Christina Sanders was somebody who I called, in my head, a mean girl grown up. That was what she looked like to me. Her hair was platinum blonde, but her eyebrows were dark brown. She was impeccably dressed in a grey suit with high-heeled Chanel pumps. Her nails were long, perfectly formed and bright red. She looked like a woman who didn’t work a day in her life, even though I knew that she had to, as she had five kids at home. That was work enough, but I wondered if she had a nanny who watched them while she drank gin and tonics with the girls. She struck me as the type.
She gave me a dirty look and started to whisper to her attorney. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I imagined that it wasn’t good. It never was whenever I had to deal with a grieving loved one. I had to do that far too often. This wasn’t the first time that I had to make a motion to a court to have a body exhumed. In fact, this was the third time that I had to petition the court for something like this. And, every time I did this, there was always a grieving person in the court room who would shoot me a dirty look. This time wasn’t any different.
“Okay, Mr. King and Ms. Ross,” Judge Graham said. “Come on up.”
Christopher and I went up to the bench. “Ms. Ross, I see that you have filed a petition to have Judge Sanders exhumed. You state that there wasn’t an autopsy and that, before the judge died, he showed signs of arsenic poisoning. Now, I will agree with you that there probably should have been an autopsy done, and I don’t really know why there wasn’t one conducted, but exhuming a body is not something that I order lightly.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But, your honor, in this case, I think that it’s necessary. I need to see if he was poisoned. Obviously, if he was poisoned, then I would approach the case in a different way.”
“Mr. King,” Judge Graham said. “What do you say to Ms. Ross? What are your objections to Ms. Ross’ motion to have Judge Robert Sanders exhumed?”
“Your honor,” Christopher began. “We do not feel that Ms. Ross has made a good faith petition for this. She only has suspicions that Mr. Sanders was poisoned. She has no proof.”
“Your honor, Mr. King has put me into a Catch-22. I don’t have actual evidence that Mr. Sanders was poisoned, although I have a strong suspicion that he was, because there wasn’t an autopsy done and the body hasn’t been exhumed. I obviously can’t prove it unless exhumation is ordered.”
Judge Graham sat back in her enormous black chair and glared at both of us. “I’m going to go ahead and order it. From what Ms. Ross indicates on this petition, Judge Sanders was suffering from unexplained symptoms for a month before he was killed. And these symptoms are consistent with arsenic poisoning. Somebody was remiss in not doing an autopsy on this poor gentleman, but Ms. Ross is correct – if there was evidence of poisoning of Judge Sanders, then the complexion of the case changes quite a bit.”
At that, Christina stood up. “No. I won’t let you do this. Let my poor father rest in peace. Please. Please, Judge Graham. I’ve suffered enough.” At that, she burst into tears. “Your honor, you don’t know how much pain I’m in right now. I have five children at home, and my husband is accused of murdering my father. My mother is so depressed that she can’t leave the house. My kids are having nightmares about their paw-paw. Now you’re saying that my father is going to be disturbed? I can’t take this. I just can’t take this. Please your honor. Please.”
Judge Graham looked like she was taking pity on poor Christina. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Sanders, but Ms. Ross has made a good case. According to her motion, your father showed classic signs of arsenic poisoning. His doctors apparently were never able to find anything wrong with him, although there was something clearly amiss with his health. He ended up being murdered in his home. I agree with Ms. Ross – there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark here, and she deserves to find out what it is.”
Christina started to wail and then she shot me the death glare. “Ms. Ross, how dare you. How dare you do this to us. I would like this to happen to you, so you can know what it feels like. I would like you to experience losing your father violently and see your loving husband arrested for his murder. I would like you to experience sleepless nights and have to tell your young children that their grandpa is never going to see them, ever again. I would like you to have to experience the pain of knowing that your beloved father is going to be removed from his final resting place and cut open like a frog on a biology table. I want you to experience everything that I’m experiencing, Ms. Ross, and maybe you’ll see what it’s like to be me.”
The ferocity of her reaction to the petition stunned me. I was expecting her to be upset, but not that upset. And I also was wondering why it was that she would oppose something that could possibly allow her precious “loving” husband to be exonerated. I narrowed my eyes, immediately wondering if she possibly had something to do with the whole murder.
I shook my head. I was going to have to keep her in mind, but I first was going to have to figure out what her relationship was with her father. If she was the one who had her own father killed and framed her husband, then there had to be something deviant behind the scenes. I made a mental note to check her out.
I turned back to the judge. “Okay, I need a timetable for the exhumation to happen. Obviously, because of the nature of what I’m requesting, time is of the essence. I would like to be present when the medical examiner does his autopsy. I would imagine that the April, the prosecutor, will want to be there as well. Give me a date for the autopsy and I’ll contact April and let her know.” I was surprised that April wasn’t there for this motion, even though she technically didn’t have to be there. I knew that she was a busy lady, however, so I wasn’t all that surprised.
“I’ll order an exhumation for next Tuesday,” Judge Graham said. “I’ll notify Ms. Todd and make sure that the two of you can be present for the autopsy.”
“Thank you, your honor.”
I turned around and saw that Christina was still giving me the stink-eye, even if she was calmer than she was before. I looked at her and almost saw the wheels turning in her pretty head. I walked past her and she grabbed me by the arm.
“Ms. Ross, I meant everything I said to you back there. I want you to hurt. I want you to feel pain. You’re putting me through all of this and you don’t seem to care.”
I took a deep breath, wanting to tell her exactly how much pain I had experienced in my life. Pain that was caused by her husband. I wanted to tell her about how he had his buddy hold his arms above my head while he raped me, and then held my arms while his buddy raped me too. I wanted to tell her that I was dysfunctional because of what Michael did to me and she could never know the depth of pain that I felt.
I didn’t say any of these things to her, though. I simply walked away. She wasn’t worth the energy.
GOING HOME THAT NIGHT, I knew that I was going to have to deal with Rina and Abby. I felt awful that they somehow thought that I was going to abandon them. I had no idea why they would think that, but I knew that I had to reassure them.
I picked up a pizza on the way home. It was a mushroom pizza, because I knew that was their favorite, and I picked it up at D’Bronx, which was their favorite pizza joint. I loved that little deli so much – it had become a Kansas City staple over the years. They were famous for their enormous sandwiches and their absolutely amazing authentic New York pizzas.
I got in the door and the girls attacked me. They both came up to me and wrapped their arms tightly around me. “Aunt Harper,” Abby said. “We’ve been dying to talk to you. We wanted to talk to you yesterday, and you didn’t want to talk to us and we’ve been paranoid all day long. Talk to us, Aunt Harper. Please.”
“Okay. Look, I have pizza. Let’s go and sit down at the table and eat. Let’s eat and we’ll talk. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
I put the pizza on the center of the table and the two girls got out two plates. Sophia left, because she always had to get home to her own children, and I sat down with
the girls.
Rina put three pieces of pizza on her plate and Abby glared at her.
“What?” she demanded from Abby.
“Nothing. You’re always complaining about being fat, yet you’re taking three pieces of pizza.”
“Hey,” I said to the two girls. “First of all, Rina, you’re not fat. Not in the least. You’re beautiful and I don’t want to hear about being overweight. If you do get overweight, then we’ll talk, but only because I would be concerned about your health if you gain a lot of weight. But you’re a rail.” Rina was 11 years old, 5’2”, and she probably weighed less than 100 pounds. I knew that there was always a ton of pressure of girls to look like the cheerleaders and the popular girls, which usually meant that they couldn’t have any extra pounds. I wasn’t going to have that, though. I was going to nip that stuff in the bud.
Rina stuck her tongue out at Abby, who gave her a dirty look. “But Aunt Harper, if she keeps eating like this, she’s going to get fat. That’s what I’m saying.”
I rolled my eyes. “You do you, Abby. Let Rina be. As I told her, if she gains weight to where she becomes overweight, we’ll figure it out from there. For now, she’s beautiful and she’s growing and she doesn’t need your nagging.”
Rina smiled. “Thank you, Aunt Harper.”
“Not a problem. Now, we’re all sitting here at the table. I think that I know why you two girls believe that I’m ready to let you go. I feel awful that I was misunderstood. But I told Abby yesterday that the two of you might not have to call me Aunt Harper for long. What I meant was that I finally have a hearing for your adoption. They’re just going to use the home study that they did before, and Alexis is on board with it. There shouldn’t be any obstacles to my adopting you two. I guess what I meant to say was that I hope that you will soon be able to call me mom.”
The two girls were quiet, just staring at me. Then I saw that Rina had tiny tears in her eyes and Abby put her arm around her. “We’re going to have you as our mom? Really?” Rina’s voice was tiny, which was not like her at all. “I just can’t believe it. I…”
Abby came over to my side of the table and hugged me from behind. I put my hand on her arm and closed my eyes. These girls were a part of me. There wasn’t a chance I could let them go. Not now and not ever.
I stood up and spread my arms. Rina came over and I wrapped my arms around her and Abby. Rina was now sobbing. Her arms were around my waist and she was crying and so was Abby. “We’re going to have a mom. You don’t want to give us back. I was so scared.”
“Shhhh,” I said. “Why would you ever think that I would give you back? I would never do that. I love you two. I…”
Rina just shook her head. “I know kids, kids who were in foster care, and they go from one home to the next. I was so afraid that was going to happen to us. We love it here, Aunt Harper. We love it here, and we want to learn everything you do. At least I want to learn. I want to be an attorney just like you. But that’s not why I want to stay here so bad. I just love you, Aunt Harper. So does Abby.”
Abby nodded her head silently in affirmation of what Rina was saying. “We do love you. And we will be good.”
I put my arms on both girls and slightly pushed them off of me so that I could look them both in the eye. “Hey,” I said to both of them. “I don’t want you to think that you’re on pins and needles here. You guys are going to mess up from time to time, but that doesn’t mean that I love you any less or that I’m going to take you back. I don’t want either of you to ever imagine that you have to be perfect or good or any of that, because if you mess up, I might send you back to foster care. That ain’t gonna happen. I just want the two of you to be yourselves. Okay?”
The two girls nodded their heads silently.
“Now, let’s dig into this amazing pizza.”
The three of us sat down, and Rina rapidly ate the first piece of pizza while Abby slowly and deliberately ate her pizza with a knife and fork. “This is my favorite pizza of all time,” Abby said.
“Mine too,” Rina said.
“So, how was your day?” I asked them both. I always tried to ask them how their day was, and they generally told me what happened that day – both good and bad. Rina was more likely to dramatically tell me all the gossip at school, and Abby more or less stuck with what was going on in her classes and what homework she had.
“Oh my God, Aunt Harper, today was like the best day ever in school. The best day ever,” Rina said dramatically.
I smiled. For her, any day where there was some kind of juicy gossip happening was the best day ever. “Tell me about it, Rina. How was today the best day ever?”
“Well, we had a substitute teacher in biology class and that teacher was such a moron. I mean, totally clueless.” She rolled her eyes. “But it was so much fun, ‘cause we didn’t do much but watch a stupid movie. It as this old movie where these people get really little and small and they go into this dude’s body to do stuff. They get attacked by red blood cells and all these cool things.”
I nodded my head. “Fantastic Voyage. I remember it well. I’m surprised that they still trot that old movie out for your generation. I loved that movie, though.”
“Yeah, it was alright. I just loved that class today, because it’s so boring every other day. And I don’t have any biology homework, so it’s all rad.”
I smiled. “Any other reason why today was the best day ever?”
“Yeah. Amelia Stone broke up with Alex Carter. They were like the popular kids and they’ve been going out for three years now. That was like whoa!” She made the motion for mind blown. “I mean, really.”
“Three years? How old are they?”
Rina shrugged. “I don’t know, they’re in the 6th grade.”
I tried to suppress a laugh. “So, they’ve been hot and heavy since the 3rd grade then. They were a regular Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton couple.”
“Who are they?” Abby asked.
“Oh, Lord. Looks like the two of you have a lot to learn. Now, I know that this is probably going to be boring for you, but the two of you need to learn about actors from the golden age. Tell you what, this weekend, we’re going to watch some movies. Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and National Velvet with a young Elizabeth Taylor. I think that you’ll love both of those movies. Later on, I’m going to expose you to movies with Audrey Hepburn, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. At the very least, you girls need to know those actors. Otherwise…” I shook my head. “You just have to know these actors.”
Rina shrugged her shoulders. “If you say so, Aunt Harper. We’ll watch whatever you want to watch as long as it’s not boring.”
“Oh, you won’t be bored. Now, Abby, how was your day?”
“It was fine.” Her face brightened. “I was going to ask you if I can start playing an instrument in the band. It’s early enough in the semester that I can get in if I want. I want to play the flute.”
“The flute it is. We’ll go shopping for it.”
“Thanks, Aunt Harper.”
“Band geek,” Rina said.
“Hey,” I said to Rina. “There’s nothing wrong with playing an instrument. I played the flute myself when I was her age. I wasn’t very good at it, but I played it. It was a lot of fun.”
Abby made a face at Rina, and she punched her in the arm.
I rolled my eyes. “None of that. Now, I know that you girls have homework to do, so after dinner, you need to get on that. I’m here to help you with whatever you need.”
Rina groaned. “I hate homework.”
“Of course you hate homework. Trust me, in your life, you’re going to do a lot of drudgery that you’re going to hate doing. I hate doing depositions and doing taxes and paperwork. Life isn’t supposed to be all fun and games.” I raised an eyebrow. “Now, let’s get these dishes done and you two girls need to get to studying. Once you’re done studying, you can do whatever you want. But homework comes first.”
We all did the dishes
and the girls went to their rooms. I retired to my office and looked over some case law on Michael’s case before I fell asleep right there in the chair, fully clothed.
Guess I was tired.
CHAPTER TEN
“You’re doing what?” Axel asked me. He was over at my house, hanging out and watching movies with me and the girls, who each had a friend over with them. We were in the kitchen, doing dishes, while the girls were plopped down in front of the television set, watching some PG-13 movies, which are the only movies I allowed them to watch, aside from G and regular PG movies. “Do you mind repeating that for me?”
I drew a breath. “I’m representing the guy who raped me in college.”
He shook his head. “You never told that you were raped.” His face looked pained. “I’m very sorry to hear that. But I don’t understand. He’s been accused of murdering his father-in-law, and you took his case? What are you thinking, Harper?” He bit his lower lip. “Why didn’t you go to the police when it happened? And why don’t you go to the police right now? There’s not a statute of limitations on rape. That’s what you should be doing, Harper, not trying to get him off on this current crime.”
I scrubbed the dish that I was working on and put it into the dishwasher. “Axel, I think that you know better than that. Hell, I know better than that. You know what happens in those rape cases. The victim gets dragged through the mud, and I was traumatized enough by that happening. I wasn’t going to be re-victimized by the prosecutor bringing in witness after witness who would testify that I was dirty-dancing with Michael that night, and that I was blasted beyond recognition. That I was wearing a short skirt and a low-cut blouse. I wasn’t going to have my character assassinated. It was going to be ‘he said she said’ the entire way, and I just didn’t want to deal with it.”
Axel raised an eyebrow. “That was completely selfish, Harper. You let the bloke get away with it. Now he’s accused of murder. Are you so sure that he didn’t kill Judge Sanders?”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 40
