No Time for Death: A Yoshinobu Mystery

by John A. Broussard

  “How about age?” Craig asked.

  “The younger the better,” Kay answered. “They'll be much more lenient to someone who may have killed in anger.”

  “The ideal jury would be Caucasian males under thirty, all hourly workers,” Qual said.

  Kay nodded. “And Ikeda will be trying his damnedest to prevent just that from happening. He may use poor judgment at arraignments and at the actual trials, but he knows what's going on during jury selection.”

  “So he's going to try to pack the jury with old Japanese women, right?” Craig posed the statement as a question.

  “Exactly,” Kay answered. “And he's got a lot better chance at getting what he wants than for us to get what we're looking for. For one thing, anyone who's retired doesn't have a job excuse to get off the panel. In fact, a lot of old codgers enjoy jury duty. And older women don't have to worry about baby sitters.”

  “Maybe women on the jury wouldn't be all bad,” Sid said, thoughtfully.

  Kay paused, then nodded her head in agreement. “Ron does make a good impression. We've had some male clients who women jurors would have been really repelled by. Ron isn't in that category. Not at all.”

  “Gender probably isn't that significant, then,” Qual said, “but ethnic group certainly is. As I said, the more haoles the better.”

  “The ethnic factor definitely works in our favor,” Kay said. “Asians, and especially older Japanese women, just aren't as politically active as haoles. They'll try to wriggle out of jury duty if they can. Political activists are more likely to look upon it as a civic duty, except for those few who are all-out anti-establishment.”

  “Maybe we should watch for environmentalists, Kay,” Sid said. “Dale has a hell of a bad reputation among them, almost as bad as with his customers. He's sent letters to the county council in favor of every development ever proposed on the Island. I can remember a couple he had in the letters section of the Chronicle. He even headed up a so called citizens group supporting the military when they proposed the rocket launch site up on the ridge.”

  Kay nodded. “And he just barely missed being indicted in that big scandal involving the Elima County Planning Commission and the Fenton Project developers. That's a good idea. If we spot an environmentalist, we'll put him on for sure.”

  “How do you spot an environmentalist?” Craig asked. “Do you watch for someone who comes in wearing binoculars and carrying a Roger Tory Peterson under his arm?”

  “It's a small island,” Qual answered, grinning at Craig’s comments. “By now we know all the most active ones by name.”

  “Which is a good point,” Kay said, scribbling some notes. “I'm going to call the environmental groups on the island just as soon as I get the panel list. Maybe they can help spot some of their members.”

  “Why not just go out and question the members of the panel individually, beforehand?” Craig asked.

  Even Craig reacted to the sudden silence following his question. All three attorneys shuddered.

  Sid spoke first, and when he did, he turned to Qual. “Why haven't you ever explained this to Craig?”

  Qual shrugged. “I'm sure I have, but Craig's memory is highly selective. All he remembers are food recipes and baseball scores.”

  “Well, tell me again,” Craig said, the annoyance now obvious in his voice.

  “An attorney is never supposed to have outside contact with any member of the panel prior to, during or after selection. Inadvertent contact before the verdict can be cause for dropping the juror. Purposeful contact could mean the end of the attorney's career.”

  “The law completely baffles me,” Craig said, then asked, “When do I get my cat, Sid?”

  “Your cat is still a kitten. You've got weeks yet to go. Did I tell you she's almost as beautiful as her mother? Why don't you and Qual come up tonight for an after-dinner round, and we'll introduce you to the whole family?”

  “Don't you think you'd better get Kay's approval first?” Qual asked.

  All three turned to Kay who was sitting quietly, her eyes focused on some distant object.

  Sid waved his hand in front of her face. “Kay! Kay! Can we have Qual and Craig out tonight for after-dinner drinks? Oh, oh!” he added. “She's thinking about the case. Have you got it solved yet, Kay?”

  She shook herself. “Solved? In a way. I don't know who the killer is, but I know how the murder was planned.”

  “Planned?” Craig asked. “How could it possibly have been planned? A while ago you said you were going into that trial arguing the crime was not premeditated. And now you say it must have been planned.”

  “That's no problem. I'll argue it's planned if I'm sure I know who the murderer is, which I don't right now. If I don't find out who actually did the killing between now and my summation to the jury, then an unpremeditated killing will be my fall-back position.”

  “I'm looking forward to this trial,” Qual said. “I always enjoy watching tightrope walkers.”

  ***

  If I didn't have that trial hanging over my head, I'd have rated this the most successful day of my life. For a while there, I even forgot about the trial. It's amazing what money can do.

  It all started with this old couple coming in looking for a condo rental. We don't handle that kind of business ordinarily. There's a rental management group a few blocks away we refer potential renters to, and they reciprocate by sending us possible buyers. It was my good luck when Annie called Aloha Rental Management to inquire about possible rentals, that their phone was busy. I sauntered out about then and struck up a conversation with the couple. They were nice, friendly people, and I like to gab, as you may have noticed. So I chatted them up while waiting for the phone call to clear. When it didn't, I thought, what the heck, I'd show them a couple of places I knew were up for rent or for sale, whichever came first.

  The standard approach in selling real estate is to start a bit on the high side. Which means you have to estimate what your client can, or wants to pay, and you show him something a bit above that. People, generally, can scrape together a little bit extra if they see something they really want.

  The trick is to get a good gauge on where the client's at. If he has only two or three hundred dollars in his checking account, and a bad credit rating, you might as well start out at the bottom if you're going to bother at all. On the other hand, you can be pretty insulting if you grossly underestimate your client's buying potential.

  I wasn't too concerned this time and didn't bother to inquire about their finances, because I didn't figure on a sale. The most I was counting on was a little good will from Aloha if I found them a renter. So we're driving along the coast road when we pass Opihi Seaview, the dream condo complex built by a Saudi Arabian businessman, who had more money to spend than the U. S. Defense Department and not much more sense about how to spend it.

  My clients were whispering to each other in the back seat, and the old codger tapped me on the shoulder. He asked if we had anything in Opihi Seaview. I told him we had a sales listing, but no rental. I didn't tell him it was the penthouse, and the Saudi businessman was trying to recover his cost for the whole complex by what he was asking for the top floor. Besides, I hadn't been in there myself, and this was a chance for me to see how the other half lives.

  Well, they looked around. I was impressed, and I guess they were too. Because after another whispered consultation, he took out his checkbook and asked me how much I wanted in earnest money—then he wrote out the amount without batting an eye. I didn't believe any of it until I'd gotten him back to the office with the contract signed and sealed. Just to be sure, I'd slipped the check to Annie on the way in. She knew what to do.

  Before we had time to finish up the paper work, wide-eyed Annie was at the door saying my aunt had called and my uncle was out of danger.

  It made me feel good to think I could now easily pay my attorneys and not have that hanging over my head. But then the thought reminded me of the trial, and spoiled what wou
ld have otherwise been a perfect day.

  Chapter 10

  After a week at Harvard, Lisa wondered how she could have thought of the University of Washington as being cosmopolitan. The mix of colors, of nationalities, of languages and races in Cambridge made her head spin. She and Jon had found a minuscule apartment near Central Square. Students, living in the area for a brief period in their lives, brushed shoulders daily with ghetto residents who had been born there and would die there.

  Both Jon and Lisa liked the neighborhood despite its blight. They would have preferred to have been closer to Harvard Square, itself, but the extra rental costs would have cut down on the precious books they could buy. As it was, they were still within walking distance of the Yard on nice days, and only one stop away on the subway on bad ones. They decided Jon wouldn't try to find work. Instead, they would live on the small amount he'd saved over the years.

  “And when I hang out my shingle,” Lisa said, “I'm the one who's going to support you, and no arguments.”

  “No arguments,” Jon said, amused at the intensity of her assertion.

  “And while I'm not getting any arguments,” she said, “I think it's time I made an honest man out of you.”

  The wedding ceremony was brief. They kissed and exchanged rings. And both of them wondered why they felt nothing had changed. “Maybe it's because nothing has,” Lisa said, thoughtfully.

  Jon smiled. “We've just discovered lilies don't need to be gilded.”

  Their days were spent at Widener Library, at the law library, in class, browsing through the bookstores along Massachusetts Avenue, walking along the Charles, drinking cappuccino in the coffee houses. And Lisa absorbed law like a squeezed sponge released under water.

  What surprised Jon almost as much as it did Lisa was the ease with which they were accepted by others in this milieu. Age, race—nothing mattered except the ability to contribute intelligently to the seemingly endless flow of conversation. Jon was still the outgoing one, but Lisa was coming up fast.

  The days raced by. Fall passed in a blaze of colors. Winter settled in with winds howling off the Atlantic, making Cambridge seem far colder than the still, dry, icy winters of Lisa's Eastern Washington home.

  And then—that beautiful, unbelievable spring!

  But that was the spring when Jon lied to her. Lisa never discovered the lie until years later. It was the day she came home early and found him pale and asleep on the couch they opened up at night for their bed.

  “A touch of indigestion,” he said.

  ***

  Kay keeps after me to find out as much as I could about the office crew, and I've taken her at her word. She must have filled a dozen of those big yellow legal pads by now. But most of what I tell her is pretty much routine. I have come up with a couple of surprises, though.

  Let me put it this way. I was surprised. Most of the time, there's no way of telling with poker-face Kay if she doesn't want to let on how she feels. One of the surprises came when I went to coffee with Reggie Kaufman the day after Chrissie took over. Reggie had just had a change of casts, and he looked almost human again. If he'd been wearing a long-sleeved shirt, it would have been hard to tell he'd been damaged at all in the car wreck.

  Naturally, I'm trying to find out as much as I can from him, and especially about what he was doing during the week when Dale was killed. The reason I'm doing it is because those were my orders. And Kay called me that morning to put special emphasis on what Reggie was doing between eleven—when he heard Dale giving me what for—and two, when he came in the office and found me with that darn club in my hands.

  I had a tough time getting Reggie off the subject of our new boss. We weren't two minutes into our glazed doughnuts and Kona coffee before he's sounding off about Chrissie. And that was even before he'd picked up on her pushing those deals toward Kimmie. I wouldn't want to repeat his comments when he heard about it a couple of days later. But, coming back to what he said at the restaurant, it isn't exactly easy to steer someone around to what they're going to testify to in court in a week or so. It's even tougher when you know, and they know, what they say could put you in the slammer for more years than it pays to think about.

  But gradually, it came out. At least what he'd been doing between eleven and two came out.

  “I had a doctor's appointment at 11:30. He's the one whose office is just mauka of Royal Elima, a block away. He was going to check my fittings.” Reggie held up his arms.

  “So I left the office a few minutes before that, just in time to catch him before he takes off for golf or whatever it is doctors do on Saturday afternoons. He eased me out in less than fifteen minutes. I imagine he was anxious to get to the clubhouse.”

  I wasn't saying much, but I was watching. Reggie wasn't exactly sitting easy about then. I was wondering if his casts were itching him, but what he said next convinced me he had a lot deeper itch.

  “I guess it doesn't make much difference now that Dale is dead, but I happened to meet Willa Matthias just outside the doctor's office.”

  Selling may not create saints, but it sure produces skeptics. I found it awfully hard to believe that meeting was just accidental, and I didn't really try to believe it. “We went over to King Kamehameha Park and sat and talked for a while. I'd figured on getting back by one to finish filing all those contracts piling up while I was in the hospital, but I didn't get away until quarter-to-two. And you know what I did then.”

  I nodded, but I was thinking about how Kay would react to the tidbit about Willa and Reggie.

  ***

  Hank wasn't there, but when Corky found out who was asking for him, she took the call.

  “Hi, Kay. This is Corky. The big cheese is out giving a speech to the VFW. Can I do anything for you?”

  “Can you check on any life insurance Dale Matthias might have had.”

  “That cheapskate? We talked to all the real-estate agents at Royal Elima and, from what they said about him, he was tighter than Hilo Hattie's corset. But hang tough, and I'll check. Hank must have the information filed away. That's one thing I will say for the old lieut, he keeps his files nice and neat. How's married life?”

  “I'm not sure. I think it's making me feel older.”

  “I wouldn't mind that. I've been an adolescent long enough. Ever since your wedding, I've been making marriage noises around Alan. There are signs he's weakening. Here we go. National Service Life Insurance. That's a veteran's policy.”

  “For how much?”

  “Five thousand dollars. I told you he was a cheapskate. And even then, he was getting most of his premiums back every year.”

  “Who was the beneficiary?”

  “Chrissie. My guess is he just never got around to changing it over to Willa. Him and his ex didn't exactly part friends. So he wasn't keeping it in her name because of any affection for her.”

  “There was no other insurance?”

  “Nope. Not a cent.”

  “Is there any word yet as to who's getting his money?”

  “There's no way of telling so far. Chrissie definitely got Royal Elima, because that was a contractual agreement between her and Dale. I imagine the kids will get something. It looks like a hell of a big estate. Beyond that, I can't say.”

  “Is there anyone else in on the pile?”

  “Uh-uh. Chrissie and her kids and Willa are the only ones in the running.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey! Wait a minute. I hear you folks have had some additions to your family.”

  “Three, as a matter of fact.”

  “One of those doesn't happen to look like John Samuel, by any chance?”

  “By some chance, there is one like that.”

  “If he or she isn't spoken for, can I have dibs?”

  “Sure. You're at the head of the line. And according to Sid, it's a he. But why this sudden interest?”

  “It's not particularly sudden. I've always had a weakness for the little brutes. And I especially like the way John S
amuel shines up to you. Maybe his offspring will have his temperament.”

  “I suspect there's something deeper here.”

  “Maybe there is. It seems to me you folks got married shortly after you got a cat. Maybe there's some magic involved. Hell, it's worth a try. And, besides, we've got a mouse problem.”

  ***

  Today was Lyle Kaupu's turn. In all the time I've been here, I've never gotten over the impression he was mad at me. Even when I finally realized it's his face and not his feelings I'm seeing, I still have a hard time talking to him. Quentin says Lyle ought to wear a T-shirt saying, “I'm not mad at you, I always look this way.”

  But, anyhow, we went off to coffee together. At first, he was about as forthcoming as a prickly cactus. Like Reggie, he was much too busy talking about the new owner to tell me much about himself or what he was doing the week Dale was killed. He made Reggie's comments about Chrissie sound pretty puny. 'Course, by the time of this coffee break, the word had gotten to everyone about the new Chrissie-Kimmie alliance and what all it involved.

  What surprised me was how much I'd had my head in the sand all these months. Lyle knew all about the Reggie-Willa affair. Probably for the first time since I'd met Lyle, I caught him grinning. “They've been having it off with each other regular since last year, long before she got married. Dumb old Dale never caught on.”

  He finally came around to talking about the day of the murder. It turns out when Quentin and him left early that morning, they adjourned to Quentin's house and killed a six-pack while watching a football game on TV. The game was over by 1:30 and Lyle headed home.

  I didn't know how much of that was significant, but I relayed it all to Kay.

  After getting all the details, she sounded disgusted. She wasn't teed off at me but at how things were turning out. I asked her what was wrong and all she'd say was, “We're getting too much of a good thing.”

  Some time later I had a chance to ask Sid what Kay meant by what she’d said. He grinned as he answered, “Kay never wants to tell you what her guesses are until she’s sure they aren’t guesses any more. It sounds like she’s on to something, but we’ll never know what it is unless she’s positive.”