Trophy Widow (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

I'm here on the motion in
Blackwell Breeders
,” I told Judge Parker's clerk.

She paused in filing her nails and glanced down at the calendar. “Are you Gold?”

“I am.”

“Knock on the door. The judge is ready.”

“Has plaintiffs' counsel arrived?”

“Oh, yeah. He's in there already.”

Of course
, I said to myself, trying to control my irritation. This was the second time I'd found Mack the Knife already inside the judge's chambers when I arrived for a court appearance in the ostrich case. Not that I was surprised. What Mack lacked in legal talent he more than made up in sheer gall. Over the years, he'd bullied his way through hundreds of lawsuits, building a lucrative practice with clients who believed that the best lawyer was a confrontational lawyer. The book on him was to be patient and hang in there. Although he curried favor with the trial judges—drinking with them after hours, hunting and golfing with them on the weekends—the breaks they gave him in the courtroom rarely survived scrutiny on appeal. But the catch was that few lawyers, and even fewer clients, had the stomach or the wallet to endure Mack the Knife through a trial and an appeal. Most chose to settle.

I rapped on the door and opened it just as Armour was delivering what sounded like the punch line to a dirty joke.

“…and don't ride your bike for a week.”

Judge Parker was seated behind his desk, leaning back in the chair, his arms crossed over his ample gut. He chuckled and leaned forward, noticing my arrival and waving me in. “That's a good one, Mack. Hello, counselor. Come on in.”

“Good afternoon, Your Honor.”

Armour got up from his chair to face me, his eyes doing a quick body scan. “Miss Gold,” he said, nodding curtly.

I returned the nod. “Mr. Armour.”

Mack the Knife was a burly, athletic man in his early fifties. He had a golf tan, a smooth shaved scalp, slate-gray eyes, and a neatly trimmed black mustache. In his khaki suit, crisp white shirt, and gleaming brown loafers, he reminded me of a corrupt CIA operative in a Latin American capital.

Judge Lamar Parker, by contrast, was the fleshy, heavy-lidded deer hunter from rural Missouri. Neither saint nor sinner, Judge Parker was a former insurance defense lawyer in his late fifties who'd used Republican Party connections to get appointed to the bench. His demeanor was affable, his rulings unimaginative, and his workday short. He rarely was reversed on appeal because he rarely was bold at trial.

“This is your motion, Miss Gold?” Judge Parker asked.

“It is, Your Honor.”

“What's it seek?” he asked, paging through the file. As usual, Judge Parker had read none of the papers and done nothing to prepare for the argument.

“As the court knows,” I explained, “my clients seek a full refund on the male ostrich they purchased from Blackwell Breeders. They also seek compensation for injuries inflicted upon several of the hens, including the death of one. I'm here today asking the court to dismiss Mr. Blackwell's claim. He alleges that he suffers emotional distress from the thought of his ostrich residing on my clients' farm. Frankly, Your Honor, the claim is absurd on its face.”

The judge turned to Armour. “Mack?”

Armour snorted. “Judge, my client sold those gals a normal, heterosexual stud cock—the kind of animal that's happiest when he's putting the lumber to some hen.” He became solemn. “Except now he's stuck out there in Kinkyland with—”

“That's ridiculous,” I snapped, immediately regretting my interruption, knowing Armour would take advantage of it.

“Your Honor,” he said, pointedly ignoring me, “I'm simply attempting to answer the court's question. May I continue?”

“Please do.”

He glanced at me. “Without further interruption?”

“Get on with it,” I said through clenched teeth.

“These women,” Armour said, shaking his head sternly, “concealed their inexperience and their incompetence and, even worse, their perverted lesbian lifestyle from my client at the time of the sale. Mr. Blackwell is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and remorse over what he's done to that poor ostrich. When Miss Gold has the opportunity to look him in the eye, she will feel his pain.”

“Your Honor, I've already looked Mr. Blackwell in the eye at his deposition. He could barely keep a straight face.”

“Smiling through his tears,” Armour answered. “The man is devastated. He's entitled to compensation.”

“Your Honor,” I said, trying to contain my anger, “the only reason Mr. Armour put that ludicrous claim in the lawsuit is to confuse and prejudice the jury. It should be dismissed for that reason alone. More important, the claim has no scientific basis.”

Judge Parker turned to him. “What about that, Mack?”

Armour smiled as he unclicked his briefcase. “She wants science, Judge, I'll give it to her in spades.” He started pulling scientific journals out of his briefcase and piling them, one by one, onto the judge's desk. I skimmed the titles as they dropped onto the desk—
Journal of Animal Behavior, Field Studies in Evolutionary Biology, Animal Husbandry Quarterly, Zoological Record
.

When he completed his stack, Armour leaned back triumphant and crossed his arms over his chest. “How's that for starters?”

“How's what?” I responded. “What are these?”

“Scientific studies of animal behavior. And there's plenty more where that came from.”

I started to answer when the judge held up his hand. “You make some good points, Miss Gold, but I think we'd all agree this is a case of first impression. The safest route here is to let the jury take a crack at it. We can clean up any miscues in the posttrial motions.”

***

Last chance,” Armour told me as we emerged from the courthouse. “Settle now or this trial's gonna put your clients on the cover of the
National Enquirer
.”

“What's your proposal?” I responded frostily.

“Well,” he said, scratching his mustache thoughtfully, “I might be willing to recommend a dog fall.”

I stared at him. “You drop your claims and we drop ours? You call that a good-faith offer?”

“Not an offer yet. I said it's what I'd be willing to
recommend
.”

“Forget it, Mack. Your offer is as absurd as your lawsuit.”

“Suit yourself, counselor, but you're living in a fantasy world.” He chuckled. “The only absurd thing here is someone who thinks a St. Louis jury is going to award one red cent to a pair of muff divers.”

I stared at him as a bunch of possible responses flashed through my head—all at the playground level, none a real zinger. Oh, where is Benny Goldberg when you need him?

Chapter Thirteen

Unbelievable,” Benny said, shaking his head as he sliced off another hunk of sausage. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I just walked away.”

“Nothing?” Benny took a big chug of beer and swallowed. “Nothing?”

I shrugged. “What would you have said?”

“Easy,” he said, putting down the bottle and stifling a belch, which rumbled ominously in his belly. He jabbed his finger at an imaginary Mack Armour. “I'd say, ‘Watch your mouth, bullet-head, 'cause I got chunks of guys like you in my stool.'”

I shook my head. “Works better coming from you.”

He gestured toward the cutting board. “You sure you don't want some more?”

I held up my hands. “I'm stuffed.”

It was late afternoon. Benny had come by my office for a surprise happy hour. He'd stopped at his favorite Italian deli for a “light snack”—a smoked turkey breast, a thick slab of cheese, a jar of pickled onions, an Italian bread, and a truly repulsive sausage composed of semi-identifiable animal parts suspended in a pink gelatinous goo.

I shook my head in wonder. “An entire turkey breast, Benny?”

“Hey, girl, I bought it because of you.”

“Me?”

“You should have seen the smoked ham. Talk about enticing. I got sexually aroused just looking at it.”

“Spare me.”

“I did. That's the point. Now that you're becoming the Orthodox Jewish Princess, God forbid I should bring
treif
into your office.”

“That's sweet. But speaking of
treif
, what in heaven's name is in that sausage?”

“This?” Benny stared at it a moment, rubbing his chin. He finally shrugged. “There are some things man was not meant to know. So when's the ostrich battle scheduled for trial?”

“Not for another month.” I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “I just want it to be over, Benny. Armour's been a complete jerk—hid documents from me, lied to the judge, hired an investigator to harass two of Maggie's former lovers. I feel like I'm stuck in an endless backstreet brawl with that guy. Each day brings a new dirty trick. Today, he dumped a pile of scientific journals on the judge's desk, supposedly to support his contention that my clients' actions could have changed that ostrich's behavior.”

“And?”

“There was nothing even remotely close in there.” I shook my head in exasperation. “Just another sleazy stunt.”

“So what'd you expect? Tea and crumpets with Miss Manners? The guy's a fucking scumbag. Hell, I feel like taking a bath after talking to him on the phone. Don't sweat it, Rachel. When that case finally gets to trial, you're going to nail his ass.”

“As my father would have said, ‘From your lips to God's ears.'”

“You got that right. So how's Angela Green's case coming along?”

“I had an interesting afternoon with Ellen McNeil.”

“Oh?”

“We visited two of the people who bought Sebastian Curry paintings from Samantha's gallery.”

“And?”

I frowned. “I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't what we found.”

“Really?” He looked up expectantly, his fingers jammed in the jar of pickled onions. “Talk to me.”

I described our meeting with Martha Galbraith in her stylish home in Chesterfield. Although the list of purchasers included the name Dr. Peter Galbraith, Ellen decided to call Martha instead. Ellen explained to me that Peter, a urologist with a practice in St. Charles, viewed art the way he viewed stocks: purely as an investment. He relied on his broker to pick stocks and on his wife to pick art. Over the years Ellen had sold the Galbraiths two paintings and a blown-glass vase—and all three times Peter had been unable to mask his boredom as he waited for Martha to make her selection. Martha had superb taste and a connoisseur's eye, Ellen told me, and thus she was our best candidate to unveil the mystery of the Sebastian Curry paintings.

But Martha was no help. Indeed, she confessed to being as mystified as Ellen. Peter bought the painting on his own—something he'd never done. Although fifteen thousand dollars was nowhere near as much as they'd paid for other works of art—in fact, as Ellen later told me, the price for one of the paintings she sold them was thirty-five thousand dollars—it was still a lot of money to pay without even consulting his wife. Suffice to say, the good doctor was defensive about the painting from the day he brought it home. He told his wife that Sebastian Curry would be the next big name in the art world, just you wait and see. She waited and she didn't see. The painting hung on a wall in his home office for a year and then he took it to work, where it hung in the waiting room. At some point that year he got it appraised for insurance purposes. The appraiser valued it at four hundred dollars. A few months later, he donated it to some charity—presumably for a tax write-off in the full amount originally paid. Martha Galbraith couldn't remember which charity and had no idea where the painting was now. It wouldn't be worth tracking down anyway, she told them. The painting was—as Martha put it—“decidedly pedestrian and derivative.”

“Decidedly pedestrian and derivative, eh?” Benny said in a mock-snooty tone. “Well, la-de-fucking-da.”

I watched him slice off a chunk of that revolting sausage and shove it in his mouth. He chased it with two pickled onions, a wedge of cheese, and a big gulp of beer. Even after years of watching him gorge on all manner of things, I was still astounded and grossed out by his eating habits. He must have caught me staring and misinterpreted my nauseous expression for one of longing.

“You want some?” he asked, gesturing toward the food, his mouth full.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Sure?”

“I'm just not feeling hungry right now.”

“You're missing a real treat here.” He tore off a big piece of bread and took a bite. Chewing, he asked, “So who else did you and Ellen see?”

“Don Goddard.”

“The lawyer?”

“Yep.”

Don Goddard was one of the name partners in Goddard, Jones & Newberger, a twenty-five-lawyer firm in Clayton that handled corporate, tax, and contract matters for various small businesses. He was a tall, slender, balding man in his fifties with a large nose and an elegant demeanor—a smooth operator, but not quite smooth enough to conceal his social pretensions. Like a lot of corporate lawyers with working-class origins, Don Goddard expended great time and energy on appearance.

“We went to his office,” I told Benny. “He had the painting in one of the firm's conference rooms. He was clearly thrilled by the prospect that a painting of his might make it into the show. On the way to the conference room he told Ellen that he'd like the ownership credit for the art show to read, ‘From the Donald E. Goddard Collection.'”

“So how was the painting?”

“It was one of those abstract things with lots of bright colors.” I shrugged. “I'm no judge of modern art, but it didn't do anything for me.”

“What did Ellen think of it?”

“She was polite during the meeting with Goddard, but afterward she told me the painting was mediocre.”

“So what did you learn?”

“That something fishy is going on.”

“What kind of fishy?”

“While Ellen was busy examining the painting, I started asking him questions—mostly innocuous ones, like you'd need for filling out an information questionnaire. I explained that we'd need some basic facts if we selected his painting for the exhibit. He started getting nervous as soon as I got beyond where and when he bought the painting. Did he own anything else by Sebastian Curry? No. Was he familiar with Curry's work? Not really. What other works of art were in the ‘Donald E. Goddard Collection'? That one had him fumbling. Turns out the only other items are a couple of pieces of pottery his wife bought in Cancún, an art print from either Monet or Picasso—he wasn't sure which—and a set of those Lladró ballerina figurines.”

“Wow,” Benny said, arching his eyebrows. “Sounds like the Donald E. Goddard Collection is almost ready for its own wing at the Guggenheim.”

“By then he was really antsy. I asked him how he ended up at Samantha's gallery. Didn't remember. Had he been there often? Didn't remember. Had he ever heard of Millennium Management? No, he said, who are they? I explained that Millennium received a big commission on the painting. Never heard of them, he snapped.”

“You're right,” Benny said. “There is something fishy going on here. I think I know what the bait is.”

“What?”

“Come on, Rachel. It's obvious. You got a pair of big-money guys who are fairly savvy businessmen but don't know jackshit about art. Both of them plunk down fifteen grand for pieces of crap by some unknown yutz. What's that tell you?”

“I don't know. What's it tell you?”

“That we got two guys choosing art with their dicks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look who owned that gallery. Samantha Cummings. That girl is a fox. I don't know exactly what she did to those guys, but I'm betting she aimed her sales pitch somewhere lower than their aesthetic sensibility. The thing she was enlarging wasn't their artistic taste.”

“Benny, flirting is not going to make a bunch of guys spend fifteen grand.”

“Come on, Rachel. We're talking about the male of the species here. And we're probably talking about more than flirting. Fifteen grand is pocket change to a rich guy chasing pussy. You got guys plunking down five times that much on a swanky car with nothing more than the hope that a car like that will make some hot chick overlook the dork behind the wheel. Here, though, you've already interested the hot chick, who happens to own the gallery, which means you have an easy way to prove you're a big spender.”

I frowned. “Why waste your money trying to impress Samantha? She was already taken. She was engaged to Michael Green.”

“You think guys don't waste time chasing women who're already taken?” Benny paused, frowning as an idea took shape. “Hey, what if one of those guys fell in love with her? And what if he was one of those crazy jealous types?”

I gave him a puzzled look. “So?”

“Wouldn't be the first time a jealous guy killed for love, eh?”

I thought it over. “You think that's possible?”

He shrugged. “It's no more bizarre than what the jury said actually happened, right?”

I tried to imagine Don Goddard, Mr. Smooth, in the role of infatuated, lust-crazed killer. He didn't fit the role, but there were still plenty of other names on the list. In fact, all twenty-three purchasers had been men. After Jacki had compiled the list from the gallery's books and records at Stanley Brod's office, I'd cross-checked the names against Michael Green's Rolodex, which was also at Brod's office. All but two of the buyers had been on his Rolodex. From what I knew of Green's behavior, he apparently bragged about Samantha to nearly everyone he talked to. Who could judge the impact of those boasts?

I checked my watch. “I have one more of these buyers to see before dinner. Ellen is seeing one, too, and then we're meeting for dinner.”

“Who are you seeing?”

“Jack Foley. He's a stockbroker. I'm meeting him at his house at six-thirty. His wife will be there, too.”

“Ellen's not going with you?”

“No, she's meeting another guy.”

“Perfect.” Benny was grinning.

“Perfect?”

“Ellen won't be there. You're going to need an art expert, right?”

“Oh?” I said, amused. “Would you perhaps happen to know where I might find such an expert on short notice?”

“If we can swing by my place on the way, I just might be able to rouse one for you.”

***

We were in the Foleys' living room. The Sebastian Curry painting—a large abstract work combining black-and-white splatters and what looked like roller swipes in bright primary colors—was on the floor propped against the fireplace. Benny—or “Benito,” as he'd introduced himself in what sounded like an Italian-Hungarian accent—stood in front of the painting, his arms crossed, expression grave, as he pretended to scrutinize it.

Benny had, of course, pushed his art critic routine out near the border between impersonation and farce. He was dressed entirely in black: black turtleneck, black jeans, black boots, black beret, black wraparound sunglasses. He'd done more than just change outfits when we stopped by his house on our way over. For an added bizarre touch, which I hadn't noticed until we stood in the bright light of the Foleys' front hall, he'd slicked back his hair with what appeared to be Vaseline and powdered his face white, which heightened the contrast with his lips. The black stubble of his beard poked through the powder. Perhaps he hoped the overall effect—black outfit, greased hair, powdered face, black stubble—would shout avant-garde art critic. To me, though, it was shouting overweight transvestite geisha from hell.

The Foleys eyed him warily as he frowned and grumbled in front of the painting. I tried to ignore him, tried to keep a straight face, tried to keep the conversation focused on the information I was attempting to elicit. It was not easy.

“So it was in the basement all this time?” I asked.

“Until today,” Margo Foley said with a perky smile. “Until you called Jack. Isn't that so, honey?”

“Right,” he answered stiffly.

Margo was seated to the left of the fireplace on a white couch with a loose-pillow back. I was facing her across the coffee table on the matching love seat. Jack Foley stood to my left—to Margo's right—behind a wing chair that faced the fireplace from the far side of the coffee table. Both in their late thirties, the Foleys were the type of couple who'd raise the level of tension in any gathering—Margo with her forced cheer and brittle smile, Jack with his edgy stare and slight stammer.