Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (17 page)

Loretta, who’d been watching my
toilette
with bland indifference, followed me back to the kitchen and cozied into the space between Tom and the stove.

“Hope you like garlic,” Tom said. “This is a pasta sauce I learned to make when Lynn and I were living in Italy. Very authentic. There’s not a tomato in it.”

It smelled divine. My stomach was already nudging me in anticipation.

“When were you in Italy?”

“Before Los Angeles. My daughter was born there, but we left when she was still a baby.”

“How many kids do you have?”

“Two. A girl and a boy.” Tom handed me a spoon. “You want to stir this while I toss the salad?”

“They’re with you on weekends?”

“Every other weekend. And some Tuesdays.” For just a moment a shadow crossed his face, then the cocky look dropped back into place. “I think we’re about ready. You
do
have a couple of plates that aren’t packed away, don’t you?”

I did, and I got them out, along with silverware and candles and real cloth napkins embroidered by my mother. The pasta was every bit as good at it smelled, the salad as fresh and crisp as it looked, and the wine so smooth I began to think Tom’s wife might have been a fool to leave, after all.

By the time we’d finished dinner, and the entire bottle of wine, we’d just about caught up on the past twelve years. We’d also exchanged a lot of surreptitious glances as we sized each other up, and laughed at a lot of things that weren’t all that funny.

“I’m out of coffee,” I told him, “unless you’re fond of instant made from gluey crystals.”

He smiled. “I’ll pass.”

We were clearing the table when the phone rang. “Hi,” Sara said, “I got your messages. I’d have called you earlier, but I didn’t want to add to your troubles.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Tom. “Can I call you back?”

“I’m going out again in about half an hour. I, uh, probably won’t be back till late.”

“How late?”

She laughed. “Tomorrow morning. Why don’t you call me at work? The stuff that’s going on around here isn’t anything you want to rush to hear anyway.”

Tom was wiping cheese crumbs from the table when I hung up. “That your boyfriend?”

I shook my head.

“What’s his name?”

“I told you, it wasn’t him.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

I gave him a sour look, which I had to cut short because the phone rang again. It was Jannine this time, sounding as though she were teetering on the edge.

“The police were here this morning.”

“Again?”

“With a search warrant.” Her voice was thin and tight. “There were three of them. They went through the whole house, closets and everything. It was awful.”

“Did they find anything?”

She made a low moaning sound. “I don’t know. We didn’t exactly have a conversation.”

Benson had to have known. All the talk about cooperation and meeting him halfway, and he hadn’t even been completely honest with me. But then, I reminded myself, neither had Jannine.

“You’re coming tomorrow?” she asked abruptly.

The funeral. “Of course I’m coming.”

“Will you ride with us? I need somebody strong like you, or I’ll never make it through.”

“Do you want me to meet you at the house?”

“Would you? I’d really appreciate it. You’ve no idea how difficult this is going to be.”

“How about tonight? Do you want me to come by now?”

“I’m okay. But thanks.”

She didn’t sound okay.

“Kali?”

“Hmm?”

“How’d you make out at the mall?”

I bit my lip, wavered, then opted for the hard truth. “I couldn’t find anyone at all who remembered seeing you.”

There was a moment’s silence. “I was afraid of that.” Her voice caught, and she took a deep breath to even it out again. “So what do we do now?”

“We keep looking, picking at things until something begins to unravel.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

It was my turn to take a deep breath. “We shoot holes through their case in court. If it comes to that.”

She made a wheezing sound, deep in her throat. “It won’t . . . I can’t . . .” Her voice was thin and high- pitched.

“That’s a long way off,” I told her.

She mumbled something I couldn’t make out and then was quiet. “I went through Eddie’s things,” she said, after a moment. The frantic overtones had faded. “I’ve got a box of stuff to give you tomorrow. Everything was kind of jumbled. I guess the police don’t care how they leave things. It all looks pretty ordinary though.”

It probably was. I told her I’d take a look anyway.

“And I called the bank,” Jannine continued. “You were right about the ten thousand. It’s right there in our account.”

“Can they tell you were it came from?”

“Eventually, unless it was a cash deposit. But it will take time. Maybe a week or so. Do you think it might point the police to someone besides me?” Her tone was hopeful.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, Jannine. Get through the funeral first.” I caught myself on the brink of telling her everything was going to be all right, but I stopped short because I wasn’t so sure myself. Instead, I mumbled a few generic encouragements, then hung up.

“The Marrero murder?” Tom asked.

“How’d you come up with that?”

“Jannine, funeral, court. It wasn’t hard.” He was rinsing the plates and loading them into the dishwasher. “I’m a journalist, remember? That’s the kind of stuff I pick up on.”

I sat down at the table and stared at my hands. “The way you guys in the press are going after this, she’ll be convicted before she’s ever arrested.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the First Amendment.”

“Oh, come on. This isn’t about freedom of the press. It’s about selling papers.
The Hadley Times’
picture of Jannine was bigger than the one they ran of Eddie.”

Tom turned off the faucet, then dried his hands with a paper towel. “I wouldn’t judge all newspapers by
The Hadley Times.
”

I was being unfair, and I knew it. That morning’s
Mountain Journal
hadn’t even run the story on the first page. And Jannine’s name had been mentioned only as a possible suspect in an ongoing investigation.

“In fact, some of us take our responsibility rather seriously.” Tom had been rooting around in the back closet. He came up, finally, with an old bottle of brandy. “You want some?”

“Make yourself right at home,” I muttered.

He smiled. “I will, thanks.” He set the bottle on the table, then started going through boxes until he found glasses which met his approval. “I have a friend who’s a cop,” Tom said, over his shoulder. “An inside source. If I wanted to get into a spitting contest with those folks at
The Hadley Times,
I could, easily. That’s not my style, though. Official department line is the investigation’s still open. That’s my approach, too.”

He offered me a glass of brandy, and even though I was already sailing comfortably along under the rosy glow of wine, I accepted.

“Is
the investigation still open?”

“For the moment. Daryl Benson is a cautious man. He’s had run-ins with the D.A. before. Now that he’s only a couple of years from retirement, he’s treading lightly.”

A confession would certainly make it easy for him. No wonder he was pushing so hard for Jannine’s cooperation. “Nothing the police have, including the gun, proves she did it,” I reminded him.

“Not conclusively. You have to admit she’s a pretty logical suspect, though. In light of everything.”

She was, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Even to Tom.

“You acting as her attorney?”

“Friend, mostly. But attorney too, I guess.”

Tom sipped his brandy. “What have you come up with?”

“A lot of pieces that don’t fit.”

For a moment, I debated the wisdom of talking with a newsman. But as long as Tom had the inside dope from the police, I figured he might as well have a look at the other possibilities as well. Besides, I trusted Tom. Trusted him even though he’d been a pain in the ass when I was a kid, and was still able to raise my hackles. Maybe it was just the wine and the warm spring evening, but I was willing to bet that underneath, where it counted, he was about as honest as they come.

While we finished our brandy, I told him what I’d learned, which sounded as disjointed in the retelling as it did in my mind. We tossed ideas around for a bit, then Tom looked at his watch.

“I need to get going,” he said. “And I promise, no early morning hammering.”

We walked to the door, stepping over Loretta who lay sprawled in the center of the hallway.

“Thanks for having dinner with me,” he said, and knuckled my neck like he’d done years ago when he and John were trying to stir up trouble.

It didn’t smart the way it used to, though. In fact, it felt kind of nice.

Chapter 13

Eddie’s funeral was a well orchestrated affair, tastefully somber without being at all mawkish. There were innumerable references to his standing in the community and efforts on behalf of the town’s young people, mercifully few to God and His mysterious ways, and none at all to the violent manner of the death we were there to mourn. The minister had been acquainted with Eddie, however peripherally, so we were spared the vague platitudes and hesitant tones of those paid-by-the-hour ministers who usually sound as though they’re auditioning for a role they don’t want. Even so, I had trouble reconciling the shiny black coffin near the front of the church with the pictures of Eddie that played in my mind.

Because I’d been sitting up front with Jannine and her family, I didn’t realize what a crowd there was until the service ended and we left the church. The funeral procession stretched for blocks. Like a long, slow-moving string of ants, we wound our way through town and out to the cemetery, passing first through the older section where the headstones read like a history book, and then finally into the newer, more manicured portion. The headstones there are polished granite, all of a uniform size and design, much like the housing tracts going up at the edge of town. Even the trees in this section, evergreens undoubtedly planted by cemetery designers, have a clipped, orderly look to them. A marked contrast to the gnarled old oaks that dot the surrounding hills.

We parked, then drifted onto the knoll, where we stood silently, and a little awkwardly, in the bright noon sun until everyone was assembled. I listened to the mockingbird off in the distance and tried to keep my gaze from drifting to the spot farther on where the grass was newly patched from my father’s burial a week earlier. That day there had been only four of us —Sabrina and I, my father’s younger brother who’d driven up from Fresno, and the mortuary chaplain in his dark three-piece suit. I’d focused on the business of getting him buried, one more detail to cross off my list. Today I let myself dwell on life and death, and that single point in time when they join. And I stared out at the sea of faces around us and wondered if anyone there knew what it was that had brought Eddie to that moment.