Wildcat Wine (13 page)

Chapter 22

With modest modifications,
Saturday is as much a workday as Wednesday at Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley. The attorneys wear jeans and the secretaries work only half days, but the law clerks drudge their regular eight hours in hopes of being noticed and promoted, and at one-thirty the top partners all disappear for their afternoon golf games with judges and rich men with influence. We baby partners, along with the associates, drone on till we can't stand it anymore.

Despite the fact that one of our own had been shot six times in what the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
quoted the sheriff as calling “suspicious circumstances,” a modest understatement, if you ask me, there we were on Saturday. And while the recently-made-dead Kenneth was definitely the topic at the coffeepot, work went on.

But Bonita didn't come in.

I punched in her home number, not to belittle her for failing to show up for work, but to inquire after her and to see if I could speak with Benny. Nobody answered.

Next I tried Philip's number to see if he was still mad over my strident refusal to return to Tired's office and turn Bonita in as the person who had custody of my Honda, the reigning cobalt blue suspect.

Philip didn't answer. I didn't like the way we'd left things. He'd claimed he couldn't be Bonita's defense attorney because there was a conflict of interest presented by his representing me, but I said I wasn't a suspect anymore, and he wanted to know if I'd ever heard of a criminal conspiracy, and I said I wasn't stupid enough to conspire with someone to kill someone else and use my car as the getaway vehicle. We sniped and snapped on Bonita's front lawn until Henry came out and offered to drive me home in the infamous Honda, and then drive Bonita's car back to her. Jumping at the chance to get Henry alone and pry information out of him, I had agreed even as Philip insisted we leave the cars where they were.

Henry and I ignored Philip, and Henry, far from capitulating to my interrogation, was a model of discretion during the ride back to my house. All I learned was what they had had for dinner—pizza.

So my Friday night had not ended up with the romantic romp I had hoped for, but my ancient blue car sat outside my office window on a fine, bright Saturday morning, and if things weren't entirely right with the world, at least my quick recovery of the suspect Honda surely reduced the chances Tired would discover Bonita had my car last night.

Okay, wrong again.

I hadn't brewed my private stash of organic, fair-trade coffee before Tired was standing in my office doorway.

“You should've told me Bonita had your car.”

He sounded angry.

“Coffee?” I offered, adding, “Good morning.”

“Withholding evidence is a criminal offense. Did you know that?”

“Black or with milk? Sugar?”

“Black's fine,” Tired said. “No, hell, make it sweet.” Pause. “Milk too.”

So, okay, we had that in common and I made us both the closest thing to hot chocolate you can make with coffee and generous amounts of milk and sugar.

He sat on the couch without being invited and sipped his coffee, and then we stared at each other while I wondered if we'd known each other in a prior life, or if it was just a karmic joke that we'd become so entwined of late.

“You should have told me about Mrs. de Vasquez. Having the car,” Tired said, sounding peevish. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Oh, please, like that wasn't obvious.

“How'd you find out she had my car?” I asked.

“So you admit it?”

Oops. That was sloppy of me, I thought, launching the counteroffensive. “So who made the spurious allegation that Bonita was driving my car last night?”

“Nice try,” Tired said. “This would be a lot easier if we just cooperated with each other.”

“Oh, yes, wouldn't it?” I gave him the full brunt of my nice, cooperative-girl smile, and then re-asked, “So who made the allegation?”

“I followed you last night. Saw where you traded cars at a house in Southgate. Got the tag off the other car, plus the address of the house. Found out Mrs. de Vasquez belonged to the house and the station wagon. Then this morning, I found out she was your secretary.”

Oh. Please, please, please don't know that Benny is her son. It was bad enough that Tired knew Benny had called in the dead man in the swamp, but if he connected him with my car, Tired might become an Inspector Javert to Benny and Bonita.

“You followed me,” I snapped in an offended tone, hoping to bypass any Benny/Bonita two-dead-men connection.

Ignoring my indignation, Tired asked, “Who was the man who drove her car home?”

“Her boyfriend.”

“Got a name?”

“Henry Platt.” Yes, I'd sell out Henry, friend and comrade that he was, to distract attention from Benny. Especially since Tired probably already knew who Henry was, or could quickly find out in any one of a dozen ways.

“What went on last night?”

“Look, Bonita was home all night, she had a . . . a dinner party. Henry was there, and all her kids. No way she drove that car to Kenneth's. And you have to admit, a blue Honda is a very, very common car. There must be hundreds, thousands of them in Sarasota.”

“The neighbor who saw it drive away, she described it pretty good. Sure sounds like your car.”

“Yeah, well, why don't you just put my car in a lineup. See if she can pick it out.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

Tired sipped at his coffee, sighed, and furrowed his brow. “Why'd Bonita have your car?”

“Her car was blocked in the parking lot by a client's car. So I loaned her mine.”

“How were you supposed to get home?”

“We just figured by the time I left, the client's car would be gone,” I said.

“So, then Bonita left early?”

“I left late. None of the attorneys leave at five.” At least none who wanted a continuing future with the firm.

“Okay, you left later in Bonita's car. Did Bonita leave early? Before five?”

Uh-oh, this could get tricky. Presumably at some point Tired would ask Bonita the same thing. If we told the truth, he would ask why she left early, and if we told the truth on that, then Tired would know Kenneth was harassing Bonita with that still-unfiled lawsuit, which smelled like a motive. But if I lied and Bonita didn't tell the same lie, we'd look really suspicious. Worse still, if I refused to answer, I would look like I was hiding something. Another round of change the topic was in order.

“I bet a car lineup wouldn't even be admissible. Are you kidding? Thousands of blue Honda cars in this city, and you're just totally fixated on mine. Why do you think that is?”

“I've never seen a car that color of blue before, ma'am. That's why, and that's what the witness lady said.”

“Well, all right, do a lineup then.” But please, please don't ask me again why Bonita had my car until we get our stories straight.

“This afternoon. I'll set it up. You have your car at the sheriff's department, back parking lot, by, say, two
P.M
.”

“Okay, and that's that, isn't it?” Translation: Go, now, and don't ask anything else.

“Once you tell me why Bonita had your car.”

When a lie is too complicated, sometimes a very carefully edited version of the truth can be twisted to serve the same purpose. “She needed to go home early, check on one of her kids. You know she's got five children, and one of them is always getting hurt, or stranded, or sick, or something, and I don't pay much attention to the reasons, but anyway I told her to go on home. But somebody had blocked her car in, and so I gave her my car.”

“How were you supposed to get home?”

“We figured the car that was blocking her's would move by the time I left, after five, and I'd drive her car, and we'd switch back this morning.”

“You were gonna switch this morning? So why switch back last night?”

Mierda,
I was so tired of Tired Rufus Johnson.

“It just seemed the thing to do, no reason.” Yeah, that was brilliant, huh? “Look, I have work to do,” I added, hoping to break up our party. “And you've got a murderer to find.”

“You told me that Benicio, the boy who called in the dead man in the swamp, was your secretary's son. So that'd make him Bonita's son, right?”

Oh, God, would somebody shoot me, or at least shut me up?

“Yes.” There was, of course, no way to deny what was so easy to find out.

I watched the wheels spin in Tired's head, and the muscle spasm in the back of my neck kicked me, and I wondered if I could have done any better at making things worse for Bonita if I had set out deliberately to do so.

And then, to my profound relief, Tired thanked me for the coffee and left.

Punch, punch, punch with phone numbers, desperately hoping Bonita would answer. She didn't. I called Henry. He didn't answer. What? Dead men lying around everywhere, a positive karmic convergence of malevolence, and they go off on a frolic?

My fingers hit Philip's phone number with vehemence. This time Philip answered his private office number and I blurted out, “Is a car lineup admissible in court?”

Philip fairly sputtered at the idea and more than sputtered at the fact that I had had a conversation with Tired. Yes, he was still mad, sort of, and I thought, Oh, wait till you hear all of it. So I made nice, invited him to dinner, and asked if he would escort me to the car lineup.

“Somebody needs to protect you,” he said, “so I will accompany you.”

Under the circumstances, those being that I needed him, I decided to overlook the nineteenth-century chauvinistic, snide, paternalistic, and just plain irritating nature of that response, though I had to sit silent a moment and then swallow twice to do so.

We made a date, and I hung up and booted up my computer for a Westlaw search, Westlaw being one of the two premier computerized legal-database services that allowed attorneys to search for the law without leaving the comfort of their office chairs.

Oddly enough, I couldn't find a thing on Westlaw about car lineups. I tried LEXIS, the competing computerized legal-research service, and found a similar lack of cases or law on point, and finally I set out to work on some of my billable files.

Calculating that if I made lunch out of a pot of coffee and an organic dried nut granola bar from a box stashed in my desk, I could bill at least three, maybe four hours, I pulled open my newest legal malpractice file. I was to defend an attorney who I rapidly concluded was an idiot for failing to correctly calculate the two-year statute of limitations on his client's case. Then I jumped up.

If Tired hadn't already gone through Kenneth's office here, he would.

Before Tired searched it, I sure wanted to go through that office a second time to make damn certain that any traces of whatever Kenneth might have had against Bonita were removed from Tired's potential discovery. I also wanted to destroy any copies of Kenneth's pleading on behalf of the bottling company against Bonita—paper and computer both. If Tired learned of any of that, he might conceive of a motive on Bonita's part to shoot Kenneth.

Practically running down the hallway, I passed a covey of law clerks who parted like the Red Sea to let me through. When I arrived in Cristal's cubbyhole, she was shredding paper in a portable shredder. Not giving a rat's ass about what she was destroying, and thinking in general that this was a good idea, I smiled and spoke and she nodded.

“Is Kenneth's office unlocked?” I asked.

“Yes, but you can't go in there.”

“Why not?”

“That investigator from the sheriff's office. The chubby one. He wanted to go through there but Jackson wouldn't let him. Jackson explained all about client confidentiality and all, and insisted he had to get a warrant or Kenneth's clients and The Florida Bar would be screaming at us. So nobody is supposed to go in there until that cop guy gets back.”

“How long did Tired say it would take to get a warrant?”

“Tired, yeah, that was his name. He didn't say, but it's just a matter of somebody typing up the paper and finding a judge to sign it.”

“You know this how?”

“I'm a certified paralegal. I know about as much as most lawyers. More than some.”

So Tired could be walking in any minute with his warrant, I thought as my heart gave a conspicuous thump-thump. I pushed toward the door.

“Hey!” Cristal spoke rather sharply for an underling and jumped up with the speed of a mad cat to physically block Kenneth's door. “You can't go in there. Tired said he didn't have the manpower to post a guard, so I assured him nobody would go in there.”

“Cristal, I won't hurt anything. I just need to take care of something. Real quick.”