Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  Matt said, “He’s a violent man. It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

  “He’s knocked Ms. Butler down before?”

  Lynn said, “No, he didn’t mean that.”

  “I mean look at Mom’s eye,” Matt said.

  They were giving themselves a motive for killing Derek, and I wondered whether I should be letting them talk.

  “What did she say about this man on the steps, other than he knocked her down?”

  Matt shrugged. Lynn said, “Nothing.”

  “Was he tall or short, thin or stocky…”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And you didn’t ask her.”

  “No.”

  “Dark hair, facial hair? Any description at all that made this man sound like he could be Derek Nolan?”

  She shook her head, and Jordan looked at Matt. He shook his head, too. Jordan sighed.

  “Back to your discovery of the body,” he said. “You went downstairs, then what?”

  “Ms. Starling unlocked the door and opened it. The apartment was dark. When she flipped the light switch, there didn’t seem to be a desk chair behind my husband’s desk. We didn’t see the body at first.”

  I opened my mouth to describe the crime scene as we actually found it, thinking a prompt admission and apology would serve better in the long run than a lie. Before I could say a word, though, the doorbell rang.

  I exhaled through my open mouth.

  Matt said, “I’ll get it.” From the entrance hall, he said, “It’s Melissa,” and he flung open the door.

  “Oh,” he said.

  It was my roommate. “I’m Brooke Marshall. Is Robin Starling here?”

  “In here, Brooke,” I called.

  Brooke came in, and I realized that she did resemble Melissa Butler. They were about the same height and weight and had the same red hair, though Brooke was several years older and their complexions were different, Brooke’s peaches-and-cream, Melissa’s freckled and her face narrower. Still, the resemblance was remarkable.

  Matt followed Brooke in, and Jordan stood. “Ms. Butler?”

  I shook my head. “You remember Brooke Marshall,” I said. “She’s my ride home.”

  “Oh,” he said. “So you weren’t the one who got knocked down on the steps outside?”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  Jordan looked at Matt. “They look a lot alike?”

  “I guess not,” he said, his eyes on Brooke. “Not really.”

  “How long have you known Melissa Butler?” Jordan asked him.

  “Six months.”

  “And you’ve been engaged how long?”

  “A week.”

  “You say she’s a student?”

  “No, I’m a student at VCU. Melissa works at O’Riley’s.”

  Jordan nodded. To me he said, “Your ride’s here. Are you leaving?”

  “I’d better stay until you finish questioning my clients.”

  “You can sit over here,” Matt said to Brooke, gesturing her to the sofa. She gave him a smile and he sat down next to her. Matt was a hound dog, I thought.

  Jordan said to Lynn, “You were just telling us about finding your husband.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We couldn’t see him from the doorway, but as we walked forward we could see him lying on his back in the overturned chair, his left arm against his body, his right arm almost straight out.”

  I started to speak, but Jordan cut me off. “Was your husband right-handed or left-handed?”

  Lynn said, “Right handed.”

  “You saw the gun next to his right shoulder?”

  “Yes.”

  I exhaled. The lie was told, and I had let it happen.

  “But something else was in his right hand,” Jordan said.

  Her eyes shifted, but she didn’t say anything.

  “What was in his right hand?” I asked.

  “A cell phone,” Jordan said.

  “Are you thinking he was trying to call someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it Derek’s iPhone?” Lynn asked.

  “I don’t know. Did he have an iPhone?”

  Lynn nodded.

  “Did any of you touch anything?”

  Lynn shook her head, but I said, “Lynn read the sheet of paper on the printer and put it back.”

  There was a flash of anger in Lynn’s eyes as she turned her gaze toward me, but I ignored it.

  “Her prints are probably on the paper,” I said. “I think it was the note that made her think of suicide.”

  “That and the gun,” she said. It made me want to choke her.

  “The gun by his right shoulder,” Jordan said.

  “Yes.”

  “And of course he was shot in the right side of the head.”

  “He shot himself.”

  “That’s right. You said he was right-handed, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he picked up the cell phone in his right hand before or after firing the shot?”

  Lynn’s face became still.

  “It would have been awkward for him to fire that shot with his left hand,” Jordan said. “I’m not sure he could have done it. It would have been just as awkward to fire the shot while holding the gun and cell phone together in the same hand—and remarkable that he maintained his grip on the cell phone, but not the gun, when he went over backwards in the chair.”

  “That’s why you don’t think it was suicide?” I asked.

  Jordan’s eyes left Lynn’s face unwillingly, and he looked at me. “That’s enough for starters.”

  “Anyway,” Lynn said. “We were standing and looking down at the body when the police showed up.”

  “Not quite,” Jordan reminded her.

  “What?”

  “You picked that paper off the printer, looked at it, and put it back down.”

  “Well, yes,” she conceded.

  “What else did you touch?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “The desk?”

  “I may have placed a palm on it when I saw Derek lying there. I don’t know.”

  “Touch anything on the desk?”

  “No.”

  “The computer? Something on the credenza? Anything at all?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ms Starling?” His gaze shifted to me.

  “I didn’t touch anything,” I said.

  “Did you see Ms. Nolan or anyone else touch anything other than the paper on the printer and the surface of the desk?”

  Here it was, and, unfortunately, the way he had asked the question made it possible for me to be dishonest without actually lying. “No,” I said. “I didn’t see anybody touch anything else.” All of it had happened while my back was turned.

  Chapter 4

  Eventually, the Nolans, Lynn and Matt, went upstairs to pack, and I left with Brooke. The Nolans were going to the Berkeley Hotel, which was in nearby Shockoe Slip, an old but upscale commercial district on the near edge of downtown Richmond. At least for this one night, the police wanted sole possession of the house.

  Brooke rolled through the tollbooth on the Downtown Expressway, and I continued my account of finding the body and of the tampering Lynn Nolan had done with the crime scene: pushing in a drawer, closing a document on the computer, getting a gun from the desk and dropping it by the body.

  “Why would she do that?” Brooke said.

  I was silent, my eyes on the big green sign that announced the upcoming junction with I-64. “I don’t know,” I said at last.

  “Don’t you think—”

  “Get off here,” I said. “Let’s go back.”

  Brooke steered the car onto the exit ramp. “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’m afraid for Lynn suddenly. The police aren’t as dumb as she thinks they are.”

  Brooke crossed over the Expressway and got back on it, heading back into downtown Richmond. “What I don
’t get is why you didn’t tell the police about her tampering with the evidence,” she said.

  “She’s my client.”

  “But you’re a witness.”

  “I know. What I saw isn’t protected by client confidentiality.”

  “So…”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Client loyalty, I guess. I’m not going to be called as a witness against my own client, not if I can help it.”

  She exited onto Byrd Street and, as the pavement dropped away from us, took her foot off the accelerator. Byrd Street was steep, and Brooke had to use the brake to control our speed. “Do you think they’re at the hotel yet?”

  “If not, we can wait for them in the lobby.”

  When we got to the hotel, Brooke turned the corner, and the car vibrated over cobblestones. Shockoe Slip had been a warehouse district before the Civil War. On a Friday night, parking was at a premium, but just past The Tobacco Company, a bar and restaurant housed in one of the renovated warehouses, a car was pulling away from the curb.

  Brooke slid into the open spot. “That was lucky,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s an omen.”

  A gust of rain came out of nowhere and spattered the windshield.

  “Maybe that’s our omen,” Brooke said.

  “Let’s hope not.” I pushed open the door of the car and got out. Another spatter of rain caught me in the face. I could see a curtain of rain sweeping up the cobblestones toward us.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s hurry.”

  “I can feel my hair frizzing,” Brooke said, her hands in her pockets and her shoulders hunched. The sky was spitting droplets at us.

  My own hair was a straight, shiny blonde. “I should be so lucky,” I said.

  “What are you talking about? You have great hair,” Brooke said.

  The rain swept past us as we reached the canopy that overhung the steps of the hotel, and we stood for a moment watching it on the shining cobblestones as it drummed the canopy above our heads. Brooke glanced at me, and I shrugged. We turned and went up into the Berkeley. The dining room off the lobby was closed. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was just after eleven.

  There were two clerks at the registration desk, a geeky white guy with a pale, thin face and a light-skinned black woman who could have been a model. Neither was over twenty-five. “Welcome to the Berkeley,” the woman said brightly.

  “Hi,” I said. “A Lynn and Matt Nolan are supposed to be checking in tonight. Could you tell me if they’re here yet?”

  The woman tapped something into a keyboard, glanced at the screen, and said, “Yes. They checked in a few minutes ago.”

  “Could you ring them for me?” I knew better than to ask for room numbers.

  “Which? Lynn or Matt?”

  “Lynn,” I said.

  She picked up the phone and tapped in a number. After a quarter-minute she moved the receiver away from her ear. “No answer,” she said.

  “Matt, then.”

  “Okay.” He was there. “Hello, Mr. Nolan, this is registration. There’s someone in the lobby asking to speak with you.” She looked at me.

  “Robin Starling,” I said.

  She repeated it, nodded, then gestured to a phone on the wall to one side of the registration desk. “You can use that phone,” she said to me.

  I went and picked it up.

  “Ms. Starling?”

  “Hi, Matt,” I said. “Sorry to disturb you. Is your mother there?”

  “She has her own room two down from me. Three twenty-one.”

  “She doesn’t answer.”

  Matt was silent.

  “Any idea where she might be?”

  “No,” he said. I found that I didn’t believe him, though I couldn’t imagine why he would lie.

  I sighed into the phone. “I guess it’s not important,” I said. “I’ll just talk to her in the morning.” I hung up the phone, nodded my thanks to the woman at the registration desk, then went into a brief huddle with Brooke.

  “You wait here,” I said. “If Lynn Nolan or Matt Nolan leaves the hotel, follow them.”

  “Okay, but…”

  I couldn’t stay to hear the rest of it. I headed for the elevators, nodding matter-of-factly to the woman at the desk. She didn’t challenge me. Rather than wait for an elevator, I pushed through the fire door into the stairwell and took the steps two at a time. When I got to the third floor, the elevator doors were closing on someone, but I was too late to see whom. There was a man in the hall standing in the doorway of his room. He was wearing Dockers, a white shirt, and a striped tie. To me he looked like a cop, but maybe I was just being paranoid.

  Back in the stairwell, I raced back down to the first floor, jumping the last half-dozen steps in each set of stairs, grabbing the rail to make the turn at each landing. I went out into the hall and looked at the lights above the elevator I’d seen leaving three. It was on the fourth floor. I went back through the fire door.

  Though I’m in good shape, I was blowing hard by the time I reached the fourth floor. I was just in time to see Matt going into a room at the far end of the hall. Half-running, half-walking, I tried to keep my eyes on the spot where he had disappeared.

  He had gone into either room 437 or room 439. As I stood between them, shifting from one foot to the other, I heard ice hitting a bucket at the end of the hall. I knocked on the door of room 439, then went to the door of room 437 and knocked on it, too.

  The door of 437 was the first to open. The man who opened it was slightly taller than I was. His shaved head and flat belly gave him an athletic appearance, though he was probably in his forties. I glanced at 439 and beyond it to where a woman wearing black jeans and a polo shirt was coming out of the ice room with her bucket. I pushed past the man into his room, ignoring his exclamation of protest.

  “Close the door,” I said, but it wasn’t necessary. As he turned, he let go of the door and it swung shut behind him. The door to the bathroom was shut. The beds were made, but both had been sat on. I went past the beds and took the chair at the desk.

  “Who are you?” the man asked me. Beneath dark eyebrows, light glinted from narrow, black-framed glasses.

  “I’m Robin Starling,” I said in a loud voice.

  “So? What do you want?”

  I waited. The door to the bathroom opened, and Lynn came out.

  “Hello, Mrs. Nolan,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice was angry, but her eyes were a little too wide to go with the voice. She looked frightened.

  Matt came out behind her.

  “Quite the party,” I said. “Are you going to introduce me?”

  Lynn’s eyes went to the man who had opened the door. He shrugged, almost imperceptibly, but she hesitated.

  “We may not have much time,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police are here. They’re keeping tabs on you.”

  Lynn’s hand went to her throat, but Matt said belligerently, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Did you see a woman with an ice bucket when you came up here?” I asked him. “Black jeans, pink polo shirt?”

  “She rode up in the elevator with me.”

  “She’s one, and she’s not the only one.” I looked at Lynn and jerked my head in the direction of the man who had let me in.

  “My name is Steve Bruno,” he said, not waiting for the introduction. “Who are you?”

  I’d already given him my name. I said, “I’m Lynn’s attorney. What’s your connection to the Nolans?”

  “A friend.”

  “What are you doing here? Why did they come to this hotel to meet you?”

  “I don’t know that they did.”

  “I’m sure you know that Derek Nolan was murdered tonight. The police are going to be able to establish that Lynn Nolan came to your room immediately after checking in. Is there any reason that would be undesirable?”

  Lynn and Bruno exchanged glances.

 
“If there’s a history between you that’s going to interest the police, I need to hear it,” I said.

  Unexpectedly, Matt spoke up. “Steven Bruno graduated from East High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, the same year as my mother. They both went to the University of Richmond, but Bruno only finished three semesters. In May of the year he dropped out, Mom married an MBA student named Derek Nolan.”

  Lynn looked shocked, but she shouldn’t have been. We already knew Matt had been doing his homework. She said, “How do you know all that?”

  “Internet. Information cost me fifty bucks.”

  “Do you live in Richmond?” I asked Bruno.

  “No, though I’ve been here for the past month.”

  “Staying at this hotel?” That had to be expensive. “How often have you seen Lynn during that time?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “He’s seen her a lot,” Matt said.

  His mother said, “Matt, what are you saying?”

  Matt looked uncomfortable, but he said, “It’s time you get honest with me. I want to know who my father is.” It was as if he’d detonated a small bomb. Lynn and Bruno were still standing, but with their insides blown out. Matt’s paternity wasn’t my immediate concern, though.

  “How many times have you seen Derek Nolan?” I asked Bruno.

  He shook his head.

  “Does that mean you haven’t seen him? Are you the one Melissa Butler saw leaving the house on Grace Street tonight?”

  “Who is Melissa Butler?”

  “My fiancée,” Matt said. “You haven’t met her.”

  “She’s a redhead,” I said. “Somebody knocked her down on the steps coming up from the basement apartment.”

  Bruno shook his head. “It wasn’t me.”

  “But you have been at the house on Grace Street,” I said.

  “Who says I have? You don’t have any basis for that accusation.”

  “That’s not a denial.”

  “Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  “She’s representing us,” Lynn said.

  “That doesn’t explain what she’s doing in my room cross-examining me in the middle of the night.”

  “I’m trying to keep everybody out of jail,” I said. “Did you kill Derek Nolan?”

  “No. I didn’t know he was dead until Lynn told me just now.”