06-Juror

by Parnell Hall

  “I have another witness, who observed a gentleman of Mr. Pendergas’ description leaving Sherry Fontaine’s apartment house at approximately one a.m. on the night of the murder. From the description, I have no doubt that this witness will also be able to make the identification.”

  Judge Davis frowned. “That is hardly sufficient for making an accusation.”

  “I know that, Your Honor. But I also have the motive for the crime. I have the statement from Miss Velma Dawson of Cincinnati, Ohio, that ten years ago Mr. Pendergas was the attorney who represented her when she was the victim of a hit-and-run. She wasn’t injured, but Mr. Pendergas got her a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement through the use of phony X-rays of a leg she’d previously injured in a skiing accident.

  “It happens that Velma Dawson was an actress, who once took classes with Sherry Fontaine. When Sherry Fontaine was put on this jury, the name Pendergas was vaguely familiar to her.

  “The records of the telephone company show that on Tuesday night, the first day of this trial, Sherry Fontaine put through a phone call to Velma Dawson in Cincinnati, Ohio. Miss Dawson’s statement verifies the call. She also states that what Sherry wanted to know was if Mr. Pendergas was indeed the attorney who had represented Velma in that action. She also admits that the action was fraudulent, and that Mr. Pendergas had full knowledge of it.

  “Which gives us your motive for murder. We know by the testimony of the witness, that Sherry Fontaine approached Mr. Pendergas during noon recess the following day. We can show by inference that she tried to blackmail him. She confronted him with what she’d learned from Velma, and demanded money for her silence.

  “It can also be shown that that money was promised, but was not paid. It happens that Sherry Fontaine used cocaine. She didn’t use much, but that was largely due to the fact that she didn’t have any money. But it can be shown that Wednesday night—two A.M. Thursday morning, actually—after her rehearsal, Sherry Fontaine put through a call to the young man who was supplying her with drugs, ordering, not half a gram as she usually bought, but a quarter of an ounce. It can be further shown that Thursday evening, when Sherry Fontaine returned from court, she had an altercation outside her building with the young man who was bringing her these drugs, over the fact that she had no money with which to pay for them. Obviously, during the noon recess she approached Pendergas for the blackmail money he’d promised her, only he didn’t pay. He stalled her, put her off until the next day.

  “Only he had no intention of paying at all. He brought up paying her later that evening, and learned that she’d be away at rehearsal, getting back some time after midnight. So he went, he watched, he waited. He saw her arrive home and get out of a taxicab with a young man, an actor named Claude Breen who had romantic designs on her. Had she allowed him to go upstairs with her, she might be alive today. But she brushed him off, and he walked over to Broadway to catch a bus home. She went upstairs, hot and tired from the long rehearsal, and hopped in the shower.

  “The doorbell rang. Well, that was a shock. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Certainly not Pendergas, since he’d stalled her till the next day. If she’d thought it was him, she might not have opened the door. But no, as far as she was concerned, it was either young actor Claude being persistent and she’d have to tell him off. Or—and this was probably why she opened the door—it was her connection, coming by to apologize for the scene and to give her the dope.

  “But it wasn’t either of them. It was Pendergas. And he pushed his way in and strangled her.”

  I looked around the courtroom.

  Pendergas, though still outwardly unruffled and dignified, seemed also tense and alert. The sly fox, scenting the wind.

  Peter, Paul and Mary looked totally shocked, as if their guitars had suddenly vanished out of their hands right in the middle of a chorus of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

  Ralph was gawking at me with his mouth open, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

  Judge Davis had regained her composure. “Have you communicated any of this to the police?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, Your Honor.” I pointed to the back of the courtroom. “I call Your Honor’s attention to the two gentlemen sitting in the back of the court. They are NYPD homicide sergeants. On the basis of evidence I’ve given them, they have obtained a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Pendergas for the murder of Sherry Fontaine. They have that warrant with them, and they are waiting to make the arrest as soon as these proceedings are over.”

  I looked at the back row of the courtroom, where Sergeant Thurman and Sergeant MacAullif had been sitting, trying to look inconspicuous since the beginning of the courtroom session. They looked incredibly grim. Thurman also looked somewhat confused, but that was how he always looked. Sergeant MacAullif looked positively murderous. His eyes weren’t just grim, they were smoldering.

  I knew why. MacAullif was furious because everything I’d just said was total bullshit. They didn’t have a warrant. And they couldn’t have if they’d wanted to. There wasn’t evidence enough for it. There were no witnesses. That was bullshit too. I’d made it up, just like the bit about the warrant.

  I’d told MacAullif about my call to Velma Dawson, of course. And I’d told him my theory of the crime. He’d been sold enough to call Sergeant Thurman and get him down here, like I said. But Sergeant Thurman hadn’t bought it. He agreed to come, just to see what was going on. But according to MacAullif, when he’d called me back last night, Sergeant Thurman’s main interest in coming was to see if I’d spill something that might tend to implicate me.

  So the grim looks on their faces were due to the fact that I’d just spun out a fine web of bullshit with absolutely nothing to back it up. They were grim, not because they expected to nail a murderer. No, the one they were angry at was me.

  But the Silver Fox didn’t know that. He looked at the back of the courtroom and he saw Sergeant Thurman and Sergeant MacAullif sitting there, looking as if they were ready for a hanging, and he thought the one they intended to hang was him. And then he looked at the front of the courtroom. And when he did, Ralph, god bless him, took one step to the side and planted himself square in front of the exit door.

  The Silver Fox was still composed. He looked around, haughty, proud, disdainful. He was sly and cunning, the Silver Fox. He never turned a hair. But the fox could smell the hounds. And he thought they had him dead to rights on a murder rap. And so the fox turned tail.

  It happened very fast. One minute he was sitting there, cool, dignified, every hair in place. The next moment he sprang from his seat and bolted up the aisle.

  Which is when Sergeant Thurman shone. He was a stupid, obnoxious cop who could never have solved the case on his own, could never even have gotten close. And who probably didn’t even understand it all now. But as MacAullif had said, he was on the side of the angels. And the man was tough, and the man was quick. Before Ralph or MacAullif or anyone else in the courtroom could move, Sergeant Thurman was on his feet.

  Yeah, he was on the side of the angels, Sergeant Thurman was. And he vaulted over the back of the bench, and launched his body into the air, and he brought down the Silver Fox with the sweetest little flying tackle you ever did see.

  42.

  LOVE STRIKES OUT opened to rave reviews, moved to off-Broadway, and won an Obie.

  Just kidding. But that was the thought that flashed on me while the waitress poured coffee for me and MacAullif at a small greasy spoon near the courthouse. MacAullif dumped in cream and sugar, took a sip and grimaced.

  “Shit,” he said. “You spoiled me with your damn uptown coffee. Now everything else tastes like shit.” He took another sip, scowled at the coffee, set the cup down. “All right,” he said. “Give.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m waiting for your explanation.”

  “Of what?”

  “The case. What, are you dense? The case.”

  “You heard what I said in court.”

  “Yeah, yea
h, yeah,” MacAullif said. “I know what you said in court, and I know what you told me last night on the phone. I know what happened. I want to know why it happened, and how you figured it out.”

  “Why it happened?”

  “Start with how you figured it out.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s like you put two and two together and made twelve.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Then give. Hey, this should be fun for you. This is a milestone. This marks, to the best of my recollection, the first time in a case you’ve ever been right.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Let’s not quibble. It’s the first time you solved the case ahead of the investigating officer and dumped it in his lap. Now, that’s admittedly not as big a deal as it seems, when you consider the investigating officer was Sergeant Thurman. But even so, it’s a triumph for you. You figured it out, you did it right, you can take some pride in that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You also left me in the dark, pulled a lot of shit in court you didn’t tell me you were gonna do, and pissed me off utterly. If you hadn’t been right, I’d have had your head. As it stands, you’re right, so you win. And I wanna know how.”

  “How what?”

  “How did you figure it out?”

  “I told you how. Dexter Manyon remembered that Sherry had once mentioned a girl named Velma.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” MacAullif said. “That’s when you added two and two and got twelve. It was a small, insignificant detail. Why did that do it for you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it was just that I’d been going under a misconception.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About what Sherry said, the first day I met her. You know how people always misunderstand each other?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Because you always know what you mean, but the other person only hears what you say. That’s what happened. Sherry was talking about this girl, Velma, and she said, ‘my girlfriend, back in Cincinnati.’ She knew what she meant—it was her girlfriend, who’d moved back to Cincinnati—perfectly clear to her. But it was an awkward construction, see? Back in Cincinnati implies to the listener, who doesn’t know, that Sherry lived there too. That’s what I heard, and that’s what locked in my mind—Sherry Fontaine came from Cincinnati.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s what did it. That’s what jolted me. Dexter Manyon told me she lived in Atlanta. That short-circuited my thought process. Wrong. Couldn’t be. Sherry Fontaine lived in Cincinnati. ‘My friend, Velma, back in Cincinnati.’ I’d heard that, and I’d heard about the insurance scam, and it was locked in my mind as something that had happened in Cincinnati when the two of them lived there before Sherry came to New York. It all was tied up in my mind.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Sherry, Velma, insurance scam, Cincinnati.

  “Dexter Manyon destroyed that. Not Cincinnati. Never in Cincinnati. Velma was someone Sherry knew from New York. That suddenly transferred the whole package here. Velma, insurance scam, Sherry, New York. A crooked New York lawyer who pulled an insurance scam ten years ago.

  “And suddenly it all clicked. Sherry gets put on this jury. Something about it triggers her memory and suddenly she starts talking insurance scam. It had to be one of the lawyers. It didn’t necessarily have to be Pendergas, though he was the most likely. It also could have been Peter, Paul and Mary.”

  “Who?”

  “The other three attorneys. We called them Peter, Paul and Mary.”

  MacAullif thought about that. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “But it was Pendergas. And that night she calls Velma and makes sure. The next day she tries blackmail.”

  MacAullif waved it away. “I know all that, I know all that. It’s your deduction from Atlanta to Pendergas. That’s what’s bothering me.”

  “Well, Sherry had told me the whole thing. But I hadn’t connected it in my mind with the murder at all, because I thought of it as Cincinnati. But then it wasn’t Cincinnati. And what really woke me up, was the realization that I’d jumped to a conclusion and been terribly stupid.”

  “Yeah, but that must happen to you a lot.”

  “Fuck you. Anyway, that’s what did it. And there was something else too.”

  “What?”

  “The old man. Nathan Hargraine. My buddy from jury duty. That was a stupid idea, yes, but it put me in the right direction. ’Cause I’d been all wrapped up in the theatrical side of Sherry’s life, the actors, her boyfriend, her connection and all that. But my buddy was the one who got me thinking that Sherry was also a juror on a court case, that maybe what happened to her was a result of that. It was dead wrong, of course, but it had me in the ballpark. So when this other thing came along, my mind was open to it.”

  MacAullif looked at me as if I’d just told him the earth was flat. He took another sip of coffee. He grimaced, set down the cup, pushed it away. “I can’t drink this stuff. I gotta get back to the office. Okay, what’s the rest of it?”

  “The rest of it?”

  “Yeah. Why? Tell me why?”

  “You know why. She was blackmailing him.”

  “I know,” MacAullif said. “But that’s not an explanation. I mean, okay, maybe ten years ago this guy wasn’t that hot. He probably wasn’t. Attorneys had just been allowed to advertise, negligence was just getting big, this guy’d probably had some lean years and rough sledding and was having trouble getting off the ground. Hence, the cuttin’ corners on the settlements and the whole shmear. Now he’s respectable, prosperous, what have you, he doesn’t want that to come out. I know all that.

  “But why kill her? It was a small deal. The blackmail couldn’t have been that much. Murder is one hell of a drastic step. Why doesn’t he just pay her off and leave it at that?”

  “Well, for one thing, I don’t think it was really blackmail.”

  MacAullif frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I think what she probably asked him for was the same thing she asked me. To pull an insurance scam for her. Just like he’d done for her friend, Velma.”

  “So?”

  “Obviously, the guy wasn’t about to do anything like that. He’s secure and legit now, he doesn’t need that kind of shit. He tells her no, but she won’t quit. She’s got the goods on him and she wants him to pull a scam. If there was blackmail, I’ll bet you he was the one suggested it. He won’t help her with her scheme, but he’ll pay her off to forget about it.”

  MacAullif considered that. “Okay, so why didn’t he? Why not pay her off and be done with it?”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t dare to.”

  “Why not?”

  I knew the answer. It wasn’t a complete answer, but it was one that satisfied me. Well, satisfied isn’t the right word—in fact, it’s dead wrong—there was nothing satisfying about it. It was in fact a rather flip answer, and a rather inadequate epitaph for someone I had known and liked.

  And not just liked. For someone who had bothered me, troubled me, for a girl who had tied me up in knots and rekindled all those old adolescent feelings of love/hate relationships, a girl as unobtainable as lost youth itself, a girl I couldn’t help liking, despite how angry and frustrated and manipulated she made me feel.

  So, no, the answer wasn’t satisfying at all.

  But for me it was an answer that made sense. In a kind of horrible way I understood.

  And I figured MacAullif would understand too, when I told him. Alice hadn’t, when I’d tried to explain it to her last night. I mean, she’d understood it intellectually, cause intellectually there wasn’t that much to understand. But Alice was a woman, so she didn’t quite get it. No matter how well I explained it, she didn’t quite understand.

  But MacAullif was a man. And, hard as it might be to realize, he’d been young once too, and gone to high school, and had girlfriends and adolescent problems and anxieties and the whole bit. He’d been young once,
just as I’d been young once, just as the Silver Fox had been young once, so he’d know what I’d recognized, what the Silver Fox had recognized, and what, had he met Sherry, I’m sure he would have recognized too. So somehow I just knew he’d understand.

  I smiled slightly. Sadly. Wistfully.

  And answered his question.

  “She was Trouble.”

  Books by Parnell Hall

  Stanley Hastings private eye mysteries

  Detective

  Murder

  Favor

  Strangler

  Client

  Juror

  Shot

  Actor

  Blackmail

  Movie

  Trial

  Scam

  Suspense

  Cozy

  Manslaughter

  Hitman

  Caper

  Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries

  A Clue For The Puzzle Lady

  Last Puzzle & Testament

  Puzzled To Death

  A Puzzle In A Pear Tree

  With This Puzzle I Thee Kill

  And A Puzzle To Die On

  Stalking The Puzzle Lady

  You Have The Right To Remain Puzzled

  The Sudoku Puzzle Murders

  Dead Man’s Puzzle

  The Puzzle Lady vs. The Sudoku Lady

  Steve Winslow courtroom dramas

  The Baxter Trust

  Then Anonymous Client

  The Underground Man

  The Naked Typist

  The Wrong Gun

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9