And what if he asked for a divorce? What if Ava told the judge that it was her or the other family, and he chose the other family? What then? If there wasn’t a prenuptial agreement, then Ava was faced with the prospect that she was going to have to give Judge Sanders half her fortune. That would be insult added to injury, to say the very least. That was the bad part of no-fault divorce, which was the law in Missouri – even though Judge Sanders apparently was acting atrociously, running around on his wife, he still would be entitled to half of what she had in the event of a divorce.
If I were in Ava Sanders’ shoes, I probably would have killed Judge Sanders. Nobody could blame her for doing that.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you know that happened after Mrs. Sanders found out about Mr. Sanders’ affair?”
She shrugged. “Nothing, really. They had a huge argument, but Mr. Sanders told Mrs. Sanders that he couldn’t stop seeing Carmela. He told Mrs. Sanders that he had a family with Carmela, and that he couldn’t just abandon the three children that they had together.” Anita shook her head. “And, oh Lord, that didn’t go over well. There was a lot of screaming going on for many weeks. Weeks of constant fighting and screaming and throwing things at each other. Well, Mrs. Sanders threw things at Mr. Sanders, although Mr. Sanders never threw anything at her. Every time Mr. Sanders left the house and did not come back for days on end caused another huge fight. He would come back in the house and Mrs. Sanders would violently scream at him to get out.”
“Did he get out?”
“No. He told her that this was his home, too, and that she couldn’t force him out.” Anita shook her head. “Oh, boy, but that was a problem, too. I heard Christina talking to Mrs. Sanders, and what she was saying was that Mrs. Sanders needed to divorce Mr. Sanders. Mrs. Sanders said that she couldn’t divorce him, although I never quite understood why. She did say things like she wanted to stay with him because her friends looked up to her because she was married to a federal judge. But I think that there were other reasons, too.”
Yes, there were other reasons why Ava could never divorce Judge Sanders. I had a feeling that I was probably right – her inheritance was converted into marital property, and she wasn’t about to give him a thin dime.
“So, there was that,” I said. “The other family he had. What else can you tell me about this family?”
Anita shook her head and started to speak in Spanish. She didn’t know that I could understand every word, but, from what I could tell, she was cursing and not really communicating anything important.
She lowered her voice. “His daughter. Christina.” She shook her head. “Oh, my. Mr. Sanders had been doing inappropriate things to her since she was 12 years old.”
I bowed my head. I had a hunch about that. I thought that might have been the reason why she was anorexic and had been in and out of psychiatric facilities. Maybe there were other reasons why she would have so many mental issues. I was going to have to ask Anita about that.
“And Mrs. Sanders didn’t suspect this, either?” What was this lady’s problem? Her husband had another family and he was sexually abusing his daughter, and she never suspected a thing. Really?
“Oh, no. Mrs. Sanders knew all about what was happening with Christina and her father. But she pretended not to. I overheard conversations between Mrs. Sanders and Christina, and Christina was trying to tell her what her father was doing to her. Mrs. Sanders shut her down every time Christina tried to say a word about it. Now, I do truly think that Mrs. Sanders had no idea that Mr. Sanders had another family or that he was having an affair with Carmela. I don’t know how she could have been so naïve, but she was.”
Maybe not naïve. Maybe she was willfully blind.
I cleared my throat. “And what about you? Did he try to make any indecent approaches to you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He never made any indecent approaches to me. I would have quit if he did. I don’t play that, mamacita.” She smiled and shook her head again. “No way.”
I mentally cleared Anita as a suspect in my head. But both Christina and Ava were looking more and more likely.
And if Ava did it, that cleared up another aspect that was nagging at me. I wondered how it was that somebody could have poisoned Judge Sanders without also poisoning Ava. They both probably drank from the same milk jug. Probably drank from the same pitcher of tea. If they drank wine, they probably shared the bottle of wine. It would be highly unusual for a married couple to not share the same drinks.
Then again, maybe not. Perhaps they lived separate lives, ever since the Judge was found to be messing around with Carmela Adams.
But that was probable – they shared the same milk jug and tea pitcher etc. If somebody else was surreptitiously poisoning Judge Sanders, then there was going to be a good chance that Ava was going to be poisoned as well. But if Ava was the one who was administering the poison…
“Tell me about how they lived. Did they live separate lives after Judge Sanders was found out?” I looked around, seeing that this house was a good 6,000 square feet. It had different wings. It would be extremely easy for a married couple to live completely separate lives in this home. If that was the case, then anybody could have poisoned the judge, because he might have his own separate refrigerator full of his own separate food.
“Of course,” she said. “Mr. Sanders was banished to the east wing. He moved out of their bedroom and that wing is an entire other house, really. It has its own kitchen, its own living room, three entire bedrooms. It’s a house within a house. That was where Mr. Sanders had to live.”
Back to square one. That meant that anybody who frequented this house could have poisoned Judge Sanders. That included Anita, Ava Sanders, Christina Sanders and Michael. All of them visited the house on a regular basis. Any one of them could have done it. Anita and Ava had the most access, because they were there every day, but there was also the chance that Christina or Michael could have done it.
“How often did Christina Sanders and Michael Reynolds visit this house?”
“Every week. They came over for dinner once a week.”
“Did Mr. Sanders have anything in his own special refrigerator that only he drank or ate? Did he buy milk by the gallon, or make pitchers of tea, or did he have bottles of unopened wine? Something that he drank every single day?”
She nodded her head. “Yes. He made a pitcher of tea every week. A new pitcher of tea. He drank two glasses a day, sometimes more. He also drank milk in his coffee every morning.”
Bingo. That seemed to be the best vehicle for poison. He had his own milk and his own pitcher of tea.
What was good was that, in my mind, Michael was still a suspect. I didn’t quite know what motive he had to kill Judge Sanders, but he still might have killed him. He still might have. I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle just yet, but I was going to.
“What kind of relationship did Michael Reynolds have with the judge?”
Anita shook her head. “Not good. Not good at all. I served all their meals, and, just about with every dinner, there was some kind of fight between Mr. Sanders and Michael. Michael would yell at Christina, would curse her out and insult her, right there at the table, and Mr. Sanders would yell at Michael. They always brought their children here, too, and they had to witness Michael say horrible things to Christina. He took pleasure, it seemed, insulting her right in front of everyone.”
“What kind of insults?”
“He called her fat, Miss Piggy, said that she shouldn’t take extra servings of food. He called her stupid, bitch, stupid bitch, told her that she was a bad mother, accused her of having sex with his best friends. You name it, he said it to her, right in front of everyone.”
I thought about Christina, who appeared to weigh about 120 lbs. She had problems with anorexia in the past, too. And he was digging at her right where it hurt her the most – she apparently had a dysmorphic body image to begin with, so he knew that if he called her fat in front of everyone, h
e would be harpooning her right through the heart. Maybe she also was insecure about raising her children. If he said things about her being a poor mother, then that, too, would be putting a dagger right into her core.
Michael apparently hadn’t changed since college. He was still just as sleazy. Still a bad, bad guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still raping women, too.
“What did Judge Sanders say to him when he was saying these cruel things to Christina?”
“They almost came to blows just about every week. But Michael and Christina would always be back the next week, because Mrs. Sanders wanted them to visit and bring the grand-kids.” She sighed. “There was always a lot of tension whenever Michael and Christina came to visit. I dreaded their visits for that reason.”
“What else can you tell me about the relationship between Michael and Judge Sanders?”
“Well, Mr. Sanders knew that Michael was cheating on Christina. I heard many conversations between Mr. Sanders and Michael, where Mr. Sanders was telling Michael that he knew about Michael’s affairs. He told Michael, in no uncertain terms, that if Michael didn’t come clean, he would tell Christina all about what Michael was doing.”
That was more promising. It was duplicative of what Judge Johnson had told me in Judge Sanders’ chambers. That gave me more of a motive for Michael to have killed the judge.
That gave me another idea – I was going to have to figure out exactly what Michael had to lose if he was forced to divorce Christina. As with Ava and Robert Sanders, perhaps Christina was the one who had the money. I was going to have to figure out if there was a trust fund set up for Christina, one that maybe Michael didn’t have access to. That would mean that Michael would have much to lose if Christina divorced him. He was an executive at an ad agency. He was highly paid, but he certainly wasn’t paid enough to live the kind of lifestyle that he was living. His house was also in one that was in one of the ritziest parts of town – he lived in the Hallbrook area, which was where business owners, CEOs, sports stars and major drug kingpins lived.
So, there was yet another theory of the case that I formulated – one that was as plausible as any other. Michael killed Judge Sanders because Judge Sanders was threatening Michael with telling Christina about his affairs. If Christina divorced him, he would be forced to come down in his lifestyle, and he had no desire to do this. So, he killed the judge.
While this was a good idea, it wasn’t a sure thing. It wasn’t even that good of a theory. I had to have something more solid, something that was more of a smoking gun. Only then would I feel comfortable undermining Michael in his case. Only then would I feel right about sinking him.
It certainly wasn’t a sure thing in comparison to everything else. Christina had reason to kill the judge. Ava certainly had reason to kill him. All three of these people – Christina, Ava and Michael – had means to poison him.
But, even if I figured out who poisoned the judge, I couldn’t figure out one thing – why was the judge shot? Why wasn’t the poison just allowed to run its course? And why was Michael so open about telling me about the symptoms the judge exhibited? That made zero sense to me, if Michael was the culprit. I would think that he would keep quiet about the fact that the judge was sick, if he was the one who poisoned Judge Sanders.
Maybe it was all just a sick kind of reverse psychology again. Just like I suspected that Michael didn’t kill the judge because he called the police, maybe the same principle worked when Michael told me that his father-in-law was sick. Maybe he figured that I wouldn’t suspect him of poisoning his father because he was open about his father’s sickness. It would have looked as if he had something to hide if he didn’t tell me about Judge Sanders being sick, but I found it out later on independently.
This could all just be a game.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next day, I wanted to dig into everything I learned from Anita, but, unfortunately, Rina stopped me from doing any of that. I got a call from her school – I was commanded to pick her up. She had been suspended for fighting in the schoolyard.
As much as I wanted Sophia to tend to this little crisis, I knew that it wasn’t her duty to do so. It was mine. I was the guardian, soon to be the adoptive mother. I was going to have to deal with it all on my own.
It’s not a big deal. God knew I was suspended more than once when I was in school. Once for fighting, and once for smuggling in a flask of alcohol. Yes, I was that kid. The kid who started trouble. I even had purple hair, just like Anna had now. I gave my parents so much grief…Now, I guess it was my turn. I gave my parents Hell, now Rina was doing it to me.
Turnabout is fair play, after all.
I went up to her school, parking right in front, and went into the main building. Her private school was situated on acres of land in Leawood, Kansas. This was a school where the millionaires sent their children, and it cost me an arm and a leg to foot the bill. I was determined that I was going to foot that bill, though, because I wanted Rina and Abby to have the best education. I wasn’t a millionaire, of course – far from it. But the girls didn’t have their mother, so, in a way, my sending them to this fancy school was my way of making that up to them. I never could get over the guilt that they didn’t have their mother because of me.
I probably never would.
She was sitting in the office of the headmaster, her arms crossed in front of her. Her little legs were swinging back and forth, back and forth, underneath the chair. She saw me and she glared and then looked away.
I shook my head. She was going to give me attitude, and I wasn’t going to be having that. “I’m going to go and talk to the headmaster,” I told her. “I’ll be right out.”
She shrugged her shoulders and said nothing at all.
I went into the headmaster’s office after she summoned me in there. She motioned to me to sit down, which I did.
She grimaced as she looked at me. “I’m so sorry that you had to come down here,” she said. “This obviously isn’t the best of circumstances.”
“No, it never is, is it? Parents aren’t summoned to the principal’s office unless there’s something going on that’s not so good. What did she do?”
“She got into a fight,” she said. “I’ve spoken with the other girl who was involved in this, and the family of that girl. I’ve also spoken with Rina. Now I’m talking to you.” She looked out the window, as if she was afraid to tell me what she needed to tell me.
“Okay,” I said. “She got into a fight. What was the fight about?”
“How much did you tell the girls about how you came into their lives?” she asked me.
My heart started to pound and a knot formed in my stomach. “I got into contact with their social worker and she agreed that I could be their guardian, so I petitioned the court and they came to live with me. That was what happened originally. Then they were taken from my house, because the guardian ad litem on that case didn’t approve of my adopting them, and-“
She shook her head. “I understand the guardianship process,” she said. “That wasn’t what I asked, however.” Her eyes were on me. They seemed accusing, although I was sure that I was imagining that. “I was wondering if you ever sat down with the girls and explained why it was that you were interested in them.”
I knew what she was getting at, and I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I never told the girls the truth. I never told them that I was the attorney for the man who killed their mother. I never explained that John Robinson, their mother’s killer, never would have been free if it weren’t for me. The time never seemed right to tell them that. I meant to. I really did. But the time just never seemed right. Never seemed right.
I guessed that I hoped that I would never have to face it. That maybe somehow, someway, we could live our lives together without them ever finding that out. I knew that wasn’t realistic, but it was my fantasy.
I felt as if I was facing a boss who was angry with me and trying to get answers from me about what I did wrong. I didn’t
like that feeling, to say the very least. “What do you know about why it was I became interested in them?” I was stalling. I didn’t want to answer her questions.
“Well,” she said and then paused. “I don’t really know. I only know that Rina got into a fight with a student by the name of Brianna Leigh, and Rina has been crying ever since. I’ve talked to Rina, asked her about why it was she and Brianna got into a fight, and she said that Brianna said something to her that made her extremely angry.”
I dreaded to hear just what it was that Brianna said to Rina, but I knew that I had to hear it. “Go on. What was this horrible thing?”
“Brianna told Rina that you defended her mother’s killer. However, I don’t think that that’s correct. I remember reading about the murder of Rina and Abby’s mother, and I distinctly recall that he was defended by a man. Or he’s being defended by a man. That case is still pending, from what I understand.”
“It is. It’s going to be tried in the spring.”
“Right. But you aren’t on the case, are you?”
I looked out the window. “No. I’m not. I would never defend that…man. Never.”
She nodded her head. “Well, then, maybe Brianna was incorrect.”
“No. She’s not.”I sighed, feeling that familiar white-hot knot forming in my stomach. “I did defend their mother’s killer. He was a client of mine earlier. He was accused of murdering his business partner. I got him off on a technicality. So, in a way, I’m responsible for their mother being killed. That was probably what Brianna was talking about.” I looked down at my lap, not wanting to meet her eyes. I felt shamed. Shamed by what she was surely thinking about me, and shamed by what I was thinking about myself.
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 45
