Julius cocked an eyebrow but otherwise didn't argue with her. He turned next to Stacy Ducker. “And you?” he asked.
She was back to her smirking, but otherwise didn't respond. Julius sighed softly before next asking Heather Chase the same question. She shook her head.
“Bill told me the company was in talks of being sold, but I didn't know much more than that,” she said.
Julius turned towards the defendant to ask him if this was true, but one look at Chase's morose, sullen expression and it was obvious it would be a waste of time. Instead Julius asked Heather Chase how long she had been married to her husband.
“Two years.”
“How long had he been working for Brenner Systems before your marriage?”
A bare trace of a smile showed on her lips, as if she were going to suggest that Julius ask her husband that, but then thought better of it and told Julius that her husband had been with Brenner Systems from the beginning. “He was their first employee,” she said.
“So the answer would be seven years.”
“I believe so.”
“Did you sign a prenuptial agreement?”
She nodded. “I couldn't blame Bill for wanting to protect his stock options. He worked so many hours over there.”
“And what did this agreement allow for in the case that your husband was ever convicted of a major felony?”
“I don't know.”
I saw it all then just as Julius had. I had a good idea why Tom was coming to the courthouse, and I had to grudgingly admire what Julius was about to pull off. I began going back over the recordings I'd made during the past four days to see what could've tipped Julius off.
“You never consulted a lawyer to find out?”
“Of course not.”
Julius shrugged. “It was a reasonable question,” he said. “Because if his being convicted of a felony voided the prenup that you signed, then you'd have more motive than anyone else here for killing Dale Wilcox and framing your husband for the murder.”
Before Heather Chase could respond, the courtroom doors opened and Tom Durkin escorted into the room a fifty-three-year-old heavyset man with an unhappy, gloomy expression. I knew the man's age because I knew who he was, having figured it out moments after realizing what Julius was up to. Bill Chase looked startled on seeing this man. Heather Chase turned to look behind her and paled at the sight of him. In a matter of seconds she changed, no longer vulnerable and stunningly beautiful but instead something feral and desperate. With her fingers bending so that her hands became clawlike things, she turned towards her husband, pleading, “Don't listen to him, Bill! He's trying to trick you!”
“No, madam,” Julius said, interrupting her. “I'm not the one who seduced Dale Wilcox in order to lure him to a deserted Chinatown alley so I could kill him. Nor am I the one who then called your husband so he would go to that same alley supposedly to rescue you only to find himself framed for murder.”
“He's lying, Bill! Please, believe me! Don't listen to him!”
Julius ignored her and walked over to Bill Chase. “Sir, you must know by now that you were never protecting your wife as you believed. Her killing Dale Wilcox was not an accident. She lured him to that alley with the intent to murder him, just as she lured you there with the intent to frame you. As you can see, I've brought to this courtroom the attorney who drew up your prenuptial agreement, and if you need to you can ask him whether your wife consulted with him concerning how this agreement could be voided. You received a call from your wife begging for your help, didn't you? That's why you went to that alley?”
Bill Chase squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. What happened next happened fast. Heather Chase was out of her seat and nearly flying at Julius, her claw-shaped hands ready to do damage. As I mentioned earlier, Julius was a fifth-degree black belt in Kung Fu. I'd seen him in the past take on as many as four hardened thugs at one time and dispatch all of them. Heather Chase couldn't have weighed more than ninety-five pounds, but at that moment she would've been more than a handful for Julius. Fortunately two court officers had moved closer to her once it became obvious that she was little more than a cold-blooded snake, and they were able to tackle her before she reached Julius.
* * * *
“You were only fishing,” I said.
Julius raised an eyebrow. “What was that, Archie?”
“You couldn't possibly have known Bill Chase was innocent and that his wife was the actual murderer. I've analyzed every minute of the trial, and it's impossible for you to have known that. But you went fishing. You wanted off the jury so you sent Tom after that lawyer so you'd at least have a plausible story. It's just dumb luck that things fell in place the way they did.”
Julius chuckled at that. He was in a much better humor since coming home to his townhouse on Beacon Hill, and was in the process of picking out a tie for the special dinner tonight that he would be taking Lily Rosten to. After carefully examining several of them he chose a rich burgundy-colored one and brought it to the mirror so he could tie a Windsor knot.
“No, Archie, I wasn't fishing. I knew within the first three hours of the trial what had happened.”
I didn't believe him. Not that Julius was in the habit of lying to me, but it just didn't seem possible. “How?” I asked.
“There were a number of reasons, Archie. I remember reading about the sale of Brenner Systems occurring only three weeks after Wilcox's murder and thinking then that his murder was financially motivated.” He paused for a moment to examine the precision of the knot he made before slipping on his suit jacket and continuing, “But what gave it away to me was that woman's performance. She would've fooled most people with the hopeful and loving looks she kept favoring her husband with throughout the trial, but not a reasonably capable poker player. Once I discovered her tell, I knew that she was only trying to keep her husband in line, and I was able to draw the obvious conclusions that I did.”
“What was her tell?”
Julius chuckled again. “I don't want to deprive you of all your fun, Archie, but if you study the trial enough, I'm sure you'll figure it out. But even without that, it was clear what happened. There was no reasonable explanation as to why Dale Wilcox would've ended up in that Chinatown alley unless he was brought there at gunpoint, and since both Wilcox's and Bill Chase's cars were found near the alley, it couldn't have been Chase who brought Wilcox there. Assuming Wilcox had a rendezvous planned with that woman, it wouldn't have been there. Similarly, there was no reason Bill Chase would've ended up in that same alley unless he was called by his wife and told to go there. And the trial itself was also a giveaway. There were no defense witnesses and Chase made no attempt to defend himself in court. If he was going to act that way, why not make a deal instead of letting the case go to trial?”
I thought about it and couldn't come up with a good answer.
“Because he was hoping for a miracle,” Julius said. “He knew he was innocent, and he was hoping that something would come up that would free him, but without also condemning his wife.”
“How'd you know about the prenup agreement?”
Julius finished buttoning his coat jacket and adjusted his shoulders so that the jacket laid better on them.
“I didn't,” he said. “I sent Tom to find out if one existed, and if it did, to bring back the lawyer who drew it up. I was lucky there on several counts, especially that she ended up consulting with this same lawyer. I was also lucky that she panicked when she saw him, because most likely he would've denied in court ever consulting with her. I'm guessing that they had worked out a deal where he was going to be paid a substantial sum of money for keeping quiet about their consultation, otherwise he would've come forward once Chase was arrested for murder.”
I digested all this and realized I still had a long way to go in reprogramming my neuron network if I was ever going to beat Julius to the punch in solving a case.
“Well, things worked out,” I said. “An innocent man has been se
t free, the real murderer has been arrested, and you get to go to your dinner tonight.” I hesitated, then asked, “If you didn't have this big special dinner scheduled, would you have come forward the way you did?”
“Yes, of course, Archie. I wasn't about to let that wretch escape justice. The only way to trap her was to get her husband to talk, and there was little chance of that happening once the trial ended. He looked dangerously close already to giving up and accepting whatever fate had in store for him. I had to move when I did whether or not Antoine Escopier's dinner was scheduled for tonight.”
This last bit confused me more than anything else. I knew Julius was someone who believed in fair play, but he also believed in being paid for his efforts.
“Why?”
Julius's eyes glistened and the muscles along his jaw hardened for a moment. “Because of that woman I was deprived of my home, my kitchen, and my wine cellar for four days, and during these four miserable days I was forced to suffer through that trial and stay sequestered at night in a stale-smelling, dingy hotel room. So yes, Archie, of course I was going to see justice done.”
Of course.
Copyright © 2012 by Dave Zeltserman
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