Lisa Scottoline - Running From The Law

“Never mind, I withdraw the question,” I said. “I have no further questions.”

I sat down and promised myself that someday I’d try to make a license plate out of cardboard and indelible markers. When I got a spare ten minutes.

After the preliminary hearing, we regrouped in Fiske’s study. It was large, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a rolling library ladder for reaching that emergency copy of Milton. Fiske kept the air-conditioning high so the first editions wouldn’t molder and grow mushrooms in the dim room. The only light came from two narrow, arched windows, crisscrossed with leaded glass. It was a nice effect if you liked Early Medieval, but since I came from the serfing class I’d always felt uncomfortable here. Especially today, since I was wondering if I was sitting in this drafty castle with a killer.

Despite my link to these players, I felt suspicious of them. Fiske, who’d been framed for murder-maybe. Kate, who drove an identical black Jaguar with an almost identical license plate, and who was furious at Patricia for suing her husband. And my own beloved, who had slept with Patricia and taken with him the only thing that would prove he knew her. Had Paul killed her? Could he? Could any of them?

It was almost impossible to believe. I had known them for years and never would have dreamed any of them capable of such brutality. And Paul, never. Still, I had lots of questions and no answers, and any lawyer would have been thinking the same way. So I set aside my personal feelings, put on a poker face, and watched the cards. In this case, the face cards, all of which were, not coincidentally, two-faced. I started play with a gutsy opening bet:

“I think someone is trying to frame Fiske for murder,” I said. “Any thoughts? Suspicions? Guesses?”

“Not a one. I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Fiske said. He sat at the head of a long table with six wooden chess games in various stages of play. Next to each chessboard was a stack of postcards. Fiske seemed to be looking at the closest chess game, albeit without much concentration.

“A judge without an enemy? Don’t you make an enemy in every case-the loser?”

“Not really. I’ve been on the bench for almost twenty years and I run my courtroom fairly. Civil litigants know that.”

“How about in the criminal cases, in sentencing cases? You sentence in the drug cases, don’t you? They’re federal.”

“The guideline cases, of course. We’re overwhelmed.”

“Has anybody you’ve sentenced gotten especially upset? Screamed at you, threatened you?”

He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. All the possibilities.”

“What about someone from the bar association or your old firm? No old grudges? Nobody on the district court?”

“My colleagues? Judges? No, no.” He fingered the White King, then set it back down. “It’s this motorcycle rider that concerns me.” He winced slightly and I knew he wasn’t thinking about Kf8 and Kc7.

“I agree. I’m going to see if I can find him.”

He looked up from the chess game. “How?”

“Investigate. I have some ideas.”

Kate edged forward on the arm of a club chair, a stubby cigarette smoldering between her fingers, a Waterford ashtray in her other hand. She had apparently started smoking again. “Do you really believe Fiske was framed, Rita? That this was an intentional act? It seems the unlikeliest option to me.”

“Why?” Fiske said to her. “How else would a Jag with my license plate appear in her driveway?”

She shrugged. “How indeed? I can think of lots of reasons short of someone actually trying to frame you, dear. Maybe Mrs. Mateer saw the license plate wrong. She simply could have misread it.”

“You don’t know Mrs. Mateer, do you, Kate?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“Besides,” Kate continued, “it was a great distance, and with the thunderstorm, everything was gray and dark. Maybe she read it incorrectly.”

“Mother, you can read a license plate in a thunderstorm,” Paul said. He stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the sun, and it was hard to see his face. “Yellow letters on a blue background, like the Pennsylvania plate? It’s easy to read.”

“Then maybe she remembered it wrong.” Kate blew a jet of smoke at the high ceiling. “How many times have you thought you remembered a number but didn’t? Gotten one letter wrong or two? I always get phone numbers mixed up.”

Fiske shook his head. “A mistake is more likely with a numbered plate, dear. Not a vanity plate.”

“Oh, you just never liked those vanity plates. You put up such a fuss.” She shaved her cigarette ash to a fragile cone on the thick edge of the ashtray.

I took a breath, then stated the obvious as tactfully as possible. “Kate, one letter wrong is your license plate. And of course it wasn’t you.”

Kate laughed abruptly, emitting a hiccup of smoke. “What are you saying, that-”

“Of course it wasn’t Kate’s car,” Fiske snapped.

Paul’s head swiveled in Fiske’s direction. I wished I could see his expression. “Rita wasn’t suggesting that it was Mom’s car, Dad.”

Of course I was. “Of course I wasn’t.”

“I confess I don’t have much in the way of an alibi,” Kate said, seemingly amused. “When I told the policeman I was gardening all afternoon, he looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.”

Fiske smiled. “He doesn’t know the time you spend on that damn garden. Or the money.” His tone was light, and if he suspected her, it didn’t show.

“That reminds me,” Kate said. “I did go to Waterloo Gardens that day, for a new hose. A soaker. I spent seventy-five dollars, but I didn’t save the receipt, nor can I remember which clerk helped me. Will I get off the hook anyway?”

I met Kate’s cool gaze through the screen of cigarette smoke. “Absolutely not. Anybody who spends that much money on a hose should be locked up. Go directly to jail and most certainly do not collect two hundred dollars.”

The three of them laughed, relieved, and it got us past my bad manners in calling the Queen a killer.

“It had better be a nice hose,” Fiske said. “A very nice hose.”

“The mother of all hoses,” Paul added.

Kate stubbed out her cigarette and set the ashtray on the tall end table. “Don’t blame me, fellas. You know you can’t get out of Waterloo for less than fifty dollars. I have to go back tomorrow to replace the geraniums the reporters trampled. Are they still out there?” she asked Paul.

He looked out the window. “The geraniums or the reporters?”

Kate smiled. “The reporters.”

“Of course.” Paul yanked at the curtain, but it was sewn open like in hotels. “The reporters will never leave and the geraniums will never come back.”

Kate shook her head. “The police traipse through the house, the reporters destroy the gardens. The telephone rings off the hook all the time, and we’re in every newspaper in town. When do we get our life back?”

Fiske glanced at her guiltily. “I’m sorry, dear. About all of this.”

“Oh, phoo,” she said, looking away. “It’s not your doing.”

I got up to go, and Paul stepped out of the sunlight and looked at me directly. His eyes looked slightly sunken behind his glasses; he hadn’t been sleeping well. “You going home?”

Home? So he still hadn’t told his parents. “No. I want to stop by the hospital. Then I’ve got some work to do.”

“Like what? Maybe I can help. I’ve been thinking about it, about different approaches you might take. Logical ways of investigating the crime.”

I picked up my handbag and briefcase, acutely aware that Fiske and Kate were watching this exchange. “I’ve got it under control, Paul.”