Motion to Dismiss (A Kali O'Brien Legal Mystery)

by Jacobs, Jonnie

  “I wouldn’t let them in, of course. But we thought it best if Emily stayed in the house.”

  Emily clutched my leg tighter. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I want my daddy.”

  “Now, now, missy, we’ll have none of that.” Simon’s tone was gentle, but his reprimand struck me as unfair all the same. I had a feeling he was even more at a loss around kids than I was.

  “I know your daddy misses you as much as you miss him,” I told Emily, giving her a one-armed hug. I wondered how much she’d been told about Grady’s arrest. “You could draw a picture for him. I bet he’d like that.”

  Emily was silent. She continued to hug my leg as though hanging on for dear life. Maybe she was.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked her, an idea forming as I spoke. When she didn’t answer, I added, “Would you like to go out for dinner?”

  She looked up at me. “You mean McDonald’s?”

  I’d actually been thinking of something a bit more upscale, a place where I could get a salad of spring greens and a glass of wine, which goes to show that I really hadn’t been thinking at all. “Is that where you’d like to go?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Arf too. He’s so lonely he’s got a tummy ache.”

  “Okay, Arf too.”

  <><><>

  Emily ordered chicken nuggets and fries. After scrutinizing the salads, I decided to join her. It wasn’t the food, I reminded myself, that had brought me there.

  After a few false starts I learned that Emily would talk if I stopped peppering her with questions and gave her the chance. In the course of the evening I learned about lizards—far more than I wanted to know, especially over food—pilgrims, Gretchen’s new father—her third—and a boy named Fred who spit when he talked. And when we started making a list of truly disgusting foods, we both got the giggles.

  We were having such a good time, in fact, that we went to Fentons for ice cream afterward. It had been a long time since I’d had ice cream loaded with gooey chocolate sauce and whipped cream, and it wasn’t, in truth, as good as I remembered. But Emily was in seventh heaven.

  “I love chocolate,” she said, spooning a dollop of the stuff into her mouth.

  “I can tell. By the spoonful, no less.”

  “That’s the way I take my medicine.”

  “With a spoon?”

  She laughed. “Of course with a spoon. With chocolate sauce, too. It hides the yucky taste.”

  The inventiveness of parents never ceases to amaze me.

  “What did the pencil say to the paper?” she asked abruptly

  “The pencil?” It took me a moment to realize Emily was setting up a joke.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, what?”

  “Take me to your ruler!” She grinned and shoveled another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

  As we were finishing up, Emily waved to a friend—a skinny child with big, dark eyes. The girl came over to say hello.

  “This is Adrianna,” Emily said, holding out a hand smeared with chocolate. “She goes to my school.”

  The name was familiar, and in the next instant I knew why. The narrow-shouldered woman Adrianna was with turned away from the counter just then and faced our direction. I recognized Deirdre Nichols’ sister, Sheila Barlow.

  Her expression darkened when she saw us. Her mouth thinned and her jaw tightened. Tucking her wallet into her purse, she approached. After the hostility she’d exhibited on the television newscast, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I braced myself for a nasty scene.

  Surprisingly, however, she was the model of good behavior. She introduced herself to me, chatted briefly with Emily, and didn’t mention a word about Grady.

  As she was leaving, she paused, her pale eyes unexpectedly serious. “I think it might be a good idea if we talked sometime,” she said.

  Before I could answer, she took Adrianna’s hand and led her away.

  “Her other mommy died,” Emily said solemnly.

  I nodded, not sure what to say.

  “Lucky for her, she had two.”

  “Two mommies?”

  Emily licked her spoon and nodded.

  I was happy for Adrianna’s sake that she had an aunt she was close to, but I knew that no one could ever replace a mother.

  Chapter 18

  We held our first strategy session the next morning. Marc, myself, and Hal Fisher, an investigator I’d used when I’d worked at Goldman and Latham.

  Hal is approaching fifty, a bit overweight, and scruffy looking in the tradition of an aging hippie. He’s also inclined to be a trifle more outspoken than is necessary.

  Although they tried to hide it, I could tell the two men had taken an immediate dislike to each other.

  “So, what have we got?” I asked Marc.

  “Why are you looking at me?”

  We were in his office, which is not only roomier than the one I was using, but neater. Marc was seated behind his wide wooden desk. Hal and I were sprawled in chairs across from him.

  “You’re the one who had the police report in your hot little hands all night.” My tone was sharper than I’d intended, the fallout of an evening spent stewing when I wanted to be working. Despite repeated calls, I hadn’t managed to reach him. “Where were you anyway?”

  “Out.” His expression was hard to read. Avoiding my eyes, he reached for a plastic portfolio. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s look at the crime scene first,” Hal said. He was eating granola from the box by the fistful, as though it were popcorn.

  “Inside or out?” There was a contentious overtone to the question.

  Hal crunched on his cereal. “Outside.”

  “Victim was found on a stone patio area directly under a third story deck. Body was twisted, on its side mostly. She was fully clothed, although not in street clothes.”

  Marc skimmed his notes. “Here’s something. There were bruises on her neck and upper arm. Probably the result of a violent confrontation prior to death—that’s according to the cop who wrote out the initial report.”

  “Fingernail scrapings?” I asked.

  “Taken, no results.”

  “Meaning the results aren’t back yet or that there was nothing there?”

  He looked again. “Doesn’t say. But you’d think they’d know if they found anything.”

  “What they know and what they put down on paper aren’t always one and the same,” Hal said glibly.

  Marc frowned. His lips barely moved when he spoke, and his voice was cool. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “How about a rape kit exam?” Hal asked.

  The question took me by surprise. For some reason, rape hadn’t occurred to me. And at this stage, the results could only hurt our case. If they’d pointed to someone other than Grady, the police wouldn’t have arrested him.

  Marc flipped through a couple of pages. “It doesn’t say.”

  “We should find out,” Hal noted. “It’s fairly standard procedure these days.”

  “Anything else?” I made a grabbing gesture, and Hal handed me the granola box.

  “Yeah. There were footprints in wet soil by the side of the house. Men’s, size ten.”

  “Any idea what size shoe Grady wears?” I wondered if Grady’s shoes were among items seized by the police in their search of the house.

  “He’s a size ten,” Marc said. “But so are a lot of men, myself included. And they weren’t Bruno Maglis—just running shoes.”

  Hal laughed. “There’s no such thing as ‘just shoes.’ They’ve all got signature soles—shape, stitching, God knows what else. With enough detail, a shoe impression can be pretty precise.”

  “Well, without the detail it’s meaningless,” Marc shot back. “And I don’t see anything here that makes it sound like this was a primo impression.”

  “What about hair?” I asked, mostly to stop the bickering. “Or fibers? Anything in the way of trace evidence?”

  “Not outside,” Marc said. He looked point
edly at Hal. “Is it okay if we move inside now?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he continued. “Most of the prints and hair collected around the house can be accounted for. Although it would help if they had a set of the Carsons’ prints for comparison.”

  “Any that can’t be accounted for?”

  “There was a short gray hair found on the sofa.” Marc looked up. “Could be Grady’s, I suppose. But he was there the week earlier. Unless the evidence comes with a time stamp, we ought to be able to use his presence there the previous week to counter whatever they come up with in the way of physical evidence.”

  Nice in theory, but I wasn’t banking on it. “What else?”

  Marc went back to his notes. “Animal hair, some carpet fibers, a small pearl button.”

  “Stuff that might help us if we were trying to pin the murder on someone else,” Hal said, “but nothing that’s going to help us know who that person is.” He pulled a grapefruit out of his tattered briefcase and began peeling it. The room filled with the scent of citrus.

  Marc glared. “You forget to eat breakfast or something?”

  Hal ignored him.

  I rubbed my forehead. “The stuff might prove useful if we’re able to identify another plausible suspect.”

  “We’re a long way from that,” Marc said, making no effort to hide his irritation.

  “Okay,” Hal said, prying a grapefruit section free. “Let’s look at what the prosecution has. A motive, I’ll grant you that. But nothing that directly links Grady to the crime. Only the handkerchief, the little girl’s story about seeing a silver-color convertible in the driveway, and possibly the shoe print.”

  “And by their absence,” I added, “the pants Grady wore the night of the murder.”

  Marc rocked back in his chair. “Unfortunately, there’s also the phone call to Grady’s office made from Deirdre Nichols’ home phone at six forty-three that evening.”

  I nodded. “Grady says he never received the call though.”

  Marc flipped back a page in the report. “The record shows an eight-minute conversation.”

  That the cops hadn’t told us. I was beginning to think Madeline’s offer to deal might not have been so far out of line.

  “Maybe someone else at the office took the call,” Hal suggested.

  “Unh-unh.” Marc’s expression, directed Hal’s way, was smug. “It’s a separate line. No secretary, no switchboard. Goes directly to Grady’s private office.”

  There was a moment of glum silence while we considered the possibilities.

  Hal crossed his arms and lifted his feet to the chair opposite him. “Let’s subpoena Ms. Nichols’ phone records, see who else she talked to.”

  “And we should ask around at ComTec,” I added. “There’s always the chance someone else picked up the phone.”

  Marc resumed his reading. “There was no sign of forced entry,” he said after a moment. “So presumably she knew her killer. Not so good for our case either.”

  A thought struck me. “Was the door locked when the sister arrived?”

  Marc shuffled through the pages of the report. “Nothing here about it. I can’t believe they didn’t ask her.”

  Hal’s laugh had a slightly superior edge to it. “Just because it’s not in the report doesn’t mean they didn’t ask. They’re not going to give you any more than they have to.”

  “But they do have to,” Marc said, alluding to the rules of discovery.

  “Only if you force them.”

  “How about the little girl,” I asked, again jumping in to defuse the tension. “Do we have her full statement?”

  “Just the summary. She apparently woke up when she heard someone knocking on the door. When she looked out the window, she saw a silver convertible. And she heard a man’s voice.”

  “In the house?”

  “That’s not clear.”

  “Any idea of the time?”

  “Ten. Or so she says. With a kid that age, though, who knows?”

  Hal scratched his chin. “This is the era of digital clocks, don’t forget.”

  “Did she get a look at the man?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t appear that way.”

  This, at least, was something in our favor. “What about other witnesses? Any of the neighbors see a man there?”

  “The guy next door said he heard a dog start barking around ten-fifteen.”

  “Which could mean nothing more than a cat in the yard,” Hal said. He offered us each a section of grapefruit. Marc declined, but I accepted.

  “Yeah, but with the girl’s statement about time . . .

  “Where does Grady say he was at ten that night?” Hal asked.

  “Work.”

  “Alone,” Marc added.

  “Offhand, I don’t know the number of silver convertibles in the Bay Area, but we ought to be able to find out. Unless she got a license number or something, there’s no way they can say with certainty that it was Grady’s car.”

  “What about the boyfriend?” I asked. “Tony Rodale. Did the police check what kind of car he drives?”

  “She had a boyfriend?” Hal’s interest was clearly piqued. “That bears looking into.”

  I nodded. “Especially in light of the fact that their relationship seemed unsettled.”

  Marc scowled. “I’m sure the cops already checked on him. They’d have followed up if there was anything there.”

  The look Hal gave Marc in return was pointed. “With cops you can’t be sure of anything. Once they find their man, they kind of get tunnel vision, if you know what I mean.” He turned back to me. “What do you know about this guy Tony?”

  “He has money and he’s a jerk.”

  “That narrows it down to a few thousand,” Hal said, heavy on the sarcasm.

  Marc didn’t crack a smile.

  I filled him in on what I’d learned from Deirdre’s coworkers at Rapunzel. “And I have a phone number for him.” I passed Hal the number. “I’ll get you a copy of her testimony at the rape hearing. She said that the two of them had a ‘complicated relationship,’ if I’m remembering correctly. And there was some uncertainty about his name.”

  “Before you two get too far afield,” Marc said, clearing his throat, “can we come back to the matter of Grady’s defense?”

  “There was a sort of party that night in the canyon below the house.” I explained about the loud music several of the neighbors had heard. “It’s possible someone saw what happened that night.”

  Marc looked through the report. “They haven’t come forward yet.”

  Hal hedged. “That we’re aware of.”

  The defense is supposed to get everything the prosecution does so there are no surprises at trial. But that doesn’t mean everything gets handed over up front. A witness who could place Grady at the scene would just about sink our chances of acquittal.

  “There’s apparently a gathering there most Saturday nights,” I said. “I think I’ll drop by and ask around. Either of you gentlemen up for a hot date?”

  Hal tossed the pile of grapefruit peels into the trash. “Unfortunately, I’ve already got one.”

  “Take her with you,” Marc grumbled. “This is the kind of stuff that you should be doing, not Kali.”

  Hal sucked on his cheek. “It’s a him, not a her, and I’m afraid we’ve got plans that can’t be changed.” He turned to me. “Marc’s right though. I should be the one to follow up on this.”

  “Except if we don’t do it this weekend, we have to wait another week. I don’t mind going.”

  Marc muttered something indecipherable, then rocked forward. “Okay, I’ll go.”

  He made a good martyr, but I wasn’t so sure he’d make a good detective. “We’ll both go,” I said.

  Marc shrugged. “I’ve got to tell you, I think you’re stretching it a bit if you expect to find anyone who saw what happened.”

  “Speaking of stretching.” Hal stood. “Are we about finished here?”

  When he had gone
, Marc tossed the report into my lap. “I can’t believe you want to use that guy, Kali. This is a big case. Grady is a friend as well as a client. We can do better than some aging, ponytailed queer.”

  I shot him a nasty look. “He’s a good investigator.”

  “He’s a boor.”

  “Not everyone wants to look like Yves Saint Laurent.”

  “Grady’s in deep shit, Kali. He’s in jail for murder, his company is leveraged to the hilt, the investors have backed off. We’ve got to get this settled. Soon.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re working on?”

  Marc sighed. He ran a hand through his hair and gave me a halfhearted smile. “Let’s just make sure we do it.”

  Chapter 19

  Nina’s on the phone,” Rose said, poking her head into my office.

  I pushed aside the police report, which I’d been going over in greater detail now that I was alone, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hi, Nina. How are you feeling?”

  She managed a small laugh. “I’ve been better.”

  “Is it the headache still or . . . or everything else?”

  “The headache was just an excuse.” Her voice was so thin I thought for a minute she was on the verge of tears, but she drew in a breath and continued. “I wanted to thank you for taking time with Emily last night.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  “So did she. I felt so bad abandoning her to Simon and Elsa, but I just couldn’t cope. The last thing she needed was to hang out with a mother who was falling apart at the seams.”

  I felt an ache in my throat thinking of all Nina was dealing with.

  “I keep reminding myself to take things a step at a time,” Nina said.

  “That’s the only way to get through this.”

  She hesitated, then asked, “You haven’t talked to Grady this morning, have you?”

  “No.” I felt a momentary alarm. “Why?”

  “They won’t let me speak to him,” Nina said. She again sounded as though she were fighting to keep herself in control. “They said I had to come during regular visiting hours. I explained that I was confined to bed under doctor’s orders, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.”