Читать книгу Courthouse Steps - Ginger Chambers - Страница 12

“THIS WAY, PETER. Over here,” Amanda urged. In her haste to get to the spot where Margaret’s body had been found, she drew ahead of the overweight professor. She moved agilely across the gently sloping hillside, while he proceeded more slowly. As she waited for him to catch up, she double-checked the accuracy of the location. To her left was the lake and the offshore wooden swimming float that she had known since childhood; to her right stood Timberlake Lodge—a large, rambling structure that had been built by her great-grandfather to host hunting parties for his friends, and which now was part of the Addison Hotel chain. Straight in front of her was the gnarled old pine tree she and Liza and Jeff had played under when they were young and had come to the lodge for a stolen afternoon. “This is the spot where they found her. A willow tree used to stand near here, but Joe took it down when he and his men were checking the water pipes.”

The professor wiped his pink cheeks. As he puffed from exertion, his alert eyes moved over the manicured lawn of the newly opened resort, then lifted to the multigabled structure that nestled at the top of the hill. “If she was running away, she didn’t get very far,” he said.

“No,” Amanda agreed.

“Why here?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know that, either.”

“What does your grandfather think? Have you asked him?”

Amanda hesitated. “My grandfather doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Peter’s answer was a displeased grunt.

“I know,” Amanda defended. “I just haven’t pressed him. He’s coming to my office this afternoon. We’ll talk then. He’s promised to tell me everything he can remember.”

“I hope his memory is excellent.”

“It is.”

She received another grunt, but this time Peter sounded more satisfied. She watched as he absorbed the quiet beauty of his surroundings. Timberlake Lodge always had the same effect on her. It was hard to believe that something as frightening and horrible as a murder could ever have taken place in such a sylvan scene.

She broke the silence that had fallen. “The police found her suitcase...did I tell you that? It was all packed and ready to go. Only for some reason, it was in the lodge’s potting shed. Well, not when they found it. Actually, it had been stolen. Whoever took it must have realized they didn’t have anything of value, so they dumped it on the highway between here and Belton. One of our police officers found it. It had her initials, M.L.I., and Granddad identified her clothing.”

Amanda lapsed into silence again, remembering the awful moment when Karen Keppler and Brick Bauer had come to the house, in uniform and on official business. And the way Karen had looked at her grandfather...suspiciously, as if she were already persuaded to believe that he had killed Margaret.

“Rather odd that it wasn’t with the body,” Peter mused.

“I know. If Granddad had done it, wouldn’t he have gotten rid of the suitcase, too? To make it look as if she had taken it? He knew Phil—Phil Wocheck was the gardener at Timberlake then. He knew Phil was in and out of the potting shed all the time, digging through things. Granddad couldn’t have expected the suitcase to stay hidden if he was the person who put it there...which he wasn’t.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m sure!” she repeated.

“This Phil Wocheck. He’s the man you said testified before the grand jury? The man whose testimony seemed to carry so much weight?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Peter frowned. “I wonder what he knows.”

“We all wonder that!”

“You need all the information you can get, yet the prosecution is required to give you only your grandfather’s statements to the police. If you want more, you’ll have to file a motion.”

“I’m working on it now.”

“Good girl,” the professor approved.

Amanda started back up the hill, this time making sure to go slowly enough so as not to outpace her companion. What Phil had said to the police and then to the grand jury had been the subject of much speculation, both within the family and without, for the past few weeks. But Phil, observing the grand jury’s injunction not to speak of his testimony, would say nothing.

Frustration curled in Amanda’s stomach. She had so little to work on! She had no idea what the prosecution would throw at them. She had only the charge included in her grandfather’s indictment: first-degree intentional homicide, the worst accusation the State of Wisconsin could issue against a person.

The professor had started to puff again when two men appeared at the top of the pathway. One was tall, the other short. One moved with commanding assurance, the other with compact grace. Both had dark hair. When she recognized them, Amanda felt her breath grow shallow. She, too, might suddenly have gained forty pounds and forty years. Instinctively her hand reached out toward the professor, whether to warn him or to ask for protection, she didn’t know.

The professor glanced at her curiously, then he followed the direction of her gaze.

“It’s him,” she whispered tightly. “Ethan Trask.”

“Introduce me,” Peter said.

“I can’t! I haven’t met him yet!”

“Then you’d better introduce yourself.” Peter seemed amused by the turn of events. Or rather, by Amanda’s reaction. “He’s not a god,” he said. “He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like I do.” He glanced at the beige trousers Amanda wore. “Just like you do.”

“I sit on the end of the bed and jam both my feet in at the same instant,” Amanda replied shakily.

Peter’s smile was no longer hidden. “Then that makes you special. Introduce yourself!”

The men were almost upon them. Amanda swallowed. She had already felt the sweep of Ethan Trask’s gaze and the much friendlier estimation of his companion. Of the two, she would much rather deal with the shorter man. She took a step sideways, signaling a desire to communicate.

“Mr. Trask?” she said. To her own ears, her voice sounded dry, strained. She could hear the fake attempt at confidence.

Up close, the special prosecutor was even more impressive than he had been the day before. He seemed taller, more intense, more determined, more handsome. His eyes were neither black nor brown, but an intimidating combination of the two. His dark brown hair was perfectly groomed, a tendency to curl tolerated but not encouraged. His features might have been carefully sculpted to give the image of strength—straight nose, firm jawline, sturdy chin, a mouth that was at the same time sensual and austere. The cut of his perfectly tailored suit bespoke a body that was muscular, athletic.

Amanda’s heart rate accelerated as he turned to look at her. Under his direct gaze she felt like a rabbit caught in a snare. “I, ah... My name is Amanda Baron, Mr. Trask, and I represent—”

Her name seemed to hit him like a lightning strike. It wasn’t so much that he jolted physically, but his mind seemed to snap to attention, focusing solely on her. It was all Amanda could do to continue. “I represent Judson Ingalls. This is Peter Williams, retired professor of law at the University of Illinois. He’s going to—”

“Amanda Baron.” Ethan Trask repeated her name as if he had heard nothing else she’d said.

Amanda smiled nervously. “Yes. I represent—”

“I know who you represent.”

Amanda shot a look at Peter, who in turn was studying the assistant attorney general. Her gaze then went to Ethan Trask’s companion. She was searching for a kind word, a kind face. She found it in the shorter man when he smiled at her. Still Amanda remained confused. She didn’t understand exactly what was happening. Ethan Trask sounded angry. Again attempting civility, she held out her hand.

There was a long moment before he responded, a moment that came close to insult. When finally his fingers closed over hers, they were brisk, businesslike. Amanda was quick to break contact. Her arm fell back to her side, but her hand still tingled.

“My assistant from the DCI, Carlos Varadero.” Ethan Trask indicated the man at his side.

Amanda knew that the Division of Criminal Investigation was the investigative arm of the State Department of Justice. A crack unit, it provided assistance to the attorney general’s office—which meant that she had been correct the first time she saw him: if he was affiliated with Ethan Trask, he was dangerous, smile or no smile.

Amanda shook his hand quickly, as did Peter. For a moment nothing happened. All of them seemed ill at ease. Then Ethan Trask said quietly, “I’m going to file a motion to disqualify you as defense counsel in this case. Since you are the granddaughter of both the defendant and the deceased, I consider your role inappropriate.”

Now it was Amanda’s turn to reel. She blinked at the unexpectedness of his attack. “But...that’s not fair!” she cried.

“Not fair?” Ethan Trask repeated, pouncing on the word. “What you and your grandfather are trying to do is what’s not fair, Miss Baron. The law does not play favorites.”

Amanda blinked again. She took a step back toward Peter. What was the man talking about? She was the one who had resisted representing her grandfather. She was the one who had done everything in the world to avoid her appointment.

Peter spoke for her. “The accused has a right to the counsel of his choice, Mr. Trask.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But this is not an ordinary case.”

“It’s a fundamental right,” Peter insisted.

“We’ll see what Judge Griffen has to say.” Ethan Trask’s attention shifted back to Amanda. “I’m filing the motion,” he said levelly, scorching her with the intensity of his gaze. Then he motioned to Carlos Varadero that they should continue on their way. After a brief nod, Carlos fell into step at his side.

Amanda was still speechless once she and Peter were alone again. She watched the progress of the two men. After consulting what had to be diagrams and photographs pulled from an envelope Carlos Varadero carried, they proceeded to the spot where she and Peter had stood earlier—the site of Margaret’s one-time grave.

Amanda’s emotions were a jumble. Shock and amazement warred with affront.

Peter took her arm and continued to trudge up the hillside. “A rather intense young man,” he pronounced.

“He’s got to be six or eight years older than I am, and I’m almost thirty!” Amanda protested.

“I’m speaking from the great advantage of my years. Once a person passes sixty-five, nearly everyone seems young.”

Amanda stopped, anger having overtaken all her other emotions. “What did he mean, Peter? What does he think Granddad and I are trying to do? My only goal is to mount a successful defense, to be sure that my grandfather doesn’t go to jail for the rest of his life for a murder he didn’t commit!”

“Obviously Mr. Trask thinks you’re placing an unfair burden on the state, and he’s giving you fair warning of what he intends to do. I wondered if he’d latch on to that.”

“You mean you had an idea that he might?”

“If he’s as good a lawyer as everyone says, yes.”

“You might have warned me,” she complained.

Peter smiled. “I didn’t want to frighten you unduly.”

“I’m not afraid of him! At least, not anymore.” Amanda threw a look back over her shoulder toward the two men, who happened, at that moment, to be looking up at them. “Humph,” she sniffed, then she jerked her head around and walked proudly on.

The man had two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. He was just an ordinary human being, nothing more, nothing less. All she had to do over the next weeks was to keep telling herself that!

* * *

CARLOS NUDGED Ethan’s arm and pointed to the two people making their way slowly up the hillside. A slender young woman with bright chestnut hair and a portly man dressed in a rumpled suit, who walked as if his knees hurt.

At that moment, the woman turned, and for the space of a second, the distance between them evaporated. Ethan again saw those huge, dark blue eyes that seemed to fill her face. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was something about her that was arresting. A small, straight nose, firm rounded chin, delicately carved cheeks—her features were a blend of feminine strengths. It was the look in her eyes, though, that had stopped him, forced him to notice her. Besides quick intelligence and a certain pride, there was a freshness about the way she looked at the world. A sweetness and generosity of spirit that Ethan was unused to in the people he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Then she turned away, and he was released.

“Mmm,” Carlos murmured. “It seems this Amanda Baron is everything we were told she would be.”

“Keep your mind on your work, Carlos.”

“Can you, my friend? Are you able to do that?”

“Easily,” Ethan claimed.

The investigator shook his head. “A man must have more in his life than work. A woman, a child...”

“I don’t see you with a woman or child,” Ethan parried.

Carlos smiled. “It is something I dream of, and one day—one day—I will have it.”

“Which will be a great moment for us all,” Ethan returned sarcastically. “Now, do you think we can get back to the business at hand?” He lifted the police photos he had been studying. “The body was found right about here, and Margaret Ingalls’s room was on the lower floor of the lodge.” Ethan shuffled other photos until he found the ones he wanted. They showed a room empty of furniture and adornment, except for a painting of a woman, a wall mirror and a fireplace. On the far wall, leading outside, were French doors.

Ethan handed the photographs, one by one, to his assistant. Both had studied the glossy prints last night, staying in the Sugar Creek office until well past midnight as they tried to digest as much information as they could about the case.

Ethan said, “It’s a short trip from the bedroom to this point. The gardener—this Philip Wocheck—claims to have picked her up and carried her down here. He says he ‘helped her go.’ Wasn’t that his testimony before the grand jury?”

Carlos nodded. “He also said he saw someone run from the room. It might have been Judson Ingalls and it might not. Do you think he is covering for his old boss?”

“Considering his sudden bouts of forgetfulness brought on by intensive questioning...yes, I’d say he’s covering something.”

Carlos shook his head. “The man is seventy-five years old, my friend. People that old—”

“Can’t be allowed to evade telling the truth! Age is a fact of life, not an excuse. Look at what’s already happened. The local D.A. didn’t press charges against him when, by every count, he should have—for obstruction of justice at the very least, if not for acting as an accessory.”

“He did volunteer the information,” Carlos reminded.

“Yes, but did he tell the whole story or did he evade?”

“The D.A. believed him.”

“I know. But something just isn’t right. I believe he’s hiding something—like the fact that Judson Ingalls ordered him to dispose of the body. Otherwise, why would he—”

“He has no immunity. He did not ask for it.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Ethan agreed. “And when we talk with him, I’m going to remind him of that fact.”

The men moved down to the lake. This was a preliminary visit to familiarize themselves with the murder site. Each knew that they would return, probably more than once. As Carlos looked out over the water, Ethan studied the resort perched on the crest of the hill. The account he had read last night was prominent in his mind. It was a story of wealth, excessive behavior and passions gone awry, the kind of story that Ethan had seen repeated many times. He hunched his shoulders, impatient with delay.

Carlos skipped a rock across the water. “It is very beautiful here,” he said, his accent as soft as his words. “It reminds me of a place I knew in Cuba, not far from my home. I was just a child, of course, but my father would often take me to the water and we would sit and talk. About nothing in particular...just talk.”

Carlos lapsed into a silence that Ethan didn’t break. He, too, remembered a time spent by the water, along the wharves of one of the two great rivers that formed a confluence at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Only for him there had been no father to sit and talk with. He’d had no father—at least, none that he knew. And the time he’d spent on the wharves had not been idyllic.

Ethan wrenched his mind from the past—from the scruffily clothed boy who’d stood out from those around him, the boy who had never fit in because he couldn’t act as irresponsibly as the others did, the boy who in the end had held himself aloof even though he’d ached to belong.... “Let’s go check out the lodge,” Ethan said in a clipped tone. “And this potting shed we’ve heard so much about.” Then he turned away, from the lake and from his memories.

* * *

AMANDA WORKED through her lunch break. Peter had given her a few helpful directions and then had gone back to Lake Geneva. He was expecting a call from his literary agent that afternoon and didn’t want to miss it. When she had questioned him as to whether he was trying to sell another volume of his memoirs, he had avoided a direct answer and escaped as quickly as he could.

With a mystified smile, Amanda had set to work, and soon was immersed in sorting through the precedent-setting cases and rules of law that she would use in writing her brief for Judge Griffen on the defendant’s right to counsel. She hadn’t expected to be doing this. She hadn’t expected an objection to her relationship in the case.

Margaret’s granddaughter. She didn’t feel like Margaret’s granddaughter. She didn’t feel as if Margaret deserved to be any relation at all. For the family, the woman had been nothing but trouble.

Liza had grown up oversensitive to the fact that she looked so much like the hell-raising party girl from the past, and since people rarely lost an opportunity to speculate on the similarity of their behavior, Liza had eventually begun to act like her, more in a twisted sort of rebellion than because she was like her grandmother. Liza was spirited, but there was no meanness in her.

And Jeff...Jeff had married a woman just like Margaret, as selfish and as insensitive as a rhino. The family had tried to talk him out of it, but Jeff had been well and truly under her spell. Because of a secret fascination with Margaret? The marriage had ended and Jeff had pretended that it didn’t hurt. But Amanda knew that it did.

Then there was their mother. Alyssa had never gotten over Margaret’s abandonment of her as a child. Now it turned out that Margaret hadn’t abandoned her after all, but had planned to; she had left a note. Same difference in the end. Die, walk out...their mother was still scarred for life.

Amanda’s thoughts moved on to the person most hurt by Margaret’s thoughtlessness: Judson. She remembered the pain that burned deeply in his eyes and remembered that throughout her childhood she had acted the fool many times in order to make her grandfather laugh.

For herself, Amanda once had thought she’d escaped untouched. She didn’t look like the Ingalls women—tall, leggy blondes. She looked like her father, Ronald Baron. So did Jeff, except for his inheritance of their grandfather’s commanding nose and chin. Yet she now knew that she had not escaped. For her, fate had played a delaying game. It had waited to spring her grandmother on her at a later date—to be exact, forty-two years. It was no wonder Amanda felt nothing except annoyance with the woman. Margaret was as much a troublemaker dead as she had been alive.

And Ethan Trask thought it unfair that she should represent the man accused of murdering Margaret? If anyone, it should be she! She resented the woman, just as she resented the assistant attorney general’s intimation that she had planned some kind of wrongdoing.

Ethan Trask...

Amanda’s fingers stopped on the pages of one of her law books as unwanted feelings fought their way into her consciousness. She had tried to ignore it earlier, but beneath all her outrage had lurked something else, the fact that on some core level, she found Ethan Trask extremely attractive. She felt herself growing steadily warmer. Then a tap on her door rescued her from further discomfort. A second later, her grandfather poked his head through the opening. “Amanda, honey?” he said. “Tessie told me to come right in.”

Amanda’s greeting was a little more enthusiastic than it normally might have been. She jumped up to give her grandfather a hug.

Judson smiled bemusedly as he patted her back. “I realize the situation is bad, but is it this bad?” he teased.

Amanda didn’t want to let go of her grandfather’s solid strength as memories of her childhood once again stirred. She’d had two men in her life then, her grandfather and her father. She had lost her father, a fact that remained like a huge gaping hole in her life even after ten years. She didn’t want to lose her grandfather, too. She didn’t think he would live very long in jail.

She made herself step back, more because she didn’t want to frighten him than because she was ready. She forced a smile. “No, it’s not that bad,” she assured him. “Only a minor bobble or two.” She hesitated, then plunged in. “Ethan Trask wants me off the case. He’s going to file a motion with the judge. He doesn’t like it that I’m both your and Margaret’s granddaughter.”

Judson’s still handsome features settled into a frown. “Can he do that?” he asked.

“Not without a fight...and I’m going to give him one. That’s what I was doing just now, working up my argument.”

Judson glanced at her loaded desk. “Would you like me to come back later? I can always find something to do at the plant or the lab.”

Amanda shook her head. “No, this is fine.” She showed him to a chair. Her grandfather still held himself with a quiet kind of dignity, but the past year had taken its toll. It was hard for him to ignore the rumors that flashed about town, to ignore the fact that people he had known all his life might think he had killed his wife. Hard to realize that people he had helped could turn against him. His face contained many more lines than it had before; his shoulders slumped, particularly when he didn’t feel on show. Amanda’s heart went out to him. He put on a brave front for the family, especially Alyssa. He didn’t want any of them to worry. But how could they not worry?

Amanda settled behind her desk and folded her hands on top of her paperwork. “This is something we have to deal with, Granddad. First, if I’m disqualified, we have to find you a new lawyer. Possibly Peter could be persuaded...or he might recommend someone.”

“I want you, Amanda.”

Amanda’s hands tightened. “I know. But if that’s not possible, we’ll have to find someone else. We’d appeal the decision, of course, if it went against us. But a decision on such an appeal probably wouldn’t be handed down until after the trial. Not unless you want to put off the trial for a number of months so that the appeals court has time to issue a decision.” Amanda stopped when she felt her grandfather stiffen. “I know. You want to see the end of all of this. So do I. So we go back to filing our appeal while the trial is held. If you lost the case, but we won the appeal, you’d have to stand trial all over again...this time with me as your lawyer.” Her grandfather’s face whitened. “That’s not something we want, Granddad, not either of us. If I were some kind of high-powered defense attorney, I’d say yes...we’d go for that. But I’m not.” She sighed. “What I’m trying to say is...if I get disqualified, I think you should find another lawyer. Someone with more experience than me. Someone we could be sure of—”

Her grandfather broke in softly, “I still want you, Amanda.” Judson Ingalls was a stubborn man.

Amanda murmured, “Let’s face that decision when we need to. It’s still down the road, and we may not even come to it.”

Judson smiled. “That’s right. I think you’ll win, to begin with. There’ll be no need for an appeal. This Ethan Trask...he isn’t infallible, is he?”

“No...” Amanda replied slowly.

“No,” Judson repeated, satisfied.

From experience, Amanda knew when it was time to retreat. She moved to another subject, one she had resisted bringing up before. But they couldn’t put it off any longer. “Proceeding on that assumption...Granddad, I know you don’t like to talk about anything concerning Margaret, but under the circumstances, if I’m to defend you properly, you’re going to have to talk to me. You’re going to have to treat me as if I’m a stranger. You have to be honest with me. Not keep anything back. Tell me things you’d never tell anyone else, particularly a member of the family. Warts and all, I have to know. Is that understood?”

Judson’s white head bobbed.

Amanda continued, “Anything you tell me will be privileged information. It will go no further than your defense team.”

“I understand.”

Amanda relaxed slightly. Her grandfather could sometimes be prickly. At least they had gotten this far.

“Where do you want me to begin?” Judson asked.

“I suppose the night Margaret disappeared.”

A muscle pulled at the side of Judson’s jaw. “We had an argument. I already told the police that.”

“What was it about?”

“Money, her running around with other men, the way she ignored Alyssa...”

“When did the argument start?”

“That morning. It ran on into late evening. It would stop and start. She was having a party—one of her constant parties. They’d go on for days. People were around that I didn’t know...didn’t want to know!”

“When did you see her last?”

Judson was silent. Finally, he said, “About six or seven o’clock. She had some kind of special evening planned with her friends. They were going to play a new game—I don’t know what kind. I didn’t ask. I sure as hell wasn’t going to play!” He paused again, becoming lost in the past. “She told me to get out. She told me she hated me. So I went.” A wealth of feeling lay beneath the flatness of his words. Amanda, who knew her grandfather well, could sense his suffering.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Out. I walked beside the lake, I don’t know for how long. A couple of hours? When I got back—”

“Did anyone see you while you were walking?”

Judson shook his head. “No.”

“Go on,” Amanda encouraged.

“When I got back...she was gone. I found a note on the mantel. It said she was leaving.”

“What happened then?” Amanda prompted.

Judson looked down at his hands. “I—I went a little berserk. I picked up a perfume bottle and threw it across the room. It broke some things on Margaret’s dressing table...bottles, dusting powder, face creams. It made quite a mess. Then I—” He stopped.

“Then you...what?” Amanda pressed, her voice husky.

“I cried,” he admitted simply. “Like some kind of huge baby, I just stood there and cried.”

Answering tears formed in Amanda’s eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. If she expected her grandfather to divorce himself from their relationship and talk to her, she couldn’t behave in a manner that would inhibit his confidences.

“Then what?” she asked.

“Then I went to see Alyssa. My little girl was all I had left.”

Amanda allowed him time to collect himself, while she, too, did a little collecting of her own emotions. “Would you like some water?” she asked.

Judson shook his head.

Amanda continued, “These men that Margaret ‘ran’ with. Did you know any of them? Do you remember their names? Do you know if any of them are alive today?”

Again Judson shook his head, but the motion had grown tighter, as if the strain he was under had sharply increased.

“It would help if you could come up with a name or two, Granddad. What about that summer? Was there anyone special?” Liza had already told Amanda about the man Rose Atkins had remembered shortly before she died. Rose had been invited to a few of Margaret’s parties, as she was one of the few people in Tyler Margaret liked. Liza had shown the old woman some of the photos she had found in the attic at Timberlake Lodge, and Rose had recognized one of the men. They were very close, Liza had reported Rose saying. He was probably her lover. “Does the name Roddy mean anything to you, Granddad?” Amanda asked, probing his memory.

At that, Judson jerked to his feet. “That’s enough,” he clipped shortly. “I have to go to the plant. A meeting I forgot. We can do this some other time. Right now I have to—” He didn’t complete his sentence; his jaw clamped shut instead.

Amanda got slowly to her feet. They had barely begun their review. She needed much more detailed information. But it was evident that she wasn’t going to get it. Not right now, not after striking what was unmistakably a raw nerve. She shrugged. “Sure, Granddad. We can talk again later.”

“Good,” he said. Then he pivoted and walked stiffly from the room, leaving Amanda to stare after him in frustration.