Appraisal for Murder (15 page)

She hadn’t heard us drive up and was sitting at the kitchen table, tea mug in front of her, stroking Jazz. She rose quickly and hugged me, looking at Michael as she did so. “Thank you.”

I felt like telling her she didn’t need to send Robin Hood to rescue Maid Marian, but I resisted. I had to give him credit, however grudgingly, for talking Robby into working with Morehouse. “I’m fine, really. Sit down and finish your tea.”

“I’m off,” Michael said. “I just wanted to deliver your package and…”

The door to the kitchen swung open and Joel Kenner stood there with another man. “Michael. Good to see you.” He held out his hand, but Michael didn’t take it. “Sorry about the article,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “It’s my job, you know.”

Aunt Madge broke the awkward silence. “Why don’t you all have a seat in the breakfast room, and I’ll make some coffee and tea.”

“Kenner,” Michael said, “you might like to meet Georgine Winters.”

IN THE END, Michael had let himself be persuaded to have coffee. I helped Aunt Madge fix it, and she and I joined them. The conversation was stilted, as could be expected given that Kenner and his colleague, a young man named Peter Sellers (really), were there to cover the hearing for their Houston paper. Mostly Kenner told Michael what was going on with people he knew in the oil industry in Houston.

I banished my thoughts about the conversation and rolled over in bed and looked at the sun coming in through the slats in the window. Jazz walked off my pillow and onto my face, and I pushed her to one side. Now that she was sure I was awake, I’d have to get up and feed her. My new strategy was to give her the daily dose of canned food in the kitchen so she’d have a reason to like the room. However, she was no longer allowed to jump on the fridge. Aunt Madge said it was unsanitary.

I showered quickly and Jazz and I went downstairs. The guests were long gone, thank heavens. Kenner had been delighted to meet me; he hadn’t had a clue who called him. I think Michael told him so Kenner would pester me. All’s fair.

Aunt Madge was at church, so Jazz and I had the run of the house. The guys were outside, anxious to come in because Jazz was visible through the glass door. She was growing bolder. She paraded in front of the sliding glass door and they whined. “You hussy,” I told her as I drank my orange juice.

The phone rang, and I answered, wondering if it would be Morehouse telling me what was going on with Robby. Instead, the voice said, “Georgine?”

“Yeah, I’ve been showing him around town. Reporter courtesy.” He paused, but when I didn’t respond he continued. “How come you talked to him and not me?”

I regret to say that I exploded. “What the hell is it with you people? Why ask me that just because I think he’s not a murderer?”

“Maybe,” he said, evenly, “it’s because you and your aunt are about the only people in town who say that out loud. Why don’t you tell me why you think that? What do you know?”

“I don’t know anything. It just seems that he would be really stupid to set it up that way. He was the only one in the house before I got there.” I could hear the scratching of his pencil, and was horrified. “Are we, like, on the record?”

“You didn’t say we weren’t,” he said, very businesslike. I hung up, and didn’t answer the phone when it rang again. I put my head on the table.
When will I ever learn?

I WAS DEFINITELY GOING to the hearing, and Aunt Madge said she was, too. She even got someone to let the dogs out and told her non-court-attending guests, as she called them, that there would be no afternoon tea. Instead, she arranged for them to go to Java Jolt, her treat, should they want to. Both couples were more than 70. I did not envision them as Java Jolt customers, but Mr. Hammond, who was visiting from Virginia, said that he’d been going there every day to email his grandson.
Go figure.

Miller County is the smallest county in New Jersey, and its courthouse is sized accordingly. The judge’s bench was raised, but not as high as in TV courtrooms. There were two small tables in front of the judge’s bench, each with three chairs. The jury box was so small it barely held the twelve empty chairs. Idly I wondered what would happen if a juror were obese.

The probable cause hearing started at 1 p.m., and we had arrived in the courtroom at 12:45. We got two of the last seats on the six rows of public benches. I recognized a number of the people as having been at the Riordan house after the funeral, and I wondered if they were there to support Michael or glare at him. No Jennifer Stenner, however. Larry and Honey Riordan sat directly behind the table that I assumed would be for Michael and his attorney, who walked into the courtroom shortly after one o’clock.

Unfortunately, we did not get the last two seats, and Mrs. Jasper sat down on the bench next to me. I groaned inwardly. At least I would not have to listen to her during the hearing. “Shame about the article,” she said.

I turned to face Aunt Madge, who looked straight ahead. “What article?” I hissed. Before I could query her more the judge walked out of a back room and people stood.

Judge Kevin Rommer gaveled the crowd to order, reminded everyone that this was not a trial but a probable cause hearing that would provide him with the information he needed about whether the case should go forward, and asked the county’s prosecuting attorney to call his first witness. As he called Sgt. Morehouse’s name, I glanced at the prosecuting attorney’s table. Next to Attorney Martin Small’s large briefcase sat Annie Milner, legal pad in front of her. She looked more like I would envision a prosecuting attorney – an expensive suit and erect posture – than the man himself, whose shirt was partially untucked and suit jacket lay carelessly on the back of his chair.

As Small paced in front of him, Sgt. Morehouse recounted Harry Steele’s call to 911, and finding me sitting on the floor of Mrs. Riordan’s room, “stunned.” I felt Mrs. Jasper’s hand on my knee, and ignored her.

The prosecuting attorney then asked Sgt. Morehouse if he had been able to verify an alibi for Michael Riordan at the time of his mother’s death. Exactly as Michael had predicted, they discussed that he could have killed her just before he left or made it from his car (which had been seen in the lot even though no one noticed him on the beach) to the house and back easily, before the police located him.

Next Mr. Small asked Sgt. Morehouse how Michael would have gotten in the house without me hearing him. Morehouse noted that Michael could have easily come in a side door near the first-floor laundry room and gone up a back set of stairs. I thought about that; he could have.

“What about an alarm system?” he asked.

“He said he turned it off the night before, so he didn’t forget to do it when the appraiser arrived.”

Michael’s attorney, Winona Mason (
whoever met an attorney named Winona?)
had few questions for Morehouse. “Mr. Riordan was not at the house when you first arrived?”

“That’s correct,” he said. “Took us about a half-hour to find him.” He added that after driving through Ocean Alley and alerting other local jurisdictions’ police to the Mercedes they were looking for, local police had finally come across him in a Dollar General parking lot. This struck me funny. I wondered how many Mercedes parked in that lot?

I’m no attorney, but I’d watched enough television to recognize that all of the evidence thus far was circumstantial. Morehouse had said that the only fingerprints on the door to the room were Michael and Ruth Riordan’s and mine. The maid had cleaned the day before, so all sets of fingerprints were fairly fresh. At least ten people turned to look at me, and I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue.

When the medical examiner took the stand Aunt Madge shifted in her seat. She did not like anything remotely grisly. I wasn’t too sympathetic at the moment, still somewhat annoyed that she had not mentioned whatever article Mrs. Jasper had read.

The examiner noted that the time of death would have been “within an hour, maybe less” of the time I found Mrs. Riordan. He based this on body temperature and the fact that rigor mortis had not set in.

Why, Mr. Small asked him, did he think it was strangulation that killed Mrs. Riordan rather than natural causes? The medical examiner went into great detail about what causes asphyxia – spasms (such as from asthma), obstruction (such as a piece of food or other ‘foreign body’ that will not go down), or compression, which means someone gets a good grip on your windpipe and does not let go until you are history. These are my summaries, of course. Other methods of compression can include someone holding a pillow over your face, but this was not the method used, in his opinion.

He thought the cause of death was strangulation by compression. If she had been smothered, say by a pillow, there would have smudging of her nightly moisturizer. In addition, there was “just the slightest imprint of a finger” on her throat. He believed someone had blocked her windpipe just long enough to deprive her brain of oxygen. Eventually her heart stopped beating.

None of this added to Michael as a murderer, as far as I could tell. Besides, her covers had not seemed mussed to me. Wouldn’t it be normal for her to have fought an attacker, and wouldn’t the bed have been rumpled? Wouldn’t I have heard something? I now wished they had asked me to be a witness. I’d ask them some questions.

As if he read my mind, the prosecuting attorney asked the examiner why the finger imprint was not deeper, or had not left a larger bruise. He attributed this to the fact that Mrs. Riordan had been drugged with probably 30 milligrams of cyclobenzaprine, a muscle relaxer; this was three times the normal dose. It was also the same prescription muscle relaxer that was in Michael Riordan’s bathroom. He occasionally took it for back spasms. The judge rapped his gavel to silence the buzz in the courtroom. I looked at Michael, and he looked as surprised as anyone else.

In the medical examiner’s opinion, the muscle relaxer made Mrs. Riordan’s breathing very shallow. Perhaps the killer had even hoped the pills would kill her.

Michael’s attorney asked the medical examiner if he could prove this medicine specifically came from Michael’s supply of pills. He could not. That was her only question. Michael had said he was paying this woman a lot of money.
What the hell for?

To my surprise, the next witness called was Mrs. Jasper. No wonder she had on such a new-looking green suit, complete with cream trim and earrings of cream and green. The outfit would be worthy of an elderly Jennifer.

As with the other witnesses, she was sworn in and said she would tell the truth. Idly, I wondered if Mr. Small would be able to get her to shut up. He began by asking her whether Michael Riordan had been estranged from his mother since his marriage. Mason objected, and the prosecuting attorney told the judge that Mrs. Jasper’s comments would provide ‘direct information’ about the status of Mr. Riordan’s relationship with his mother. The judge allowed the question.

With, in my opinion, the sincerity of someone hawking diet pills, Mrs. Jasper relayed the hurt that Ruth Riordan had felt when her son (no mention of the jealous wife) stopped calling and visiting very often. She knew all about Mrs. Riordan’s pain because she was her best friend. There was some rustling in the courtroom, and I sensed that there were those in the group who did not think Ruth Riordan would have characterized the relationship this way.

When Mr. Small was done, Michael’s attorney asked Mrs. Jasper to explain how she had met Mrs. Riordan, and the kinds of things they did together. Winona Mason pressed with questions until it was clear that the two women had met through their church and that most of their interactions were through the church Social Services Committee.

Michael's attorney continued, “It sounds to me, Mrs. Jasper, as if you considered yourself a better friend to Mrs. Riordan than she considered you.”

Winona Mason pointed out that if the prosecuting attorney was presenting Mrs. Jasper as an expert on the relationship between Mrs. Riordan and her son it was important to know the true nature of the friendship between the two women.