Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (15 page)

Not surprising. “Why?”

“Because I love my daughter, and your dredging up the painful past can only hurt her.”

“She doesn't feel that way. Shouldn't the decision be hers to make?”

He sighed. “Judy has always been a . . . problematical child. It's small wonder, of course, considering what happened to her at the vulnerable age of ten. She overdramatizes, and tends to bring difficulties upon herself. First there was this business of reestablishing contact with her biological mother. For close to twenty-five years she visited her at Fronters—where Mrs. Benedict was moved in the sixties—whenever she could, and Mrs. Benedict filled her head with lies. Next came the nonsense of bringing the woman into her home. With that, it has gone far enough. I cannot . . . I
will
not allow this exhumation of a past that is better left buried.”

“Justice Stameroff,” I said, “Judy is forty-six years old.”

He frowned. “I know my daughter's age.”

“Then you must also know that she's an adult woman, capable of making her own decisions.”

“I'm afraid you don't understand the situation. Judy is a grown woman, yes, but in many respects she's like a child. A willful child who wants her way regardless of the consequences.”

“The consequences to whom?”

“To her, of course.”

“I'm not sure your main concern is for your daughter.”

“For whom else would it be?”

“Yourself.”

His eyes narrowed. “Explain that.”

“Justice Stameroff, I'm not at all convinced that Lis Benedict killed Cordy McKittridge. If I were to prove she didn't, it would reverse your victory in the case—a victory that put you on the road to the state supreme court.”

“I hardly think it would affect my tenure there.”

“Unless there was some sort of cover-up or collusion at the time of the trial.”

He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Not the old conspiracy theory again! Miss McCone, I thought better of you.”

“Leonard Eyestone laughed at the conspiracy theory, too. But something has made me wonder if it isn't true: in ‘fifty-six you were only a deputy D.A., fairly junior on the staff. Why were you chosen to prosecute Lis Benedict? It was a high-profile case; why not the D.A. himself?”

Stameroff spent a moment framing his answer. “The district attorney himself was in poor health; he'd already announced he wouldn't run for another term. The prosecutor's office was looking for someone who had potential as well as trial experience on crimes such as Lis Benedict's. I was the obvious choice.”

“Or perhaps you were the obvious choice because you were young and willing to compromise in order to further your ambitions.”

Stameroff's reaction was mild, considering what I'd accused him of. “If you believe that nonsense, then you're a fool.”

I didn't respond, merely looked into his eyes and waited.

“A fool,” he repeated. “Do you realize what you're risking by undertaking this ridiculous cause?”

“You tell me.”

“I
have
told you. My daughter's happiness, perhaps her emotional stability, is at stake.”

“And what else?”

“I'm sure this case will not enhance your career. Or your employers.”

“Ah, there it is. I knew it had to come down to this.”

“To what, Miss McCone?”

I got up, began to pace. “What would the first step be, Justice Stameroff? Costly but essentially harmless destruction, like the graffiti sprayed over the façade of Judy's house? Or an attempt to wear me down psychologically, like the anonymous phone calls that have been troubling Lis? And when those things didn't work, what next? Bodily harm?”

For a moment Stameroff seemed incapable of speech. “Would I do that to my own daughter? Only a monster would resort to such tactics, no matter how much he wanted to get that woman out of her house!”

“Then for your sake, I hope you haven't. But I suppose when it came to me, you wouldn't feel called upon to resort to such clandestine tactics. You're very highly placed, and you have friends in even higher places. A call to the right person . . . Of course, you couldn't exert pressure on All Souls; you tried with Jack Stuart, and it got you nowhere. You might attempt to influence the state board that licenses me, but you know what? To civil servants like them, there's something that smells very bad about illegal coercion for a man who's sworn to uphold the law.”

Slowly Stameroff rose from the chair—an old man with a failing body, but still a formidable adversary. “I will not tolerate any more of this kind of talk! I will not tolerate your meddling. You cannot fly in the faces of the people who count.”

The people who count
.

No phrase could have triggered more rage in me. I turned, faced him down. “Who are these people, Stameroff? Your friends? The ones at the top of the political power structure? The ones with enough money to buy whatever and whomever they please? Just who the hell are they, Stameroff?”

He compressed his lips, glanced around. It was obvious he wanted out of my house, but he also wanted to have the last word.

“Who are they?” I insisted. “Are the people who count the ones who know the truth about Cordy McKittridge's murder? Who know the truth and have good reason to fear it?”

Stameroff's tongue flicked over his lips. He busied his hands with adjusting the hang of his suit coat. Finally he said, “I will not dignify your questions with a response. Suffice it to say, this is your last warning. You will not be allowed to perpetrate this offense against justice. Justice was served thirty-six years ago when Lisbeth Benedict was sentenced to die in the gas chamber. My only regret is that I wasn't able to watch her strangle on cyanide. I will not allow justice to be further subverted—not at this late date! And certainly not by you.”

I looked directly into his eyes—eyes that now made me understand what the old westerners had meant when they spoke of the eyes of a hanging judge—and said, “That's the first time I've heard someone refer to righting a wrong as ‘subversive.'”

His mouth worked, and he clamped his lips together again. Then he turned on his heel and left the room. Moments later the front door slammed violently behind him.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on routine work in my home office, and the early evening digging out the remaining blackberry-vine roots from my backyard, while contemplating exactly how much trouble I'd gotten myself into. A good deal, I decided, but wasn't at all sorry. I was thoroughly sick of the Joseph Stameroff's of the world, who thought they could trample all over the rest of us. In attempting to intimidate me, Stameroff would find out some of us weren't so easily frightened.

Tough talk, McCone, I told myself. Not at all bad for one of those uppity enterprising young women. We'll see how brave you are when the pressure starts coming down.

With renewed frenzy, I resumed my attack on the blackberry roots.

By nine, when I was laying on the sofa listening to some CDs of big band music—a recent enthusiasm, brought on by a rereading of
The Last Convertible
—I had to conclude that any desire to drop the Benedict case was gone. Anger made me want to press on with it—and that in itself gave me caution. Very few things I'd ever undertaken in anger had turned out well. What I needed was advice—both legal and personal—as well as official sanction from All Souls. Hank could provide both; I'd call him tomorrow at the condo he and Anne-Marie had rented on Kauai.

And if he did give me the green light? I wondered, jiggling my foot to Glenn Miller's “American Patrol” and sending Allie flying from the sofa's arm. Investigate very discreetly and hope that Stameroff wouldn't catch wind of it? Or go full tilt and place myself and All Souls in ever greater jeopardy? Bad choice to be forced to make.

I didn't like either option any better by the time the CDs had cycled twice, so I gave up and went to bed.

At first I didn't know what the ringing was. I'd been dreaming at such a deep level that I couldn't hold the images long enough to identify them. I pushed myself up on one elbow, tossing my hair out of my face. The digital clock showed two-seventeen. The phone kept ringing. I grabbed the receiver, prepared to snarl at a drunk calling the wrong number.

Jack's voice—agitated, forming words I couldn't grasp.

“What? Say that again?”

“Come over here right away.”

“Why? Where?”

“Sharon, wake up! I already told you—Judy's house. Lis has been killed.”

There always are crowds when police cars and an ambulance arrive in a residential area, even at two-forty in the morning. The small one in front of Judy's house parted, at first I thought for me; then I realized they were bringing the body out, and I stepped back, looking away as the bag on the stretcher went past.

A uniformed patrolwoman guarded the door. I told her who I was; she spoke with someone else, then motioned me inside. Jack and Judy sat on the sofa in the little formal parlor I'd glimpsed that morning. She was rumpled and red-eyed; he wore running shoes that didn't match. She must have come home late, found Lis, and called and woken him.

With them was Bart Wallace, an inspector on the Homicide detail. A wiry black man with gray hair and silver-framed glasses. Wallace was one of the department's best detectives. I'd known and liked him for years, respected his abilities, and trusted his judgment. It was a relief to see he'd caught the call.

Wallace came forward and shook my hand. “Mr. Stuart says you may have some information that could be helpful to us.”

“I hope so.” I glanced at Jack, but his attention was focused on Judy. She sat still as stone, eyes on the floor in front of her. Jack had his arm around her shoulders, but she seemed barely aware of his presence, not at all aware of Wallace's or mine.

Bart noticed, too. He said softly, “We'll go back to the kitchen, where Ms. Benedict found her mother.”

I nodded and followed him into the hall. “When did she find her?” I whispered.

“Twelve-fifty, the call came in. She'd just returned on the redeye from New York.”

“And how did it happen?”

“Benedict was shot in the head. Looks like a contact shot: star-shaped wound, flaps outward, no blackening.”

“Someone she knew, then?”

“Maybe not. It was a forced entry. You been here before, know the layout?”

“Yes.”

“Sliding glass door to the backyard was broken. Signs of a struggle in the eating area—chair tipped over, coffee cup knocked off the table. Gun was beside her—thirty-two, belongs to the daughter. Says she bought it for protection.”

“So Lis Benedict was trying to scare off an intruder. He took the gun away from her and killed her.” It was a prime argument against untrained individuals having access to firearms.

“Looks like,” Wallace said.

Poor Lis, I thought. Alone here, frightened, helpless against someone younger and stronger. I remembered my leave-taking of her; I'd become irritated, told her to stop being a martyr. And I'd told her Jack would probably stop by later, but he hadn't wanted to.

I put my regret away for now and motioned at the kitchen. “Is it okay to go in?”

“Lab crew's finished.”

We entered the room where I'd talked with Lis that morning. The signs of a struggle, while not numerous, were readily apparent. The chair where she'd last sat had been knocked on its side. Her coffee cup lay shattered next to the chalk outline of her body. A fern had fallen from a stand near the glass door, was trampled and wilted. I looked at the door: jagged shards protruded from its frame, and smaller ones were scattered on the terra-cotta tile. On the table the coffee cup I'd drunk from was filmed with fingerprint powder.

“The prints on that are probably mine,” I said, pointing it out. “I came by around nine-thirty yesterday morning. Stayed maybe half an hour. Do you have a fix on the time of death?”

“Yeah. Neighbor to the right, Adele Skillman, heard the shot. About six-fifteen, she says. A little while later she heard somebody run down the path between the houses.”

Six-fifteen. I thought again of Lis, alone and helpless. Judy had been out of reach, unaware of the crippling depression into which the increasingly frequent anonymous phone calls had plagued her mother. And Jack? He might not even have bothered to call Lis, taking to heart what I'd said:
I find it hard to believe that someone who survived all those years in prison can't survive until Judy comes home tonight.

Well, she hadn't survived, had she? And perhaps my words to Jack made me, in some indirect way, partly responsible. Where had I been while Lis was dying? At home, obsessing about Joseph Stameroff and how I might have put myself and All Souls in jeopardy.

Stameroff, I thought now. Could Stameroff be involved in this? He hadn't made an outright denial when I suggested he might have arranged for the graffiti and phone calls. Could this have been a professional hit?

Wallace was watching me closely. “Something wrong?”

I wasn't ready to bring Justice Stameroff into the conversation yet, so I said, “Feeling guilty, I guess. She was my client, and I didn't like her much. When something like this happens to a person you don't care for, you feel guilty for a lot of irrational reasons.” I looked at the smashed door again. “Bart, this Adele Skillman—she heard the shot, but not the glass breaking?”

“Right.”

That bothered me. It had to do with something I'd learned during the seemingly endless years of renovating my house, but I couldn't quite grasp it. “So what did she do after she heard the shot and the person running?”

“Nothing. Didn't want to—”

“Get involved.”

“Yeah.”

We were silent for a moment. The Wallace said, “Tell me about your investigation. Stuart gave me the rough outlines, and of course, I know the victim's history. Now let's hear what you've got.”