Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (31 page)

With nothing but time to kill, Ben went back to the hotel and checked out before heading across the street to Steak ‘n Shake for lunch.
 
As he finished off his chocolate milkshake, he turned the case over in his mind.
 
Still too many holes to fill and not enough pieces with which to fill them.
 
He needed the records from the school and the physical evidence from the prosecution in order to really get going.
 
He decided to put
Disko
to work on the Nora Fleming connection to see what he could turn up.
 
Ben looked at his watch.
 
It was after one o’clock local time, and he figured if he got back to Orlando early enough he could stop somewhere and pick up the required trinkets for his kids.
 

Ben paid the tab and went out to the parking lot and put the top back down on the Sebring.
 
A couple of minutes later, he punched the gas and merged onto I-75 going about seventy miles per hour.
 
He found
I Saw Her Standing There
by the Beatles on the radio and turned it way up letting the engine out.
 
Just after he veered off onto the southbound Ronald Reagan Turnpike, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pants pocket.
 
He struggled to get it out and looked at the display.
 
He didn’t recognize the number.
 
He flipped it open and said, “Hello, this is Benjamin
Lohmeier
.”
 

“Mr.
Lohmeier
, this is Nora Scott.”

26

The phone call was brief.
 
Nora had thought about it and changed her mind.
 
Now she wanted to talk.
 
They agreed on an early dinner at the Lone Star Steak House, since it was a place that Ben knew.
 
Ben turned the Sebring around and headed back up the expressway to the hotel.
 
He even got the same room, now freshly cleaned.
 
He changed his airline reservations to the following morning and got Libby on her cell phone to tell her that he’d be staying an extra night.

“Your daughter is going to be pissed,” she warned.
 
“You better call her later and beg for forgiveness.”
 

Then he called Mark to see what was going on.
 
Mark wasn’t there so he talked to Dan Conlon instead.
 
Dan told him that Mark had received a call from Bridget Fahey telling him to look out for a stack of documents, the first batch of evidence received from the State.
 
He also said that they were scheduled to go downtown on Thursday to look at some of the files assembled at the law school.
 

“What’d you make of the girlfriend?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Ben replied.
 
“At least we know she was there at the time of the murder.
 
I’m going to have
Disko
look into it.
 
I should know more this evening.
 
All I can tell you right now is that it’s warm and sunny down here and I don’t miss Chicago a bit.”

“Fuck you,” Dan said and hung up.
 

Ben arrived at the restaurant first, greeted by the same hostess as the night before, who raised her eyebrows when he asked for a table for two.
 
Ben thought he saw her exchange a knowing glance and accompanying grin with a co-worker when Nora Scott arrived ten minutes later and they were led to a booth in the back of the dining room.
 
As the hostess walked away, Ben laughed.
 

“What’s so funny?” Nora asked.
 

“I think she thinks I got lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was in here last night by myself and now I’m in here tonight with you.
 
I think she thinks I got lucky.”

“In a sense, you did.
 
Andrew wanted to come along, but I wouldn’t let him.”

“Just as well.
 
I don’t think Andrew and I hit it off very well this morning.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Ben shrugged, then he asked, “What made you change your mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.
 
“I guess I thought about what you said and figured you could make it a lot worse for us if I didn’t talk to you.”
 

The waitress came and they each ordered a beer.
 
Nora looked a little more relaxed than earlier that morning.
  
Ben figured her husband not being there took a little bit of the edge off.
 
He still sensed a bit of nervousness and hoped that a less formal setting would help put her at ease.
 
She looked around to make sure that no one could hear and then said in a low voice, “Do you really think I could have killed him?”

Ben shrugged.
 
“I don’t know?
 
Why not?
 
I think you’re probably as likely as anybody else.
 
I think your husband probably could have done it too.
 
Either of you two
are
at least as likely as my client is.”
 
Ben paused as he saw the waitress approaching with their beers.
 
After she left, he continued.
 
“Look, I’m just getting into this case.
 
I’m trying to figure out who all of the players are before I form any conclusions.
 
You seem like a decent enough
woman
.
 
I hope you didn’t kill him.
 
Other than that, who knows?”

“How did you find out about me anyway?”

“The Missus.”

“Sylvia told you?
 
What did she say?”

“She didn’t say much.
 
She only knew your name was Nora and that you had a relationship with her husband for quite some time, one that apparently led to the break-up of their marriage.”

“That’s what she said?
 
That’s rich.
 
I think the marriage had been broken long before I came onto the scene.
 
It’s just that nobody decided to pick up the pieces and throw them away until Daniel and I were together.”

“Well, she acted like she didn’t know who you were, just that your name was Nora and that you two had been fooling around for quite a while.
 
She said that was the last straw.
 
A bunch of conquests, as she put it, were one thing, but a long-term relationship with a student was another.
 
She said that she couldn’t accept that and filed for divorce.”

“I suppose that’s more or less true, although Daniel probably would have put a different spin on it.
 
From what Daniel told me, Sylvia was very … well, very, very cold is how I’ll put it.”

“I’ll take it he phrased it a little less delicately than that?”

“You might say that.
 
Daniel thought she was just trying to stick it to him, both financially and with his daughters.
 
I don’t know whether that’s true.
 
I only know about Sylvia through Daniel.
 
I never actually met her myself.”
 

“If it’s any consolation, I would agree that she’s quite a chilly woman indeed.
 
I’m not sure if it was a façade, obviously I don’t know her that well, but warm and fuzzy she wasn’t.”
 
Ben decided to get right to it.
 
“So, how did you meet up with him?”

“About like you’d expect.
 
I had him for
Crim
Law and went to see him once or twice about questions I had and one thing led to another and as you might imagine, he wasn’t
adverse
to being with a student.”

“That’s his reputation anyway,” Ben said.
 

“And it’s probably well-deserved,” she said matter-of-factly.
 
“That was during the middle of my first year and things gradually got more serious until I moved into an apartment right downtown by the law school my second year and we spent loads of time together there.”

“What did he tell his wife?”

“I have no idea.
 
It’s probably not that hard if you think about it.
 
He could just say he had another class or office hours or something.”

Ben nodded in agreement.
 
“That’s true.
 
Plus he had all of those ball games to go to, right?
  
He was a season ticket holder.”

“Exactly.
 
We missed quite a few ball games to go over to my apartment.
 
That’s one of the reasons I thought he was really falling for me, you know, because he managed to miss a lot of games.”

“Was he with anyone else while you two were together?”
 

She closed her eyes and scrunched her nose as though recalling something unpleasant.
 
Then she took a long drink of her beer.
 
“Who knows?
 
I don’t think so, but looking back on it, I suppose anything is possible.”

“Well, that’s pretty definitive,” Ben said.
 

“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

“No, that’s okay,” Ben said.
 
“I understand.
 
So how did Sylvia come to find out about the two of you?”

Nora shrugged.
 
“I’m not really sure.
 
I think probably in the usual way.
 
She had her suspicions and then confronted him, and then lo and behold, he didn’t deny it.
 
That’s another way I thought we were serious, when he admitted to her that we were together and told her, at least he said he told her, that he wanted to be with me.”

“But I thought he didn’t want the divorce.”

“He said he wanted it at first and then he changed his mind.”
 
She played with the coaster while she spoke.
  
She appeared to be putting things into words that she had thought about for a long time, but never really discussed with anyone.
 
Since she probably didn’t really discuss this stuff with her husband, Ben assumed that the act of telling him about it may have helped her get it out of her system.
 
It had the quality of something that had been ruminated about for some time.
 
They sat in silence for a moment and Ben thought about where he could take the conversation.
 
Just at the point it was starting to get awkward, the waitress came back to take their order.
 
It gave him time to re-group and re-think his approach.
 
Around them, the other tables started to fill and the restaurant got much noisier, thus assuring the privacy of their conversation.
 
Ben grabbed a warm roll out of the basket the waitress had brought and broke it in two, buttering each half.

“Was the divorce difficult for you?” he asked, swallowing a bite of roll.
 

She considered that.
 
“Not at first.
 
At first, it was what I wanted and what Daniel said he wanted.
 
It only became clear later on that he didn’t want a divorce at all.
 
Of course, he couldn’t say that to me because he had strung me along for such a long time and he didn’t want to run the risk of losing both of us, which he eventually did.”

“How did that happen?”

She got that far-off look again.
 
“Well, it happened because it became obvious that he didn’t want to divorce his wife and he didn’t want to lose me either.
 
He just wanted the status quo.
 
He wanted both of us.
 
But by that point, both of us wasn’t good enough anymore.
 
At least not for me and from the sounds of it, not for her either.
 
I stuck it out for awhile to see if he might change his mind once it became clear that they would never get back together, but he didn’t want me, at least not the way I wanted him to.
 
So eventually I had to get out too.”

“How did he take that?”

“Not very well because he was losing me on top of her and on top of losing his daughters, I guess.
 
So he felt like everything was crashing in around him.
 
Then you had the thing with those other girls at school and I’m sure he had a pretty hard time.
 
I didn’t care very much at that point though.
 
I just knew I had to leave.”

“How’d you wind up down here?

“Andrew and I dated for a long time while I was in college and we had sort of broken up when I started seeing Daniel.
 
We were still reasonably close and Andrew wanted to get back together and he kept telling me that my relationship with Daniel was a bad idea whether he got back together with me or not.
 
I didn’t listen at the time, although I suppose he was right.
 
After my relationship with Daniel fell apart, he was there for me.
 
I eventually came to realize that I wanted and needed him too.”
 
She smiled.
 
“And I probably loved him in some way all along.”