John Lescroart - The Motive

"Ruth Guthrie."

"And actually, I was hoping to talk to somebody about Missy D'Amiens."

She was squinting at him. "You're really Jewish?"

"Baruch atah Adonai.. he said. Glitsky had had his bar mitzvah many years before, and he attended synagogue with his father several times a year, the High Holy Days. He could still spout liturgical Hebrew when the occasion demanded. His scarred and weathered face worked its way to a smile.

"Well, come in then out of this soup," Mrs. Guth-rie said. "Can I get you something warm? Some coffee, maybe, tea?"

"Tea sounds good, thank you."

"Go in. Sit, sit. I'm right behind you."

Taking a seat in one of the slipcovered chairs in the living room, he heard her running water in the kitchen, then the "click click click" of the gas starter on the stove. In less than a minute she appeared with empty cups and saucers, sugar and cream, and some cookies on a tray. "When the kettle whistles, you'll excuse me." She sat down.

"So you own this place?" he asked.

"Since 1970, if you can believe. My Nat bought it as an investment."

"Nat," Glitsky said. "My father's name is Nat, too."

She pointed at him. "Now you are teasing me."

He held up his right hand. "I swear to you."

After a second or two, she decided to believe him. She sat back on the couch. "All right, Abraham son of Nathaniel, how can I help you?"

It didn't take him three minutes to acquaint her with where he was. This wasn't really official. She might have even seen something about the case in the newspapers over the past months, but there were some other issues about Paul Hanover's estate that related to Missy D'Amiens. Unfortunately, all efforts to contact her next of kin had been in vain.

"I know. Some of your police colleagues came and asked me about that right after it happened. But I didn't know anybody else who knew her."

"When she moved in here, did she fill out any paperwork?"

"Sure. Nat always said trust everybody, but make sure they sign the papers."

"So she had references?"

Mrs. Guthrie gave a sad little laugh. "For all the good." "What do you mean?"

"Well, they were all in French. She read them to me in English, translated, but you know, she could just as well have made them all up. What am I going to do, call and check references? Anyway, Nat was gone and she seemed nice and she had the money. Ahh, there's the whistle."

She went again to the kitchen. Glitsky got up and followed her. "So she had a job?"

"Yes. Where was it now?" She poured the water into a kettle. "Lipton okay?"

"Fine," he said. "Her job?"

"Just a minute. It's coming." She turned and led him back to the living room. "Ah ha! Here it is," she exclaimed. "What's the name of that place? Arrgh. Ah. Beds and Linens and Things, something like that. You know the one. Almost downtown."

Glitsky did know it. It was a huge warehouse store for household goods, with perhaps hundreds of employees. Glitsky, thinking that this would be the next step in this trail, found himself asking if she paid her rent with checks.

Mrs. Guthrie thought, sipped tea, and said yes. "You wouldn't have kept any of the stubs, would you? She might have had something left in the bank when she died."

She nodded. "Another thing Nat said. You don't throw it away. You store it. God bless him, he was right. Those tax bastards. But wait, it was just last year, right? Her folder would still be right here, in my files."

In the courtroom, Cuneo was still on the stand as Rosen's witness. The fireworks from his earlier testimony were mere prologue. They hadn't even gotten to any of the evidence. But after another recess, that was about to change.

"Inspector Cuneo, were you specifically looking for something when you made your search of the defendant's home?"

"Of course. You can't get a warrant without a list of specific items you're looking for." Cuneo and the jury were already on familiar terms. Now, the helpful instructor, he turned to face the panel. "The list of items you're looking for, it's part of the search warrant."

"Okay," Rosen said, "and what did you list on the warrant for your first search?"

"The clothes she'd been wearing on the night of the fire."

"And you found such clothing?"

"Yes. In the closet and also the hamper in the master bedroom. The tennis shoes she'd been wearing, along with the pants and the blue shirt."

Rosen had the clothing in the courtroom, separated into three plastic bags. After Cuneo had identified each of them, Rosen had them entered as the next People's Exhibits after the gun, the casings, one of the bullet slugs they'd recovered-they'd now gotten to numbers 5, 6 and 7. Then he came back to his witness. "And what did you do with these items?"

"Delivered them to the police lab to look for gunshot residue, bloodstains or gasoline."

"And was the lab successful in this search?"

"Partially," Cuneo said. "There were traces of gasoline on the pants and the shoes."

"Gasoline. Thank you." Rosen didn't pause, but walked back to his table, picked up a small book and crossed back to the witness box.

Hardy knew what was coming next-the diary. He really hated anew Catherine's insistence that Heather be excused from testifying. It might have caused her some temporary pain, true, but on the other hand, Hardy could have made Rosen look especially heartless and perhaps even nasty, forcing the poor girl to testify against her own mother. Jury sympathy for Catherine and her daughter would have flowed.

But there was nothing for all that now. It was going to play out. "Sergeant," Rosen continued in a neutral tone. "Do you recognize this item?"

Cuneo examined it briefly, flipped it open, closed it back up. "I do."

"And would you please tell the jury what it is?"

"Sure. This is Heather Hanover's diary. Heather is the defendant's youngest daughter."

While Rosen had the diary marked as People's 8, the gallery came sharply alive with the realization that this was the defendant's own daughter's diary. Part of the people's case?

"Inspector," Rosen asked, "when did you first see this diary?"

"The Monday after the fire. I was by now considering the defendant my chief suspect, and I obtained a second search warrant for documents in her house."

"What kind of documents?"

"I wanted to look at her financial records especially, but also downloads on the computers, telephone bills, credit card receipts, even Post-its with shopping lists. Anything written, which of course included diaries like this one, that could verify or refute her alibi for the day of the murders. The defendant had said her children were away. We wanted to check records to substantiate that."

"And what did you learn from this diary? Heather's diary?"

Cuneo turned his head slightly and brought his testimony directly to the jury. "Heather unexpectedly decided to come home after school and was home all that afternoon and night."

"And what had the defendant told you?"

"She told me that she came home after her afternoon talk with Paul Hanover and had stayed there all night until she'd seen the news of the fire on television."

"Inspector," Rosen said, "would you please read from the relevant portion of Heather Hanover's diary on the day that her grandfather was killed?"

Hardy stole a rapid glance at the jury. Every person on it seemed to be sitting forward in anticipation. As he'd known it would be, this was a damning moment for his defense; and doubly so now that he had just ascertained to his own satisfaction that Will Hanover had in fact been having an affair with his secretary. If he could at least demonstrate the truth of that assertion, it might lend credence to Catherine's actions on the night of the fire, even if she had originally lied about them. As it was, though, he only had Catherine's lie, no corroboration of the affair, and her own daughter's handwritten refutation.