Laughing Heirs (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “That’s something,” I said.

  “Wait a minute,” Brooke said. “What petition? I’m missing something.”

  We filled her in. When she had it straight, she said, “There’s a lot going on here, and Macy Buck’s death is tied into it somehow. Brian did not walk into her house and stick a butcher knife in her.”

  “His connection is through his relationship with Whitney.”

  “I think we need to know more about Jared and Nathan.”

  “Rodney’s been working on it.”

  She turned to him. “What have you found out?”

  He cleared his throat, looked at me. I shrugged, then nodded.

  “Let me get my notes,” he said.

  He came back with a manila folder, sat, and crossed his legs as he opened the folder. “Okay,” he said. “Jared Walsh, age 39. Married twice, the first time to a Valerie Johnson for a couple of years in his early twenties, most recently to a Jennifer Pace. That ended six years ago, about the time she was starting a residency at MCV and both of them were declaring bankruptcy.”

  “Jennifer is a medical doctor?” Brooke asked.

  I was thinking about Jared’s bankruptcy. I couldn’t recall any reference to it in the petition for conservatorship, but it would have posed an obstacle to Jared’s getting himself appointed.

  “Internal medicine,” Rodney said. “During their marriage, Jared was investing in real estate, mostly rent houses and small apartment buildings in the block or two south of the Fan.”

  “Marginal neighborhood,” I noted.

  “Transitional neighborhood,” Rodney said. “Or it was. A decade ago, prices were climbing pretty fast.”

  “And Jennifer was part of this real estate empire?”

  “I don’t think so. She was in med school. As his spouse she signed all the loan documents, though, so when the real estate crisis came, it took her down with him.”

  “How long were they married?” Brooke asked.

  “Four years. They have a ten-year-old son named Mason who’s in the fifth grade at Southampton Elementary.”

  “Does Jared pay child support?”

  “Three-fifty a month.”

  I said, “That doesn’t sound like much for a man who lives in Jared’s neighborhood.”

  “An unemployed man who lives in Jared’s neighborhood. Actually, that figure was part of the divorce decree. It could have changed since.”

  “Is Jared unemployed or self-employed?”

  Rodney inclined his head. “Depends on how you define it. He still buys and sells real estate, but it’s all in the name of an LLC owned by two brothers named Strumpf. They made their fortune with a chain of pawn shops that was bought out by Cash America a decade or so ago. I’ve got copies of the articles of organization, and as near as I can tell, Jared has no equity stake in the LLC. He’s working under some kind of commission arrangement.”

  He fell silent, evidently to allow for questions. “How about Nathan?” I said.

  Rodney shuffled his papers, then leaned back. “Nathan Walsh, age 33,” he said. “Started college at Virginia Tech, came home and took some courses at J. Sargent Reynolds, then enrolled at VCU and came within a course or two of finishing. Talked his dad into financing a business venture about five years ago…”

  “Knockers?”

  “You know about that. Yes. Kind of a Hooters knock-off, evidently. He was open less than a month. There was some kind of trademark infringement suit, some violations of city codes. The service was bad, the food was bad…Pretty clearly Nathan didn’t know anything about running a restaurant.”

  “How do you know about the bad food and service?” I asked. “Internet reviews?”

  His gaze stayed on his papers, but his ears turned pink.

  “Rodney Burns,” Brooke said. “You were a customer.”

  “Just the once.” He flapped his hand as if to brush it away. “Food was bad, you know. The service.”

  “Does ‘bad service’ mean the girls were inefficient?” I asked. “Or that they weren’t pretty?”

  “They were okay, I guess, but, you know, slow.”

  I eyed him. “But you didn’t go back.”

  “No. Like I said, it closed.”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes you think you know someone.”

  “How did they dress?” Brooke asked. “Did they wear undersized shorts, scoop necklines, cut-off T-shirts, that sort of thing?”

  His ears had gone beyond pink almost to burgundy. My cell phone dinged, and I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. It was a text from Mike McMillan. “Paul at MCV, collapsed at work. Going now.”

  I stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

  Brooke said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Rodney said, “I hope you don’t…”

  I sat down again and grabbed at my cross-trainers. “Not at all. You like pretty girls who smile at you. What man wouldn’t? I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”

  Chapter 12

  The shortest way to MCV, the downtown hospital, went through the grounds of the state capitol. As I speed-walked up the hill, I fished out my cell phone and placed a call back to Rodney.

  “What have you got on Jack Packard?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Who’s he?”

  “Robert Walsh’s best friend, from what they tell me. If Robert was fighting with his nephews for control of his estate, his best friend might know something about it.”

  “I’ll look him up. Listen, Robin. I hope you don’t think I’m one of those creepy, middle-aged men…”

  “Time to let it go, Rodney. The damage is done.” It was probably not the kindest way to end the call, and I regretted it immediately. I was crossing Broad Street at that point, though, and didn’t have time to think about it.

  Ten minutes after I’d left the Ironfronts, I was walking through the door of the emergency room. I couldn’t have done much better if I’d gotten my car from the garage, and I couldn’t have been certain of a place to park. At the desk was a woman in purple scrubs with red hearts all over the top, which reminded me it was Valentine’s Day and I was going to have to do something for Paul.

  “I’m here to see Paul Soldano,” I said. “I understand he was brought in a short time ago.”

  Her eyes cut to her clipboard. “He’s in room 82. Are you family?”

  “Sister. Robin Starling. Do I need to sign something to go back? Which way is it?”

  “Room 82,” she said again. “Straight down this corridor, first left, third door on the left.”

  “Got it. Thanks.” I sped down the hall, sidestepping an old woman in a wheelchair with an IV pole attached.

  Paul was lying on a gurney and wearing a hospital gown. A tube from a bag of clear fluid ran to a needle in his left arm. Except for his disheveled hair and his sheepish expression, he looked pretty much like he had the last time I’d seen him.

  “I hear you passed out,” I said.

  “Yeah. Stupid of me. I was feeling light-headed, and I should have sat down.”

  I looked at the IV bag and saw they had him on saline. “So you’re dehydrated?”

  “Evidently.”

  I took his hand. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Has what been going on?”

  “Your love affair with Scarlett Johansson. The dizzy spells, you dope.”

  He shrugged.

  “Very communicative.” I studied him. “How much weight have you lost exactly?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Give me an estimate.”

  “Twenty pounds. Twenty-five.”

  “In a month?”

  “Or so. Five weeks, maybe.”

  “Are you counting calories? How many have you been getting a day?”

  “Not many.”

  I thought back over the last several meals we’d eaten together: A burger without a bun, a salad without dressing—a junior breakfast burrito, for heaven’s sake. “Fifteen hundred calories?” I guessed.

  He
looked uncomfortable.

  “Twelve hundred?”

  His expression didn’t change.

  “A thousand?” My voice had gone into its upper registers.

  “About that. I have an app on my phone that helps me keep track, but there’s some guesswork involved.”

  “A thousand calories a day for five weeks? Are you nuts?”

  He smiled weakly. “That’s what they tell me.”

  Mike McMillan came through the curtain. “I see reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated,” he said to Paul.

  “Hello, Mark Twain,” I said.

  “Robin Starling, English major.”

  “What’s your excuse?” I said.

  “Voracious reader.” To Paul he said, “How was the ambulance ride?”

  “Unnecessary. I was conscious before it got there, you know, but they wouldn’t let me stand up.”

  “You hit your head?”

  “I don’t know. It is a little tender.”

  “So you left the Fed on a gurney.”

  “Pretty embarrassing.”

  “Did you know he was on a hunger strike?” I asked Mike. “A thousand-calorie-a-day diet?”

  He moved his head. “I knew it was something like that.”

  “And you just let him do it? Why didn’t you say something to me?”

  “He was doing it for you.”

  “Doing it for me?” I looked back and forth between them. Paul was giving Mike a hard look.

  “Oops,” Mike said.

  “I want to know in what way this is my fault,” I said.

  “Nobody said…”

  Paul interrupted. “It isn’t your fault, Robin. Of course it’s not your fault.”

  “I’m going to step into the hall,” Mike said. “You two can talk.”

  “About what?” I said. “What’s this about?”

  But Mike was gone. I looked at Paul. “So what have you told Mike that you haven’t told me?”

  Paul shifted his gaze. He took a breath and released it, like he was steeling himself for an ordeal. I waited. I had a question on the table, and I wasn’t planning to speak again until I got an answer.

  “You remember the end of your last big trial?” he said finally. “We had that big celebratory dinner at Enrique’s, and afterwards you and I went to your house. We were on the couch and things were…”

  “I remember,” I said.

  His gaze flicked to my face. “Things progressed right up to the point…”

  “Yes, I remember,” I said again, feeling a growing sense of foreboding.

  “I know you do.” He took a breath and looked at the wall again, then with an effort turned his gaze back on me. “I guess this is the part I need to say. Okay?”

  My heart was pounding, and I didn’t know why. I nodded.

  “We progressed to the point that my shirt was open—I was wearing a T-shirt, like I always do, helps keep the flab from jiggling—and you were kissing me and…” He stopped and swallowed. “Your right hand was holding onto a big fistful of belly fat. And then it was over. You were getting up, straightening your clothes. I was buttoning my shirt. In fifteen minutes I was outside in my car trying to figure out what had just happened. Of course, I did figure it out. It didn’t take any great leap to see you were disgusted by all that blubber, and I don’t blame you. You thought you could overlook it, but when it came right down to it you just couldn’t.”

  His bleak smile sent a stab of pain right through me. “Paul,” I said. A tear broke from each of his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and my own eyes to start to leak in sympathy. I sat on the edge of his gurney. “I remember kissing you. I don’t remember squeezing your belly fat. Do you remember what you were doing at the time?”

  The hint of a smile quirked his mouth. “I guess I had my hands pretty much all over you.”

  “Pretty much, yeah. And you know where things were headed.”

  “I had my hopes.”

  “It wasn’t time for that. I’ve been in a relationship before.” I took a breath. “I’ve been in several relationships before. Once the sex starts—in itself, it’s pretty wonderful, of course—it puts all kinds of pressures on the relationship. We have a good thing going, you and I. I wasn’t ready to exchange it for something a lot less stable.”

  It’s hard to maintain eye contact with someone when both your eyes and his are leaking tears, but I held on.

  “Really?” Paul said in a squeaky voice. He cleared his throat.

  “Really,” I said.

  “I’m not too fat?”

  My mouth twitched. I leaned toward him until our noses touched. “Of course, you’re too fat. You’re too fat, and you leave the toilet seat up when you use the bathroom at my house. When you eat, I can hear you breathing through your nose. I’ve got problems, too, and I even know what some of them are. I’ll bet if I gave you a pen and paper, you could fill a page.”

  “Actually, you’re pretty perfect. I do wish you could be nicer to me sometimes.”

  “Paul.” I took his head in both hands, leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. I took my time about it. When I pulled back, I raised my eyebrows.

  “That was pretty nice,” he said.

  “For me, too. And I’ll try to make more of an effort, if I can do it without getting your libido stirred up.”

  He looked at me, and I looked at him. The eye contact was excruciating.

  At last Paul said, “Robin? Do women not have libido?”

  Well, that stung. It did kick me loose of all the naked-soul sincerity. “Someday, if we get to that point in our relationship, I’ll strip you naked and chase you through the house with a flyswatter. You’ll see.”

  His breathing kicked up a notch. “Is that a, uh, particular fantasy of yours?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. I’m a little disconcerted to realize it’s one of yours.”

  “I’m in the E.R. and out of nowhere you start talking about stripping me naked and chasing me around the house. You went from zero to sixty in a hospital zone.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go stirring up your libido.” I patted his cheek and stood. “Where’s your phone?”

  “In my pants pocket. Folded up there on the chair.”

  I fished it out and punched it on. “What’s your passcode?”

  “Ah. Well, that’s something else that’s embarrassing.”

  “Why embarrassing?”

  “Oh-nine-oh-eight.”

  My birthday. “What a coincidence,” I said, punching it in. “And you’ve got your fitness app open.” I tapped the little wheel for settings, tapped fitness goals… “You’re trying to lose five pounds a week. You are insane.” I changed it to one pound per week, tapped the screen again. “There, you can eat 2,000 calories a day. When I check this a week from now, I don’t want to see that you’ve been under eighteen hundred calories, ever. Do you understand me? If you don’t think you’re losing weight fast enough, you can kick up the exercise.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was a tap on the door, and I opened it. It was Mike.

  “Have you two got things sorted out yet? I’m getting strange looks out here.”

  “They’re sorted. Paul needs to eat, so he and I are going to be having a big dinner at Enrique’s tonight. Probably Brooke Marshall will be joining us. Are you in?”

  “Sure. I don’t usually get included in your little soirees.”

  My phone rang and I slid my finger across the screen, saying, “Maybe you don’t try hard enough.” Into the phone I said, “Robin Starling.”

  “Robin, it’s Whitney. The police are here with a warrant.”

  “Where, the coffee shop?”

  “Yes, Carytown Joe. They got here about ten minutes ago.”

  I looked at my watch. My car was across downtown. I was probably thirty minutes away. “Watch them. Pay attention to what they look at. If they take anything, they’re supposed to give you a receipt.”

  “What about pictures?
They’re taking pictures.”

  “What are they taking pictures of?”

  “Bills. Bank statements. Some printouts from QuickBooks.”

  “Keep paying attention. If they walk off with the computer, get a receipt. Find out when you’ll get it back—tell ’em you need it to run the business. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  I punched off.

  “Trouble?” Mike asked.

  “The police are searching Carytown Joe. Where’s your car?”

  “Parked on the street about half-a-block down.”

  “Can you give me a ride to my car?”

  “What about him?” He jerked his head in Paul’s direction.

  Paul’s eyebrows had gone up inquisitively. “Yes. What about me?”

  “You can be back in twenty minutes, tops,” I said to Mike.

  He smiled crookedly. “Maybe twenty-five. I’ll never find that parking space again.”

  “Paul will still be here. If they finish with him before you get back, they can leave him propped in a wheelchair by the door.”

  “Hey!” Paul said.

  I smiled at him. “It wouldn’t be for long.”

  Chapter 13

  Even with the lift from Mike it took twenty-five minutes to get to Carytown Joe. Only two of the tables were occupied, one by an old man reading a Wall Street Journal and having a pastry with his coffee, the other by a couple of middle-aged women with lattes. No one was behind the counter, but when I walked around it, I found Whitney in a small office. There were no police.

  “Did they run off your customers?” I asked.

  Whitney was sitting in a padded swivel chair, white faced and looking as if she were about to throw up. She shook her head. “Business will start picking up again about eleven-thirty.” She handed me a set of papers stapled at the top corners. It was the search warrant. I flapped back the top page to read the affidavit it was based on.

  “The police have talked to you before,” I said, looking up.

  “They’ve been in here, just making conversation it seemed like.”

  “But you told them Brian had a key to the shop.”

  “He does. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything.”

  I took a breath. “You need to tell me when the police come by.” The last page wasn’t stapled to the others. It was a receipt for a woman’s jacket, a dish cloth, and three assorted kitchen utensils. “Actually, from now on, you should not talk to the police except in my presence. Any question they ask, say you want your lawyer.”