Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “Does Walker have big feet?”

  “Probably. He’s six-three or so and weighs around two-forty.”

  “That matches the description of the Mark Walker I know. Did he have a lot of hair?”

  “Not on top. Why?”

  “I think that’s him. Did you notice what kind of shoes he was wearing?”

  “Hell no. Topsiders, I think. Some kind of leather shoe.”

  “He might have changed shoes.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Stebbins said.

  When I had hung up, I repeated the conversation to Brooke. She was so excited she capped her nail polish and set it aside.

  “That’s him,” she said. “Derek Nolan’s collector. Call them back and get them to pick him up.”

  “Let’s think for a minute. Suppose Matt identifies him, and he did used to work for Derek Nolan. What have we got?”

  “We’ve got a man whom Derek Nolan fired trying to run down the lawyer who’s representing his wife.”

  I nodded. “If Walker wasn’t driving that truck, it’s a heck of a coincidence. Who was with him, do you think?”

  She hesitated. “Liz?”

  “Liz Lockard? I’d been thinking Little Feet was a man.”

  “So had I. Liz has that deep carrying voice, though.”

  “Huh.” After a moment, I added, “Let’s say it was her. Walker and Lockard broke into our house. What did they want?”

  “To kill that bitch of a lawyer, for one thing.”

  “Well, yes, they tried that. What did they want with you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to kill me, too.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No,” Brooke agreed. “It would make more sense if they just wanted to kill you.”

  I made a face at her as I picked up the phone. “I’m going to call Sergeant Stebbins back,” I said. “Walker is our guy.”

  Stebbins, though, was no longer available. I left a message.

  “He stepped out,” I said, hanging up. “I’m going running. If he calls back, tell him we want to prosecute.”

  “Be careful out there. It’s open season on lawyer-bitches.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Chapter 20

  Rodney Burns called on Monday with Mark Walker’s address and phone number. “I don’t think it will do you any good, though,” he said. “He’s not at home. There’s a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of attempted homicide.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “The victim was one Robin Starling. Would that be you?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Rather a coincidence,” he said.

  “It is.”

  “Do you want anything else, or should I send you my bill?”

  I sighed. “Send the bill, I guess. I can’t think of anything else.”

  I hung up, and almost immediately Sergeant Stebbins called. What he told me I already knew—and, regrettably, had paid money to find out.

  “You can’t find him?” I asked Stebbins.

  “No. We can’t.”

  “Are you looking?”

  “We are. We’ll let you know when we pick him up.”

  I worked late, preparing for the preliminary hearing for Lynn Nolan and Steve Bruno. It seemed to me that the whole thing was hopeless, but I didn’t want to go home until I had some kind of a plan. My mother called late in the afternoon. After a moment’s hesitation, I picked up.

  “Robin!”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “When are you coming to see me?” Mom lived in Tazewell in western Virginia, which was several hours drive from Richmond.

  “I’ll be there for Thanksgiving,” I said.

  “I understand your father came to see you.”

  Mom was always one to get to the point. “Yeah,” I said. “He was here.”

  “And you threw him out.”

  “I did not throw him out. How could I have? I didn’t even have him thrown out.”

  “You didn’t want to talk to him.”

  “It’s been fifteen years,” I said. “What do we have to talk about? Twice a year I get a present from him and a Hallmark card.”

  “He’s been through a lot, you know.”

  “So have we all.”

  “It’s time to forgive him, Robin. For your sake, if not for his.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “You’ve forgiven him, I take it?”

  “I’ve come to terms with him.”

  “What does that mean? It sounds like you’ve signed a contract.”

  “No. I have forgiven him, I think.”

  There was a silence.

  “You’re not saying he’s going to be there at Thanksgiving, are you?” I asked.

  “Would you come if he was?”

  “So he is going to be there.”

  “We haven’t discussed it.”

  That wasn’t an answer, but I let it go. We talked a bit about what my brother was doing—he had a medical practice there in Tazewell — and then ended the call without returning to the subject of Dad.

  The rest of the afternoon, my thoughts went to Dad whenever my focus on work relaxed. For a couple of years I’d worked for him summers and after school. Before he moved out on us, I had fully expected to become a veterinarian and join him in the business.

  I tried not to think about it. When my phone rang at just after six, I glanced at the phone and saw NAME NOT FOUND in the display window.

  Dad, I thought, following up on Mom’s call after she had softened me up. I sighed and picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Robin Starling?” It was a man’s voice, but one with a strong Southern accent. Not the one I’d expected.

  “Yes,” I said. “Who is this?”

  “Mark Walker.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Does the name mean anything to you?” the voice asked. It was almost too soft to make out over the traffic noises in the background.

  “Your truck tried to run me down Friday night,” I said.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “So talk.”

  “Not on the phone. In person.”

  “Have you ever seen me? You know what I look like?”

  “Not really. I know you’re tall.”

  “So you have seen me.”

  His breathing was audible. “A glimpse,” he said.

  “And did I look that stupid?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know whether it was you who tried to kill me or not, but I have to regard it as a substantial probability. I’m not going to give you a second shot at it.”

  “They’re some things I’ve got to get off my chest, and you need to hear them,” he said.

  “For my benefit or yours?” I asked.

  “For your clients’ benefit. We can meet in a public place. I’m not asking you to meet me in a dark alley or anything.”

  “How about my office?”

  “No. That won’t work.”

  “Where do you suggest?”

  “How about the bar of the Tobacco Company?”

  It was only a couple of blocks away from me. “When?” I asked.

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  I thought about it. The danger would be getting there, getting in, and getting out again. “Can you give me some idea of what this is about?” I said.

  “Not on the phone. I can help you, I think, but I’m going to need some help from you in exchange.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Now listen…”

  But he had hung up.

  “Crap,” I said, and dropped the receiver back into its cradle.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Certainly, my case needed help—all it could get. On the other hand, I didn’t want to put myself within arm’s reach of a two-hundred-forty-pound behemoth who wanted to kill me.

  Fishing my cell phone from my purse, I held dow
n the “3” key to speed-dial Brooke’s cell phone.

  “Hi, Robin,” she said when she picked up.

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “I just got a call from Mark Walker.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. He wants me to meet him at the Tobacco Company. Says he has something important to tell me that can help in my defense of Lynn and Steve. He won’t say what.”

  “Call the police and let them pick him up. Don’t meet him.”

  “I need to hear what he has to say.”

  “You don’t need to. You don’t know he can help your clients; all you know is he says he can. You have every reason to doubt him.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “I’m going to do it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “At least you know where I am.”

  “You mean, I’ll know where you were headed when you disappeared.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Trust me, Robin. This is not something you want to do.”

  “You mean it’s not something I should do.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said ‘want to do.’ What I want is to look Mark Walker in the eyeball and hear what he has to say.”

  “Wait for me. I’ll go with you.”

  “Can’t. He gave me fifteen minutes.”

  “It’s a trap, Robin.”

  “He sounded sincere.”

  “Listen to yourself. Anyone can sound sincere.”

  “It’s a public place.”

  “At least stay on the line,” she said. “Tuck your phone out of sight, but leave it on.”

  “It’ll have to be in my purse,” I said. “I’m not wearing pockets.”

  “I may not be able to hear anything.”

  “I’ll shout if I need you. You can call 9-1-1.”

  Chapter 21

  When I emerged from the office building, I found it was twilight. I stood for a moment outside the revolving door and studied the traffic. It was rush hour, and parking along the curb was prohibited, which made my surveillance easier. No parked vehicles with watching occupants. A few pedestrians, but no bald-headed giants. Taking a deep breath and letting it out again, I started the climb up Tenth Street toward Shockoe Slip.

  I kept an eye out as I walked, my focus at first on a fat man stumping toward me down the steep sidewalk, then, after he had passed me, on all the headlights, any of which might turn toward me as the vehicle behind them mounted the curb. As I passed a parking garage, I moved as close as I could to the edge of the sidewalk without stepping in the gutter, fearing the shadowy assailant that might lurch out of the entrance to drag me back into darkness. Then I moved back against the garage, looking up, thinking that someone could shoot down at me from an upper level.

  I found myself walking faster and faster, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. The Tobacco Company was at the corner of Tenth and Cary Streets. A tall building with the basement nightclub where I had interrogated Steve Bruno, it had a bar on the ground floor and a restaurant on the second and third. When at last I turned the corner and reached for the door handle, a young man wearing a vest, tuxedo shirt, and black tie opened it for me. I nodded as I went past him.

  It was happy hour, and the bar area was loud with talk and music. My muscles relaxed marginally. This was a yuppie crowd: well-dressed men and women in their twenties and thirties winding down after a day in the office. The bar itself, a large square in the middle of the room, had no empty stools that I could see at first glance, but a scan of the stools and of the high tables along the outside walls failed to reveal the man I was looking for. Though a big, bald-headed man wouldn’t have been out of place, he would have been noticeable, even in the crowd.

  I eliminated the bald-headed criterion and looked again, this time for any tall, heavy men. There were two who would have tipped the scale at two-thirty, and one of them was over six feet, but he looked too much like an accountant and his thinning hair was too obviously his own. It seemed that Mark Walker had not yet arrived.

  I stood watching as people pushed past me. A waitress stopped in front of me to ask what she could get me. I waved her off, and she continued working her way around the bar. I got jostled again and saw another waitress working her way toward me.

  Heck with it. Wedging myself between two men on stools, standing sideways to the bar, I ordered a margarita from the red-vested, blousy-haired bartender.

  “How you doing?” the man next to me said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the conversations going on around us. He was plump and baby-faced and, though it was hard to tell since he was sitting, seemed to be several inches shorter than I was.

  “Fine,” I said, watching the bartender shake my drink.

  “Paul Soldano,” he said loudly.

  I looked at him, and he smiled at me. He was about my age, thirty, wearing a polo shirt that said Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on the left breast.

  “Mike McMillan,” boomed a voice behind me, and I turned to look at the man on the other stool. This one wore a gray suit and striped tie. He was probably an inch or two over six feet, almost tall enough to be Walker, except that he couldn’t have weighed over one-eighty or so.

  “What is this, a pick-up?” I asked. The bartender set my drink on the counter, and I extracted my wallet from my purse.

  The one named Paul beat me to it, laying a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “Only if you want it to be,” he said to me.

  “I’m meeting someone,” I yelled.

  “That’s okay,” he yelled back. He left the ten on the bar. The bartender looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I shrugged and nodded. She took the ten.

  “You haven’t told us your name,” said Mike from behind me.

  I stepped back to get them both in front of me. Neither one looked particularly threatening, but I didn’t put a lot of stock in appearances. “Do you care what my name is?” I asked.

  “It would be friendly,” Paul said.

  “And you’d like me to be friendly?” I took a sip of my drink. Probably it was a bad idea to have a drink when I was there to meet a man who’d try to run over me, but I was both hungry and thirsty. The tang of tequila and lime juice felt good in my mouth and throat.

  “You’re not a lawyer, are you?” Paul shouted. When I didn’t respond, he rolled his eyes at his friend Mike. “Another one.” To me, he added, “Mike’s an attorney, too.”

  Mike grinned. “He’s trying hard to be nice. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Paul use the word attorney without putting the word ‘weasely’ in front of it.”

  “I’m honored.”

  Mike stood up. “Here, take my stool.”

  I jerked my chin at it. “You keep it.” My gaze drifted to the door, then did another sweep of the room.

  Paul shouted, “There’s more comfortable seating in the back. We can take our drinks.”

  I glanced at my watch. If there was more seating in the back, maybe Walker was waiting for me there.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?” The two of them exchanged glances. I had the impression they didn’t have much luck with women.

  “Let’s go on back,” I said.

  The seating was a lot like it was downstairs in the nightclub: love seats and comfortable chairs arranged around low coffee tables. Surprisingly, given the crowd at the bar, one of the arrangements was vacant.

  “Still no Walker,” I said, relieved that here it was possible to speak in nearly normal tones.

  “What?”

  I smiled at Paul and shook my head. The two of them were standing, waiting for me to sit down. They’d left the chair for me rather than a spot on the loveseat. Either they didn’t want to crowd me, or they both wanted to sit where they could look at me.

  I sat. The chair was low enough that my skirt slid halfway up my thighs. I kept my knees together and pointed to the side to keep the floorshow from getting too entertaining.
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  “So what do you do?” I asked Paul as I again glanced around us.

  “I work at the Federal Reserve.”

  “So you didn’t steal the shirt,” I said.

  Mike laughed. “He’s a bank examiner. Where do you work?”

  I told him, and he nodded.

  “I’m on my own,” he said.

  “What do you do?”

  “Almost anything.”

  Paul said, “His bread-and-butter is Social Security Disability.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  Mike smiled. “No, it’s not.”

  I smiled back and glanced at my watch again.

  “Is your date late?” Mike asked.

  “He is.” He’d said fifteen minutes, and it had been thirty. “He’s not really a date, though. He’s a potential witness.”

  Mike’s eyebrows went up. “Maybe if he doesn’t show up, we can take you to dinner.”

  “What are you hoping to get out of this?”

  “A little feminine company. If you turn us down, it’s just Paul and me.”

  I glanced at Paul.

  “You’d be helping us both out,” he said. “I’m not much to look at, and Mike’s not much of a conversationalist.”

  “You make it sound really tempting,” I said.

  Mike took a pull of his beer and set the bottle on the coffee table. “We’re what we’ve got,” he said. “How about it? You get a free meal, and you don’t even have to tell us your name.”

  “You two must be pretty hard up.”

  “Take another look at my alternative there.”

  I looked at Paul, and he smiled at me engagingly.

  “I have to meet someone,” I said.

  “But he hasn’t shown.”

  “Yes. That worries me.” I stood up with my drink. “I’m going to check the bar area again.”

  Both men stood with me, but sat again as I walked around the corner and back toward the front of the building. The noise level now was terrific, drowning out the background music as I approached. At the edge of the crowd, I stood for a couple of minutes studying the large men in the room, taking a step this way and that to open a line of sight to various points on the opposite side of the bar. I wasn’t sure I would recognize Walker if I saw him, but I wanted to give him a chance to recognize me if he were there. No one approached me, though, so I worked my way around the bar, twice excusing myself and pressing between knots of people.