Phillip Margolin - Sleeping Beauty

“But you didn’t see him at the boathouse?”

“No. He was probably hiding inside and got away when I chased you.”

“What really happened in there?”

“When I came in, Casey was kneeling over Terri. The knife was on the floor next to her. She grabbed it and jumped up. Then she screamed ‘Murderer,’ and ran at me. She looked terrified. She thought that I had killed Terri. She tried to stab me. It happened so fast that I didn’t think. I hit her on the jaw. She flew back and cracked her head on that oak column. The sound was sickening. I knew she was badly hurt as soon as I heard it. I was going to check on her when it dawned on me that Terri’s killer might still be in the boathouse. There hadn’t been that much time between hearing the second scream and my entering, and I hadn’t seen anyone go out the front door. Casey dropped the knife when I hit her. I picked it up for protection. A second later, I saw you at the window. I wanted to tell you that I was innocent but you took off before I could get close enough to say anything.” He looked away. “When it dawned on me that you’d tell the police that I killed Terri and attacked Casey I panicked and ran.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone what happened, later?”

“Who would believe me after you told the police what you saw and I took off?”

Ashley smiled confidently. “I do, Mr. Maxfield, and I’m going to make other people believe you. I know who killed my parents.”

It takes forty-five minutes to drive from Salem to Portland, and Ashley was thinking all the way. Joshua Maxfield had filled in most of the blanks, but one question still nagged at her. By the time she left the freeway, she thought she knew how to answer it.

Jerry was waiting for her in a dark booth in the rear of Huber’s, where they had arranged to meet for a late lunch.

“Well?” he asked as soon as she sat down.

“He didn’t kill them,” Ashley answered, “and I know who did.”

Ashley spent the rest of their lunch explaining her theory to Jerry. He played devil’s advocate, but she beat back all his arguments. When she had finished her presentation, Jerry sat back and thought. She watched him expectantly. Finally, he shook his head.

“My God, Ashley, I think you’re right.”

Ashley let out a pent-up breath. She had worried that Jerry would not agree with her or that he would find some flaw in her reasoning. It meant so much that he was on her side.

“One thing bothers me, though,” Jerry continued. “If you’re right, the murders in your house weren’t random. How did he know that you’re Casey’s daughter? That didn’t become common knowledge until the guardianship hearing.”

The question seemed to bother Ashley.

“Remember when we were in court for the hearing, the week I came back to Portland?”

“Sure.”

“You wanted to get the file on my adoption from the firm that represented Henry Van Meter. What happened?”

“Monte Jefferson couldn’t find it.”

“Why?”

“He thought it had been misfiled or thrown away by mistake. It’s over twenty years old. It happens.”

“What if the file wasn’t lost? What if it was stolen?”

The import of her question suddenly struck Jerry and he turned pale as he realized why Ashley was so upset. Jerry’s face crumpled.

“Once he found your file he had the names of everyone who knew that you were Casey’s daughter, including my father’s name.”

Ashley reached across the table and held Jerry’s hands. “He won’t get away with it. We’ll get him. He’ll pay. But we need proof. So, tell me, where did they store my file?”

Elite Storage owned a 186,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial park in North Portland. Wide, metal overhead doors opened onto loading docks at set intervals around the building. Jerry and Ashley drove past several moving trucks parked at the loading bays. The office was located in the northeast corner of the warehouse. A balding, middle-aged man in a plaid shirt and khakis was doing paperwork when Ashley and Jerry walked in. A sign on his desk identified him as Raymond Wehrman.

“Help you?” he asked.

“I’m Jerry Philips, Mr. Wehrman. My dad was Ken Philips. You store our old law office files.”

“If you say so. We handle about seventy percent of the law offices in town.”

“I’m not surprised that the name doesn’t ring bells. My dad passed away and I’m a one-man outfit now. But you store Brucher, Platt and Heinecken’s files, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a big firm. I recognize that name.”

“This is Ashley Spencer. The Brucher firm handled her adoption twenty-four years ago. I’ve been representing her in a probate matter and we needed to see the file.” Jerry handed the man the document Judge Gish had signed ordering Miles’s attorney to hand over Ashley’s file. After Wehrman read the order he looked up. “Why are you here? Doesn’t the firm’s lawyer have to give you the file?”

“Yes, but he told us that the file is missing.”

“From our warehouse?”

“Yes. We were wondering if you could try to find it. It’s very important.”

“Even if it’s there, I can’t give it to you. I can only give it to a lawyer from the Brucher firm.”

“That’s okay,” Ashley said. “We just want to know if it’s here.”

The man checked his watch then looked at the piles of paper that covered his desk. He stood up.

“Let’s go see what I can find. I’ve been sitting behind this desk all day and I can use a break.”

Wehrman led Jerry and Ashley down endless rows of twelve-foot-high shelves illuminated by overhead fluorescent lighting until they arrived at the shelves rented by the Brucher firm. Wehrman pulled over a ladder and climbed up to the shelf that should have held the file with the record of Ashley’s adoption. After several minutes, he slid the ladder to another section. Finally, he gave up and climbed down.

“It’s not here,” Wehrman said.

“What does that mean?” Jerry asked.

He shrugged. “Any number of things. The file could still be at the law office. You know, they thought they sent it over but the problem happened at the firm. Or we could have misfiled it, which doesn’t happen much, but does happen every so often. Or someone could have checked it out and forgotten to return it.”

“If someone did take it out of the warehouse would there be a record?” Ashley asked.

“Yeah, we have everything on computer now, even the old stuff. Cost us a fortune.”

Back in his office, Wehrman typed in Brucher, Platt and Heinecken. Then he typed in the title of the file.

“Says here we received the file seven years ago.” He hit more keys. “That’s funny.”

“What is?” Ashley asked.

“The file was never checked out. It should still be here.”

“If I gave you a year and a name, could you find out if the person checked out a file in that year?”

“Sure. I’ll just run a search.”

Ashley told Wehrman the year Ken Philips, her father, Terri, and Tanya Jones were murdered and gave him a name. A short time later, Wehrman had her answer.

“Miles Van Meter checked out a file that year but it wasn’t yours.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” Ashley said.

Miles had been speaking for almost an hour when Jill Lane, the owner of Murder for Fun, came to the podium to rescue him.

“We have time for one or two more questions. Then Mr. Van Meter will sign your books.”

A middle-aged man in the front row raised his hand. Miles pointed at him.

“Mr. Van Meter, I went online and found the itinerary for your first Sleeping Beauty book tour. Did you know that there were unsolved murders like the Maxfield murders in two of the cities on your tour, Cleveland, Ohio, and Ames, Iowa?”