Neither Townley nor Taylor appeared to appreciate the mockery but did not say anything. Townley changed the subject.
“Sherwin, I think you should take control of Eskill’s files. Move them into your office and lock them up.”
“In addition to that, I’d seal off his office,” Reuben said.
“Good idea,” Townley agreed as their meeting broke up.
By the next day, the press had learned of the attorney-client relationship between Eskill and his victim’s father. They had also been told, presumably by an indiscreet source at the police department, that there was “a possible romantic involvement” between murderer and victim. Another field day:
FULL-SERVICE LAWYER?
Marina Courtland’s Killer
Was Her Billionaire Father’s Attorney—
And Just Possibly Her Lover
—New York Post
THIS IS HOW YOU GET BUSINESS?
Courtland Killer (and Maybe Lover) Was Lawyer for Girl’s Father
—New York Daily News
“Just the kind of publicity Dan Courtland wants,” Reuben remarked to Cynthia over breakfast.
“I wonder who tipped them off to the connection.”
“It didn’t take much digging. It’s public knowledge that Chase & Ward represents CDF, and I think Dan himself has been mentioned as a client in stories a couple of times.”
The efforts of the press to track down Dan Courtland failed. But he was almost as much a prisoner as Eskill, trapped in seclusion in his Indianapolis home with a security guard outside. He was beside himself for missing the final preparations for the Memorial Day race, but he couldn’t bear the thought of coming face-to-face with the media types chasing him down.
His imprisonment did not prevent him from making his views known on the telephone, however. He managed to get through, without any help or encouragement either from Reuben or Luis, to Jonathan Perkins, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Lander case.
Dan expressed his outrage that Eskill had not been charged with first-degree murder. According to Luis, based on Perkins’s account, the ADA had done his best to explain that such a charge was reserved for a list of special circumstances, such as the killing of a policeman or a corrections officer or a witness to another crime, a killing for hire or a killing in the course of another felony. He also told Dan that second-degree murder was the highest category of felony possible in the circumstances. Then when asked if the death penalty was applicable and Perkins said no, Dan became “excessively abusive.”
Then the New York Times had a break, scooping the tabloids. Ben Gilbert, the medical student who had dated Marina, contacted the paper’s reporter on the case and said he had a theory, which he would disclose to the reporter if he were guaranteed anonymity. The reporter did so, feeling she had nothing to lose. If the theory made sense, it was worth the grant of anonymity. If it did not, she could simply forget the whole thing.
Gilbert told the reporter the same story he had earlier related to the police, jumping to the conclusion that Eskill Lander had dated “Hallie” and only found out the Courtland connection later. At which point, he killed her. Another press field day, with references and awful puns based on double identity, double dealing, double blind date, double cross, and, of course, double play.
Eskill Lander’s office remained sealed for two weeks. He had made no attempt to come to Chase & Ward since his arraignment and, as far as anyone knew, had not been in touch with anyone at the firm—except when Townley called to notify him that his partnership was terminated.
Reuben concluded that the sealed office was an embarrassment and suggested to Russ Townley, after checking with Luis—who had no objection—that it be cleared out. Townley agreed, but asked Reuben to accompany Wayne Kidde, the office manager, when he emptied Eskill’s quarters.
Once unsealed, the office yielded a few surprises. All Eskill’s files had been removed and taken over by Sherwin Taylor, as Townley had directed. Inside, there was a clothes closet, which contained nothing except an old raincoat and an umbrella. Eskill’s worktable had no drawers, so the only spaces that needed clearing out were his desk drawers. They were locked, but Kidde had a master key, which he used to open the desk.
Kidde deferred to Reuben once the drawers were opened. There he found Lander’s checkbook, a pile of receipts for some charitable contributions, monthly bank statements, and the related canceled checks.
The top drawer seemed even less interesting: a box of paper clips, a pack of rubber bands. Then there came a surprise: a folded-up piece of stationery which, when opened up, had a photograph attached with a clip showing Eskill and Marina sitting at an outdoor restaurant table, a nearly finished meal in front of them. The paper enclosing the photograph read: “Apropos of our conversation, here is a copy of the picture from last Friday. I have another copy, as I told you, which I hope I won’t have to use.” It was signed “Ed.” As in Edward Joyner.
“Oh my God,” Frost murmured to himself as he examined the note and the photo he clutched in his hand. He closed his eyes as he pieced together in his imagination what this discovery meant. It was clear: The hapless Chase & Ward associate Joyner had encountered Marina and Eskill eating al fresco at Quatorze and snapped their picture with the camera on his new phone. Then he’d blackmailed Eskill—presumably to support his quixotic and unrealistic bid for partnership or perhaps for money—with the incriminating photo, leading Eskill to commit a second murder.
“I’ll let you take care of the books. I have no interest in them,” Reuben said to the office manager, pointing to the shelves of legal tomes and bound volumes of past legal transactions lining the walls. He gingerly put the offending photo and note in his pocket, giving no clue to the others of their significance, and retreated to his own office as quickly as he could.
He called Luis at once.
“Can you come up to the house?” Reuben asked. “I don’t mean for a friendly drink. I’ve got something you must see.”
“Something really interesting, huh?”
“Don’t doubt my word.”
“I’m on my way.”
Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
Luis was, of course, excited by what Reuben had found in Eskill’s desk. The excitement was short-lived, however, because there were no other clues, no substantiating or conclusive evidence, linking Joyner’s murder to Eskill. Muldoon, Luis’s colleague assigned to the Joyner investigation, didn’t have any helpful theories or ideas, either.
“I hate to tell you this, and this is just between you and me, but Muldoon is a MUPPET,” Luis told Reuben.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“MUPPET—Most Useless Police Person Ever Trained.”
“Oh, I see.”
Nonetheless, Reuben and Luis were convinced of Eskill’s guilt in the second murder, though they felt the motive was different from the first. This time, their suspicion was that Joyner had planned to blackmail Eskill by threatening to get the compromising picture into the hands of Irene Lander or Dan Courtland—or both.
“We’ve theorized about his fear of Courtland, and possible disgrace at the firm, but do we believe he really cared what his wife might think?” Luis asked Reuben. “You always told me she was something of a horror show.”
“That’s true, and my impression is that they were not very close. But Eskill would not want the facade of respectability and domestic harmony to be ripped apart for all to see.”
“Murder’s a pretty desperate way to preserve the peace,” Luis countered.
“Yes, but he’d already done it once and, as far as he could tell, gotten away with it. And besides, you don’t know Irene Lander. If you did, you might understand why homicide was the preferable alternative to confronting her.”
“I guess I’d like to meet her,” Luis said, laughing.
“No
you wouldn’t, believe me.”
Despite the lack of clues, Luis discussed the blackmailing letter and photograph with Assistant District Attorney Perkins. At the time, Perkins was in negotiations with Eskill’s attorney, Illingsworth, over a plea bargain; the proposal being discussed was a reduction in the felony charge from second-degree murder to first-degree manslaughter, in exchange for a plea of guilty.
Perkins broke off the plea bargain discussions after reviewing the Joyner letter and photograph, and remained adamant about a second-degree murder charge despite Illingsworth’s strenuous arguments.
Ultimately, after a jury trial, Eskill was convicted of homicide in the second degree. His attorney made an attempt, aided by fancy psychiatric experts, to show that, when Eskill killed Marina, he had been “under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance.” The jury did not buy this elaborate defense and Lander was sentenced to life imprisonment. He is now serving his sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York, not too far from his home.
Sherwin Taylor, Eskill’s successor as the head of the Chase & Ward trusts and estates department, was the only person from the firm known to have visited Eskill. Taylor said he felt it was his duty to check on his former boss and colleague at least once, which he did some three months after Eskill went to Green Haven.
Taylor’s report back was a sad one. Eskill had gained considerable weight since being imprisoned, his Yale-crew physique gone. Apparently, his principal jail-time activity was playing solitaire. His contact with the outside world was minimal; entitled to have fifteen numbers on an approved telephone list, he had not bothered to list even one.
“He never mentioned Irene the whole time I was there. The only thing he would talk about was his regret at losing his partnership in Chase & Ward,” Taylor reported. “‘That was my whole world, Sherwin,’ he told me.”
At Taylor’s suggestion, the firm makes a small monthly payment to Eskill’s prison account to cover his minimum personal needs.
Irene Lander did not visit her husband in prison. Instead, she filed for divorce within a week after his conviction. She moved to San Francisco and was seen, on occasion, in the gossip pages on the arm of a glamorous young man. His amazing handsomeness and her tightly pulled face formed a bizarre contrast.
“I wonder how much she paid for him?” Cynthia asked, after a picture of the two of them together was published.
Some weeks after Eskill’s trial, Russ Townley received the following letter:
Dear Mr. Townley:
This is to advise you that I wish to terminate the legal services of Chase & Ward for myself and for my company, Courtland Diversified Foods, as of the first of next month. I would appreciate it if you would render me final bills, for me personally and for CDF, and arrange as quickly as possible for the appropriate attorneys at your office to communicate with Wallace Mills, Esq., at the firm of Mills and Walsh, 100 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204 (317-558-4100).
Very truly yours,
Daniel S. Courtland
Townley found the coldness of this severance breathtaking: no preliminaries, no oral conversations, and no communication at all with Mike Kramer, the lawyer on the CDF account, or Sherwin Taylor, Lander’s successor on Courtland’s personal account. And, most surprising of all, not one word to Reuben Frost, the man’s friend and counselor for twenty-five years.
When he broke the news to Reuben, Townley tried to be gentle. Reuben told him that was quite unnecessary.
“I usually escaped Dan’s rude side,” Reuben explained. “Not this time. I never heard one word from him after Lander’s arrest.”
“He might have thanked you for helping to bring Lander to justice.”
“He might have, but he didn’t. So be it. I’ll survive and the firm will survive.”
The firm did indeed survive. Coming at a time when the economy was in an upswing, the CDF business was easily replaced. And the trust and estates department soldiered on with one less partner and one less client.
Leisurely reading the morning Times one day in midsummer, Reuben came across a tiny item in the Arts section:
In a statement issued today, Ray Greene, president of Gramercy House, announced that the firm would not be publishing Darcy Watson’s new novel, Carry Me Back. Gramercy has been the publisher of Watson’s previous six novels, which have sold in the aggregate an estimated three million copies. No reason was assigned for the publisher’s decision, though Greene’s statement said that Gramercy and the author had ‘departed on the best of terms.’
Neither Greene, nor Watson, nor Watson’s longtime editor, John Sommers, could be reached for comment.
Another short Times item followed two weeks later, announcing the marriage of Darcy Watson and Dan Courtland by a justice of the peace in Philadelphia.
Nearly six months later, Reuben received a call from Gino Facini. At first, he did not realize who his caller was, but quickly remembered he was Marina Courtland’s half-brother. Facini asked if he could come and see Frost, with no hint as to why he wished to do so. Reuben, now curious, of course acceded, and invited him to the townhouse, rather than the office.
“I kept that card you gave me the night you and your wife came to the performance at the Dockers,” Facini explained to Frost. “Not that I’ve got anything more to tell you about my stepsister or her murder.”
“I think that’s all settled, thank goodness,” Reuben said.
Facini then explained his purpose in contacting Frost. He had just turned thirty and had received the full amount remaining in the trust Dan Courtland had set up for him and Marina—a quite staggering thirty-five million dollars.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since I received the money,” he said. “I feel I have to memorialize Marina in some way. We weren’t close, as I told you before, but I feel guilty receiving her share of the trust. So I want to dedicate one-third of that thirty-five million dollars to some good causes.”
Reuben recalled that Gino, had Marina lived, would have received only one-third of the remaining trust corpus. It amused him that the young actor would now get two-thirds and give one-third away.
“What did you have in mind?” Reuben asked.
“A bunch of things. Marina went to Brown and majored in English, so I thought of endowing a professorship in English in her name at Brown.”
“That sounds very sensible—and very generous,” Reuben said.
“Then, I want to do something to memorialize my mother. I’ve done some poking around on the Internet and came across an outfit called the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Seems like a pretty solid group, I think. They do good things, like prevention research. I want to set up a fund in my mother’s name—Gretchen Facini, not Gretchen Courtland, thank you—with the income to be used every year for research.
“The third thing I want to do I probably shouldn’t tell you, you being my stepfather’s lawyer and all.”
Reuben explained that all ties had been cut between Dan Courtland and Frost, as well as between Courtland and Chase & Ward.
“Dan hasn’t spoken to me in several months,” Reuben said.
“I’m not surprised,” Gino said. “But what I want to do is support something political—something that will drive that right-wing bastard crazy.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Reuben said, smiling.
“I was thinking of a fund that would make contributions to politicians who favor gun control.”
“That should do it,” Reuben said, smiling again. “But why, may I ask, are you consulting me about these things?”
“Well, despite your ties to Dan, I found you and your wife simpatico that night we met. And I don’t know any lawyers, so I thought maybe you could recommend somebody. But now that you tell me your firm’s not Dan’s lawyer anymore, maybe they could take me on as a client?”
“T
hat’s certainly a possibility. If you’re serious, I’ll look into it.”
“I’m damn serious.”
Gino Facini became a client of Chase & Ward, albeit not on the scale of Dan Courtland, his billionaire stepfather. A young and up-and-coming trust and estates partner—following in the initial footsteps of the young Eskill Lander—was assigned to his affairs. He supervised the three gifts Gino had outlined to Reuben and also drew up a proper will and established a not-for-profit theatre company for him. Gino seemed to enjoy the fact that his legal needs were being looked after by the firm his stepfather had first retained and then fired.
Cynthia Frost’s seventy-third birthday was the next January. Reuben, as a practical joke, enrolled her in Meet.com (sans photograph) as TwinkleToes73. It seemed funny when he did it, but Cynthia was furious when she found out. She calmed down when she discovered that it was very easy to deregister from the site, although she did not do it until after she had received two hellos—from a thirty-two-year-old Pakistani in Karachi and an eighty-year-old retired dentist from Passaic, New Jersey.
“Reuben, if you ever do anything like this again, I swear I’ll run off with the first person who approaches me on the Internet,” she warned her husband.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I’m through with Internet match-ups for good.”
About the Author
The pseudonymous Haughton Murphy, in real life retired Wall Street lawyer James Duffy, is the author of the Robert Frost Mysteries. He lives in New York City.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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