Motion to Kill

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mason decided to skip the office and visit Ellen Philpott instead. He knew that dropping in on a witness unannounced was better than calling for an appointment. It was easier to hang up than it was to close the door in someone’s face.

He had followed the same rule when he met Kate for the first time. He was at a lecture, which was thin cover for a chance to meet women who didn’t like getting picked up at bars. He stared at her from the moment she walked in. She was slender and slick, with thick, wavy black hair. And she knew how to move. She didn’t walk. She shimmied and shimmered. What she lacked in cover-girl credentials, she made up in mystique.

It was a combination of things; the arc of her smile, the promising cup of her hands, the scent that lingered on her very kissable throat. Some of these things he guessed at that night and some he discovered in the fever of their time together.

She didn’t notice him that night until after the speaker had shared her life experiences, none of which he could repeat since he didn’t hear a word the speaker had said. He introduced himself like a thirty-second commercial, probing her education, career, and relationship status, closing the sale by asking her out, figuring it was harder to say no in person than over the phone a couple of days later when she’d struggle to remember they’d ever met.

When she said yes, he peeled the name tag off of his sweater and stuck it on top of hers, making certain she wouldn’t forget his name. Later that night, he looked at himself in the mirror, toothpaste still leaking from the corner of his mouth, and declared that Kate was the woman he would marry.

Ellen Philpott didn’t surrender as easily. She didn’t even come to her door. She summoned Mason from within.

The Philpotts lived in Crystal Lakes, a gated community in the suburbs of south Kansas City that offered neither crystal nor a lake. Gated community meant a high-dollar development enclosed by an eight-foot wrought-iron fence to keep out the 99 percent of the economic food chain that weren’t otherwise admitted to visit or clean. So much for surprise, Mason thought.

Each resident’s name was engraved on a burnished brass panel mounted on a limestone post outside the automated gate barring the private entrance. A white marble button was provided beneath each name so that a visitor could announce his or her presence. Mason pressed the button below the Philpott name and waited.

“Speak,” a disembodied sharp-toned female voice commanded from the speaker.

“It’s Lou Mason to see Mrs. Philpott.”

“Of course it is. Third house on the left past the gate. I’m on the patio.”

The first house on the left past the gate was a Country French limestone McMansion. The second house on the left was a pale pink Mediterranean stucco with a tiled roof. The third house on the left was a rounded two-story white brick structure that looked more industrial than residential. Flower beds were paved with lava rocks. Stainless-steel figure eights skirted the high-gloss ebony front door. Home is where the bunker is, Mason thought as he walked around to the back of the house.

Morning sun baked the inlaid Spanish tiles and red bricks that crisscrossed the patio. Ellen sat on a high-backed, red-lacquered oval stool, her slender shoulders ramrod straight, her wide eyes fixed on a canvas stricken with ill-matched strokes of black and blue acrylic paint, brushes and palette at her feet. Sodden men’s clothes, reeking of mildew, were heaped in a pile behind the easel.

“Painting is supposed to soothe me, but I don’t want to be soothed,” Ellen said. She brushed her close-cropped auburn hair with both hands. “All things considered, I’d rather be crazy.”

“Go with your strengths,” Mason said.

She laughed so hard she slipped off the stool, stepped on her paints, cursed, and wiped her shoes on an Armani shirt at the edge of the pile. Warren Philpott may have been tough, Mason thought, but he couldn’t compete with crazy.

“Now, that’s real good advice,” she drawled after catching her breath. Her Missouri twang was just another contradiction. Though he’d not heard her speak during the trial, Mason would have guessed that she was more city than country.

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“That’s not much to thank someone for. It doesn’t take much effort and the payoff can be kind of skimpy.”

“Mrs. Philpott, I’ll be honest with you. I’m still working on the case against your husband’s company for Tommy Douchant. I know that you’re divorcing him. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

“Warren already kicked the snot out of you once. What makes you think I can help you or that I would?”

“I don’t know if you can. That’s what I’m here to find out. I read the story in the newspaper about your divorce and thought you might be willing to try.”

She squared up and glared at him, hands on bony hips, elbows flared like a human pelican, the veins in her long neck pulsating. Captain Queeg would make a better witness.

“You must think I’m no better than he is. Yes, my husband did me dirty. Shamed me with women no better than twenty-five-dollar whores. And you want me to get my revenge by telling you his secrets. Betray him to get even. Is that what you want me to do, Mr. Mason?”

“Tommy Douchant is my best friend. He’s got a wife and two kids who don’t eat if his social security disability check is late. You can call it betrayal or getting even. I call it doing the right thing.”

She gave him a calmer, more studied look. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

He laughed. “No, I don’t. I think you’re one powerfully pissed-off woman who’s trying to figure out what to do with a pile of wet clothes.”

“Are you married?”

“Divorced. My wife left me. She said she just woke up one day and was out of love with me.”

Ellen chewed her lower lip, digesting Mason’s answer. “I don’t know which would be worse. At least Warren claimed he still had feelings for me. He said he just wasn’t built to be faithful.”

“I think the worst one is the one that happens to you.”

“You are surely right about that.” She picked up her palette and brushes. “What would you need to help your friend?”

“The jury decided that there was nothing wrong with the design of the safety hook on Tommy’s belt.”

“So wouldn’t you have to prove that something went wrong when it was manufactured?”

“Exactly.”

“So why didn’t you do that at the trial?”

“My expert witness said that the hook was made just like the design called for.”

“Then you’d have to prove that your own witness was mistaken, wouldn’t you, Mr. Mason?”

Ellen Philpott’s crazy act evaporated. Her country-cousin accent vanished. And her questions cut to the bottom line. Mason wondered if she was leading him along, hoping he would ask the right question and relieve her of the burden of outright betrayal.

“Not necessarily. Tommy’s employer turned the safety belt over to your husband the day of the accident. I didn’t see it until after I filed the lawsuit. If there was something wrong with the hook, he could have switched it for a good one and no one would ever have known.”

“Why, Mr. Mason,” she said, her drawl fully engaged. “That would be dishonest and deceitful. It would be the act of a man who had no honor.”

“Would it also be the act of a man who would dishonor a fine woman?”

Bending over, she reached beneath the pile of clothes and pulled out a metal cash box.

“Warren is a collector. He fancies bad women and bad hooks. I suppose a psychiatrist would have a field day tying those two passions together.”

She handed the box to him. It contained ten hooks just like the one on Tommy’s belt. Mason couldn’t tell one from the other. He looked up. She was sitting on the stool, her back to him, adding strong brushstrokes of paint to her canvas.

“Is one of these Tommy’s?”

“I don’t know. Warren used to brag about switching the hooks. He said lawyers weren’t very smart. These may not be the only ones.”

“Does your husband know you have this box?”

“I doubt it, since I found it hidden in his closet. I suspect it’s one of those personal things he keeps telling me he wants to stop by and pick up.”

“Mind if I keep the hooks?”

“So long as you hang Warren with one.” She turned toward him from her canvas, smiled weakly, and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Damn paint makes my eyes water. Good-bye, Mr. Mason.”

On his way to Sullivan’s funeral, Mason stopped at the engineering department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Dr. Webb Chapman, the chairman of the department, had been his expert safety engineer at Tommy’s trial. He wasn’t in, so Mason left him the box of hooks and a note asking him to call.