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

by Jacobs, Jonnie

  “But you’ll follow up on Rodale?”

  “I’ll relay your message to the detectives in charge.”

  “Tell them he called on Saturday, the day he was killed. The timing might be important.”

  When I again turned my attention to preparations for Wednesday’s hearing, I had trouble concentrating on anything but the slender folder I’d labeled Tony Rodale. Inside were my notes from the visit Hal and I had paid him ten days before, along with the status report from Hal concerning Tony’s alleged abuse of both Deirdre and his ex-wife.

  What had Hal wanted to tell me? He’d discovered something he thought would be useful in Grady’s defense. If I could figure out what it was, the police might be able to find Hal’s killer. And I might be able to get Grady acquitted of murder.

  Hal had listed two phone numbers for the ex-wife, both in Los Angeles. I tried them with no luck. Not even a machine where I could leave a message.

  He hadn’t included a business number for Rodale, but I found a listing in the white pages for Rodale Investment Management and dialed. The woman who answered had a thin, chirpy voice.

  “I’d like some information about investments and financial planning,” I told her. “Is there someone there who could help me?”

  “I’d be happy to send you one of our brochures.”

  “I was hoping I could speak with someone in person.”

  “Mr. Rodale is out of the office at the moment. May I have him return your call?”

  I didn’t want to talk to Tony Rodale himself; I wanted to speak with someone who knew him. “There’s no one else?” I asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “It’s a very small company, then?”

  “In terms of personnel. But the investment assets are quite substantial.”

  “Who handles the paperwork?”

  This stumped her for a moment. “I do some of it. Most of it Mr. Rodale takes care of himself.”

  “I see.” I was sure Hal would have done better. “What sort of investments does Mr. Rodale handle?”

  “It would be best if you talked to him directly. It’s a very personalized service.”

  Best for those who were actually looking to invest, maybe. But not for my purposes. “Has he been in the business long?” I asked, not willing to be put off.

  “Seven years. Ma’am, why don’t I send you a brochure?” I sensed her growing impatience.

  “Yes, of course. But I have a few more questions first. What is Mr. Rodale like?”

  “What’s he like?” It was obvious this wasn’t the sort of question she usually fielded.

  “It’s important to me to know something about the person handling my finances. It has to be someone with whom I’m, uh, compatible.”

  “I suggest you make an appointment, ma’am. There’s no charge for an initial visit.”

  “I will, if I decide to go forward. But, you see, it’s difficult . . . that is, well, I have limited mobility.” Play on her sense of compassion and hope God didn’t inflict me with some terrible disease by way of punishment. “It’s not easy for me to get out and around.”

  “My mother uses a walker,” the woman said sympathetically. “The simplest errands take her forever.”

  “So you understand why I’d like to know a bit about Mr. Rodale before deciding whether or not to follow up with an appointment.”

  “Well, he’s easy enough to work for,” she said, her voice having lost a good deal of its chirpiness. “And his clients seem to like him. I can tell you that. He’s quite friendly with some of them.”

  “Does he strike you as a man of principle?”

  “Principle?”

  It was apparently not a word that got a lot of play around Rodale’s company. “Integrity,” I explained. “Is he somebody I should trust with my money?”

  She gave a breathless little laugh. “Well, those who have trusted him have done rather well financially. But you’d have to make that assessment yourself.”

  She had her lines down perfectly.

  “I really think you should read the brochure,” she added. “As a first step.”

  I fingered the tape with Hal’s message, then scooted sideways to my office door and closed it. “You know,” I said as though the thought had suddenly struck me, “I’m not even sure I have the correct company. A friend gave me the name, but I’ve got such a bad memory . . . there were a couple of listings in the phone book that might have been the name he gave me. Maybe you could tell me if a Marc Griffin is a client of Mr. Rodale’s. Then I’d know I have the right place.’’

  “I’m sorry, I can’t divulge names of our clients. But Mr. Rodale can supply you with references once you’ve talked with him. You really should start with the brochure.”

  If nothing else, it would be interesting to see how Rodale presented himself on paper. I gave her my address, but used my sister Sabrina’s name. The phone number I recited was the office number with two digits transposed. I certainly didn’t want him calling me back.

  <><><>

  A little after five, Marc knocked on my open door. “You want to grab some dinner a bit later?” he asked.

  I did, and I didn’t. Where had this feeling of distrust come from? Yesterday I’d turned to Marc for comfort— something he’d provided amply and without hesitation. And today I felt the need to keep my distance. Or at least to keep my thoughts to myself.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You need to eat, regardless.”

  “I can munch while I work.”

  “We’ll keep it simple and quick,” Marc prodded. “I promise. We can discuss the points for the prelim at the same time.”

  I shook my head again. “I don’t feel up to it.”

  He came around the desk and hugged me from behind. “It’s not healthy to grieve in isolation, Kali. You’re sad, you’re worried, you feel guilty. It’s going to eat away at you if you let it.”

  I could smell the scent of soap on his skin, could feel the warmth of his body through my blouse. For a moment the veil of doubt lifted. Marc was my friend. My lover, in fact. He was also Nina’s law partner and my co-counsel. What possible connection could he have with Tony Rodale or Deirdre Nichols?

  I held his hand against my cheek. “I know you’re trying to be helpful.”

  “I care about you, Kali. And I know you’re hurting. You’ve always been so independent. You act as though it were a failing to let people close to you.”

  “It’s not that,” I told him.

  “Is it me? Have I done something to upset you? If so, I’m sorry.”

  I hesitated, then turned to look at him. “Hal left a message for me Friday before he was killed. He said he’d discovered something about Tony Rodale that might save Grady. He mentioned Deirdre also.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  Had I imagined it, or had Marc’s body really tensed when I told him about the tape? That was the trouble with suspicion. It clouded and befuddled your judgment.

  I shook my head. “No, he didn’t say.”

  A flicker of something in Marc’s expression. Disappointment or relief?

  “You’ve been holed up in here all day,” he said. “Like you were avoiding me. I thought maybe you were angry with me.”

  “No, I’m not angry.” With mixed feelings I let go of his hand. As much as I wanted it to be otherwise, I couldn’t ignore the sense of unease that was tugging at me. “I just feel like being alone.”

  Marc kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be home tonight if you change your mind.”

  <><><>

  It was almost eight when I left work. I stopped at McDonald’s and picked up a grilled chicken sandwich, fries, and diet soda, then drove up Broadway Terrace to Tony Rodale’s house. I parked across the street and down several houses, away from the streetlamp. I didn’t know what I expected to discover, but I was sure that at some point Hal had done the same thing. Besides, I was plum out of ideas of my own.

  What,
I wondered for the zillionth time, had Hal discovered about Tony Rodale? Had it cost Hal his life? And might its absence in our case cost Grady his? Hal, Grady, Marc. Rodale seemed to be at the heart of it all.

  I turned on the radio and ate my dinner in the dark. Except for the flickering light from the television, Rodale’s house was quiet. No one came or went, and I saw no human activity inside.

  Within an hour, I was bored out of my mind. After two hours, I felt an overwhelming urge to brush my teeth. And finally, three hours into my stakeout, I had to go to the bathroom so badly, I left.

  As I was pulling out, I noticed a black car parked several spaces ahead up the road. The driver looked up as I passed, and I recognized the cop I’d seen at the zoo the other day. The one Madeleine Rivera was dating.

  Despite his unenthusiastic response, Fogerty had apparently passed along my message. And those in charge had listened. With a sense of relief I waved at the cop and drove home to prepare for tomorrow’s interview with Grady.

  Chapter 36

  “How’s Nina doing?” Grady asked even before he was seated at the table in the interview room. He looked tired, and his flesh appeared looser, as though his large frame had shrunk from within. “Is she really okay?”

  Was anyone with cancer, the threat of premature labor, and a husband in jail ever okay? But I figured okay was a relative concept. At least the contractions had stopped.

  “She’s doing well,” I told him. “The medicine is making her a little jumpy, and she hates having to stay flat, but all things considered, she’s doing remarkably.”

  “And the baby?”

  “He appears to be fine.” I was thankful that I’d remembered to request a contact meeting this time. Face-to-face assurances carried more weight than those offered through glass. “They did another sonogram and everything is normal. Another month and his lungs will be developed enough that he should be healthy, even if he’s early.”

  “He’ll be able to breathe on his own?”

  “Looks that way.” I reached into my purse. “Here, I brought you a picture.”

  Ultrasound photography wasn’t the same as shooting with Kodak. When Nina had first showed me the picture, it looked like nothing but wavy lines, reminding me of the patterns made by magnetic filings in high school physics. But when she’d pointed out the head and limbs, I was actually able to discern the shape of a baby. It was pretty exciting stuff, and I wasn’t even directly involved.

  “See,” I said, leaning across the table and tracing the contour Nina had shown me. “He’s sucking his thumb.”

  Grady stared at the picture for several moments. The lines around his eyes eased and his face brightened. “This is my son,” he said with awe. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  I gave a nod of agreement.

  He looked up. “I want to be there when he’s born. I want to hold him.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I want to be there for him, and for Nina. You can’t imagine how awful it is not to be with her right now, when she needs me most.”

  “It must be hard for both of you.”

  Grady tapped his fingers against the plastic tabletop. “You’re going to get me out of here, aren’t you? Soon?”

  It’s never pleasant being the bearer of bad news. I tried to put a favorable spin on it. “The state’s case has a lot of holes in it. I think our chances at trial are good, but I wouldn’t expect any miracles tomorrow.”

  He blinked. “What are you saying?”

  “The burden of proof at the preliminary hearing is very low,” I reminded him. “All they have to do is show that a crime was committed and that it’s likely you committed it.”

  Grady slumped forward, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. “But I didn’t.”

  “That’s the issue that gets settled at trial.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t wait for the trial. Don’t you understand that?”

  “It’s not the—”

  He sat back and glared at me through narrowed eyes. “I’m not worried about tipping our hand, or whatever you call it. I want you to do what you can to get me off. I want it done at the hearing so I can get out of here and put this nightmare behind me.

  We’d been over this ground before. My advice was to do nothing more than defendants usually did at this stage, namely, trying to expose as much as possible of the prosecution’s case.

  “I don’t want to reveal the strength or direction of our defense,” I told Grady. “Not now, not when the chances we’ll prevail are close to zero.”

  “Then why have a hearing at all?” he snapped. “It’s supposed to test the prosecution’s case, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The logical extension is that sometimes the judge finds the evidence doesn’t support the charges.”

  “Rarely.”

  “You told me yourself that the defense is allowed to present evidence.”

  “Allowed, but—”

  “You said that it was different from a grand jury indictment, which is strictly the prosecution’s show.” His tone was intense. He punctuated each point with an angry thrust of his finger. “You said you were glad we were getting a hearing, that it was better for us.”

  I nodded. “Better because we can see more of the D.A.’s case. But the bottom line is that it’s a lot easier to convince a jury than a hearing judge. You really need to convince only one out of the twelve that the state hasn’t proved its case. But more important, the burden of proof is so different at trial.”

  Grady folded his arms in disgust. “And meanwhile, I’m sitting in jail. My wife is in the hospital, my baby son won’t know his father, and the company I’ve worked my whole life to build is down the tubes.”

  I tried to keep the irritation from my own voice. “You need to realize that this is more than an inconvenience. More, even, than a major annoyance. You’re charged with murder, Grady. Murder.”

  “Are you’re trying to tell me that I’m likely to be convicted?”

  “The D.A. isn’t doing this for fun.”

  “Jesus,” he exploded. “I didn’t do it. Isn’t there any room for truth in the system?”

  “If I start down the path you want at the hearing, I have to destroy Madeleine’s case. Otherwise you’ll be worse off. The publicity will affect the jurors, and we’ll have given the prosecutor, and her witnesses, our line of attack at trial. We’ll have locked ourselves into stances we might later wish we hadn’t.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” he said hotly. “It’s a gamble I’m willing to take.”

  I wasn’t so sure that I was. “Let’s go over the evidence,” I said with a sigh. I pulled my notes from my briefcase.

  “We’ve done that.”

  “And now we’re going to do it again.”

  Grady rolled his shoulders and huffed in exasperation. But he sat square in his chair and looked at me. “Okay, let’s do it, then.”

  “They’ve set the time of death for somewhere between eight and midnight,” I said. “During this time you were at work, right?”

  Grady nodded.

  “You didn’t see or talk to anyone?”

  “No. I don’t even know for sure what time I left.”

  “A neighbor saw your car pull into the driveway a little before midnight. That sound reasonable to you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You left work and drove straight home?”

  Grady was staring at his thumbs.

  I waited.

  “Yeah, as far as I can remember.” He didn’t look at me.

  “They’re going to use the little girl’s testimony, you know. She saw a silver convertible in the driveway at ten. She heard a man’s voice.”

  “She’s a kid.”

  Children’s testimony was sometimes unreliable, but not always. “A child witness can evoke juror sympathy,” I told him. “She can come across as entirely believable.”

  “Isn’t it your job to discredit the prosecution’s witnesses? A kid ought to be easy.”<
br />
  “Not as easy as you might think.” In fact, dealing with a child witness was a tricky proposition. I had to discredit Adrianna without turning the jurors against me, and therefore against Grady.

  “Anyway,” Grady continued, “she only heard a man; she didn’t see him, did she?”

  I shook my head.

  “And there was nothing distinctive about the car she saw, right? Mine isn’t the only silver convertible in the Bay Area.”

  “Still, it would be better for us if you drove a station wagon or a minivan.”

  “The best thing,” Grady said with disgust, “would be if I’d never laid eyes on Deirdre Nichols.”

  “That wasn’t what got you into trouble.” I was still angered by his betrayal of Nina. “What you should have done,” I said, “is kept your pants zipped.”

  Grady looked at me for a moment with a tight expression, as though he were ready to explode. Then he shook his head and sighed. “You’re right. But I didn’t. We have to deal with what we’ve got.”

  “Adrianna and the car,” I said, recapping. “There’s also the shoe print. We can handle that the same way we do the car. Nike is a popular brand, and ten is a common size.”

  Grady nodded vigorously.

  “Only thing is, it strains credibility that you just happened to donate the pants you were wearing to the Salvation Army two days later.”

  “Monday was the pickup. I always go through my closet the night before and toss things that are getting old.”

  If we could substantiate that Grady’s custom was actually that, it might help. But I wasn’t sure it would entirely alleviate suspicion. I made a note to check with Simon about routine pickups by the Salvation Army and other charities, then moved on to the next item.

  “We also have to contend with the fact that your handkerchief was found in Deirdre Nichols’s front hallway.”

  “I told you, I left it there the night I gave her a ride home.”

  “The night of the alleged rape.”

  He nodded.

  I rocked back and looked him in the eye. “Why?”

  “Why what?

  “Why did you leave it there?”