Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  I snatched up the phone and dialed information. There was a phone book in my desk, but I hadn’t used it since my first year as an associate attorney. “Richmond,” I said in answer to the usual question. “McCormack Labs.”

  I got the number and punched it in.

  “McCormack Labs,” a voice said.

  “Wendy Walters, please.”

  After half-a-dozen rings I got her voice mail. “Wendy, this is Robin,” I said. “Call me back.” I gave my number and hung up.

  I sat staring at the phone.

  I picked up the phone and dialed McCormack Labs again. “Is Wendy Walters in the office today?” I asked. “I’ve already spoken to her voicemail. I just want to know if she’s there.”

  “Moment please.”

  After several moments, a male voice came on. “Accounting.”

  “Yes, I’m trying to reach Wendy Walters.”

  “I’ll give you her voicemail.”

  “Is she out sick, or…”

  “She hasn’t come in yet. I’m her supervisor. Is it something I can help you with?”

  “No. It’s personal, not professional.” I hung up, thinking too late that his phone might be equipped with Caller ID, just as mine was. If so, Wendy’s supervisor knew someone at the Northcutt law firm was calling for her.

  I checked my wristwatch. It was nearly ten-thirty. Calling information again, I asked for Wendy Walters. There were a lot of Walters. No Wendy, but there was a W. Walters on Main Street with a street number that should put it in Shockoe Bottom, which was where John said Wendy lived.

  An answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, Wendy’s voice repeating her phone number. I hung up without leaving a message.

  I looked at my watch. I had to be at a docket call in forty-five minutes, which didn’t leave a lot of time for anything else. I glanced at the computer screen, where work for Larry Briggs’ Homes was progressing, but not very fast.

  Most of my practice involved suing people, but Larry Briggs was a client I had on the defense side of the docket. I stood up. Today, Larry Briggs was going to have to look after himself. I got a file folder out of the big, lateral file cabinet and glanced around for my briefcase to put it in. It was a moment before I realized I no longer had a briefcase. What I did have was a little leather portfolio my mother had given me for Christmas. It was small, just big enough to hold a standard-sized folder, and my folder was legal-sized. I had to fold up the bottom to make it fit.

  I found a parking place on the street next to the courthouse, a bit of good luck that seemed out of keeping with my recent experiences. As I approached the main entrance, I glanced toward the house that Chief Justice John Marshall used to live in, which was next door to the courthouse, and thought, for the hundredth time, that someday I was going to have to take the tour.

  In the courtroom my case was called. I announced ready, and the lawyer for the defense asked for a continuance. The judge, an overweight, jowly guy in his fifties, said, “I can see by the case number that you’re entitled,” and that was that. The case was continued. It was a simple case that didn’t require any more discovery, so there was no reason for a continuance, but the wheels of justice sometimes get ahead of themselves and pause in their grinding for no particular reason.

  As I walked back into the late summer heat, I got out my cell phone and tried again to reach Wendy at her office.

  “I’ll give you her voice mail.”

  “Wait, I—” But of course it was too late. I’d been transferred even before the receptionist finished speaking. I hung up and tried Wendy’s apartment, where I got her answering machine.

  “It figures,” I said to no one in particular. I beeped my car unlocked and got inside.

  Chapter 9

  Shockoe Bottom is a valley between downtown Richmond and Church Hill, the city’s oldest neighborhood. A hundred years ago, the Bottom was the center of the city’s tobacco industry. Flooding has wiped it out a number of times, most recently just a couple of years ago when a tropical storm dropped twelve inches of rain over its watershed. The clubs, restaurants, and shops were just beginning to come back.

  Wendy, it turned out, lived in the apartment over a newly renovated bar and grill at the corner of 19th and Main. The entrance to the apartment, a few feet down from the restaurant’s, was a wide red door with a large pane of glass in its upper half. The door was, predictably, locked — with a double-keyed deadbolt, I saw with my forehead pressed to the glass. No one could open the door without a key, even from the inside.

  I rang the bell and waited, glancing toward the entrance of the restaurant, which didn’t seem to be getting much traffic even at the noon-hour. The sound of hammering was coming from somewhere about halfway down the block. I backed away and looked up at the windows, which consisted of large panes of time-rippled glass. For a moment, I thought I saw movement, and I raised my hand in a wave. Nobody waved back.

  I went back to the door and rang the bell again, then again backed out into the street to look up at the windows. Nothing this time. No hint of movement. No doubt I was imagining things.

  I walked back around the corner of the restaurant to look up at Wendy’s apartment from 19th Street. On that side the apartment had a narrow balcony with a wooden balustrade painted the same shade of crimson as the door on Main. It was about fifteen feet above the sidewalk, and there was nothing below it but fifteen feet of blank brick wall.

  As I stood looking up at the railing, a power saw whined in the distance and a board fell with a muffled clunk. I stepped toward Main Street and looked down the block. A pickup loaded with boards and tools stood on the street about a half-block down. An extension ladder was strapped to a black metal frame that rose above the pickup’s bed.

  I walked down. The door of the shop nearest the pickup was propped open. Inside were two men about my age cutting boards, one standing at either end of a stack of them propped on a pair of sawhorses. Both wore shorts and work boots. One wore a T-shirt with Curt Colbain’s picture on the front. The one with the Skil saw was shirtless, exposing a tattoo of Porky Pig on one shoulder and a tattoo of a Chinese dragon on the other. The saw whined briefly as they looked at me, their eyes going first to my face, then dropping to check out the rest of me. Ordinarily, this automatic physical assessment by those of the male persuasion irritates the crap out of me, but ordinarily I don’t want something.

  I smiled, and the guy with the saw smiled back reflexively. He had too much in the way of sideburns for my taste, but the tattoos didn’t bother me, and he was built like a Greek statue come to life. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” said the guy in the shirt. Apollo waved his fingers at me.

  “I seem to have locked myself out of my apartment.” I blinked at them, which is about as close as I can come to an eye-flutter. “It would be really helpful if I could borrow your ladder,” I said.

  For a moment they just looked at me. Then the guy in the shirt straightened, and Apollo put down his saw. “Sure.” “Okay.”

  “Great,” I said.

  There was a little awkwardness in the doorway, since I was standing in it. They hesitated, unsure how to get past without rubbing their sweaty, sawdust-speckled bodies against me. Since my dress was silk, which stains like nobody’s business, I stepped aside. Physical contact with sweaty, well-built men would have to wait for a more auspicious occasion.

  They had the ladder off the truck in about ten seconds, and I was leading them down the sidewalk and around the corner. I pointed to the balcony, and they put the end of the ladder on the sidewalk and pulled on a rope to raise the ladder to the necessary height. They then propped the ladder against the wall next to the balcony.

  “Thanks,” I said, a hand on a rung of the ladder. “I really appreciate this.”

  “Don’t you want one of us to…?”

  “No, this is fine.”

  I started up, and it evidently took two of them to steady the ladder, because they each stood with a hand on it, looking u
p as I climbed. My biggest regret was that I couldn’t sell popcorn.

  When I got to the top and reached out for the top of the balcony railing, I discovered a problem. My dress, though not all that long, was too tight to allow me to keep one foot on the ladder and reach the edge of the balcony with my other foot. I looked down. My two helpers were looking up at me.

  “Are you all right?” one said.

  “Just stuck.” I only saw one way to do this, and it wasn’t particularly modest. My underwear, fortunately, was new — peach colored panties with a lacy top. They didn’t match my fuchsia pumps, of course, but last night when I was grabbing things to take to the hotel, I hadn’t seen the need to color coordinate, since I am by occupation neither a runway model nor a stripper. I looked down again to where the guys were smiling encouragement.

  Amateur night on a ladder in Shockoe Bottom. I hiked my dress up around my hips and took a big step sideways, sliding the toe of my pump beneath the rail of the balcony and grabbing the top of the balustrade with one hand. I brought my other hand and my other foot across so that I was standing, legs together, on the outside of the balcony railing, gripping the top of it with both hands. Looking at my reflection in the two windows that faced onto the porch, I could see my legs all the way to my waist. Great.

  I swung one leg over the railing, then the other, and allowed my dress to fall back into place, a little wrinkled, but otherwise undamaged. I rested my forearms on the rail to look over. The two men were looking up at me, and they seemed at little dazed, as if they’d just been slapped in the face with a large wet tuna.

  “Thanks, guys. You’re life-savers,” I said.

  “Oh, ah, you’re welcome. What’s your name?”

  I hesitated, unsure whether to give them my name, Wendy’s name, or to make one up completely. “Robin,” I said. “Robin Starling.”

  The name of the guy without the shirt was Steve. “And this is Dustin,” Steve said.

  Dustin nodded and smiled at me.

  “Thanks, Steve. Dustin.” I gave them my best smile, then stood watching as they lowered the ladder and disappeared with it around the corner.

  The solid wood door at the end of the narrow porch turned out to be locked, so I turned to look at the windows. One of them was closed and latched, but the other stood open a full inch, which struck me as being neither very security-conscious nor energy efficient. There were no screens.

  I bent and poked at the curtain that blocked my view of the interior. “Hey, Wendy!” I called through the gap. “It’s Robin Starling.”

  There was no answer, though I had half-expected one, thinking of the movement I had seen in the window from below. Poking at the curtain with my finger showed me no more than an uncarpeted wood floor and the edge of a bed. I hooked my fingers under the frame of the sash and tugged upward, but it was stuck. I stepped out of my shoes, braced my feet in a wide stance, and drove upward against the top of the frame with the heels of my hands. Nothing budged.

  I took a closer look at the window, peering in at an angle in an effort to see whether the lower sash had been nailed in place, but I couldn’t tell. Probably the wood had swollen over time, or else someone had painted the thing in place.

  Bracing myself again, I took a breath and pushed up on the sash with everything I had, a deep guttural sound forcing its way through my throat. A second passed as I strained upward. Two seconds. Three.

  I dropped my hands and gasped for air.

  “Door locked up there, too?” It was Dustin, coming to check up on me.

  “Yeah. I thought I could go in through the window, but it’s stuck tight. I may have to get you to bring back that ladder.”

  “Want me to come up and try? We’ve got a couple of pinch bars. We can have that thing open in no time.”

  He had a nice face, I thought. “Let me try one more thing first,” I said. I’d tried raising the lower sash, but hadn’t tried lowering the top. I turned back to the window and hung my fingers on the crosspiece of the upper sash. I sagged against the window, letting it take as much of my weight as my fingertips would support. It gave slightly, or I thought it did.

  “Is it coming?” Dustin called.

  I redoubled my effort, sagging against the window, easing up, sagging, easing up.

  “You getting it?”

  “I…think…so.”

  The window gave suddenly, dropping all the way to the bottom. The glass panes rattled, but didn’t break, which was something.

  “I got it,” I called down to Dustin.

  He nodded encouragement from the street, having stepped back far enough to keep me in view.

  “I’m going in now,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome.” He continued to stand there, grinning up at me in the strong sunlight.

  The sill of the window was about six inches above the floor of the balcony. I stepped up on it and ducked my head to get it in the window, using my free hand to push at the curtain. The sashes were about three feet high, so there was no question of stepping through. I was going to have to go through on my belly.

  I stepped down and considered my dress, which I’d already sweated through in places. At the moment it was salvageable, but this was going to finish it, stretching and ripping it in any number of ways.

  I hesitated, looking back over the rail at Dustin. “I’m going to have to…” I took a breath. “Oh, heck with it.” I reached behind my neck to unfasten the clasp at the top of my dress and get the zipper started. I pushed the dress off one shoulder and then the other, feeling the zipper slip further. Then I let the dress fall to the floor of the balcony and stepped out of it.

  I glanced down at Dustin, but he seemed to have petrified on me. “Don’t want to ruin my dress,” I called by way of explanation. I picked up the dress and tossed it through the open window. I was, unfortunately, wearing a beige bra with my peach panties, and it was a plain, serviceable bra without a trace of lace. In the future, I was going to be a lot more careful with my color coordination.

  Bending to get my shoes, I tossed one and then the other through the window after my dress, and there I was, half-naked on a balcony at the corner of 19th and Main.

  “Bye now,” I called to Dustin.

  He raised a hand in a vague sort of wave. I stepped onto the sill and put my head and shoulders through the window, trying not to think of the rear view I was giving Dustin and any passing traffic. Bracing my hands on the tops of the two window sashes, I pushed up into the hanging curtain with my back arched and my feet pressing against the inner edge of the window frame for balance. This brought my hips up to rest on the top of the sashes. From there I rolled into the apartment, the heels of my bare feet catching for a moment on the frame of the window, then catching in the curtains. Both curtains and curtain rod came with me as I completed an inelegant somersault and landed on my butt.

  I was inside, sitting on the uncarpeted floor in what looked like Wendy’s bedroom. Beside me was a double bed on an old-fashioned iron frame, neatly made and covered with a quilt. There was a small throw rug beside the bed; I’d missed it by inches.

  Disentangling my feet from the curtain, I got up, moving gingerly from having just been hit in the fanny by a hardwood floor. I shook out my dress and put it on, looking about me. A wardrobe stood open against the wall opposite the bed. As with many of these old apartments, there was no closet.

  I bent to retrieve my shoes and walked out of the bedroom into a short hall. The bathroom that opened off it was so small it looked like you’d have to stand in the bathtub to close the door. Holding one shoe in each hand, I walked past the bathroom, passing over a vent blowing cold air that felt good on my bare legs. At the end of the hall was the living room, which was where my investigation ended.

  Wendy was sprawled on a long sofa upholstered in a faded floral pattern. She was naked, but for a bra and panties.

  I approached her body with almost a reverent awe. There was cord around her neck that looked like a piece o
f clothesline. Her eyes were fixed and staring, and her skin looked strangely pale beneath her tan. I knelt beside her, touching a hand to her bare stomach. She was probably room temperature, more or less, but for a human being she was cold — shockingly so.

  The side of her body, of her chest and hips, was two toned, pale on top and a bluish tint closer to the couch. I knew the cause from an autopsy film I’d seen in law school. The blood was settling, responding to the force of gravity rather than that of a beating heart. I couldn’t remember how long it took for that to become noticeable, but she’d been dead awhile.

  I glanced at my watch — 12:15. At the upper limit, she’d been dead no more than fifteen hours, because I’d seen her alive fifteen hours ago, alive and making out with one John Parker. At the thought, goose bumps broke out all over my body, and my heart kicked it up a notch. About twelve hours ago John had just been getting home, having come from delivering Wendy to her apartment. Looking down at Wendy’s body, I found it all too easy to believe that twelve hours ago Wendy had been dead.

  I walked back through the apartment in a daze, looking at everything, but not really seeing any of it. I felt somehow as if someone else were there, lurking just outside my field of vision.

  Of course, someone was there, and I went back to the living room and sat by her. Wendy’s clothes were lying carelessly on the floor at the end of the couch, the same blouse and skirt she had worn to my office, the same vest. I didn’t see her shoes.

  I took Wendy’s cold fingers loosely between my thumb and forefinger, as my attention returned to the body that looked so much like Wendy Walters and at the same time nothing like her. “I’m sorry, Wendy,” I said, and for a moment had the feeling she was in the room with me — she herself, and not just her corpse.

  I shook my head. My thoughts were crazy, possibly because they were shying from their proper subject, which was the possibility that John had killed Wendy Walters. He had no motive, at least none that I knew of. It was possible that something had gone wrong during some kind of sex game, but it didn’t strike me as terribly probable. I’d dated the guy for months, and he’d never tried to put a clothesline around my neck.