A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (9 page)

She dropped her cane and made sure her feet were planted solidly before attempting to grab the cat. Just as she started to reach for it, the cat's ears flicked, the head spun to look over its shoulders, and then it hissed.

Helen followed the cat's gaze to see Nora Manning coming from the mansion's entrance. She wore designer jeans and a dark blue sweater with a gorgeous aquamarine silk scarf formed into a cowl. Helen might not like the woman, but her taste in scarves was exquisite.

"What are
you
doing here?" Nora said.

"I was just going to ask you the same thing." With Vic dead, there was no risk of him saying the wrong thing and needing a handler to fix it for him. Perhaps Nora hadn't been here for business but had a personal relationship with Vic. After all, no one had said exactly why Nora had shown up at the library event. Helen had just assumed it was on behalf of someone in the gaming industry, most likely the management of the new casino in Springfield, worried that its star player might embarrass them. She had always believed Nora had hit on Helen's ex-husband for purely professional reasons, but it was possible the woman was personally attracted to older men, or at least to their aura of power.

Nora tugged at the scarf, rearranging the already perfect folds. "
I
was invited. You weren't."

"Art asked me to help find…" Helen had to force herself to say the ridiculous name for an animal, "Broadway."

"Broadway? The famous one?" Nora unfolded her arms and hummed a few bars of the song, revealing a voice that was as lovely as the rest of her physical attributes. "You're about a hundred-fifty miles north of where you'll find the neon lights, if that's really what you're looking for."

"I prefer to stay out of the limelight. Broadway is the name of Vic's cat."

"He had a cat?"

"I'm surprised you didn't know about it." At least that resolved the question of whether Nora had been here for business or other reasons. Since Nora was unaware of the supposedly beloved pet, it was unlikely she had any kind of personal relationship with Vic. If they'd been friends or something more intimate, surely Vic would have mentioned the cat at some point, and Nora would have recognized its name.

Nora shrugged. "I'm not much of an animal person."

Helen wanted to delve deeper into what Nora was doing here at the mansion, but the lupus fog chose that moment to settle in more densely. She couldn't find
any
words, let alone the requisite cunning ones to get a straight answer out of a woman whose job it was to spin the truth.

Nora filled the awkward silence. "Vic's entire property is considered a crime scene. You should probably leave before the detectives find you here."

"Too late for that." A deep female voice said from behind Helen, startling her.

Helen turned to see a tall, solid-looking black woman in her late twenties. Her hair would have fallen to the bottom of her ears except that it was teased and gelled into a helmet shape that looked tougher than Kevlar. She wore a white blouse with a severe navy pants suit that looked brand new. 

"I'm—" The woman patted the left chest pocket of her jacket and then looked down, as if startled to find nothing but fabric there. She then pulled back the edge of the jacket to reveal a police detective's badge hanging from a narrow belt. "I'm Detective Almeida. And you are…?"

"Helen Binney. A friend of the victim." Maybe she could get some information out of this young officer. In the past, Helen had picked up quite a few clues from Detective Peterson, who had enough experience to know better but hadn't even realized what he was letting slip.

First, though, she needed to keep from being tossed off the grounds. Helen gestured back toward the purple Adirondack chair and the empty tuna can. "I was looking for Vic's missing cat, and I almost had it before you two showed up and scared it away."

Detective Almeida shrugged and said, "If it came home once, it will come home again. I'm sure you've done all you can."

"Art tells me that the cat needs daily medication, and he has to keep it healthy until he can hand it off to whomever ends up with it, or he'll be a quitter, and that's not like him." Helen knew, somewhere in the barely accessible depths of her brain, that she was rambling incoherently, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. For once, she was talking to a detective who at least appeared to be listening intently.

Helen's words just kept tumbling out. "It's a beautiful cat, and I'd hate to think something might happen to it. Judging from Art's anxiety, I wouldn't be surprised if the cat is actually his boss now. Vic didn't have any family, and he apparently doted on his pet. Probably left the entire estate to it."

When Helen finally wound down, Detective Almeida said. "Why don't I take your name and contact information so we can let you know if we could use your assistance once the scene is completely cleared?"

"That's not necessary," Helen said, opting to believe the offer was sincere and not, as she suspected, merely attempting to placate the annoying civilian. "Detective Peterson knows me and knows how to get in touch with me."

Almeida's dark, thick eyebrows rose. "You're known to the police?"

Nora's more delicate eyebrows rose even further, and her lips took on a gloating edge. "Circumstances really have changed for you since you left Boston."

"It's not what you're both thinking." Helen knew better than to mention the other bodies she'd been involved with. "I was here when Vic Rezendes's body was found."

"Have you already given your official statement to the lead detective?" Almeida asked.

"I talked to Peterson Sunday." He hadn't paid much attention to her, and she doubted anyone who worked with him would be any better. Still, she had to try to make sure they considered all the possibilities. "There's something else you should know, something I didn't realize before. While I was looking for the cat, I noticed that there's no fence along the side property line. Anyone could have gotten onto the property through the neighbor's yard without going through the security at the gate."

Detective Almeida withdrew an obviously new, leather-covered notepad from the back pocket of her pants. "I'll make sure someone is looking into that."

"There might be cameras on the side of the house," Helen added, hoping to get confirmation, but the officer only made a brief note in her pad before closing it and slipping it back into her pants pocket.

"That's good to know." Detective Almeida handed Helen a business card. "If you think of anything else, you can call and leave me a message."

Almeida's offer was only half sincere, Helen thought, but that was an improvement over Peterson's attitude. The new detective's number might come in handy, though, so Helen keyed the contact number into her phone before she could forget where she'd put the business card. It also served as a stalling tactic. As she punched in the numbers, she tried to figure out how to get permission to stay here at the mansion. Unfortunately, she couldn't remember exactly why it had been so important to come here today. All she knew was that there was something she needed to do here, and she hadn't done it yet. Something more than look for the cat.

She glanced around her, hoping some visual cue would jog her memory. Her cane was lying on the grass next to the chair with the empty tuna can. That could buy her a little time to let her brain kick back into gear. "I need to get my cane."

"Let me." Detective Almeida retrieved the cane before Helen could even take her first step. "And now, why don't I walk you to the gate? The lawn isn't as even as it looks. I wouldn't want you to fall."

Helen accepted the cane and the escort. Nora's smile had turned into full-fledged gloating over what she probably perceived as Helen's fall, not physically, but socially, from the heights of the governor's mansion to the depths of a perp walk. Nora would never understand that Helen had chosen to live in a quiet little place like Wharton, far from the centers of power and social climbing.

"I was just trying to help," Helen said. "It's too cold for a pampered pet to be outside."

"I'm sure it will figure that out and come home on its own," Detective Almeida said, implacably escorting Helen down the driveway.

Helen gave in for the moment and accepted the inevitable.

For once, she wished Peterson was the only detective on the case.
He
would never have caught her on the grounds, or if he had, she'd have been able to talk him into letting her stay.

*   *   *

"I hear you almost got arrested for trespassing," Tate said without looking up from the lamp stem he was staining. The space heater was on full-blast, which Tate only did when he needed the temperature high enough for the wood finishes to dry properly in the otherwise chilly space. He hadn't been in the studio when she'd returned from Vic's mansion for her lunch. She'd only noticed his car when she'd looked outside to see if Jay and Zee had arrived to drive her to a meeting with Terri Greene at the library, to see what could be done to salvage Saturday's fiasco.

"Your grapevine is almost as good as Betty's and Josie's." Helen should have known someone would rat her out to him. She couldn't do anything in this small town without being noticed, making her life even more public than when she'd been in the governor's mansion. Fortunately, she only had a few minutes to bear the brunt of the most recent lecture before Jay and Zee would arrive.

Tate set the lamp stem on a drying rack near the space heater. "Maybe I should have asked your friends if they have any idea of what the police theory is for Rezendes's murder. My sources are being uncharacteristically close-mouthed. I finally had to give up on the back channels and make it official that I'm representing Stevie. Now that the department knows she's represented by counsel, at least they won't try to talk to her without me present."

"I was wondering about that. Isn't representing a family member against the rules of being a lawyer? I remember one of my ex-husband's cronies got disbarred for sleeping with a client. They weren't married, but they were family for all intents and purposes."

"That's different." Tate picked up the next lamp stem. "It's all about the power dynamics. When a spouse or a cousin asks for legal advice, the lawyer is in the weaker position. If he refuses, he's being a jerk, and everyone in the family will be mad at him. In your example, where the attorney is asking for sex or even a date with a client, the lawyer has the power position. The client is dependent on the lawyer for the duration of the legal case and risks losing both her legal representation and possibly her case if she refuses the lawyer's advances. The ethics rules are intended to prevent that sort of unfair pressure on clients."

"Still, it has to be difficult to represent a family member in something as serious as murder charges."

"Like representing yourself in court, it's allowed, but not necessarily a good move," Tate said. "I'll step aside if Stevie's formally charged with a crime or if it even looks like that's going to happen. For now, though, I can make sure she isn't railroaded."

"Do they have any real evidence against her?"

"That's what I can't find out." Tate hid his emotions well, but there was a tightening around his eyes that signaled frustration. "All I know, and this was through so many levels of hearsay it wouldn't even be admissible in a kangaroo court, is that he died from a stab wound around 4 a.m. Not a standard knife, but something with a wider and thicker entry point, like a chisel."

"A contractor's tool, in other words."

Tate nodded.

"I'm guessing Stevie was home alone and asleep at the time of the murder," Helen said. "They can't hold her lack of alibi against her in these circumstances, can they? No one's likely to have much of an alibi at that hour."

"As far as I can tell, the police are focusing on the limited number of people who had access to the mansion. They know alibis won't make or break this case," Tate said. "Practically no one ever has a truly ironclad alibi anyway. The only one that's really solid is if the suspect was in jail at the time of the crime, and that can take a while to establish. Beyond that, a good prosecutor can undermine almost any claimed alibi by attacking the credibility of the alibi witness or finding a way to prove the crime occurred at a slightly different time when there is no alibi."

"So means and motive will be more important," Helen said.

"And Stevie has both. She's got a temper, she's strong, and she works with sharp tools all the time. And she was known to be irritated with Vic for harassing one of her crew members."

"She's not the only one who might have wanted to get rid of Vic, though. What about his heirs? Have the police found his will?"

"Not as far as I know," Tate said, "but for once Peterson is actually playing his cards close to his Kevlar vest, so maybe they do have it. If I knew what it said, I'd have some alternative suspects in case Stevie needs to establish reasonable doubt."

"Is it possible Vic might have left his entire estate to his pet? Whoever is named the cat's caretaker would have had a motive to kill Vic to get his hands on all that money."

"If that's why Vic was killed, someone's going to be mighty disappointed." Tate carried the second lamp stem over to the drying rack. "Massachusetts law doesn't allow the sort of really outrageous bequests to pets that sometimes make the news. If anyone contests the will, the court would reduce it to an amount that's reasonable for the animal's welfare. The larger the bequest, the more likely someone will fight it, so if Vic left all his money to a cat and he was as wealthy as he appeared, a will contest is almost a sure thing."