by Alan Cook
“Actually, her skin didn’t seem to need saving before because there wasn’t any evidence against her, other than the fact that she discovered Elise’s body. Could somebody else have put the knife in the trunk when it was parked at the college?”
“Possibly. But I remember now that the police had searched Mark’s car before and hadn’t found anything.”
Burt made a note and said, “Of course we will explore all of this.”
“When can I see Mark?” I asked.
Burt smoothed his hair with his hand again. He said, “As his attorney, I can see him. I’m going to talk to him this afternoon. At the place where they’re holding him at the moment, they have a funny system. They’re not set up for visitors so friends and family members can’t actually visit him, but they can talk to him on the telephone. They have sort of an intercom setup.”
“Do we have to go to the jail to use it?”
“Yes.”
“May I hitch a ride with you when you go?”
“Of course. And don’t worry. We’ll get Mark out of this. But we should eat first. Are you up for lunch?”
“Always.”
***
It wasn’t actually a jail. The Bethany Police Station had several holding cells and Mark was in one of these until they sorted out what to do with him. His arraignment hearing was scheduled for Monday.
I only got as far as the waiting room inside the main entrance. It wasn’t the sort of place where you would choose to spend a lot of time. It was clean enough and the walls were painted in pastel colors. Large bulletin boards had notices about the benefits of joining the police force. Computer printouts contained alerts on recent local crimes and several posters had graphic propaganda about the dangers of taking drugs. I didn’t see any of the “wanted” posters that one associates with places like this. Maybe all the known bad guys were behind bars.
People kept coming in and going out. Several uniformed police officers passed through; others not in uniform appeared to be police employees. It was the other people I saw who made the place depressing. Some were there to report problems to the officer at the counter. Others came to talk to inmates, as I did. They looked worried or bewildered or upset. Family members clung together. None of them smiled.
When my turn came the officer instructed me to pick up the phone. I pressed it to my ear and said hello. Although the noise in the waiting room wasn’t overly loud, conversations between the desk officers and civilians created a constant hum and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear Mark. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.
“Hello, Lillian,” Mark said. “Burt told me you were here. It was nice of you to come.”
He sounded all right; Burt must have given him encouragement. I said, “I wanted to let you know that we’re working for you.”
“At least you are. You’re my most faithful friend.”
I hoped that wasn’t true. I would make sure that Sandra came here tomorrow. I couldn’t talk long so I had to get to the point. I said, “When do you think the knife was put in the trunk?”
“I don’t know. I had the trunk open the day before—that’s the day you and I went to Bethany—but I didn’t see the knife. However, the police found it in the wheel well underneath the mat so I wouldn’t have looked there unless I had noticed something suspicious, such as the mat being out of place. But everything looked all right to me.”
“Have you kept your car locked for the past few days?”
“I lock it when I’m working at the restaurant. I never lock it at Silver Acres because that’s such a safe place.”
“How about at the college? For example, when you and I were there.”
“No, I didn’t usually lock it there.”
That corresponded with my memory. Donna—or somebody—could have placed the knife in the trunk at the college. Mark had parked the car in the faculty parking lot where it would have been easy to find. He still had a sticker that allowed him to do that.
“What about this new story of Donna’s?” I asked.
“It’s a complete fabrication. I don’t know why she told it, unless she’s trying to protect herself.”
I knew that already, but I wanted to hear Mark say it. We chatted for a few more minutes until our time was up. I promised to get him out and tried to raise his spirits. He thanked me for caring.
As he drove back to Durham in his leased Lexus, Burt told me that the stains on the knife and the towel had definitely been identified as the blood of Elise.
“So that’s the murder weapon,” I said, abandoning a ray of hope I now realized I had been clinging to, subconsciously.
“It appears that way.” Burt glanced at me, having heard the disappointment in my voice. “But don’t let that get you down. There were no fingerprints on the knife. We can use the fact that Mark rarely locked his car as evidence of how easy it would have been to plant the knife in his trunk. The case against him is circumstantial, at best. I hope you wouldn’t mind going on the witness stand to verify that he didn’t usually lock his car.”
“Of course not. But I hope it never gets that far. How did you find out that the blood was Elise’s?”
“I ran into Detective Johnson and waylaid him long enough to get him to tell me that.”
“Speaking of Detective Johnson, I need to talk to him too. But I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me when he finds out what I want him to do. You’re going to have to help me with him.”
“Anything for you, Aunt Lillian. And to help prove that Mark is innocent.”
Chapter 21
The temperature soared on Sunday as we gathered at Albert’s farm for brunch. After several weeks of cool and sometimes rainy weather, I welcomed the change. The heat and humidity of the North Carolina summers get to me after a while, but I like an occasional hot day in the spring. Spring had officially sprung, as we had just passed the spring equinox.
I had invited Burt to come, thinking that this was an ideal opportunity to hold a family conference about Mark, with Burt’s input, and hopefully agree that we would do everything in our collective power to clear Mark of the murder charge. Sandra and Albert had driven to Bethany the day before, Saturday, at my urging, and talked to Mark on the internal telephone at the police station. That was a step in the right direction.
After arriving at the farm, I released King from the back seat of my old Mercedes so that she could play with her friend, Romper. Winston trotted down the sidewalk as I retrieved the rolls and pies I had baked from the car.
“Hello, Great Grandma,” Winston said as I gave him a kiss. Always one to keep his relationships straight, he eschewed use of the name Gogi, which is what Sandra called me.
“How are you, Pumpkin?” I asked, wondering how long he would allow me to call him that. He certainly didn’t look like a pumpkin, having lost his baby fat. He would grow up to be tall and thin, like most members of the family, except Sandra, who was short and thin. Albert was tall, but his thinness had thickened in recent years, in spite of his exertions on the tennis court.
“How are your tires?” Winston asked, surveying them with a practiced eye. He had been born at the age of 40 and already had the cares of the world on his shoulders.
“They’re fine. I had them checked recently.” I couldn’t remember how recently.
“Look, there’s a car,” Winston said, pointing to the edge of Albert’s woods, where Burt’s Lexus had just appeared out of the trees. Cars were Winston’s staff of life.
“That’s Mr. Brown’s car. What color is it?”
“White,” Winston said, with the assurance of one who has long known his colors. “There’s another car.”
Sure enough, right behind the Lexus came a less flashy model, one I didn’t recognize. As Winston announced that this car was green, I was more concerned about who was inside it since I had hoped there wouldn’t be any extra people to interfere with our discussion.
We waited for the two cars to negotiate the long driveway and pull up beside min
e. Burt got out first and gave me a hug. I introduced him to Winston and they gravely shook hands. A good-looking blond woman, prematurely wearing a short summer dress, got out of the other car. She showed a lot of leg as she did so, but if Burt saw the show he diplomatically didn’t let on. She was somewhere in her thirties, an age range Albert preferred for his women, so I assumed that he had invited her.
“Hi,” she said, brightly, to the three of us. And zeroing in on me, “You must be Dr. Morgan, Albert’s mother. “I’m Daisy Templeton. I work with Albert.”
We shook hands and I introduced her to Burt and Winston. After a brief hello she ignored Winston, leading me to infer that she probably didn’t have any children of her own.
Albert appeared from the house and after kissing me and shaking hands with Burt, reintroduced Daisy to us and reinformed us that Daisy and he were colleagues. Apparently not yet kissing colleagues, at least in front of other people. Albert took my pies and Daisy my rolls and he and Daisy led the procession along the sidewalk to the front door. Winston, Burt and I followed. By the time we entered the house Winston had Burt’s key case and had identified the key to the Lexus.
The remaining member of the party, Sandra, met us in the kitchen, with kisses, hugs and handshakes, as appropriate. At one time I had had visions of Sandra and Burt getting together, but that had never happened. Sandra hadn’t met Daisy before, and I saw her surreptitiously eyeing the graceful newcomer as we prepared brunch, probably wondering the same things I did: How much older than Sandra was her father’s new girlfriend and was she wearing any kind of support beneath the spaghetti-strapped top of her dress, because, if not, she had a lot going for her.
We sat down at Albert’s round table, the six of us fitting snugly, and ate a delicious meal, the main course consisting of an omelet concocted by Albert, which had some ingredients that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in an omelet, but which tickled the palette. He was a good cook.
Daisy, it turned out, was an associate professor in the Women’s Studies program at the University of North Carolina. Albert looked hard at me when he gave us this information because I sometimes make inappropriate comments on subjects like women’s studies.
Today, however, I was on my best behavior. But I couldn’t find a way to bring up the subject of Mark with Daisy present, and had resigned myself to discussing him later in smaller groups.
Then Sandra said, “Burt, I’m glad that you’re defending Mark. I feel a whole lot better now that you’re on the case.”
“Thank you,” Burt said, bowing his head slightly in the Sandra’s direction. “I’ll do my best.”
I think they would have made a good match. But Mark was a good substitute for Burt, if we could get him out of jail. From Daisy’s expression at this exchange, I gathered that she hadn’t been clued in about Mark. Fortunately, Mark’s arrest had been buried in the Raleigh News and Observer. Albert gave her a quick overview of why Mark was in jail, skipping very lightly over the details and hinting broadly that Mark had been framed. He didn’t mention sexual harassment.
There didn’t seem to be anything else we could say about Mark so the talk turned to other topics, including, somehow, global warming. Daisy apparently accepted global warming as an established fact. And it was obvious from what she said that she blamed men for it.
“Yes,” I said, casually, “global warming is a possibility. The earth has been getting warmer and cooler for billions of years without the help of any men. It would be very surprising if it weren’t doing one of those right now.”
The group ignored this remark as the ramblings of an old lady, except for Albert who gave me another hard look, but then Daisy started documenting all of the horrible results that would undoubtedly accrue from global warming and again implied that the male members of the human race were responsible for the forthcoming catastrophe.
Sometimes the devil makes me do things. I said, “Chaos theory suggests that the effects of global warming are completely unpredictable.”
This time Albert glared at me, but this too might have gone unnoticed by Daisy, as I suspect they don’t spend a lot of time on chaos theory in women’s studies. However, Sandra took up the ball and said, “With all the obvious problems in the world, does it make sense to pour billions of dollars into something that may not be a problem?”
“You’re asking for a lot if you expect government policy to make sense,” Burt said, with a smile, apparently not taking the attack on his sex too seriously.
“Mother,” Albert said, firmly, “could we serve the pies now?” And turning to Daisy, “Mother makes the best apple pie you ever ate.”
That effectively cut off the discussion before Daisy could answer us and we got into a real brouhaha. I could picture Albert saying to us later, “Can’t you children behave yourselves when I bring somebody home?” Maybe not those exact words, but he sometimes lectured me as if he were the parent and I were the child.
I managed to get Albert’s attention, briefly, while we were washing the dishes and Burt was talking to Daisy in the family room. She was actually quite charming and I could see why Burt would be attracted to her. I told Albert that Mark had a bail hearing tomorrow and that, if possible, I planned to put up his bail.
This got his attention since he was the executor of my estate and my principal heir. I also said, “You’re welcome to come along. I always welcome your advice on financial matters. Besides, Burt and I are going to try to talk to Detective Johnson and you could help us with that.” I briefly outlined what I had in mind.
Albert was clearly uncomfortable telling me not to guarantee Mark’s bail because it would make him sound disloyal to Mark. I had counted on that. We called Sandra over and I told her what I had told Albert. She was all for getting Mark out of jail and wasn’t concerned that he might skip town. It appeared to me that she still loved him. Neither of them could get off work to go with me.
“Well, you’ll just have to trust Burt and me to do the best we can,” I said, somewhat relieved that they weren’t coming. We would have a free hand.
When Albert went to join Burt and Daisy, Sandra said, “Gogi, do you still believe Mark is innocent?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you?”
“Yes. Things were going so well between Mark and me. I wish all this had never happened.”
She had tears in her eyes. I gave her a hug and said, “Don’t worry, Honey. Everything’s going to be all right.” I hoped that was a true statement.
Chapter 22
The chief impression I have of courtrooms is dark wood: wooden benches for the spectators, a wooden wall separating the spectators from the participants, a wooden barrier around the jury box, wooden tables where the attorneys and defendants sit, a large wooden desk for the judge and smaller wooden desks and tables for the other court employees, including the bailiff and the court reporter. And wooden walls. I wondered what would happen if somebody threw a match into the middle of the courtroom.
Fortunately, Mark didn’t look like a defendant as he sat beside Burt at the defense table. Since he had been kept in the holding cell over the weekend, instead of being transferred to the county jail, he still wore his own clothes. Burt had taken him a suit from my apartment and the two of them, dressed alike and sitting side by side, could have been fellow attorneys.
The prosecuting attorney was a pretty young lady. I felt initial relief when I saw her, I suppose because she didn’t look like someone who would throw the book at Mark, but then she got up and proposed a bail amount so high that I couldn’t possibly afford it. My feelings about her changed abruptly and I wished that a California-style earthquake would send the ceiling crashing down on her.
Burt argued in a logical manner that Mark wasn’t dangerous, nor was he a threat to skip town. His family resided here. At least his surrogate family, I thought. Burt said that Mark had no prior criminal record and he had always been a model citizen. Well, except for the harassment charge. However, Burt was able to get the bail amount
reduced to a figure that I could handle, but high enough so that if Mark did decide to take off Albert would probably become a bounty hunter and go after him.
***
“Stay in the car, Mark. Your presence might prejudice the results we hope to get.”
Mark reluctantly acquiesced to Burt’s request, acknowledging that he would be more of a hindrance than a help.
Burt had parked a few doors from Donna’s apartment because he didn’t want her to be able to look out her window and see Mark. Detective Johnson, on the other hand, parked right in front of her door and he was waiting for us when Burt and I walked up.
“Donna’s car is here, so she must be home,” I said, pointing the old Chevy out to the two of them.
“I called her and made sure she would be home,” Detective Johnson said, the coldness in his voice indicating what he thought of my reservations about his competence. “You just better not be wasting my time.”
He rang the bell and as we waited I noted that the broken front window had been replaced. Donna opened the door; she seemed surprised to see me and even more surprised to have Burt introduced to her as Mark’s attorney. However, she shook hands with Burt and led us into the main room of the apartment.
When she offered us seats, Detective Johnson said, “We’re not going to stay long. We want to talk to you briefly about your role as the Shooting Star.”
“Is that going to be brought out at the trial?” Donna asked, looking from one of us to another.
“Your own testimony will bring it up,” Detective Johnson said. “That’s where you were the night of Elise’s murder. Right?”
“But if you answer our questions now,” Burt said, smoothly, “maybe we can downplay it. Do your parents know you were the Shooting Star?”
Donna shook her head.
“How long did you dance as the Shooting Star?” Detective Johnson asked.
“About…three months. I started in December.”
“How did you get to and from Club Cavalier?”
“I drove my car. But I didn’t park in the parking lot.”
