  Sandra Kelley

  Chief Ben Hathaway

  State Attorney Michael Drake

  Chief Ozgood Livingston Richardson (Oz or CJ)

  Larry Davis

  George Carson

  PROLOGUE

  Tampa, Florida

  Sunday, 3:00 a.m.

  February 18, 2001

  MIGUEL STRUGGLED TO TURN the corner at Seventh Avenue and Sixteenth Street. He grunted with effort as he pushed a heavy plastic trash barrel on wheels, piled high with garbage. The cleaning crew had been working on the streets in Tampa’s Ybor City since the parade ended and the crowd finally dispersed about one a.m. Miguel had a lot of clean up to do before the small businesses along the brick paved streets opened.