Mistletoe and Murder in Las Vegas

C
opyright
© 2015 by Colleen Collins

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

T
o my husband
, Shaun

J
udge Darren Fields
, his dark-frame eyeglasses in stark contrast to his mop of snow-white hair, peered down at public defender Joanne Galvin as if she were an alien with a law degree. “You just told the jury that the DA plays fast and loose like a gunslinger. Has defense lost her mind?”

Whispers rippled throughout the courtroom. Someone stifled a laugh.

Locked in a stare-down with the judge, Joanne had the irrational urge to answer “yes.” And she knew exactly when she’d lost it, too—at one o’clock this morning when she’d found in the DA’s discovery a buried reference to someone who had seen “Tater” drinking a beer “that night.”

She’d missed the significance of that reference the first time she reviewed those pages, but when she read it again at one this morning, her instincts went on orange alert. This “someone” had to be the key witness who could finally prove her client, twenty-year-old Sebastian Vaughn, had been at a dive bar thirty miles away and not at the scene of the attempted murder the DA was trying to hang on him. A quick call to Sebastian’s mother confirmed that years ago some of his buddies had called him “Tater,” slang for
home run
as he had been a star on the high-school baseball team.

By then it was nearly two a.m. At nine o’clock sharp, she and the DA would begin presenting their closing arguments in the trial, during which neither were allowed to enter new evidence, such as this witness. Despite the ungodly hour, Joanne called the judge and begged him to please re-open the trial based on what she read. He grumpily agreed to meet her and Sam Burnette, the DA, in his chambers precisely at eight o’clock.

A meeting that had gone about as smoothly as a Three Stooges farce.

Judge Fields had alternated between swilling coffee and popping antacids while Sam Burnette furiously accused Joanne of obstructing justice by purposefully waiting until the night before closing arguments to read parts of the discovery.

She countered that the DA had played dirty by doing a
discovery dump
on her—referring to the hundreds of pages of police reports, interviews and other documents that the DA’s office provided the defense during the pre-trial phase. Only Esmeralda—an elderly Vegas fortune teller who regularly swindled tourists on the Strip—and her crystal ball could have divined the hidden meaning of that
purposefully
vague reference on first read-through.

After that the judge quietly belched and cleaned his eyeglasses for several thoughtful moments. Putting his glasses back on, he said the mere inference of evidence, obviously favorable to the defense, was insufficient reason to upset the orderly administration of justice in his court. Therefore he ruled the trial would
not
be re-opened.

Donning his judicial robes, he griped about his lack of sleep and stated he was not in the mood to put up with any more tomfoolery.

Now, at ten a.m., Joanne stood in the well of the courtroom, eye-locked with the judge who frowned so hard his bushy white eyebrows resembled a puffy storm cloud over his dark eyes.

She did her best to look dignified despite the tension and her feet, which were aching in a pair of new, insanely high heels that she impulsively decided to wear thinking they added some noble height to her five-two. Like that mattered now.

“Miss Galvin,” the judge finally said. “That comment comes darn close to violating my ruling during a trial, which is
direct
contempt of court for which I could send you to jail. Like this very instant.” He snapped his fingers.

Her insides shriveled as the stocky courtroom deputy lumbered toward her, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the marble floor.

“Deputy, I did not order you to arrest her!” The judge pointed to the spot where the deputy had previously stood. As he squeaked back across the floor, the judge sighed heavily and turned to the twelve wide-eyed jurors. “I direct the members of the jury to disregard the defense’s statement…”

Joanne glanced at her investigator and best friend, Gloria Falco, who sat at the defense table wearing an I-can’t-believe-this-crazy-shit expression. They had been friends since their first day of work at the Clark County Public Defenders’ office, almost five years ago. Joanne, then twenty-six, had recently passed the bar exam and was beginning her career as a lawyer. Gloria, a year younger, had worked as a private investigator in Brooklyn for her dad, the legendary private eye Sal Falco. Shortly after he died, she relocated to Vegas where her brother, a talent manager, lived.

For court Gloria always toned down her rock-n-roll, tough-chick look. Today she’d feathered her short dark hair rather than spiked it, and ditched her usual tight jeans, form-fitting T-shirt, and badass boots for a powder-blue pantsuit and flats.

Next to Gloria sat Sebastian wearing a mauve shirt, black tie and gray suit his mother picked out for him at Goodwill. Last June his life was unfolding—he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday, landed a job at The Tropicana, and fell in love for the first time with a girl named Nina. All that changed on July third when the police arrested him for attempted murder. Sebastian matched eyewitnesses’ descriptions of the person who shot at a man in a grocery store parking lot. Now, if found guilty, he faced spending the next twenty years of his life in prison.

With a small shake of his head, Sebastian mouthed F-M-L—
Fuck My Life
, street slang expressing his incomprehensible despair.

His anguish broke her heart. Joanne had not become an attorney because she had political aspirations like Sam Burnette or viewed lawyering as a get-rich career. As corny as it sounded, she went to law school to effect justice. Considering how freakishly difficult achieving that simple goal turned out to be, maybe Judge Fields had been right to ask if she’d lost her mind.

The judge finished giving directions to the jury and turned his disgruntled attention to her. “Defense may continue its closing argument.”

She crossed to the jury box, fighting the urge to wince with each toe-pinching step, while scanning the jurors’ expressions. An elderly woman with pinkish hair gave her a you-poor-thing look. A thirty-something guy, who obviously believed a man could never wear too much leathery-scented cologne, eyed her with suspicion. The rest of them appeared to be confused, nervous or both.

These twelve people would decide Sebastian’s fate without knowing the whole truth. Justice would not be served—it would be trampled on. Then kicked a few times just in case it hadn’t gotten the message.

It hurt and enraged her that an innocent young man would go to prison for a crime he did not commit. Rules and procedures were a necessary part of fair due process, but something was dead wrong with the system when it sabotaged the very spirit of the law.

Which left her at a fork in the road of justice. Play nice and watch her client go to prison, then work her ass off appealing the case, which could take years. Or she could forge her own path and violate a judge’s ruling, which promised a rocky ride.

She smiled politely. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I was wrong to say what I did about the DA. The simple truth is Sam Burnette tried to hide evidence that proves Sebastian is not guilty.”

“Stop, Miss Galvin!” the judge bellowed, followed by loud bangs of his gavel.

Conversations erupted in the gallery. Jurors’ wide-eyed gazes bounced back and forth between her and the judge.

She turned around slowly, her hands clasped tightly, ready to face his wrath. Yes, she had broken a rule. This time Judge Fields might really sentence her to a day or two in jail, a minuscule punishment compared to the decades an innocent man would spend in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Judge Fields sighed heavily and set down his gavel. He looked toward a far window where the pale blue sky showed with a disgruntled look, as if there were surely more intelligence in the entire cosmos than in his courtroom.

He lowered his gaze to Joanne. “Miss Galvin, you’re a talented lawyer, but you have the preservation instincts of a lemming. Based on your comments and your disrespect for the court’s direct order to you, I find you in contempt. One-thousand-dollar fine, and you should count yourself lucky I didn’t throw in a night in jail as well. No stay on the fine, which must be paid within forty-eight hours. After I
again
direct the jury to disregard defense’s comments, I am sending the jurors home for the day, and I strongly suggest, Miss Galvin, that you designate another lawyer to finish your closing argument tomorrow.”

She remained where she was, vaguely aware of the scuffling of jurors’ feet as they stood. The court clerk, reeking of cigarettes, ambled past looking like a low-rolling storm cloud in her shapeless black dress.

It wasn’t the best day Joanne had ever had in court. In fact, it was the worst—with the time a client hurtled the defense table and tried to slug a juror because he was “looking at me funny” running a close second.

But on the bright side, she had two things in her favor—she would not be looking at the world through bars, and the judge had only
suggested
she find a replacement.

Which meant she would be back tomorrow to give her closing argument. The thought made her smile.

Oh, wouldn’t Judge Fields just love that.

A
n hour later
, Joanne walked into the office of Roger Montgomery, who sat at his desk reviewing a document. Two months ago he had been promoted to chief deputy defender at the Clark County Public Defenders’ office, making him second-in-command to Chief Defender Paul Ochs.

Roger also happened to be her live-in boyfriend for most of the past four years. Because it presented a conflict of interest for her manager to also be her significant other, she was being transferred to the defenders’ appellate division in a few weeks. She wasn’t wild about spending her days at a desk writing and conducting research, but at least it was short-term. Everybody expected the governor to appoint Paul to a district judgeship next year, after which Roger would fill Paul’s slot, and Joanne would return to trial work.

She slumped into one of the leather-upholstered guest chairs—a big step up from the defenders’ cheap plastic ones that looked like old lawn furniture and probably were as they tended to smell like baked dirt.

She dropped her briefcase and purse onto the carpeted floor.

“Judge Fields just found me in contempt,” she muttered, tugging off a high heel. “
And
hit me with a thousand-dollar fine.” The shoe hit the carpet with a soft
flump
. “I should never have worn these...my feet were screaming for mercy all morning.”

Roger looked up. At thirty-five, he still had boyishly clean-cut looks that reminded her of Jake Gyllenhaal in his earlier romantic comedies before he started playing psycho-killers.

“I know,” he said.

After removing her other shoe, she groaned with relief. “How did you know? I have a similar pair that are super-comfortable, but these are like matching medieval torture devices.”

“I meant I know that Judge Fields charged you with contempt.”

She waited for
I’m sorry that happened, baby
, but he said nothing. Probably didn’t want somebody walking past his open door and overhearing. Roger was Mr. Office Decorum these days.

“Gloria told you?” she asked.

His smartphone beeped, signaling an incoming text message, and he made a hold-on gesture. After reading it, he placed the phone screen down on his desk and redirected his pale brown eyes on her. “Sam Burnette called Paul, who then called me.”

“Burnette, what a tattletale.”

In the last three years, she had won two out of four cases against the DA, and would have won more if he hadn’t pulled some slick courtroom tricks. To be honest with herself, Judge Fields couldn’t justify re-opening the trial based on her inference alone—he needed the evidence to back it up—which she could have had weeks ago if Burnette hadn’t buried that damn reference. She dreaded going to trial with him again.

“He wasn’t
tattling
on you, it was a business conversation.”

“The DA reporting on me to the head of the defenders’ office is like a guard gossiping with an inmate.”

“Bad analogy.”

“Okay, the
chief
inmate. Anyway, you were in the shower when I left this morning, so I didn’t get to tell you that late last night while I was wading through Burnette’s discovery dump—more like a trash heap—I found a reference to a key witness buried so deep I half-expected to find Jimmy Hoffa’s body, too.”

“Joanne, that’s enough.”

His sharp tone took her aback. Plus, he rarely called her Joanne…in private, anyway. His nickname for her was Amanda, the lawyer Katharine Hepburn played in the film
Adam’s Rib
, because of Joanne’s tendency to “showboat” in the courtroom the way Amanda did in in the movie. Sometimes she playfully called him Adam, the lawyer-husband Spencer Tracy played in the film. It was all in fun, but to her it foreshadowed their future as a husband-and-wife law practice, which they talked about. They didn’t actually use the M-word—marriage—but they always referred to it as Montgomery and Montgomery, LLC, the second Montgomery obviously being Joanne as he was an only child and his father, a banker in Rhode Island, was planning to retire in a few years.

She missed chatting about their law firm. Missed a lot of things, actually. They used to joke about sharing “out of order” hair—Roger’s was wavy and dark, hers insanely curly and auburn—but recently he started wearing a stylishly choppy style calculated to look messy, using some kind of gel that smelled like musty apricots. Dressed differently, too, as if he were auditioning for the lead in the next James Bond movie. Today he wore a tailored gray suit accessorized with a pale-blue silk tie and a matching folded pocket square, which he called a
pochette
. Roger, whose French vocabulary until recently had consisted of
croissant
and
quiche
, now tossed out French terms for things like handkerchiefs.