Brooke’s door was closed, and I didn’t know whether she was in there working or off at a client’s. Rodney’s door was open. He looked up when I stopped in the doorway, his eyebrows rising.
“Problem?”
“You didn’t take that handgun out of my desk for some reason, did you?”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t see anybody going in or out of my office?”
“No. I really can’t see anything from my desk but that wall.” His office was more out-of-the-way than either Brooke’s or mine.
“Didn’t hear anybody out here, today or yesterday?”
“Nothing. I can’t even tell you if Brooke’s been in this morning. Sorry.”
I nodded. When I came out of his office, Brooke was at her door, her keys in hand. Her gaze went from McClane, who had appeared in my office doorway, to me. “What’s up?” she said.
“That gun I got in the mail yesterday? It’s gone.”
“What? No.”
“This is quite a little skit you’re putting on here,” McClane said, “but I’m not buying it. I want that gun.”
“No, really? Come on, McClane. You’ve got to see that I’ve got nothing to gain by making that gun disappear.”
“I don’t have to see anything of the sort. I find you conspiring with the chief suspect in this case, and lo and behold the very weapon that might tie her to the crime has gone missing. And we can prove it was in your possession. We can prove it out of your own mouth.”
“Yes. As I say, I’ve got nothing to gain by hiding it.”
“Look. If I have to come back, it’s going to be with a warrant and some help, and we won’t just be searching your office. We’ll be going through your home, your car. . .We’ll get a court order to open your safety deposit box, if you have one.”
“Somebody took the gun. If you find it somewhere else, it’s because somebody took it out of this drawer and planted it there. I have no idea who or why.”
“So that’s how you want to play it,” McClane said. “This is the hill you want to die on.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’m always looking for a hill to die on.”
McClane left. I got Willow to fill out and sign the paperwork that appointed me her attorney in all matters pertaining to the death of Christopher Woodruff and set out a pay schedule. I suspected that she didn’t have the cash to pay me outside of the insurance policies, and those wouldn’t pay off if she were convicted, but she had what she had.
When she was gone, I called Jordan to twist his ear for ratting me out to McClane. The call went to voice mail, but rather than leave a message, I ended the call and found Ray Hernandez in my list of contacts. He answered.
“You’re a persistent thing, aren’t you?”
“This is the first time I’ve called you in a month.”
“About two seconds after you tried to get Jordan.”
“So he’s with you? He didn’t answer.”
“We were just debating whether we should talk to you.”
“I’m glad you decided in the affirmative. I want to take you to lunch.”
“Just me, or both of us?”
“Either or both. I’ve got my tail in a crack.”
“That’s a poetic way to put it.”
“So what about it? You name the place.”
There was a silence. Jordan said something I couldn’t make out, then Hernandez said something. I waited them out. Finally Hernandez said, “Can you be on Cary Street in about thirty minutes?”
I looked at my watch. “Sure.”
“Be on the sidewalk maybe a block down from the Tobacco Company.” He ended the call.
Brooke had come into my office and taken one of the client chairs. “Was that Jordan? Is he going to help you?”
“Hernandez. I don’t know. It was all very cloak-and-dagger.” I told her about them wanting me to be on Cary Street in thirty minutes. “I almost expected him to tell me to come alone.”
“Are you scared?”
“Shell-shocked, I think. Yesterday morning everything was calm, blue skies, not a hint of trouble anywhere. Now a murder case I didn’t even know about has exploded in my face.”
There was an art gallery and a bookstore right next to each other in Shockoe Slip, so at least I could window-shop while I waited. Patricia Cornwell, a one-time Richmond native, had a new book out, and copies of it and most of her backlist filled the bookstore window. I was counting the titles when the familiar Ford Explorer turned the corner and began to vibrate down the sloping cobblestone street. I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye and crossed the street toward it just as it drew even with me. It stopped. I pulled open the rear door and got in. The Explorer started rolling again.
Hernandez was driving. “Hey, Starling,” he said, and Jordan twisted in his seat to look at me.
“Once again into the flames,” Jordan said. “There’s not another lawyer in this city with your talent for landing in trouble.”
“Yesterday morning I was at my desk opening mail,” I said. “That’s my crime. Why all the intrigue? Why not meet me for lunch?”
“You’re radioactive at the moment. Any contact with you that’s not strictly adversarial will be regarded as conspiring with the enemy. ”
“Well, that’s great. I appreciate you risking your careers to meet with me at all.”
“So what did you want?”
“You told McClane about me having that gun,” I said accusingly. “He knew I’d called you.”
“What did you want me to do? You told me you had a gun that might be relevant to McClane’s investigation. I called him and told him he might want to swing by to get it.”
Okay, so I was being unreasonable. “What are the chances I can get a look at McClane’s file in the Woodruff case?” I said.
Hernandez snorted. I waited, then gave up that item on my wish list and went on.
“Somebody notified the police I had a gun in my desk. Before I called you, I mean. Do you have any idea who that somebody was? Or where the call came from?”
They exchanged glances.
“An equally interesting question is where did the call go to,” Hernandez said. “Your somebody didn’t call the police. He called the D.A.’s office, and Aubrey himself sent McClane hotfooting it over to your office to pick up a murder weapon.” Aubrey Biggs, Richmond’s vertically challenged, curly-headed district attorney.
Jordan said, “So this somebody seems not only to have known about this gun you had, but also about the animosity Biggs feels for you. He placed his call with the precision of a demolition expert placing his bomb charges to take down a building.”
“Now you’re the one being poetic,” I said drily.
“Thanks. I worked on it on the way over here.”
“If the tip came from someone who knew about our mutual disregard, then it was someone with the police or the district attorney’s office,” I said. “An insider of some sort.”
“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Hernandez said.
“You can add to your list of suspects anyone who reads the Times-Dispatch,” Jordan added. “Biggs has made some pretty harsh statements about you.”
“Add to that, Biggs hasn’t looked too good in some of the newspaper accounts of your trials.”
“You did say it was a phone call,” I said. “It wasn’t a message made from letters cut out of a magazine or anything.”
Hernandez laughed.
“It was a phone call,” Jordan said. “Placed yesterday afternoon from a pay phone at Regency Square Mall.”
“If you’re imagining some big call-tracing operation, don’t,” Hernandez said. “The D.A.’s office just checked its phone records.”
“I didn’t know the mall had a pay phone,” I said. “I haven’t seen one in forever.”
“There’re still some out there,” Jordan said. “This one’s near the food court.”
“Did the police dust it for prints? Talk to any
of the vendors out there, see if they recognized a photograph of anyone connected with the Woodruff case?”
“You’d have to ask McClane, but I doubt it. Right now the thinking is that the call came from a person doing his civic duty.”
“His duty,” I said. “It was a man who called.”
Again, they looked at each other.
Jordan said, “That was my understanding. I can’t say for sure.”
“Well, this good citizen, whoever he was, knew I had Christopher Woodruff’s pistol. The most likely explanation for that is that he sent it to me. If it was in fact the weapon used to kill Woodruff, then we’ve got ourselves a prime suspect.”
“A person, possibly a man, who was in Regency Square Mall yesterday,” Hernandez said. “We’ve practically got him cornered,” Hernandez said.
“A person who is not Willow Woodruff and who has been in my office in the last twenty-four hours,” I said.
“Back up. Why do you say that?”
“Somebody took the gun.”
“What do you mean, somebody took the gun,” Jordan said. “Didn’t McClane pick it up this morning?”
“No. He didn’t. I opened my desk drawer for him so he could take it out himself, but the gun was gone.”
“You didn’t just misplace it,” Hernandez said.
“I did not.”
“Holy crap.”
“And then some,” I said.
Chapter 3
McClane’s partner, Matt Tarrant, stood as I reentered the Executive Suites. He wasn’t a tall man, and I could look down at his scalp and thinning blond hair even when he was standing.
“Robin Starling,” he said.
“Matt Tarrant. That was fast. Back with a search warrant already?”
He handed me an envelope.
“What’s this?”
He didn’t answer, but stood waiting as I opened the envelope. It contained, not a search warrant, but a subpoena demanding the immediate production of a Smith & Wesson .380 semiautomatic with a certain serial number. I refolded the document.
“Biggs is playing nice, going the subpoena route first,” he said. “You should take advantage of it.”
“Sure, why not?” I smacked my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Oh, that’s right, the gun has gone missing. McClane should have told you I don’t have it anymore. It might have saved you the trip over here.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favors.”
“No, I don’t suppose I am.”
He left without the gun. It was that or pull out his sack lunch and wait for me to spin copy paper into blued steel. The wait would have been a long one. Rumpelstiltskin I was not.
“Trouble?” Carly said when he had gone.
“Yeah.”
“Bad trouble?”
“It’s hard to say. I’m not sure what I’m up against.”
“You are the coolest cucumber I know. If the police were in and out of here threatening me all the time, I’d be wetting my panties.”
I wagged my head. I didn’t like the police attention any more than she would—so I did my best not to think about it.
Rodney came through the archway from our cluster of offices and stopped when he saw me. His Edgar-Allan-Poe mug was in his hand, which meant he was probably on his way to the kitchen for coffee. “You talking about the Woodruff case? I may have some more light to shed on that.”
I started back with him, but when he cast a wistful eye toward the kitchen, I said, “Let’s both go get some coffee. It can’t be as urgent as all that.”
His face brightened. We got our coffee and went back to his office. His computer was on his desk, and he’d recently connected a second monitor facing the client chairs.
“Have a seat. I’ll turn that monitor on for you.” The monitor facing me blinked on, he accepted the new settings, then expanded his browser. He was on Instagram, which was showing an electronic poster that read in block letters, “A man doesn’t hurt his woman. He always weighs his actions, not wanting to be responsible for her pain.” A comment left underneath the poster said, “Emotional blackmail is never pretty.”
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“Your client’s Instagram account.”
I leaned closer. “She’s WittleWombat?”
“Pretty sure.”
Willow Wendell Woodruff was a woman who embraced alliteration.
“Now look at this,” Rodney said. He opened another tab to show another Instagram account, this one showing a picture of an average looking guy with a very pretty woman with honey-blonde hair and a big chest that seemed disproportionate to her otherwise slender frame. They both looked about thirty. The caption under the photo said, “The love of my life.”
“This is Peyton Shilling’s Instagram page.”
The third side of the triangle, according to Willow. “Peyton Shilling is the blonde?”
“I think so. The man, I think, is Christopher Woodruff.”
There was a comment from WittleWombat below the caption: “I don’t understand why anyone would be ‘the other woman.’ It’s just another term for slut and home wrecker.” Below that was a comment from Peyton.S.Woodruff: “Spoken like a woman who can’t hold onto her man.”
Rodney scrolled up. A man’s right hand lay over a woman’s on a white table cloth next to a coffee cup and saucer.
Rodney clicked back to his original tab and scrolled up to show a photograph of Willow Woodruff in a hospital bed cradling a new-born infant. It had been posted on New Year’s Day, and the caption read, “To have and to hold from this day forward.” Peyton.S.Woodruff had commented, “Sad to see a grown woman hiding behind a bassinet.”
“It’s like they’re all in middle-school,” I said. “Why wouldn’t they make their pages private? Why not unfriend each other?”
Rodney shook his head. “I guess you’ve noticed that Peyton had taken Chris Woodruff’s name. Peyton S. Woodruff?”
“They weren’t married, were they?”
“No, though Chris did file for divorce about a month before his death.”
“I’d like you to get me the paperwork on that.”
“Sure.” Rodney switched to a third tab, this one to a Facebook page. Chris Woodruff was in a relationship with Peyton Shilling. Willow Woodruff had left the comment, “This is just sick. It turns my stomach.” Beneath that, someone named Megan Harris had said, “Who’s lonely now?”
“Who’s Megan Harris?” I asked.
“Don’t know. One of Peyton’s Facebook friends.” He switched back to the tab for Peyton’s Instagram page and scrolled up to a picture of Chris Woodruff sitting between Peyton’s feet, the top of her short skirt brushing the top of his head, his eyes cut upward and his tongue showing between his teeth. The caption was “Ticket to Paradise.”
There were a string of comments beneath it.
WittleWombat: Home wrecking is the fallback for a hooker who can’t get laid.
CWoodruff85: Stop stalking us, Willow.
Peyton.S.Woodruff: Some of us have a life.
WittleWombat: One of you has a wife.
Petyon.S.Woodruff: Don’t try to ruin other people’s happiness just because you can’t find your own.
Peyton’s next photograph was a close-up of Willow’s face, looking puffy, her eyes squinted. I imagined it had come from the photos on Chris’s cell phone and wondered if it had been taken late in Willow’s pregnancy. The caption: “Looks unstable, doesn’t she?”
Rodney switched back to Willow’s Instagram page and scrolled to a wedding photo, her face and Chris’s cheek-to-cheek over a cake topped with a miniature bride and groom. The caption: “Till death us do part.”
Peyton.S.Woodruff: No wonder he left you, you manipulative bitch.
WittleWombat: Says the painted whore.
CWoodruff85: You need to get over us and get on with your life.
WittleWombat: Caden, too?
“Last one,” Rodney said. He switched back to Peyton’s page and
scrolled up to a picture of Chris and Peyton jogging. He was wearing warm-ups, and she had a jacket on over a T-shirt and shorts.
WittleWombat: You’d better run.
CWoodruff85: My wife is unstable and even dangerous. If you’re one of the dozens of people getting messages from her, you should take that into account.
The photograph had been posted just over a month ago. Chris was less than five weeks away from having his brains blown out in the wittle wombat’s bed.
I sat back, thinking what any lawyer in my situation would be thinking: Would these posts be admissible at trial? If Willow was charged with Chris’s murder and I couldn’t keep them out, it was going to be pretty devastating.
“Useful?” Rodney asked.
I nodded. “More useful to the prosecution than to me, but it’s better to know than not know.”
“I had some free time and thought if I found something useful, I could bill you for it.”
“You’re a peach, Rodney.”
“Would it be convenient to have contact information for Peyton Shilling?”
“I don’t know. How much is that going to cost me?”
He stuck a Post-it note on the edge of the desk in front of me. On it were an address and phone number. “It didn’t take five minutes. I’ll throw it in, gratis.”
I picked it off the edge of the desk as I stood.
He stuck another Post-it on the edge of the desk. “Employment information,” he said.
I eyed it.
“You can take it. I’ll throw that in, too.”
I smiled as I took it. “I have to say—and I mean this sincerely—you’re worth every penny, Rodney Burns.”
Peyton was a yoga instructor at Gold’s Gym, which probably explained the muscle definition in the golden legs on prominent display in several of her photographs. I called the number for Gold’s on the Post-It.
“Do you have yoga classes for beginners?” I asked.
They did, Monday through Friday at eight a.m.
“Is that Peyton Shilling’s class? Someone told me she was really good.”
“Yes, it’s Peyton’s class.”
“But it hasn’t met the last week or so, I heard. Some kind of personal tragedy?”
Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 4
