Motion to Dismiss (13 page)

"Have you met him?"

"Unh-unh."

"He's a jerk though," the shaved head added. "She broke up with him once. I don't know why she went back."

Rick rolled his eyes. "Like I said, she appreciated the good life. Tony was rolling in the green stuff."

"What kind of jerk?" I asked.

The stylist with the shaved head answered. "The male kind. Big ego, small dick."

Rick Bernard laughed. "Not that you'd know big from small, Rachel. I'm not even convinced you know dick."

I cleared my throat to get their attention. "Am I right that Deirdre Nichols worked here the day she was killed?"

"Until six."

"Did she say anything about her plans for the evening?"

Another three-pointed conversation with the bottom line being, no, she hadn't dropped even a hint about her plans.

"Did she seem worried or upset that day?" I asked.

Rick shook his head. "In fact, she was in a pretty good mood, as I remember. Happier than she'd been for quite a while. It's a damn shame, her being killed."

I agreed that it was.

The telephone rang and Rick Bernard sprinted to the reception desk. As I waved my thanks and started for the door, he held up a hand.

"Wait, I think we might have Tony's phone number here, if you're interested." When he was off the phone, he rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a duplicate-copy message pad. He flipped a few pages. "Here it is."

I grabbed one of the pink and purple promotional pens from the counter and copied the number into my notebook. "Thanks."

"Come back for a haircut sometime."

It wasn't likely, but I nodded anyway.

"Keep the pen. Our phone number is on the side."

I glanced at it before dropping it into my purse.
Rapunzel, a full-service hair salon
. Accompanied by the phone number. "Thanks," I said again.

"Some hotshot salesman sold me on the idea," Rick said, pointing to the collection of pens. "Haven't seen any great upturn in business because of it."

I pulled out three business cards and left them on the counter. "If any of you remembers something more, I'd appreciate a call."

I wasn't going to hold my breath waiting.

It wasn't yet seven when I got to Nina's. Simon, standing formally in the open doorway, informed me she'd already gone to bed for the night.

"Is she okay?" The words were out of my mouth before I realized what a dumb question it was. Cancer, a complicated pregnancy, and now a husband in jail awaiting trial for murder -- how could she be okay?

"She said she had a headache."

"How did she seem, uh, otherwise?" I never quite knew how to approach Simon, who was privy to the intimate details of the Barretts' life, yet when all is said and done, an outsider.

Simon shook his head sadly. The glow of the front porch light gave his silver hair and white uniform an iridescent quality. "It is not easy for her, I'm sure."

An understatement if ever there was one. I wondered how Nina would ever get through the next months.

Just then Emily appeared from inside the house, one shoe off, hair hanging in her face, her thumb in her mouth. She slid past Simon and stood next to me, wrapping her free arm around my leg.

I don't have the gift of talking easily to children, but I could tell Emily was feeling unsettled.

"Hi, honey." I brushed the hair from her forehead. "How are you doing?"

She pressed against me without answering.

"Did you have a fun day at school?"

"We had a substitute."

"Ah." I dithered for a moment and then, unable to come up with a better topic, asked, "And after school?"

"I was supposed to go to gymnastics but we couldn't, because of the reporters were out front."

"They were here?" I looked at Simon.

"I wouldn't let them in, of course. But we thought it best if Emily stayed in the house."

Emily clutched my leg tighter. Tears welled up in her eyes. "I want my daddy."

"Now, now, missy, we'll have none of that." Simon's tone was gentle, but his reprimand struck me as unfair all the same. I had a feeling he was even more at a loss around kids than I was.

"I know your daddy misses you too," I told Emily, giving her a one-armed hug. I wondered how much she'd been told about Grady's arrest. "You could draw a picture for him. I bet he'd like that."

Emily was silent. She continued to hug my leg as though hanging on for dear life. Maybe she was.

"Have you eaten?" I asked her, an idea forming as I spoke. When she didn't answer, I added, "Would you like to go out for dinner?"

She looked up at me. "You mean McDonald's?"

I'd actually been thinking of something a bit more upscale, a place where I could get a salad of spring greens and a glass of wine, which goes to show that I really hadn't been thinking at all. "Is that where you'd like to go?" I asked.

She nodded. "Arf too. He's so lonely he's got a tummyache."

"Okay, Arf too."

Emily ordered chicken nuggets and fries. After scrutinizing the salads, I decided to join her. It wasn't the food, I reminded myself, that had brought me there.

After a few false starts I learned that Emily would talk if I stopped peppering her with questions and gave her the chance. In the course of the evening I learned about lizards -- far more than I wanted to know, especially over food -- pilgrims, Gretchen's new father -- her third -- and a boy named Fred who spit when he talked. And when we started making a list of truly disgusting foods, we both got the giggles.

We were having such a good time, in fact, that we went to Fentons for ice cream afterward. It had been a long time since I'd had ice cream loaded with gooey chocolate sauce and whipped cream, and it wasn't, in truth, as good as I remembered. But Emily was in seventh heaven.

"I love chocolate," she said, spooning a dollop of the stuff into her mouth.

"I can tell. By the spoonful, no less."

"That's the way I take my medicine."

"With a spoon?"

She laughed. "Of course with a spoon. With chocolate sauce too. It hides the yucky taste."

The inventiveness of parents never ceases to amaze me.

"What did the pencil say to the paper?" she asked abruptly

"The pencil?" It took me a moment to realize Emily was setting up a joke.

I shook my head. "I don't know, what?"

"Take me to your ruler!" She grinned and shoveled another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

As we were finishing up, Emily waved to a friend -- a skinny child with big, dark eyes. The girl came over to say hello.

"This is Adrianna," Emily said, holding out a hand smeared with chocolate. "She goes to my school."

The name was familiar, and in the next instant I knew why. The narrow-shouldered woman Adrianna was with turned away from the counter just then and faced our direction. I recognized Deirdre Nichols's sister, Sheila Barlow.

Her expression darkened when she saw us. Her mouth thinned and her jaw tightened. Tucking her wallet into her purse, she approached. After the hostility she'd exhibited on the television newscast, I wasn't sure what to expect. I braced myself for a nasty scene.

Surprisingly, however, she was the model of good behavior. She introduced herself to me, chatted briefly with Emily, and didn't mention a word about Grady.

As she was leaving she paused, her pale eyes unexpectedly serious. "I think it might be a good idea if we talked sometime," she said.

Before I could answer, she took Adrianna's hand and led her away.

"Her other mommy died," Emily said solemnly.

I nodded, not sure what to say.

"Lucky for her, she had two."

"Two mommies?"

Emily licked her spoon and nodded.

I was happy for Adrianna's sake that she had an aunt she was close to, but I knew that no one could ever replace a mother.

We held our first strategy session the next morning. Marc, myself, and Hal Fisher, an investigator I'd used when I'd worked at Goldman and Latham.

Hal is approaching fifty, a bit overweight, and scruffy-looking in the tradition of an aging hippie. He's also inclined to be a trifle more outspoken than is necessary.

Although they tried to hide it, I could tell the two men had taken an immediate dislike to each other.

"So, what have we got?" I asked Marc.

"Why are you looking at me?"

We were in his office, which is not only roomier than the one I was using, but neater. Marc was seated behind his wide wooden desk. Hal and I were sprawled in chairs across from him.

"You're the one who had the police report in your hot little hands all night." My tone was sharper than I'd intended, the fallout of an evening spent stewing when I wanted to be working. Despite repeated calls, I hadn't managed to reach him. "Where were you anyway?"

"Out." His expression was hard to read. Avoiding my eyes, he reached for a plastic portfolio. "Where do you want to start?"

"Let's look at the crime scene first," Hal said. He was eating granola from the box by the fistful, as though it were popcorn.

"Inside or out?" There was a contentious overtone to the question.

Hal crunched on his cereal. "Outside."

"Victim was found on a stone patio area directly under a third-story deck. Body was twisted, on its side mostly. She was fully clothed, although not in street clothes." Marc skimmed his notes. "Here's something. There were bruises on her neck and upper arm. Probably the result of a violent confrontation prior to death -- that's according to the cop who wrote out the initial report."

"Fingernail scrapings?" I asked.

"Taken, no results."

"Meaning the results aren't back yet or that there was nothing there?"

He looked again. "Doesn't say. But you'd think they'd know if they found anything."

"What they know and what they put down on paper aren't always one and the same," Hal said glibly.

Marc frowned. His lips barely moved when he spoke, and his voice was cool. "I wasn't born yesterday."

"How about a rape kit exam?" Hal asked.

The question took me by surprise. For some reason, rape hadn't occurred to me. And at this stage, the results could only hurt our case. If they'd pointed to someone other than Grady, the police wouldn't have arrested him.

Marc flipped through a couple of pages. "It doesn't say."

"We should find out," Hal noted. "It's fairly standard procedure these days."

"Anything else?" I made a grabbing gesture, and Hal handed me the granola box.

"Yeah. There were footprints in wet soil by the side of the house. Men's, size ten."

"Any idea what size shoe Grady wears?" I wondered if Grady's shoes were among items seized by the police in their search of the house.

"He's a size ten," Marc said. "But so are a lot of men, myself included. And they weren't Bruno Maglis -- just running shoes."

Hal laughed. "There's no such thing as 'just shoes.' They've all got signature soles -- shape, stitching, God knows what else. With enough detail, a shoe impression can be pretty precise."

"Well, without the detail it's meaningless," Marc shot back. "And I don't see anything here that makes it sound like this was a primo impression."

"What about hair?" I asked, mostly to stop the bickering. "Or fibers? Anything in the way of trace evidence?"

"Not outside," Marc said. He looked pointedly at Hal. "Is it okay if we move inside now?" Then, without waiting for an answer, he continued. "Most of the prints and hair collected around the house can be accounted for. Although it would help if they had a set of the Carsons' prints for comparison."

"Any that can't be accounted for?"

"There was a short gray hair found on the sofa." Marc looked up. "Could be Grady's, I suppose. But he was there the week earlier. Unless the evidence comes with a time stamp, we ought to be able to use his presence there the previous week to counter whatever they come up with in the way of physical evidence."

Nice in theory, but I wasn't banking on it. "What else?"

Marc went back to his notes. "Animal hair, some carpet fibers, a small pearl button."

"Stuff that might help us if we were trying to pin the murder on someone else," Hal said, "but nothing that's going to help us know who that person is." He pulled a grapefruit out of his tattered briefcase and began peeling it. The room filled with the scent of citrus.

Marc glared. "You forget to eat breakfast or something?"

Hal ignored him.

I rubbed my forehead. "The stuff might prove useful if we're able to identify another plausible suspect."

"We're a long way from that," Marc said, making no effort to hide his irritation.

"Okay," Hal said, prying a grapefruit section free. "Let's look at what the prosecution has. A motive, I'll grant you that. But nothing that directly links Grady to the crime. Only the handkerchief, the little girl's story about seeing a silver-color convertible in the driveway, and possibly the shoe print."

"And by their absence," I added, "the pants Grady wore the night of the murder."

Marc rocked back in his chair. "Unfortunately, there's also the phone call to Grady's office made from Deirdre Nichols' home phone at six forty-three that evening."

I nodded. "Grady says he never received the call though."

Marc flipped back a page in the report. "The record shows an eight-minute conversation."

That the cops hadn't told us. I was beginning to think Madelaine's offer to deal might not have been so far out of line.

"Maybe someone else at the office took the call," Hal suggested.

"Unh-unh." Marc's expression, directed Hal's way, was smug. "It's a separate line. No secretary, no switchboard. Goes directly to Grady's private office."

There was a moment of glum silence while we considered the possibilities.

Hal crossed his arms and lifted his feet to the chair opposite him. "Let's subpoena Ms. Nichols' phone records, see who else she talked to."

"And we should ask around at ComTech," I added. "There's always the chance someone else picked up the phone."

Marc resumed his reading. "There was no sign of forced entry," he said after a moment. "So presumably she knew her killer. Not so good for our case either."