Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3) (8 page)

“It does.” She clicked her glass to his and drank.

The second half of the evening,
Pagliacci
, was less inspiring than the first.

“I believe they call this kind of writing
verismo
,” Teller said as they left the ornate red theater and headed for his car. “It means ‘realism’ but it doesn’t work as well as traditional opera. Puccini trumped all of them, including his fellow Italians.”

“You’re a very interesting… man,” she said as they drove from the parking garage.

“You were about to say character.”

“No, I wasn’t, but I guess it would fit.”

“I also get my shoes shined instead of doing them myself, and I send my laundry out.”

“A typical bachelor.”

“Typical?”

“No, I’m sorry. I enjoyed tonight. Very much. Thank you.”

“Where to now?”

“Home.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“Feel like singing?”

“After hearing those wonderful voices?”

“They weren’t so great. I have V-discs that are better.”

“I wouldn’t know from better, I’m afraid. Damn little opera in my upbringing.”

“Ditto. I got the taste for it late in life… Look, I know a nice place in Georgetown. A bunch of crazies hang out there but they’re basically nice people, just like to sit around and drink and sing. The owner and I are friends. He plays the piano. He made a million in frozen French fries and then dumped the whole business to open a club. I don’t know whether you’d like the place or not but they serve steak sandwiches on garlic bread until closing, and sometimes the music is good and—”

“Do they serve French fries?”

“The best in D.C.”

“Let’s go.”

Instead of sitting at the piano bar, Teller took her to a corner far from the bandstand. They said little to each other as she observed the Saturday night crowd.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked after their drinks and sandwich platters had been served.

“I don’t know yet, I haven’t tasted it.”

“I mean the place. Nice atmosphere, huh?”

“Yes, it’s—”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s sort of sad, seeing people in a singles bar—”

“Singles bar? This isn’t a singles bar. If it were I wouldn’t come here.”

“Don’t be touchy. It’s just that I wish those women sitting around the piano bar were
with
someone…”

“But that’s what’s nice about Club Julie, Susanna. It’s
like
a club, no hassles like in real singles bars. Women can come here and feel safe.”

“I suppose you’re right. Funny, but it makes me think of Dr. Sutherland’s secretary… Vera Jones.”

Teller sliced into his steak and took a bite. “Good. Don’t let it get cold.”

“Do you think she’s ever been married?”

“Vera Jones? Most people have been, although she does come off like one of those who hasn’t. But I don’t figure her for the singles’-bar scene. Not her style—”

“What is her style?”

“Quiet, a one-on-one type, maybe a twenty-year affair with a married man.”

“Dr. Sutherland?”

“Not likely, but you never know. I do think she’s loyal and discreet enough to be a twenty-year mistress, don’t you?”

“Yes. Do you find her attractive?”

“Yes, in a cold sort of way.”

“Hidden passion, as they say in the purple romances?”

“Could be.”

“A legitimate suspect?”

“Everybody is at this point.”

“Including the nine justices?”

“Including the nine justices. Do you know who interests me?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

He grinned. “That court clerk, Laurie Rawls. She was at the funeral and bawled all through it. I figure there was more to her relationship with Sutherland than just a coworker.”

“Cherchez la femme…”

“Huh?”

“Justice Childs’s advice to me. Look for the woman. Have you interviewed Laurie Rawls?”

“One of my people did. Uneventful. She said she liked Clarence, enjoyed working with him. Her alibi is shaky, but so are a lot of other people’s.”

“If you’d like, I’ll talk to her. She might open up to another woman.”

“Could be. I understand she’s been temporarily assigned to the Chief Justice. She’d worked for the old man, Conover.”

“I’ll call her Monday morning.”

Julie, the owner, came to the table and asked Teller if he wanted to sing. Teller shook his head, but Susanna insisted. “I’ve never heard a singing detective before.”

“You still won’t have,” he said as he went to the bandstand, and picked up a microphone while Julie played an introduction to “As Time Goes By.”

He smiled at Susanna as he ventured into the second stanza. She nodded her approval and leaned her chair back against the wall, her thoughts divided between attention to his resonant voice and the thing that had led them to spend the evening together—Clarence Sutherland’s murder. She felt overwhelmed. The number of suspects and the complication
of it having happened in the United States Supreme Court.

The smell of garlic filled her nostrils, and chatter at adjoining tables deafened her. She closed her eyes against a pain that had started at the back of her neck and was now creeping up over her head and toward her forehead. She opened her eyes and saw a blurry Martin Teller.

He held the last note and Julie rolled off a rich chord. Applause, applause. Teller put the microphone on top of the piano and made his way to the table.

“I warned you.”

“It was terrific.”

He sat down and looked at her closely. “You don’t look so good, do you feel sick?”

“I… it’s a migraine coming on, damn it. I get them once in a while.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s go, I’ll take you home.”

“I’m sorry to ruin the evening.”

They pulled up in front of her building. Teller put his hand on the ignition key but didn’t turn off the engine. “I’ll walk you in.”

“No, please don’t. I’ll be fine. Thank you for a really wonderful evening.”

“I just wish you felt better.” He turned, leaned close. “I’d like to kiss you.”

“Well, then, Lieutenant, for God’s sake
do
it.”

Temple Conover sat in his chambers wearing an old, loose, nubby gray sweater. He’d changed from black shoes to worn carpet slippers as soon as he arrived that morning. It was almost noon. He was to attend a luncheon at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, known as Washington’s “Embassy Row,” at which he was to receive a plaque from England’s equivalent of the American Bar Association for his years of “dedication to upholding the principles of freedom and justice.” Cecily would join him there, and after lunch she was to drive him to the airport for a flight to Dallas, where he would address the Texas Bar Association’s annual formal dinner.

He turned to his typewriter and quickly wrote a memo to Chief Justice Poulson.

He called out the open door to his senior secretary, a heavy, middle-aged woman named Joan who’d been with him for six years. She stepped into his chambers.

“Have this envelope delivered right away to the chief.” He handed it to her. “Where’s Bill and Marisa?” he asked, referring to two of three remaining clerks on his staff.

“In the library.”

“Get them down here right away.”

“Yes, sir.”

They arrived minutes later and took seats across the desk from him. He waved a hand over piles of petitions for certiorari, requests to the Supreme Court to review decisions handed down by lower courts. Of five thousand such requests received each year, only about two hundred were accepted for review. Each justice was expected to analyze the five thousand petitions, then vote on which of them to accept. A minimum of four out of the nine justices was necessary for a cert to be granted.

Shortly after becoming Chief, Poulson had attempted to establish a cert pool, ostensibly to relieve the workload on each justice, but he’d been voted down, with Conover leading the opposition. The senior justice felt it had been a move on Poulson’s part to gain additional control of the Court, something he felt had been happening with regularity.

In reality, it was the clerks who reviewed most petitions for cert and condensed them to one- or two-page summaries for their justices.

Conover picked up a thick file of cert reviews his clerks
felt warranted his special consideration. “I’ve read these and agree with your views, but what good are they if we can’t get three of the others to go along with us?”

“I think we can, sir, on the job discrimination and ecology petitions,” Bill said. “I spoke this morning with Justice Tilling-Masters’s clerks, and they feel she’ll be in favor of accepting them this term. We know the Chief’s position. Justice Childs won’t bend, but…”

The other clerk added, “Peg O’Malley, who works for Justice Sims, told me that he might go along with us on the job discrimination case if it’s narrowed to the pension issue and doesn’t include sexual discrimination.”

Conover twisted in his high-backed leather chair and groaned as a sharp pain shot from his hip to his shoulder. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said, his voice mirroring his discomfort.

“I’ll keep working on her,” Marisa said.

“Don’t bother. I’d rather press on the ecology issue and the two petitions on church and state.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fifteen minutes later, and after Bill’s help with his shoes and jacket, Conover stood by Joan’s desk while she assisted him on with his overcoat. “Would you like me to walk down with you?” she asked.

“No.”

She handed him his crutch and he slipped his forearm into its metal sleeve. “I want those opinions ready to be circulated when I come back.”

Another of his secretaries, Helen, wished him a safe and pleasant trip. He thanked her, then said, “Mrs. Conover will be coming by to pick up theater tickets that are being sent over this afternoon. Please see that she gets them.”

“Of course, sir.”

Both secretaries watched him slowly and painfully leave the room.

“Poor man,” Joan said aloud.

“It’s awful to see him in such pain,” Helen said.

“I sometimes think of Justice Douglas when I see him,” Joan said.

“I do, too, especially when his wife comes in.”

Joan shook a finger in the air and said emphatically, “The
only
thing they have in common as far as
that’s
concerned is that they ended up with young wives. Justice Douglas’s wife was a lady, a tremendous and loyal help to him before he died. I wish I could say the same for Mrs. Conover.”

Helen started to say something but Joan cut her off. “Enough of this. Justice Conover’s personal life is his own business. I just hope this dreadful thing with Mr. Sutherland doesn’t open up that can of worms. Come on, let’s get going on those opinions. If they’re not on his desk when he gets back from Dallas we’ll all be looking for jobs at Foggy Bottom.”

“I’m delighted you could get free for lunch,” Susanna Pinscher said to Laurie Rawls after they’d met inside the front door of the American Cafe’s Capitol Hill branch on Massachusetts Avenue. Susanna had called Laurie to set up an interview and suggested lunch. The clerk declined lunch, then called back the following day and accepted.

They were seated at a blond wooden table in a corner. Susanna settled into her chair and looked across at her young luncheon guest. She’d liked Laurie Rawls from the moment they met. There was an openness and brightness about her, a wide-eyed inquisitiveness. She wore no makeup to mask her translucent, fair skin that gave off the same healthy glow as her short, straight brown hair. She was dressed in a pleated gray flannel skirt, a dusty rose blouse that buttoned
to the neck and a blue blazer with the crest of her alma mater, George Washington University.

“I was surprised when you called back and agreed to lunch,” Susanna said after ordering a white wine for herself and a kir for Laurie.

“Why? Because I’m a suspect? The fact is, Miss Pinscher, I’m interested in you. You’ve obviously succeeded in a field I’d like to get into. I thought lunch might be helpful for
me
.”

Susanna liked her candor. “Well, the Justice Department isn’t very glamorous, but it does have its interesting moments…”

“I’m sure.”

“As I assume the Supreme Court does for you.”

“I love clerking there. Some of my friends are clerking other places, but being in the nation’s highest court is… well, it’s kind of awesome.”

“I understand you’ve been assigned to Chief Justice Poulson since Clarence’s murder. It must have been tough… I mean losing someone you’ve worked closely with, and in such a violent way…”

“Yes.” She took a long, deliberate drink, put down her glass, picked up a menu. “I’m famished. What do you recommend?”

“Some days the meat pies are good, and—”

“I think I’ll have a California salad.”

“I’ll stick with turkey. Another drink?”

“Thank you, no, but you go ahead.”

Susanna ordered another wine, and said to Laurie, “How well did you know Clarence Sutherland?”

Laurie hesitated a beat before saying, “About as well as anyone else on the Court, I guess.” It was delivered too offhandedly, Susanna thought. Laurie added, “Clarence could be… difficult.”

“How so?”

“He worked for Chief Poulson, he was chief clerk. Sometimes he made the other clerks pretty mad. Some of them thought he was cruel—”

“I see…” And rather obviously, Susanna thought, Laurie was one of them. She decided to pursue that sideways… “I’ve seen pictures of Clarence Sutherland. He certainly was a handsome man.”