Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) (20 page)

              In a few minutes, the sod was pulled back to expose the concrete vault covering the coffin. Workers stepped in to wedge their shovels around the vault lid and lift it high enough for industrial green straps, now hanging from the bucket, to be slipped beneath each end of the lid. The backhoe’s engine groaned as the concrete slab came up and was laid on the sod beside the grave. Still silent, two workers slipped the green straps off the vault lid and jumped into the concrete vault.

              As one worker lifted the head of the coffin, another slipped one of the green straps underneath. Then they shifted to the bottom of the coffin, repeating the procedure. They scrambled out of the vault and signaled to the backhoe operator to raise the coffin.

              As the bucket rose, the backhoe’s engine groaned, bringing the mahogany coffin to the surface. Birger and McGinnis stepped closer as the workers guided the coffin, hanging in mid-air, to the opposite side of the open grave, working to set it down gently on the green grass where Dr. Bovir stood, pulling on latex gloves.

              Suddenly, the bucket jerked and the engine’s gears made a grinding sound. The coffin swung dangerously in the air, the foot of it tilting toward the ground. The bucket jerked alarmingly again as the engine gears ground and the operator fought to get the backhoe to react.

              “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”

              Another jerk of the bucket, another swing and we gasped collectively as the coffin struck the ground with a thud. A bottom corner struck first. There was a sharp crack as the mahogany lid split in half, revealing the red and white satin liner—and nothing else.

Chapter 33 Marcus

            
 
“All rise. Court is now in session.”

              The bailiff opened the door from the judge’s chambers and stood until Judge Susan Vernon entered.

              “Be seated,” she said.

              Prosecutor Steve Adolphus and I, standing at the plaintiff’s table, and Charlie, at the defense table with her public defender, a pony-tailed young man named Poe McGee, complied. A representative from the victim-witness department, here for my support, sat behind Adolphus and me in one of the gallery seats. The courtroom door opened and closed quietly. It was Graham Kinnon, who slid into a seat near the door.

              Charlie did not look like the flamboyant woman I’d met en route to Seattle. Gone were the stylish bulky sweater and thigh-high boots she’d been wearing when she was arrested in the newsroom Saturday. Today, she was dressed in a somber black business suit, a pink blouse and sensible black flats. She wore no jewelry and her jaw-length brown hair was flat, but clean. She looked more like someone Calpurnia taught school with, rather than a crazy stalker.

              I could not believe I’d agreed to what was going to happen, but I didn’t think I really had much choice. Adolphus and Birger both believed it was the only way to locate Rowan Starrett, provided Charlie’s story and Rick Starrett’s story were both true. I hoped there was no body in the coffin I knew was being opened as this hearing progressed.

              “This might be the one way we have to solve Virginia Ferguson’s murder as well,” Birger said to me, before departing for the cemetery.

              The judge began to read Charlie’s charges into the record, one misdemeanor count of menacing by stalking, which carried a sentence of up to six months in jail, and a one thousand dollar fine.

              “It’s my understanding that the parties have come to an agreement?” she asked, looking over her reading glasses at the attorneys.

              “Yes, your honor.” Adolphus and McGee spoke in unison.

              “Miss Deifenbaugh, you are pleading guilty to this charge of your own free will?”

              “Yes, Judge,” she said. The voice that sounded like it had been filtered through two Kentucky distilleries and three cubic feet of gravel was oddly out of sync with her submissive manner and conservative clothing.

              “Mr. Henning, you agree to this plea agreement? This is being done of your own free will?”

              “Yes, your honor,” I answered.

              “Provided the conditions of the plea agreement are adhered to,” Adolphus said.

              “
Yes
, Mr. Adolphus,” Judge Vernon looked sharply over her glasses. “Miss Deifenbaugh, you are hereby sentenced to six months in jail and a one thousand dollar fine. I am suspending both of those, provided you keep your word on the plea agreement. Any further violations and this case will be treated as a felony.”

              With a sharp crack of her gavel, it was over.

              “All rise!” The bailiff called out again. Judge Vernon stood and left the bench.

              McGee, beaming like he’d just kept his client from the electric chair, grasped Charlie by the elbow and walked toward us. Adolphus stepped forward to shake hands, but I stepped back.

              I looked at Graham, whose jaw hung slack with shock.

“              OK, folks,” Adolphus said. “Let’s go over here to the conference room. Miss Deifenbaugh, you’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

*****

              “I met Deke in rehab, in Chicago. He’d come in from the burn unit at Cook County Hospital, after his arms and hands were badly burned.”

              Adolphus, McGee, a stenographer and I sat around a gleaming conference table in the Plummer County courthouse. The light from the cold, winter sun shone through the tall stained glass window, bathing Charlie in shades of yellow and blue. She sat with shoulders hunched, voice low and subdued. Her hands picked at a pack of menthol cigarettes, alternately tapping and spinning it on the table’s shiny, waxed surface. She wouldn’t look at any of us.

              I wondered how much of her speech was an act.

              “How did his arms get burned?” Adolphus asked.

              “He said he spilled brandy on the sleeves of his shirt. He was smoking a cigarette, which fell onto his arms and caught fire. He told everybody in group it was the event that made him realize he had an alcohol problem.”

              “Was that the truth?”

              “I thought so at first. Later I learned it wasn’t true.”

“              What was the truth?”

              “He’d meant to burn his hands only, to burn off his fingerprints, so no one would know his true identity.”

Adolphus pulled two photos from a file in his briefcase. One was a glossy promotional photo of the former goalie in his Blackhawks’ uniform, smiling for the fans. His hair was thick and wavy, and his smile was perfect, just like his brother’s. The other photo was of a more battered, beaten man, overweight from bad prison food. He was holding a placard with his name and prisoner number in front of him. His forearms were marked with prison tattoos and his black hair was thinner and shot with gray. His nose, once thin and aquiline, was flattened.

              “Which of these photos accurately represents the man you met in rehab?”

              Charlie pointed to the prison photo, and then turned away in sorrow.

              “Go on,” Adolphus said.

              The story was long and tawdry.

              Following his release from federal prison and his faked suicide, Rowan Starrett sought to reinvent himself as a clean and sober man. He returned to Chicago, where his hockey career began, assumed the name of Deke Howe and found a modest apartment, funded by his brother Rick, and a job working construction.

              Construction was good for Rowan—it kept him active, and too tired to drink at nigh. Staying sober, he was able to keep his urge to gamble at bay. After a few years, he worked his way up in the company to sales, traveling to homes where he spoke to the owners about building their new bathrooms, kitchens or patio rooms.

              “He handed them an estimate and they handed him a down payment check,” Charlie said. “It wasn’t long before those checks weren’t making it back to the office and he was using again. Then a stack of company checks got stolen and he got fired.”

              “Was he gambling?”

              Charlie nodded. “And using. He knew his boss was going to file charges against him for stealing the checks and that would expose his real identity, so just before he was arrested, he tried to burn his hands to remove his fingerprints. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way he planned and burned his arms really badly.”

              We each grimaced around the table, imagining the pain.

              “Did he not think about CODIS?” Adolphus asked. CODIS is the national DNA database, originally designed to identify sex offenders, but now includes anyone convicted of, or simply arrested for a felony, in some states. “If he was in federal prison, they would have had his DNA on file.”

              Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. I know he told me that some states didn’t take a DNA swab until after you were convicted of a felony, but I don’t know if Illinois was one of them. After he got out of the hospital, he was formally charged. It was bargained down to misdemeanor, with a few months in Cook County Jail suspended if he promised to go to rehab. That’s where I met him.”

              “And you married him after you were both released?”

              She nodded.

              “What were you being treated for?”

              “I’m a drunk,” she said flatly. “My agent with my first two books dumped me after I did some pretty crazy things.” She looked up at me sheepishly and continued.

“              When did you learn your husband’s real identity?”

              “It wasn’t for a few years. We had some good times. My books were selling—he didn’t have to work. He couldn’t get a job anyway, not with the stolen checks conviction on his record. I didn’t care—I loved him.” Charlie stopped and stared at the ornate painted ceiling. A single tear ran down her cheek. She sighed deeply and continued.

              “Then things changed. My publisher didn’t like my third book,
Death Among the Celts,
and demanded a complete rewrite. So, I rewrote the whole thing, even though I was finding it harder and harder to stay sober and so was Deke. We’d stay sober for weeks on end, and then we’d have minor relapses. Then we’d get back on the wagon and help each other stay sober for a couple months, and one of us would relapse, then the other. The book came out and I convinced my publisher—the same one who published Marcus’s book—that I was in good enough shape to go do the book tour. I promised I’d stay sober. Then, right before I leave for Seattle, Rowan reads a news article that this guy, Rick Starrett, was being considered for a cabinet position with the Ohio governor and he went nuts.”

              “What happened?”

              “He got really drunk and told me the whole story, that his real name was Rowan Starrett, that he’d been banned from hockey for life and this other guy was his brother.”

              “Did you know about Rowan Starrett?”

              “The black heart of the Blackhawks?” she asked sarcastically. “Sure. Everybody did, even folks like me, who never watched a hockey game in their lives. I thought, like everybody else, he’d committed suicide. Even the
Tribune
ran that story on the front page when it happened. Before he told me the truth, we used to have this joke between us: I used to say ‘You look like this hockey player I used to know.’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, I get that a lot,’ and then we’d both laugh. It wasn’t funny after that.”

              “What all did he tell you?”

              “That he didn’t make all those bets he was convicted of, that Rick was just as big a gambler as he was and he was responsible for some of those bad bets. They used to split the winnings. Rick was living high on the hog, with some bimbo on the side and he needed the extra money to keep her happy. He’s the one who told him to throw those games.”

              Adolphus sat back and whistled low. “Wow.”

              “Rowan said he was tired of living in Rick’s shadow and hiding behind the lie that he’d committed suicide. After all, Rick was sailing into this great future and Rowan wasn’t.” Charlie looked me dead in the eye.

“              He wanted to get back at Rick, and then when things got really crazy, he wanted to get back at you.”

Chapter 34 Addison

Gary McGinnis and I were at Aunt Bea’s, drinking our second cup of coffee when my cell phone rang.

              It was about an hour after Rowan Starrett’s broken, empty casket had been taken to the police evidence room to be examined for any possible evidence and Birger left to go meet with Steve Adolphus about something.

              Pat got a shot of the casket hanging from the backhoe’s bucket before it fell, but the shot of it falling came out blurred and unusable. There were a few other shots of police and cemetery workers examining the empty casket. I’d look them over later this afternoon when we decided which one to put on page one and the Web site.

              Right now, I had Fisher Webb’s smooth voice in my ear.

              “See? I told you that you could do this and do it well,” he said. “I saw your interview on the noon news.”

              “A little judicious editing can make anybody look good, Fisher,” I answered. Thankfully, Flagg had cut the profanity from the end of my interview. I hated that I now owed that asshole a professional favor.

              “So have you thought any more about my offer?” he asked.

              “Yes I have.” I looked at Gary, who arched an eyebrow when I mouthed Fisher’s name. I had told him about Webb’s offer while we waited for the waitress to refill our mugs.

              “What’s your decision?” Webb asked.

              “I think I’m ninety percent there. I’m leaning toward yes,” I said.

              “I don’t want you if you’re only ninety percent sure, Addison,” he said. “If you’re not one hundred percent certain you want to walk away from that newspaper, then I don’t want you.”

              “OK, let me think about it some more.”
              “Would an additional twenty thousand make you more certain?”

I sucked in my breath. “That’s double what I make now,” I said softly.

              “I told you Addison, I’d make it worth your while.”

              “Let me talk it over with Duncan,” I said.

              “OK. Let me know.”

              I ended the call and lay my cell phone beside my reporter’s notebook on the table.

              “What are you going to do?” Gary asked me. “You gonna take the job?”

              “I don’t know, Gary. If things keep going as they are at the paper, I may not have a job.” I stirred a packet of sweetener into my coffee. Briefly I told him of Whitelaw’s possible plans to sell the paper and about the visit from the brokers.

              “I hate to hear that.”

              I shrugged my shoulders. “Life is change, Gary.”

              “I’d hate to lose you, Penny,” he said. “I can count on you. You make my job a whole lot easier.”

              “Thanks but…” I shrugged. “So what happens now with the Starrett brothers?”

              “There’s a death certificate for Rowan on file in Columbus that’s now obviously fraudulent,” he said. “We’re having the PD there look into that—if Rowan actually committed suicide, the coroner would have signed off on it. We need to know who really signed it—or who was paid to sign it. We’ve got to track down who ever it was who signed it. That’s at least one count of fraud against that person. If Rick filed any claims against any life insurance policy, we’re looking at more fraud, in addition to the murder charge. We will make some calls to some of the investigators at the companies we’ve worked with.”

              “But what about Rick’s claim that Rowan shot Virginia Ferguson? Doesn’t this empty casket verify this story that he didn’t kill her?”
              “You really don’t want him to have done this, do you?”

              I sighed. “No. Not really.”

              “We still have Virginia Ferguson’s dying declaration, identifying Rick as her killer just before she went into surgery. That’s a lot to get past.”

              “Could she have been wrong? What about fingerprints? Weapons?”

              Gary smiled. “I’m not telling you that, Penny.”

              “’You make my job a whole lot easier, Penny,’” I mimicked.

              “Listen, all it verifies is that the story he told is true, that Rowan Starrett is still alive. That’s a pretty damned big lie to be carrying around for ten years.”

              “Rick told me Rowan was running from people he owed money. Was Rowan in witness protection? Could you find that out?”

              He shrugged. “I could always ask. I don’t know if the feds would tell me or not, unless Rowan had come out of the program.”

              “I wish I knew what connects Virginia Ferguson’s murder with Kay Henning’s shooting,” I said. “There are so many little pieces that don’t quite fit together.”

              Gary took a sip from his coffee mug. “I think we’re getting closer to finding out what those pieces are.”

*****

              Back in the newsroom, Graham was waiting for me. He followed me back into my office and shut the door behind him.

              “So how’d the hearing go?” I asked, slinging my purse into my bottom left-hand desk drawer, and flopping into my chair.

              He shook his head. “You’re not going to believe this.”

              “What?” I pulled a cigarette from my center drawer and bounced the end of it off the top of my desk.

              “Marcus and Charlie came to some sort of plea agreement, with Charlie getting a suspended sentence. Charlie, Marcus and the attorneys all went into a conference room after the hearing. I waited for more than an hour, but they never came out. Birger showed up about forty five minutes in and went inside, but I couldn’t wait any longer.”

              “This needs to be another joint story, I think.” I slid my chair over to the window and lit my cigarette. “You need to write about the agreement that was reached in the case, nothing more. It’s possible that Charlie was going to tell them everything she told you.”

              “Good thing we didn’t publish it in today’s story,” Graham said.

              I nodded. “How could we? We couldn’t verify any of it from a second source, not with our deadlines. I need you to verify with Birger whether or not she’s still a suspect. I’ll do the part of the story about Rowan’s casket being empty.”

              “We should call Marcus about the agreement.”

              “Yes, if for no other reason than to give him and everybody in that conference room a chance to say ‘no comment.’”

              “You think Marcus would do that?”

              “If he wants to find whoever shot his wife, he will.” I smiled, took a final drag off my cigarette and tossed it out the window into the alley. “And frankly, if someone had done the same thing to Duncan, I would too, the story be damned. When are visiting hours at the jail?”

              “Females, nine until eleven in the morning Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Male inmates have visitation on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays from three until five in the afternoon. No visitation on Friday nights.”

              “Probably because they’re too busy booking new guests in. Why did I think you’d know those hours by heart?”

              Graham smiled.

              “Let’s start our story. I’ve got a few things to clean up here and then I can add my info to it. After that, I’m going to pay Rick Starrett a visit.”

*****

              It was close to four-thirty before I made it to the jail.

              I’d chosen two of Pat’s shots to run on page one for tomorrow: One of the casket hanging mid-air and another one where police were investigating the open casket. The story was nearly finished—I’d done my part. Grant was simply waiting for Birger to call him back to verify a few details.

              “I’d like to see Rick Starrett,” I said into the voice box outside the visitor area door. There was a buzz, the door unlocked and I was let through. I’d left my purse and my cell phone in my car, checking only my car keys and my driver’s license as I came through security.

              I received a visitor badge and was led by a deputy, who advised that this visit would be recorded, to a long concrete ledge, separated into separate cubicles by thick Plexiglas. There were institutional-style chairs covered in chipped paint, setting in front of each cubicle, facing a thick wall of bulletproof glass. Phone receivers hung on the right side of each cubicle.

              The deputy led me to an empty cubicle. I sat down and scooted close to the ledge. In a moment, Rick Starrett was brought in to the other side of the glass. Before Rick sat down, another deputy fastened his shackles to a ring on the wall.

              He picked up the receiver on his side of the glass. So did I.

              “Hello, Rick.”

              “Hello, Penny.”

              “So, I looked into the stuff you told me about Rowan.”

              “Yes, I saw your story.” This voice was flat and non-committal.

              “They dug up Rowan’s grave today. It was empty, just like you said it was.”

              “Further proof what I told you wasn’t a lie.”

              “But I can’t connect Rowan in any way to the shooting. I’ve seen pictures of Rowan and he doesn’t look a whole hell of a lot like you any more, Rick. Prison wasn’t kind to him. The police say Virginia Ferguson identified you as her shooter.”

              Rick didn’t answer, just hung his head.

              “There’s more to Rowan’s disappearance, isn’t there?” I asked.

              Rick shook his head. “I’m done, Penny. I’m not saying any more.” He hung up his receiver and signaled for the deputy.

              The deputy unlocked the chain from the wall and refastened Rick’s shackles. Rick stood up and with a sharp wave, was escorted back to his cell.