Due Justice (27 page)

Flight 255 went down twenty seconds after liftoff; normally, after twenty-one seconds, I do, too.

But not today.

Today, sleep was pushed aside by the riddle I couldn't seem to solve: Who killed Michael Morgan?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tampa, Florida

Sunday 7:20 a.m.

January 24, 1999

AT THIS POINT, THE possibilities seemed endless, even if I discounted all my personal acquaintances. I ran though the list.

Any lawyer involved in the breast implant litigation, on either side, would certainly have a motive to keep Morgan's threatened great solution to the health issues from ever being published, if Carly's theory of the litigation were true.

Ditto, the “victims,” manufacturers and the doctors making bundles on expert fees.

Somehow, though, I thought the murder a little too vicious, too devious for a purely professional motive. The killer took extraordinary steps to keep his work secret. Only luck and the low tide caused Morgan's body to be discovered.

Morgan was reported missing. The police would eventually have inspected Morgan's home and found the obvious evidence of murder, but with no physical body a charge and conviction was unlikely.

No, simply killing Morgan was not the goal.

The killer meant to make Morgan disappear. Forever.

Bad luck, not stupidity, had thwarted the killer's achievement.

Not a detached professional motive, then, but a personal one.

Methodically, I considered each person I knew to have an axe to grind with Michael Morgan. I took out my yellow legal pad, filled now with notes, facts, thoughts on the case. I wrote down each of the possible suspects on two pages, leaving room for notes after each name.

Forced myself to consider each one in turn.

Eliminated Carly immediately.

Carly didn't kill Morgan; I wouldn't consider the possibility. She had no motive. If she'd discovered her company's products were faulty, she could have resigned. She didn't own MedPro, after all.

Nor did she have the capacity to kill.

Carly had always been difficult and often impossible, and I do subscribe to the nature theory of childhood development. Even so, I wouldn't believe any of Kate's children capable of murder. Never.

Which led me to consider MedPro's two remaining founders: Dr. Zimmer and Dr. Young.

Zimmer was least likely. Too old and frail to kill Morgan in his home and spirit his body off to the gulf.

An accomplice? Possible.

But Zimmer worried excessively about death by heart attack. He quit golf because he feared the stress might kill him. He wouldn't risk the physical and emotional stress of murder on his weakened ticker. Certainly not simply to avoid
potential
financial ruin when he held only a
partial
interest in MedPro.

Sadly, no. Not Zimmer. I crossed him off my list.

The next name seemed to come alive on the page, tapping its feet, dashing to the finish line, shoving everyone aside, declaring itself the winner.

Carolyn Young.

Yes. Definitely a killer candidate.

By all accounts except hers, Morgan had used her. And discarded her like so many others. She admitted she never got over him. That sounded like a good motive for murder, but it wasn't the only one she had.

Carolyn Young was an owner of MedPro. Marilee Aymes claimed Carolyn was willing to commit theft to obtain that ownership. She also sought to protect her very lucrative explant scam and expert witness fees. The end of the litigation would make a sizeable dent in her earning power. For Carolyn Young, killing Morgan would have been both personal and professional.

I wanted to believe it, but I didn't quite.

Maybe if she hadn't made such a public spectacle of herself at his funeral? That day, it seemed to me, she really did love him still.

Not crossing her off, but I kept going down my list.

Considering the strengths and weaknesses of each suspect in the same way, I covered Marilee Aymes (very angry, capable of lifting the body, a good shot?), Victoria Warwick (woman scorned?), Sheldon Warwick (reelection bid tainted by wife's affair with Morgan?).

Paused. Sheldon Warwick is a proud man. He wouldn't be pleased by Tory's affair. But murder? Everybody knows Tory's a flake. If it never affected him before, no evidence the knowledge pushed him to kill this time.

Christian Grover (a definite possibility), Fred Johnson (the same motive as every other plaintiffs' lawyer on the planet), O'Connell Worthington (ditto on the defense side), even Cilla Worthington (you've got to be kidding), Kate (now you're really getting silly).

I still had several names to cover, but the flight attendant tapped my shoulder and asked me to put my seatback in its full upright position for landing, and the captain slowly lowered the L1011 onto the runway at Detroit Wayne Airport. Passengers did not applaud, but we should have.

One major advantage to flying first class, besides interesting flying companions and comfortable seats, is that first class is always at the front of the plane. While my fellow passengers accumulated overstuffed bags and waddled up the aisle, I dashed out into the frigid jet way and immediately realized I'd forgotten my parka.

January above the Mason Dixon line. How absurd.

Instead of renting a car, I turned my pink tropical wool blazer's lapels up, hustled to the taxi stand and stomped around to generate warmth in the sunless damp while I waited for the first available heated cab.

“The Renaissance Center, please,” I said between chattering teeth, naming the city within a city now synonymous with the best of Detroit.

He looked at me like I'd have to repeat myself in Arabic before he'd comprehend, but after a while the taxi headed east onto the rebuilt I-94 entrance ramp toward Detroit. The only trace of Flight 255 was the black marble memorial surrounded by blue spruce trees on Middlebelt Road.

About twenty-five minutes later, I winced at Joe Lewis's oversized black fist positioned at the entrance to downtown Detroit. Joe Lewis was a great native son, but why the artist couldn't have presented a more flattering and welcoming sculpture of the man was a mystery.

The temperature sign at Comerica Bank declared fifteen degrees without the wind-chill factor, which would bring the “feels like” temperature down another ten to twenty.
Shit.

The taxi driver pulled into the driveway between the chiller berms, stopped in front of the RenCen's main entrance, collected his forty-five-dollar-plus-tip ransom, and released me.

Briefly, I looked up. The Renaissance Center, brainchild of Henry Ford II, was built to revitalize Detroit's economy. Designed by an Atlanta architect and opened in 1976, it resembled a collection of five giant silver cans separated from the rest of the city by a concrete bunker. The center cylinder, at seventy-three stories, housed the claimed tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere.

Lingering to admire was impossible. No matter. I knew every inch of the place.

Frigid cold chased me inside the icy architecture where the indoor temperatures were marginally higher. Chillers inside the berms used Detroit River water to heat and cool the building. Slight miscalculation. River water, like the atmosphere inside and out, was near frozen in winter.

By 1980, completed and occupied, the RenCen was memorable for three truths: Gleaming buildings reflected Detroit's decline too brightly. The cylindrical labyrinth was impossible to navigate even with a blueprint and a guide. And the post-construction fight was the first lawsuit of my career. I defended the case for eight years before we moved to Tampa.

Now Detroit was more decrepit than ever. Locating restrooms inside the cornerless RenCen buildings remained impossible and the construction lawsuit continues without me.

I rode the glass elevator facing the Detroit River and Canada up forty-five floors to The Renaissance Club at the top of Tower 400. Breathtaking view. Made me almost nostalgic for the city where I'd practiced law for eight years.

Almost, but not quite.

I shivered again in the cold elevator; wrapped my arms around myself. How had I ever survived here?

Robin Jakes waited in the club's lobby, fashionably attired in a heavy wool pantsuit, closed shoes, and a turtleneck. She was a bit shorter and wider than I am, but when she greeted me with a warm hug, I bent and too enthusiastically embraced, clinging for body heat.

Seated at a window table, hot coffee poured, caught up on family matters, I held the cup in both palms like a warmer and prompted, “So tell me what your articles didn't say about Michael Morgan.”

Robin's crooked chagrin seemed genuine. “He was a curious guy. Brimming contradictions.”

Cold waves emitted from the glass walls raising gooseflesh over every inch of my skin. Was there no heat in this entire building? I jiggled my legs under the table.

I asked, “How so?”

“Brilliant, arrogant, but charmingly charismatic. A parade of lovers, but serially monogamous, he said.”

“All female? The lovers?”

She tilted her head, as if the question hadn't occurred to her. “I never asked, but I'd guess he was two-thousand percent hetro.”

I nodded. “What did you talk about?”

“He used to ask me why women latch onto every screwy idea that comes along for improving their physical appearance.”

“Not what I'd have expected from him,” I said.

She folded ringless fingers with short buffed nails together on the table between us. “He raved for hours about how women spend billions of dollars on makeup and clothes to enhance their outer appeal, and billions more on drugs, creams, and injections.”

“What about surgery?”

“That, too. Then he'd move on to eating disorders and the American woman's preoccupation with excessive thinness. Women die, he'd say, but others are not deterred.”

“Curious rant for such a womanizer, don't you think?”

“I do. I did. But he seemed possessed, almost.” She mocked his tone and cadence while wagging a pointed finger at me. “Health is one thing. Exercise and proper nutrition for health reasons is sound thinking. Prolonging the joy of living is everyone's right. But bulimia, anorexia, plastic surgery, removal of ribs, tattoos, body piercing. These are abominations, mostly preying on women, primarily frivolous and some seriously harmful. You are a beautiful woman. Don't do things like that.”

The waiter warmed our coffee and delivered soup. I wondered if I could put my frozen feet in it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Tampa, Florida

Sunday 1:35 p.m.

January 24, 1999

ROBIN ADOPTED TWO VOICES now, hers for questions and Morgan's for answers, like an audio book. “And the men, I asked him. What are they doing? He said, ‘They wear oxford cloth button down collar shirts from ages eight to eighty, from his mother's selections until his undertaker chooses.' Then he'd waive his hand to flip through the next bit. He said, ‘With brief respites in the teen years for obnoxious tee-shirts and middle age for red bikinis.'”

She chuckled at the image these last two apparently conjured up.

I was half listening and shivering, and otherwise thinking that Carly had delivered a variation of this same speech not too long ago. She must have heard the rant from Morgan, too.

“Morgan made more than one fortune exploiting this supposed wealthy-woman's neurosis,” I said.

Robin teased, “And slept with them all before, during and after. That's what made him interesting to interview. Sex and attraction is an endlessly fascinating topic. Haven't you read the best seller list lately?”

We ordered more coffee, and she salivated when our waiter presented the desert tray featuring six different bowls of ice cream. Even the smell made me colder.

I lit up a Partaga. I think better when I'm smoking and there's a fire stick in my hand.

Robin ordered a double scoop hot fudge sundae. Maybe burning off those extra calories raised her body temperature or something.

“The point is that what Morgan said got me to thinking about the issues, and that's how I sold the piece to the Sunday
Times
. Whatever causes the behavior he described, breast implants might be the poster child for the condition.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it,” she said between spoonfuls of the frozen sundae. “A more chauvinistic product has never been marketed. Yet millions were sold, and most implants were beloved—no, more like worshiped—by women. Even after the potential side effects were publicized and access restricted, women manipulate FDA rules to get implants.” She'd finished the sundae and pushed aside the dish. “Why is mammary fat worth all that pain? Maybe even death?”

“You'll be nominated for a Pulitzer, Robin. The article is well done. Maybe we can talk more on the phone when I get home?”