Everyone helped clear away the trash. In deference to Sandy’s forbidding nature, Winston shook her hand. She thanked him again for the rabbit-skin blanket. Nina and Genevieve also came in for a final handshake. There seemed nothing left to say.
“I’ll be in touch, Nina,” Winston said, pulling away.
“You better be,” she said.
He saw her mood and gave her arm a squeeze. “Hey, we’ll do another trial again sometime. I feel it. Meanwhile, stay out of trouble. I mean it!” he said when they laughed at the thought. “Don’t you ladies do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said as he went out the door.
“Winston that’s just not a possibility,” Genevieve called after him. “I can’t think of a thing he wouldn’t do,” she said to Nina with a mischievous smile.
Susan Lim lived in a large, two-story home in Montgomery Estates. Paul always felt this particular development had a slight unreality to it, like a Twilight Zone of complete suburban normality on the cusp of the wild kingdom. Its landscaped yards fended off the wilderness, and the forest skulked just beyond its borders, threatening to engulf it again if the mowers ever stopped.
She answered the door. He introduced himself, giving the usual explanation for his questions, and she agreed to give him five minutes. She liked to be into work by ten in the morning, when the realty office opened, and was already running late.
They sat in two chairs on the porch at the front of the house. The lawn and flowers reflected the touch of a precise, artistic hand.
“First, I’d love your impressions of the mood of this jury as a whole, how they reacted to the testimony,” he said, notepad in hand.
A plain-featured woman with a helmet of shining dark hair, Mrs. Lim wore a hint of pink lipstick that matched her jacket and brightened her face. Sighing, she shook her head. “I found the process really grueling, since you ask. It seems like such a simple thing, to ask people to listen to some information, synthesize it, and decide the facts and evidence support one side or the other. Instead, what we had in the jury room was more of a free-for-all.”
“In what sense?”
“Everybody’s got an agenda,” she said. “I’m sure you know that. Usually, it’s not so obvious. We got in there and reason just flew out the window. Not that there was a window. That might have helped.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what was your position?”
“I favored Lindy Markov. From the beginning, I thought it was obvious they had some arrangements they didn’t have in writing. They must have informally agreed to share things. She was too bright not to have at the very least squeezed some promises out of him. And people agreed with me, at least at first.”
“I understand on the first vote of the original jury, eight people supported her.”
“That’s right. Then Cliff brought out his presents and threats…”
“Threats?”
“Oh, yes. I believe he threatened Sonny Ball with prison. He’d found some evidence of drugs in the bathroom at one point. I believe he seduced Kris Schmidt. I suspect they slept together after that first day,” she said, clearly disgusted.
“Maribel craved attention, and he gave it to her. Ignacio, well that was a shame. He’s a good person with good instincts, but not someone who is used to argument on the level Cliff inhabited. Cliff dumped him in a maze and walked circles around him, all the time posing as the logician.
“Grace just needed some sympathy and he came along, the Good Samaritan giving her what she needed.”
“So Frank, Bob, and Kevin already favored Mike,” Paul said.
“Yes. They didn’t allow anything as messy as logic to sway them. They had picked a position and stuck with it, by God,” she said, with a tinge of sarcasm. “All Cliff had to do was ensure they knew how welcome they were in the anti-Lindy club with him.”
“You didn’t like Cliff Wright.”
“I have nothing but contempt for men like him. I despised his manipulations of weaker per- sonalities.”
“Why do you think he was so opposed to Lindy?”
“I think Diane had that figured out. It had to be personal. He said he had recently separated from his wife. Maybe he was really suffering, who knows with a man like that? But he was so underhanded and angry, and so persuasive and determined in there. I’m guessing that Mrs. Markov looked like his worst nightmare come true, a woman ruining a man’s bright future because of a breakup.”
“I guess you’re glad things happened the way they did.”
She stared at him. “You mean, Cliff dying?”
“Well, with the alternate installed, the jury came back around to Lindy, didn’t they?”
“That’s true.”
“I understand most of the jurors brought snacks along during the deliberations,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Anybody eat peanuts?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Anything with peanuts? Candy?”
She began to laugh. “Snickers. Butterfingers. Nutty granola bars. Peanut M &M’s. Mr. Van Wagoner, is this a joke? Are you implying that someone, that I-”
“Look, I’m just saying things worked out the way you wanted them to.”
“I wish my husband could hear you. He thinks I’m not aggressive enough. And here you are suggesting I… correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you suggesting that I planted a peanut butter cup in his eggroll because I was so mad at him?”
“Stranger things have happened, Mrs. Lim. Did you or anyone else leave the room before lunch was served that day?”
“There were a few minutes before the lunch was brought in. Most of us left the room. I made a phone call. Some smoked, some stretched, some used the bathrooms.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Everyone was really looking forward to that lunch. I even saw Diane lifting the aluminum foil and peeking at the cartons.”
The implication of what she had said struck her so forcefully, her cheeks flamed. “The food smelled very good. We all thought so,” she said, trying to regain her composure.
He persisted with her, but after that, she refused to answer another question.
Back in his van, Paul looked around feeling discontented. Things were looking shabby in the old vehicle. Somehow, the leopard-skin cover in back had picked up some mildew, probably from sitting in airport parking lots for days. Like it or not, his car was an extension of himself, and it was dying of neglect. He started the engine up. The people in Washington were after him for a final decision by next week. He didn’t know what to say.
He had to finish up this investigation. He needed to think about Nina.
34
Promptly at noon, Paul arrived at Bizzbees on the highway. He and Wish were ready to swap notes on their interviews. Paul found himself instead being beaten to a pulp at darts.
“So Kevin Dowd and Frank Lister stuck by Mike from the beginning. They basically loved Cliff Wright. Grace Whipple came to her door in a housecoat, and this was at about two o’clock yesterday afternoon. She takes care of someone, said he’d been having some trouble. She only talked to me through the grill in the door. She was so distracted,” Wish said, pulling his arm back, and with a thwack, another dart met the bull’s-eye at dead center.
“What did she think of Cliff Wright?”
“ ‘Charming,’ she called him. And Maribel what’s-her-name…”
“Grzegorek.”
“She was at work over at Mikasa, but they were having a slow day. She told me she had liked Cliff, but got disappointed in him at some point.”
“Oh?” Paul said, interested, taking his turn.
“Yeah. She’s a real fun person. Said Kris Schmidt had already snapped him up by the time she noticed how handsome he was. Kevin told me she asked him out and he turned her down.”
“So her disappointment had more to do with romance than the case.” Paul tossed his last dart to the outside.
“Yep.”
“You didn’t tell me you were league champ at the rec center when yo
u challenged me to a game,” said Paul. “You’ve got an unfair advantage here.”
“That’s why,” said Wish, selecting another dart, eyeing it closely for shape, whipping around and tossing it lightly to land beside the one already stuck in the board, “I only bet you ten bucks.”
His third dart flew to keep close company with the other two.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” said Paul. “I came here to talk.”
“Oh, come on,” said Wish. “Don’t be a sore loser.”
With a deep breath, Paul positioned himself, dart in hand. The bull’s-eye, so close from some angles, suddenly appeared quite far away. He threw. “Twenty,” said Wish, marking a chalkboard beside the dartboard. “That’s nice.”
Paul gritted his teeth, aimed, and threw dart number two.
“On the line,” pronounced Wish. He examined the board. “On the two side. Sorry.”
“Thanks one whole helluva lot,” said Paul. Here was one game he couldn’t win. Might as well quit now. Without aiming, just to get the throw over, he hurled his last dart.
“Bull’s-eye!” marveled Wish. He wiped Paul out with a few more well-placed darts, then said, “Okay, game two. Let’s up it to twenty.”
But Paul refused. He ordered another soda. Wish, who was on his lunch break, ate a sub. They settled near the pool table, where a slender man and a large woman were locked in combat and the room had the hush of church over it.
“Okay, let’s go over what we’ve found out,” said Paul, keeping his voice low.
They hashed out what they had heard about the events leading up to Wright’s death. “Just to be thorough, I looked into some other possibilities besides the jurors,” Paul said. “Rachel’s ex, Harry. He might want to sabotage Mike. But Harry was at a photo shoot at an automobile dealership all that morning according to his coworkers, and anyway would have trouble getting into that hall without a hassle from Deputy Kimura. Then there’s this other guy, George Demetrios, apparently a loyal fan of Lindy’s. Same problems except for a slightly weaker alibi provided by his brother.
“Then I looked at Alice, Lindy’s friend. Her alibi checked out, but again, we’re talking an employee. Nobody’s alibi is airtight. But with all three of these people, we return to a central problem: how could these people know what was going on in the jury room? How could they get to the food? Alice used the hall occasionally during the trial. Kimura said he’d seen her in there. But she would have no business there while the jury was deliberating. Someone would have noticed her that day.”
He took a long drink. “Here’s a thought,” he said. “The three women jurors were in cahoots. They spiked his food together.”
“Didn’t someone write that in a story once?” asked Wish. “Neat idea.”
“But there isn’t enough passion here for a conspiracy. He didn’t kill someone’s friend or murder anyone’s father. He just played with their heads,” Paul said, dismantling his own suggestion.
Wish winced as the slender man scraped his cue on the felt of the pool table. Three balls dropped into sockets. “Yeah, people don’t kill people over being on a jury together. They just want to.”
“People kill people over a pair of shoes these days, Wish!”
“Not with peanuts they don’t.”
“You have to admit, with this much dough floating around, someone’s easily going to want some enough to harm Cliff Wright, if it would do any good. Lindy Markov had the biggest motive. But that theory has a major flaw because how could she know what went on in that jury room? How could she know Wright was turning everyone against her? We didn’t know until those jurors came out and gave all those interviews.”
“A friend on the inside?” Wish said.
“That’s what I finally decided. Maybe she bribed someone. Promised one of the jurors a lot of money to do their damnedest to make sure that jury went her way. What if that person saw Cliff turning everyone against Lindy and had this ingenious idea on how to stop him?”
“Which juror?”
“I don’t know. Diane Miklos is the most likely candidate in that case. Mrs. Lim even saw her lifting the lids off of the lunch that day. Her lifestyle requires major injections of moolah. But she’s off on a climb. That means she’s already got her money in the bag, when Lindy doesn’t yet. And then there is the fact that Lindy swears she didn’t bribe anyone and seemed awfully credible to me.”
“What about her friend Alice?” Wish asked.
“Oh, I looked into that. Lindy helped her buy a house after her divorce. She had a breakdown, and that’s where most of Lindy’s salary went over the past few years, to supporting her old friend.”
“Lindy sounds nice,” Wish said.
“Or you could see her as the type of person who needs that money so that she can keep playing the big shot with her friends and favorite charities.” Feeling frustrated, Paul pounded a fist on the table, accidentally knocking his Coke to the floor. The brawny woman at the pool table missed her shot and turned eyes filled with hatred on him. She whispered to a few menacing-looking friends.
“You know I’ve got fifty bucks riding on this,” said the nearest one, the venality in his tone a warning. He puffed out his chest and stood close enough to violate Paul’s personal space.
“No, I sure didn’t,” said Paul. Swooping down, he picked up his cup and headed for the nearest exit, followed quickly by Wish.
“Maybe it was an accident after all,” Wish said.
Paul walked more slowly. He had decided not to push back in there because after all, fifty bucks was fifty bucks. Paul could see the guy’s point. “But did you see what just happened? That guy looked mad enough to deck me, maybe kill me over fifty bucks, and there was a lot more money involved in the Markov trial.” Paul stopped beside the van and took a good look at his raw recruit. “I don’t know where all this discussion leaves us. I’m afraid we’ve hit the end of the line.”
“This is such a bizarre job,” said Wish. “I don’t know another single soul who gets to have so much fun around people dying.”
After Winston left, the law offices of Nina Reilly had fallen into quiet. Because of the furniture removal, Sandy had not scheduled any clients. In the reception room, Sandy’s fingers clicked across her keyboard. In the conference room, having made several passes through the place to collect her things, Genevieve scratched out a list of expenses for Sandy. In her office, Nina sat, unable to work.
Bob would be flying in from his school trip back East late tonight into San Francisco. Nina’s father had offered to pick him up at the airport. They would drive up Saturday morning. She couldn’t wait. She missed him, particularly today, with everyone leaving.
The phone rang to interrupt these dark thoughts. The caller was Jeffrey Riesner, who if the legal grapevine could be believed, had just lost Rebecca Casey to a big firm in Reno. Nina assumed he couldn’t afford to keep her on after the Markov loss.
“You know why I’m calling, don’t you?” he said, without introducing himself.
“Who’s calling?” asked Nina perversely.
“Don’t start,” he said. “Let’s attempt to talk.”
“I assume this is about Markov’s appeal.”
“Well, not exactly,” he said, hedging. “Didn’t you get a copy of the final receiver’s report?”
“It’s here somewhere,” Nina said. “I haven’t really studied it.” She patted around on her desk, picking up papers, looking for it.
“Find it and call me right back,” he said. And bang, down went his phone.
Wondering what in the world had put him into such a snit, Nina groped around, finally locating it in a pile on the floor beside her. She read it and called Riesner back.
“This is an amazing document,” she said, “if I read it right.”
“You do,” he said shortly. “And now I’m going to level with you, Nina.”
“I’m astonished and delighted to hear that… Jeff.”
“You can see the immediate problem.
If we pay the claim, Mike’s flat broke. Plus, I’m in a bind. Mike… has decided not to appeal the award. Naturally, he made his decision against my advice. I can cite a million errors that make this eminently suitable for an appeal, even a reversal. But he’s made up his mind.”
Nina almost fell off her chair. This she had never foreseen.
“I wondered if you would talk to your client about this.”
“What would I say?”
“I think I saw a little sympathy up there on the stand from her. She’ll realize he’s gone completely off his rocker. Maybe she’ll give him a break and open up negotiations for a reasonable compromise.”
“We’ve always been open to negotiating, Jeff. I’ve said so many times. But we no longer have to do that. We’ve won our case.”
“Would you just check with her? See if she’s seen the report. See what she thinks. Maybe she’ll want to do something for him,” he said.
It was incredible. He was groveling.
“I’ll do that,” she said. “But don’t expect anything.” She tried to sound courteous and keep the triumph out of her voice. Riesner’s plum of a case had turned rotten on him. His client had quit cooperating. There was no more money to be squeezed out. And she knew the worst of it for Riesner.
Losing. This public brawl had been won by a woman, by her, Nina Reilly. Not by Riesner, the good old boy.
And Mike Markov would be broke. She had better get Lindy on the phone soon to stanch any outbreak of pity.
Paul appeared in her doorway. “Looking for me?” he asked.
“Always. What’s up?” she said.
“Not much.” He took her up for a long kiss. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
With a word to Sandy, they moved outside, walking along a road that led to the lake. “I’ve got a business hanging on by a thread back home,” Paul said. “Just gave Wright’s family the news that I haven’t come up with diddly to prove his death was anything but natural. Talked with Cheney, too. The local police haven’t got anything either. They’re closing the file on his death.”
Breach Of Promise Page 37
