Outwitting Trolls (14 page)

“You'll see for yourself. Then you can tell me. We'll have pizza and beer.”

“I love pizza and beer. Sausage. Mushrooms.” I heard her yawn. “Sleepy Alex,” she murmured. “I just called to say good night to my honey.”

“Good night, babe.”

“Sleep tight, swee'ie.”

“See you Friday, huh?” I asked.

“Before you know it, darlin'. Mmm. Hug and kiss, 'kay?”

“Back atcha,” I said.

Julie buzzed me on my office console a little before ten thirty on Thursday morning. “Your appointment is here,” she said.

“Sharon Nichols?”

“Correct.”

I hired Julie when I opened my law practice. She was my first and only secretary. Much of the communication that passed between us was unspoken. We read each other closely and accurately—tone, inflection, body language. No words needed.

“Why don't you like her?” I asked into the phone. “Or can't you talk?”

“That's right,” she said. “She just arrived, and she's standing right here.”

“She's my client, for God's sake,” I said. “I'm not dating her.”

“I've heard that before.”

I found myself smiling. “Just bring her in, will you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Oh-oh. When Julie called me sir, it meant she was upset—and when Julie was upset, I had learned, it was a sound policy to try to figure out why and then do something about it.

When she opened my office door and held it for Sharon, I understood. Sharon was wearing a narrow black skirt that stopped just above her pretty knees, with an off-white linen jacket over a tight-fitting red sweater that left little about her upper body to the imagination. Some tricky makeup emphasized her big eyes and good cheekbones and expressive mouth.

Julie, I guessed, thought Sharon looked slutty and dangerous, but that was Julie. I thought Sharon looked classy, in fact, and quite beautiful, although behind her eyes and around the corners of her mouth I saw tension and sadness and fatigue.

Julie, ever protective of my current relationship, in the present case with Alex, assumed that Sharon had dressed for my benefit.

I stood up, came around from behind my desk, and held out my hand to Sharon, who gave me a quick, knowing little smile and a hearty, formal handshake.

“Would you like coffee?” Julie asked.

“No, thank you,” I said. “We'll be leaving in a minute.”

“As you wish,” said Julie.

After Julie closed the door, Sharon sat in one of my client chairs, and I resumed my seat behind my desk.

“She doesn't like me,” Sharon said.

“She thinks you've got designs on me,” I said.

“Oh, dear.”

“Don't worry about Julie,” I said. “She thinks every attractive woman is a threat to my virtue. Take it as a compliment.” I looked at my watch. “It's a fifteen-minute walk or a five-minute cab ride to Tally's office over on Albany Street. Your pick.”

“Oh, let's walk,” she said. “It's a gorgeous day out there.”

“We can have lunch after you're finished with Tally.”

She smiled. “That would be nice, but I told my partner I'd be at the shop by two. Now I wish I'd taken the whole day.”

“Another time,” I said. I stood up. “We better get going.”

It was an April-in-Paris spring morning in Boston. In the vacant lots and in the little side gardens and in the patches of yard in front of the buildings along Mass Ave, the forsythia and honeysuckle were blooming aromatically. The new leaves on the maple trees were lime green, the size of mouse ears. The easterly breeze that came wafting in from the harbor smelled like freshly turned earth and spring rain. The sun was warm on our faces, and puffy white clouds drifted harmlessly across the high blue sky. It was the sort of morning that made you want to grab the hand of the first pretty girl you saw and go skipping down the sidewalk.

I managed to resist the impulse.

Tally Whyte, as promised, was waiting for us in the lobby of the square brick building at 720 Albany Street that housed the OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Tally was a tall, lanky gal somewhere in her thirties. She reminded me of the actress Laura Dern. She was quite pretty in an angular, interesting way, with big expressive eyes and high cheekbones and a tangle of blondish hair.

When Sharon and I walked through the front door, Tally flashed her great warm smile, came over, gave me a hug, then held out her hand to Sharon. “I'm Tally,” she said.

Sharon took her hand. “I'm Sharon. Sharon Nichols.”

Tally kept hold of Sharon's hand. “Let's talk. Come on. My office is this way. You'll have to meet Penny. She's my dog. Nice to see you again, Brady. Thanks for bringing her over.” She tugged Sharon toward a door off the lobby in a cloud of happy chatter.

“I'll wait for you here,” I called to Sharon.

“You don't need to,” she said over her shoulder. “I left my car
at Alewife and took the T in. I'll just hop back on the subway when we're done.”

“No, I'll be here,” I said.

I found a comfortable sofa and a stack of magazines on a side table, and in the pleasant sitting area off the lobby, it was easy to forget that this building was the place where the Commonwealth's medical examiner and his assistants performed postmortem examinations on homicide victims and, in fact, on anybody whose death was suspicious or unexplained or unattended. Somewhere behind the doors that opened into the lobby was the refrigerated room where dead bodies lay in their body bags on stainless-steel tables.

I found the
Sports Illustrated
special springtime issue with the annual Major League Baseball forecast, and I was halfway through the section on the American League before I realized that the magazine I was reading was over a year old. The winners and losers and final standings these articles were predicting were history.

I read the forecasts anyway, and compared the
SI
experts' prophecies with how I remembered the baseball season had actually played out. Thankfully, there had been many surprises that the prognosticators failed to anticipate. What fun would it be if all the teams performed as expected?

Sharon and Tally came back into the lobby a little over an hour later. Penny, Tally's three-legged German shepherd, hobbled along beside them. The two women were walking slowly, their shoulders almost touching. Tally was tilting her head toward Sharon, talking softly to her, and Sharon was looking down at the floor, nodding at what Tally was saying to her.

When they came over to where I was sitting, I looked up at them as if I hadn't expected them and said, “Hey. You're back.” I reached out and gave Penny's muzzle a scratch.

Sharon smiled. “You waited.” Her eyes were puffy, and I guessed she'd been crying.

“I didn't want to walk back alone,” I said.

Tally touched Sharon's arm. “Next week, then?”

“Same time, same place,” Sharon said. “I'll be here.”

“You've got my numbers if you ever…”

“Yes,” Sharon said. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“It's going to be fine,” Tally said. “Really.”

Sharon nodded and smiled. “I'm beginning to believe you.” She turned to me. “She's amazing.”

“I know,” I said.

Sharon gave Tally a hug and Penny a pat, and then we walked outside.

“I can't talk you into lunch?” I asked.

“I'd love to,” Sharon said, “but I really must get back. Another time, I hope.”

“You have an appointment next week?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe we can have lunch then.”

“Let's plan on it,” I said. “So it went well with Tally?”

“You know,” she said, “I understood that I was sad and frightened and depressed, but I didn't realize how guilty I was feeling. I was being smothered by my guilt. About what happened to Ken, I mean. Tally helped me understand that I was blaming myself, beating myself up, as if I was the one who killed him. She got me talking, and the next thing I knew, I was telling her how it was my fault, and then we talked about that, and then I cried for a while, and pretty soon it was like I was standing up and straightening my spine and shrugging some giant weight off of my shoulders. She didn't really explain anything to me. She just asked me a few questions, and I explained it to her. I mean, I knew it all the time, but I was blocking it out. That's how guilt works, Tally said.”

“I'm glad you're feeling better,” I said.

“Tally says I should expect those awful feelings to keep coming back for a while,” she said. “Lying awake at night, the dreams, the glooms, all that. Now I've got some ways to deal with them. She gave me some tools. They give me power. Now I believe I can control those feelings. Plus, I'm going to keep seeing her. She's quite wonderful.” Sharon put her arm through mine and held it tight against her side. “For the first time since it happened, I actually feel as if I might become normal again. I can't tell you how good that feels.”

Provided,
I thought,
you don't end up going to trial for Ken's murder. That might tend to slow down your recovery.

 

We were shutting down our office computers, closing the blinds, cleaning out the coffee urn, all the things we do at the end of a workday, when Roger Horowitz came blustering into the office.

Julie smiled at him. “You're too late,” she said. “We just threw out the dregs of today's coffee.”

“Well, damn,” he said. “Everyone knows Coyne's office is the place to go for coffee dregs.”

“How about a Coke?” asked Julie. “Bottle of water?”

“I only got a minute,” he said. “Benetti's double-parked in front of the library.” He looked at me and jerked his head at my office.

I nodded, and he followed me in.

He sat on the sofa. I took the upholstered chair across from him. “What?” I asked.

“Your client,” he said. “We gotta talk to her.”

“Interrogate her, you mean?”

He shrugged. “Call it whatever you want. Ask her a few questions, sure. Benetti was all for sending the troops to her house
with handcuffs, sirens screaming, and hauling her in. My idea is this. Why don't we meet here in your office, your home field, you might say, tomorrow morning?”

“That's very considerate of you,” I said. “Surprising.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I surprise myself sometimes. Benetti and I don't see this case the same way, which isn't such a bad thing, but it causes some disagreement on tactics. Anyway, I'm senior in the partnership, so we're doing it my way. Can you have Mrs. Nichols here at ten tomorrow morning, do you think?”

“Sure I can,” I said. “You want to tell me what it's all about?”

“I absolutely do not,” he said.

“You come up with something you think is new evidence on this case?”

“Don't push me, Coyne, or I'll defer to Benetti. She's ready to dust off the waterboard. I think there's some girl thing going on between her and your client. A pair of nice-looking women like the two of them, you know what I'm saying?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” I said, “but you better keep your partner in line. Whisper the word ‘harassment' into her ear.”

Horowitz grinned and pushed himself to his feet. “We'll be here at ten. We'll bring the recorders, you take care of the coffee.”

I stood up and held out my hand to him. “Seriously,” I said. “I appreciate it. Whatever people are saying about you, don't listen to them. You're not such a bad person.”

“For God's sake,” he said, “don't tell anybody.”

Sharon showed up in my office a little after nine thirty on Friday morning. We went into one of my conference rooms, sat side by side at the rectangular table, and sipped coffee.

She wore tailored slacks and a blouse that was buttoned to her throat. She looked tired and edgy. “Your secretary was actually pleasant to me,” she said. “Smiled, asked how I was doing, Mrs. Nichols, if I wanted coffee. I asked her to call me Sharon.”

“She probably won't,” I said. “She likes to keep the distinction between client and friend clearer than I do.”

She nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “So when you called last night, you said you didn't know what was up. Can you tell me now?”

“I still don't know,” I said. “I told you last night not to worry about it. Did you obey me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure. You know, the things Tally and I talked about yesterday, in her office, with her there, her calm, warm self, Penny snoozing peacefully at our feet, sunshine coming in through the window, it all made sense, and I really thought I was suddenly and magically okay again. But last night? I'm
here to tell you, Tally was right. It's not going to be that easy. I stared up at the ceiling for a long time, wondering what the detectives wanted to ask me.” She shook her head. “I came up with some pretty wild possibilities.”

“Like what?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Now, in the daylight, I can see that they were all stupid. Things look different in the middle of the night.”

“Nothing plausible, then?”

“Well,” she said, “if the murder weapon showing up in my kitchen dishwasher or under my bed is plausible, okay, then. Or if somebody said they heard me and Ken talking or yelling or something in his hotel room that night, then, yes, my craziness was plausible.”

“Ken was dead when you got there, right?”

Sharon frowned. “Are you questioning that?”

“If somebody could've heard you and him…”

“That's my point,” she said. “They couldn't have, because he was already dead. So it's stupid of me to invent the idea that somebody heard something, or thought they did, and then to obsess on it—but it's what I did instead of sleeping.”

“Maybe you should see your doctor,” I said, “get a prescription for sleeping pills.”

“I'll run that idea past Tally,” she said. “I want to get better so I can sleep. I don't think it works the other way around. I'm not sure if sleeping pills would help the process.”

There came a discreet tap on the door, and then it opened, and Julie stepped inside. Marcia Benetti and Roger Horowitz came in right behind her. Benetti had a big leather bag slung over her shoulder. Horowitz was carrying an attaché case.

I stood up and shook hands with both of them.

They both nodded at Sharon, who remained seated.

“I'll bring coffee,” Julie said, and she walked out of the room.

Horowitz and Benetti sat across from me and Sharon at the conference table. Benetti took her digital recorder out of her bag and put it on the table. Then she reached back into the bag and came out with a stenographer's notebook, which she flipped open and put on the table beside her.

Horowitz slid a manila folder out of his attaché case, put it on the table in front of him, and placed his clasped hands on top of it.

We looked across the table at each other.

Benetti cleared her throat and glanced at Horowitz, and that's when Julie shouldered open the door and came in carrying a silver tray with a carafe of coffee, two bone china cups with matching saucers, and milk and sugar in little silver pitchers. Our very best tea service.

She put the tray on a side table, poured coffee into the two cups, and raised her eyebrows at Horowitz and Benetti.

Horowitz said, “Black,” and Benetti said, “Just one sugar, thank you.”

Julie served each of them, then refilled Sharon's mug and mine. Then she slipped out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Horowitz sipped his coffee. “Okay,” he said. “Let's get started.”

Marcia Benetti hit a button on the recorder, said, “Testing,” set it in the middle of the table, and said, “Say something, please, each of you.”

I said, “Here we are again,” and Sharon said, “I wonder why.”

Benetti replayed what we'd said. It sounded fine to me. “Okay,” she said. “That's loud and clear. We can get started.” She cleared her throat and fixed her gaze on Sharon. “Just so you understand, Mrs. Nichols, anything you say here today can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to refuse to
answer any question. You have the right to have your attorney present.” Benetti smiled at me. “Which, of course, you do. Do you have any questions about this?”

“No,” said Sharon. “I understand.”

“Attorney Coyne?”

“Are you planning to take my client into custody?” I asked.

Horowtiz shook his head. “Not at this time.”

“So why are you Mirandizing her?”

“We are being scrupulous about protecting her rights,” he said. “We thought you'd appreciate it.”

“We do,” I said.

“Means she better tell the truth, though,” he said.

“We get that,” I said.

Horowitz said, “Okay, for the record, I'm Homicide Detective Roger Horowitz, Massachusetts State Police. My colleague Sergeant Marcia Benetti is here with me. We're in the law office of attorney Brady L. Coyne with him and his client, ah, Sharon Nichols. It's Friday morning, ten oh six, April the twenty-seventh.” He slipped some papers out of the manila folder. “What I got here,” he said, looking at Sharon but speaking for the benefit of the recorder, “is a copy of Mrs. Nichols's divorce agreement. I made copies for all of us. You want to take a look at them?”

“We certainly do,” I said.

Horowitz pushed two paper-clipped stacks of paper across the table to us. Sharon pulled one stack in front of her. I took the other one and flipped through it. There were fourteen pages altogether. They included the four articles that specified, defined, and enumerated the “Parties,” the “Recitals,” the “Covenants of the husband and wife,” and the “Interpretation and execution,” followed by six exhibits, A through F: “Custody and parenting,” “Alimony, child support, and college costs,” “Taxes,” “Division
of personal and real property,” “Insurance,” and Exhibit F, “Miscellaneous.” Standard stuff.

I turned to Sharon. “Okay?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. It's a copy of my divorce agreement, all right.”

I looked across the table at Horowitz. “Okay,” I said.

“Mrs. Nichols,” he said, “that's your signature there on the bottom of page five?”

“It is,” she said. “On the next page you can see where two notary publics signed it, authenticating that it's my signature and the other one is my husband's.”

I smiled at her mild sarcasm. I was glad to see it. It meant that Horowitz hadn't intimidated her.

“Thank you for pointing that out,” Horowitz said. He turned to Benetti. “You want to take it from here?”

“I do,” she said. She thumbed through a few pages of the divorce agreement. “Let's look at Exhibit B, paragraph one, where it says, ‘The husband shall pay child support to the wife.'” She looked up at us. “Got it?”

I nodded, and then Sharon said, “Yes.”

Benetti said, “It goes on to say that the child support ends when the children are emancipated, and it defines that as when they've finished college or reached the age of twenty-two, whichever comes first. Is that right?” She cocked her head and looked at Sharon.

Sharon turned to me. Before Horowitz and Benetti arrived, I'd told Sharon that she should answer no questions without my assent.

“That's right,” I said to Benetti. “It's right there in plain English, or as plain as English can be in a legal document.”

Benetti looked at me, gave me a quick smile, then turned back to Sharon. “How old are your children, Mrs. Nichols?”

Sharon looked at me.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Wayne's twenty-two, and Ellen is twenty-five.”

“They're both in school?”

“Ellen's in graduate school,” Sharon said. “Getting her master's at BU. Wayne was, up until…” She looked at me.

“Last fall,” I said. “He dropped out.”

“So you've been getting child support checks every month from your ex-husband since your divorce, is that right?”

“That's right,” Sharon said.

“In the amount specified in this agreement?”

“We renegotiated the numbers when Ellen entered college,” Sharon said. “To reflect the realities of college costs, which had changed a lot since we first signed our agreement. After she graduated, we negotiated them again.”

“You're paying Wayne's college bills?”

“Yes,” said Sharon.

“With the child support money your ex-husband sends you.”

“That's right.”

“Your checks come regularly?”

Sharon shrugged. “Pretty much. Ken missed a few payments here and there. I called him and reminded him, and they started coming again.”

“Reminded him?” asked Benetti.

Sharon smiled. “I told him I'd turn it over to my lawyer, and the checks started coming again.”

“‘Threatened' would be the word for it, then, right?”

Sharon shrugged. “Sure. I guess so.”

“Did the checks stop when Wayne dropped out?”

“No,” Sharon said.

“Did you and your husband talk about it?”

I touched Sharon's arm and spoke softly into her ear. “Tell me.”

“No,” she whispered to me. “I didn't know he'd dropped out, and I don't think Ken did, either. If he did, we never talked about it.”

“The answer is no,” I said to Benetti. “They did not talk about it. They didn't know their son had dropped out.”

“Now, about Ellen,” said Benetti, “she's on her own?”

“That's right,” said Sharon. “She's taken out student loans, worked part-time. Ken and I haven't helped her financially since she graduated.”

“Okay, Mrs. Nichols,” Benetti said. “Now I'm looking at paragraph four, same exhibit. Alimony. Your husband—your ex-husband, I should say—has been paying you alimony all these years, is that right?”

“That's right,” Sharon said.

“Has this number been renegotiated?”

“No.”

“So every month since this agreement was approved, you've gotten monthly checks for alimony and child support.”

“One check, actually,” said Sharon. “He lumped the child support and the alimony together.”

“You've been financially dependent on him. Your ex-husband.”

“I wouldn't—”

“Don't answer that,” I said. To Benetti I said, “The numbers are right there. You can judge them.”

“Let me put it this way,” Benetti said. “Did what your husband pay you in alimony and child support adequately cover your children's college expenses and your own living expenses?”

Sharon looked at me, and I nodded.

“Not really,” she said. “I've always had to work.”

“Did you ever ask him to increase his payments?”

“We already stipulated that the child support was renegotiated,” I said.

“How about since then?” said Benetti. “That was quite a few years ago. Alimony or child support?”

“No,” said Sharon. “Well, yes. The child support. When Ellen graduated from college.”

“Other than that?”

“No,” Sharon said. “It stayed the same. We didn't talk about changing it.”

“The subject was never even mentioned? You never complained to him about how hard it was to make ends meet? You never told him that you and the kids were struggling, or that college costs were skyrocketing, or how hard you were working just to keep your head above water?”

“You're being argumentative,” I said.

“You can't object,” said Benetti. “This isn't a courtroom. There's no judge.”

“Well,” I said, “I'm telling you, I do object.” To Sharon I said, “Don't answer those questions.”

“I don't mind,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Please don't.” I looked at Benetti. “My client answered your question. She and her ex-husband did not discuss or argue about finances, and I object to your browbeating her.”

“I'll remind you again, Mr. Coyne,” she said, “this isn't a courtroom, and you can't object to something just because you don't want to hear it.”

“Okay,” I said, “but we don't have to sit here and pretend that this wild stuff you're throwing around should be taken seriously, either.”

Benetti shrugged.

“You have nothing except some supposition, then,” I said. I set my forearms on the table and leaned forward. I looked at Horowitz, then at Benetti. “If this is all you've got,” I said, “this unsubstantiated implication that my client and her ex-husband might have discussed family finances, might even have had a disagreement about money, which, if it did happen, which my client says it didn't, would only make them just like everybody else—if that's what you've got, then we're done here.”

Horowitz grinned. He was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest. He was enjoying the show.

Benetti smiled across the table at me. “We're not quite done yet,” she said. She looked at Sharon. “Do you know who the beneficiary of your ex-husband's will is?”

I touched Sharon's elbow. “Don't answer,” I said.

She looked at me. “But I don't—”

I held up my hand, and she stopped.

I looked at Benetti. “I bet you already know the answer to your question.”

She smiled. “In fact, I do.” She leafed through some papers and held up a thick document. “The Last Will and Testament of Kenneth Roland Nichols.” She pushed it across the table to me.