Evidence of Guilt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  Before heading for the door I sat in my rental car for a few moments, gathering my thoughts. What did you say to the mother of a murder victim, especially when you’d aligned yourself with the man accused of the crime? What could you say, besides “I’m sorry for your loss”? And even that, no matter how heartfelt, seemed almost a mockery.

  Finally I willed myself from the car, took a deep breath and rang the bell. An Hispanic woman opened the door a moment later, then nodded with recognition when I told her my name.

  “I tell Mrs. Reena you coming here,” the woman said, and started off. When I didn’t follow immediately she turned and gestured me forward.

  I followed her to a glass-walled room at the end of the hall, where she mumbled a rudimentary introduction and then quickly departed.

  The woman sitting on the sofa glanced up and frowned. She looked to be in her early fifties, although she was clearly doing everything in her power to keep the signs of aging at bay. Her hair was a solid shade of honey blond, feathered around her face and fuller in back. Her makeup was artfully applied, and her dress, though snug, was well- tailored. She held a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  The man standing behind her, kneading her shoulders, was probably ten years her junior, although it was hard to tell because he had the kind of smooth, urbane features that merely mellowed with age. A second drink rested on the table to his left.

  “Maria said you were a friend of Lisa’s.” Reena Swanson’s voice had the raspy quality of a longtime smoker. And the crisp intonation of someone who didn’t wish to be bothered.

  “I knew her,” I said, “but not well enough to be called a friend.”

  Reena studied me a moment, her gaze level, the eyes cool. “I’m not interested in semantics,” she said, crinking her neck so that her shoulders molded to her husband’s fingers. “A little deeper, Ron, especially on the right side.”

  “Lisa was a lovely person,” I said. “Always upbeat and friendly.”

  “Really.” Reena dipped her head further forward. Her expression was hard to read, but it made me uncomfortable.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said, rather stiffly.

  She looked up, frowned heavily, then stubbed out her cigarette. “What was it you wanted? You certainly didn’t come all the way to L.A. to tell me what a wonderful daughter I had.”

  I felt both taken aback and chastised. “I understand you packed up some of your daughter’s belongings. Had them shipped back here.”

  Husband and wife exchanged glances.

  “Did Cole put you up to this?” Ron asked.

  “Put me up to what?”

  Reena waved her hand in disgust. “It doesn’t matter,” she said to her husband. “None of it’s worth much. Besides, he made an inventory of everything we took.”

  “What is it he wants back?” Ron asked with a sigh. There was only time for a quick round of soul-searching, not one of my fortes. Honesty won out. Although it probably had as much to do with not wanting to involve Cole as with any clear aversion on my part to stretching the truth.

  “Ed Cole has nothing to do with my being here,” I explained. “I’m an attorney representing Wes Harding.”

  “Harding?” As recognition struck, Reena Swanson’s features clouded. “The man who killed Lisa and Amy?”

  “The man accused of killing them.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Are you telling us he didn’t?” Ron asked, incredulous.

  “I’m simply trying to get some information.”

  Silence again filled the room.

  Reena’s face was tight, with all the warmth of marble. She reached for a cigarette and lit it, hands shaking. Then she folded one arm across her chest and glared at me. “You’ve got a fat lot of nerve, showing up at our door like this.”

  “It’s not a comfortable position, believe me. I may not have known Lisa well, but I did know her. And I liked her.”

  Ron eyed me warily. “So what is it you want?”

  “It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Reena said, standing abruptly. Her voice was raspy, her features squeezed tight with anger. “Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with us.”

  I looked toward Ron, then back at Reena. “I know the loss of your daughter and grandchild must be terribly painful—”

  Her gaze turned to steel. “You don’t know squat, my dear.” She reached for her drink, lost her balance and had to steady herself by catching hold of the table.

  “Reena. Please.” Ron Swanson came around the edge of the sofa and tried to calm his wife.

  She wrenched away. “My daughter was lost to me a long time ago. Isn’t that right, honey?” She turned to Ron with an ugly expression.

  He looked at her sharply.

  “And I never met my granddaughter. Never so much as talked to her on the phone.”

  “Reena, you’re letting yourself get worked up.”

  “Damn right I am.” She spat the words at her husband, then turned back to me. “I never even knew I had a grandchild until last year. So don’t talk to me about loss. And don’t try to involve me in this . . . this problem of yours. It doesn’t affect me in any way.”

  I shifted my weight, discomfited at what I’d unleashed. “Still, you can’t pretend it never happened,” I insisted. “If nothing else, there’s the property, and whatever else is part of your daughter’s estate.”

  “Ain’t that a hoot?” Reena finished off her drink and stared hard into the bottom of the glass. “Looks like little like Lisa’s managed to thumb her nose at me all the way from the grave.”

  Ron Swanson had been hovering off to the side, looking about as comfortable as a man with a toothache. “Nothing’s settled,” he told his wife. “Cole was talking worst-case scenarios.”

  “Worst case,” she repeated, stepping back unsteadily. She held the glass at eye level, regarding her husband through the bubbled surface. “I guess all the best-case scenarios have been taken.”

  He moved toward her, his voice full of concern. “You’ve got to put the past behind you, Reena.”

  “Easy words for someone like you.” With a violent shudder, she turned, raised her arm and hurled the glass in her husband’s direction. Fortunately she had a weak arm and a poor aim. The glass missed Swanson by a wide margin and shattered against the tile floor.

  For a moment no one moved. Then, with a cry of anguish, Reena flung herself onto the sofa and began pounding the cushion with her fists.

  Ron sat beside her and reached out to touch her arm. The flailing continued for a few seconds longer. Then, abruptly, she turned and crumpled into his embrace, where she began sobbing in great waves against his chest.

  I let myself out and headed for the car, feeling guilty and vaguely voyeuristic at the same time.

  As I reached the front sidewalk, I heard Maria call after me. “Mr. Ron,” she explained, “he want to talk to you.”

  “Inside?”

  She shook her head.”The Crossing. In about half an hour.”

  “The Crossing?”

  “A bar, not far from here. I tell him yes?”

  I had a moment’s hesitation about meeting a man I didn’t know in a strange bar. But I figured if it was close to San Marino it had to be fairly safe. And I hadn’t yet found what I’d come for. “I’ll be there.”

  She gave me the address and directions, then retreated back up the walkway and into the house, muttering to herself.

  Chapter 17

  The Crossing wasn’t the dark, back-alley beer joint I’d half expected. In fact, it was so trendy I felt out of place, like a country cousin at a yachting party. The decor was glass and brass, garnished with enough greenery that the place could have passed for an indoor botanical garden.

  I had planned to sit at the bar while I waited for Swanson, sip a glass of wine and maybe pick up a bite to eat. But the bar was packed three and four people deep, a wall of racket and commotion that showed no sign of thinning. I opted instead for one
of the few available tables and had to peer through a tangle of schefflera in order to keep my eye on the front door.

  I ordered a glass of chardonnay and a plate of fried zucchini sticks. My glass was almost empty by the time Ron Swanson arrived.

  I stood and waved to catch his attention. Three men at the end of the bar waved back, and one of them blew a kiss. They seemed to find the exchange hilarious.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” he said. The waitress arrived, and he ordered a double martini. “I apologize for the scene back at the house. Reena’s not usually so high-strung. This whole thing’s been very hard on her. Hard on us both.”

  “There’s no need to apologize, Mr. Swanson.”

  “Ron, please.” He pressed his palms together, elbows on the table in front of him. “It’s just that I didn’t want you to think that, well . . . to get the wrong idea.”

  “The wrong idea about what?”

  “About Reena. About me too, I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure I followed his meaning. “It’s understandable that you’d be upset. Your wife especially.”

  He ran a hand across his forehead. “It’s the anger I’m talking about . . . I mean, she is angry, but it’s because she loved Lisa, despite everything. I wouldn’t want it coming out at trial that her own mother didn’t care about . . . about what happened to her.”

  “Or that she blamed you in some way,” I added.

  He nodded, looked around to see if his drink was on its way. “Yeah, that too.”

  “Does she?”

  “Does she what?”

  “Blame you? I got the feeling maybe she did.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a complicated situation.”

  I waited.

  After a moment he cleared his throat. “Do you have children?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “They’re their own people, you know. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, they ultimately follow their own mind.”

  “Is that what Lisa did?”

  “I don’t know what she was following. From everything Reena’s told me Lisa was a happy, easygoing child. Then, when she reached her teens, things changed dramatically.” They usually did when hormones kicked in.

  “How old was Lisa when you and your wife married?”

  His eyes again scanned the room, looking for the waitress. As she approached with his drink, his scowl eased. He sipped first, then reached into his pocket to pay the bill.

  When the waitress left he took another sip before nodding in my direction. “Lisa was almost fifteen. I’m sure Lisa’s age, the fact that Reena and I married rather quickly, the move to San Marino, they were all part of the problem. Reena had been married twice before. Neither marriage lasted long. I’d guess that was a contributing factor, as well.”

  He paused, took another couple sips of his drink. “Knowing Reena, I’m sure there were men in and out of the picture during the intervening years, but in terms of family it was just the two of them, Reena and Lisa, for most of Lisa’s life.”

  I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

  “Then I show up. There she is on the verge of womanhood herself, and suddenly Lisa has to “share her mother with a stranger. A male.” He sounded embarrassed. “A man’s presence in a situation like that . . . it alters things, recasts them in ways that aren’t always entirely obvious.”

  “You sound like a shrink.”

  He smiled. “A radiologist, actually. But I have a psych background, and a buddy who’s an analyst.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Are you saying that Lisa was jealous of her mother?”

  “There was a certain degree of rivalry, I think.”

  “Kind of a modern-day slant on Freud?”

  Ron smiled again. The martini seemed to have relaxed him. His features were looser, his gestures less sharp. Or maybe it was my own glass of wine that softened the edges.

  “Nothing quite so deep,” he said. “Nothing you could really put a finger on, either. It was always just beneath the surface.”

  “How did Lisa act when you were around her?”

  “At times she was standoffish or sassy. Other times it was almost like she was flirting. Again nothing overt.” He rubbed his chin. “I guess maybe coquettish is a better word. More subtle and childlike.”

  “How did you react?”

  “For the most part I ignored it.”

  “For the most part?”

  He sighed, sipped his gin. “I wanted Lisa to like me. The wicked stepmother persona is just as uncomfortable for stepfathers, you know. It’s not an easy role.”

  “I imagine not.” My dealings with Tom’s children had been an eye-opener in that regard.

  “Besides, I knew it was unlikely I’d have a child of my own. Lisa was my one shot at family.”

  “By fifteen, most of us want to forget we’re part of any family.”

  Ron acknowledged the remark with a smile. “The funny part is, things seemed fairly smooth at first. Lisa didn’t react badly to the news that we were going to be married. We included her in the wedding, took her on all but four days of our honeymoon. I thought we were off to a great start. I don’t know . . . Maybe it was just that the novelty wore off, or maybe I tried to be too chummy too fast.”

  As the waitress circled by our table, Ron caught her eye. “Would you like another?” he asked me.

  “Sure.”

  The waitress cleared our empty glasses and left.

  “In retrospect,” Ron said, “I can see that things started to change almost immediately. But at the time it took me a while to notice. Of course Lisa was sick a lot during that time, too.”

  “Sick how?”

  “Stomachaches. Odd, unexplained pains. I’m sure it was psychosomatic, but it put a strain on all of us.”

  “How about headaches; were they part of it?”

  He thought for a moment. “They might have been, but I don’t recall that specifically. The symptoms seemed to change from week to week.”

  “But they eventually disappeared?”

  He nodded. “Although to tell you the truth, I can’t remember when that was, exactly.”

  Our drinks arrived, and Ron took a moment to refortify himself.

  “They must have cleared up by her junior year, though. That’s when she began hanging out with a tough crowd, thumbing her nose at our rules. The classic symptoms of self-destructive behavior.”

  “Drugs?”

  He nodded. “Drugs, sex, letting her appearance go, her grades slide. It seemed like our hands were tied. The more we clamped down, the more she rebelled. She moved out of the house altogether in the middle of her senior year.”

  I was intrigued. The Lisa I’d known was so unlike the young woman Ron Swanson was describing. “Where did she go when she left home?”

  “Not that far. She moved in with some guy who had an apartment in Alhambra. But she finished high school; I give her credit for that. After she graduated she took off and didn’t tell us where she was headed. We’ve barely seen her in the last six years.”

  “What about her husband? Do you know anything about him?”

  “Not much. We met him for the first time last year when he showed up at our doorstep looking for Lisa. I gathered they’d had a fight or something.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Young, good-looking in that healthy, southern California way. He was a musician, or so he said, although he made his living as a chauffeur for one of those airport limo services.”

  Ron paused. “That was when we first learned of Amy.”

  “It must have been a shock.”

  He nodded. “It was. For Lisa to have kept something like that from us . . . it seems so spiteful.”

  We sipped our drinks in silence for a moment. Ron seemed lost in some private rumination, and I needed a chance to collect my thoughts. The more I learned about Lisa, the less I understood her. But that wasn’t why I’d come to Los Angeles.

  “Lisa apparently
kept a journal of some sort,” I said. “I’m hoping it might tell us something about what led to her death. It’s not at her house. Do you think it might be among the things you had shipped here?”

  “It doesn’t sound familiar, but I can look.”

  “I’d appreciate it." Then I had another thought. “When was the last time you spoke with Lisa?”

  Ron frowned. “I think it was just after Anne died. Anne Drummond, Reena’s cousin.”

  “I thought they were sisters.”

  “Not technically. Reena lived with Anne’s family after her own parents were killed, so in some sense they felt like sisters.”

  “Yet Anne left the property to Lisa instead of Reena.”

  Ron gave a hollow laugh. “Reena was a little surprised about that. It wasn’t so much the inheritance as the idea of the thing. Not that we couldn’t use the money, what with the HMOs taking control of medicine these days. But I think, mostly, Reena was hurt at being overlooked in favor of Lisa. Especially after the way Lisa had treated us.”

  And Reena had been listed as beneficiary in the original will. It didn’t make a lot of sense. “Were Reena and Anne close?”

  “I think they were at one time, but. . . well, you know how things go.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

  “After Reena’s second marriage fell apart she kind of went off the deep end. Was actually hospitalized for a period. Lisa, who was only four at the time, went to live with Anne. I gather that made for some tension between Anne and Reena. And they weren’t at all alike. Reena’s quite emotional.” Ron smiled slightly. “As you can probably tell. Anne was strong-willed and opinionated. Very much her own person.”

  He paused to take another swallow of his drink. “Anne’s husband ran off and left her when they’d only been married a year or so. She never brooded over it, though, or let it color her thinking. I got the feeling she thought Reena lacked a certain . . . inner strength. It’s not true. But Reena’s a romantic at heart, and Anne was a pragmatist.”