Death by Surprise Page 2

  But there was Greg. He was just a little older than I. He was handsome, tough, and the most exciting person I had ever known. Greg was District Attorney when I had my first criminal case. My client, Tommy Wallace, was accused of holding up a convenience store. The clerk identified him. Greg had a reputation as a tough prosecutor on this kind of case. Too many hoods high on drugs had killed too many clerks along the Coast in recent years. But Tommy’s older sister believed he was innocent. She patiently placed ads in small town papers up and down the coast and talked the radio station into repeating free her query, “If you gave a ride on Highway 101 on the early morning hours of Aug. 14, 1978, from Laguna Beach to Santa Barbara to a young man with blond hair and a tattoo on his right arm, please come forward to prevent a miscarriage of justice.” Tommy had claimed he was hitchhiking during the hours the robbery was committed. A Robert Michaelson of Santa Barbara heard the plea and responded. The jury believed him so Tommy was acquitted. After the case was over, Greg spoke to me on the way out of the courtroom. “Congratulations, Counselor. I don’t run into many Perry Mason endings. How about a cup of coffee?”

  That was the beginning of a hectic friendship. Greg assumed that I remembered him. We had gone to the same high school. I didn’t, frankly. He had been from the wrong side of town, a poor boy who worked after school for money, not fun, and didn’t have the time to play sports. So the boys with money and time were on the football team. Like Kenneth.

  “Big deal,” Greg said once, bitterly. “Macho football player. Hell, I could take Carlisle with one hand.”

  “I suppose there is a lot of hand-to-hand combat on the House floor,” I responded drily.

  Greg glared, his eyes hot and angry. “He’s always had everything. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, K.C., his money isn’t going to buy this election for him.”

  Damn the election. Well, at least it would soon be over.

  The Beacon headline announced:

  CAMPAIGN TO CLIMAX WITH DEBATE

  The Beacon was sponsoring a debate between Greg and Kenneth a week from tonight in the high school auditorium. I glanced at my calendar. The debate would be on Halloween evening. I wondered if the voters would be amused. Trick or treat. But it wouldn’t be a laugh-filled program to me. It promised to be a harsh confrontation. Greg would want me there, prominently on his side.

  I sighed. I didn’t like to be pushed. And I was tired. Too tired tonight to sit around thinking about Greg and Kenneth and the Cochran-Carlisle Trust. Tomorrow. As Scarlett, one of life’s survivors, knew full well, you can handle anything . . . tomorrow.

  I began to restack the papers then stopped to listen. Yes, that was the rattle of the front door knob. The door was locked, of course, locked and the dead bolt shot home.

  The handle rattled again then a loud knock reverberated. I hesitated. The knock sounded again. I didn’t like the flutter of fear in my chest but I also don’t like the rape statistics in our fair coastal city. I reached down, opened the shallow right front-drawer and picked up the .22 pistol Greg had given me after the second break-in of the office. I tucked the gun in the waistband of my skirt, beneath my beige linen blazer, and walked out into the front office.

  Someone stood in the darkness beyond the front door. I felt terribly vulnerable. The plate glass storefront window and the plate glass of the door made too much glass altogether. Plate glass shatters like pop bottles. Maybe I should put up bars like the pawnshop next door. It would be like living in a cage, but safer, much safer.

  The door handle rattled.

  The little sigh of relief I gave when I saw my caller was a woman was immediately followed by a surge of irritation. I looked down at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Why on earth would anybody knock on a lawyer’s door at this hour of the night? But, of course, there were many possible reasons, somebody in jail, a battered wife, a DUI, or what the police delicately describe as a domestic disturbance.

  I slid back the bolt and opened the door.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to talk to you.” She said it crisply, her voice low, clear, and self-possessed.

  This wasn’t the usual late night emergency. This was something different, something totally out of the ordinary.

  I had a quick impulse to shut the door.

  “My office hours are nine to five weekdays and ten to two on Saturdays.”

  “It won’t wait.” There was a curious tone to her voice. A hint of threat?

  “Sure it can.” Antagonism flared between us. I started to close the door. She moved quickly, jamming her purse between the door and jamb.

  “Oh yes, Miss Carlisle, you will see me—if you value your family name.”

  It should have been funny, something out of a 1905 melodrama. Who, for God’s sake, talked in terms of family name anymore?

  It wasn’t funny.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s better.” The tone was soothing and as rude as a slap. “Let me in and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  I wanted to slam the door, but I wanted more to know who she was, what she was up to. A lawyer picks up some useful skills. If you take enough depositions, you learn a cardinal rule of interviewing—get them talking. It’s amazing how people will reveal themselves if you give them enough rope.

  “You’re sure you have the right person?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, Miss Carlisle.”

  I let her in, relocked the door, and led the way to my office.

  She was about my age and quite beautiful in a sleek, high-rise fashion. There are high-class hookers in LA who have her look, shiny and all-American, like Iowa cheerleaders, but with an overall gloss that is unmistakable. Her blond hair glistened like spun gold, her eyes were lake blue, and her profile quite perfect. The only odd note was in the look she gave me, intent, speculative, and hostile. Then she glanced around my office. She brushed past me to run her hand under the center drawer.

  “Hey . . .” I began.

  “Relax, Miss Carlisle. I’m just making sure you don’t trigger a little black recorder when your clients start to talk.”

  “I assure you,” I began stiffly.

  “Oh, come off it, honey. All the in people do it. But I guess you are just getting started.”

  The implication, of course, was that I was a square-toed rube, dewy-eyed and dumb.

  “You must,” I said softly, “keep charming company.”

  “Yes. Charming as hell.” She dropped onto the chair that faced my desk, fished a spiral notebook and a ballpoint out of her purse, and a pack of cigarettes. She began to open it. “Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

  She had the cigarette out as I replied, “Yes, I do.”

  She gave me a level look and dropped the package back into her purse. “My, aren’t we something. Rich, beautiful, and hygienic.”

  I folded my arms. “It’s late. The office is closed. What do you want?”

  She flipped open her notebook. “Okay, Miss Carlisle. Your father was Kenneth Calvin Carlisle IV. Right?”

  “Just a minute. You have an advantage over me. Who are you?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I thought you probably knew. I suppose the family grapevine hasn’t gotten to you yet. I’m Francine Boutelle and I’m writing a story about the Carlisle family. For Inside

  The family grapevine. If it existed, I wasn’t plugged in. I spent as little time as possible, quite frankly, dallying with my family. When Dad died, I felt cut adrift. I had not realized until then that it was he who meant family to me. The rest of them . . . but that was no business of Francine Boutelle’s so I just looked bland.

  “I shouldn’t think,” I said mildly, “that Inside Out would be interested in the Carlisles.”

  “Spoken like a true daughter of the rich. Honey, there’s nothing a magazine such as IO appreciates more than people like the Carlisles. You’ve been rich forever. You run La Luz. And there’s a lovely luscious hint of scandal popping out all over.”

  So she intended some k
ind of slimy article on us. Nothing that appeared in Inside Out would surprise me. It was a cheap magazine, pandering to the public’s lust for scurrilous exposes. It loved to parade as a crusading journal. One recent issue featured an article on private play days at public expense, i.e., a detailed description of a city manager’s hijinks at a government seminar in Las Vegas. He lost his job, his wife filed for divorce, and he was indicted for false travel expenses. As a citizen, I don’t like to be had, but it seemed to me he paid a pretty stiff penalty for one rousing weekend. But, as the magazine worried, Who Knew How Many Other Ill-gotten Gains There Had Been? Another issue focused on an LA banker’s wife with a weakness for quarterbacks (she liked to help them out to the tune of several hundred a month, poor boys), and the NCAA was now in the midst of a full-blown investigation that threatened to balloon into an all-out recruiting scandal with the resulting sanctions sure to ruin some coaching careers and cripple the University team for several seasons.

  I wondered how Ms. Boutelle thought she could find enough juicy tidbits to make the Carlisles competitive? There was always Uncle Bobby, of course, Kenneth’s father. But Uncle Bobby was dead and it couldn’t be too exciting to go after him.

  “Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “You were very close to your father, Judge Carlisle.”

  I frowned. Inside Out didn’t spend much time exploring civic virtue. By no means. It concentrated on frailty, fraud, and deceit.

  Of all the Carlisles, past or present, my father had been the finest. He was honorable, decent, fair.

  “What about my father?”

  “I want to get your view of him, as a man and a judge. It makes a story more real to the reader when you can include intimate details. You know the kind of thing, the day I turned sixteen and what my father said to me, that kind of thing.”

  “I admired my father very much,” I said slowly. “He was an honorable man.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Now that’s interesting, that really is. So he had you fooled, too.”

  For a moment, I really couldn’t believe what I had heard. Then I was furious. I was so angry I could scarcely see. When I could trust myself to speak, I said harshly, “Get out of here. Now.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said quickly, “I can tell we have a lot to talk about. I want . . .”

  I stood. “Get out.”

  She looked down at her notebook and began to write furiously.

  I reached out to the telephone. “Get out now or I’m going to call the police.”

  She ignored me, wrote for a moment longer, then snapped shut the notebook. “Okay, Miss Carlisle. I’ll be on my way. But we could have a very interesting chat. About the Levy case.”

  The Levy case. I remembered it, of course. You don’t forget the cases that touch people you know. Dad had been criticized because he didn’t disqualify himself, but he was no great friend of the Levy family. He knew them. In a small town, the rich all know each other, but there was no intimacy so Dad sat and heard the evidence accusing Adolphus Levy of fraud and stock misrepresentation. Ultimately, Dad accepted a negotiated plea and sentenced Levy to a year in prison. Dad then suspended the sentence, citing Levy’s heretofore unblemished record and the court’s feeling that the misrepresentation had been primarily a matter of poor judgment, not malicious intent.

  It was the kind of case that could have gone either way. Another judge could have looked at the same evidence, seen no mitigating circumstances, and assessed the maximum penalty, ten years in prison.

  But Adolphus Levy had a good reputation and even the Beacon, with all the bad blood between the Nichols and the Carlisles, had commended Dad for the sentence in a short, stiffly written editorial.

  “The Levy case has been around for a long time,” I said wearily. “It’s a dead horse.”

  “I’ve done a lot of research on the Levy case, honey, and I’ve got the goods. It isn’t just a matter of judicial propriety, either. No, ma’am. It’s fifty thousand bucks in a bag.”

  “Nonsense,” I said sharply. My perspective righted. This girl with the beautiful face and vulgar speech seemed absurd now. Perhaps Dad could have been criticized for his decision, but he couldn’t have been bribed. Never. Not in a million years.

  “Not nonsense,” she said softly. “The bag man was Sonia Levy’s nephew, Albert Gersten, and he delivered the money to the Carlisle lake front home on Thanksgiving night, 1975.”

  “No.”

  She shrugged. “I’m really sorry, honey, but it’s true. I know all about it. Albert Gersten’s ex-wife told me and I’ve got it on tape.”

  For the first time, a little sliver of fear touched me like early frost on a windowpane. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. I would never believe it.

  Her dark blue eyes watched me avidly.

  “I don’t care if you’ve taped the archangel Gabriel. It isn’t true.”

  “Oh yes, it is. I even have the serial numbers of the bills.”

  I felt angry again. How tawdry. How demeaning to Dad. “Look, Ms. Boutelle, I don’t care what you have. I’ll never believe my father was a crook. So let’s call it a night.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to hear the tape? See what kind of proof I have?”

  For the first time, it occurred to me that, cheap magazine or not, this wasn’t quite the obvious course for an interview. Of course, I was tired, but still, it shouldn’t have taken me so long to tumble.

  “Why should I care about your sources?” I asked slowly. “I’ve told you it can’t be true. I suppose my father had enemies. All judges make enemies and some of them might be willing to say anything, now that he is dead and can’t answer. But you won’t convince me, no matter who you quote.”

  She forced a smile, tried to look ingratiating. But her eyes were still cold and avid.

  “Look, Miss Carlisle, I’m always open to persuasion. I want to give both sides.”

  “There aren’t two sides. My father wasn’t a crook.”

  She gave a little sigh. “It’s so hard, especially for a free-lance writer. You get started on an article and it turns out to have all kinds of ramifications. And, of course, you don’t get paid a penny until you turn in the completed manuscript. It’s expensive, doing so much research. Really, you wouldn’t believe how much it costs.”

  I leaned back in my chair. Now my eyes must have been as cold as hers.

  “How much?”

  She ignored the bald question.

  “If you want to help finance my research,” she began.

  “How much?”

  “It would all depend, of course. Any substantial aid would give you some kind of rights in deciding what would be printed.”

  “Sure. How much?”

  “About $50,000.”

  I doodled across the top of my legal pad, making fat round zeroes in a sturdy line.

  “Even with inflation, that’s quite a bit for a blackmailer.”

  “Blackmail.” Her voice oozed shock. “You’ve misunderstood me, Miss Carlisle. We are talking . . . oh, more along the lines of an investment.”

  “An investment?”

  “Yes. An investment in the future of your family’s good name.”

  “I see.” I pulled open my desk drawer, dropped my pen in it. “This has all been very interesting, Ms. Boutelle, but you’ve called on the wrong Carlisle. To begin with, I’m not worried about my family name. Moreover, I don’t have $50,000 so this is quite an academic discussion.”

  “But you will have.”

  I looked at her sharply.

  She said it quickly, confidently. I could see the edge of the cream-colored envelope from Kenneth in my ‘in’ box.

  “I will? What do you know about my finances that I don’t, Ms. Boutelle?”

  “The trust,” she snapped impatiently. “You’ll have all the money in the world when the trust is dissolved.” She breathed it with lingering delight. “I could have asked for a lot more.”

  Get them talking. It always r
eveals more than they know. Sure, she could have asked for more. And she would. If anybody ever paid her once, she would see it as a gold-plated source of income, continuing income. But colder than that came the realization that she must indeed know a very great deal about the Carlisles. I had not known the trust might be dissolved until this evening. How had Francine Boutelle known?

  “You seem to know a great deal about my family,” I observed.

  “Oh, I do,” she said with great satisfaction. “Yes, I do. Lots, Miss Carlisle. About you and your father and your cousin Kenneth and his father and about Priscilla and your brothers, Edmond and Travis.”

  I laughed. A tired laugh but a real one. “You know more than I or anybody else would ever care to know, Ms. Boutelle. Now, it’s been interesting talking to you, but, as I said earlier, I’m tired. More than that, I’m bored with it. As far as I’m concerned, you can write until your fingers turn to bloody stumps and I won’t read what you’ve written or care.”

  “Not even if it’s about your mother?”

  My mother. The paragon of virtue. The exemplar of noblesse oblige.

  “If you have something on Grace,” I said drily, “you’re quite clever.”

  I pushed back my chair and stood, obviously waiting for her to leave. She gave it one last shot.