Authors: Jessica Fletcher
A Deadly Judgment (14 page)
“Can’t really tell that yet, Mrs. Fletcher. Could have been either way.”
“Was anything missing from the house?”
“Not that we can tell.”
“What about her family?”
“Her mother flew in from Ohio. Father’s dead. We can’t release the body until the autopsy is completed.”
“Do you think it was someone she knew, or a stranger?”
“Now
that
I can answer. Judging from the look of the living room, my bet would be on someone she knew, probably knew real well.”
that
I can answer. Judging from the look of the living room, my bet would be on someone she knew, probably knew real well.”
“A boyfriend?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think that whomever murdered her is from the Cape, and might still be here?”
“I have no idea,” said McPartland. “I suppose the attorneys for Mr. Brannigan are pretty upset over this.”
He obviously hadn’t read that morning’s paper, in which Malcolm was crowing about how he’d won the case. I said, “Yes, they are. That’s one of the reasons I’m here, Chief McPartland. ”As you know, I’m part of Mr. Brannigan’s defense team.”
“So I read, and see on Court TV.”
“You’re very gracious, Chief, allowing me in here this morning, and answering my questions.”
“My pleasure. You ought to set one of your books down here on the Cape. We’ve had a few juicy murders.”
“I’m sure you have. Chief McPartland, would it be possible for me to visit Ms. Warren’s house again?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was very touched being there when the body was discovered. It’s such a beautiful house, so welcoming, hardly a setting for murder.”
He said nothing.
“Could I? Go there again? Just for a few minutes?”
“I see no problem with that, Mrs. Fletcher. But I’ll have to accompany you. It’s still an off-limits crime scene.”
“Of course.”
We walked outside to where Cathie and her Town Car were waiting. “She’s my driver,” I said.
“Afraid she can’t come with you,” he said. “Into the house.”
“Of course not. But she can follow us there and wait outside, can’t she?”
“That would be fine.”
Cynthia’s house looked even more lovely than I remembered. But there were the yellow plastic CRIME SCENE tapes draped around the house that shrouded it in death’s shadow.
How unfair, I thought, that an innocent young woman would no longer reap the benefits of the work she’d put into her home.
“Mrs. Fletcher, are you all right?” asked McPartland.
“Yes, I’m fine. Just saddened by her death, that’s all.”
“Did you know Ms. Warren?” he asked.
“No. Did you?”
“Saw her around. Here and there. She was a knockout. Knew her boyfriend better. He spent a lot of time down here, mostly with her. Had a run-in with him once. She called police to the house, domestic stuff. Never arrested him, though I thought she should have pressed charges.”
“I wasn’t aware of this. Was it ever in the newspapers? Have the lawyers for the prosecution looked into it?”
“Nope. Ms. Warren wouldn’t file a complaint. Just wanted us to calm him down, which we did.”
“May we go inside?”
“That’s what we’re here for.”
We started up the steps to the porch, but Cathie’s voice stopped us. “Mrs. Fletcher, a call for you.”
I went to the car and took the cellular phone from her. “Jessica Fletcher here.”
“Jessica, it’s Georgia.”
“Yes, Georgia?”
“I think you’d better get back right away.”
“Why?”
“Juror Number Seven is gone.”
“Gone? How? Why?”
“Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. Run over.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I returned to where McPartland stood. “Chief, something has come up. I have to return to Boston immediately.”
“Thought you wanted to see the inside of the house.”
“Oh, I do. A raincheck?”
“Anytime, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“You’ve been very kind.” We shook hands. “Thank you.”
“Pleasure’s all mine. Hurry back.”
“A problem?” Cathie asked as we headed for the bridge.
“A big one. One of the jurors has died.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Yes, it is. Run over, I was told.”
“I don’t wonder, the way people drive in Boston. We’re kind of notorious for bad driving.”
“I’ll never question that again,” I said.
Chapter Fifteen
I called Malcolm on the limo’s cell phone on the way back to Boston and was surprised to find him in his office.
“Why aren’t you in court?” I asked.
“Judge Wilson canceled today’s session. Says he has to spend the day deciding whether to revoke Billy’s bail. You heard?”
“About Ms. Montrone? Juror Number Seven? Yes. Georgia called. How horrible. Georgia said she was run over.”
“That’s right, Jessica. Hit-and-run, right in front of her house.”
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“Last night. About midnight. Where are you now?”
“In the car heading back from the Cape.”
“Sorry your day off was ruined.”
“It really wasn’t a day off, Malcolm. I hooked up with the police chief, McPartland. He took me to Cynthia Warren’s house. I was about to go in when—”
“Why did you go there?”
“Simple curiosity. That’s all. I should be at your office in an hour. Will you be there?”
“Yes.”
I heard the click of the phone being lowered into its cradle. Malcolm was obviously upset, and who could blame him? His client might end up having his bail revoked, and we’d lost one of our handpicked jurors. Of course, one of the six alternates would replace Juror Number Seven, and we’d passed favorably on them, too. But you never knew. I’d learned from Jill Farkas that once a trial gets underway, jurors tend to bond into a somewhat cohesive unit, making it easier to reach a unanimous decision. Injecting a new person into the mix could be, according to our high-priced jury consultant, disruptive, no matter who that new person was.
I mentally went over the profiles of the six alternates. If I had the choice to make of who to replace Juror Number Seven, it would have been Thomas McEnroe, our pottery maker. But that choice wasn’t mine to make, nor anyone else’s on either side. Judge Wilson would pick a number out of a hat, so to speak, and the alternate juror bearing that number would replace Juror Number Seven.
When I reached Malcolm’s office, everyone was there except Rachel Cohen, who’d taken advantage of the unexpected day off to catch up on things at home. Malcolm had ordered in enough Italian food to feed us and everyone else in the building. It covered the conference table; the aroma of garlic competed with the sour smell of Malcolm’s cigars, which were piling up in a foot-wide ashtray.
I passed on the food. The last thing on my mind was lasagna and spaghetti with white clam sauce.
In contrast to the festive food on the conference table, the mood was distinctly somber. Everyone, including Linda, the receptionist, was busy reading documents of one sort or another. Jill Farkas sat hunched over her laptop computer in a comer of the large office. I’d no sooner arrived and greeted everyone when she picked up a sheet of paper that had inched out of the ink-jet printer, scrutinized it for a moment, and handed it to Malcolm. He frowned as he read it, then passed it to me.
It was a printout of a computer analysis she’d run on the twelve jurors, including Juror Number Seven. In the analyses, Jill had come up with an evaluation of how each of the twelve jurors had been leaning, based upon her observations. The one juror she identified as being most likely to acquit Billy Brannigan was the dead housewife, Juror Number Seven.
“I agree completely,” I said, handing the paper back to Malcolm. “If I had to choose one of the jurors who was seeing things our way, it would have been Ms. Montrone.”
“Any word yet who’ll replace her?” Georgia Bobley asked.
“No,” Malcolm growled. “Wilson will pick a number at random tomorrow. That’s who we’ll get.”
I asked Jill Farkas, “Have you run the same kind of analysis on the six alternates?”
“I can only do one thing at a time, Jessica,” she said. “I intend to start that analysis this afternoon.”
People eventually drifted out of the office over the next few hours. Investigator Ritchie Fleigler left to do some additional digging into the backgrounds of the six alternate jurors. Jill Farkas, who seemed to become increasingly agitated as the day wore on, announced she was going home to run the computer analysis on the alternates. Georgia Bobley became ill. After vomiting twice in the ladies’ room, Malcolm told her to go home and get to bed.
That left Linda in the reception area, and Malcolm and me in his office. I hadn’t had much to say since arriving. I busied myself going over previous evaluations of the jurors and alternates, but my mind really wasn’t on that. What kept occurring to me was that two people who would have been helpful to Billy Brannigan had died under violent circumstances.
Certainly, if Cynthia Warren had provided an alibi under oath, there was little chance this jury, or any jury for that matter, would convict Billy. And if my instincts, and Jill Farkas’s computer analysis were correct, Marie Montrone, Juror Number Seven, would likely have voted for acquittal.
I voiced this to Malcolm, and it seemed to generate interest. “Do you see a correlation between these two deaths?” he asked.
“Goodness, no, Malcolm. That would be a stretch, even for this fiction writer. Then again, the reality is that both these people have been killed. We tend to view a pedestrian fatality as an accident. But according to what I’ve heard here today, Ms. Montrone was run down in front of her house—which I assume is in a quiet residential neighborhood—by a car traveling at excessive speed. And, the driver took off. It’s possible, isn’t it, that he deliberately hit her?”
Malcolm opened a file folder on his desk. “My preliminary information is that Ms. Montrone was already up on the sidewalk when she got hit.”
My eyebrows went up. “That would lend even more credence to the possibility that the driver of that car deliberately went after her.”
Malcolm pondered what I said before asking, “Are you sure this isn’t your overactive imagination going into high gear?” He smiled to soften the question.
I smiled, too. “It could well be, Malcolm. I have a confession to make to you.”
“Don’t tell me I’m going to end up defending you for murder?”
“I certainly hope not, although if I’m ever charged with a serious offense, you’ll be the first to know. No, I agreed to come to Boston to work as a jury consultant for you because my publisher in New York, Vaughan Buckley, has convinced me to use a murder trial as a setting for my next novel. I told Vaughan that I didn’t know anything about how murder trials worked, and so he suggested I sit through one. Then, your call came inviting me to not only sit through a trial, but to be a part of it. I couldn’t resist.”
“Looks like you used me,” Malcolm said, chuckling.
“I suppose you could view it that way,” I said. “Of course, I have the feeling that inviting me to join your team had something to do with enticing Court TV to cover this trial.”
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that,” he said, his right hand on his heart, an exaggerated expression of hurt on his face.
“Oh, yes you would, Malcolm, and it’s all right with me. I don’t mind being used, as long as I’m doing a little using myself.”
“The perfect definition of a good deal, Jessica. Both parties benefiting.”
“Exactly.”
Malcolm gestured to the remains of the Italian takeout on the table. “You haven’t eaten,” he said.
“Not hungry,” I said. “The trial is going to continue tomorrow morning?”
“Supposed to, although you never know with Judge Wilson.”
I looked at a large clock on the wall. It was a little after one. “Would you mind if I used Cathie again this afternoon and went back to the Cape?”
“Of course not. As I said, I was sorry to ruin your day off.”
“I’m not viewing it as a day off, Malcolm. I’d like to touch base with Chief McPartland again. He doesn’t seem very busy, and I think he would welcome my visit.”
“Sure. Go ahead. But why?”
“I keep thinking of that deposit slip I saw on Ms. Warren’s desk, the one for ten thousand dollars. I’d like to follow up on that.”
“Be my guest.”
“And, Malcolm, would there be anything wrong in my visiting Ms. Montrone’s family?”
Malcolm thought before responding. “Might be, Jessica. You remember Wilson’s admonition to us.”
I certainly did remember it:
“Under no circumstance is anyone involved in the case, from either the defense or prosecution, to have any contact, of any nature, written, oral or through third parties, with any number of the twelve-person jury or the six alternates. Because I have faith in each juror’s integrity and honesty, and because the attorneys representing the people and the defendant are known to me to uphold the highest professional standards, I have decided against sequestering this jury. Its members are admonished to not read about the case or hear reports about it through radio or television, and are not to discuss the case with anyone until it has been submitted to them. And I reiterate—no person from either side is to have any personal contact with members of the jury.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t,” I said.
“Based upon Judge Wilson’s admonition, I’d be the last person to suggest you visit Ms. Montrone’s family. An attorney is an officer of the court. Wouldn’t think of violating the judge’s word.
“Then again, Judge Wilson said we couldn’t have contact with members of the jury. Ms. Montrone was alive when he made that ruling. Obviously, you wouldn’t be making contact with her, now that she’s dead. But tell me something. Why do you want to do it?”
“I might be able to confirm whether Jill’s analysis is correct, that Ms. Montrone was leaning in our favor. If she was, that could make my speculation about a possible connection between the death of Ms. Warren and Ms. Montrone a little more credible.”
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