Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “I can’t put down ten percent.”

  “You don’t have twenty-five thousand dollars? Not even in your 401(k)?”

  “Well, sure, in my 401(k).”

  “You’ll have to borrow against it. I’ll get the forms you need and drop back by to get your signature.”

  “Larsen’s going to fire me when he finds out about this,” John said.

  “No, he won’t. Why would he?” I protested automatically. Then I pictured Larsen’s face at seeing a secretary in the break room, at seeing me with my feet on my desk. “It would look bad to abandon you in your time of need,” I said. “He’ll wait until you’re acquitted.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “You’ve just been charged with capital murder. I don’t have a lot to work with here.”

  There wasn’t much left for me to do. Jordan and Hernandez came and got John. I said good-bye and left. I parked my car in the parking garage attached to our office building, and, before I went up to my office, stopped off at one of the shops in the food court for a bite to eat.

  I got a raspberry tea and a deli sandwich and sat at one of the tables next to the black monoliths with the falling water. When I’d finished about half my sandwich, I began to feel better. It had not been a good week. It had been a terrible week — murder, finding the body, attacks on me, boyfriend’s infidelity, ex-boyfriend’s arrest… When I’d sat down to eat, I’d been depressed almost to the point of being nonfunctional. Now, with a little food in my belly, I found my spirits rising.

  Monday he cheats on me, I thought. By Friday he’s in jail. “Who said there’s no such thing as justice?” I mumbled with my mouth full of sandwich.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said at my elbow.

  I threw myself forward across the table, tilting it and knocking over my tea, and I landed on my keister with my bare legs splayed out in front of me on the marble floor.

  The man in the blue apron had taken a step back. There were a couple of stains on the apron, and I recognized him as somebody I’d seen before bussing tables. He was about forty, with a thin face and very little chin. He looked terrified.

  I held up a hand for help in getting to my feet, but he shrank back, his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s my fault. I’m just a little jumpy.”

  I got awkwardly to my feet. It’s not as easy as you’d think when you’re wearing heels and a tight skirt that’s trying to ride up on you, but I managed it. I brushed myself off and sat back down, noticing that several men and a couple of women — in fact, all those in the immediate vicinity — were looking at me.

  Grimacing, I nodded around at them, making eye contact with this one and that one until everybody’s attention had returned to his or her own business. “I’m sorry,” I said to the busboy, who was still hovering a pace or two away from me. “I really am. I don’t know why I reacted that way.”

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple wobbling in his neck.

  “Can I help you?”

  He opened his mouth, but wasn’t immediately able to get his words out. “The other day,” he began, “the day when you and that other lady were here?”

  I nodded encouragement.

  “The other day when you and that other lady were here, you dropped something. I mean, I don’t know if you dropped it, I didn’t see you, but it was on the floor under the table when you left.”

  My eyes went to his outstretched hand. It was holding a CD jewel case with a picture of Taylor Swift on the front.

  Chapter 22

  The compact disc contained Excel files, spreadsheets. I opened one to take a look, but to me the file was just columns of numbers. I clicked print and opened another file. This one was clearly some kind of financial statement. I clicked print and opened another.

  Take a look at these, and we’ll talk, Wendy had said, but she was giving me way too much credit. I could tell a balance sheet from an income statement, but that was about the limit of my accounting abilities. What I needed was Wendy standing over my shoulder to tell me what I was looking at.

  “What’re you working on?” a voice said behind me, and I spun in my chair. Because the chair swiveled, the results were not as spectacular as they had been down in the food court. I stayed in my seat, though I found myself looking up at Pete Larsen through round eyes with my breath coming hard.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He came in and sat across from me. “I left you a message this morning, but hadn’t heard back from you.”

  My eyes shifted to the telephone and back to his spare, angular face. “I forgot.”

  He smiled. “What are you working on so intently?” He nodded at the computer screen behind me.

  “Financial statements,” I said inadequately.

  His eyebrows rose.

  “The Ledbetter case,” I said, feeling both uneasy and pleased with myself at how easily the lie came to me. “Punitive damages are an issue, you know, and…”

  He waved it off. “What I wanted to talk to you about is McCormack Labs,” he said. “I have some good news.”

  I don’t think he could have surprised me more if he’d sprouted horns.

  “Good news?” I repeated.

  “They’ve hired us to defend their class-action litigation for them, the mass-tort stuff.”

  To surprise me any more he’d have had to sprout wings as well as horns and fly around the room. He raised his fists in the air and shook them. “We’ve hit the mother lode, Robin,” he said, his voice trembling. “In two years, the Northcutt law firm will be twice the size it is now. The partners’ incomes are going to double.”

  I, of course, wasn’t a partner.

  “It means you, too, Robin. In a year, you’ll be up for partner, and being a partner is going to mean a lot more at the Northcutt firm than it used to.”

  My smile was as sincere as I could make it. “That’s great, Pete. It’s really great.”

  “You’re one of the first to know. I’ll be meeting with Al Baldridge this afternoon to hash out the broad outlines of the deal. All goes well, and we’ll be making a general announcement Monday morning.”

  “Who’s…”

  “Al’s the head of their legal department.”

  “Don’t they have about sixty lawyers working for them? Why aren’t they handling their litigation in-house?”

  “They’re transactional lawyers. They hammer out deals and draw up contracts. They don’t have any experience in the courtroom.”

  I nodded. I had one more question, but I wasn’t going to ask it. I’d had a message from Pete before eleven o’clock, and, when I hadn’t responded, he’d come and found me. Why was he so anxious to tell me about this?

  Pete’s smile dimmed a bit, which was a relief, because it let me drop mine. “There is one thing,” he said.

  I braced myself.

  “I understand a friend of yours worked for McCormack Labs, and she was murdered several days ago. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry wasn’t one of the things Pete did best, but he was making an effort. I nodded.

  “Al said he had one concern about taking us on. You.”

  “I was the concern?”

  “He thinks you may blame McCormack for what happened to your friend. He said you might have some kind of bee in your bonnet.”

  “He said that? Bee in my bonnet?”

  Pete’s mouth twisted. “His words, I assure you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him Northcutt lawyers didn’t wear bonnets and that you were a litigator, not a beekeeper. Was I right?”

  I nodded, though not quite willingly. “Did it seem to satisfy him?”

  “Yes, it did.” Pete slapped his thighs and stood up. “Just so we’re clear on that.”

  “Pete?”

  He turned back in the doorway.

  “How well do you know Al Baldridge?”

  He shrugged. �
�I’ve known him slightly for years. I think we played a round of golf once upon a time.”

  “How many conversations have you had with him about us working for McCormack?”

  “Two.” Pete came back into the office and stopped directly in front of my desk, frowning down at me.

  “Both of them this week?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  I shook my head, shrugged, and smiled, all at the same time. “I don’t know. It all just seems kind of sudden, like it fell out of the sky.”

  He relaxed. “It’s all tentative at this stage. Al and several members of his staff will be meeting with us over the next month or so, finalizing the agreement.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Sure.”

  He looked at me a moment, then turned to go. In the doorway he stopped. “I know this sounds crazy,” he said, turning around again. “But I need your assurance you aren’t going to mess this up for us.”

  “You have it.”

  He grinned. “Oh, I know. It’s just that Al seemed kind of…” His head moved as he searched for the right word. “…focused on you.”

  “Huh,” I said. I remembered what Wendy had told me: If what I’ve found are two sets of books, then the fraud goes all the way to the top.

  Chapter 23

  That afternoon I ran errands, my first stop being a bail bondsman named Ricky “The Clubfooted Tornado” Anderson. It seems that in earlier life he had been a professional wrestler. There was a picture of a man in a red cape on the wall behind his desk that I could only assume was Ricky Anderson himself. The man in the picture, though, looked nothing like the bearded, barrel-bellied, bald-as-a-goose-egg man on the other side of the big oak desk.

  He had a lot of questions about John Parker, as well as a two-page form for me to fill out. Many of his questions had to do with John’s family, and I was embarrassed to find that I couldn’t answer many of them. After all, I’d been sleeping with the man for three months. Though I hadn’t told John about my father’s betrayal until this week, he’d heard more about my deceased grandma than I knew about his entire clan. His mother had been married a few times, I knew. She was in Houston, but I was uncertain as to what her current name was. Her first name, I thought, was Sarah.

  “Sarah?” Ricky, the club-footed tornado, repeated in a gravelly voice as he wrote the name on the back of the form I had filled out so sketchily.

  “Or Linda,” I said.

  He crossed out Sarah.

  “John has a sister up in Indianapolis.”

  “And her name?” He looked over his half-glasses at me.

  “Maybe her name is Sarah.”

  “Sarah Parker?”

  “Maybe I should take the form and get him to fill it out.”

  He pushed it toward me across the oak desktop. “Maybe you should,” he said.

  “But you can handle the bond,” I said, seeking reassurance.

  “If he deposits twenty-five thousand dollars with me, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Does he get any of it back?”

  “Some of it.” He pointed at the papers in front of me. “That yellow sheet is our fee schedule.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’d gotten a form from the law firm’s office manager that would allow John to borrow against the funds in his 401(k), so I was ready to return to the jail. I left my car in front of the bail bondsman’s office and walked. It was only two blocks. As I walked, I reflected that the lack of genuine love in my relationship with John hadn’t been all on his side. If I’d been more interested in him as a person, I’d know more about his family. I’d know more about a lot of things.

  “You’re a superficial person, Robin Starling,” I said to myself. There were people on the sidewalk, but nobody reacted to my outburst. With the growing popularity of Bluetooth, it looked like half the people you saw were talking to themselves.

  What concerned me was this: If I hadn’t loved John, even after nine months, then maybe I wasn’t capable of love.

  “That would suck,” I said as an approaching group of women in nursing smocks parted to walk around me.

  None of them even glanced at me.

  John’s mood seemed to have deteriorated since that morning. I thought at first that the seriousness of his situation had been working on him, but it turned out to be cellmate problems.

  “The guy they’ve got me with is in a Lewis Carroll play with the Richmond Community Theater. He gets out of jail the week before opening night, and he keeps wanting me to read his lines with him. He talks all the time. And his breath smells of sour vomit.”

  “Not like the sweet vomit you’re used to?”

  He made a face.

  “What’s the play?” I asked. “I didn’t think Lewis Carroll was a playwright.”

  “What difference does it make? ‘Through the Looking Glass’ or something. I don’t know.”

  “What’s he in for, your roommate?”

  “Unpaid parking tickets. He gets a hundred dollar credit for every twelve hours he spends in jail.”

  “And they put him in with an accused murderer?”

  “He thinks it’s cool.”

  “I think it’s irresponsible.”

  “He’s a two-hundred-pound biker who likes to sit around in his underwear so I can admire his tattoos. If anyone’s at risk, it’s me.”

  “So he likes you.”

  “Yeah. Great.” John started filling out forms and signing things. It was an hour before he finished.

  “It’s the weekend,” I said. “Even if they’re willing to wire this into your checking account, it’ll be Monday before we can get you out of here.”

  He nodded. “O frabjous day,” he said. “Callooh. Callay.”

  “Have you called the office?” I asked. “What have you told them?”

  “That I’m sick.”

  “That’s it? Sick?”

  “Specifically that I’m blowing chow at both ends.”

  “Not quite as poetic as ‘callooh, callay.’”

  “Oh, I didn’t put it quite that way. I said just enough to suggest that the details are something nobody wants to hear.”

  Chapter 24

  It was nearly six o’clock when I turned onto my home street, which was earlier than usual. I had work piling up in my inbox, but I wanted to get into my house and out again well before dark. I stopped at the curb in front and walked across the street to Dr. McDermott’s.

  On my way out I had called him on my cell phone, and his door opened as I came up the sidewalk.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “I’m ready.” He sounded a little grim, though, and he was holding a pistol. He pulled back the slide as he came down the steps to the sidewalk, and it slapped back into place.

  “You bought a gun,” I said.

  “I already had it. After what happened to you last night, I took it out and cleaned it.”

  I tried to think back fifty years to what war he might have been in, and the closest I could come was Korea. “Were you in the Army?” I asked. “Or…”

  “Army, but this came later. No good reason for getting it, I guess. When I was an intern, several of us bought guns and took up target shooting.” We turned onto my sidewalk. “You’re welcome to stay with me, you know.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it. But I have a friend who’s out of his apartment for the next couple of days, and that’ll be fine.” The friend, of course, was John Parker. It would be Monday or Tuesday before I could get him out of jail, and I had a key to his place.

  “But you…” He fell silent as I stepped up onto the porch and put my key in the lock. I think we were both holding our breaths as I pushed at the door.

  I don’t know what we expected. The door swung slowly inward to reveal my living room — no visible intruders, everything looking just as it had when I'd last seen it.

  I exhaled as Dr. McDermott did the same.

  “I think we’re okay,” I said.

  He nodded. When I went in, though,
he stayed close behind me, and he kept his gun up, pointed at the ceiling like a cop on television.

  In my bedroom the light on the answering machine was blinking lazily. One message. I sat on the bed and pressed the button.

  “Robin. I—” A woman’s voice, sounding hesitant. “If you get this, call me.” She gave a number and hung up.

  “Who was that?” Dr. McDermott asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “If you get this? She was calling your house. Why wouldn’t you get it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  I didn’t like it either, but that just made it par for the course. I wrote the number down on the square notepad by the phone and ripped off the top sheet. “I’ll call her when I get where I’m going.”

  We were out of the house in fifteen minutes. I said good-bye to Dr. McDermott on the front lawn, got in my car, and watched him cross the street to his house. Then I pulled away from the curb and drove to John’s apartment.

  After I had moved in, laying out my toilet articles on the bathroom counter, hanging up some clothes and stacking others along the bedroom wall in neat piles, generally making the place my own, I was feeling hungry. John had a frozen brick of lasagna in his freezer, a case of beer in his refrigerator, and an open bag of chips in one cabinet, but almost nothing else.

  What the heck, I thought, turning on the oven to 450. I tried to screw the cap off a bottle of Corona, though I wasn’t a beer drinker. The cap hurt my hand, but didn’t come off. There was a bottle opener stuck magnetically to the side of the fridge. When I’d got the cap off, I took a swig of the beer and choked on it, then noticed a lime sitting alone on the counter by the sink. It couldn’t hurt.

  With half the lime squeezed into the bottle and a slice of lime wedged into the neck, I tried again and found that it didn’t help, either. But I carried the bottle into the living room where John’s phone was, so I could make a call while the oven preheated.