The Mourning Sexton (19 page)

CHAPTER 31

“O
h, yes,” Cassie Markman said with a smile. “Pat was impressed with that little gal. Told me more than once that she could have been one heck of an investigative reporter. ‘Far better than me,' he used to say. ‘Far better than me.'”

“Did your brother say why?” Hirsch asked.

She frowned as she thought back. “I can't say for sure. I just know he was real taken with her.” She placed her hand on her chest. “He was just devastated when that poor girl died. He went to her funeral.”

They were in the small living room of Cassie Markman's bungalow on the far south side of St. Louis, just a block or so off Gravois. She'd grown up in that bungalow—she and her older brother Patrick, the two of them raised by their mother, who'd been widowed when her fireman husband died fighting a three-alarm factory fire. Cassie's brother was just eight at the time. She was five.

Like her bungalow, Cassie Markman was small and neat. She was in her late sixties, barely five feet tall, trim, close-cropped white hair, keen eyes, high cheekbones. Her face and hands were weathered, no doubt from spending the summer months outdoors tending the gardens that took up most of her front yard and painting the dozen or so urban landscapes that hung on the walls of her house, all signed
C Markman
. She wore a simple, freshly starched white blouse, a long navy skirt, sturdy brown shoes, no jewelry, and a man's wristwatch.

“More tea?” she asked, reaching for the teapot on the coffee table.

“No, thanks.”

He waited until she refilled her teacup. The scent of chamomile filled the room.

So far he'd learned that Cassie's brother had joined the army after high school. His sister stayed put, taking a sales job at a department store. Patrick returned home after his honorable discharge and took a job as a police beat reporter with the old
Globe-Democrat
. When their mother died of cancer at the age of forty-six, Patrick moved back into his old room. The two siblings, bachelor and spinster for life, lived together in the family home for nearly forty years until his death.

“How did your brother meet Judith?” Hirsch asked.

“I think she actually called him up. Out of the blue. Said she was interested in some stories he'd written many years ago. He was a reporter, you know.”

“I do,” Hirsch said.

“And a darn good one, rest his soul.”

Markman had died less than two months after Judith. He was a special assignment investigative reporter with the
Post-Dispatch
by then. According to the obituary Hirsch read on microfilm earlier that afternoon, he was killed in a one-car accident late at night on his way home from Jefferson City, where he'd gone to investigate a story on government corruption. The medical examiner said he'd apparently fallen asleep at the wheel and driven into an embankment.

“She called him about a court case he'd covered,” Cassie continued. “I remember meeting her. A little thing. Even smaller than me. She came by one night to drop off some papers for Pat. As best I recall, they were copies of some court files.”

“Did they involve any Brookfield condemnation cases?”

“Brookfield,” she repeated. “Now that does sound familiar.”

“I've reviewed her papers,” Hirsch said. “In one of them she mentioned some articles that your brother wrote on the Brookfield warehouse condemnations. I found the articles on microfilm this afternoon and made copies.” He reached into his briefcase and handed her copies of each.

He watched as she read them, one by one.

The first article, five paragraphs on the second page of the Metro section, ran under the headline: $3.75
MILLION AWARDED IN BROOKFIELD CONDEMNATION CASE
;
CITY OFFICIALS EXPRESS SURPRISE OVER AMOUNT
. The story explained that a St. Louis county jury had awarded the owners of a pair of warehouses on the south side of Bulger Road $3,750,000 for the properties, which had been condemned as part of the city's proposed redevelopment plan. What made the case noteworthy, and the city officials concerned, was that the verdict exceeded the city's appraised value of the property by more than a million dollars. The article quoted the city's attorney, Mitchell Monroe, as “evaluating the possibility of an appeal.” The successful property owner's attorney, Marvin Guttner, told the newspaper that his client “is quite satisfied with the verdict and believed that justice has been bestowed.” The article closed by noting that the same parties would be back in court in two weeks for the trial of the condemnation of the two remaining warehouses on the north side of Bulger Road.

Patrick Markman was there when they returned to court for that case, and his story made it onto the first page of the Metro section under the headline:
BROOKFIELD OFFICIALS FEAR SECOND MULTIMILLION
-
DOLLAR VERDICT ENDANGERS REDEVELOPMENT PLAN
. The story opened:

A surprisingly acrimonious condemnation trial ended this afternoon with a multimillion-dollar jury verdict that one Brookfield city official labeled “the death knell” for his town's ambitious redevelopment project.

A St. Louis County jury awarded Eagle Valley Storage Corporation $4.1 million as compensation for the taking of a pair of warehouses on the north side of Bulger Road. The warehouses are located on a parcel of land that Brookfield city planners hope will one day be the site of a restaurant, theater, and shopping complex. The properties had been condemned under eminent domain authority by the Brookfield Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority, a municipal authority established by the city as part of its ambitious plans for transforming its aging industrial park into an entertainment and shopping district.

The award exceeded the city's appraised value by $950,000, making it the second time in less than a month that Eagle Valley Storage Corporation has obtained a jury verdict for Brookfield warehouse properties that significantly exceeded the city's valuation of the properties.

The article quoted a Brookfield alderman who claimed that the combined jury verdicts had so far exceeded the city's condemnation budget that the entire redevelopment project was in jeopardy. There were several paragraphs describing the origins of the redevelopment project, the performance of similar projects in the region, and the used of eminent domain powers to achieve those goals. More interesting for Hirsch was the description of certain courtroom events:

Courtroom observers noted that the most critical portion of the trial took place outside the hearing of the jury. Attorney Guttner objected to the testimony of appraiser Lawrence Gallagher, the city's expert witness on valuation of the properties. Judge McCormick excused the jury and conducted a mini-hearing on the admissibility of Gallagher's opinions. In a ruling mirroring his ruling in the prior condemnation case, he excluded large portions of Gallagher's testimony, including the expert's opinion as to the valuation of the properties.

As a result, the jury heard valuation testimony only from the property owner's expert, Harlan Reston. Moreover, Monroe's cross-examination of Reston was severely restricted when the judge sustained objections to several of Monroe's questions.

After the jury verdict, an obviously frustrated attorney for the city, Mitchell Monroe said, “This is a verdict that cries out for reversal on appeal.”

The last article ran three weeks later. It described a hearing before Judge McCormick in which attorneys for the city and the property owner announced that they had worked out a global settlement of both cases for a compromise amount. The resolution, according to the city's attorney, would save the redevelopment project. The article quoted both attorneys on the subject of their clients' satisfaction with the results, and also quoted the mayor of Brookfield, who said he was thrilled that the project could once again move forward. But it was the final sentence of the article that caught Hirsch's attention: “The good spirits seemed to be shared by everyone in the courtroom except the judge, who angrily chided attorney Guttner for ‘wasting the court's time with matters that should have been settled before trial' and then abruptly left the bench.”

Hirsch had pondered that final sentence. In his experience, a judge was often the party most satisfied by a lawsuit settlement. The plaintiff might feel he'd settled for too little, the defendant might believe he'd overpaid, but the judge was always delighted, since it meant another case off his docket. Hirsch thought back to McCormick's comment in Judith's November 12 memo: “Hey, Marvin, these aren't the Brookfield warehouses. What's done is done.”

The comment still made no sense.

Cassie looked up from the final article and nodded. “I think these were the cases she was interested in.”

“Do you remember why?”

“Oh, my.” She closed her eyes as she tried to remember. “The best I can recall,” she said, eyes still closed, “is she wanted to know about the relationship between the judge and one of the lawyers.”

“Which lawyer?”

She opened her eyes and shook her head. “I don't recognize any of the names in the article.”

“Do you know what kind of relationship she was interested in?”

Cassie gave him a puzzled look that faded into an amused grin. “I've never been an investigative reporter, Mr. Hirsch, but I did spend four decades living with one. You pick up a few things over time, and one of them was that when someone came to see my brother about a relationship between a government official and a lawyer, there's only one kind of relationship they're talking about.”

“Had he ever talked to you about that judge?”

She glanced at the article. “McCormick? Not specifically.”

“What do you mean not specifically?”

“The name doesn't ring a bell.” She paused. “These articles you copied, that was back when my brother was covering the county courts for the
Post-Dispatch
. I've heard things have changed out there since then. Changed for the better. But back then, well, my brother had a pretty low opinion of some of those judges. Real low. He told me a joke among the lawyers back then. It went like this. What's the definition of an honest judge in the circuit court of St. Louis County?”

“What?”

“When you fix him, he stays fixed.” Her smile faded. “He may have met a lot of bad men over the years, but he never did lose his sense of humor.”

They talked some more about the articles and the condemnation cases, but it was clear that she didn't remember any of the specifics.

She did recall that Judith met several times with her brother, sometimes during the day, once or twice at night. And she was certain that Judith had “passed the test.”

“What test?” Hirsch asked.

Cassie Markman smiled. “He gave her a tour of the pyramid. My brother was a tough judge of people, Mr. Hirsch. If he gave that little gal the tour, it meant she was special. It meant she was okay in his book.”

“I'm afraid I'm lost,” he said. “What pyramid are you talking about?”

She stood up. “Stay there. I'll be right back.”

She headed toward the back of the house and reappeared carrying a quarto-sized book entitled
An Illustrated Journey to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
She opened the book on her lap and looked up at him.

“Do you know where the word
mausoleum
comes from?” she asked.

“No idea.”

“From a king named Mausolus. He was one of the provincial kings of the ancient Persian empire.”

She started leafing through the book as she spoke. “He had a small kingdom along the Mediterranean coast. He ruled over it from the city of Helicarnassus.” She looked up. “It's called Bodrum today. It's on the Turkish coast. Mausolus had a queen named Artemisia, who happened to be his sister, too.”

She gave him an impish grin.

“Sounds weird, I know, but my brother assured me it was the custom for kings in that region to marry their sisters. He claimed the marriage was purely ceremonial, and he better have been telling the truth, because he nicknamed me Artemisia. Especially after I started showing my paintings.” She gestured toward the paintings on the wall. “He used to call me the Artist Artemisia.”

She smiled at the memory. Her eyes seemed to go distant, but only for a moment.

“Anyway, when King Mausolus died, his sister was heartbroken. She decided to build her brother the most splendid tomb in the world. She brought in the top artisans from Greece. The result was a spectacular tomb on a hill overlooking the city. What's sad is that Artemisia never lived to see it. She was killed in battle before the tomb was completed. The city buried her and her brother side by side inside it. The tomb of Mausolus became the most famous one in the ancient world—so famous that all fancy tombs came to be called mausoleums in honor of Mausolus.”

She handed him the open book. “Take a look. Tell me if it looks at all familiar.”

He stared at the artist's rendering of the Tomb of Mausolus at Helicarnassus. It consisted of a Greek temple topped by a stepped pyramid topped by a sculpture of a four-horse chariot holding a man and woman standing side by side.

Hirsch looked up with a tentative smile. “The Civil Courts Building?”