“Only eight years!” Dutton snapped. “For killing someone!”
“It’s just a suggested sentence. It can be a lot more or a lot less. Depends on the judge. If it turned out to be manslaughter it could be much less, even probation.”
“No wonder crime is rampant,” Dutton said.
Robin frowned, then spoke. “Could you work something out, Charley?”
“Like what?”
“That manslaughter business, perhaps. Something where she wouldn’t have to go to jail.”
I shook my head. “The prosecutor wants this one to go to trial. He has the idea that this case is his yellow brick road to Washington. Unless there’s a drastic change, he won’t agree to a lesser plea.”
“Robin, let me handle this,” Dutton said. “We’ll find out who has connections with this prosecutor and hire him. Everything is networking. It’s merely a matter of finding the right man.”
“Sometimes it is,” I said, “but this prosecutor is honest. Also, this is his big chance and he’s not about to do any favors for friends, not when he thinks his career is about to skyrocket.”
Dutton’s cold eyes showed his disdain. “Mr. Sloan here doesn’t have the right connections,” he said to Robin. “I’ll —”
“Malcolm,” she spoke sharply, cutting him off, “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but this is something I’ll decide. Please leave now. I want to go over a few things with Charley.”
He slowly nodded, but the disdain for me in his eyes had changed to loathing.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said quietly.
“Maybe,” Robin said. “I’ll call if I need you.” Her words were soft, but the cool tone reminded him he was just an employee.
Dutton got up, said the usual comforting things to Robin, shot me another fierce look, and walked away with stiff-backed dignity.
“I’m sorry about that, Charley.”
“No problem. He’s probably right about getting someone else to try the case.”
“I don’t think so.”
I watched a small sailboat under power, its canvas furled, as it worked its way against the strong river current. The boat, all thirty feet of it, was heading toward Lake Huron and the unknown.
Huron was sometimes tranquil, but the frequent sudden storms could quickly turn into a sailor’s nightmare, the enormous waves capable of snapping the spines of steel-keeled ocean ships. Hundreds of miles of Huron’s bottom were dotted with such wrecks, like underwater tombstones, each broken hull marking the place where screaming crewmen died in the tumult of crashing walls of water.
The sailboat moved resolutely on, slowly heading toward the huge watery creature that might turn like a tiger and crush it.
I felt a strange kinship with that little boat as it bobbed toward whatever fate awaited it.
“Robin,” I said. “Show me where they found your husband’s body.”
*
HARRISON Harwell’s office wasn’t large but it was unusual. It was like stepping into Japanese culture. The walls were paneled in bamboo mats. Japanese prints of fierce samurai warriors brandishing long swords had been given prominent positions. An enormous samurai sword hung on the wall behind the desk. Beautiful yet deadly, its handle and scabbard were elaborately worked in vivid gold and red. Below it were brackets for something, but whatever it was was gone.
“He was lying behind the desk,” Robin said. “The police cut out a piece of the rug, as you can see. I don’t understand why they did that.”
“Blood-soaked,” I said. “They cut a piece so the lab can compare it with the blood of the deceased. These days a lot of good carpeting gets ruined that way.”
Two photographs, one of a group of naval officers looking soberly out at the camera, the other of a scowling young officer, hung on either side of the sword.
“This may sound odd,” Robin said, “but this office is duplicated in every home we own. Exactly. The prints, the photos, even the books in the bookcase. Harrison insisted on it. He said he wanted to feel at home no matter where he was. At least, when he was working.”
I studied the photo of the young officer.
“That’s Harrison,” Robin said.
“World War Two, obviously,” I said. The young officer was in dress blues and held a drill sword in the “present arms” position. He was a tough-looking, muscular young man with a long, almost horselike face. The eyes, hooded and prominent, looked challenging, even mean. He wore the two stripes of a full lieutenant.
“He was proud of having been in the navy,” she said. “God knows why, he spent most of the time here in Pickeral Point at his father’s boat works. They produced landing craft during the war. His father arranged that he be assigned here. Harrison went overseas only after Japan surrendered. But from the way he carried on you would have thought he had been in every major battle in the war.”
I looked around the office. A small, expensive-looking, and very beautiful statue of a samurai, about a foot tall, sat in the middle of the desk. “I take it he served in Japan?”
She snorted. “Yes, for all of three months.”
I looked at the books in the narrow bookcase. Other than a dictionary and an atlas, the rest were slim volumes describing the best way to wage war as a samurai, a samurai who used a computer rather than a sword, but who applied the same old battle principles. No mercy, just victory whatever the cost.
“Harrison used to parade around in silk kimonos and sandals at home. But he had circulatory problems and he lost his leg hair.” She chuckled softly. “I told him he looked like a pot-bellied stork in drag. After that he quit wearing the get-up.”
“How old was he, Robin?”
“Seventy.”
“Twenty-five years older than you, right?”
She nodded.
I looked down at the spot where the carpeting had been cut. There were still dark stains around the rim of the spot. “Did you love him, Robin?”
At first I thought she hadn’t heard the question. I looked over at her, then she spoke.
“Life gets complicated, Charley.”
“It sure does, but that doesn’t answer the question.”
She sighed. “I don’t know if you can tell from those photographs, but Harrison was handsome in a rough way, very big, very, well, physical. At least he was when we, well, got together, ten years ago or so.”
“Sexy?”
She smiled. “He was then.”
“Age catch up with him? Impotency happens.”
Robin shook her head. “Not with Harrison it didn’t.”
“Lucky man.”
“I suppose. You men always seem to put such store on the biological side of life.”
“Propagation of the race,” I said. “You still haven’t answered the question, Robin.”
She perched her hips against the lip of the desk. She was a beautiful woman still and I felt the stirring of desire as I looked at the sensuous curve of her legs. They looked even better than when she had been a kid.
“I’ve never really defined love,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure anyone else has, not really. In any event, if you ask that question of people who have been married for ten years or so I’m sure you’d get the usual quick, easy answer, but not the real one.”
“What’s the real one?”
Her smile held the shadow of sadness. “Marriage, a long one, becomes like an old shoe. It may have lost the shine, but you feel comfortable in it. It becomes more a habit than happiness. You know what’s expected of you, and vice versa.”
“Sounds pretty dull, frankly.”
She shrugged. “It’s life, Charley.” She paused and studied me for a moment, then spoke. “I understand you were married.”
I nodded. “Three times. Never long enough for things to get boring. For me, marriage was more like war or the prize ring.”
She nodded. “The blind men and the elephant. Each senses the beast in a different way.”
“Robin, I’m not prying. I’m
trying to find out what really happened here. Call it love, call it anything you like, but what was your relationship with your husband?”
She seemed to focus on a print of a samurai drawing his sword, then she spoke. “At first, we were lovers, with everything that entails, the sex, the erupting emotions, everything. Then we were married and for a while it was still exciting, although reality was beginning to creep slowly into the relationship. And, there was Angel. I had to become something more, a mother, or at least a mother substitute. The realities of life do seem to have a chilling effect on romance, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. What’s this got to do with Angel?”
“Let’s get out of here, Charley. This room gives me the creeps.”
I followed her out and down a hall. The place never seemed to end. Two curving staircases with enough polished wood in the bannisters to build a house led the way to the first floor, but Robin walked me to a room at the far end of the hall.
“This is my room,” she said as she led me through the doorway. “It’s my own little fortress against the world.”
It was large enough for a fort, bigger than most hotel lobbies and more ornate. A huge bed set on a riser dominated the room. The large windows looked out on the river.
If Harrison Harwell’s den looked like Japan, Robin Harwell’s bedroom looked like Paris, a very hot, very inviting Paris.
“Harrison’s bedroom is at the other end of the hall,” she said.
“You didn’t sleep together?”
She sat on a small sofa and patted the seat next to her. “We never slept together, not if you mean actual sleep. Harrison couldn’t sleep if anyone was in bed with him. That applied to everyone, me, his first wife, an enormous assortment of women, servants, and the occasional prostitute. He was what you might call sexually active, even at seventy.” She laughed. “You remember the old description of the horny cowboy, a guy who would screw a snake, or a pile of rocks if he thought a snake was in it? That would nicely describe Harrison.”
“And that didn’t bother you?” I was acutely conscious of her perfume.
She shrugged. “Oh, at first it did. I knew what kind of a man Harrison was when I married him. After all, I was his mistress, wasn’t I? I thought I might be able to change him. How many women think that when they marry? About ninety-nine percent I’ll bet.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, Harrison was faithful for maybe a month, I suppose. And that probably was a record for him. After that, he went back to his wicked ways.”
“And you objected?”
She shook her head. “Token stuff. I was being territorial, I suppose. But then I started viewing the other women like a relief shift. Harrison was insatiable. Having him diverted a bit gave me a chance to rest.”
“Sounds pretty chaotic to me.”
Robin smiled. “How about a drink, Charley? I keep some rather good brandy up here.”
“I don’t drink anymore, Robin. Thanks.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about that sometime.” She walked to a barrel cabinet and extracted a decanter and poured herself a healthy jot of the brandy. I could smell the aroma. It was distracting but my eyes were on the sensuous line of her hips and back.
Robin turned and stood, sipping from the glass. “We worked things out after a fashion, Harrison and me. He had his life, I had mine.”
“No sex?”
She laughed, but almost sadly. “Christ, at first I was just another snake under the pile of rocks. We still made love. There was no way to avoid it, not with Harrison. Later, we only did it on rare occasions. Usually when we both were drunk. Does that shock you?”
“Very little shocks me anymore. What did Angel think about all this?”
Robin sipped again at the brandy, her eyes on me. “Angel loved her father, but it was a complicated thing even before I arrived on the scene. After Angel got sick things became even more stormy between them. Harrison couldn’t accept, well, that anything was wrong with Angel.”
“The cops are hinting that the servants told them something, something that might look bad for Angel.”
“All families have secrets,” she said, finishing the brandy. She turned and poured herself some more. “I suppose they mean the fight.”
“What fight?”
Robin looked again out at the river, her face away from mine. “Last night. Harrison tried to understand Angel’s illness but he couldn’t. He was a fierce man and he couldn’t imagine anyone who couldn’t control herself. Harrison managed to control not only himself but everyone around him. At least he tried.”
“What happened?”
“Angel announced she was going to New York.”
“So? She’s twenty-one and all that.”
Robin merely nodded. “She said she was going to become an actress.”
“A lot of people do that. Angel is a good-looking girl. Who knows? She might have done all right.”
Robin turned slowly. She was smiling, but the smile was the kind seen on funeral directors, sad but resigned.
“Angel’s done this kind of thing before,” she said. “The last time she slipped the leash Harrison found her dancing in a topless joint in Manhattan, the kind of place favored by swarthy sailors and fat men with pimples, Harrison paid off some people and Angel did a few months in a rather fancy sanitarium. Against her will, of course.”
“Tell me about the fight. What did she say to her father?”
Robin sipped again at the brandy. I hardly noticed. “They screamed at each other. He called her a whore and she called him a monster.”
“And then what?”
“He said he’d put her back in a mental hospital.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she would kill him first.”
I heard the distant dreamlike clang of a jail door in my imagination.
This time it was my turn to look out at the river. The small sailboat and the ocean freighter were gone. Now there was no vessel of any kind on the water.
“Robin, I think you had better get Wally Figer. This is his kind of case.”
“What can he do for Angel?”
I laughed despite myself. “Pray, I suppose. But that aside, Wally is at the top of his game. Maybe he can rattle the tree hard enough so that the prosecutor will think he might fall out. Maybe he can force a plea to a lesser offense.”
“Can he do more than you?”
At the moment, no one, not Figer, not Drake, certainly not me, could do much to help Angel Harrison.
“I want you, Charley,” she said, sipping again, those green eyes shining above the rim of the glass. “I know you. I trust you.”
I sighed. I wondered how much she would want me if she knew my full story. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to hold on to the case for a while.
“How many servants heard Angel threaten to kill her father?”
She shrugged. “All of them, I suppose. They were screaming at the top of their lungs.”
“Were you here?”
She nodded. “I heard.” Which explained why Morgan wanted to talk to her.
“Why didn’t you intervene?”
“Charley, fights between them weren’t an unusual occurrence. I would have just made things worse.”
“Can I talk to your servants? Individually?”
“Alone?”
I nodded.
Robin studied me for a moment. “You may get several different versions. There is some jealousy involved, I think. At least, with some of them.”
“Like who?”
“The girl who brought you in.”
I thought of the young woman with the beautiful skin and haunted eyes.
“Harrison was slipping down to her room regularly.”
“Did you object?”
Robin shook her head. “No.”
“And you knew?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “The rich are different.”
She smiled ruefully. “Not that different, Charl
ey. They just have more opportunities.”
4
THOMAS J. MULHERN HAD BEEN FIRST APPOINTED BY the governor, and later, elected to the post of district judge. In Michigan, district courts handle the small claims stuff, traffic offenses and the like, trials for a reasonable amount of money. The big stuff, the heavy stuff, unreasonable money, is handled by the circuit courts.
District courts also handle small-time crimes, felony arraignments, and examinations. Tommy Mulhern’s court had jurisdiction over the good people of Pickeral Point. The city of Pickeral Point wasn’t yet big enough to merit two district judges so Tommy ruled like a minor league prince.
Which was okay if Tommy knew you and liked you.
Tommy knew me and liked me, so it was okay by me.
Although the Honorable Thomas J. Mulhern wasn’t a member of the Club, he was eminently qualified. Like most drunks he had his own peculiar set of rules. Judge Mulhern tried never to drink before lunch unless it was a medical emergency. At lunch, however, he habitually belted down three or four doubles. Then, all afternoon, he would take ten-minute breaks every half-hour to skip into his chambers and toss down a couple more ounces of good Irish whiskey. The local lawyers said that after three o’clock in the afternoon, Tommy might be physically present, but not mentally. He looked good, very judicial, and he nodded and smiled at all the right places, but nothing registered in his numbed Irish brain. After three o’clock Tommy was on autopilot.
The electors of Pickeral Point never knew that side of Tommy Mulhern. The only Mulhern they saw was the laughing, smiling politician who graced every local wedding and funeral. He always looked sober, but he seldom was.
I tactfully tried to recruit Tommy for the Club, but he wasn’t ready.
He had seven grown children, each of them a success, but each a problem for him in varying degrees. Mrs. Mulhern, a dried prune of a woman, was an addict, not to booze or dope, but to faith. When you met her, her eyes seemed fixed on something only she could see, and she silently mouthed prayers even as you talked to her. I could never figure out how she had managed to descend from her spiritual plateau sufficiently often to have conceived seven children. But at the moment that puzzle for me was of a very low priority. Court was about to start.
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