Murder in the Courthouse (15 page)

“Can we go get dinner now?” Hailey asked in mock desperation. “As much as I love spying on county clerks and transport officers, I'm starved.”

“OK, Hailey girl. Let's go get pizza.”

“Again, Fincher. I never agreed to
another
pizza night. What about a salad bar? Have you ever even heard of that? They're awesome . . . lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cheese . . . you know . . . healthy?”

The two headed back through the double doors and into the cavernous courthouse lobby. Nodding at the night sheriff, Hailey held up her canvas bag and sweater, showing him she found her things. They pushed through the side door out onto the courthouse steps and into fresh air, away from the ghosts of the dead and their now-empty cubicles full of memories. The sky over them just barely hinted at nighttime approaching.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D
inner turned out to be a compromise. Not pizza, not a salad bar . . . but Mexican. Fincher chowed down on a huge basket of chips and salsa, two cheesy beef burritos, and a bowl that, according to Hailey, looked like a vat of cheese sauce. It was titled on the menu as Queso Divertido, or cheesy fun. Hailey went with the Veggie Lover's Delight with avocado.

After, Hailey drove her rental car straight back to the hotel where the state was putting her up. It wasn't luxurious by any means, but it had a double window that looked past Savannah's famed River Street and out onto the side bend of the Savannah River.

By night, the water was black and silver ripples mirrored the lights of River Street along its edges. Huge ships, barges, and yachts floated past under the stars. There were container ships from faraway ports gliding by in the dark with writing on their sides foreign to Hailey.

After a hot bath, toothpaste, and makeup remover, Hailey sat in the dark on the edge of the king bed situated against the center of the bedroom wall. Hotel drapes still drawn open, she sat motionless, thinking, legs drawn up under her, watching the dark water and the watercraft passing by on the swelling waters of the Intracoastal Waterway that could take a ship all the way up the Eastern Seaboard.

Rowdy voices drifting up from far below her window on the eleventh floor of the River Street Hyatt broke her train of thought. Restless, Hailey paced past the walnut cabinet housing a flat-screen TV. Reaching into her canvas bag, she pulled out her Todd Adams trial notes and her iPad resting in its eggshell-blue case.

Turning on the iPad, she started by poring over searches of Todd Adams, Julie Love, their wedding, and the trial. She rarely found an entry she hadn't already read.

Staring at the screen's effervescent glow, just for the heck of it, she plugged in the name Chase Billings. Wow, Hailey had no idea about his history. “Sharpshooter of the Year” eight years in a row, “Rookie of the Year,” and number one in his class at the police academy. He received the Sheriff's Medal of Valor for storming into an ongoing bank robbery in full SWAT gear, taking down the three thugs inside the bank, and, before it was all done, shooting out the tires of the getaway car. Then there was the National Sheriff's Star.

Three years before that, he was awarded the Medal for Heroism for chasing down a white van driven by a child predator during a high-speed chase. Billings managed somehow to get the nine-year-old little girl out unharmed and take down the perp. Just to top it all off, he graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hailey cleared the screen. Billings never once let on.

She clicked off Chase Billings and tapped in the words “Eleanor Odom” and “Chatham County.” Dozens of hits immediately presented themselves.

Just as the night deputy said, there she was . . . Committee Chairman of Toys for Tots for the past four years running, walk-a-thons, charity runs, you name it, Eleanor Odom did it. The fourth or fifth entry down had a link to Eleanor Odom's Facebook page. Clicking on the link, a virtual encyclopedia of her life revealed itself. Literally hundreds of photos of Eleanor with friends, at dinner, and with pets all came into view on the screen glowing in the dark of Hailey's hotel room.

Posts about jogging, the courthouse, cases, trials, fundraisers . . . it was all there. Her life was an open book. Or was it?

Hailey noticed that while there were plenty of sheriffs peppered throughout the photos, there wasn't a single one of Judge Bill Regard. Hailey looked him up.

The judge's online profile revealed a distinguished-looking guy in his mid-to-late thirties, handsome with dark hair brushed straight back from his face and deep brown eyes that practically crackled with intelligence, even in a photo. He was dressed in his long black
judicial robes and seated in front of a wall containing shelves of law books Hailey immediately recognized as the OCGA, the Official Code of Georgia, Annotated.

Other photos showed Regard getting sworn in, his wife, a petite brunette with her hair in a short bob dressed startlingly similar to Jackie Onassis, and their three children. Two boys and a girl stood beside their mother. All three resembled Bill Regard.

Hailey clicked back to Eleanor's Facebook page to make sure not a single picture of Bill Regard appeared. Hailey wondered if Deputy Marks was right. Had she secretly been in love with Regard? And what must that be like? For Regard to mourn in complete secrecy?

The memory of the years of mourning Will's death flooded over her . . . the weeks of no appetite whatsoever . . . the very smell of food would make her nauseated. Crying in the shower, the pain of hearing songs on the radio or even the low buzz of voices on TV. Not being able to even speak Will's name—that would have been unbearable. If Marks was in fact right, that's what Judge Regard was going through at this very moment.

Eleanor Odom had lots and lots of “friends.” Hailey started scrolling down more than 400 so-called Facebook friends, recognizing several court personnel. And there, of course, was Alton Turner, decked out in full Chatham County Sheriff regalia.

She had lots and lots of friends . . . but were they really friends? Did any of them ever tell her, as a friend, to stop the courthouse romance with a married man? A judge at that? In the public eye? Hailey thought back to the thin, pale wife, the Jackie O look-alike. Did Mrs. Bill Regard know her husband was cheating? Was that what she was thinking about as she held the Bible for her husband to take his oath as judge?

Hailey minimized Eleanor's Facebook screen and went to Google. Dozens of articles popped up before she'd even finished typing the words “Judge Bill Regard Chatham County.” Regard had been a crackerjack trial lawyer before he took the bench, a former death-penalty prosecutor for the state's attorney general's office.

That, in itself, was a rare achievement. Only the best and the brightest were typically entrusted to handle death-penalty cases and the AG was very selective when it came to their trial lawyers. He appeared to be a Democratic Party darling and was rumored to be up for the next available spot on the Georgia Supreme Court . . . or more. Some articles suggested that Regard was considering a run at the Georgia governor's mansion.

Wow. The governor's mansion. It was absolutely gorgeous—a 24,000-square-foot red brick Greek revival palace rising at the crest of a gently sloping hill. The entire eighteen acres of lawn was absolute perfection, adorned by abundantly blooming pink, purple, and white azalea bushes, dogwoods, cherry trees, and plenty of tall pine trees that never seemed to drop a single pinecone on the green carpet below.

The interior was gorgeous but comfortable looking. Ostentatious would never do, but the mansion was the ultimate in classical, muted design, not over the top, but clearly steeped in good taste and expert interior design. It was just a few miles northwest of downtown Atlanta. Hailey had been there several times for law enforcement galas.

Hailey sat on her hotel bed, staring at her iPad. If Bill Regard ever hoped to move himself and his family into that mansion someday, it could never come to light that he had an affair with a calendar clerk behind his wife's back.

That sort of story might play in other parts of the country where the cheater would make a carefully guarded statement, with his wife standing beside him in prescription-drug stoicism as her husband claimed a “sex addiction.” He'd then go somewhere posh like Horizons Malibu Rehab and be back cheating again in four to six weeks. But in the Bible Belt, not just cheating—but cheating
and
humiliating your wife—was the kiss of death.

If this came out about Elle, Regard's goose was cooked.

Hailey started to navigate out of the online maze of Eleanor Odom's life, but she paused briefly to look at an absolutely perfect-looking roast turkey. Just barely showing over the top of the
evenly browned bird was Elle's smiling face, proud of the big bird she'd basted and cooked to perfection. In the background, Hailey could just make out a Thanksgiving pilgrim decoration in the center of a table set for eight.

Hailey clicked through. Eleanor Odom was quite the cook, sharing dozens and dozens of food postings, maybe close to a hundred or so. Many of them showed her cooking in what appeared to be a small apartment kitchen. Several of the dishes were photographed at various stages of preparation with a gorgeous shot at the end. One was a steamed lobster, completely done and perfectly pink, garnished and sitting staged on the same table as the turkey, but this time set for two.

But for who?

Hailey rummaged through a myriad of recipes, amazed Eleanor had taken the time to post so many. What sort of a woman spends hours and hours not just preparing food, but posing the dishes and taking pictures of them to post online?

There was a beautiful shot of ruby red rhubarb and deep purplish-green kale in two colanders beside the sink. Hailey clicked on a gorgeous peach salad with prosciutto, plum, and amaretto tarts, a blue and white dish of bourbon-poached peaches posed on an antique linen tablecloth. Eleanor had each recipe detailed beside each photo. Hailey paused to read “Eleanor's Delicious Banana Nut Bread Without the Nuts!” The next was a photo of Eleanor in a Christmas sweater with “My Favorite Fruitcake, Fruity Not Nutty!” A different set of postings covered cooking organically, avoiding foods treated with pesticides, and intricate recipes for pastries like napoleons and éclairs.

The time and planning it must have taken to prepare, pose, photograph, then post the photogenic dishes. They were, each and every one, absolutely perfect. Had it become sort of an obsession for Eleanor Odom? Something to fill her time? But then there were softball games, charity functions, work. She didn't need time-fillers.

Or maybe it was Eleanor's desire to create something perfect, something beautiful, something that she alone could control . . .
including its outcome. Was she obsessed not just with the preparation of food, but with creating the perfect family home . . . minus the family? The family she'd never be able to have with a married judge?

Exhausted and feeing like she knew way too much about Eleanor Odom now, Hailey turned off the iPad and pulled back the covers on her bed. Settling in, she pulled the blankets over her. Lying on the bed looking out and up through the window, she had an entirely different view. Instead of the black water of the Savannah River, she saw an even deeper black, velvety sky with stars twinkling down through her hotel room window.

Unbidden, photos of Eleanor Odom drifted through her mind. So happy, so vibrant, so alive. The last glimpse Hailey had of her, her face was purple and sweaty as she died on the cafeteria floor. Hailey felt a deep swell of sadness for the woman she hadn't even known. The woman smiling over a roasted turkey, holding a team softball trophy, in love, sadly, with a married man. The woman who probably never even knew Alton Turner adored her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
t was 10:30
AM
and the courtroom was packed. Hailey sat with her notebook and pen in hand, she and Fincher touching shoulders, three rows back behind prosecutors. The courtroom never failed to remind Hailey of a wedding: No matter how large or small the ceremony was, lavish or simple, guests invariably sat on either the bride's or the groom's “side.” Guests would only be seated otherwise if there were no seats on the “right” side.

Julie Love's blood family, relatives, and friends sat, like Hailey and Finch, behind the prosecution. Todd Adams's family, supporters, and the press sat on the defense's side of the huge, old courtroom.

Once or twice, Hailey spotted Tish Adams casting a quick, surreptitious glance across the center aisle dividing the sides. Hailey caught her looking over, usually, at Julie's mother and once at Hailey herself. When she locked eyes with Hailey, Tish Adams quickly looked away.

Opening statements had commenced at nine o'clock sharp under Luther Alverson's watchful eye. He stared down from the bench, rarely interrupting, but listening carefully. His law clerk, Walter Lovell, according to a desk placard sitting at a solid wood desk to the side of the judge's bench, was a slight, pale young man with a bushy moustache, a high forehead, and pale blue eyes. Lovell also seemed to listen to every single syllable uttered in the courtroom, likely as an aide to Alverson. The judge would do nothing to jeopardize these proceedings.

The state's opening had lasted exactly an hour, and, afraid they'd lose their places, neither Hailey nor Fincher left the room for a break before Mikey DelVecchio began opening for the defense. Not a word was spoken as the lead prosecutor, following his opening,
returned to his seat at the counsel table closest to the jury box and sat down, clearly spent of energy.

The courtroom was completely hushed. A long silence ensued. From behind them, Hailey could see Julie Love's father place a protective arm around her mom's shoulders, as if to protect her from what was about to happen.

And he was right.

“Mr. DelVecchio? Are you ready to proceed with opening statement for the defense?” Alverson was not about to allow defense delays this early in the ball game.