Chasing Suspect Three (18 page)

His look was slightly pained.

Her hand grazed in a circle against his
crotch and she gave him another kiss ending with a slight flick of
her tongue. “I’m going to take care of it.”

“Right here!”

“No, you idiot, not here.” She took her hand
away and grabbed his arm. “We didn’t want to see this film anyway,
did we?”

“I’m not certain I even like Fellini and
Bergman.”

“Who?”

T
he next morning
would have been one of the most beautiful Sandy had ever seen,
except she had to leave the comfort of Chip’s bed and return to the
real world. That morning she felt exceptionally optimistic about
the real world. She’d meet with Margo at the office, although she
doubted Richie would come along. She’d squeeze at least a couple
thousand out of Margo somehow to start the day and begin living
like a normal person. Then she and Margo would put in some serious
time putting together their defense.

Richie would be a no show, of course, and
Margo would come up with some incredible excuse. Sandy needed him
as Margo’s alibi; he was driving her car when it was seen at the
condo, and was with her at her apartment most of the time the night
of the murder. She wondered if Margo was clever enough to engineer
all this Richie hide and seek. Or was it all an accident that he
seemed to be involved yet always just out of reach.

Margo showed up at the office at nine. After
a shower, clean clothes, and make up, she looked better even though
it seemed she hadn’t exerted much effort on her appearance.

The next minute was a dreamlike sequence for
Sandy. Through a delicate fog a hand reached out and anointed her
with the incredible piece of paper, and she floated upward an
immense distance from the earth, where she was wrapped in a warm
scented cloud of the unreal and could feel the heavy pulsation of
her heart. The cloud rapidly dissipated as though sucked out by a
giant vacuum, and she glided lower and lower until she felt her
feet solidly on the office floor. She heard a sluggish drawl of
syllables strung out too slowly to be recognizable. Then faster and
faster until at last familiar words took form.

“I said, you didn’t believe me did you?”

Sandy looked down at the green bank check in
her hand and blinked hard—ten thousand dollars.

She moved to her desk and sat. Still too
stunned to yell Halleluiah just then. She’d do that later. “Where’d
you get the money? Wait! Don’t answer that.” Better off not
knowing.

“Just give me my cash.”

“I need to phone my partner to open the
safe.”

“I need my cash. I thought you’d just hand it
to me. Now I have to wait for someone else to come down here?”

“Sit down, relax.”

“Give me the check back. I’m going to hold it
until you put my money right there on that desk.”

“Don’t push it, Margo. And stop calling it
your
money.” Sandy carefully folded the check, put it in her
pocket, and patted it. “You know, my retainer is fifty thousand. A
retainer means that’s the amount you pay me to start representing
you. Well, I started defending you long ago. You told me you’d get
the money. Well, it’s taken you until today, and so far, I’ve
received merely ten thousand. You still need to come up with the
other forty thousand, if you want me to continue.”

“I thought the ten thousand was a down
payment.”

“No, I don’t offer easy time payments. You
borrow from someone else and you pay me. The fifty thousand is the
payment. Maybe fifty will cover all my time and expense, and you
won’t owe anymore. I don’t know that yet.” Until that very moment,
it hadn’t occurred to Sandy to play tough. She guessed that, in the
end, she wasn’t going to get all her fee out of the woman anyway.
“So, where’s my forty thousand? How do I know I’m ever going to see
any more?” Why was she letting this fruitcake jerk her around? “Why
didn’t you say you were serious?”

Margo looked contrite, and finally nodded. “I
didn’t know it was that serious.”

Geez. Dealing with this woman was as hopeless
as trying to teach a cat some tricks. “Okay, so where’s Richie?”
She hadn’t actually expected him to come, given that Margo had said
he was illegal. Trying to deal with this Richie situation was
getting old.

She was just getting ready to scold her for
being unhelpful, when Margo said, “He’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“He knew I was getting out.” Margo explained
she had spoken with him yesterday, and they had planned a cozy
rendezvous at her apartment, but he didn’t show up.

“He wasn’t with you last night.”

“I’m dying to see him, but I don’t know where
he is.”

Sandy had been frustrated trying to build a
defense that included Richie. Now her patience was exhausted. “I
can’t go into court and talk about a witness I can’t produce. Not
only is it hearsay, the jury would burst out laughing. Using Richie
as an alibi is worse than no alibi at all.” She needed to take
Richie entirely out of the defense. Somehow, she’d do without
him.

What was left? Well, there’s always
reasonable doubt—convince the jury that a suspicious someone might
have committed the murder. Such a defense didn’t put Margo in the
clear, but it created doubt about her guilt. And that suspicious
someone else definitely shouldn’t be boyfriend, Richie. For her
defense to be successful, she didn’t care if he was missing, just
so he had no connection with the murder.

She did have another thought, however.
“Margo, did you ever meet any of John’s friend’s from Miami? Did he
ever bring anyone home? Or did you ever go to any consulate parties
down there?”

“No. Well yes, some guy from Miami drove him
home one time when he had car trouble. But he didn’t get out of his
car.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him
again?”

“Didn’t really get a look at him. Why?”

“I’m looking for possible suspects. So,
there’s no one locally who also works down there? He never shared a
ride or anything?”

She shook her head.

“You know what I’d like to do? Would you mind
going over to the morgue with me? Not the most pleasant way to
spend your first full day out of jail, I know. But I want you to
look at a guy, look at his body, and tell me if you’ve ever seen
him before. You lived in the condo for three years. He might be
from the neighborhood or something. Worth a shot.

“The guy who broke into the condo? The one
you were telling me about? They still haven’t identified him?”

“Not yet. He’s been laid out in the morgue
now for days. Not even the FBI can trace him. Only his mother is
going to miss that guy. Let’s go. We’ll take my car.”

“Ah, another ride in your little red car,”
Margo said, as she got in beside Sandy.

“Don’t slam that door.”

Five blocks later, they had pulled into a
bank drive-up lane.

“Doesn’t look like a morgue to me,” Margo
observed.

Sandy signed the bank check and completed the
deposit transaction. It was the largest single check she had signed
since getting her law license. “Let’s get this baby into the
system,” she said with a smile. “Next stop the morgue.”

At the county morgue, the young attendant
with a prissy beard and wearing a white lab coat looked up from his
desk as the two women walked in. “All visitors must sign the log.”
He pushed the log book over to Sandy. “Don’t I know you from
someplace? Do you come to the morgue often?”

“Every chance I get.”

“So, a dead body doesn’t bother you?”

“Not unless it’s mine.”

“Who do you want to see?”

“The John Doe the deputy had to take down at
the vehicle stop two days ago. Need the case number?”

“Oh, that one. You know I thought you sounded
like a cop. You PC or Federal?”

“Plain Clothed lawyer.”

“Well, you still have to sign in.”

After they both had signed, he looked at the
names. “Margo Larena. I’ve got a stiff by that name over there in
number nine.”

“The other one’s her husband, you jerk.”

“Oh, sorry.” He led them through the swinging
double doors into the examination room. The room of the dead was
all shiny white and stainless steel, brightly lighted with fixtures
hanging far down from the high ceiling. Gurneys were stacked
against one wall and another wall was lined with cold chambers.

Margo rubbed her arms. “It’s freezing in
here.”

“That’s the idea,” Sandy said. For her it
wasn’t so much the cold as the medley of stinking chemicals. “Does
this place make you nervous, Margo?”

“They’re not going to move, are they?”

“I don’t mind looking at bodies as long as
they’re cleaned up and in a clean body bag.”

“We don’t use dirty body bags here,” the
attendant said. He opened one of the cold chambers and rolled out a
gurney holding a white body bag. He unzipped the bag down to the
waist.

Sandy stepped over and stared. She recognized
the face from seeing the guy shooting at her in the condo and lying
dead in the street. He was all cleaned up, but still looked
dangerous as hell. Even dead, she wasn’t going to turn her back on
him. “If you’ve ever seen this guy, Margo, it might be a help.”

Margo stepped up to the body with her eyes
closed. Then she looked. She frowned. Then she let out a loud gasp
and turned away. She covered her face with her hands and started
sobbing, “Richie.”

Sandy froze in surprise. Margo had identified
the body as Richie Grant? Entirely unexpected. Didn’t make any
sense. Sandy had interrupted the man searching the victim’s
apartment for the money. Had Margo somehow known about the missing
money and sent her boyfriend to find it? Sandy supposed at least
that part was plausible. However, Richie could have just run away.
Instead, he chased after her and kept shooting trying to kill her.
Then he lost exchanging gunfire with a sheriff’s deputy making a
routine stop. All of it seemed excessive for a boyfriend.

The thought that any woman would have such a
repulsive type for a boyfriend, was also beyond belief. The man
Margo once described as hot and sexy was dangerous and scary.
Possibly, in her need, she was confusing love and sex.

Sandy’s grandfather was wrong; there isn’t a
man for every woman. Some men don’t deserve women. Some men, when
you see them coming down the street, you’d better cross over to the
other side fast.

D
uring the drive
from the morgue back to the office, Sandy was silent and stared
straight ahead with her hands stiffly gripping the steering wheel.
Margo looked over at her several times, but Sandy didn’t
acknowledge her.

It remained quiet in the car until Margo
spoke. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. It’s not like Richie
and I were going to get married or anything like that.”

“I’m delighted that he won’t be around for
you to marry. Now shut up.” Sandy still hadn’t pieced it all
together. And what she had pieced together didn’t make sense.

“What?” Margo looked at her, then turned back
and watched the street for several minutes. “Richie was always good
to me.”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear any more of
your lies.”

“Lies? I haven’t lied to you.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, I admit that after John shot at me, I
went to his condo.”

“Not that, I know you did that.”

“Okay, so I didn’t make out with Dennis on
his dive boat exactly like I said.”

“Did you have Richie murder your
husband?”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“You knew John had stolen money hidden in his
condo, didn’t you?”

“What stolen money?”

“And you sent Richie there to kill John and
get the money. He didn’t find it, or got scared off, and went back
to look again. That’s when I walked in on him, and he tried to kill
me also.”

“I don’t know about any of that. I know
Richie is nice and he wouldn’t do bad stuff like that.”

“Sure...I know the type–tall, dark, and
handcuffed. When and how did you meet Richie?”

“Let’s see. Must have been about a year
ago.”

“That would be while you were still living
with John.”

“No, that’s wrong. It must have been only
three months ago.”

“You sound as if you’re making this up as you
go along. Where did you meet him?”

After a moment of thought.”I came out of the
supermarket one day and found a flat tire on my car. He came along
and changed it for me. We got to talking and then, you know, like
that.”

“You should have started that story with,
‘Once upon a time.’ What kind of car does he drive?”

“Cars all look alike to me.”

“What color is it?”

“It’s kind of blue,” Margo answered.

“Oh, that’s right, it’s a blue SUV isn’t
it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“No, that’s wrong. He drives a silver Buick.
Stolen, by the way. When was the last time you were in Miami?”

“Must be over a year. What does Miami have to
do with it?”

“It’s now obvious that Richie is from Miami.
He’s in a drug gang down there.”

“Not my Richie.”

“Stolen car, no ID of any sort on him.
Doesn’t sound too innocent to me. You say you don’t know about any
of this, but you keep lying.”

“It’s your fault. If you didn’t ask questions
so fast, I’d have time to think.”

“Another strange thing. Suddenly you find out
your boyfriend is dead, but you have yet to ask what happened.
You’re not curious? Why didn’t you ask me how he came to be
dead?”

“Yeah, I was just going to ask you that. How
did he die?”

“Hoodlums get shot.” Sandy tightened her grip
on the steering wheel. “Richie Grant is a hoodlum in a Miami drug
gang, probably an illegal alien from El Salvador. You say he’s your
boyfriend up here, but you can’t produce him. No one around Park
Beach has ever seen him or heard about him, except for you and
Claudia. You have been stringing me along. You never intended for
him to ever come to my office, did you? The morning after he got
himself shot, you told me you spoke to him. He was already dead.
And yesterday morning, before I got you released, you said you’d
spoken to him. Again, already dead. More lies. I’ve had it with
your bullshit.”