by Joel Goldman
She raised him after his parents were killed in a car wreck when Mason was only three. She tried talking him out of going to law school, telling him that he wasn’t cut out for the only kind of law worth practicing. Her kind. He’d gone anyway, suspecting that she was right. He enjoyed the battle but didn’t care enough about the war she never stopped fighting. When he graduated, he joined a small firm that specialized in representing injured people.
“It’s the kind of practice where I can do good and do well at the same time,” he told her.
“Go sell your slogans to someone else,” she said.
Mason thought of Claire as the sun rose at their backs. She called Kelly the intrusive arm of the law—investigating, accusing, and punishing. She taught him that it’s the lawyer’s duty to shield the individual from that power. That duty drew her to the law. He understood the duty, but it had never held the allure for him that it had for Claire. Still, as they reached Pamela, he could hear Claire’s voice telling him, “There, that one.”
Pamela had the look of a handsome woman who did not miss the untarnished beauty of her youth. She carried herself with the confident assurance of someone who understood that age brings its own luster.
This morning, a lavender sweatband held back her chin-length chestnut hair. Her face was lightly made up, but not enough to cover the glow from a just-finished morning run. A trace of sweat darkened the scoop neckline of the yellow T-shirt that hung over her matching shorts. She stood with her hands on her hips, her full chest rising and falling with still settling breath, giving them a quizzical look as they topped the stairs.
“Oh my, excuse me. It’s Lou, isn’t it?” she asked him with sudden recognition.
“Yes, Pamela. I’m one of your husband’s partners. We met a couple of months ago.”
“Of course. Please excuse me. I wasn’t expecting you or the police,” she added, turning toward Kelly and extending her hand. “I’m Pamela Sullivan. But I expect you know that or you wouldn’t be here. What can I do for you, Officer?”
Kelly shook her hand quickly and firmly. “Mrs. Sullivan, I’m Sheriff Kelly Holt. Would you mind if we spoke inside?”
“My, this is starting to sound quite official.” Kelly didn’t reply and Pamela’s refined control showed the first sign of fraying as she held her arms folded across her chest. “Yes, it is a bit cool this morning, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t close to being cool, but Mason understood Pamela’s sudden chill. There was no possible explanation for their visit that could include good news. As if she sensed their purpose, Pamela led them through a sliding door, taking her time to delay the inevitable a few seconds longer.
They followed Pamela through a sliding glass door and into the den. She eased herself onto a sofa, her careful movement underscoring the fragility of the moment. Uncertain of his status, Mason stood near the sliding door. Kelly sat on the edge of a chair next to Pamela.
“I’m sorry to intrude on you, Mrs. Sullivan,” Kelly began in a soothing voice that quickly gave way to a crisp matter-of-factness. “A man’s body was found this morning in a cove not far from here. A wallet was also found with your husband’s driver’s license and credit cards. The man generally matches your husband’s physical description. Mr. Mason thinks it may be your husband.”
Pamela held fast as her jaw tightened and her eyes widened at the implications. She shook her head in response to the inevitable question of whether she knew where her husband was. Kelly’s request that she identify the body left Pamela mute and renewed Mason’s protective instincts.
“Sheriff, I’ll bring Mrs. Sullivan, but I would think my identification is sufficient.”
Kelly acknowledged his offer without taking her eyes from Pamela. “You’re welcome to come along, Counselor, but identification has to be made by next of kin if possible.” Her soothing tone was reserved for the newly widowed. He was entitled only to her official voice. “You can bring Mrs. Sullivan in her car.”
“I’m not a native, Sheriff. I’ll need directions.”
“I’m certain of that,” she replied. “Take County Road F to Lake Road 5-47 and pick up Highway 5 south. Go across Hurricane Deck Bridge and take the highway all the way to Starlight. Listrom’s Mortuary is on the square. I’ve got to return the boat, and I’ll meet you there.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Doc Eddy greeted Mason and Pamela at the mortuary. He introduced Malcolm Listrom as the finest mortician in Pope County, able to restore the departed to grandeur they had never achieved while among the living. He was so effusive in his praise of Malcolm’s gift that Mason decided the coroner was in for a cut.
Malcolm basked in Eddy’s praise while emitting appropriate solicitous sounds of sympathy for the bereaved. When Mason told him that the deceased was just passing through and would be buried in Kansas City, he became a waiter trying to turn his table. Kelly arrived a few minutes later and Malcolm led them to the room where he prepared bodies for burial.
Malcolm plied his magic in a ceramic-tiled, circular operating room dominated by two large surgical tables in the center. Glass-covered cabinets filled with unfamiliar solutions and tools lined the walls. The air was heavy with disinfectant that made their eyes water. Sullivan lay on one of the tables covered in an off-white sheath and adorned with a vanilla toe tag marked John Doe.
“I’m afraid I haven’t repaired the damage, Mrs. Sullivan,” Listrom apologized. “We’re not allowed to prepare the body until the authorities approve.”
Pamela nodded, but Mason wasn’t certain she had really heard him. He stood behind her as Listrom pulled back the sheet.
“No, you bastard, not like this,” Pamela said as she slumped into Mason’s arms.
He half carried her into a waiting room and set her onto a sofa beneath a comforting portrait of Jesus, smiling beneficently, hands outstretched. Kelly followed them, murmured her condolences to Pamela, and motioned Doc Eddy and Mason to an adjoining office.
Mason asked, “Has anyone made a determination of the cause of death?”
“Can’t tell yet,” Doc Eddy said. “He’s got a knot on the back of his head. May have fallen and hit something. Won’t know for sure until we give him the canoe treatment.”
“Canoe treatment?”
Eddy laughed. “The incision goes stem to stern. Just like hollowing out a log for a canoe. It’s an old coroner’s joke.”
His crack made Mason punch up his defense of Pamela a notch. “I doubt if Pamela will want an autopsy. She’s been through enough.”
“An autopsy is required in the case of all suspicious deaths. Doc Eddy will do it this afternoon,” Kelly said.
“Wait a minute! You just said he hit his head and fell in. He probably drowned. There’s nothing suspicious or unexplained about that. There’s no reason to put Pamela through that.”
“A ski boat belonging to Sullivan was found tied up at the Buckhorn marina this morning. We found an earring on the boat, and your partner doesn’t look like the earring type. I doubt if he hit his head, fell in, and the boat drove itself back to the marina. I’m betting someone helped him into the water. I’m sorry if that’s hard on Mrs. Sullivan, but that’s the way it is.”
“If you’re going to question her, you’ll do it in my presence and you’ll stop when I tell you.”
He was drawing lines for a client who hadn’t retained him. Claire would have told him he was finally showing some promise. He and Kelly eyed each other, trying to guess when the confrontation that was brewing between them would finally erupt.
“Take her back to her house, and I’ll meet you there in an hour. Questioning is always more productive immediately following a death. I’ve been through this enough times to know that.”
“Yeah, Sheriff, I’ll bet that the lake is a real hotbed of murder and mayhem.”
Her withering stare confirmed that he’d just made an ass of himself. He conceded the moment to her and shepherded Pamela to the car.
They made it back to Sullivan
’s just before eleven. Diane Farrell, Sullivan’s legal assistant for ten years, was sprawled on the doorstep. She was leaning against a brown grocery bag filled with fresh fruit for the brunch, flicking ashes from her cigarette into clay pots brimming with red, pink, and violet impatiens. Pamela walked past her without comment, too dazed to speak.
Diane was plain and thick with a blocky face bolted to a rectangular body. Her hair was a washed-out brown matching the grocery bag. She had dark, wide-set eyes, a nose too small for her broad face, and thin lips on a downturned mouth.
She promoted and protected Sullivan as if he were her own. Try to go around her or behind her and you’d probably end up just going—to another firm. Office scuttlebutt had her madly in love with Sullivan, though no one could picture them together. Sullivan played only with beautiful women. Ordinary need not apply. But she had job security and a kinship with Pamela, who welcomed her as a link to her wandering husband.
“Mason, what’s going on? Where’s Sullivan?” she asked.
Mason knew Diane well enough to dislike her, and he disliked her enough not to soften the blow.
“He’s dead, Diane. Someone found him floating in the lake this morning. Pamela and I just identified the body.”
She studied his face for some hint that it wasn’t true. Her eyes were like black holes, sucking in everything and emitting no light. When he didn’t recant, she went inside, calling for Pamela. Her stoic response made him feel like a heel for smacking her with the news.
Mason spent the next twenty minutes telling his colleagues, as they arrived for brunch, that even though the firm’s biggest producer was dead, everything would be fine. They didn’t believe it and neither did he, but it was the sort of thing people said and accepted when bad news was too fresh to argue with. Some wanted to stay and help. But he told them there wasn’t anything for them to do.
He was waiting for the sheriff. Claire’s voice wouldn’t let him leave Pamela to be questioned without a lawyer. When the last group drove away, he picked up Diane’s fruit and went into the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
No one was in the den, and he was enough of a stranger not to knock on closed bedroom doors. Diane emerged a few minutes later, dry-eyed, with her normal shade of pale.
“How’s Pamela?”
“Her husband is dead, so that’s a bummer. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“The sheriff will be here soon to question her. I’ll stay for that. You don’t have to stick around.”
“She expects me to stay, Mason. You play lawyer. I’ll take care of Pamela.”
One more reason not to envy Pamela, he decided.
Kelly arrived at noon. Mason introduced Diane, who studied Kelly’s badge like it was counterfeit before saying that she would ask Pamela to join them.
Pamela had showered, changed, and added fresh makeup and appeared composed as she returned to the den. She and Kelly took the same seats as before. Mason stood at Pamela’s left with Diane on her right. They were a mismatched pair of sentries.
“When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Sullivan?” Kelly began.
“Last night about seven o’clock. We were supposed to go to Buckhorn for dinner. We had a fight and he left.”
Mason drifted away from Pamela’s chair so that he could watch her face for any signs of weakness that would trigger his instruction not to answer any more questions.
Kelly continued. “What did you fight about?”
“I never remember anymore. We just fight.”
“Where did he go?”
“He took the ski boat. I watched him from the kitchen window.”
“Which way did he go when he left the cove?”
“Toward Turkey Bend.”
“Do you know anyone who lives up that way whom he might have gone to visit?”
“No, we don’t have many friends at the lake. We have a lot of visitors, and they either stay with us or at a client’s condo.”
“Whose condo is that?”
“One of Richard’s clients has a condominium in a cove near here. I don’t know who really owns it. Richard never talked about his clients. I only knew that he was able to use it for guests when we entertained at the lake.”
“Did you have guests at the condo this weekend?”
“No.”
“Do you water-ski, Mrs. Sullivan?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Has anyone else used the ski boat recently other than your husband?”
“No, and he doesn’t ski anymore either. He says his knees can’t take it. He just uses the boat for transportation.”
“Mrs. Sullivan, the lake patrol found your husband’s boat at dawn. It was abandoned. I wonder if you can identify this earring that was found on the boat?”
Kelly handed her an evidence bag containing a single gold hoop earring. Pamela reached for her ear and removed one of her own clasp hoops.
“It’s not mine, if that’s what you mean. I’ve never pierced my ears.”
Kelly’s silence told Mason that she knew her business. She would learn more by listening than by asking. Pamela let the silence hang for a moment. She pulled herself upright, looked directly at Kelly, and answered with a last shot of dignity.
“The earring probably belongs to someone younger with a flat belly and firm tits and I don’t know her name. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long morning.”
She rose and turned away. Diane padded behind her as they retreated into the bedroom.
“Son of a bitch!” Mason said.
“Seems likely,” Kelly added.
“How about a ride back to Buckhorn, Sheriff?”
“Sorry, Counselor. I’m not running a taxi service.”
“I wasn’t planning on tipping you. You dragged me into this mess. You can’t leave me stranded here.”
“Yes, I can. Your partner’s death isn’t neat and tidy, and I like neat-and-tidy deaths. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Maybe I can help.” Her arched eyebrows told him that she didn’t think so. “Look, I admit I’m a reflex smart-ass. But I helped identify the body and brought you here. And I was just trying to protect Pamela.”
Mason doubted that Sullivan had died of natural causes, as any decent asshole would have done. O’Malley’s indictment on charges that he’d skimmed money from the bank that he owned was inevitable. Sullivan had done everything but confess to helping O’Malley steal the money when he asked Mason to lose documents that incriminated him. Mason knew that Sullivan’s only chance to save himself would be to testify against his client. O’Malley couldn’t invoke the attorney-client privilege to prevent Sullivan from testifying about their crimes. O’Malley’s best defense would be a lawyer who was too dead to testify. Mason was the only other lawyer in the firm who knew what Sullivan knew—or who knew what Sullivan had intimated to him. If Sullivan had been murdered, Mason wanted to know sooner rather than later. His protective instincts were becoming self-centered.
“Who said she needs protection, Counselor?”
“Anybody who starts the day with a dead husband needs protection.”
“Miss Farrell can take you back to Buckhorn. This is an official investigation. I don’t need any volunteers.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going home today, but I’ve got an obligation to my partners to find out what happened.” Though true, that was the least of his concerns. But it was the only excuse he could use until he knew whether Sullivan had been murdered. If Sullivan’s death wasn’t murder, telling Kelly that both his client and his dead partner were crooks would put him on O’Malley’s hit list. “Just tell me what your next step is. Maybe I really can help.”
Kelly sighed, as if he would accept her annoyance as an answer. His silence said not likely.
“Okay. I follow the most logical line of investigation. That means find out where Sullivan went and who he was with before he died. He left his house around seven. Mrs. Sullivan saw him heading toward a cli
ent’s condo. I want to know where it is and who owns it.”
“How will you find it?”
“I’ll start with county records of property ownership.”
“Perfect. I may recognize a name and save you a lot of trouble.”
Kelly looked at him as if she’d just found a stray dog and couldn’t decide whether to feed it or take it to the pound.
“I hope you’re ready for a long ride home. I’ve got some stops to make.”
“Sheriff, I’m like lunch meat; I’m always ready.”
CHAPTER SIX
Kelly punched in a number on her cell phone as they pulled away in her pickup truck, leaving the call on speaker.
“Riley, it’s Kelly. Get your lazy ass off your back porch and meet me at the courthouse in half an hour.”
The playful teasing in her voice told Mason that Riley didn’t have a lazy ass. He wondered what kind of ass Riley really had that caused Kelly to react that way.
“Listen, little girl. I got you that badge, and I can have it back in a heartbeat. Your daddy never woulda talked that way to me.”
Riley’s voice was filled with pleasure that said they’d played this piece many times before. Kelly’s laughter was rich, lighting her eyes.
Mason was relieved that Riley sounded a generation removed. He was also surprised at his relief. He had lost track of the different emotional chords Kelly had struck with him in less than half a day.
“Friend of yours?” Mason asked.
“Riley Brooks has been the register of deeds since I was a girl. He talked me into taking this job until a new sheriff is elected in November.”
“What happened to the other sheriff?”
“He got carried away with strip-searching women who ran stop signs. Someone had to finish out his term.”
“Don’t tell me you weren’t first choice, Sheriff?”
