No Escape Claws

Chapter 17

I didn’t really have a plan for what I was going to do when I got to the judge’s office. Luckily he had been as good as his word as far as helping with the nonexistent book project. His receptionist smiled at us. “Hello, Mrs. French, Ms. Grayson,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.” She was wearing a crisp white blouse with three-quarter-length sleeves. The fuchsia streak was still in her hair.

“Hello, Chelsea,” Liz said. “Would the judge have a few minutes for us?”

Liz knew the young woman’s name. That didn’t surprise me.

“Let me check with Mr. Davis,” Chelsea said.

She reached for the phone, had a brief conversation and then hung up. “He’ll be right out,” she said.

It was no more than a minute before Henry Davis came into the reception area. “It’s good to see you both again,” he said.

“I’m sorry we didn’t call first,” I said.

“You caught us on a quiet day,” he said with a smile. “How can I help you?”

He knows, I thought. I was willing to bet every visitor, not just us, saw Henry Davis first. He was more than an assistant. He was a protector.

“I don’t know if you remember, but that last time we were here the conversation turned to a man named Mike Pearson,” I said.

Henry stiffened. It was almost imperceptible but I was watching for a reaction and I saw it. “I remember.”

“The judge is certain he saw Mike the night the Pearson house burned down.”

“The judge’s word is beyond reproach.”

“No one is questioning Neill’s word,” Liz said.

I looked down at my hands. I felt as though I was shaking but they were steady. The sensation was all on the inside. “He also called me Isabel,” I said.

Henry had recovered his equanimity. “It seems you resemble your grandmother.”

“A little. I do,” I said. “But that’s not why the judge got my name wrong, is it?”

He didn’t say anything.

“An innocent man doesn’t deserve to be in jail, Mr. Davis.”

“Mr. Pearson took a plea deal,” Henry said.

“Because the police had a witness whose integrity no one would question,” Liz said.

Just then Judge Halloran came down the hallway. He was in his shirtsleeves, carrying a yellow legal pad, his reading glasses sliding down his nose. “Chelsea, did I—” he began, then he caught sight of us. “Elizabeth, I didn’t realize you were here.” He joined us.

“Hello, Neill,” Liz said. “You remember Sarah Grayson.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “It’s good to see you again, Sarah.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” I said. He had such a kind face. I suddenly had a lump in my throat.

He smiled at us. “Why are we standing out here? Come back to my office.”

We followed the judge down the hall and I tried to tell myself I was wrong. So he’d called me by Gram’s name. I’d gotten people’s names mixed up before. And he started the barbecue in December. Lots of people liked to grill all year ’round.

Henry Davis was in front of me. He held himself stiffly, his shoulders rigid. He didn’t want this conversation to continue. I knew I wasn’t wrong.

We stepped into the judge’s office. “Please, sit down,” he said, gesturing at the two chairs in front of his desk where we’d sat during our last visit. He turned to me and smiled. “Now, Isabel, what can I do for you?”

I swallowed down that lump in my throat. “The last time we were here we talked about Mike Pearson.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“You told us that you’re certain you saw him after the Pearsons’ house was on fire.”

“That’s right. I also saw him earlier in the day while I was shoveling my driveway.”

Henry Davis took a couple of steps closer so he was in my line of sight. “Ms. Grayson, I don’t mean to be rude, but Judge Halloran is a very busy man.”

The judge looked at his assistant. “I’m not too busy for an old friend, Henry.”

I felt the prickle of sudden tears, but I blinked them away. “What’s my name?” I asked.

Henry sucked in a sharp breath.

Judge Halloran frowned. “Your name is Sarah,” he said. “Now, how about you tell me what is going on?”

“Before, you called me Isabel.”

He smiled then. “I’m sorry. You remind me so much of your grandmother.”

“You called me by her name when I was here before,” I said. I kept my eyes locked on his face.

“Are you trying to say there’s something wrong with my memory?” he asked. “Is that the reason for all the questions about the fire?”

Liz leaned forward in her chair. “Neill, Mike Pearson is a good man, a good man I believe should not be in jail.”

Henry cleared his throat. “As I said earlier, it’s my understanding that Mr. Pearson is in jail because he took a plea deal.”

Her gaze flicked to him for just a moment. Something in the look she gave him silenced the man. Liz turned her attention back to Judge Halloran.

I didn’t like doing this. The judge was a good man, too. I didn’t like forcing his secret from him. But I couldn’t leave Mike Pearson in jail. I couldn’t leave three kids without their father.

“Judge, we don’t know each other,” I said. “But my grandmother does know you. Her exact words to me were, ‘Neill will do the right thing, always.’ I’m going to trust that you’re the person she says you are.” I got to my feet and looked at Liz. “Let’s go,” I said.

I expected her to object, to say something more to the judge but she didn’t. She stood up and slipped her purse over her arm.

I’d taken two steps when he spoke. “Please, don’t leave,” he said.

I stopped and turned around. Liz put a hand on my arm.

The judge was on his feet as well.

Henry Davis stepped in front of him. “Think this through, Judge,” he said.

Judge Halloran smiled. “I have, Henry,” he said. “That’s the problem. All I’ve done is think . . . about myself.” He gestured at the chairs. “Please, Elizabeth, Is—Sarah, sit down.”

I glanced at Liz. She nodded. We took our seats again. The judge leaned against the edge of his desk.

“I’m in the very early stages of . . . dementia. According to my doctor, aside from some drop in my concentration levels—and some of that may just be a factor of getting older in general—and some small memory issues, mostly with names, which you noticed, I’m not suffering from any cognitive decline.”

“I work with the judge every day,” Henry said. “I haven’t seen any loss of mental ability.” He was angry. I could see it in the way he held his mouth and in the rigidity of his body. I couldn’t help but like his loyalty.

“It’s not a question of your mental function, Neill,” Liz said.

“But you believe I’m mistaken about seeing Mike Pearson,” he said.

I shook my head. “We think someone went to a fair amount of effort to set Mike up, to make you believe you saw him.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

I leaned forward in my chair. “One of the details you mentioned was Mike’s hat—a blue and red baseball cap.”

“The replica of the Melbourne Olympics baseball team hat,” he said. “Michael wore that hat a lot.”

“He wasn’t wearing it when the fire started,” Liz said. “Because he didn’t have it then.”

“You’re certain.”

I nodded.

“So you believe I saw someone pretending to be Michael?”

“Yes.”

He may have had dementia but his reasoning skills were still intact. “Which means you think there’s a possibility that Gina Pearson didn’t start that fire. You think someone murdered her.”

“We don’t have enough evidence right now to take to the police,” Liz said. “But yes, we do.”

“Would it help if I went to the prosecutor and explained about my diagnosis?” he asked.

The tight feeling was back in my chest. “At some point it might,” I said.

He nodded. “You know, the one thing that always bothered me was that Michael didn’t make any attempt not to be seen. His house was on fire and he just walked away. He was too smart for that.” He looked at Henry, whose lips were pulled into two thin lines. “Henry, don’t be angry with Elizabeth and Sarah.” He smiled at me when he said my name. “I should never have kept this quiet like it was some dirty little secret.”

I smiled back at him. “Judge, may I ask you a question? I’m only asking out of curiosity so I won’t be offended if you tell me it’s none of my business.”

“What is it?” he said.

“Why did you care so much about Gina Pearson? Why did you go to so much trouble to help her?”

“Gina wasn’t drinking when they first moved in next to me. She was a good mother. A good person.” He exhaled softly. “She reminded me of my mother.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that.

“When my older brother, Connor, died, my mother started drinking. We didn’t use the word ‘alcoholic’ very much back then, but that’s what she was. Good people helped her find her way back to us. I just wanted to do the same thing for someone else.”

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. “I think you would have succeeded,” I said.

Liz got to her feet and I followed suit. “Thank you, Neill,” she said, extending her hand.

“You’re welcome, Elizabeth.”

I offered my own hand, which he took in both of his. “Thank you,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Everything Gram said about you is true.”

He swallowed to clear his own throat. “I’m honored by her faith in me, and yours.” He smiled then. “And please, come back soon and I’ll pull out a couple of embarrassing stories about Elizabeth for your book project.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.”

Neither Liz nor I said a word until we were in the elevator. I leaned my cheek against the top of her head. “Being the Warrior Princess bites sometimes,” I said.

She laid a hand against my other cheek. “I know,” she said. “And I’m proud of you.”

We headed back to the shop, where we brought the others up to date.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Mallory and Gregory can give statements that Mike didn’t have his ball cap,” Mr. P. said.

“Do you think Katy Mueller remembers that Mallory was wearing it?” Charlotte asked.

“I think that’s a long shot,” I said, choosing my words carefully. Katy Mueller seemed convinced that Mike Pearson was responsible for her best friend’s death. I had the feeling she wasn’t going to be very helpful in getting him released.

I looked at Mr. P., who seemed to know what I was thinking. “I agree with Sarah,” he said. “Judge Halloran’s condition will add a little ambiguity to his ID of Mike, but it would help if we could come up with a little more evidence.” He hiked his pants up. “There is one more thing we could try. It’s a bit of a long shot, though.”

“A long shot is better than no shot,” Liz said. “What are you thinking, Alfred?”

“Maybe one of the neighbors had a security system.”

“But Rose said you didn’t notice any cameras,” I said.

He nodded. “I didn’t. But it’s occurred to me that the fire happened just two weeks before Christmas last year.”

Rose realized what he was getting at before the rest of us did. “Christmas parcels,” she said with a knowing smile.

Charlotte and I exchanged a blank look.

“Want to clue the rest of us in?” Liz asked, making a get-on-with-it motion with one hand.

“More and more people are shopping online, especially during the holidays,” Mr. P. said. “Which means there are more packages being delivered when everyone is at work and school.”

Rose straightened the front of her apron. “Do you remember the story last December about the three friends who were stealing parcels all over Rockport?”

Charlotte began to nod her head. “They each dressed up as Mrs. Claus.”

“I remember that,” I said. “They didn’t even need the money. They were just doing it because they were bored.”

“And do you remember how they got caught?” Alfred asked.

“Someone set them up,” I said, smiling as the details came back to me. “The guy left a box on his front steps and he set up some kind of temporary camera.”

Alfred nodded as though I was his prize student who had just gotten all the test answers right. “That camera sent images to the man’s phone and stored them in the cloud.”

“And how does that help us?” Liz asked.

“Those cameras were very popular,” Mr. P. said. “You could even rent them. A lot of people did that. In January they took them back. But unless they closed their account and deleted the images that were stored in the cloud, it’s all still there. As I said, a long shot.”

“Like Liz said, a long shot is better than no shot,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Charlotte left with Liz and Avery. Rose and Mr. P. rode with Elvis and me. They spent the drive making a list of the neighbors in the immediate vicinity of the Pearson house. It seems Denise had mentioned the names of several of them when Rose and Alfred had talked to her about the fire.

I unlocked the apartment door, set my things inside and put Elvis on the floor. He stretched and headed for the bedroom. I followed him. He made his way over to my new running shoes, which were sitting by the bottom of the bed. He nudged one shoe with his nose, knocking it over onto its side. Then he looked at me.

“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked.

“Merow,” he said.

Jia Allison had mentioned she ran the hills loop, an almost-six-mile circuit with some easy-grade uphill work. I’d been thinking of running the route on the off chance that she might be out there herself.

I crouched down, leaned my face in close to Elvis and gave the top of his head a scratch. “Sometimes you’re just a little bit spooky,” I said. He murped in agreement and licked my chin.

I changed into my running gear while Elvis nosed around in the closet. “We’ll have supper when I get back,” I said. “Unless you were planning on cooking.”

He yawned. I was pretty sure that meant no.

It was a good time for a run. There was very little traffic for some reason. Usually at this time of day I’d see other runners but I was the only one hitting the pavement. There was no sign of Jia Allison.

I was past the halfway point of the loop when I caught sight of someone running ahead of me. I spotted short, dark hair under a baseball cap, but it wasn’t until the street curved that I knew for sure it was Jia. I upped my speed, pushing myself to catch her, which wasn’t easy because her training pace was faster than mine. But I did manage to close the distance between us.

“Jia,” I called when I judged I was close enough for her to hear me.

She looked back over her shoulder. I saw a flash of recognition and she slowed her pace. I closed the rest of the distance between us.

“Hi,” she said. “You training for the Half Shore 10K too?”

“Actually I was looking for you,” I said as I kept pace beside her. It helped that she hadn’t speeded back up.

“Let me guess: You have more questions about Gina Pearson. I already told you everything there is to tell.” Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine.

I studied her for a moment, tried to imagine her in a dark coat and a red and blue ball cap. In the dark and the snow could Judge Halloran have mistaken her for Mike Pearson? It was possible. “You saw her before the fire, didn’t you?”

It was a guess but I had a gut feeling I was right.

She pressed her lips together for a moment. “It was bad enough that she drove drunk and ran my daughter down. She also had her own child in the car. Did you know that?”

“You mean Greg.”

Jia nodded. She was wearing a gray and yellow half-zip running shirt. It was inside out and something was hanging from the upper arm. A fabric softener sheet. I reached over and grabbed it. Jia started and pulled away from me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hand. “You just had a dryer sheet stuck to your shirt.”

She glanced at her arm. “And my damn shirt is on inside out.” She closed her eyes, her chin dropped to her chest and she stopped in her tracks. Her whole body sagged.

“Are you all right?” I said.

Jia shook her head. “No. I’m not. I know Hannah is better—better than we could have hoped for. And I’m grateful every single day but sometimes I have these moments where I panic that it’s all going to be taken away again. I keep . . . I keep trying to run past the feeling, but I’m not doing a very good job of it.” She looked at me then, shaking her head.

“We should walk,” I said. “Your legs are going to cramp.” We started moving and I watched for any sign that she was light-headed.

We walked in silence for maybe half a minute, Jia looking straight ahead. “I did see her,” she suddenly said.

I realized she was talking about Gina.

“In fact, it was the day of the fire. I was at the grocery store. She tried to apologize again. I just . . . I pushed her aside and just walked away from her. I was afraid if I stayed there I’d hit her.” She looked at me then, anguish etched on her face. “I keep thinking what if that was the one thing that pushed her over the edge, what if I drove her to kill herself because I wouldn’t let her apologize?”

I was shaking my head before she finished talking. “You are not responsible for Gina Pearson’s death,” I said emphatically. I wished I could tell her that Gina had been murdered, that she hadn’t killed herself. “It’s . . . it’s more complicated than that, but it’s not your fault in any way. It’s not.”

She nodded but I wasn’t sure I’d convinced her. “I told you that I was out for a run that night,” she said.

I nodded. “I remember.”

“That night and all the other times I was supposed to be training, I was really just running as far as the lookout and then just sitting there on a bench and crying.” Her mouth twisted to one side. “How dumb is that?”

I put a hand on her arm and this time she didn’t flinch. “It’s not dumb. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you when your daughter was hurt. I think that now it’s okay if you take care of yourself. You don’t need to hold up everyone’s world.”

Jia gave me a small smile. “That’s what it feels like some days. Like I’m holding up the world.”

“Promise me when you get home you’ll talk to your husband?”

It took a moment but then she nodded. “Okay.”

“And I’m going to call you if that’s okay?” I said.

The smile got a tiny bit bigger. “It’s okay.”

We ran the rest of the loop, albeit at a much slower pace.

“That’s my house, right there.” She pointed at a gray saltbox with a fire-engine-red front door. She glanced down at her feet for a moment then looked up at me. “Thanks for listening.”

“Hey, anytime,” I said. “Maybe we could go for a run sometime.”

“I’d like that,” she said. She took a couple of steps toward the house and then stopped, looking back over her shoulder. “You’re going to watch me until I get to the door, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “I am. And I am going to call you.” I shrugged. “I spend a lot of time with a bunch of nosy, bossy, opinionated—wonderful—seniors. You met two of them the other day. I’ve picked up some of their behaviors.”

Jia smiled. “I’ll talk to you soon then,” she said. She headed down the sidewalk, stopping to raise one hand before she opened the red door and went inside. I turned then and headed home.

When I got there, Liz was just getting out of her car parked at the curb.

“Hi, what are you doing here?” I said.

“I came to talk to John, to see if there’s anything else he remembers about those projects that never happened.” She eyed my running gear. “Did you talk to the Allison woman?”

“I did,” I said, pulling the elastic out of my hair.

“It’s not her, is it?”

We headed up the walkway. “I don’t think so. She did see Gina the day of the fire. And she’s carrying a lot of guilt because she just walked away from her. I just don’t think she would have admitted that if she’d killed Gina.”

She patted my arm. “Chin up, kiddo,” she said. “We’ll figure this out.”

I held the door and then followed her inside. “Did you call Marie’s son?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Liz said. “He’s overnighting a box of papers and things from his mother’s desk that she’d had in storage.”

“Maybe we’ll find some answers somewhere in those papers,” I said.

“Channing says the key to figuring out who set up Rob Andrews is to figure out who benefitted.”

I opened my mouth but before I could say anything her index finger was in my face. “Think carefully before you speak,” Liz warned.

I gave her my best guileless look. “I was just going to say that I think Channing is right. He’s pretty savvy when it comes to financial issues.”

I unlocked my apartment door. “And hot babes!” I added. I wiggled my eyebrows at her then ducked inside.

“You better hide, missy,” Liz said from the other side.

I leaned against the door, laughing. I wasn’t going to stop teasing her about Channing Caulfield. It was way too much fun. On the other hand I did make sure my door was locked. Liz wasn’t above sneaking in while I slept and pouring a bucket of water over my head.

I kicked off my shoes and headed for the shower. Was Channing right? I wondered. If we could figure out who benefitted would we have the person who set up Michelle’s father?

As I ran the water in the shower it occurred to me that maybe the same reasoning could be applied to Gina Pearson’s death. The only problem was I couldn’t think of anyone who had benefitted from her death.