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

by Jonnie Jacobs

  I nodded in sympathy.”This is one of the nicer places, though.”

  “I suppose so.” Leaning closer, she gestured to the other end of the room, where a small group was gathered in front of the television. “The worst part,” she whispered, “is that you have to put up with other people and their annoying habits.”

  She straightened, played with the fabric of her skirt for a moment, then sighed. “I forget things, though. Sheri’s right; I can’t care for myself anymore. And I sometimes make the stupidest decisions. It’s like I’ve got some other person’s brain inside my head some days. A very stupid person.”

  I pulled my tote bag into my lap and retrieved the package. “Sheri sent this. She said you were expecting it.”

  Tearing at the wrapped package as gleefully as a child, Irma let out a squeal of delight. “She got me three of them.”

  “Three of what?”

  “Books on tape. My eyes are so bad, I had to give up reading. Then one of the women here introduced me to audio books. They make a tape of someone reading the book aloud, and then you listen to it. My friend likes to knit while she listens, but me, I just like to close my eyes and concentrate on the story. It’s a wonderful invention.”

  I made a mental note to bring her a couple of tapes next time I came for a visit. “I brought you something too,” I said, reaching into my tote for the box I’d picked up at The Sugar Plum on my way over.

  Her eyes sparkled. She opened the box and offered me a cookie. “Why don’t I get us some tea also?” she suggested. “There’s a service set out in the dining room. We can have our own little party.”

  “That’s a lovely idea. But I’ll get the tea. You sit right here.”

  “I take mine with sugar,” she said. “Two spoonsful.”

  I found the room on the other side of the hallway. Tea, coffee and juice were set out on the long buffet near the door. I had to give Sheri credit for choosing a decent place. I was sure the homelike amenities did not come cheaply.

  When I returned, balancing the cups one in each hand, Irma was leafing through one of Lisa’s sketchbooks. “You’re quite an artist,” she said with admiration.

  I set the cups down on the coffee table in front of us. “Those aren’t mine. They belong to a friend.”

  “Your friend is quite good. I always wanted to have artistic talent. One of the classes they offer here in the evenings is a drawing class. Maybe I’ll give it a try.” She laughed. “Grandma Moses herself.”

  She nibbled on a cookie as she flipped through Lisa Cornell’s drawings. Then she stopped abruptly and pointed to the page in her lap.

  “Goodness, that’s Barry Drummond.”

  “Barry Drummond?”

  “I haven’t seen him in years. He was married to a woman I used to work with.”

  “Anne Drummond?”

  Irma Pearl looked up. “You knew her?”

  “Are you saying that’s a sketch of Anne Drummond’s husband?”

  “Wasn’t much of a husband, if the truth be told. How did you know Anne?”

  “I only knew her by reputation.” I scooted closer. “Are you sure that’s him?”

  “It certainly looks like him. Like he looked twenty years ago, anyway. Cleft chin, broad forehead, wavy hair. And that killer smile.”

  I wondered if her choice of words was prophetic. “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s not much to tell. Anne and I both worked at the library. Barry worked for some company back East, was sort of their western sales representative. I never did understand exactly what it was he did, but it involved a fair amount of travel. Then, all of a sudden, a couple of years after they married, he just up and left her. I recall that she got a card or two from him, then nothing.”

  Irma sipped her tea. “He had a reputation as a womanizer, and most of us figured he’d just moved on to greener pastures. Of course I always suspected Anne had herself a beau on the side too. Not that I fault her. Barry was one of those fellows who could pour on the sweetness and charm but didn’t give a hoot, really, about anyone but himself.”

  “Why’d she marry him then?”

  “Well, he was good-looking. And like I said, he could be a real charmer. Then too, Anne was kind of impulsive. She wasn’t what you’d call a weighty thinker.”

  “But she never divorced him?”

  “Not as far as I know. She never remarried, anyway. Barry’s leaving seemed to sober her up quite a bit. She kind of kept to herself after that.”

  “Do you remember when it was he left?”

  “Let’s see, it must have been in the mid-seventies.” Irma frowned. “It was the summer Sheri got engaged. She didn’t do a whole lot better than Anne in choosing the right man, but at least she didn’t give up trying.”

  As I recalled, Sheri had tried to find the right man on at least three separate occasions. And I knew for a fact that she was still trying.

  “Your friend who drew these pictures, how did she know Barry?”

  I shook my head, perplexed. Although the question in my mind was not only how Lisa knew Barry, but why she would be sketching his face some twenty years later.

  <><><>

  When I got home I called Sam first thing. He wasn’t in, but I left a message relaying the key points of my conversation with Irma Pearl. I was anxious to hear his reaction.

  I tried Tom next, but he too was out. I’d barely hung up when the phone rang.

  It was Curt Willis. He tried his best to be cordial, but he couldn’t keep the gloating tone from coming through. “You’ve heard about the panties the police discovered? They were hidden in the yard of one of Harding’s neighbors.”

  I hate the way men say panties. I don’t know one woman who refers to her underwear that way. “I heard,” I told him.

  His voice smoothed out. “I just wanted to make sure you knew. I wouldn’t want anyone accusing me of not playing fair and square with the defense.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you, Curt.”

  “I mean it. I’m not one of those attorneys who maps out a dramatic surprise to spring at the eleventh hour of trial.”

  If he thought he could get away with it, I was willing to bet he’d try. “Only because the law won’t allow it,” I said.

  “In this case it doesn’t matter. The evidence is lining up nicely for the prosecution.”

  “You really think the underwear belonged to Lisa and Amy?” I asked.

  “It’s too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. Of course, we’ll know more when the lab results are in.”

  “Benson wasn’t so sure they’d show much.”

  “He’s overly cautious. I imagine he was also trying to soft-pedal the bad news. He seems to have a thing for you, you know.” Curt’s tone sounded vaguely petulant.

  “It’s not the sort of thing you imagine,” I explained. “Daryl Benson is a family friend from way back.”

  A chuckle. “So that’s it. I didn’t figure him to be your type, although I could see how you might be his.”

  “In this case you figured wrong.”

  He laughed appreciatively. “I got to tell you, Kali, I’m looking forward to this trial. I hope it doesn’t sour what’s between us.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.” I didn’t know there was anything between us but professional camaraderie. Besides, butting heads at trial was the way attorneys bonded. Kind of like dogs sniffing at each other’s hindquarters.

  “Most of the lawyers in this hick town are a bunch of yoyos,” Curt said. “But you and I are different. We’ve got the smarts and the drive to play with the big guys.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Of course, you’ve been on the front line before. For me this is a new experience. This is the most prominent case I’ve worked on.” Curt paused. “I feel like I’m stepping into the spotlight, playing on Broadway. And it’s just the beginning.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, Curt, but you haven’t won yet.”

  His laugh was good-natured
. “But I will.”

  “In case you’ve missed them, there are a whole slew of holes in your case.”

  “Like what?”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Wait and find out.”

  <><><>

  I’d thought I might spend the afternoon putting the first coat of paint on the dining room walls. But Curt’s call left me feeling unsettled, as though an elusive gnat were buzzing near my head. I got out the drop cloth and brush and then decided to bag the idea. I was in no mood for painting.

  What bothered me in large part was trial strategy. The possibilities were numerous and seemed to fly off in a new direction at every juncture. Sam and I had to pin down an approach, and soon.

  I was also bugged by Curt’s attitude, although I understood where he was coming from. Curt’s legal career had never quite come up to his expectations. It had stalled at an early stage, and he’d spent the intervening years jockeying for a second chance at the brass ring. It remained to be seen whether this trial would help him, but to his mind it was his best shot. He was going to give it everything he had.

  In some respects my own situation wasn’t all that different. My career had stalled at a later stage, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted the brass ring. But the trial was important to me, too. I wanted to win as much as Curt did.

  I poured myself a glass of iced tea, then sat down at the kitchen table with my case notes and files. Curt’s attitude and my own professional ambitions aside, this newest development with Barry Drummond raised enough questions that my head was beginning to spin. I couldn’t wait to talk it over with Sam.

  I took out paper and pen, then spent several minutes staring at the blank page. There were two starting premises — either Wes did not commit the crimes in question or he did. I decided to set the second aside for a moment and concentrate on the first.

  I believed Wes’s account of having picked up Lisa at the Last Chance. Ricky, the bartender, had pretty much corroborated that. Also plausible were Wes’s explanations for the rabbit’s foot in Amy’s pocket, the dirt on his motorcycle, and the bloodstains on his clothing. Of course, to get all that into evidence at trial we’d have to put Wes on the stand — and that proposition didn’t thrill me at all.

  Left unanswered, though, was the question of why Lisa had left so abruptly the night she’d gone home with Wes. Had she simply changed her mind about him, or was she playing the tease all along? It was equally possible, of course, that Wes’s own behavior had caused the cooling of Lisa’s ardor. He might not be a killer, but that didn’t mean he was a saint, either. I was willing to bet his version of events had been sanitized at least a little.

  There was also the matter of the Friday night phone call. Had Lisa actually received a call? If so, was it related to her death?

  I wrote down questions and jotted a few stray thoughts. Then I started with a clean sheet of paper and Dr. Markley’s death. She’d called me Wednesday afternoon, presumably because she’d remembered something she thought might have bearing on Lisa’s death. Had the doctor been killed because of what she knew? Or was I reading too much into a simple accident?

  I pulled out the sketch of Barry Drummond — or the man who looked like Barry Drummond. Had Lisa found a picture of him among her aunt’s things and decided to draw him? But why, of all the faces she could practice sketching, would she choose his? I wondered if perhaps the man had returned to Silver Creek.

  I flipped through the sketchbook. I recognized the barn at the back of her property, but that was all. Many of the drawings resembled doodles. Flowers, trees, birds. Even a geranium in a flowerpot that looked as though it might have been inspired by the old wallpaper in Wes’s kitchen. Maybe it had been.

  Drummond’s picture was roughly halfway through the sketchbook. I examined the other pages on which she’d worked on her rendering of chins and eyes and mouths. Except for one exaggerated drawing of a cleft chin, I couldn’t see that the features bore any resemblance to the drawing of Barry Drummond.

  A thought came to me. I checked the file notes from my conversation with Ron Swanson, Lisa’s stepfather. Her childhood stay with Anne Drummond was likely to have coincided with Barry’s departure, but Lisa would have been only four or five at the time. Would she remember a face from that far back?

  It was possible, I supposed. Maybe, through hypnosis, Lisa had remembered something damaging about the man. It seemed pretty far-fetched, and I couldn’t imagine who would care at this point except for Barry Drummond himself.

  Of course Irma Pearl could have been mistaken. In light of her deteriorating mind, it was more than possible. Surely there had to be someone in town who could tell me whether the sketch was truly of Barry Drummond. I was wading through a mental list of people who might be able to help when I heard a knock at the door. Tom’s knock.

  “It’s open,” I yelled.

  Loretta jumped to her feet and went to greet him.

  “I thought I’d take a walk,” Tom said. Barney shot past, headed for Loretta’s food dish. “You want to come along?”

  “Sure. My brain could use the exercise.” I changed shoes and grabbed a hat to block what was left of the sun. I’d spent so many summers baking myself to a golden brown that my skin was probably beyond help. But encroaching age lines made me anxious to hold on to whatever youth I had left.

  “Did you see Benson this morning?” Tom asked as we headed down toward the main road. The day was hot and I could feel my cotton T-shirt sticking to my back.

  “Yes, but I didn’t learn much more than I did over the telephone.”

  “Rumor has it there are bloodstains.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “The guy covering the story was gabbing with one of the lab people.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s her blood,” I said bleakly.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “And it certainly doesn’t prove that Wes Harding was involved. Anyone could have gotten back to that compost bin.”

  “Anyone willing to risk being caught.”

  We turned off the main road and onto a fire break. “If you were going to get rid of evidence, would you dump it in a compost bin? Seems like you’re almost asking for it to be found.”

  “I guess it would depend on what my other options were.” Tom bent down to unleash the dogs. They trotted off to sniff the trees.

  “There’s something else that’s been troubling me,” I said, brushing aside a gossamer strand of spider’s web.”The underpants the police found were black lace, very skimpy. Yet Lisa was dressed in comfortable clothes — old jeans and a jersey. Her bra was white cotton.”

  “So?”

  I shrugged. “It just seems like an odd combination.”

  “Not all women have the same pedestrian tastes you do.”

  I nudged him with my elbow.”Thanks a heap. You really know how to lay on the compliments.”

  “It’s a statement, Kali, nothing more.”

  “Those G-string things are uncomfortable,” I grumbled. “And lace scratches.”

  He grinned, held up his hands. “Okay, you win. It’s an odd combination.”

  “You want to hear something else odd?” I told him about the sketch of the man who might be Barry Drummond. “Do you think he could be here in town and no one would recognize him?”

  “Sure, especially if he didn’t want to be recognized.”

  “That’s spooky.”

  “You think Barry Drummond might be connected to the murders?”

  Tom’s train of thought had followed my own, but the theory sounded pretty outlandish when I heard it aloud. Why would a man who’d disappeared from Silver Creek twenty years earlier return to kill a woman he’d barely known?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the sketch isn’t Drummond. Or maybe Lisa ran across a picture of him and simply drew the face for an artistic exercise.”

  “Or maybe Drummond wanted his old home back,” Tom offered.

  “Enough to kill for?”

  �
��It’s worth quite a bit of money. And Lisa was inquiring about property records, remember.”

  I nodded. “The property angle was one of the first I thought of. There’s apparently a fair amount of interest in the place. Some guy from San Francisco even called Cole because he has a client who’s interested.”

  “How did he even learn of the property?”

  “I have no idea. The guy’s name is Simmons. I’ve been trying to reach him for days.”

  I stopped to pick a handful of wild blackberries. “Enough of this,” I said, plopping a couple into my mouth. “It’s giving me a headache. It’s what one of my law professors called flee-flow.”

  “Is that some fancy legal term?”

  I laughed. “No, it refers to thoughts that flee as fast as they flow. You can’t hold on to any of them.”

  <><><>

  I awoke Sunday morning with a kicker of a headache. Tom and I had taken in a movie, then come back and settled outside with a pitcher of margaritas. Tom mixes them strong, but they slide down so smoothly, I tend to forget.

  It was after nine when I finally pulled myself out of bed. Tom had left early to spend the day with his children. I swallowed two Motrin, took a shower and fixed myself a cup of coffee. The Mountain Journal doesn’t publish a Sunday paper so I was stuck with The Hadley Times, which ran the underwear discovery as front-page news.

  There wasn’t much in the way of hard facts, but the reporter used the opportunity to review the murders and the case against Wes Harding. He’d obviously talked to Curt Willis, though he hadn’t called me or, to my knowledge, Sam. Curt was quoted as saying that the prosecution had a strong case, which had been made even stronger by yesterday’s discovery. He felt confident tests would show the bloodstains to be the victims’. It wasn’t a long quote, but it contained enough words like justice and morality that Curt came across like a white knight. I had no doubt the article pleased him immensely.

  Sabrina called while I was still lingering over the paper. “Do you think there’s a battered-mother defense to murder?” she asked.

  “Who hit you?”