by Allen Eskens
“Mother died five years ago. Father is fighting bone cancer right now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He’s a tough old bird. A lesser man would have been dead by now.”
“With him being sick, who runs the . . . enterprise?”
“It’s a closely held corporation. He still owns the majority of the shares, but he gave his proxy to Jennavieve and me. Jennavieve has one vote more than me, so we won’t tie.”
“Excuse me if this seems indelicate, but what happens to those shares, now, if your father should pass on?”
Anna cast her eyes down as she prepared her response. When she raised her head and spoke, she seemed to be channeling Lauren Bacall from The Big Sleep, her eyelids weighted and her voice a note or two lower than before. “Detective, I know you have to ask these questions, and quite frankly I thought I had prepared myself for this before I came in here. But it’s difficult for me to sit here and think that a part of you, even a very tiny part, suspects that I may have had anything to do with my sister’s death.”
“I didn’t say that.” Max said.
Anna looked at Max with a quiet intensity that cut through the pretense. “You wouldn’t care about the control of my father’s company if that thought hadn’t crossed your mind. Or am I mistaken about that?”
Max kept his face expressionless and didn’t answer.
She held her gaze on Max for a few beats, then smiled, bringing a touch of warmth to her otherwise-serious features. “It’s a valid question, I suppose. As the will is written right now, I become the sole owner of Adler Enterprise after my father passes.”
“‘As the will is written right now’?”
“My father may be sick, Detective Rupert, but he still has his wits about him. If he thought for a second that I had anything to do with Jennavieve’s death, he’d cut me out.”
“Did you kill your sister? I mean, you have a pretty understandable motive, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Ben Pruitt killed my sister, and the motive is in the prenuptial agreement.”
“How is a prenuptial agreement a motive for murder?”
Anna leaned forward and, for the first time, deigned to put her fingertips on the edge of the table. “Jennavieve and I have trusts set up for us. My father wanted to make sure that we would never want for anything. When I heard that Jennavieve was dead, that she’d been murdered, I called our family attorney, the one who handles all of this stuff.”
“You learn that your sister is dead and your first call is to an attorney?”
Anna recoiled a little at Max’s accusation, and he could see anger seeping out from behind the stony façade that she struggled to maintain. “I’ve never been the weepy, sentimental type. That was Jennavieve. That was her weakness, not mine. I’m more like my father. My reactions start in my head, not my heart.”
“I suppose it takes a great deal of detachment to run an empire?”
“It’s not detachment, Detective. I feel for the loss of my sister; I miss her dearly. But you will excuse me if I choose to grieve in my own way. I will honor my sister, not by curling up into a fetal position and bawling my way through a box full of tissues, but by getting the man who killed her. That’s why I came here today—not to apologize to you for being strong, but to bring you something that could help put Ben Pruitt in prison.”
This woman was a piece of work. Max couldn’t tell if she was the strong, take-charge woman as she claimed, or a heartless manipulator. Either way, Anna Adler-King was a woman of considerable discipline. There would be no Perry Mason moment with this one.
“Okay,” Max said. “What do you have?”
“I asked our attorney to look at Jennavieve’s prenup and tell me what would happen if Jennavieve died versus what would happen if they got divorced.”
“Was your sister thinking about getting divorced?”
“I’m not sure. She never said anything to me directly, but I got the feeling that she wasn’t happy.”
“So what did the attorney say?”
“He said that if Jennavieve and Ben were to ever get divorced, they would trace their assets to determine who paid what. In other words, if they both own a car, and they each paid half, they would split the asset. But if Jennavieve paid for it with money from her trust, and she put it in both their names, the car would go to Jennavieve. The idea being that if they ever got divorced, the stuff they bought with Jennavieve’s trust money would go back to her.”
“And if she dies?”
Anna looked coolly into Max’s eyes. “If Jennavieve dies, all of the jointly owned assets go, by statute, to the co-owner.”
Max leaned back in his chair to let those words sink in. He remembered Dovey’s instruction to get him a motive so he could start the grand-jury proceeding. This had all the markings of a first-rate motive. “Do you have any notion of what they bought with trust money?”
Anna smiled. “Everything. Over the years, Jennavieve and I figured out that our father could never say no to us. We were able to raid the trust to buy just about anything we wanted. I know that Jennavieve paid for their mansion in Kenwood with trust money. And then there’s the cabin up north, the condo in Aruba and another in France. I don’t know the extent of it, but Jennavieve paid for pretty much everything they owned.”
“And Ben Pruitt’s name is on all those titles?”
“Co-owner and heir.”
“But we don’t know if there was any discussion about a divorce.”
“I can’t say. We had very different lives. We were both so busy that it became hard to get together.”
“If she were going to tell someone about her plans to get a divorce, who might she tell?”
“Honestly, Jennavieve didn’t have many close friends, not the kind she might confide something like that to. She lived for that foundation she ran, the one trying to protect the wetlands. Every time we got together, that was all she talked about. I think that if she had any friends close enough to answer your question, I’d look there.”
“You’ve been a great help, Mrs. Adler-King.”
“Thank you,” she said with a slight nod of her head. “So, you think Ben did it, don’t you?”
Max pursed his lips and gave Anna a slight shake of his head. “I can’t discuss a pending investigation in that way. You understand?”
Anna’s reply came back soft but firm, like a mother coaxing a child toward a predetermined conclusion. “What I understand, Detective Rupert, is that my sister is dead and my niece is with the man who killed her. I will stop at nothing to protect that little girl—the same way that I expect you to do whatever is necessary to put Ben Pruitt in prison. I hope to hear, very soon, that you’ve arrested Ben for my sister’s murder.”
Anna Adler-King rose from her chair, so Max stood as well. She stepped toward the door and he opened it for her. He understood that she was finished talking to him, so he didn’t attempt to change her mind or make her stay.
“You can get me copies of that prenup?”
“I’ll have it delivered,” she said. Then she turned to face him one last time. “I like you, Detective Rupert, and that’s not something I say to many people. I get the feeling that, like myself, you know full well my sister was killed by her husband. I have complete faith that you won’t let me down.”
With that, she turned and left.
Chapter 20
Ben took a moment to check on his daughter before re-creating his movements on the day that Jennavieve died. He returned to Boady’s study, closing the glass French doors with a quiet click. He informed Boady that Emma seemed to be engaged in drawing something on the sketch pad, and he didn’t dare interrupt her as it was her first sustained distraction from the events of the previous Friday. He sat back down, and Boady touched his pen to paper to signify the official start of their endeavor.
“Let’s start with your alibi,” Boady said. “We lock that in and we nip all this in the bud.”
“I’ve been going over th
at in my head all weekend,” Ben said. “To start with, I parked at the park-and-ride on Lexington. I don’t believe they have cameras, but I gave Rupert a receipt that has the time and date. Shuttle to the airport and on my flight by 10:15 in the morning. Taxi to the hotel—the downtown Marriott—paid on my Amex card.”
“So for that part of the trip, there can be no question that you flew to Chicago. What about the hotel? Did you notice any surveillance cameras?”
“I wasn’t looking for them, but I’m sure they have some. It’s a nice hotel.”
“I’ll send a letter to the Marriott’s security director requesting that he preserve the footage. I doubt they’ll give it to us, but if I know Max, he’ll be requesting it, if he hasn’t already. So you get to the Marriott, check in . . .”
“I check in, go to the room, unpack, then I go for a walk.”
“A walk?”
“The opening speeches started at noon, but it was just an overview of recent court cases. They give you that material on CD, so I opted to skip it.”
“Where did you go?”
“Took a stroll down Navy Pier. It was a beautiful day.”
“Any paper trail?”
“Let’s see . . . I bought a hot dog from a street vendor, but I paid cash. That’s about all I did there. Just walked around, taking in the fresh air.”
“What time did you get back to the hotel?”
“Just before one p.m. I went to a panel on white-collar sentencing trends and then one on protecting client assets, and after that . . . let’s see . . . oh yeah, a panel on preserving appellate issues. That was the last one of the day.”
“Anybody see you?”
“You know Michael Tanner? From Dugan & Fitch?”
“We’ve met.”
“He sat next to me at the panel on appellate issues.”
“Okay, we have only a single gap in time so far. Between check-in and when Tanner saw you on that last panel of the day. Maybe the hotel has video of the conference center.”
Ben looked puzzled. “Why do we care about those couple hours? They’re not going to suggest that I could have flown back here and killed Jennavieve in that time.”
“No, but we’re going to leave no holes. So the conference gets over at . . .”
“Five. Tanner invited me to join him and some friends in the hotel restaurant for dinner and drinks. I gave him a soft yes, but I wasn’t big on the idea.”
“Why?”
“Tanner’s one of those guys who . . . well, he’s kind of a pig. I’m not saying he actually cheats on his wife, but he sure does try. He calls every waitress ‘honey’ and chats up the lonely hearts in the room. I’ve never liked socializing with him because I never want to be put in a position of being a witness to that kind of crap.”
“Okay, so you stay in.”
“Right. I order room service—club sandwich and some fries—and watch TV.”
“Make any phone calls?”
“Just the one to Jennavieve around five. I wanted to say hi to Emma. Got no answer, so I sent a text.”
“We can get cell-phone tower data to show where that call originated. Any others?”
“No.”
“Go online at the hotel?”
“No.”
Boady raised a hand to his face and began stroking his light beard. “Any contact with anyone?”
“Truth is, I wasn’t feeling so well. I thought maybe the hot dog from Navy Pier didn’t agree with me.”
“That’s a pretty big hole in your alibi. How long does it take to get from Chicago to here?”
“Well, not counting flight delays, just under an hour.”
“No, I mean driving.”
“Um. I don’t think that I’ve ever driven from Chicago to here.” Ben pondered some more, then nodded. “No, I’ve never driven it.”
Boady pulled his computer keyboard to the edge of his desk and typed in the query. He clicked on different options and found that the most direct path to drive from Chicago to Minneapolis took just over six hours. He frowned as he did the math in his head.
“What?” Ben asked.
“You don’t have an alibi at all.”
“Of course I do.”
“No, Ben, you can get from Chicago to Minneapolis in just over six hours. We have the phone call and texts that put you in the room between five and five thirty. There’s no evidence that you stayed in your room after that. No phone calls. No computer log-in. No contact with anyone, am I right about that?”
A shadow of panic passed over Ben’s face, washing away what little color he had. His eyes darted from one imaginary point to another as though he was searching his memory for some touchstone that would confirm his presence in his hotel room. “I didn’t talk to anyone.”
“If it takes six hours to get from there to here, and no one saw you after six p.m. . . .”
“Oh, Christ. There’s got to be . . .”
“Any contact at all? Anything that might leave a trail?”
“Can the hotel tell if I turned the TV channel?” he asked.
“Not unless you purchased a pay-per-view channel. Did you?”
“No. I watched news programs.”
“Key cards will record every time you unlock your door from the hallway. Did you go out for ice?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. I might have, but I’m almost positive I didn’t leave the room.”
“So we have a problem.”
“But I didn’t have a car. I flew there. I have no way to drive back here.”
“That’s a different issue. If we could find one little piece of evidence, something irrefutable that puts you in that hotel room after . . . say, eight o’clock, then there’d be no need to discuss how you might have gotten back here. If we cannot find that piece, then we have to prove the negative—prove that you didn’t and couldn’t have driven back here.”
“What about the hotel surveillance? If there are any cameras, that’ll show I didn’t leave.”
“True. I’ll get that letter out today.”
“If they say no, I’ll also put a call into Max Rupert and ask that he secure it.”
Boady turned to a new page on his legal pad and wrote the word “Motive” at the top of the page. “We’ve covered opportunity, now let’s talk about motive. Rupert’s likely going through your life with a magnifying glass right now looking for reasons why you might want to kill Jennavieve. What’s he going to find?”
“I had no reason to kill Jennavieve. Things at home were pretty good.”
“Pretty good?”
“I mean, every relationship has its ups and downs.”
“Were you in an up or a down when you flew to Chicago? Tell me about these ups and downs.”
Ben didn’t look at Boady as he prepared an answer. “It’s been quiet around the house lately.”
“Lately?”
“Maybe a year now. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It was like she didn’t want to do anything anymore, at least not alone with me. If Emma came along, we all had a great time. We went and rented one of those little sailboats on Lake Harriet last month. Had a blast. We took Emma to see Pippin when the touring company came through in February. Got all dressed up. Ate dinner at the Capital Grille. It was a terrific evening.”
Ben began to tear up again and paused to let the emotion pass. “But if I ever suggested a date night, just Jennavieve and me, she’d always have some reason why she couldn’t go. Or she’d invite another couple to join us and not tell me.”
“Did you ever talk to her about it?”
“I tried a few times, but she swore it was just my imagination. She seemed to need to be away from home as much as she could, going to events at the Minneapolis Club, sitting in on extra committee meetings for the theater trust, working extra hours at the foundation. I could understand wanting a break from me, but by staying away from the house, she was also staying away from Emma. That’s the part that didn’t make sense. Emma was her life.”
&nb
sp; Boady stared at the legal pad as he contemplated a delicate way to approach the next topic. Finally he asked the question that he needed to ask. “Is it possible Jennavieve was . . .” He looked at Ben and waited for him to finish the question.
“Having an affair?”
Boady shrugged sympathetically and nodded.
Ben seemed to lose himself in his thoughts, undoubtedly stacking and restacking his recent memories, exposing them to this new light to see if they mutated into something ugly. After several minutes, he spoke in a whisper. “I don’t think so. I mean, I suppose it’s possible, but . . . no, not Jennavieve. She wasn’t that kind of person. You knew her. Granted, it’s been six years since we spent any real time with you and Diana, but you knew her. She’d never do something like that. I can’t see it.”
“I’m going to hire a researcher to do some digging. Maybe we’ll come up with something. I’ll also be getting the hotel surveillance footage. That might be all we need to get you off of Rupert’s suspect list.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. Any evidence you bring to the table will automatically be rejected by any jury. Let me do my work. You take care of that little girl of yours.”
Ben nodded and stood to leave. Boady followed him out to the living room, where Emma had fallen asleep on the couch. Beside her lay the sketch pad. Boady picked up the pad as Ben lifted his exhausted daughter, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.
Boady opened the door and watched as Ben carried Emma to his car, carefully laying her in the back seat. Ben stretched a seatbelt across Emma and shut the door. Then he waved to Boady and drove off.
After Ben left, Boady looked at the sketch pad and at the picture Emma had drawn. It almost took away his breath. She’d drawn her mother, and not the stick-figure-type drawing where you would need context to know what she was drawing. No. This picture was the product of a talented hand. The face and hair were that of Jennavieve Pruitt. She lay on her side on the ground, stretched out beneath a tree. Emma drew Jennavieve’s hands pressed together and tucked under her head in a makeshift pillow, and she wore a princess dress.
Above Jennavieve’s head, Emma had drawn a dialogue bubble, the little circle that animators use to show when someone is speaking. And in the bubble she wrote: “I miss my Emma.”
