A Knight at the Opera (9 page)

"So I called her, and she's hired me to represent her."

"Why does she need a lawyer?" he demanded. "Because she was the woman at
that opera?"

"Actually, she wasn't. She tells me you keep calling her and hinting that you
don't believe there was another woman."

"I don't. I think she planned all of this out."

"You really think she drugged him and just left him there, hoping that by some
miracle he'd fall over the balcony?"

I instantly regretted saying it, but it was too late to take it back.

He was all over it. "How do you know he was drugged?"

"Come on, Stone, You've been asking the widow about Rohypnol. Why would
you do that if you didn't find some of it in his bloodstream?"

That seemed to calm him down. "That's how you know about it?"

"Exactly. I don't have any inside information."

"Maybe you're telling me the truth. Why did she hire you, Larsen?"

"You know I can't answer that. It's privileged."

I was expecting his usual threats and belligerence. Instead, he surprised me.
"Then I'll do to you what you always do to me. Let's talk in hypotheticals."

He was right about that. In my past encounter with Deputy DA Swain, I had used
a hypothetical as a backhanded way of providing him some information he desperately
needed. Stone had been there during the conversation. It amazed me that he was proposing
that same procedure.

Maybe you could teach an old dog new tricks.

"Okay. That's fair. What's your hypothetical?"

"Try this. We'll assume that a woman--who happens to match the description of
a suspect in a possible homicide--hasn't officially been named as a suspect in her husband's
death. You, the great genius lawyer, tell me she couldn't have done it. But she hires you
anyway. Why would she need to hire you if she couldn't have done it? What could she
possibly be hiding?"

"That's not really a hypothetical, but I'll answer it, anyway. First, she only
superficially matches the description of the woman at the opera, meaning that she happens
to have blonde hair and is an attractive woman. That describes half of the cheerleaders for
the Broncos or the Nuggets. But, for the purposes of your hypothetical, I'll give you that.
Second, as far as I know, there's no evidence this was a homicide. But setting all that aside,
you're on the wrong track, Stone. I can't tell you anything she and I have discussed, but
what she's hired me to do is no secret. Several people already know about it. Her husband's
will contains a provision whereby she is supposed to become a partner in his accounting
firm. His surviving partners have a different view about that. We met with them this
morning, to try to negotiate something. They're considering their options."

"Yeah? Then why the hell were you calling Semper Security?"

"Wouldn't any woman in her position want to know whether her husband was
cheating on her? Speaking hypothetically, of course. Think about it. They'd been married
less than a year. He tells her he's going out to play poker with the boys--you already know
all of this, so I'm not giving away any secrets--and she finds out he took some blonde babe
to the opera. Wouldn't you expect her to ask questions?"

"Her, yes. But not you. And not by calling Semper Security. In my book, you're
interfering with my investigation."

"Did Johnson say I asked him to do anything improper?"

Stone didn't answer, which of course didn't surprise me. He was one-way Stone.
He didn't answer questions. He just asked them.

"And did he say I told him to keep my call a secret?"

No answer.

I took advantage of his silence to ask one more question. "Were you calling
Johnson to talk about Rohypnol?"

He said, "Go to hell!" and slammed down the receiver.

I didn't take it to heart. Most of our conversations ended that way.

Maurice had listened to my side of the conversation with a quizzical expression
on his face. "What's he accusing you of now?"

"The usual. Interfering with his investigation. But, for once, our conversation
wasn't a waste of time."

"Yeah? Why not?"

"We've now established that Markowsky was there with a woman, that it wasn't
his wife, and that she fed him Rohypnol before she left the scene."

"Great," he said. "Why would she do that?"

"We haven't figured that out yet."

The intercom sounded. I pressed the speaker phone button.

"I see the light went off," Diane said. "Did you calm him down?"

"Probably not. He hung up on me. As usual. What's up?"

"Jana called. Evidently you and she had plans for tonight. She said a client has
hired her for a job and she needs to attend to it tonight."

"Did she give any details?"

"No. It sounded rather commonplace."

"Okay. Thanks."

I turned to Maurice. "Jana can't come out and play tonight. Can you can get us a
couple of Avalanche tickets?"

"No problem. One thing, though."

"Oh? What's that?"

"You need to promise me nobody's going to get killed."

* * * *

Nothing untoward happened at the hockey game. The only "killing" was that the
Avalanche beat Nashville by three goals, one of them an open net shot after the Predators
pulled their goalie in the last two minutes of the third period. As we filed out of the Pepsi
Center, I reached for my phone, which I had silenced during the game. There were two
missed calls from Jana's number. Both times, she had also left voice messages. The first one
said, "Adam, Jana. I'm in the ER at Rose Medical Center. Call me." The second said, "I'm still
in the ER. My arm is broken. They think I also have a concussion."

I turned to Maurice. "That was Jana. We need to get to Rose Medical Center.
She's in the emergency room with a broken arm and concussion."

Typical for Maurice, he didn't ask any questions. "Let's go." He began gently but
firmly pressing his way through the crowd, calling out, "Excuse us, this is an
emergency."

Nobody resisted, and in about ten minutes we were in Maurice's new Grand
Cherokee, waiting for other vehicles to move so we could get out of the parking lot. I tried
to call Jana, but it went to voice mail. All we could do was sit there and wait. Finally, a path
opened up, and Maurice started to roll. He took Speer to Colfax, cruising through the light
just as it turned red. Otherwise, he obeyed the traffic laws, keeping his speed close to the
limit. Getting stopped by a cop would ultimately just slow us up. Besides, the way the lights
were timed along Colfax, even if you floored it when one light changed, you'd only end up
sitting at the next one.

Rose Medical Center was originally called Rose Hospital, established as a
nonprofit facility and named after a World War II general who was killed in action in
Germany. Maurice found a space in the parking area designated "Emergency Services". We
hurried inside. A young Hispanic man at the screening desk asked if he could help us.

"Jana Deacon called and said she's here at the ER. It sounded urgent."

"We don't allow visitors in the emergency room."

"I'm not a visitor. I'm a close friend of hers and she asked me to get here as soon
as possible." I knew I was stretching it a bit, but I also knew that hospital rules were made
to be broken.

He stared first at me and then at Maurice, who nodded solemnly as if to assure
the man we were solid citizens. "I can just wait here."

"Let me check." He walked over to a windowless door behind his desk, punched
in a code, and left us. He emerged about five minutes later.

"The doctor say it's okay. Both of you. This way. But just for a few minutes. She
needs rest." He led us down a hallway to a room that contained three hospital beds on
wheels, separated into cubicles by long ugly plastic curtains. Jana was propped up in the
second bed. Her left arm was in a cast.

"Thank you," I told the young man.

"No problem."

"What happened?" I asked Jana. She glanced meaningfully over at Maurice.

He said, "Do you want me to leave?"

She shook her head. "No. He'd just tell you everything, anyway."

I opened my mouth to object, but she gestured it away. "Forget it. I'm sorry. I
don't mean that. I've got a splitting headache, and my arm is throbbing. Someone attacked
me with a tire handle jack. I mean, tire jack handle." She was slurring her words, as if her
tongue was refusing to cooperate with her brain. The on-call doctor had obviously given
her some heavy duty medication.

I pulled up a chair and took her hand in mine. "What happened?"

"It-- I guess I should start with yesterday. Or the day before. I'm not sure which.
A man called and said he wanted to hire me. He found my agency online. I've signed up with
an internet service where they have some way of making your name pop up more often on
search engines. I get a lot of hits. It's pretty amazing."

"This man called you?" I prompted, since her mind seemed to be
wandering.

"Oh, yeah. Thanks. His wife is trying to serve divorce papers on him, and he
doesn't want to be found yet. He's expecting some important letter that's supposed to show
up at his post office box."

She grimaced. "This stuff they gave me is making me sick. Go away for a few
minutes. I need to throw up." She reached for an empty bag on the tray table beside the
bed. "Hurry!"

Maurice and I stepped outside the curtained area. I could hear her retching. So
could the nurse, apparently, because she came rushing past us, to check on her patient. Jana
said, "No, it's okay. I feel better now. Whatever you gave me made me sick."

The nurse came out, bearing the bag which was no longer empty, and
disappeared around the corner.

"Jana, should we come back later?"

"No. Come back in. I'm okay."

I parted the curtains and we rejoined her. The room had an odor that reminded
me of the way the hallways at Palmer Elementary School used to smell after one of the kids
tossed his cookies, but I didn't say anything. Under the circumstances, I figured we needed
to make allowances.

"You were telling us about an important letter," I reminded her.

"Yeah. The letter. He said all he needed me to do was check the post office box
every day for the next week, and if anything showed up, we'd arrange a time when I could
meet with him and hand it over."

Maurice said, "This sounds bizarre."

"It did to me, too," she said. "But it seemed simple enough, so I told him I'd do it.
He sent me five hundred dollars in cash and the key to the box. He said he'd call me every
day at six o'clock."

"So what happened?"

"The first day, I guess it was yesterday, there was nothing there. Today, there
was one envelope. When I described it to him, he said it sounded like it was just junk mail,
but that I should get it to him, anyway."

"Get it to him? How?"

"Well, that's the thing. He said to put it in a big brown envelope. Then I was to go
to the parking lot at the Cherry Creek Mall after ten o'clock, because all the stores would be
closed. I was supposed to leave the brown envelope in the stairwell near the east entrance.
On the Steele Street side." She stopped talking. Her mind had apparently wandered off
again.

"Did you do that?"

"Did I do what? Oh, sorry. I tried to. I parked my car in the Safeway parking lot. I
even went inside and bought something, just so they wouldn't get mad that I was leaving
my car there. Then I walked over to the mall. They have security guards, and one of them
was sitting in his car inside the covered parking garage. I think he was eating dinner. There
was no way I could walk in there, go all the way across the garage to where the main doors
are, and leave an envelope. He would have seen me and probably would have thought I was
planting a bomb or something."

She stopped and sipped some water from the cup on the tray table. "I waited
around the corner, keeping out of his line of sight. Then, all of a sudden, there was a man
behind me, threatening me with some kind of metal thing. You know, the handle on the jack
you use to change a tire. I knew right away I was in trouble. He was wearing gloves and a
black ski mask that completely covered his face, except for his eyes. He said, 'Give me your
purse. The envelope, too.'"

"What did you do?" I prompted.

"I stepped back and said, 'When pigs fly.' That's when he swung at me with the
metal whatever-it-was. I managed to block most of it with my left arm, and I punched him
with my right, but the thing still smacked me on the side of the head. I went down. I think
he grabbed my purse and the envelope and ran off. I don't remember that part too
well."

"Did you make contact when you punched him?"

"You bet I did! I'm not sure if I hit his nose or his eye, but I know I connected
with something solid." She looked over at Maurice. "What are the odds? I'm trying to
deliver a damn envelope to my client, who just wants to dodge a process server, and some
creep decides it would be a great time to mug me."

"The whole thing sounds pretty weird," Maurice agreed.

"It's more than weird," I said. "Especially all the clandestine rigmarole. And I
don't believe in coincidences. Has it occurred to you that your mysterious client may
actually be the man who mugged you? For all we know, he made up the entire divorce story
just to get you alone."

She stared at me, while the words percolated their way through the synapses of
her medicated brain. "Damn, you're good! No wonder I keep you around." She told Maurice,
"He's the only person I know who would think of something like that."

"It is an interesting thought," he said. "If it's true, why would he steal her
purse?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. There are several possibilities. Maybe the purse was
what he was after in the first place. Or maybe he just took it to make it look like a robbery,
and he was actually after that envelope. We don't have enough information to decipher this.
Jana, did you happen to look at the letter before--"