A Midnight Clear

by Libby Howard

  I sighed, once more thinking that there were too many unknown variables in this whole thing. Which was a good thing for Irene, but a bad thing for those of us wanting to bring Rhett Reynolds’ killer to justice.

  “So what are you working on tonight?” I glanced at the overflowing box and grimaced.

  “This is more of a long-term project.” He patted the box. “Issues that are likely to come before the appellate court this next year. I know I’m not in the running, but it’s good to be prepared in case any other candidates wind up murdered in a restroom. Besides, I want to be able to knowledgably discuss these cases if I need to.”

  “Don’t you have a paralegal to read all these and type up summaries for you?” I teased.

  “Yes, but she has an actual full-time job working for me at the courthouse, and I don’t want to ruin her holiday season by making her read all these cases. Besides, I’ve always been the sort of judge who likes to read the original rulings and make my decisions on those rather than on someone else’s summary.”

  I looked at the box and wondered about Judge Beck’s holiday season. But the kids were with Heather until Christmas Eve. That gave him plenty of time to pull some late nights and power through what looked to be excruciatingly technical papers. I wasn’t exactly one to point fingers given that it was past midnight and I was still up and working. Seemed both of us were going to be pulling all-nighters, just like back in college.

  My mind suddenly skipped back to memories of Eli and me studying side-by-side. The early years of our marriage had been hard—me working at the bottom of the hierarchy in a newsroom and him either at school, at the hospital, or with his nose in a book as he threw himself into his studies and residency.

  Eli had always been dedicated to his career. It was the mistress, and I was more than willing to step aside for the time he spent in the office, in the surgical suite, researching, and reading. It made him who he was. His passion for his career was just as much a part of the man I loved as his brown eyes and his sideways smile.

  “So who are you thinking for the Reynolds murder?” Judge Beck asked as he began to pull stacks of paper from the box.

  “Heck if I know. There’s Helen Dixon who quite likely orchestrated something with Judge Reynolds to facilitate a quick and profitable divorce from her husband. That leaves the husband as a suspect.”

  Judge Beck shrugged. “I’ve known Stuart professionally for five or six years. He’s ruthless. I won’t say he’s not capable of murder, but I see him more as the hiring-a-hitman type.”

  “Unless he didn’t have time to hire a hitman and needed to act fast,” I replied. “There’s all this other stuff I can’t untangle about the Cresswell case. Seems like everyone was involved in that—Dixon, Barnes, Magoo, and Reynolds. It was a long time ago, but I wonder if something surfaced about that.”

  “That was before my time. I was in law school when it was settled, so I read quite a lot about it, but the actual casework began almost ten years prior to the settlement. These class action cases take forever to resolve.”

  “What were your thoughts on it?” I glanced over at the window where the dollar sign had been. “Anyone make out like a bandit in that case? Anything odd you remember about it?”

  The judge sat down opposite me. “Everyone made out like bandits in that case besides the plaintiffs. That’s the way those things work. By the time the settlement gets divided, all the plaintiffs make a few hundred at the most. The lawyers get a cut of each settlement, so the firms with the most plaintiffs made the most money.”

  “And that gets divided among the attorneys who worked on the case?” I asked.

  Judge Beck nodded. “Firms do it differently, but usually there’s a percentage scale depending on if you’re a lawyer or a paralegal, and how much time you devoted to the case and gathering the clients. I never worked on any class action lawsuits, but I know once it looks like there’s enough evidence to either get a win or a settlement, everyone goes crazy trying to locate and sign on affected plaintiffs.”

  I frowned. “But that dilutes how much of the settlement each person gets.”

  The judge shrugged. “Yes, but the more plaintiffs a firm has, a larger percentage of the settlement goes through the firm, and the larger a fee the firm can collect. It’s all about the money.”

  Once more I looked over at the window, and at the ghost in the corner of the room.

  “How about Irene O’Donnell?” Judge Beck added. “I know she’s retained your services, but do you think she might have done it?”

  I sighed. “I’ll admit there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence against her. She admits her prints are in the restroom. She doesn’t have an alibi because she evidently went up to her office on the third floor to throw up and not pass out in front of the partners of the law firm. She was vocal about her dislike of Judge Reynolds. In spite of that I can’t see her as the murderer. She was drunk. I’m pretty sure if she’d swung a toilet tank lid at someone, she would have fallen flat on her face and not even hit him.”

  “Just keep her in the back of your mind, and don’t be too hasty about crossing her off your suspect list,” the judge told me. “People lie, and those with an agenda and a lot to lose tend to lie a lot.”

  It sounded a lot like the strange advice Sonny Magoo had given me the night of the party. He’d said not to believe everything that I heard, that some people had their own agendas and were motivated to lie.

  Could Irene be lying and using me to cover her tracks? Or was there something else going on here between all these judges whose paths had been intertwined for decades?

  Chapter 11

  After sending out the skip traces and getting J.T. the summaries of the background checks I’d done, I sat down with Molly and went over the work I needed her to do for the day. Justine and I were supposed to have lunch today, so I skipped out of the office at eleven, hoping to meet with Horace Barnes beforehand.

  As luck would have it Horace was in the office along with Damien Smith. Thankfully Damien saw me at the receptionist desk, otherwise I was pretty sure Horace might have insisted I make an appointment for some time in January.

  “Hey, there’s our new marketing manager!” Damien announced, shaking my hand and leading me past the receptionist to his office. “Glad you decided to join us, Kay. Pierson’s loss is our gain.”

  “Sorry to let you know I’m still working with J.T. I was hoping to talk to Horace if he’s available. I’ve got a few questions about the Cresswell case.”

  “Whoa, that’s ancient history—almost as ancient as Horace himself,” Damien joked. The man made a hard left at the office he’d been about to enter, an led me down another hallway. “You’re going to need to talk to him about that one. He’s the one that managed the plaintiffs for our firm, and it was before my time anyway. Dad might have been able to tell you something about it, but he died last year.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. My condolences on your loss.”

  Damien paused outside a closed door. “Thanks. It was a rough year, but he’s out of pain now and with Mom. Probably up in heaven teasing her about the roast beef being overcooked.” He knocked, then swung open the door without waiting for a reply. “Here’s Kay Carrera to pester you some more, Horace.”

  The look Horace shot his partner was a strange mix of venomous and amused. “I’ll get you back for this, Smith. Watch your back.”

  “I always do.” Damien laughed and closed the door on his way out.

  I hadn’t been invited to sit, but I did so anyway, taking one of the chairs across the desk from the attorney.

  “So, what can I help you with, Mrs. Carrera?”

  Horace Barnes didn’t seem too happy about his offer, but I was going to ignore that.

  “Call me Kay. I was wondering if you could answer some questions about the Cresswell class action suit.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Cresswell? That case was huge. It got Stuart Dixon his county judgeship and ten years later his appellate c
ourt position. Magoo as well.” Horace Barnes settled back in his chair, a smug expression on his face. “The whole thing put SMS&C on the map, not that they were any small fish before.”

  “Makes me wonder why Sonny Magoo left them. Wouldn’t it have benefitted his career more to stay with the firm that was the lead on the case?” I asked.

  Horace snorted. “Are you kidding me? At SMS&C he was a big fish among a whole lot of other big fish. Crum and Stevens was a gold-plated law firm with a great reputation but they didn’t have anyone there that knew jack about class action suits. They threw a ton of money at Magoo to take over the whole thing for them. He’s the one that found out which of their clients were entitled to a portion of the settlement, held their hands to get them to sign up, and organized the distribution schedule. The firm took a small cut, but Magoo got pretty much the entire attorney’s percentage for himself.”

  “And Dixon?” I asked.

  The lawyer steepled his hands beneath his chin. “Same on his side. He was lead attorney. SMS&C had a huge list of plaintiffs. He probably made half of what Magoo did though since he had to split it with the firm and all the other attorneys and paralegals that worked on the case. Different paths, same end result. Dixon got the fame where Magoo got the money. Dixon got a judge appointment and went right up the ladder where it took Magoo longer. They’re probably both about the same as far as net worth goes, and career.”

  “And what did Reynolds have to do with any of this?” I wondered out loud.

  “He was the burr under everyone’s saddle, that’s what Reynolds was.” Horace dropped his hands and leaned forward. “The guy went around poaching plaintiffs as they say. Not only did he work off his own firm’s client list, he pretty much went door-to-door. Like Magoo, he was the only one in his firm handling the plaintiffs. Unlike Magoo, he only accepted a flat fee for his work and divided the rest among the plaintiffs he represented. It meant they got more than the others and caused a huge stink when it got out. There was a bunch of noise about excessive fees and how attorneys were parasites sucking every dime out of their clients. Let’s just say no one liked Rhett Reynolds. If his clients and that Polefax County hadn’t loved him so, and it hadn’t been an election year, he would never have been appointed as a judge.”

  I frowned in thought. “Do you think any of that might have been stirred up again recently?”

  I doubted someone was holding a grudge for twenty years and committed that murder. It had seemed a killing of desperation, of anger and a need to act fast—not a carefully thought out plan from twenty years ago.

  “I haven’t heard anything about it recently.” Horace tapped on his desk. “Unless one of the candidates had something in his or her background that had to do with the case. Reynolds was the sort of guy who’d feel it was his duty to bring it to light if he discovered someone up for the appellate court position was bribing someone, or taking kickbacks, or had embezzled.”

  I ran through the list of candidates in my head. Judge Beck was way too young to have been involved in the case. Elaine Stallman and Trent Elliott were of an age that they may have been an assisting attorney. And then there was the man in front of me now….

  “Did you handle the plaintiffs for Smith, Barnes & Dorvinski?”

  “You betcha. We didn’t have many, but someone had to manage the plaintiffs for the firm and I drew the short straw.” He shot me a perceptive glance. “Trust me, what I made was peanuts and we kept meticulous financial records. Even had them audited. We specialize in inheritance issues, trust funds, cases involving land titles, and large-scale insurance fraud. We’ve got wealthy old clients whose families have been with us for generations. I’m not about to ruin a good thing by trying to weasel an extra ten grand out of a class action suit.”

  It made sense, and I got the impression Horace Barnes was telling the truth. I kept thinking of the ghost’s insistence this was about money, and the weird conversation Sonny Magoo had with me at the party.

  I stood, then hesitated. “One more thing, if you don’t mind—how well do Stuart Dixon and Sonny Magoo get along?”

  Harold shrugged. “Like two sharks in a tank. They respect each other. They hang around each other because if one scents blood, the other wants to be right behind him. They’d stab each other in the back if they needed to, but there’s never been a need. So basically they get along pretty much like any other two lawyers.”

  I mulled over that on my way to meet Justine for lunch. She’d picked the location and I was expecting her to suggest an elegant downtown restaurant or a country club, not a little Thai place in an out-of-the-way strip mall. With a name of Tom’s Thai, I didn’t have high hopes for the food, but I didn’t think Justine would suggest something horrible, so I parked and headed into the surprisingly packed restaurant.

  Justine waved me down from where she’d grabbed a booth. I slid onto a red vinyl bench seat and took the menu she slid to me.

  “Get the papaya salad,” she urged. “Their panang is really good, and the eggplant with the black bean sauce is to die for.”

  I took her advice, choosing the curry over the eggplant dish, then the pair of us settled in to talk about our cats and the upcoming holiday.

  “I feel so bad for Judge Reynolds’ daughter.” Justine made a sympathetic clucking noise. “To lose a parent at Christmas is especially hard. They probably already had gifts for each other and plans for the holiday.”

  I winced remembering Ruby’s comment about the tofu turkey. I needed to give her a call and see if she’d like to join us for the holiday.

  “I keep thinking about the murder,” Justine continued. “I know Judge Reynolds was a controversial character, but I can’t imagine anyone being angry enough to kill him. And how could the murderer have possibly gotten away with the building locked down tight with security? He must have had blood on him. And they interviewed all of us including the catering staff, security, and the musicians. Someone must have had blood splatter on them.”

  I nodded. “I was wondering the same thing. And how the heck did they get out of the bathroom without dripping blood on that carpet in the hallway? Not to be gruesome, but Judge Reynolds hadn’t been dead for long when I found him. I’m guessing the killer attacked him no more than five or ten minutes before my arrival.”

  “Maybe the killer works there and hid in his or her office until the police left,” Justine suggested.

  I shook my head. “The police went off an attendee list, checking off who they were interviewing. And I’m pretty sure they searched the building.”

  She shrugged. “It’s an eight-story building. That’s a lot of searching to check every office.”

  “A judge was murdered,” I pointed out. “I don’t think they’d take short cuts on investigating this one.”

  “So that means the murderer cleaned up before coming downstairs,” she mused.

  “He might have done a fast clean-up in the restroom before leaving, then a more thorough clean-up elsewhere. Maybe he wiped off his clothes, washed his face and hands, then went to another restroom?” I frowned. “But I still think there would have been bloody footprints leading to the door and on the carpet. It’s like he left through ceiling, or did an Alice in Wonderland thing and went through the mirror.”

  Our food arrived and we both dug in. The curry was amazing, and I quickly decided this needed to be a place I came to again. Maybe I’d bring Judge Beck here one night. I wondered if the kids liked Thai food.

  “Maybe the killer did go through the mirror,” Justine mused once we’d finished. “There used to be a door on that wall into the office next door, you know.”

  I thought for a moment about the remodeling work Eli and I had done on our house. “The opening in the wall framing would probably still be there, but they would have drywalled over it. I can’t see the killer taking time to bust through the drywall to hide. Besides, there would have been drywall chunks and dust everywhere.”

  “I’ll bet they didn’t even drywall over the
door,” Justine scoffed. “Under all the gilt and marble, Sullivan is cheap as they come. It’s all show with him. Spend money on the trappings, then sweep the rest under the carpet where no one can see it.”

  My pulse sped up. “You think he just slapped that huge mirror over the door? And put something in front of it on the other side, like a bookcase?”

  The judge’s wife nodded. “I can completely see him doing something like that.”

  If that were the case, the killer could have easily slipped into the next office to clean up, or even to get away without leaving bloody footprints outside the restroom door. Plus, that gave me another idea.

  “I wonder if Judge Reynolds knew about the door, and if he was actually searching for something in the office, just using the restroom as a means to enter without having to deal with a locked door.”

  “Could be, although someone must have told him about it because he never worked for SMS&C.” Justine sipped her tea, a thoughtful expression on her face. “You know, Trent Elliott has that adjoining office.”

  “And Trent Elliott is a candidate for the appellate court position.”

  Justine sat back in the booth. “I’ve got an idea. Can you get off work tomorrow and join me for lunch in the capital?”

  I remembered our dwindling workload. “Sure. I’ll need to go into the office first thing to make sure Molly is set for the day, but then I’m sure I can take off.”

  “Perfect.” She grinned. “We’re going to take a little field trip, Kay. It’s time for us old ladies to do a bit of snooping.”