The Family Lawyer Read online

  Chapter 4

  Don’t erase those texts,” I blurted, then added, “We may need them.”

  “Okay.” Melissa froze with the phone clenched in her hand. Her eyes glimmered with tears. They wouldn’t fall—there was no time to cry.

  The phone buzzed. Another text. U FUCKING CAPULLO!!!

  I pointed to the phone. “Wipe off your fingerprints.”

  Melissa grabbed the hem of her dress and wiped the front and back of the phone. “Now what?”

  I closed my eyes, tapped my right temple. Think, think, think. “Put his prints back on it.”

  “What?” She blinked at me, then gaped down at her dead husband. “How? Why?”

  “The cops will wonder why there aren’t any of his fingerprints on the phone. They’ll know that you wiped the phone, and then they’ll wonder why you wiped the phone, and then they’ll start asking questions. Understand?”

  Another text. NO ME CHINGUES!!!

  Melissa grimaced as she lifted Kirk’s dead right hand and placed it around his phone. She turned the device this way and that against his fingers and palm. Then, she repeated this process with his left hand. Still holding the device with her dress, she slid the phone back into the pocket of his soiled cargo shorts. “Okay? How’s that?”

  I nodded. “Good, but—”

  “Damn it.” Melissa grabbed the tipped-over wineglass from the coffee table. She got back on her feet, then scurried past me.

  “We need to call now,” I said, following her to the foyer. “Melissa—”

  She knocked over the mail on the bannister as she raced into the foyer. She grabbed Jonah’s Elmo roller-bag from the tiled floor.

  I snatched up the mail, then snatched her wrist. “Mel, we need to call—”

  Wild-eyed, Melissa yanked out of my grip. “I know, but I need to do something first.” Perspiration had darkened the neckline of her dress, and now, the smell of sweat was mingling with the scent of candles and Kirk’s last meal.

  My sister darted into the family room with its stained cloth sofa and child-friendly rug thick with crushed crackers and spilled applesauce. From the plastic tubs of toys, she grabbed two Tonka trucks, then tossed them into the roller bag. From the pile of stuffed animals, she plucked out the fancy talking teddy bear I’d given Jonah on his first Christmas.

  Melissa unzipped the bear’s back, pulled out the battery pack that made him talk, and shoved that pack deep into the tub of toys. She gathered all the leftover packets of Ecstasy, filled the wineglass with them, and slipped the glass into the bear’s back, covered it with cotton batting, and zipped up the teddy. She lay the bear in the roller-bag, beside the trucks.

  I squinted at her. “May I ask—?”

  Melissa ran back to the foyer and raced up the stairs, two at a time. She hurried down the hallway until she stopped at the closed door of Jonah’s room. She took a breath, said, “Okay,” more to herself than to me, then slowly turned the doorknob.

  Golden stars and crescent moons from the space night lamp glowed and twirled on Jonah’s walls and ceiling. So quiet and ordered in here.

  Melissa tiptoed to Jonah’s bureau and pulled out shirts, training undies, and pants. She grabbed his asthma inhaler and breathing chamber from her nightstand, then lay each piece atop the toys in the Elmo bag.

  My nephew, now in a “big boys’” bed, slept with his butt in the air and arms to his side.

  Just like his dad down in the living room.

  We returned to the kitchen, where Melissa poured Cheerios from the box into sandwich baggies. She plucked tangerines from the ceramic bowl on the breakfast counter. The snacks went into the Elmo bag, too.

  A whirlwind now, she swept back into the living room and over to the coffee table. Grabbed the wine bottle there, then spun back to the kitchen. She poured the leftover wine in that bottle down the sink, then ran the tap to rinse the basin. She wrapped one of Jonah’s sweatshirts around the empty bottle, then placed it in the bottom of the Elmo bag. She whirled over to the sideboard in the dark dining room and grabbed a clean wineglass and a bottle of cheap California red, then swooped back into the living room. She poured a finger of wine into the glass, then knocked it over as though it had been the glass that had made the original spill.

  The phone in Kirk’s pocket buzzed again.

  Melissa stood in the space between the living room and the kitchen. Slowly turning—wine bottle, toppled glass, wine stain, Elmo bag—her gaze finally landed on me. Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head. “You understand what I just did?”

  Breathless, I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Stay here.” She disappeared back up the stairs, and returned a minute later with a sleeping Jonah in her arms. He wore Elmo pajamas and clutched his favorite blanket in his tiny fist. She kissed the top of his head as a teardrop tumbled down her cheek and landed in his curls. “You’ll take care of him tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes.” The lump in my throat was now the size of a comet and was just as cold. “What about Kirk’s parents? Are you gonna call them?”

  “Soon.” Melissa kissed her son’s head again, then offered him to me. “Here.”

  I was accustomed to carrying boxes of vodka and twenty-pound cartons of invitation stock, but not the heft of a sleeping three-year old boy.

  Melissa patted her son’s back, then turned her attention to the now-stuffed Elmo bag. She zipped it, stood it upright. “You’ll have to take care of this, too. You can’t forget about it. Do not let it out of your sight.”

  Her words made the weight in my arms even heavier.

  She brushed my cheek with her knuckles. “You’re a good sister.”

  I said nothing, just listened to my pulse banging in my ears, the soft snore coming from the sweetest boy in the world.

  Melissa squared her shoulders, then gazed one last time at the man she’d married just four years ago. “Guess I should call now.”

  “I love you, Mel,” I whispered.

  “I love you, too.” She stepped over to the landline telephone on the kitchen wall, then lifted the receiver from the cradle.

  The operator’s voice cut through the kitchen’s quiet. “911, what’s your emergency?”

  Chapter 5

  What’s your emergency?

  Melissa had lost her ability to talk to the 911 operator, so I’d plucked the phone from her shaky hands.

  “There’s a man collapsed on the living room floor, and we don’t know if he’s dead or alive.” That’s what I had reported, and now, ten minutes later, EMTs had rushed into Melissa’s house to attend to her husband.

  Someone had turned off the stereo—Jill Scott’s smooth alto didn’t fit the room’s current mood.

  A red-headed EMT with a treble-clef hand tattoo held the disc of a stethoscope to Kirk’s back. He closed his eyes as he listened to…nothing.

  The house was now filled with the noise of a crime scene. Camera clicks, police radio squawks, and the chatter of men and women wearing uniforms. The red-headed EMT closed his carrying case—the forty-two-year-old black male no longer needed saving. A second paramedic, a pudgy Asian guy with spiky hair, now attended Kirk Oakley’s widow at the poolside patio table.

  I stood in the kitchen with Jonah in my arms, and I hadn’t heard the paramedic pronounce Kirk dead. But I already knew.

  Drowsy Jonah tugged at my raggedy ponytail with one hand and sucked the thumb of his other hand. “Dee-Dee, why the people here?” he asked me.

  “They’re just making sure your mommy’s okay,” I whispered.

  “Daddy sick?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry, J-Boogie. It’s gonna be okay.” My face numbed from the lie I kept telling. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. The hell it was. But Jonah didn’t need to know that, so I shifted him to my other hip, then kissed the top of his head.

  “Where’s the family?” A man’s husky voice cut through the clicks and squawks of the cameras and radios.

  “In the kitchen,” a female voice s
aid.

  “Why the hell are they still in the house?” Husky Voice asked.

  “Because it wasn’t a crime scene at first,” the woman explained.

  Two men wearing bad suits entered the living room. The younger one looked in my direction. He had the clear blue eyes of a ventriloquist’s dummy and a full mouth that reminded me of the candy wax lips I’d bought for a quarter back in third grade. His partner was an older black guy who could’ve earned millions as Danny Glover’s body double.

  The white guy tugged the sleeve of a passing female patrol officer, then whispered to her.

  A moment later, the lady cop, Officer Robynn, held Jonah and I stood before Detective Gavin Elliott the Older and Detective Ian Anthony the Husky-Voiced.

  “You’re Danielle Lawrence, aren’t you?” Detective Anthony asked.

  I squinted at him. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m disappointed,” he said. “You don’t recognize me?”

  I flipped the pages of my mental “Back Down Memory Lane” photo album—shaggy-haired Brian, Kels the Lenny Kravitz clone, Magic Mike…

  “We went to college together,” Detective Anthony said. “Our second year, I lived two doors down from you.”

  Put a pair of Buddy Holly glasses on him, make those lips dry and flaky, un-straighten his teeth and…Ah! There he was!

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. You dated what’s-her-face, the Raider’s daughter.”

  “Everyone remembers that.”

  “You never let us forget. Neither did she.” I frowned. “Wish I could say that I was happy to see you, but under the current circumstances…” I wrapped my arms around my shoulders, then slowly exhaled.

  Ian thumbed back to the living room. “Who’s the guy back there to you?”

  “He’s my brother-in-law, Kirk Oakley.”

  “This your house?” Detective Elliott the Older asked.

  “No. My sister’s.”

  “Not your brother-in-law’s, too?” he asked.

  “He lived here but he didn’t own it,” I said. “She does.” I sounded petty but it was Monday at two-something in the morning, and Kirk was an asshole who had used and abused my sister. Just call me Petty LaBelle.

  Ian pointed at Jonah, who was now playing with one of his toy trucks out on the terrace. “That your kid?”

  “No. My sister’s.” I paused, then added, “And my brother-in-law’s, too. The EMT—” I looked away as tears burned in my eyes. “Is Kirk…? Will he be okay?”

  Ian’s glassy eyes softened. “He’s not. He’s dead. I’m sorry. But don’t worry. We’ll catch the bastard who did this.”

  Chapter 6

  We now congregated in Melissa’s tiny home office behind the main house. The pre-fab module was a peaches-and-cream affair straight out of Working Mother magazine. My sister and I shared the love seat while Ian huddled on the ottoman and Detective Elliott sat behind the grand oak desk. Melissa’s weeping had slowed into hiccups. Each time her breath caught, she tore at damp sheets of tissue in her hands. Pieces of that paper littered her knees and drifted to the carpet like snowflakes.

  “For the hu-hundredth time,” Melissa answered between hiccups. “I don’t own a gu-gun. Why do you keep asking me about gu-guns?”

  “Because someone shot him,” Detective Elliott said.

  “What?” Melissa screeched.

  Ian glanced at his partner, then asked Melissa, “How did you think he died?”

  “Like from a h-heart attack,” Melissa said, tissue-ripping now set on high. “Or from a s-stroke.”

  “Only because we didn’t see any blood,” I said. “Are you sure he was shot?”

  “Where?” Melissa asked. “On his body, I mean. Was he shot? I can’t think straight.” She’d torn all the tissue paper and now clamped her ears with both hands.

  Ian pointed to his belly. “Small caliber, shot in the abdomen, which is why you don’t see a lot of blood. It’s probably pooled on the inside. Bullet went in, probably ruptured major vessels, created internal bleeding. No one was here to get him to the ER, and that was that.”

  Melissa’s trembling hand clutched her neck. “Oh, no. Oh, Kirk—”

  Somewhere in the kitchen of the main house, a tray of silverware crashed to the floor.

  We all—even the detectives—startled in our seats.

  Tearing shit up—that’s what Johnny Law was doing to my sister’s house.

  “What are they looking for?” Melissa asked, bug-eyed.

  “Evidence,” Detective Elliott said.

  “There’s evidence in my cutlery drawer?”

  For the cops, evidence was everywhere. In the living room and kitchen, forensic technicians wearing khakis and blue nylon jackets had dropped plastic yellow tents with black numbers on floors and pieces of furniture. They swabbed strips of walls and carpet, and took pictures and pointed at invisible things. The wine stain had been marked with yellow tent 38, the wine bottle with yellow tent 25, and the wineglass with yellow tent 26. The numbers between marked those things that could only be seen with a microscope.

  “…gonna have to do some testing,” Detective Elliott was now saying. “Starting with you.” He pointed at Melissa.

  Melissa froze and her mouth hung open. “Why?”

  “Because…” Ian used his pen to point at my sister’s wine-stained palms and kneecaps.

  Melissa gaped at her hands—she hadn’t realized that she was now covered in Burgundy. “But it’s not blood. It’s from the wine in the carpet. I didn’t shoot my husband.”

  Detective Elliott smirked. “We’re supposed to just take your word for it?”

  Ian shot his partner a glare, then said to Melissa, “It’s all standard procedure, okay? We have to check everyone for blood and gunpowder residue because months from now, at trial, we don’t want a defense attorney punching holes in our case because we’d neglected to run a few swabs over everyone’s hands. That’s reasonable, right?”

  “But I touched him,” Melissa explained. “When I saw him there, I thought he had passed out—”

  “He passes out a lot,” I added. “And she revives him a lot.”

  “I didn’t know he’d been shot,” Melissa continued, silencing me with a look. “I just saw him collapsed there.”

  “And so the tests won’t be accurate,” I said. “Blood or powder or whatever would’ve been transferred to her hands when she touched him.”

  “We’ll deal with that once the test results return,” Ian said. “Really, Mrs. Oakley. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to—”

  “Give me a break,” I interrupted. “How stupid do we look? You think that today we can actually trust the cops to do the right thing? To look past the easy answer?”

  “Are you insinuating that we’re crooked cops?” Detective Elliott squinted at me, his thick black eyebrows wriggling on his forehead.

  “Only if you’re insinuating that she’s a murderer,” I shot back. “And from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you are.”

  Detective Elliott glared at me. But I thrive under glares—the heat made me stronger. “Mrs. Oakley,” he said to my sister, “you’ll need to change out of your clothes.”

  With no more tissue to tear, Melissa now pulled at the tattered hem of her dress. “No. I don’t think I want to do that.”

  “Mrs. Oakley, please,” Ian said. “Work with us on this, all right? We need your cooperation and I know this is difficult but you have nothing to fear. I promise you. Trust us. Trust me.” Then, he looked at me. Please?

  Melissa slumped on the love seat as though her frame had separated from her muscles. She turned to me with worry in her eyes. “Dani?”

  I took her hand and squeezed. “He’s right. You have nothing to fear, because you didn’t shoot him.”

  “Yeah.” My sister took a deep breath that reunited her body again, then pushed off from the couch. She strode out of the tiny house and Detective Elliott shuffled behind her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Oakley,” Ian called a
fter her.

  Melissa glanced back at me a final time.

  I winked at her. It’s gonna be okay. The truth this time—she hadn’t shot Kirk.

  A forensic tech was now scouring for clues out on the patio. “What’s in the Elmo bag?”

  My stomach lurched—I’d left Jonah’s bag at the poolside table. The same bag that hid a poisoned wine glass and bottle, and blister packs of Ecstasy. A bag that could implicate my sister in the murder of her husband.

  Shit.

  Chapter 7

  Something important had been discovered in Melissa’s cutlery drawer, and Ian Anthony moved past me on the patio and returned to the kitchen to check it out. Glass clinking, some rustling—sounded like they’d found empties in the trash can.

  But something just as important had been discovered here at the poolside table, and now I needed to explain it away. Or else.

  “It’s just my nephew’s bag,” I told the man wearing the blue nylon jacket.

  He was now squatting beside that bag, and his gloved hand rested on Elmo’s face. “I’m gonna have to search it. You understand that, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Ice crackled over my chest and scalp. There’s nothing to see here. “Jonah’s staying with me,” I explained, “so he needed a change of clothes, some toys…Cheerios. I don’t have Cheerios at home. No one over thirty eats Cheerios.” Move along, damn it.

  “I’m a Frosted Flakes man myself.” He pulled the bag’s zipper.

  The backyard was becoming hotter and the dark sky seemed to be closing in on me like a coffin.

  “His liver temp’s at 87.8 degrees.”

  The man in the nylon jacket stopped un-zippering and turned to look through the living room bay window. There, a slight black man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a jacket that said CORONER kneeled beside Kirk’s stiff body, which had been flipped onto his back. Apparently the crime scene photographers had gotten everything they needed. He pulled a long thermometer from my brother-in-law’s hip, then jotted a note onto his clipboard.