“He didn’t leave a message?”
“Just that he’d call back. He said he’d be out of pocket, so he didn’t leave a number.”
Great. The man in the world I most wanted to talk to. “Thanks, Carly.” I crossed the reception area toward the archway in the wall of exposed brick. Halfway there I turned back.
“Carly? That woman who came to see me this morning?”
“Your first client.” Carly beamed at me, a friendly, upbeat expression that made her look simple-minded.
“Yes. What did she say when she came in? Did she ask for me specifically?”
“Not specifically, no. She asked if we had any lawyers here in the Executive Suites, and I told her about you.” Her smile, which had faltered a bit at my question, brightened again to full wattage.
“Thank you,” I said. “Why not Dave, though?” Dave was the lawyer down the hall from me, six months on his own after six years with the commonwealth attorney’s office. I, on the other hand, had been in the Executive Suites for two weeks.
“Well, I did,” Carly admitted. “She said it was a criminal case, so I mentioned Dave and all his experience as an assistant D.A., and then I told her about you.”
“And she chose me.”
“She sure did.”
“Well, thank you again.”
I went through the archway into a small secretarial area that as yet boasted no secretary. It did have a water cooler, my one extravagance, and I got myself a drink in a paper cone. Three offices opened off the secretarial area, the one on the far left still vacant. Brooke Marshall’s door was closed, so I went into my office on the right, a narrow room that ended in a rough wall of exposed brick. The wall needed a big, framed picture of a landscape to compensate for the lack of a window, but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. I went around my desk, set my briefcase and the drawstring bag with my heels against the wall at the end of it, and sat in the faux-leather chair I had purchased at Costco the week before.
Chloe Stevens had sat in one of the client chairs facing me, the one on the left. She declined water, declined coffee, which I would have had to get from the Executive Suites’ kitchen, and kept her coat on, an embroidered jacket that was almost as long as her dress. She did take off her sunglasses upon entering the windowless office, and, as she folded them, she sat in the client chair and crossed her legs. As short as her dress was, she had to cross them to keep from being indecent.
“I’m here about my stepdaughter Natalie,” she said, her chin tucked and her expression wide-eyed and serious. “She was arrested for felony hit-and-run a short time ago.” She had a rich, throaty voice that would have sounded seductive in other circumstances.
“A short time ago today?” I asked.
She looked at her watch, which hung loosely on her wrist like a bracelet. “About ninety minutes ago,” she said. “A little less.”
“You’re working fast.”
“She is my stepdaughter, and my husband is out of the country, so there’s only me.”
“You want me to represent her?”
“Yes. Money is no object. I’m prepared to write you a check for ten thousand dollars—unless that isn’t enough.”
“It should be enough. I charge by the hour. Your money starts off in a trust account: It’s your money, but I’ll be holding it to pay legal fees and expenses. Each week, I’ll take out whatever I’ve earned and what I’ve had to spend on Natalie’s account. You did say Natalie?”
“Natalie Stevens, yes. I’m Chloe Stevens.”
“And I’m Robin Starling,” I said again. “Can you tell me where the hit-and-run occurred?”
“Not exactly.” She lifted her hands to smooth her long, dark hair in front of her shoulders. She was wearing a pale, silk blouse, open at the throat to show a pearl necklace. “It was somewhere on the Southside.”
“Inside the city limits?”
“I don’t know. I assume so.”
I didn’t ask her on what basis she assumed it. “What else can you tell me? Natalie hit somebody. Was the person on foot or in another vehicle?”
“On foot, I think. One headlight of her car was broken, and there was blood.”
“Blood on the front of her car?”
Chloe nodded solemnly, and rubbed her hands on her bare thighs, nicely tanned even in winter.
“Do you know who she hit? Was it a man or a woman?”
“Man, I think. I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve identified him. The tires went over his head, tore most of his face off, I understand. Of course, Natalie was pretty hysterical.” Chloe, clearly, was not.
“Who told you this? Natalie? The police?”
She shook her head. “Natalie called from the police station. It took me some time to get her father on the phone—he’s out of the country—then I came here.”
There was something off about Chloe Stevens, as beautiful as she was. “How are you handling it?” I asked.
“I’m not the one who’s in jail.” A smile touched her mouth, giving it just a hint of frost, then it was gone.
“Where did they arrest her, do you know?”
“At our house, in Wyndam.” She gave me the address, and I wrote it on my legal pad. I went ahead and asked her for her phone number while I was at it, and she gave me a landline and a cell.
“Were you home?” I asked.
She shook her head, her eyes still a bit too wide. I was having trouble getting a read on Chloe Stevens, but I got her to write me a check. Then I got her up and got her out of my office so I could get to work. Her jacket and the dress beneath it clung to her body so that I could see her hips move as she went out through the glass doors to the elevator.
“Who is Mrs. Onassis?” a voice said at my elbow, and I started. It was Brooke Marshall, in the doorway of her office.
“A client,” I said. “Stepmother of a client, actually.”
“She could start a fire.”
I glanced at her, grinned. Outside the glass doors the elevator opened, and Chloe Stevens stepped onto it. She had her sunglasses on again, and her eyes were opaque. “How old would you say she is?” I asked.
“A woman like that, could be anywhere from twenty-five to forty.”
“You’d assume near the upper end of that range, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m catty enough that I’d like to,” Brooke said.
Now that I had met Natalie at the police station and walked her through her presentation before the magistrate, it was time to talk to Chloe again. I took a breath, then leaned over to get my legal pad out of my briefcase. Chloe Stevens’ phone numbers were on the first page. I dialed the landline first.
“Yes,” Chloe said in her throaty voice.
“Hello, Ms. Stevens. It’s Robin Starling.”
“Hello, Ms. Starling.”
“I’m calling with an update. I’ve met with Natalie, and she’s okay with me representing her. We’ve appeared before a magistrate, and bail’s been set at seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars!” She didn’t sound shocked, more like she was rolling it around on her tongue because it was delicious.
“She’s going to be in the Richmond City Jail until you can raise the money. Would you like me to contact a bail bondsman for you? If you’d like a recommendation, I’d go with Ricky Anderson, the Club-footed Tornado.”
“The what?” She gave a little laugh.
“It’s how he bills himself. He used to be a professional wrestler, but he’s older now and largely gone to fat. I’ve dealt with him before though and found him to be very professional.”
“Oh, I can manage seventy-five thousand on my own, I think.”
“You’ll need a certified check from your bank. If you’d like to bring me the check, I’d be happy to take care of it for you. If you want to do it yourself, you should call the jail first, just so you’ll know which door to go in and who to ask for.”
“Well, I want to thank you, Ms. Starling. You’ve been a wonder.”
“I’d just need the funds to work with.”
“I understand.”
As I put down the phone, I bumped my computer mouse, and the monitor came on, displaying the game of Spider Solitaire I’d been in the middle of when Chloe Stevens showed up with her ten-thousand-dollar check. I saw a move, put my hand to the mouse to make it.
“You’re back.” Brooke Marshall was in my doorway.
“Your door was closed,” I said. “I thought you had someone with you.”
“I had work to do. Carly likes to stand at the door and talk.”
“Yes, she does like to do that. You, on the other hand, like to come in and sit,” I said as Brooke came in and dropped into the client chair Chloe Stevens had occupied a couple of hours before.
“Sorry. Am I interrupting something?”
I turned my monitor around so she could see it. She laughed and pushed her thick, pale red hair behind one ear. “Maybe you’ll have less time for that now,” she said. “Congratulations on the new client. I am surprised you got her, though.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“I was coming back from the restroom when she was talking to Carly. You should have heard the build-up Carly gave Dave. You’d have thought he was Johnnie Cochrane.” The lawyer who defended O.J. and won his acquittal.
“What did she say about me?” I asked.
“That you were new here and really, really nice, but she understood you’d been fired from your last job for being—” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “—something of a loose cannon.” The drop in volume was a habit of speech Carly had when she was delivering the goods on someone.
“And after those introductions, Chloe chose me over Dave. Interesting. Disconcerting, even.”
“She said her daughter would be more comfortable with a lady lawyer.”
I shook my head. Lady lawyer was a phrase I’d be happy to go the rest of my life and never hear again. “Natalie—that’s the daughter—stepdaughter actually—thought I must be incompetent if Chloe had hired me to defend her. Didn’t seem to think Chloe had her best interests at heart.”
“You do wonder why she’d be lawyer-shopping in an executive suite.”
“Yes. I imagine that, like me, even like Dave from the D.A.’s office who’s only been on his own six months, lawyers in executive suites aren’t often well established. So Chloe showed up at one, chatted up the receptionist, and chose the least likely candidate available.”
“That pretty clever really, if she wants to submarine her stepdaughter without being too obvious about it.”
“Yes, Natalie’s father is out of the country and seems to be out of pocket at the moment, but of course he’ll be back. I may have scared her though. I recommended a bail bondsman and even told her what he looks like. Shows I’ve been around the block a few times.”
“You have been around the block. Twice.”
“Getting to be an old-timer.”
“Does it bother you that she thought you’d be a lightweight?”
“Not at all. I’m a blonde female just a few months over thirty. I get that kind of thing all the time. What bothered me is that Chloe didn’t seem to have those kinds of smarts. Street smarts, but not any understanding of commercial arrangements.”
“What kind of street smarts do you think she has?”
“She’s evidently the second wife of a wealthy businessman. She’s used her looks to set herself up pretty well in life. Seemed to be trying to use her looks on me, too. Stroked her hair as she talked, crossed her legs, rubbed her thighs a couple of times.”
Brooke’s eyebrows had climbed her forehead.
“Fortunately, I’m immune,” I said.
I hung around another hour waiting for Chloe to call back with instructions, or, alternatively, just to drop in with a nice, fat cashier’s check. I didn’t waste the afternoon completely. I finished my game of spider solitaire with a win—my stats were now above sixty percent—and started another one. I got on Facebook and Instagram and downloaded pictures of everyone I could think of onto my phone: Natalie Stevens, her father Mark, and even her mother-in-law Chloe, who looked pretty spiffy clad all in black leather, the jacket open halfway to her navel, leaning up against a low-slung sports car of (to me) indeterminate make.
When I hadn’t heard from her by four o’clock, I decided to head for home so I could go by the police station on the way. I found Detective Jordan behind a door that had Homicide Division stenciled on the pebbled glass in the door. No one responded to a knock, so I opened the door and found an office with eight desks in it. Only three of them were occupied, two on the left side and Jordan’s in the back right corner. He was typing on a keyboard, his eyes squinted and his shoulders hunched as he jabbed at it. He looked fit and healthy, an improvement over the last time I’d seen him.
I went past the other two cops, drawing no more than a glance from each, and sat on the corner of his desk. His eyes cut to my knees, then worked their way up to my face. He pushed his chair back, one roller screeching on the dingy linoleum.
“Robin Starling,” he said.
“Detective Jordan. I see biker moustaches are still in style.”
“And will be as long as Hulk Hogan and I are around to keep them in fashion. What brings you down into the bowels of the police station?”
“We’re on the fourth floor,” I said. “Hardly the bowels of the station.”
“I was speaking figuratively. Don’t tell me you’ve got another murder case. I don’t think I can survive another one.”
“Sort of. It’s felony hit-and-run, but the victim died.”
He grimaced and shook his head. “I haven’t got one of those at the moment. What gives? I thought criminal defense was just a sideline with you.”
“I got fired, had to open my own office. I’m in the Ironfronts over on Main Street.”
“And you’ve decided to specialize in criminal law?”
“I’ve decided to specialize in anything that comes in the door. You know, mortgage to pay and all that.”
“So what do you want?”
“I think I want to talk to someone named Tom McClane. That’s the name on the complaint anyway.”
Jordan pointed to a desk two in front of his. “Well, that’s his desk, but he’s not in it.”
“No, I can see that.”
“Anything else I can do for you?”
“I expected you to sound more helpful after I saved your life.”
“You mean after you got me shot?”
I sighed. “Sorry about that.”
“Me, too. My wife and kids weren’t too crazy about it either.”
“How about you fill me in on some police-station protocol?”
He looked at me doubtfully, and I gave him a smile. “Please?”
A voice from the direction of the door said, “Whoa. What gives?”
I turned toward it and saw Ray Hernandez, Jordan’s partner. The two other cops in the room seemed to have stopped what they were doing, and I wondered how long they had been watching me try to wheedle information out of Jordan.
“Hello, Ray,” I said.
He ignored me and spoke to Jordan. “What’s this skinny b…barrister doing here?”
“Nice save,” Jordan said.
“No, it’s not,” I objected. “Forget the b-word. You don’t call a woman skinny. Lean, maybe. Slender. Skinny has negative connotations.”
“Tell me she’s not on one of our cases,” Hernandez said to Jordan.
“You make me sound like a hand grenade in a foxhole,” I said.
“Since we haven’t caught a case of vehicular homicide in the past week, I’m thinking not,” Jordan said. “She’s somebody else’s problem this time.”
“This is outrageous,” I protested.
“She came by to ask about police station protocol.”
“She did?” Hernandez had come to a stop at the next desk. He was not a tall man—shorter than I was—bu
t he was big through the shoulders. He had a broad face, a big nose, and heavy cheekbones. “That’s different,” he said. He swung the desk chair around, its wheels spinning, and sat. “What does she want to know?”
That sounded promising, but I said, “You gonna address any of your comments to me, or you just going to talk to Jordan?”
He grinned at me. “We’ll see.”
“Better,” I said.
“So what do you want to know?”
“If I want to see a police file, can I just ask to look at it, or do I have to go through the process of filing my discovery motions and all that?”
“We talking an active case?”
“Sure. It’s my hit-and-run.” I pulled a manila folder out of the side pocket of my briefcase. “She’s just been presented before the magistrate. I’ve got a copy of the complaint, but that’s it.”
Jordan took the folder from me and flipped it open to glance at the document inside. It consisted of two-and-a-half sheets of single-spaced type. “This just happened yesterday. A complaint may be all there is at this point.”
“My client says they showed her a photograph of the victim—who isn’t identified here, by the way.”
“May not know yet,” Hernandez said.
Jordan added, “A lot of it’s going to be up to Tom McClane, since it’s his case. The law says that investigative information ‘may but need not be disclosed.’”
“So what constitutes investigative information?”
Jordan shrugged. “You know the answer to that. It’s whatever a judge says it is.”
I nodded. “So what kind of guy is McClane? Is he a stickler for the rules, or is he a sweetie like you guys?”
Hernandez was grinning. “I don’t think anyone would call McClane a sweetie.”
Jordan said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call us sweeties either.”
Chapter 3
I got on the Downtown Expressway, intending to take it up to I-64, but on impulse took the left fork onto the Powhite Parkway. As I went over the James River, I increased my chances of an accident fourfold by punching an address on Everglades Drive into my Google Maps. According to the complaint, Everglades was where the witness to the hit-and-run lived.
Dog Law (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 2
