The Mourning Sexton (14 page)

CHAPTER 21

“R
uss Jefferson called me this morning.”

Dulcie put down her fork. “About her computer?”

He waited until the waitress refilled their iced teas and left.

“They can't find it,” he said.

“How can that be?”

“The court administrator has no record of her computer after her death.”

They were having lunch at the Chez Leon bistro in the Central West End. Dulcie had called that morning to say she'd been able to reach a few more of the people whose Knoxville phone numbers were on Judith's phone bills. Hirsch had been thinking about her at the time she called—as he had been, off and on, for most of the morning. He'd suggested they talk about it at lunch, and she agreed.

On the way to the restaurant he tried to temper his anticipation, reminding himself that Dulcie's involvement in the case was due to her relationship with Judith and not him.

She'd been seated alone in a booth along the side wall with a legal pad on the table in front of her. Reading glasses were perched on the end of her nose and the top of her pen was pressed against her lower lip as she studied her notes. She was wearing a black wool vest over a white cotton turtleneck, a tartan plaid skirt, and high leather boots. She'd looked up as he scooted into the booth across from her. When she smiled, he felt like he was back in junior high sitting next to the cutest girl in the class.

But she was frowning now. “It wasn't a laptop computer, was it?”

“Nope. Just a standard desktop model.”

“Then what about the law clerk who replaced her? Why didn't he receive her computer?”

“Good question. Lousy answer. There was a six-month gap between Judith's death and the arrival of McCormick's new clerk, a guy named Hernandez. His computer had a different serial number than Judith's.”

“They're sure?”

“That's what Russ told me. He even had the court administrator send someone over to McCormick's chambers yesterday afternoon to physically check the serial number on the current law clerk's computer.”

“Is the clerk in her old office?”

“Yes.”

“So where did her computer go?”

Hirsch shrugged. “All the court administrator could say was that it was probably a clerical error.”

“No pun intended.”

It took Hirsch a moment. “Right.”

“You think McCormick knew what she had on her computer?”

“Who knows? Remember, we don't even know if she had
anything
incriminating on her computer. And if she did”—he shook his head in frustration—“we have no idea what it could be. We're assuming that if he killed her, he had a dark motive. But maybe they were having an affair. Maybe it was just a crime of passion, assuming there was any crime at all. If so, there wouldn't be much on her computer besides maybe a few romantic e-mails.”

Dulcie leaned back in her chair. “Shit.”

Hirsch took a sip of iced tea and then another forkful of his grilled salmon. He watched Dulcie eat her pesto pasta. She looked up and met his gaze.

She gave him a curious look. “What?”

“Have you talked with Lauren?”

He'd been thinking about his daughter constantly since their encounter at Dulcie's clinic last week.

She nodded. “This morning. She wanted to know how I knew you. I told her. We talked some about your case.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Don't worry, David. I told her nothing beyond the facts of the wrongful death claim you filed. Nothing beyond the public documents in the court file. She knows nothing about your suspicions.”

“How's she doing?” he asked.

“She's dealing with it. She told me you send her a letter every year on her birthday. And another one on the High Holidays.”

“Does she read them?” Hirsch asked.

“Yes.” Dulcie smiled. “And she's saved them all.”

Hirsch nodded, momentarily unable to speak.

Dulcie said, “She was pleased to hear about the lawsuit. Maybe even a little proud of her father.”

Hirsch shook his head. “She's still young.”

Dulcie gave him a sympathetic look. “It'll take time.”

He wasn't there for therapy. “Tell me about your Knoxville calls.”

“I reached six more people. One still works at Peterson. Guy named Finch. He's in risk management. Spends most of his time on workmen's comp claims. The other five,” she paused to check her notes, “two are retired and three work for other companies. Most of them barely even remembered her phone call. But one of the five, a woman named Carmen Moldano, actually met Judith.”

“In person?”

Dulcie nodded. “She came to Knoxville.”

“In September, right?”

Dulcie looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“Judith's credit card records. They included one roundtrip airline ticket in September. I checked with the airline for the flight information. She flew into Knoxville on the afternoon of September eleventh. That was a Friday. She flew home two days later.”

“She saw Carmen that weekend. Carmen remembers that she was planning to meet with two others the same weekend.”

“Did she know who?”

Dulcie shook her head. “Judith wouldn't tell her.”

“Why not?”

“She told Carmen that all of the meetings were strictly confidential.”

“Did she tell her why?”

“Something vague about investigating something related to the lawsuit in St. Louis.”

“How did she set up the meeting?”

“She talked to Carmen on the phone a couple times. The first time was pretty general, but she second time she explained that she was real interested in the names of people at the company involved with the tire case. Carmen was a file clerk in the legal department back then, so she knew a lot of names. About two weeks after their second telephone conversation, Judith sent her an e-mail telling her she was coming to Knoxville and wanted to meet with her. They e-mailed back and forth to set up the meeting. By the way, Judith didn't use her own name.”

“Esther Summerson?”

“Yep. She must have set up another e-mail account for that name.”

“So what happened when they met?”

“It was basically a more detailed version of their second telephone call. Judith had Carmen walk her through all of the legal department personnel, from the general counsel down to the guy who worked in the copy center. She took careful notes, asking her about each of the people and what they did.”

“You said Carmen was a file clerk?”

“Right.”

“Did she work on the tire case?”

“No. She worked mainly with the environmental lawyers. She was aware of the tire case. Everyone in the legal department was. But she had no involvement in it.”

“She's no longer with Peterson Tire?”

“Right. She's a paralegal with a Knoxville law firm.”

Hirsch leaned back in his seat, pondering the information. “Did she think it was unusual to get a visit like that from the law clerk for the judge in that tire case?”

“Judith didn't tell her she was a law clerk. She told her she was a lawyer—a lawyer representing a third party who was interested in certain aspects of the case.”

“Interested in what way?”

“Judith never told her.”

“So what did Carmen think?”

“She thought it was a little odd. But she told me that Judith's, or rather Esther's, visit wasn't the only odd thing about the case.”

“How so?”

“She said that there was a lot of top secret stuff with the case, which seemed strange to her because so much of what was happening
in
the case was public knowledge. But the lawyers and staff on the case never talked about any aspect of it with anyone in the department. Never. The files were kept in a separate locked room. Everything was highly confidential.”

“Anything else about the visit?”

“She said Judith asked her about Ruth Jones.”

“That was the CFO's secretary?”

“How'd you know?”

Hirsch said, “One of the Knoxville people I talked to was a retired sales manager named Kindle. He told Judith that his secretary had a friend in the executive suite named Ruth. He couldn't remember her last name, but he said she was the CFO's secretary.”

“According to Carmen,” Dulcie said, “Judith was very interested in finding out more about Ruth.”

“What did Carmen know about Ruth?”

“She knew that Ruth had left the company earlier the summer Judith visited. Judith told Carmen that she'd been trying to locate Ruth but couldn't find her. Carmen agreed to look for her new address. She assumed that Personnel would have it, and they did. About a week after their meeting in Knoxville, she sent Judith an e-mail with the new address.”

“Does she remember it?”

Dulcie shook her head. “All she remembered was that Ruth lived somewhere in Chicago.”

“Chicago.” Hirsch nodded. “Judith must have gone to visit her. Maybe twice.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Credit card bills. She paid for gas in Chicago once in late September and again in mid-October. There's also a motel bill from up there as well. The Hyatt Lincolnwood. That's from the October visit.”

“Did she travel anywhere else that last year?”

“Just the one trip to Knoxville and the two to Chicago.”

Dulcie signed. “This is maddening. What was she looking for?”

“And whatever it was, did she find it?”

CHAPTER 22

C
hapter Thirteen Day, and once again Judge Shea was running late.

All the usual players were in all the usual positions. Rochelle Krick, the bankruptcy trustee, was alone at counsel's table, seated erect, facing the judge's bench, her color-coded accordion files on the table before her. Hirsch was in the front row, his trial bag on the floor at his feet as he leafed through his notes for today's debtors.

The gallery behind them hummed with voices. Scattered around the courtroom were lawyers and debtors—the two easy to distinguish. The lawyers were mostly male and mostly white, while the debtors were a motley assortment—black and white, male and female, city and suburb, young and old, waitresses and auto mechanics, riverboat casino pit bosses and department store floor managers, computer technicians and used car salesmen. Many wore the uniforms of their trades, some with their names stitched above the breast pockets.

Among the lawyers, there were two breeds, debtor lawyers and creditor lawyers, and the keen observer could tell them apart. Most of the debtor lawyers were in sports jackets and slacks, and most were clutching jumbled batches of files. Many stood along the side walls, peering around the crowd as they called out names, trying to locate their clients. By contrast, the creditors' lawyers were the suits. Not a plaid jacket among them. All with meters running, paid by the hour by their corporate and banking and public utility clients. These weren't country club suits, of course. The five-hundred-dollar-an-hour swells worked the big Chapter Elevens, the ones covered by the
Wall Street Journal.
No, these were the second-tier suits, the Chapter Thirteen boys from the smaller firms, the ones who snagged the work by cutting their hourly rates and then making it back in volume. The suits waited calmly, some chatting together, others seated on the benches, paging through their papers or doing the crossword puzzle in the
Post-Dispatch,
one or two drifting up to confer with Rochelle Krick, others talking on their cell phones.

Not a big-firm lawyer in the lot. Hirsch had been handling Chapter Thirteen dockets for nearly a year now and had yet to run into a single lawyer he'd known from before. Parallel universes with little overlap, in or out of court. The Jewish lawyers in the bankruptcy bar tended to be in the Jewish Community Center crowd, while their counterparts in the big law firms tended to be in the country club crowd. In his former life, he'd never run into any of these bankruptcy lawyers in court, at his country club, or at any social function. And now he never saw any of the lawyers from that life, while the bankruptcy faces were getting familiar. Two of his regular handball opponents at the JCC represented secured creditors, and one of the debtor attorneys was often in the JCC weight room on the nights Hirsch did his lifting.

“Hey, David?”

Vinny Manoli. He represented GMAC, a creditor in at least a third of Hirsch's Chapter Thirteens. Vinny was in his mid-thirties, a stocky guy with a dark complexion and thick black hair slicked straight back, highlighting a deep widow's peak.

“Guy out there wants to see you.” He gestured toward the back of the courtroom with his thumb, reminding Hirsch of an umpire signaling an out.

“Who is he?”

Vinny shrugged. “Didn't say. Fat guy, expensive threads.”

A description that fit Vinny, too, although Hirsch knew who it was.

Marvin Guttner stood by the window facing east toward the Arch and the Mississippi River. His entourage that morning consisted of a junior partner and two associates. They were huddled farther down the hall, just out of earshot. All of their eyes followed Hirsch as he approached Guttner, who turned to greet him.

“Good morning, David. A happy coincidence, eh?”

“How so?”

“I had a hearing upstairs.”

The district court courtrooms were on the upper floors. This was, Hirsch assumed, the first time Guttner had ever found himself down here with the bankruptcy riffraff.

Guttner said, “We were before Judge McCormick at nine. A short hearing. In the Peterson Tire case, in fact. I noticed on the schedule in the lobby that Judge Shea had a Chapter Thirteen docket at ten this morning. I took a chance that you might be here, and so you are.”

Hirsch waited.

As usual, Guttner was elegantly attired: a gray chalk-striped suit, crisp white shirt, silk tie, gleaming black Guccis. Hirsch marveled at the skills of the tailor who could drape that frame so gracefully, as if Omar the Tentmaker had earned an advanced degree from Saville Row.

Guttner's smile faded, replaced by a concerned frown. “Jack Bellows is chomping at the bit, David. For that matter, so is my litigation team. I can hold them back only so long. Bellows told me yesterday that if you haven't responded by the close of business today, he's withdrawing from the settlement discussions and serving you with his written discovery.”

Guttner leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Frankly, David, I get the sense that Bellows has some personal agenda here. Something with you in the past. In any event, time is of the essence. I cannot emphasize that enough. Explain to your client that we need his response as soon as possible. Today, if possible. Talk to him.”

“I have.”

“Ah, good. And?”

“He rejects your offer.”

“I suppose I am not shocked. I understand that he was a tenacious businessman in his day. Not an easy man to bargain with, they say. I must warn you, however, that I do not have much wiggle room here, David. Nonetheless, you might as well let me hear it.”

“There's nothing to let you hear.”

“Surely he has a counteroffer?”

“He didn't give me one.”

“How can that be?”

“He rejected your offer, Marvin. He has not asked me to make a counteroffer.”

Guttner pursed his lips. “That is unwise.”

“To you, perhaps.”

“What about to you?”

Hirsch shrugged. “I'm just the lawyer. If my client wants to settle, fine. If not, that's his prerogative. He didn't retain me to force him to do something against his will.”

“But he did retain you to give him legal advice.”

“Actually, he retained me to sue your client. That's what I've done.”

Guttner tugged at a loose fold of skin on his massive neck. “This is imprudent. For him and for you.”

“It is what it is, Marvin. Your clients made an offer. My client turned it down. Away we go.”

“Yo, David.”

Hirsch turned.

Vinny Manoli was leaning out of the courtroom. “He's on the bench.”

Hirsch nodded at Vinny and turned back. “See you in court, Marvin.”

Guttner stared at him for a moment and then turned away, shaking his head.