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

by Jacobs, Jonnie

  “Rodale isn’t someone I’d go out of my way to be friends with,” I said. “But I’m not sure we’ll have much luck trying to cast him as the killer.”

  Hal frowned. “Maybe not. But there’s something about him that doesn’t ring true.”

  Chapter 21

  “Remind me again why we have to do this,” Marc grumbled -as I slid onto the soft leather upholstery of his Lexus.

  I buckled my seat belt. “We don’t have to. I wanted to, and you insisted on coming along.”

  While I’d worn jeans and a turtleneck, Marc had dressed for the evening in a blue blazer, razor-pleat slacks, and white rayon shirt. However inappropriate his attire, he looked good. But he did not look happy.

  “This is the kind of grunt work your friend Hal should be handling,” he said.

  “Hal is tied up tonight, remember?”

  Marc was barely able to contain a snicker. “Into S and M, is he?”

  I gave Marc a withering look, which he might have missed in the darkness of the night.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Marc gunned the engine pulling out of the parking spot.

  “Enough, already. Hal’s a friend of mine.”

  “You’ve made that clear. In fact, I get the feeling you two are pretty chummy.” Marc looked over at me with a raised eyebrow. “He isn’t bi, is he? Like maybe it’s more than friends.”

  “We’re friends, period. What’s with you anyway?”

  The hint of a smile softened Marc’s expression. “Just checking.”

  “Anyway,” I said, getting back to the evening’s mission, “if Grady’s serious about not waiving time, we’ve got less than two weeks before the hearing. We have to find the kids tonight. Next weekend will be too late.”

  “So while Hal’s getting laid, we’re crawling through the underbrush like the Hardy Boys. I still say there’s something wrong with this picture.”

  “Think of it as an adventure,” I suggested.

  He made a pretense of sneering, but I caught the glimmer of a smile underneath. “On the bright side,” Marc said after a moment, “I get to spend an evening with you.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was teasing, so I let the comment pass.

  We stopped at a red light. Marc sucked his cheek. “I’d rather be taking you to dinner though.”

  “There’s always another night.”

  “You’d go out with me?” He sounded surprised.

  I rubbed my chin. “Depends on the restaurant.”

  “No joke, Kali. Would you?” There was a serious edge to his voice I didn’t expect.

  “I might.”

  The light changed and we pulled away in another stretch of silence.

  “Back when we were in school—” He stopped and started again. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  The brittle anguish of betrayal had dulled over the years, but I felt anger rising in my throat anew. “How could I not be hurt? We were sleeping together. We told each other our secrets and our dreams. And you never bothered to tell me you were engaged to someone else?”

  “It does sound stupid in retrospect.”

  “Damn right it does.”

  “But it’s the truth. All those things I told you—I wasn’t lying. My feelings for you were genuine.”

  “But not very deep.”

  He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  I gave a skeptical snort.

  “I was confused. Young, scared—”

  “And selfish,” I added.

  He offered an apologetic smile. “That too. Hell, I don’t like the guy I was back then any more than you do. I’d redraw him in a minute if I could, but I’m stuck with him.”

  When I didn’t say anything, Marc continued. “I think I knew then that Janice wasn’t right for me. The fact that I got involved with you should certainly have made that clear.”

  “One would think so.”

  “But we’d been together so long. Our families were friends, had been for years. It just seemed like one of those things that was. It never dawned on me to question it.”

  “Nor did it stop you from playing around while she was back in Cincinnati, or wherever she lived, planning your wedding.”

  “Cleveland.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Kali. I know that’s too little too late. But I mean it. The older I get, the more I realize how vulnerable we all are. At the time, I thought it was just me.”

  I folded my arms and gave my head a casual toss. “If it’s any consolation, none of the emotional scars were permanent.” None that I’d admit to him, at any rate. Besides, I’d acquired plenty of others along the way to keep them company. I thought fleetingly of Tom before pushing the memory from my mind.

  “You’re lucky.” Marc’s tone made it clear he didn’t believe me. “I’ve picked up quite a number of scars myself. All of them permanent. And all of them painful.”

  “What about now? Are you seeing someone?” I hadn’t heard Nina mention a name, but that didn’t mean much.

  Marc shook his head. “Casual dates. Nothing remotely serious for several years.” He took his foot off the accelerator as we neared the next light. “Is this the road?”

  I nodded. “Take a left.”

  I guided him through several turns to the wide shoulder where I’d parked the day before. Tonight, though, the space was occupied by a couple of pickup trucks and an older model sedan. We parked up the road a bit and walked through a tangle of leaves and scrub toward the clearing. Although I’d brought along a flashlight, it was still hard going. The ground was uneven and sometimes slippery.

  As we got closer I could hear voices above the music, but I wasn’t able to make out any words.

  “This is it?” Marc asked.

  “Right.”

  “Jesus, can’t they find a better place to party?”

  “It’s private. And it’s theirs. Didn’t you have a similar place when you were a kid?”

  “We’d sometimes sneak a beer under the maple between the sixth and seventh holes. But that’s about it.”

  Marc’s was a country club childhood, the product of a lifestyle most of us fantasized about when we were young. But he’d clearly missed some of the more memorable experiences that had been part of my own teenage years.

  We stopped short of the partying. Through the bramble, about thirty yards ahead, we could see shadowy forms. Eight or ten males, each with a can in his hand. The pungent odor of marijuana filled the evening air.

  “What now?” Marc whispered.

  Before I could answer, a crackling noise from behind raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “Stay put and don’t move.” The voice was male and nasal, and raw enough that we obeyed instantly.

  “You and your great ideas,” Marc muttered.

  “Shut up,” ordered the voice.

  I wondered whether our companion had a weapon, and whether he intended to use it.

  “What’s doing, Dirk?” A voice from the clearing called out in our direction.

  “Hey, guys,” Dirk called back, “we got company. Peeping Toms or something.” He turned his attention to us again. “Okay, let’s join the others.”

  “We were just leaving,” Marc said, reaching for my hand.

  “Yeah? Well, you’ve just had a change in plans.” He put a hand on Marc’s back and shoved. “Let’s go.”

  As we inched toward the clearing, the cluster of young men moved in our direction. I’d been expecting kids, and the kind of spirited carousing of an after-game celebration. These may well have been kids—it was hard to tell—but there was a hardened, streetwise air about them that was a long way from high school football. I wondered if they were gang members—the kind who killed people as an initiation rite.

  “Went to take a piss and stumbled on these two snooping around in the bushes,” Dirk explained.

  “We weren’t snooping,” I said, twisting to look for a gun. I couldn’t see one.

  “Yeah, well, you weren’t on your way to the ope
ra either.”

  A wiry little guy with dark hair edged to the front. “Hey, dudes, this is a private party. We kinda got this spot reserved, so to speak.”

  “And it’s public property,” slurred an unseen companion in what, to my mind, was a complete non sequitur. But several of his compatriots grunted agreement.

  “Besides which,” added another, “you ain’t dressed right.” He turned to me. “Not you, li’l lady. I’m talking about your friend here, Mr. Eddie Bauer.” He flicked a finger under Marc’s lapel.

  Marc knocked the hand aside. “Get your hands off me, punk.”

  “Hey, the dude thinks he’s tough.” The wiry guy laughed as if he’d told a joke.

  “Shut up, all of you.” A broad-shouldered young man wearing a backward-facing baseball cap sauntered forward. The others grew quiet.

  “You cops?”

  “Nope,” I said. “And we’re not here to crash your party either.”

  “We’re attorneys,” Marc said before I could stop him.

  The young men seemed neither awed nor ready to laugh—the two reactions I’d anticipated. Apparently they didn’t have much feeling one way or the other about attorneys.

  “We’re hoping to find someone who was here last Saturday,” I explained.

  “Who?”

  “Anyone. I mean, we’re not looking for a particular person. We’d just like to talk to people who were here.”

  Baseball cap crossed his arms. “How come?”

  “A woman up the canyon was killed falling off her deck.”

  “Wow, she musta been really gassed,” said the wiry boy with a giggle.

  “Shut up,” said the boy with the cap, who seemed to be the leader. He looked at me. “She didn’t roll clear down here. Why you looking for people here?”

  Over the past few minutes I’d felt some of the tension in my shoulders ease. If they were members of a gang, it didn’t appear to be one bent on collecting scalps.

  “Were any of you partying here that night?” Marc asked. “Maybe you saw something.”

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “See,” Marc said snidely. “You know, with your eyes.” I could tell that he was growing impatient.

  “Her house is up there,” I said, pointing. “Above that stand of eucalyptus. The police think someone pushed her.”

  “Wasn’t us.”

  “Nobody says it was. We just want to talk to anyone who was here that night.”

  “What’s it worth?” asked Dirk.

  Marc’s anger was close to the surface. “All we’re asking for is information. Maybe you should try cooperating simply for the novelty of contributing to the betterment of society.”

  “Save the civics lecture.” Dirk rubbed his fingers and thumb together in the gesture of asking for money. “How much?”

  “Do you know something?” Marc asked.

  “Might be able to tell you who does.”

  “Ten dollars,” I said. “If you can give us the name of someone who saw what happened that night.”

  “Ten?” His tone was derisive.

  “Tell them,” the wiry guy muttered. “We don’t want to be standing here yakking all night.”

  “For twenty,” Dirk said, “I’ll give you a name.”

  Marc snorted in disgust. “Come on, Kali. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay, twenty,” I said.

  Dirk held out his hand until I’d pulled out two tens and handed them to him. “Talk to Xavier.”

  “He saw something?” Marc asked.

  “Says he did.”

  “Xavier says that?” It was a different kid this time. “He never told me.”

  “That story about the angel, remember? You know how he could’n stop talking about her that night? Well, next day there it is on the news. That was the lady going over the railing. He called me up like he’d won at Lotto or something.”

  Marc shifted his weight. “So we’ll need to talk to this fellow, Xavier.”

  “Good luck, man. Most days, Xavier don’t know what he sees or what he says. His elevator stops short, if you know what I mean.”

  Unfortunately, I did. “Where do we find him?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  The young men looked at one another and shrugged. “Could be anywhere. If he’s not here though, most likely he’s hanging in Berkeley.”

  “Where in Berkeley?”

  More shrugs.

  “Where does he live?”

  “Around.”

  “Around? You mean on the street?”

  “His old man kicked him out last year. He lived over in Albany for a while with some chick.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “He’s not there anymore. Her parents got tired of feeding him. He still sees her sometimes though. She might know how to reach him.”

  We were finally able to pull an address of sorts from their combined expertise. The address was either 916 or 619. Or maybe 896. No one knew the street name, but it was one of those that ran south off Solano Avenue. The girl’s name was Sara. Her last name began with C or maybe a K.

  All in all, it wasn’t a lot to go on.

  Chapter 22

  “Where to now?” Marc asked when we were back in the car.

  “I guess it’s too late to go calling on Sara’s parents.”

  “Especially if we want their cooperation. Besides, we’d have to hit about fifty houses in the hope of getting the right one. Not a neighbor-friendly thing to do this time of night.”

  “No,” I said, disappointed. “I guess not.”

  Marc leaned against the door and draped an arm over the back of the seat. “You want to go have a drink somewhere?”

  A drink sounded good. “Sure.”

  Marc had been picking burrs off his trouser legs, and now he brushed them in disgust. “I’m going to have to send these to the cleaners.”

  “You should have worn jeans.”

  “I should have stayed home. What a zoo. No wonder people are worried about the future of our country.”

  “Hey, they told us what we wanted to know.”

  “For a price.”

  “So, they’re steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit. That’s the good old American way, isn’t it?”

  <><><>

  We wound up at Baywolf. The restaurant was filled with diners, as I’d known it would be, but we were able to get a table on the outside deck and an order of crab cakes to go with our wine. The evening was crisp, as it often is in early spring, but without any wind, the temperature wasn’t uncomfortable. And the wine helped ward off the chill.

  “This is more like it,” Marc said, dotting salsa on a wedge of crab cake.

  “All’s well that ends well,” I quipped.

  “I was hoping we hadn’t yet reached the end of our evening.” He gave me an impish grin, which I ignored.

  “I take it that’s a ‘no comment,’ “ he said.

  “Right.”

  “You’re a hard-hearted woman, Kali O’Brien.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  Marc nudged the plate in my direction. “Do you really think this Xavier person saw Deirdre being pushed from the deck?”

  “I know it’s a long shot, but he might have. Until we talk to him, we won’t know whether he saw, or heard, something that will prove useful. If we’re able to uncover even one piece of evidence that isn’t consistent with Grady’s guilt, it might be enough to sway the jury.”

  “Like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “More or less. But the prosecution is going to put together a beautifully wrapped package, and we have to come up with some way to tug at a few of those ribbons.”

  “It’s a pretty thin police report if you ask me.” Marc frowned. “Almost like they wanted it to be Grady so they jumped from A to Z without spending a lot of time getting there.”

  That was often the case, but many times the cops were also right. When the available evidence was less than pe
rfect, they filled in with intuition and experience. For my own peace of mind, I wished I knew if they were right about Grady.

  “You’re not convinced Grady is innocent, are you?” Marc asked, as if reading my mind.

  “Not entirely, no. Are you?”

  He nodded. “As sure as I would be about anyone.”

  Marc’s fingers grazed the back of my hand. I felt the tingle all the way down my spine. I sipped my wine and pretended I hadn’t noticed.

  “You didn’t see any reference to an address book or Day-Timer in the list of items seized by the police, did you?”

  Another pass of the fingertips. “Not that I recall. Why?”

  “I didn’t find one at her house.”

  “You sure she had one?”

  I nodded. “Deirdre talked to me the day of the rape hearing. She pulled one of those leather-bound planners out of her purse to write down my number.”

  Marc retracted his hand, ran his finger around the edge of his plate instead. “You think the killer took it?”

  “Someone did. Makes me think maybe there was something incriminating there.”

  He whistled under his breath. “If that’s the case, good luck. It’s gone for good.”

  “But if we figure out where it is, we may have a clue as to her killer.”

  Marc stared into his wineglass, swirling the deep red liquid before venturing a sip. He seemed lost in thought.

  After a few beats of silence, I said, “I went to see Tony Rodale yesterday. The guy Deirdre was seeing.”

  Marc snapped to attention. “Why?”

  “Hal learned that he’d beaten Deirdre in the past. She filed charges then refused to follow through.”

  “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Just another loose end.” He closed his eyes for a moment.

  “I wondered if you knew him.”

  “Know him? Why would I?”

  “He does something with investments.”

  “Yeah, well, that covers a lot of ground.”

  “I take it that’s a no.”

  Marc ignored the comment. “Did you learn anything?”

  “Not directly.” I filled him in on the visit with Tony Rodale. “I doubt anything will come of it, but Hal has a couple of ideas he’s going to follow up on.”