EDGE OF SUSPENSE: Thrilling Tales of Mystery & Murder (14 page)

"What is this about?"

The detectives looked at each other, as if
carrying a great secret.

"Mind if we go inside?" Detective Jefferson
asked.

"Has something happened to my husband?" Emma
surprised herself by asking, her voice fraught with emotion.

Again the detectives exchanged glances and
frowns.

She decided to take control. "Something has
happened to him. Has he had an accident?" She wasn't sure why she
chose to use the word "accident" instead of "heart attack" or some
other reference to death or dismemberment.

Detective Buchanan looked at her grimly.
"There was a plane crash. A twin engine Cessna went down in the
Sierras. There were two people on board—Harrison Kincaid and a
young woman who hasn't been identified yet." He paused. "I'm afraid
that neither one survived."

Like the good wife, Emma turned white as a
ghost and began to wail like a newborn baby. "Noooo," she cried
out. "There must be some mistake." She knew there was no mistake.
Harrison had told her that he and his mistress were going to the
cabin for a couple of days.

Obviously he never made it.

When she finally got rid of the detectives a
half an hour later, Emma retreated to the study. Admittedly, she
was in disbelief over the turn of events. It was almost as if she
had willed the accident to happen.

Yes, it had been an accident.

She had never even contemplated Harrison's
death by plane crash, though somehow it seemed fitting. She
imagined the terror he and his ill fated lover must have felt as
the plane was spiraling out of control, knowing that death was
imminent...mere seconds away that probably seemed like years.

She wondered if Harrison had thought of her
just before the moment of impact.

Had he considered that the circumstances
that would result in his death might never have occurred were it
not for his own misguided choices?

Emma poured herself a glass of wine. She
drank it, laughing hysterically, while saying aloud: "To my darling
late husband. May you and your whore rot in hell!"

She thought about how justice seemed to have
a way of prevailing when all was said and done.

Suddenly she felt dizzy and her stomach
tightened. Then her throat felt like it was on fire. She dropped
the glass, spilling its contents onto the floor even before it
shattered into a thousand pieces.

Clutching her throat, Emma felt as if her
entire body was being invaded by a foreign enemy. One determined to
make sure she did not survive. But not before she suffered
horribly.

She fell backwards, her body wracked with
pain, before she hit the floor with a thud. Her voice was raspy,
but she was unable to scream. Yet her mind was still remarkably
clear. She had laced the wine with strychnine.

It was intended for Harrison.

# # #

THE JURY HAS SPOKEN

The four men and two women sat around the
table, a nearly empty bottle of bourbon and half-filled bottles of
red and white wine between them, along with a bowl overflowing with
cash. A smooth jazz CD was playing in the background, but no one
was paying attention to it.

"Guilty as charged—murder in the first
degree," said prosecutor Jay Penchant. "I had the jury eating right
out of my hands."

"Hell, if they'd known where your hands had
been, they would've thought twice," remarked Judge Walter
Armstrong.

Penchant laughed humorlessly. "Yeah right,
Your Honor
. You'd know something about that, wouldn't
you?"

"Let's just keep our focus on the case,"
defense attorney Lisa Hamilton said.

"Yeah, she's right," said detective Matt
McDonald. "The jury has spoken. Isn't that the bottom line?"

"Of course," the judge said, sipping
bourbon. "I'm just trying to keep things light."

"We all are," said assistant district
attorney Deborah Knight. "None of us can afford to take this too
seriously, or we'd all go nuts."

"Amen to that," said defense attorney Scott
Valdez, lifting his drink.

Prosecutor Penchant smoothed a thick brow.
"Now that we all seem to be on the same page, let's take it from
the top on how we got to this point. And, more importantly, where
do we go from here?"

"Okay," said McDonald, flipping through a
notepad. "Let's see, we've got Thomas Baker, forty-seven, arrested
for murdering his thirty-eight-year-old wife Cassandra."

"Cause of death?" Penchant asked.

"Blunt force trauma to the head."

"And the method used to commit the
murder?"

"He used one of his golf clubs and really
went to work on her," McDonald said.

ADA Knight made a face. "Sounds
gruesome."

"You've got that right," the detective said.
"Not even a belated attempt to call 911 could save her from the
onslaught."

Judge Armstrong cleared his throat and said,
"As I recall, the DNA evidence was overwhelming. His prints were
all over the murder weapon and the victim's blood was all over
him."

"Not so fast," argued Hamilton. "The DNA,
while certainly powerful, was hardly overwhelming. The defendant
never denied he was at the crime scene, especially since he lived
there with his wife. But nothing was presented to contradict his
assertion that someone conked him on the head and left him in a
pool of the victim's blood."

"Ahh, but that's where you're mistaken,
Counselor," said the prosecutor. "We had an expert witness come in
and testify that the superficial bump on the back of the
defendant's head was most likely self-inflicted to make it
look
like someone else was there."

"Yes, and our expert disagreed," Valdez
stated sharply. "According to her, it was highly unlikely that Mr.
Baker knocked himself out; supporting the view that he was struck
from behind as he stated, rendering him unconscious and
conveniently caught red-handed, no pun intended."

"Assuming that's true, and it's a big
assumption," said ADA Knight, "it still doesn't explain how the
defendant's prints ended up on the murder weapon that was left
embedded in his wife's skull."

"That's an easy one," said McDonald. "Baker
was an avid golfer, and a damned good one by most accounts. As
such, you would expect to find his prints on clubs he owned. Of
course, the fact that no other prints were found on the murder
weapon makes it difficult to believe that it was used by anyone
other than the defendant to bash his wife's head in."

Attorney Hamilton scoffed. "Sounds just a
little too pat for me. Thomas Baker, a Harvard grad, decides to
kill his wife by beating her to death with his own golf club that
has his fingerprints on it, leaving no doubt that he did it. Then
he concocts the hit on the head story as his rationale for being in
the wrong place at the worst possible time. Give me a break." She
rolled her eyes. "That's either the lamest excuse ever or he was
telling the absolute truth."

"Sounds like a good closing argument,
Counselor," said Prosecutor Penchant. "But you've neglected to
include something very important. Thankfully, the jury took this
into consideration when rendering their verdict. The defendant had
more than one reason for wanting his wife dead."

"Do tell," Judge Armstrong said eagerly.

Penchant tasted his wine as he looked around
the table. "For starters, the Mrs. had just filed for divorce. Then
he discovered that she'd been having an affair with one of his
colleagues. Talk about the ultimate betrayal. Oh, and did I forget
to mention that Thomas Baker was having his own affair and there
was some indication that he wanted his wife out of the picture?
Since he had a million dollar life insurance policy on her, she was
worth far more to him dead than alive."

"Well, I'm sure we'd all agree that those
things certainly worked against the defendant," the judge said.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean he killed her,"
Valdez said. "If you're just looking solely at money as the motive,
Baker wasn't exactly poor. His advertising firm is one of the most
successful in the city. A million bucks was like a drop in the
bucket for him. Not to mention he and his wife each had million
dollar life insurance policies long before the crime occurred,
which would seem to debunk that theory."

ADA Knight scoffed and stared at him in
disbelief. "Were we in the same courtroom? As was presented into
evidence, Thomas Baker's business was failing and he was deeply in
debt. Collecting a million dollars while making sure his wife
didn't divorce him would go a long way toward solving both of his
problems."

"Come on," Valdez said. "Some of the
witnesses we put on the stand testified that, if anything, Baker
wanted out of the marriage as much if not more than his wife. So
spare me with your obsessed, jealous husband motivation." The
defense attorney downed the rest of his wine. "With respect to him
being heavily in debt as a motive for murder, let's not forget that
Baker had a business partner who had the same motivation for
killing the victim, and then some. Need I remind you that Cassandra
Baker was having an affair with John Horn, who testified to this
effect as a hostile witness? Since he was married, too—never mind
that his wife has since filed for divorce—and had no desire to give
up his wife's money to prop up the business, Horn could have
murdered his lover if she'd threatened to tell his wife what was
going on, taking away his piggy bank. The man had access to the
house and knew Baker's schedule as well as anyone if he'd wanted to
set it up."

"But Horn had an alibi," ADA Knight
said.

"Yeah, right," attorney Hamilton rolled her
eyes. "Horn claimed he overslept in his car. Only no one could
vouch for that, except a friendly neighbor who claimed he
remembered seeing
someone
in the car."

"But Horn's prints weren't found on the
murder weapon," ADA Knight countered.

Hamilton snickered. "Uh, excuse me, but have
you ever heard of gloves? And let's not forget that Horn's
fingerprints and DNA
were
found at the house, since he was
Cassandra's lover and possible killer; as well as other prints and
DNA that have not been identified, including the bloody shoe prints
leading to the back door."

Prosecutor Penchant frowned. "I don't think
we should make too much out of something that turned out to be a
non issue at the end of the day. It's been established that most of
the unidentifiable prints and DNA likely came from people who were
cleared as suspects. As for the bloody shoe prints, our expert
testified that the defendant could have deliberately dragged his
feet in a manner to make the shoe prints seem half a size larger
than the shoes he wore that night."

"I think we should agree to disagree on this
one," attorney Hamilton said.

"Fair enough," Penchant said and finished
off his drink.

Detective McDonald looked around the table.
"I admit that I'm still intrigued over the possibility that Thomas
Baker's lover, Stella Sabatini, got away with murder. She admitted
that she wanted more than anything to become the new Mrs. Baker.
And, with her shaky past, including drug addiction and stalking,
who's to say that she didn't decide to go after Cassandra Baker
herself?"

"And set up the lover she wanted to be
with?" Judge Armstrong asked, shaking his head. "You'll have to do
better than that."

"All right, so it's a stretch," McDonald
admitted. "But maybe Stella got tired of waiting for Baker, who
obviously had no intention of marrying her. You know what they say
about a woman scorned. What better way to pay the bastard back than
by killing his wife and setting him up to take the fall?"

The judge laughed. "You've been reading way
too many novels, Detective."

"Hey, I'm just tossing out a hypothetical,"
he said. "We all know nothing's set in stone, even after a verdict
has been handed down."

"You're preaching to the choir, McDonald,"
Prosecutor Penchant said. "Yeah, I'm sure our friends here will
file the customary appeals and all the what-ifs can be bandied
about by the press. But this time the public appears to be squarely
on our side. Thomas Baker beat his wife to death, whatever his
reasons, and now he's paying the price by spending the rest of his
miserable life in prison. End of story."

"Not quite," said attorney Hamilton.
"Sometimes the truth has a way of coming out, even long after the
fact."

"Are you talking about the intruder theory
you tried unsuccessfully to sell to the jury?" ADA Knight teased.
"Uh, excuse me, but I'm afraid there's no one-armed man to come to
your client's rescue."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that,"
Hamilton countered. "Thomas Baker deserved a better fate. Yeah, he
was no angel by any stretch of the imagination. But he's not the
vindictive, cold-blooded killer you made him out to be either."

"Sounds like you're a sore loser,
Counselor," she said. "Get over it. You took your best shot and we
still won the jury over. Better luck next time."

"And hopefully your luck won't be so damned
good next time," attorney Valdez snorted.

Judge Armstrong slammed his fist onto the
table as if it were a gavel. "Order in the court, friends. Everyone
played the game fair and square and it's over." He sipped his
drink. "As usual, we each put up twenty grand on how long it would
take the jury to render a verdict. They did so in exactly five
hours. ADA Knight, you predicted the time right on the money, so to
speak. As such, the pot is yours. Congratulations!"

He lifted his glass in toast and the others
did the same, echoing his congrats.

The judge slid the bowl containing one
hundred and twenty thousand dollars to Deborah Knight.

"Sometimes one can be lucky
and
good," she said, scooping up the money and tucking it in her
purse.