Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill (13 page)

Following the funeral service, friends and family gathered at the Sullivan home in Mission Hills, the richest of the Kansas-side municipalities that grew into a seamless patchwork of neighborhoods, oblivious to the state line.

An out-of-towner couldn’t tell where Jackson County, Missouri, ended and Johnson County, Kansas, began. But it was easy to tell where the money was, and a lot of it was in Mission Hills. This enclave of the locally rich and famous was five minutes and a million dollars west of Mason’s house.

Huge homes sat on large, heavily treed lots, along winding streets that oozed an old-money ambiance. The Sullivan home was a handsome Tudor set back on a broad, carefully manicured lawn. The circle drive was filled with cars bearing Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus hood ornaments. American-made cars lined the street.

Two hours spent pumping the hands of colleagues who were planning their pitches to Sullivan’s clients was enough for Mason. He found Pamela in the family room, sitting on a small sofa next to a stern-faced, dark-haired woman who was holding Pamela to her breast and stroking Pamela’s hair. The woman looked up at Mason with a defiant glare. Two half-empty cocktail glasses sat on the butler’s table in front of them. Mason cleared his throat. Pamela raised her head and sat up. The woman brushed Pamela’s lips with her own while Pamela brushed imaginary lint from the woman’s breast. This was a post-funeral visitation, not a slumber party, he thought.

“I know this isn’t a good time, Pamela, but I’d like to come back tomorrow morning. Richard may have left some firm files at home.”

Her eyes were glassy. He couldn’t tell whether it was grief or booze or both. She didn’t introduce her friend, who kept her high-beam glare trained on Mason.

“Certainly, Lou. I should be up and around by ten.”

Mason spent the rest of the day and early evening returning calls from clients and answering mail until it was time to meet Blues at The Landing.

The Landing was a piano bar in the northwest corner of the downtown in what used to be the garment district. The buildings that used to turn out dresses and coats had been rehabilitated as offices and lofts. One, however, still ground coffee beans, and when the wind was right, the aroma swept the streets like a runaway Starbucks.

The Landing occupied a three-story redbrick building on the northeast corner of Eighth and Central that felt as if it had always been a saloon. Maybe it was all the beer and whiskey that had been absorbed by the wood-plank floors and the bartenders who looked as though they’d heard it all. The food was good and the music was great. The bar was jammed when Mason arrived at nine, slicing his way through the crowd until he found Blues finishing his dinner in the kitchen.

“It’s about time you got here, man. I go on in five minutes. I’m gonna play ‘Green Dolphin Street’ no matter how many times those accountants taking inventory of each other ask me to play some hip-hop bullshit.”

Blues was not a fan of professional people. In fact, Mason couldn’t name many people Blues was a fan of, especially if they wore neckties and counted money for a living.

“How do you know any of them are accountants?”

“You go out there and watch how they move. Only accountants move like that.”

Mason didn’t want to hear his critique of lawyers. “How’d you make out at my office?”

“I didn’t find any more bugs. It looks like somebody cleaned house.”

“How could you tell?”

“The bugs have an adhesive backing to hold them in place. Two phones were sticky where they shouldn’t be sticky.”

“Whose offices?”

“Scott Daniels and Harlan Christenson.”

“If someone was bugging all three offices, why leave the one in Sullivan’s office?”

“Maybe they wanted to or maybe they didn’t have time to pull it out.”

“What’s the range on these things?”

“Not much. Whoever was listening couldn’t have been more than a floor or two away.”

“I’m supposed to find out if Sullivan left any dirty laundry behind. It looks like I may be able to open a dry cleaners.”

Mason left as Blues weaved through the crowd toward his piano.

The next morning, he told Sandra about Blues while they drove to Pamela Sullivan’s house. She accused him of being sexist and patronizing for not telling her sooner. Mason told her she was right. Before he could lie and tell her that he was sorry, she told him that he was on his own if he left her out again and that he was invited to her place for dinner Friday night to show that there were no hard feelings. Mason was still trying to remember when she started calling him Lou when they pulled into Sullivan’s driveway.

“Pamela, this won’t take long,” he said as she let them in. “We need to make certain we’ve got all of Richard’s files on client matters.”

“Of course, I understand.”

“Before I forget, I have your husband’s briefcase at the office. There wasn’t much in it. Just a book, a newspaper, and a CD. I’ll have someone bring it out to you.”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t need it. Keep it or give it away. Can I offer you a Bloody Mary?” she asked, holding up her own tall glass. “I tried orange juice, but I needed something a little stronger. I’m afraid I’m not very good with death.”

“Another time,” Sandra said.

Pamela shrugged, set her glass down on a narrow table in the entry hall, and led them into a paneled, bookshelf-lined study with overstuffed furniture, a fine Persian rug, and prints of English hunt scenes on the walls. A high-backed chair sat next to a small table adorned with an inkwell and feathered quill. A pearl-handled letter opener lay alongside the antique writing instruments.

Sullivan’s desk had six drawers that were devoid of anything related to his law practice. A credenza behind the desk contained tax returns, financial records, and a locked cabinet.

Sandra asked, “Pamela, do you have the key for this cabinet?”

“Try the desk drawer.”

Sandra rifled the desk again with no luck. “Any other suggestions?”

“Well, perhaps.”

Pamela walked over to the bookshelves, reached behind the six-volume Carl Sandburg biography of Abraham Lincoln, and pulled out a handgun. Before they could move, she calmly fired two rounds into the lock.

“There, that should do it.”

They gawked first at Pamela and then at the gaping hole in the cabinet and then back at Pamela.

“Richard bought the gun for me after someone broke in last month. He said it might come in handy. He was seldom wrong,” she said as she returned the gun to its hiding place.

The cabinet was empty except for an unlabeled CD case. Mason opened it and found another DVD.

“Do you mind if we take this to the office, Mrs. Sullivan?” Sandra asked.

“Not at all. But I would appreciate it if you could do a small favor for me.”

“You name it,” Mason said.

“Have someone let me know what to do to collect Richard’s death benefit. When he told me about it, I never imagined actually getting the money. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would ever die.”

She said it with a wistful, sad tone laced with genuine surprise. Her mix of anger and grief since last Sunday made sense to Mason, as did her drinking. Sullivan may have been a son of a bitch, but he was her son of a bitch. It was the way a lot of dead people left their survivors.

Still, her request felt as if she’d just fired another round from her revolver. Mason wasn’t ready to tell her that her husband had been diagnosed with HIV and didn’t get the life insurance policy to pay for his buyout and that the firm didn’t have the money to pay her. He would leave that happy task to Scott after Mason warned him about her gun. But he did tell Sandra on the drive back to the office.

She looked straight ahead as she muttered through clenched teeth, “That no-good son of a bitch!”

“Seems likely,” Mason said.

The conference room had given birth to a landfill. It was littered with half-empty coffee cups, Coke cans, wadded paper, and pizza boxes. Phil and Maggie had matching sets of bags under their eyes. Diane Farrell looked fresh, rested, and completely in charge.

They had rolled in portable erasable whiteboards to keep track of O’Malley’s projects. Each project was cross-referenced to the others so that assets, ownership, and attorneys could be visualized at a glance. Diane was busily entering data on the computer so they could sort information into endless combinations.

“Diane, what do you know about these? We found one in Sullivan’s office here and the other one at his house.”

Mason handed her the two DVD cases.

“You found Richard’s porno flicks—big deal.” She turned back to her computer monitor. “What do you want—a psychohistory of a man who watched dirty movies on his computer? Give it a rest. Besides, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Diane, you work for me now, so unless you want to peddle your bullshit at another firm, cut the crap. Make sure there’s nothing else on these DVDs.”

Mason wasn’t certain he could fire Diane, but he doubted that anyone would fight to keep her now that Sullivan was gone.

“The king is dead. Long live the king. Would now be soon enough?”

For her, it was a surrender speech.

“That would be lovely, Diane.”

She inserted each disk into her computer and pulled up a list of the contents on the disks. The only document shown on each was the movie title.

“Satisfied, boss?”

“How do you know if the list identifies everything on the disks?”

“That’s what it’s for.”

“Can you put something on the disk that wouldn’t show up on the list, something that you’d have to have a special password to access?”

“I don’t know. Programming is not one of my areas. I just run the software on the system.”

“All right.” Mason turned his attention to Phil and Maggie. “How far have you gotten?”

“Phil and I are about halfway through the files. We should have the raw information compiled in a couple of days. Then we have to figure out what we’ve gathered. Some trends are starting to appear,” Maggie said.

She stopped, waiting for them to ask her to continue. It was the nature of too many young lawyers not to speak unless spoken to, especially if they’d been to the Sullivan school of intimidation.

“Well, Maggie—we’re waiting,” Sandra said.

“Right. The real estate deals handled through Quintex look clean. The property values are backed up by independent appraisals.”

“So far, so good. What else?” Mason asked.

“It looks like O’Malley set up a bunch of phony loans from the bank. The companies are mostly shells with no assets. The money ended up in his pocket.”

“We’ve known about that for a while. That’s what St. John has been pressing him on. Have you found anything else?”

“This may not be a problem yet. There’s another set of deals by Quintex that involve the purchase and leaseback of store fixtures. I never worked on those and we haven’t sorted them out yet.”

“Fine. Stay after it and, remember, nothing leaves this room. If St. John can tie Sullivan to those loans, he may get the keys to our office as part of the settlement we’ll have to make with the government.”

Mason dreaded the stack of mail and messages that he knew would be waiting on his desk. His secretary, Cindy, had divided them into piles marked
Junk
,
I already stalled them until next week
, and
Ignore these and die
. Fortunately, the last group was limited to five calls and three letters, which he spent the next two hours answering. He was starting to review the O’Malley billing memos when Scott Daniels walked in and closed the door.

“O’Malley isn’t happy.”

Scott’s pained expression meant that if O’Malley wasn’t happy, he wasn’t happy.

“I didn’t ask him to be happy—I just told him to tell me the truth. If he can’t do that, we’ve got serious problems.”

“He’ll fire us if you don’t ease up. He doesn’t want you digging up his life. Back off a little, just until things calm down. Let me deal with O’Malley. We can’t afford to lose him as a client.”

Mason wondered where Scott stood in all of this. They had been close friends for thirteen years. They had stood up for each other in their weddings and Scott had made a place for him at the firm. But someone had tapped Scott’s phone. That had to mean that Scott knew at least some of what had been going on even if he wasn’t directly involved. Mason decided to tell him parts of what he knew and let Scott’s reaction guide him.

“Kelly Holt says Sullivan was murdered. Someone tried to run me off the road on the way back from the lake. St. John is on us like white on rice. Pamela wants her million bucks. O’Malley is at the center of all of this. I’m not backing off.”

“You’re making a big mistake, Lou.”

He slammed the door on the way out just in case Mason missed his punctuation.

Scott’s reaction to Mason’s catastrophe checklist was near the top of the week’s bizarre turns. No questions or comments about the murder of his mentor or the attempt on Mason’s life, no concern for his own vulnerability, no solutions for the financial crisis they faced over Pamela’s demand for payment. Scott either didn’t care, which Mason didn’t want to believe, or trouble with O’Malley was the only thing that really frightened him.

The door was still vibrating when Harlan Christenson opened it, looking as if he’d just been sent to the principal’s office.

“St. John has upped the ante. I’m being audited.”

“Harlan, lawyers are audited all the time. I doubt if St. John has the clout to single you out. Just give the IRS agent your files and your accountant’s phone number and don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Harlan picked up a pencil on Mason’s desk and rubbed it between his palms.