Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “You already apologized, this morning.”

  Grinning, Tom held out a large paper sack with his other hand. “I brought dinner, too, and wine. Nothing fancy.”

  The tantalizing aroma of garlic and herbs drifted in my direction. “You might have called,” I observed coolly.

  “I did. Your line was busy.”

  “Did it ever cross your mind I might have plans for the evening?”

  “Do you?”

  I hesitated. “No. But I’m tired. I’ve had a busy couple of days.”

  “Then you ought to be especially grateful you don’t have to cook.” Tom stepped through the door and headed for the kitchen as though he owned the place. “I just have a few last minute preparations to take care of.”

  I followed at his heels. “I never cook.”

  “Never?”

  “Almost never.”

  “You should. It’s good for the soul.” He set the wine on the counter, then began unloading plastic-capped bowls. He took another look at the raincoat and frowned. “You want to slip into something cooler? It was eighty-five degrees in the shade this afternoon.”

  I was beginning to understand what had prompted Tom’s wife to run off with the contractor. Even if the guy did nothing more than grunt and watch TV all evening, he was probably a lot easier to live with than her ex.

  “Go on,” Tom said, sifting through my carefully boxed crate of kitchen giveaways. “I can handle things in here.” He retrieved a frying pan and a medium-sized saucepan. Then he turned again to his bag and pulled out a glass bowl filled with the most scrumptious looking salad I’d seen in a long time. Crisp lettuce, avocado slices, mushrooms, bright red cherry tomatoes.

  Soggy pizza seemed suddenly a most unappetizing alternative. “I’ll just be a minute,” I told him.

  He grinned again, and his eyes crinkled. “Take your time.”

  I didn’t make a big deal of it, but I didn’t exactly rush either. I took a shower, freshened my make-up and slipped into jeans and a jersey shirt. I realized only after the fact that I’d chosen my favorite shirt, the one everyone tells me clings in just the right places and turns my eyes an enticing emerald green.

  Loretta, who’d been watching my toilette with bland indifference, followed me back to the kitchen and cozied into the space between Tom and the stove.

  “Hope you like garlic,” Tom said. “This is a pasta sauce I learned to make when Lynn and I were living in Italy. Very authentic. There’s not a tomato in it.”

  It smelled divine. My stomach was already nudging me in anticipation.

  “When were you in Italy?”

  “Before Los Angeles. My daughter was born there, but we left when she was still a baby.”

  “How many kids do you have?”

  “Two. A girl and a boy.” Tom handed me a spoon. “You want to stir this while I toss the salad?”

  “They’re with you on weekends?”

  “Every other weekend. And some Tuesdays.” For just a moment a shadow crossed his face, then the cocky look dropped back into place. “I think we’re about ready. You do have a couple of plates that aren’t packed away, don’t you?”

  I did, and I got them out, along with silverware and candles and real cloth napkins embroidered by my mother. The pasta was every bit as good at it smelled, the salad as fresh and crisp as it looked, and the wine so smooth I began to think Tom’s wife might have been a fool to leave, after all.

  By the time we’d finished dinner, and the entire bottle of wine, we’d just about caught up on the past twelve years. We’d also exchanged a lot of surreptitious glances as we sized each other up, and laughed at a lot of things that weren’t all that funny.

  “I’m out of coffee,” I told him, “unless you’re fond of instant made from gluey crystals.”

  He smiled. “I’ll pass.”

  We were clearing the table when the phone rang. “Hi,” Sara said, “I got your messages. I’d have called you earlier, but I didn’t want to add to your troubles.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Tom. “Can I call you back?”

  “I’m going out again in about half an hour. I, uh, probably won’t be back till late.”

  “How late?”

  She laughed. “Tomorrow morning. Why don’t you call me at work? The stuff that’s going on around here isn’t anything you want to rush to hear anyway.”

  Tom was wiping cheese crumbs from the table when I hung up. “That your boyfriend?”

  I shook my head.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I told you, it wasn’t him.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  I gave him a sour look, which I had to cut short because the phone rang again. It was Jannine this time, sounding as though she were teetering on the edge.

  “The police were here this morning.”

  “Again?”

  “With a search warrant.” Her voice was thin and tight. “There were three of them. They went through the whole house, closets and everything. It was awful.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  She made a low moaning sound. “I don’t know. We didn’t exactly have a conversation.”

  Benson had to have known. All the talk about cooperation and meeting him halfway, and he hadn’t even been completely honest with me. But then, I reminded myself, neither had Jannine.

  “You’re coming tomorrow?” she asked abruptly.

  The funeral. “Of course I’m coming.”

  “Will you ride with us? I need somebody strong like you, or I’ll never make it through.”

  “Do you want me to meet you at the house?”

  “Would you? I’d really appreciate it. You’ve no idea how difficult this is going to be.”

  “How about tonight? Do you want me to come by now?”

  “I’m okay. But thanks.”

  She didn’t sound okay.

  “Kali?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How’d you make out at the mall?”

  I bit my lip, wavered, then opted for the hard truth. “I couldn’t find anyone at all who remembered seeing you.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “I was afraid of that.” Her voice caught, and she took a deep breath to even it out again. “So what do we do now?”

  “We keep looking, picking at things until something begins to unravel.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  It was my turn to take a deep breath. “We shoot holes through their case in court. If it comes to that.”

  She made a wheezing sound, deep in her throat. “It won’t . . . I can’t . . .” Her voice was thin and high- pitched.

  “That’s a long way off,” I told her.

  She mumbled something I couldn’t make out and then was quiet. “I went through Eddie’s things,” she said, after a moment. The frantic overtones had faded. “I’ve got a box of stuff to give you tomorrow. Everything was kind of jumbled. I guess the police don’t care how they leave things. It all looks pretty ordinary though.”

  It probably was. I told her I’d take a look anyway.

  “And I called the bank,” Jannine continued. “You were right about the ten thousand. It’s right there in our account.”

  “Can they tell you were it came from?”

  “Eventually, unless it was a cash deposit. But it will take time. Maybe a week or so. Do you think it might point the police to someone besides me?” Her tone was hopeful.

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, Jannine. Get through the funeral first.” I caught myself on the brink of telling her everything was going to be all right, but I stopped short because I wasn’t so sure myself. Instead, I mumbled a few generic encouragements, then hung up.

  “The Marrero murder?” Tom asked.

  “How’d you come up with that?”

  “Jannine, funeral, court. It wasn’t hard.” He was rinsing the plates and loading them into the dishwasher. “I’m a journalist, remember? That’s the kind of stuff I pick up on.”

 
I sat down at the table and stared at my hands. “The way you guys in the press are going after this, she’ll be convicted before she’s ever arrested.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the First Amendment.”

  “Oh, come on. This isn’t about freedom of the press. It’s about selling papers. The Hadley Times’ picture of Jannine was bigger than the one they ran of Eddie.”

  Tom turned off the faucet, then dried his hands with a paper towel. “I wouldn’t judge all newspapers by The Hadley Times. ”

  I was being unfair, and I knew it. That morning’s Mountain Journal hadn’t even run the story on the first page. And Jannine’s name had been mentioned only as a possible suspect in an ongoing investigation.

  “In fact, some of us take our responsibility rather seriously.” Tom had been rooting around in the back closet. He came up, finally, with an old bottle of brandy. “You want some?”

  “Make yourself right at home,” I muttered.

  He smiled. “I will, thanks.” He set the bottle on the table, then started going through boxes until he found glasses which met his approval. “I have a friend who’s a cop,” Tom said, over his shoulder. “An inside source. If I wanted to get into a spitting contest with those folks at The Hadley Times, I could, easily. That’s not my style, though. Official department line is the investigation’s still open. That’s my approach, too.”

  He offered me a glass of brandy, and even though I was already sailing comfortably along under the rosy glow of wine, I accepted.

  “Is the investigation still open?”

  “For the moment. Daryl Benson is a cautious man. He’s had run-ins with the D.A. before. Now that he’s only a couple of years from retirement, he’s treading lightly.”

  A confession would certainly make it easy for him. No wonder he was pushing so hard for Jannine’s cooperation. “Nothing the police have, including the gun, proves she did it,” I reminded him.

  “Not conclusively. You have to admit she’s a pretty logical suspect, though. In light of everything.”

  She was, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Even to Tom.

  “You acting as her attorney?”

  “Friend, mostly. But attorney too, I guess.”

  Tom sipped his brandy. “What have you come up with?”

  “A lot of pieces that don’t fit.”

  For a moment, I debated the wisdom of talking with a newsman. But as long as Tom had the inside dope from the police, I figured he might as well have a look at the other possibilities as well. Besides, I trusted Tom. Trusted him even though he’d been a pain in the ass when I was a kid, and was still able to raise my hackles. Maybe it was just the wine and the warm spring evening, but I was willing to bet that underneath, where it counted, he was about as honest as they come.

  While we finished our brandy, I told him what I’d learned, which sounded as disjointed in the retelling as it did in my mind. We tossed ideas around for a bit, then Tom looked at his watch.

  “I need to get going,” he said. “And I promise, no early morning hammering.”

  We walked to the door, stepping over Loretta who lay sprawled in the center of the hallway.

  “Thanks for having dinner with me,” he said, and knuckled my neck like he’d done years ago when he and John were trying to stir up trouble.

  It didn’t smart the way it used to, though. In fact, it felt kind of nice.

  Chapter 13

  Eddie’s funeral was a well orchestrated affair, tastefully somber without being at all mawkish. There were innumerable references to his standing in the community and efforts on behalf of the town’s young people, mercifully few to God and His mysterious ways, and none at all to the violent manner of the death we were there to mourn. The minister had been acquainted with Eddie, however peripherally, so we were spared the vague platitudes and hesitant tones of those paid-by-the-hour ministers who usually sound as though they’re auditioning for a role they don’t want. Even so, I had trouble reconciling the shiny black coffin near the front of the church with the pictures of Eddie that played in my mind.

  Because I’d been sitting up front with Jannine and her family, I didn’t realize what a crowd there was until the service ended and we left the church. The funeral procession stretched for blocks. Like a long, slow-moving string of ants, we wound our way through town and out to the cemetery, passing first through the older section where the headstones read like a history book, and then finally into the newer, more manicured portion. The headstones there are polished granite, all of a uniform size and design, much like the housing tracts going up at the edge of town. Even the trees in this section, evergreens undoubtedly planted by cemetery designers, have a clipped, orderly look to them. A marked contrast to the gnarled old oaks that dot the surrounding hills.

  We parked, then drifted onto the knoll, where we stood silently, and a little awkwardly, in the bright noon sun until everyone was assembled. I listened to the mockingbird off in the distance and tried to keep my gaze from drifting to the spot farther on where the grass was newly patched from my father’s burial a week earlier. That day there had been only four of us —Sabrina and I, my father’s younger brother who’d driven up from Fresno, and the mortuary chaplain in his dark three-piece suit. I’d focused on the business of getting him buried, one more detail to cross off my list. Today I let myself dwell on life and death, and that single point in time when they join. And I stared out at the sea of faces around us and wondered if anyone there knew what it was that had brought Eddie to that moment.

  While we waited for stragglers, the minister mopped his brow and ran a finger under his collar. He murmured something to one of the representatives from the funeral home, who in turn said something in Spanish to another man. Off to one side, I caught a young woman staring hard in our direction and wondered fleetingly if she was the other woman in Eddie’s life.

  When the last of the mourners had finally joined the group, the minister said a few words, then asked us to bow our heads in prayer as the casket was lowered into the earth. Jannine was standing between her mother and me, with her children assembled in front. I heard her breath catch when the ceremonial spade of soil struck the casket, but she held her head level and her eyes were dry. Somewhere she had found an inner strength that amazed me. After the minister said a few more words, a woman with tight blonde curls and visible streaks of pink blusher sang an off-key solo of “Amazing Grace.”

  And then it was over. The crowd dispersed, and we made our way individually to the Langleys’ for bodily nourishment and spiritual fortification.

  The Langleys’ house was a fairly new, excessively fancy ridge top villa that looked to me more like a mausoleum than the place we’d just come from. But Marlene had been right. It was spacious and ideally suited for entertaining, something at which Mrs. Langley seemed quite proficient. While Mrs. Langley greeted guests and directed them to the various tables of food and drink, Marlene took Jannine off to the side and settled her onto a comfortable couch. There were a couple of chairs angled next to it, presumably for those who wished to offer words of comfort.

  “Thank goodness this day is almost over,” Nona said, joining me in the alcove off the dining room.

  “Jannine seems to be holding up remarkably well,” I observed.

  “She didn’t really want any of this foofaraw, particularly with people saying the things they’re saying about her, but you know how it is. Sometimes it’s hard to say no.”

  “Especially for Jannine.”

  “Yes, she’s a great believer in peace at all costs.” Nona started to say something more, then stopped, pulling her mouth tight “Have you managed to see Benson yet?” she asked, after a moment.

  “Yesterday.”

  Nona looked at me expectantly, her expression an odd mix of hopefulness and dread. “What did he say?”

  I looked over at Jannine in the far corner, surrounded by a small group of women. Her head was bent, her hands clasped tight in her lap, b
ut she managed to look up every now and then, and nod at one of her companions. With the exception of a few bleak moments, she’d managed to hold herself together. But I wasn’t sure how long she could sustain it. An arrest, the ensuing trial, I hated to think what it might do to her.

  I looked back to Nona and sighed. “The police don’t have anything concrete, but they’ve got enough to make them think they can build a case. And I haven’t found anything so far to blow it apart. No one remembers seeing Jannine at the mall last Saturday, and she has no proof her gun was stolen.”

  Nona drew in a sharp breath. "This isn’t going to work, is it? You’re not going to be able to stop them.” Her voice was tight. Her hands twisted and kneaded, mirroring the panic inside. “Dear God, I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what to do at all.”

  I took her hands in mine and held them steady. They were frailer than I remembered, the skin soft and loose like worn flannel. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll find something. It’s just a matter of digging. I’ve already come up with a couple of things that may lead somewhere.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Nona. She pulled herself together, mentally dusting off the places that had scraped bottom. She gave me a feeble smile. ‘‘Thank you, Kali. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  I smiled back, reassuringly. After a moment, I said, “I need to ask you some touchy questions. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She raised a brow, curious.

  “Did Eddie and Jannine have a good marriage?”

  The curious look gave way to a frown. “Jannine doesn’t talk to me about such things.”

  “From what you’ve seen, though, did they get along?”

  “People work things out in their own way, you know.” There was a pause. “Anyway, Jannine just sort of let things roll over her.”

  “Let what roll over her?”

  It took a moment for Nona to answer, but she finally stopped biting her lower lip and looked at me. “You know, the sarcasm, the insults. I can’t remember any specifics, but the gist of it was that she was fat and stupid and dull. Seemed like lately Eddie found fault with everything she did.”