Inherit the Shoes

by E. J. Copperman

  ‘Why can’t one lawyer handle it?’ Patrick wanted to know. ‘Didn’t Gregory Peck handle the case all by himself in To Kill A Mockingbird? I have a pair of glasses he wore in that movie.’

  ‘That’s the point, Patrick. It’s a movie,’ I said with a little too much force, prompting Bach to give me a poisonous look and turn his attention to his client.

  ‘Patrick, if you want Ms Moss to handle this on her own, that is what she’ll do,’ he said. ‘But every lawyer requires some support. For example, there will have to be at least one investigator assigned to the case, and it sometimes helps to have a second opinion from a lawyer when you need to make a decision.’

  ‘The investigators are bad enough,’ Patrick said, sticking out his adorable chin. ‘And we already have the weasel …’

  Bach looked at me. ‘The weasel?’

  ‘He means Evan.’

  Bach turned back toward Patrick, raising his eyebrows. ‘You don’t like Evan?’

  I walked toward Patrick before he could answer, demanding his attention and making threats with my eyes. ‘He likes Evan,’ I told Bach without looking at him. ‘You like Evan,’ I said to Patrick.

  He stared at me for a moment, then said to Bach, ‘I like Evan.’

  ‘All right then,’ Bach said, choosing to ignore the dynamic that had evolved. ‘We have a course of action. You, Ms Moss, will handle the legal end …’

  ‘And I’m sure I can count on you for support when I need it, Mr Bach,’ I added.

  Bach’s mouth tightened, but he said, ‘Of course. We’ll get an investigator working on the case immediately, and you can have the full use of Mr D’Arbanville whenever it’s necessary. I think that concludes our business here today.’ And with that, he stood and headed for the door with the speed of a man used to living in a palace who’d been dropped into a sewer.

  ‘Just one thing, Mr Bach,’ I said in lieu of bringing him down in a flying tackle (which, to be honest, was what I would have preferred). ‘Who’s going to take care of my car?’

  TEN

  The preliminary police report on the killing of Esmerelda ‘Patsy’ DeNunzio didn’t offer much in the way of information: the victim was found on the floor in her dining room, an arrow through the chest. The victim’s husband, one Patrick Dunwoody (aka McNabb), found the body and called EMS. His bloody fingerprints were found on the arrow and the bow nearby. The suspect did not confess under questioning, but admitted he and the victim had quarreled that day at a conference designed to settle their divorce before proceedings began in earnest. The argument had been over the disposition of their property.

  That wasn’t much, I thought, sitting in my office that evening – Patrick had ‘had a car brought round’ to drive me back to my office. Before making an arrest, the police usually had either a confession or some physical evidence that clearly proved the suspect committed the crime. In this case, all they had was a bizarre murder weapon, a prop from some long-ago movie that had been part of Patrick McNabb’s pop culture collection, and fingerprints on both the bow and the arrow, which could be easily explained without his having done any violence at all to his wife. There must have been something else the police had that compelled them to act so quickly.

  If I really had the sources in the police department Patrick believed I had, I could have called and made a few discreet inquiries, but the only people I knew in Los Angeles were the suspect, the head of the law firm representing him (who hated me), and a cute paralegal who looked like a kicked puppy if I didn’t include him in everything I did on the case.

  I hoped our investigator knew what he was doing, because I had remarkably little to work with.

  Then again, maybe the situation wasn’t that bad. My pessimistic outlook might well have been due to my recent lack of sleep or food. I needed to get some rest, and attack all this with fresh eyes tomorrow morning. I also needed to shave my legs before people started to mistake me for a very well-dressed gibbon.

  Just as I was thinking of leaving the office and thanking my good fortune no one else would possibly be here this late, Evan appeared in my doorway. Naturally, I thought, the only guy who’s kissed me in how many months, and he shows up when I bear a striking resemblance to Ernest Borgnine. Sorry, Angie, I’m never going to date anyone ever again. God doesn’t want me to.

  ‘You going to eat tonight?’ Evan asked, a pleasant, if serious, smile fixed to his face.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked in response. ‘Don’t you have class tonight?’

  Evan walked in, which I thought would be an olfactory miscalculation on his part, given my recent lack of a shower, but he didn’t flinch as he sat in the chair facing my desk. ‘I decided to cut class tonight,’ he said. ‘I want to hear about what’s going on with our case.’

  Our case? When did this become our case?

  ‘What’s going on is that I’m going home to bed so I can think straight about our case tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t slept since sometime during the Obama Administration, and I haven’t eaten since a very nice man fed me Chicken Diane and kissed me at the door.’

  He grinned. ‘Come on. We can catch a hamburger and I’ll drive you home. I heard about your car. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m all right. It’s my car that took the shots. I gotta tell you, though, being shot at is not my idea of a fun afternoon. I was shaking like a leaf for two hours afterward.’

  ‘What do the cops think it was?’ He was so cute and wide-eyed.

  ‘The cops.’

  ‘Yes, what did they say when you reported it?’

  ‘Evan, I, er, I didn’t report it.’

  His eyes were the size of pancakes, and not the silver dollar kind. ‘You didn’t?’

  I felt like I was telling him there was no Santa Claus, and I was pretty sure there wasn’t. ‘The cops would have thought we planned the attacks, or simulated then, to make the newspapers and gain sympathy for Patrick. The judge might very well have revoked his bail, and Patrick doesn’t respond well to jail.’ Even one that has potpourri in its rest rooms.

  ‘But you were shot at!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must have been terrifying,’ Evan said. He stood and walked around the desk. ‘They should have one of the investigators with you at all times from now on. Bach really doesn’t seem to be taking this threat to you too seriously.’

  He leaned against the wall a few feet from me. ‘I don’t think it was a threat to me at all,’ I said. ‘I think they were after McNabb, and I just happened to be sitting in the driver’s seat at the wrong time. He’s the one who needs protection. Mostly from himself – the man’s crazy.’

  ‘I don’t care about him. I care about you,’ Evan said. ‘So come on, let me get some food into you and drive you home. What do you say?’

  I smiled and rolled my head on my neck. ‘I don’t know. I might skip dinner and go straight to bed.’

  He slipped behind me and started massaging my neck. Damn, that felt good. The sneaky little … ‘Hey, watch it,’ I murmured. ‘You don’t want to get too close. I stink to high heaven.’

  ‘Oh, you do not.’ His fingers were really untying all the knots in my neck muscles, and if I didn’t keep a level head, it might not be my bed I ended up in. But I did need sleep, above all else. ‘Come on. Quick bite, drive home. No funny business.’

  ‘None?’

  Evan chuckled a very controlled chuckle. ‘No. I never take advantage of a woman who isn’t awake.’

  ‘Do you take advantage of the awake ones?’ My voice sounded like I was eight years old. I’d better give in before he started massaging something other than my neck. ‘OK, you win. Let’s go eat and then you can take me home. To my home. To bed. You know what I mean.’

  I stood up, and he slid his arms around me and kissed me again, a little more insistently than last time. I couldn’t actually process all that had happened in the past thirty-six hours, and wasn’t sure I wanted to, right at this moment. I kissed back, with all my
mouth.

  And, of course, the phone rang.

  I shouldn’t pick it up. I knew I shouldn’t pick it up, and yet, there went my hand to the headset, and there went Evan’s lips, back to his side of the room, where they believed themselves to belong. Life ain’t fair.

  ‘This is Nate Garrigan,’ the voice said after I admitted to being Sandy. ‘I’m the investigator working the McNabb case for you.’

  ‘Oh hi, Nate. Nice to meet you. But it’s a little late, so why don’t we do this in the …’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’m calling with a situation. I was out doing some preliminary interviews with a few people who knew the victim. I think you need to talk to your client.’

  ‘McNabb? I just left him a few hours ago. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Well,’ Garrigan said with a perplexed, if not annoyed, air, ‘so far I’ve visited four of the victim’s friends and her sister. And every one of them says your client has been here ahead of me. He told them he’s investigating the case himself.’

  I don’t have to work on his defense any more, I told myself. I have to work on my own, because I’m going to kill him!

  ELEVEN

  Nate Garrigan turned out to be a large man in his fifties, who must have been an ex-cop – he would have been perfect as a station house extra in a tough police movie. With a face that had obviously come into contact with a large, hard object at some point in his life, Garrigan was also not one for levity, and standing in the driveway of Patrick McNabb’s ‘house,’ Garrigan looked especially unamused.

  ‘The man’s stopping me from doing my job,’ he said as I gawked at the huge Tudor mansion and wondering if this was where all Hollywood bachelors came after their marriages broke up. ‘All the witnesses are talked out, and they think I’m just mopping up for the big TV star who’s really going to solve the crime. It’s no way to work.’

  I nodded with great sympathy, and Evan, who’d insisted on driving me (‘you’re so tired you’d wrap yourself around a telephone pole, and besides, you have no car’), looked dour, as if he was deciding whether to hang McNabb by his toes or someplace more sensitive.

  ‘Believe me, Mr Garrigan, I feel your pain,’ I said. ‘He’s been doing this to me for three days now, and I’ll be with him all the way to the end of his trial.’

  ‘God be with you,’ said Garrigan.

  ‘Now, here’s what we’ll do,’ I continued. ‘We’ll go in there, and we’ll explain to him why he has to stop doing these interviews. He’ll agree, and he’ll be convincing, but he’ll be lying. So we’ll explain it again. And he’ll be annoyed that we’re telling him what we’ve already told him, and he’ll insist that he gets the message. This, too, will not be true. So, we’ll be forced to tie him to a chair and hire someone to feed him and take him to the bathroom for the next six months. How does that sound?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Garrigan said, nodding.

  ‘Yeah, that works,’ Evan agreed.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  The lights were on in the windows, and Patrick’s vintage Aston Martin was parked at the main entrance to the cozy little twenty-three-room cottage. I rang the doorbell, and we stood in the entrance for some time. Receiving no response, I rang again.

  Nothing.

  My mind, against its will, began to worry about Patrick. Suppose he’s so distraught he’s trying to kill himself, I thought. Suppose he hears the bell but won’t come to the door out of pride, or simple inertia at the events of the past few days. Suppose …

  The door opened and standing before us was a butler so dapper he could have been a tuxedo model, with the kind of complete contempt for visitors only a truly cultivated servant can have.

  ‘May I help you?’

  ‘We’re here to see Mr McNabb,’ I told him, trying to see past the man. ‘Would you tell him his attorney is here?’

  ‘Mr McNabb is not in,’ the butler said. He was standing so straight and tall, I had to sneak a peek to make sure he didn’t actually have an ironing board stuffed up the back of his coat. He didn’t.

  Wait a minute. What does he mean, he’s not in?

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, realizing what a stupid question that was. ‘Isn’t that his car in the driveway?’ I pointed to the vintage British sports car.

  ‘That is one of his automobiles,’ Ironing Board said. ‘It is part of his collection. From a James Bond film, I believe.’

  ‘Goldfinger,’ Garrigan said admiringly. ‘That’s the car from Goldfinger.’ He sounded like he might actually be having a spontaneous sexual experience just standing in the entranceway.

  ‘A replica,’ the butler noted with a disapproving tone.

  ‘So, he’s out in one of his other automobiles?’ Evan asked, clearly trying to break Garrigan of his reverie, but the ex-cop’s eyes could barely stand to leave the car. ‘We do need to speak to him.’

  ‘He said he would be back … nine-ish,’ Ironing Board said, his tongue slumming over the word. ‘That isn’t long from now. Perhaps you could come back later.’

  Garrigan’s eyes never left the Aston Martin, but his eyebrows rose and his voice became louder and more insistent. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can come in and wait. Perhaps you can call him and tell him that the people who’re trying to keep him out of jail are here and need to speak to him immediately. Perhaps.’

  The butler, who probably wouldn’t have been rattled if someone had set his pants on fire, moved into what seemed a more comfortable mode, which was condescension. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘If you must. I will try Mr McNabb’s mobile phone.’ He moved aside.

  The entrance hall was huge and marble. But it looked like a well-preserved museum rather than a home. There were glass cases, lit expertly, at various places throughout the room, on either side of the immense marble columns holding up the ceiling. I felt like I was entering the Great Shrine of Movies.

  The cases held such artifacts as a space pistol of some sort from a science fiction movie (I wasn’t much for all the space sagas – fiery explosions in oxygen-free space? Come on!), a large pointy tooth, a man’s shoe (rather large), a false mustache, and a bottle of ketchup.

  It was like entering the Louvre and seeing, in place of the Mona Lisa, a Chuck Jones animation cel. Still nice, but not exactly what I’d call high art.

  Garrigan, who apparently was a movie fan of a very enthusiastic sort, was absolutely enthralled by what he saw, and could identify every artifact, despite the lack of any identifying plaques.

  ‘That’s from Forbidden Planet!’ he said when he passed the space blaster. ‘And look! That tooth is from Jaws! I’ll bet it’s the one they took out of the side of the boat! And the ketchup bottle.’ He looked at the butler. ‘Rebel Without A Cause?’

  The butler could barely contain his contempt. ‘American Graffiti,’ he said, as if it should have been obvious.

  ‘This place is amazing,’ Garrigan gushed. The tying-McNabb-to-the-chair plan was fast losing one proponent.

  Evan looked merely disapproving – except when he looked at me. Then he always managed a warm smile. It was a little scary.

  ‘When do you expect Mr McNabb to be back?’ I asked Ironing Board.

  ‘I would be surprised if he were not here in a very few moments,’ the Starched One said with great weight, as if he’d foreseen the future.

  Apparently he had, because Patrick McNabb then opened the huge oak door, walked in, and stopped in his tracks when he saw the three visitors in his entrance hall. He was carrying a small shopping bag marked ‘Bergdorf Goodman.’

  ‘Sandy!’ he shouted, all beer and skittles (or something British like that, I thought). ‘How lovely to see you!’

  ‘Patrick, we need to talk,’ I said. ‘Where can we sit?’

  ‘Meadows, have you kept them waiting?’ Patrick admonished the butler. ‘This is my attorney, and she’s …’ He stopped himself, and turned impishly to me. ‘Sorry. I was going to say the “b” word.’

  Evan’s eyes
widened, but I shook my head. Not that ‘b’ word.

  ‘And this is the young man who follows her around,’ Patrick continued, looking at the hooded-faced Evan. ‘What is your name again, lad?’

  ‘Evan D’Arbanville, Mr McNabb.’

  ‘Of course. And this fellow I don’t really know, do I?’

  Garrigan turned and pointed at one of the cases. ‘Nate Garrigan, Mr McNabb. I’m the firm investigator assigned to your case. May I ask you – this shoe?’

  Patrick’s head turned quickly. ‘What shoe?’

  ‘The one in this case, sir. What movie is that from?’

  Patrick approached the case with reverence. ‘Ah, that one,’ he said. ‘That’s from North By Northwest. Mr Cary Grant himself wore that shoe in the famous crop dusting scene.’

  Garrigan looked like he might genuflect. ‘My goodness,’ is all he could manage.

  ‘Indeed,’ Patrick agreed. He put down the shopping bag and gestured to us. ‘Please. Follow me.’

  We walked into a large library, where the shelves that would normally be lined with books were instead crowded with movie memorabilia, ranging from scripts to Academy Award statuettes (none of which had been awarded to Patrick). After the requisite gushing by Garrigan, I managed to shift the conversation to McNabb’s case, and his insistent meddling in it.

  Patrick, of course, dropped his jaw and stared at me. ‘I didn’t ask you to investigate,’ he said. ‘I was doing it myself.’

  ‘Which is exactly what I asked you not to do,’ I responded immediately.

  ‘You mean you want to do it yourself?’

  I gave Garrigan a desperate look, and the investigator finally seemed to remember why he was there. ‘Mr McNabb,’ he said in the best gargled-with-glass-slivers voice I’d ever heard. ‘The accused doesn’t do the investigating. The lawyer doesn’t do the investigating. The investigator does the investigating. That’s me.’ He pointed to himself, just to make the point a little clearer.