Ehrengraf for the Defense (20 page)

“You called the police.”

“Last thing I wanted to do. Wanted to get in
the car and just drive, but I knew not to do that. And I wanted to
pour a stiff drink and I didn’t let myself do that, either. I
called 911 and I sat in a chair, and when the cops came I let ‘em
in. I didn’t answer any of their questions. I barely heard them. I
just kept my mouth shut, and they brought me here, and I wound up
calling you.”

“And it’s good you did,” Ehrengraf told him.
“You’re innocent, and soon the whole world will know it.”

* * *

Three days later the two men faced one
another in the same cell across the same little table. Blaine
Starkey looked weary. Part of it was the listless sallowness one
saw in imprisoned men, but Ehrengraf noted as well the sag of the
shoulders, the lines around the mouth. He was wearing the same
clothes he’d worn at their previous meeting. Ehrengraf, in a three
piece suit with a banker’s stripe and a tie striped like a coral
snake, wondered not for the first time if he ought to dress down on
such occasions, to put his client at ease. As always, he decided
that dressing down was not his sort of thing.

“I’ve done some investigation,” he reported.
“Your wife’s blood sugar was low.”

“Well, she wasn’t eating. I told you
that.”

“The Medical Examiner estimated the time of
death at two to four hours before you reported discovering her
body.”

“I said she felt cold to the touch.”

“She died,” Ehrengraf said, “sometime after
football practice was over for the day. The prosecution is going to
contend that you had time before you met your teammates for
drinks—”

“To race home, hit Claureen upside the head,
and then rush out to grab a beer?”

“—or afterward, during the time you were
driving around and trying to decide on a movie.”

“I had the time then,” Starkey allowed, “but
that’s not how I spent it.”

“I know that. When you got home, was the door
locked?”

“Sure. We keep it so it locks when you pull
it shut.”

“Did you use your key?”

“Easier than ringing the bell and waiting.
Her car was there, so I knew she was home. I let myself in and
keyed in the code so the burglar alarm wouldn’t go off, and then I
walked into the living room, and you know the rest.”

“She died,” Ehrengraf said, “as a result of
massive trauma to the skull. There were two blows, one to the
temple, the other to the back of the head. The first may have
resulted from her fall, when she struck herself upon the sharp
corner of the fireplace surround. The second blow was almost
certainly inflicted by a massive bronze statue of a horse.”

“She picked it out,” Starkey said. “It was
French, about a hundred and fifty years old. I didn’t think it
looked like any horse a reasonable man would want to place a bet
on, but she fell in love with it and said it’d be perfect on the
mantle.”

Ehrengraf fingered the knot of his tie. “Your
wife was nude,” he said.

“Maybe she just got out of the shower,” the
big man said. “Or you know what I bet it was? She was on her way
to
the shower.”

“By way of the living room?”

“If she was on the stair machine, which was
what she would do when she decided she was getting fat. An apple
for breakfast and an enema for lunch, and hopping on and off the
stair machine all day long. She’d exercise naked if she was warm,
or if she wore a sweat suit she’d leave it there in the exercise
room and parade through the house naked.”

“Then it all falls into place,” Ehrengraf
said. “She wasn’t eating enough and was exercising excessively. She
completed an ill-advised session on the stair climber, shed her
exercise clothes if in fact she’d been wearing any in the first
place, and walked through the living room on her way to the
shower.”

“She’d do that, all right.”

“Her blood sugar was dangerously low. She got
dizzy, and felt faint. She started to fall, and reached out to
steady herself, grabbing the bronze horse. Then she lost
consciousness and fell, dragging the horse from its perch on the
mantelpiece as she did so. She went down hard, hitting her forehead
on the bricks, and the horse came down hard as well, striking her
on the head. And, alone in the house, the unfortunate woman died an
accidental death.”

“That’s got to be it,” Starkey said. “I
couldn’t put it together. All I knew was I didn’t kill her. You can
push that argument, right? You can get me off?”

But Ehrengraf was shaking his head. “If you
had spent the twelve hours preceding her death in the company of an
archbishop and a Supreme Court justice,” he said, “and if both of
those worthies were at your side when you discovered your wife’s
body, then it might be possible to advance that theory successfully
in court.”

“But—”

“The whole world thinks of you as a man who
got away with murder twice already. Do you think a jury is going to
let you get away with it a third time?”

“The prosecution can’t introduce either of
those earlier cases as evidence, can they?”

“They can’t even mention them,” Ehrengraf
said, “or it’s immediate grounds for a mistrial. But why mention
them when everyone already knows all about them? If they didn’t
know to begin with, they’re reading the full story every day in the
newspaper and watching clips of your two trials on television.”

“Then it’s hopeless.”

“Only if you go to trial.”

“What else can I do? I could try fleeing the
country, but where would I hide? What would I do, play professional
football in Iraq or North Korea? And I can’t even try, because they
won’t let me out on bail.”

Ehrengraf put the tips of his fingers
together. “I’ve no intention of letting this case go to trial,” he
said. “I don’t much care for the whole idea of leaving a man’s fate
in the hands of twelve people, not one of them clever enough to get
out of jury duty.”

Puzzlement showed in Starkey’s face.

“I remember a run you made against the
Jackals,” Ehrengraf said. “The quarterback gave the ball to that
other fellow—”

“Clete Braden,” Starkey said heavily.

“—and he began running to his right, and you
were running toward him, and he handed the ball to you, and you
swept around to the left, after all the Jackals had shifted over to
stop Braden’s run to the right.”

Starkey brightened. “I remember the play,” he
said. “The reverse. When it works, it’s one of the prettiest plays
in football.”

“It worked against the Jackals.”

“I ran it in. Better than sixty yards from
scrimmage, and once I was past midfield no one had a shot at
me.”

Ehrengraf beamed. “Ah, yes. The reverse. It
is something to see, the reverse.”

* * *

It was a new Blaine Starkey that walked into
Martin Ehrengraf’s office. He was dressed differently, for one
thing, his double-breasted tan suit clearly the work of an
accomplished tailor, his maroon silk shirt open at its flowing
collar, his cordovan wing tips buffed to a high sheen. His skin had
thrown off the jailhouse pallor and glowed with the ruddy health of
a life lived outdoors. There was a sparkle in his eyes, spring in
his step, a set to his shoulders. It did the little lawyer’s heart
good to see him.

He was holding a football, passing it from
hand to hand as he approached Ehrengraf’s desk. How small it
looked, Ehrengraf thought, in those big hands. And with what ease
could those hands encircle a throat...

Ehrengraf pushed the thought aside, and his
hand went to his necktie. It was his Caedmon Society tie, his
inevitable choice on triumphant occasions, and a nice complement to
his cocoa brown blazer and fawn slacks.

“The game ball,” Starkey announced, reaching
to place it on the one clear spot on the little lawyer’s cluttered
desk. “They gave it to me after Sunday’s game with the Ocelots.
See, all the players signed it. All but Cletis Braden, but I don’t
guess he’ll be signing too many game balls from here on.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“And here’s where I wrote something myself,”
he said, pointing.

Ehrengraf read: “
To Marty Ehrengraf, who
made it all possible. From your buddy, Blaine Starkey
.”

“Marty,” Ehrengraf said.

Starkey lowered his eyes. “I didn’t know
about that,” he admitted. “If people called you Marty or Martin or
what. I mean, all I ever called you was ‘Mr. Ehrengraf.’ But with
sports memorabilia, people generally like it to look like, you
know, like them and the athlete are good buddies. Do they call you
Marty?”

They never had, but Ehrengraf merely smiled
at the question and took the ball in his hands. “I shall treasure
this,” he said simply.

“Here’s something else to treasure,” Starkey
said. “It’s autographed, too.”

“Ah,” Ehrengraf said, and took the check, and
raised his eyebrows at the amount. It was not the sum he had
mentioned at their initial meeting. This had happened before, when
a client’s gratitude gave way to innate penuriousness, and
Ehrengraf routinely made short work of such attempts to reduce his
fee. But this check was for more than he had demanded, and that had
not
happened before.

“It’s a bonus,” Starkey said, anticipating
the question. “I don’t know if there’s such a thing in your
profession. We get them all the time in the NFL. It’s not
insulting, is it? Like tipping the owner of the restaurant? Because
I surely didn’t intend it that way.”

Ehrengraf, nonplused, shook his head. “Money
is only insulting,” he managed, “when there’s too little of it.” He
beamed, and stowed the check in his wallet.

“I’ll tell you,” Starkey said, “writing
checks isn’t generally my favorite thing in the whole world, but I
couldn’t have been happier when I was writing out that one. Couple
of weeks ago I was the worst thing since Jack the Ripper, and now
I’m everybody’s hero. Who was it said there’s no second half in the
game of life?”

“Scott Fitzgerald wrote something along those
lines,” Ehrengraf said, “but I believe he phrased it a little
differently.”

“Well, he was wrong,” Starkey said, “and you
proved it. And who would have dreamed it would turn out this
way?”

Ehrengraf smiled.

“Clete Braden,” Starkey said. “I knew the
sonofabitch was after my job, but who’d have guessed he was after
my wife, too? I swear I never had a clue those two were slipping
around behind my back. It’s still hard to believe Claureen was
cheating on me when I wasn’t even on a road trip.”

“They must have been very clever in their
deceit.”

“But stupid at the same time,” Starkey said.
“Taking her to a motel and signing in as Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland
Brassman. Same initials, plus he used his own handwriting on the
registration card. Made up a fake address but used his real license
plate number, just switching two digits around.” He rolled his
eyes. “And then leaving a pair of her panties in the room. Where
was it they found them? Wedged under the chair cushion or some
such?”

“I believe so.”

“All that time and the maids never found
them. I guess they don’t knock themselves out cleaning the rooms in
a place like that, but I’d still have to call it a piece of luck
the panties were still there.”

“Luck,” Ehrengraf agreed.

“And no question they were hers, either.
Matched the ones in her dresser drawer, and had her DNA all over
‘em. It’s a wonderful thing, DNA.”

“A miracle of modern forensic science.”

“Why’d they even go to a motel in the first
place? Why not take her to his place? He wasn’t married, he had
women in and out of his apartment all the time.”

“Perhaps he didn’t want to be seen with
her.”

“Long as I wasn’t the one doing the seeing,
what difference could it make?”

“None,” Ehrengraf said, “unless he was afraid
of what people might remember afterward.”

Starkey thought about that. Then his eyes
widened. “He planned it all along,” he said.

“It certainly seems that way.”

“Wanted to make damn sure he got my job, by
seeing to it that I wasn’t around to compete for it. He didn’t just
lose his temper when he smashed her head with that horse. It was
all part of the plan—kill her and frame me for it.”

“Diabolical,” Ehrengraf said.

“That explains what he wrote on that note,”
Starkey said. “The one they found at the very back of her underwear
drawer, arranging to meet that last day after practice. ‘Make sure
you burn this,’ he wrote. And he didn’t even sign it. But it was in
his handwriting.”

“So the experts say.”

“And on a piece of his stationery. The top
part was torn off, with his name and address on it, but it was the
same brand of bond paper. It would have been nice if they could
have found the piece he tore off and matched them up, but I guess
you can’t have everything.”

“Perhaps they haven’t looked hard enough,”
Ehrengraf murmured. “There was another note as well, as I recall.
One that she wrote.”

“On one of the printed memo slips with her
name on it. A little love note from her to him, and he didn’t have
the sense to throw it out. Carried it around in his wallet.”

“It was probably from early in their
relationship,” Ehrengraf said, “and very likely he’d forgotten it
was there.”

“He must have. It surprised the hell out of
him when the cops went through his wallet and there it was.”

“I imagine it did.”

“He must have gone to my house straight from
practice. Wouldn’t have been a trick to get her out of her clothes,
seeing as he’d been managing that all along. ‘My, Claureen, isn’t
that a cute little horse.’ ‘Yes, it’s French, it’s over a hundred
years old.’ ‘Is that right? Let me just get the feel of it.’ And
that’s the end of Claureen. A shame he didn’t leave a fingerprint
or two on the horse just for good measure.”