Читать книгу Fatal Judgment - Andrew Welsh-Huggins - Страница 14

7

I DROVE FASTER THAN I should have back to Laura’s condo. My suspicion might be nothing, and if that was the case, Pinney, the sheriff’s detective, was right. Better to leave the detecting to the real investigators. Plus I’d have the added pleasure of knowing I’d blown off my son for no reason. But for better or worse, my conversation with Mike loosened a nagging thought in the back of my brain, like a screw with a stripped head I’d finally been able to budge. I wouldn’t be able to rest until I pulled it all the way out. A few minutes later I parked once again outside Laura’s condo, inserted the purloined key into the lock on her door, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

The cat materialized a couple of seconds later. I ignored it as I walked into the kitchen, approached the refrigerator, and tore the grocery list off the pad of paper affixed there with a magnet. I held it close and read. Eggs, bananas, 1 percent milk; 1 percent underlined. The notation that gave me pause that morning. Who gets that specific on a list only she will see? I thought about almost the same words spoken by Laura in a different order and very different context. Practically zero, Andy. A coincidence, or something more? Had she been trying to tell me something over the phone at the sheriff’s office, send a coded message as someone listened in? I continued reading. Carrots, oranges, yogurt. Coffee, paper towels, chicken.

My heart sank. There was nothing here. The groupings were random, to be sure, lumping carrots with yogurt and paper towels with chicken. Even I knew those items were on opposite sides of any store. Hardly in keeping with Laura’s orderly approach to things. But so what?

I read further. Rice, wine, granola. Escarole, estoppel, endive. TP, avocados, peanut butter. Soda water, dish soap—

I stopped. I read backwards up the list. Estoppel?

I looked closer. Was I misreading the word? Laura’s handwriting wasn’t the neatest in the world, but it was still a more than serviceable cursive. At second glance there was no question about it. Laura had inserted an arcane legal word I’d heard a few times but couldn’t possibly have defined into the middle of her weekly grocery list. But why? I pulled out my phone and looked up a definition. The principle that bars a person from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous deed or statement of that person or by a previous relevant judicial determination. Huh? I searched for plain English definitions and after a couple minutes decided it basically meant you couldn’t try to prove or disprove something in a legal argument whose truth had already been established.

Like, say, denying anything was wrong after you’d called an ex-lover out of the blue after five years and told him you were in trouble?

I folded the list, placed it in my wallet, stepped back, and leaned against the counter. The cat approached and rubbed back and forth against my legs. So Laura left behind a clue after all. But for who? Me? She’d dropped the hint during our call at the sheriff’s office. But how could she have known I’d show up at her condo on the basis of one missed phone call? A darker thought crossed my mind. Maybe she hadn’t been that calculating. Maybe she left a clue on her shopping list so that, no matter what happened to her, someone, someday, might be able to figure out the truth. Only by luck was I the one who earned the first shot at the puzzle.

But what was I supposed to do with this? How was I meant to handle a handwritten legal term hiding in plain sight on a grocery list like a link of German sausage nestled in a drawer of red Christmas candles? Call Detective Pinney back? “Hey, I know this sounds a little weird, but . . .”

I put myself in Laura’s position. If I was right, she’d handed me proof that something was indeed rotten in Denmark. But so what? I’d been thinking that all day, despite her subsequent denial of a problem over the phone as Pinney eavesdropped. Laura was more calculating than that. Anyone who knew her well—and I was going to count myself in that category—knew that the “Velvet Fist” nickname was the beginning of her legal reputation, not the end. She was renowned for her deliberate and thoughtful approach to cases. I knew she prided herself on rarely being overturned on appeal.

There must be more, I thought.

I walked slowly through her apartment, seeing if anything else caught my eye. Something told me that having hidden one clue in the open, she would have done it again. No treasure boxes under loose floorboards for her. I glanced at the bookshelves on either side of her fireplace, jammed with a combination of biographies, histories of various global conflicts, and a smattering of legal thrillers. Nothing that said estoppel, and nothing that made me think her plan was for me—or someone—to pull every volume off a shelf to search.

Next I went into her office. I tried the computer, but the password protection was on. I knew someone who could help me with that if it came to it, but again I wondered. Laura would have known that checking her computer files would be a chore for whoever tackled it. The chances were good that estoppel appeared frequently, adding to a needle in the haystack problem. I crossed the computer off the list as an option. The desk it sat on was clear except for a couple of bills marked “paid.” I tried the file drawers, but none of the folders was marked with the word of the day. I was about to walk out when I glanced in the wastepaper basket. Something didn’t look right. I reached in and pulled out the offending piece of trash.

It was a black frame, 8-1/2 by 11, its glass shattered. From the force of being thrown away? I loosened a couple of the shards and carefully tossed them back into the basket. The frame held a certificate. The Berman Prize. An award of some kind, I recalled, from the judge’s Ohio State law school days. I’d glanced at it a dozen times during our purported romance, pausing in the office to say hello and to attempt a seductive gesture like kissing the back of Laura’s neck. Usually a mistake. I wasn’t sure what kind of prize it was, although I assumed, with Laura’s smarts, it was an academic honor. I looked around and saw a small nail jutting out where the frame once hung to the right of her desk. For some reason Laura—or someone—had trashed the framed certificate, and not nicely. I picked out more glass shards. I thought about taking the certificate, and then remembered Pinney’s skepticism about my presence in the condo. I set the remains of the frame beside Laura’s computer and took a couple pictures of the certificate instead. Strange. But the source of her trouble? It seemed unlikely.

Next I returned to the bedroom. I lowered myself to my hands and knees and looked under the bed. I started as a pair of gleaming eyes stared back me. The cat, creeping about with no regard for privacy. But other than her—him?—there was nothing to see other than a dust bunny or two and an errant sock.

I rose on my knees and was about to stand when my eyes came to rest on her nightstand. The pile of New Yorkers. The photo of her children, who meant so much to her. The dry-as-dust book of legal definitions.

Who keeps that kind of book as bedside reading?

I grabbed it, stood up and flipped through its pages.

Ejectment, Eleventh Amendment, En Banc.

Enumerated Powers. Equitable Defense. Escape Clause.

Escrow, Estate at Sufferance, Estoppel—

A single piece of paper fluttered to the floor.