Death by Surprise Read online

  I couldn’t help Kenneth unless I knew more than I did now.

  “Megan, tell me exactly when you realized Kenneth was disturbed about something.”

  She frowned. “It was almost exactly a month ago. He was late coming home from the office and he isn’t often late. We were supposed to go to the charity auction at Ruisdael’s that night. Kenneth had forgotten and that was so unlike him. We went and he didn’t make an offer on anything. I made a bid finally on a weekend at La Jolla and Kenneth hardly had a word to say about it on the way home. Nothing was right after that evening. Kenneth would try hard to be happy, like we’ve always been, but then his face would look worried, distant. I didn’t ask him. I thought surely he would tell me soon. But he didn’t. Then I worried that it was another woman. It is so common, you know. So many people we know . . . but K.C., I can’t believe it, I don’t believe it. It wasn’t that he didn’t come home at night or didn’t,” she paused painfully, “make love to me. It wasn’t that at all. He seemed, really, to love me more, to be more intense. It was more as though he had a dreadful fear.” She pushed up from the couch and walked to the mantel to stare into the empty grate. “Then I was afraid, so afraid, that there was something terribly wrong physically. That he had cancer and he didn’t want to tell me.” She turned to look at me, her narrow chin high, “But Kenneth isn’t a coward. Oh K.C., I haven’t known what to think.”

  “I don’t know what it could be, either,” I said slowly.

  “There is something,” she said, her voice weary. “I’ve known it ever since the night at your mother’s. I asked him on the way home if Francine Boutelle had asked him for money. He looked straight ahead and kept on driving and then he said he didn’t want to talk about it, that I wasn’t to worry. I knew then that he didn’t want to tell me. I guess I was hurt. I didn’t mention it again. I started talking about the campaign, about how well the contributions were coming in . . . He reached out and took my hand and held it so hard. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t.”

  The Megans of this world don’t often cry. They don’t often ask for help, either.

  “K.C., please, tell me, whatever it is, if you know. I can’t help Kenneth if I don’t know what he’s fighting.”

  “I would tell you if I knew, Megan. All I can say for sure is that Francine Boutelle was a blackmailer. She tried to blackmail me and Priscilla. I’m certain of that. I think she had also threatened Grace and Travis and Edmond.”

  “The whole family?” Megan exclaimed.

  For the first time in hours, I smiled. “The whole damn marvelous family.”

  “Not just Kenneth,” Megan said eagerly.

  “No. Not just Kenneth.”

  “So Kenneth isn’t the only one with a motive, is he?” Megan demanded.

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. I looked at Megan with a new respect. Obviously, she didn’t care what it took to clear Kenneth, including jettisoning someone else in the family.

  “No,” I agreed, “Kenneth certainly isn’t the only one with a motive.”

  “Does that policeman know this?”

  “No. I doubt it. But let’s wait a while before we spread out all the family scandals for Farris.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know how serious Farris’s arrest of Kenneth will be. Maybe we can handle this without turning Farris out after the rest of us.”

  Megan looked at me sharply.

  “No,” and I was answering the unspoken question, “I won’t protect anyone else at Kenneth’s expense. I promise you that.”

  “All right, K.C., but if it comes down to it, I’ll tell the whole world everything I know if it will help Kenneth.”

  I understood that. I accepted it. And admired it.

  “But what are we going to do right now?” she asked urgently. “Kenneth’s in jail.”

  “Hire me. I’ll go down there now. They can’t refuse to let Kenneth see counsel. Later, if it comes to a trial, we can get somebody better than I am.” I wasn’t going on pride now. It might be Kenneth’s life and there were criminal lawyers in town who could do more than I could. “If it comes to it, we’ll get Jake Pinella. But, for right now, to get access to Kenneth, hire me.”

  A jail at one o’clock in the morning is a mournful place to be. The desk sergeant looked up from a copy of True Detective and watched me walk across the gritty concrete floor.

  “You have a prisoner. Brought in about an hour ago. Kenneth Carlisle. I’m his lawyer and I want to see him.”

  The sergeant sighed. “Middle of the night, lady.”

  “You ever heard of the Miranda decision?”

  “He’s probably asleep.”

  “Wake him up.”

  Finally, he checked his booking records and called upstairs. He yanked his thumb toward the elevators.

  “Third floor.”

  “Thanks.”

  The elevator smelled. I didn’t try to figure out what it smelled like. I doubted that Kenneth had ever in his life visited the jail. Maybe as a young lawyer he had been appointed to defend an indigent. Knowing Kenneth, I would imagine he had managed to evade that unpleasant little duty. The elevator and the cops would be new to him. Of course, when your life is dissolving around you, I don’t suppose it matters much whether the executioner wears a smile.

  The elevator moved grudgingly upward. The door opened ponderously and I stepped out into the narrow corridor that faced the cage. Thick wire mesh separated me from the cage where the booking sergeant sat. Behind him was the heavy steel door that opened into the cellblock. To his right was a wooden door that I knew gave onto rooms where counsel could interview prisoners.

  The booking sergeant was engrossed in a late-night flick. I knocked on the grillwork.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m Kenneth Carlisle’s lawyer.”

  “So?”

  The late-night charm of the cops overwhelmed me.

  “I want to see him.”

  “Jail opens at eight-thirty, a.m.”

  “That’s great, but I want to see Carlisle now. If you don’t bring him up, I’ll get Judge Margolis on the phone.”

  Judge Margolis is a winter-faced ascetic with exceedingly strong views on the proper treatment of prisoners.

  The sergeant worked the plug of tobacco in his mouth from one jaw to the other, spit a thick brown stream into a wastebasket, slowly stood, and came to the window.

  “Lemme see your stuff.”

  I handed him my purse and briefcase. He pawed through them, shoved them back. “Come on.”

  He unlocked the door that opened into the cage, motioned me through, and relocked it. I followed him to the wooden door. He opened it, said, “Number three,” and shut the door behind me.

  I walked into number three and turned on the light. Two straight chairs sat on opposite sides of a rickety wooden table. An ashtray sat on the table. Barred windows, a spittoon and an old-fashioned silver-painted radiator completed the furnishings.

  Kenneth came in and the door slammed behind him. He still wore his tuxedo. The bow tie was off and his shirt open at the throat. He looked disheveled, tired, and pale. He stood uncertainly just inside the door.

  “I didn’t call for you.”

  “I know, Kenneth. I heard you had been arrested and I went to your house. Megan hired me to represent you. She is frantic.”

  He winced. “Does she think—”

  “She doesn’t think you did it, Kenneth,” I said quickly. “She is desperate to try and help you. That’s why I’m here.” Hurriedly, I added, “I’m not trying to . . . if it comes to a trial, Kenneth, we’ll get Pinella. I know you would want the best.”

  Kenneth pushed a hand through his thick blond hair. “Trial? I hadn’t even thought that far. They’ve been asking me questions, hundreds of questions.”

  “You haven’t told them anything, have you?” I asked sharply. For God’s sake, he was a lawyer. Surely he had kept his mouth shut.

  “I haven’t told them a damn thing.
Not a damn thing,” he said grimly. His face crinkled in an odd frown, “K.C.,” he said simply, “I’m in a hell of a mess.” He looked at me uncertainly. “Are you sure you want to get involved?” He paused, then added awkwardly, “You and I haven’t . . . I mean, we went our separate ways a long time ago.”

  It was very quiet in the dingy little room, the quiet of late night, the quiet of isolation, the quiet of two people looking at each other, really looking, for the first time in years.

  “I know.” I looked at his tousled blond hair, at his weary face, and I didn’t see the immaculate arrogant Kenneth I had seen for so many years. I saw a shocked and frightened man. My cousin. I remembered, achingly, the way he used to smile, when we were young, before we grew up and took on the masks of Kenneth Carlisle, establishment lawyer, and K.C. Carlisle, people’s lawyer. I remembered his courtesy to Amanda and courtesy is just another form of love. I remembered the time he fought, grimly and not very well, an older heavier boy who was throwing rocks at the ducks on the lake one summer. Kenneth came out of it with a chipped front tooth and a black eye, not at all triumphant but utterly determined. I remembered the day he married Megan and the look in his eyes as he watched her walk down the aisle toward him.

  “I don’t think you killed anybody.” I said it gruffly because I was trying not to cry.

  “Thanks, K.C.,” he said quietly. “I didn’t. But nobody is going to believe me.” He shook his head wearily. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

  “Look, Kenneth, if we’re going to get you out of this, I’ve got to know what’s happened.”

  “Right.”

  We sat down at the wooden table. I lifted a yellow pad from my briefcase and laid it on the cigarette-burn-scarred surface.

  “First . . . is Megan okay?”

  “She’s upset,” I responded. It would do no good to tell Kenneth of the pain and shock in her eyes. “But Kenneth, she’s sure you didn’t do it.”

  “Did she say that?” His voice lifted and quickened and he looked years younger.

  “Of course.” I didn’t remember her exact words. I don’t know that she said it at all, but she didn’t have to say it, it was implicit in her every word and gesture. And I needed Kenneth pepped up.

  “Oh hey, that’s great. I was afraid . . . I was afraid she might think . . .”

  “She doesn’t think you killed Francine, but, Kenneth, she knows something was wrong. She said it started about a month ago.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Yeah.”

  “What was it, Kenneth? What did Francine know?”

  “That bitch,” he said softly.

  That kind of talk wouldn’t help him. It could make a bad situation worse, but he could say what he wanted to me and only to me. I was his lawyer and every word we exchanged was privileged.

  “She wanted money?”

  “Fifty thousand. I broke the trust to get it. I had to get the money without Megan knowing.”

  “You were going to pay up?”

  “Yeah.”

  I could hear the prosecution now: You were angry, weren’t you, Mr. Carlisle? You were going to have to pay this woman fifty thousand dollars. That made you mad, didn’t it, Mr. Carlisle? And even then you couldn’t be sure your secret was safe. You decided there was a better way to keep her quiet, didn’t you? You decided to make sure Francine Boutelle would never tell anyone . . .

  I shook my head, batting away the imagined diatribe. I knew the DA, Jack Kerry. I knew his deep powerful voice. He would attack and batter a defendant, all within legal bounds, until a jury could scarcely hear another voice.

  “What did Francine know, Kenneth?”

  His hands, powerful hands, and it was odd that I had never noticed their size or strength before, gripped the edge of the table.

  Powerful hands.

  “You won’t tell Megan?”

  “Kenneth, for God’s sake, whatever it is, we can’t hide it forever. Believe me, Farris won’t stop searching until he finds out.”

  He sagged tiredly in his chair. “If it all comes out, it’s going to be hell for Megan.”

  It was already hell for Megan, but I didn’t say that to Kenneth. It was odd, but apparently all that mattered to Kenneth was Megan and how his arrest affected her. He hadn’t said a word about his political campaign. Had he even thought of it yet? Thought of the devastating impact his arrest would have upon the race? I really liked Kenneth even more. His total concern was for Megan.

  And yet, a small whispery voice inside me wondered, was that all so wonderful? Wasn’t this concern really just an extension of Kenneth’s concern for himself because it was the loss of Megan’s love that he feared? I felt caught in a welter of confusion. Was it his love for Megan or his love for himself that motivated him?

  “I should have told Megan, told her years ago,” Kenneth said dully. “But I thought it was so far behind me, not a part of our world.”

  It was not a pretty story, but it had happened a million times, would happen a million times more. A teenage girl, a teenage boy, first love and then, shockingly, an unwanted pregnancy. I remembered the girl, Christy Nelson. She was Kenneth’s age, tall and willowy, a little silly, painfully middle class.

  Grace must have been appalled.

  Kenneth’s bitter words echoed my thought, “Your mother was furious, of course. You know how important it is to her to be . . . socially impeccable.” There was a world of disdain in his voice.

  That was odd, too, because he and Megan were so definitely socially impeccable.

  Grace said marriage was out of the question. My father agreed, though I would believe from a better motive.

  “I can see now,” he said painfully, “that it must have been pretty awful for Christy. Hell, we were just kids. The judge went to talk to her parents. He came back and told me that everything had been arranged, that Christy agreed that it was better that we not see each other again. Then they sent me off to Westover Academy to finish high school.”

  I remembered that. At the time, I had been puzzled, but what teenager really looks beyond himself? Kenneth went off to Westover, so what?

  Abruptly, Kenneth slammed his hand against the table. “Goddamnit, I didn’t know for years that she had the baby. I thought she was going to have an abortion. That’s the only thing I really fault your dad about. He should have told me about the baby.”

  I suppose Mother and Dad thought they were handling it for the best, protecting everyone as well as they could. They set Christy up in an apartment in LA, paid her bills, put her through business college after the baby was born. Christy seemed not to have expected more.

  “Christy was always easy to manage. She was cheerful, kind of silly, more interested in having a good time than in anything else.”

  He didn’t know he was a father until Francine came to see him, six weeks earlier.

  “I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was some kind of a put-up job. You know, the kind of thing that happens in political campaigns.”

  But Francine had the photocopy of the birth certificate. More tellingly, she had a picture of a ten-year-old girl named Kendra.

  “I knew it was true,” Kenneth said simply, “when I saw Kendra’s picture.”

  Francine wanted $50,000, or a copy of the certificate and the picture would go to Megan.

  “Why didn’t you tell Megan immediately?” I asked. “It happened years ago, long before you knew Megan, why should Megan have cared at all?”

  He looked at me unhappily. “Megan and I . . . a lot of people are jealous of us, you know. They think we have everything. That’s how it looks to outsiders.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the one thing we don’t have, can’t have . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Megan can’t have children.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long moment. Would it have mattered so much to Megan? Women are, after all, the ultimate realists. More than that, didn’t Kenneth see that he would someda
y have to tell Megan, that blackmail once begun would never end?

  “Kenneth, didn’t you see that you would someday have to tell Megan? With someone like Francine, how could you trust her not to come back for more?”

  My words trailed off. That would be the DA’s question. Are you trying to tell the jury, Mr. Carlisle, that you were so naive you thought you could pay off Miss Boutelle and forever buy her silence? Instead, didn’t you decide to make sure she would never tell anyone?

  Kenneth wasn’t listening to me. He was intent upon his own thoughts. “I had to pay Francine. I had to shut her up.” His hands once again gripped the table, such big powerful hands. “I couldn’t let Megan find out like that. To have a cheap bitch like Francine tell her, that would be the greatest insult of all.”

  I listened but I couldn’t force my eyes away from Kenneth’s hands. He looked down at them too and abruptly he let go of the table edge. Then he looked up at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  He knew. “It’s all right,” he said harshly, “you can relax. Francine wasn’t strangled by hands.”

  I looked at him, appalled. How could he know that?

  I must have stopped breathing for an instant.

  “Jesus, K.C.” he exclaimed, “don’t look at me like that.”

  “But Kenneth,” I asked huskily, “how do you know?”

  “It’s all right,” he said wearily, “I was going to tell you. I know how she died. I was there.”

  “You were there when she was killed?”

  “Oh God no, I didn’t mean that. No. I found her dead.”

  It had happened much as with me but with several differences. Critical differences. Differences that could convict Kenneth of murder.

  “I was supposed to bring the fifty thousand at seven o’clock. I left the office around six-thirty, I was too restless to sit there and wait. I drove around, down to the beach, then, finally, over to Francine’s apartment. I got there a little early. About five to seven.”

  His ring had not been answered or his knock. Kenneth almost said to hell with it, almost went home.

  “But I kept thinking, she’s probably just gone to run an errand. If I don’t give her the money, she’ll call Megan. I knocked again, hard and gave the knob a little twist. The door opened and I decided to go in and wait for her.”