Thicker Than Water

Chapter Seven

The elevator jerked to a stop and the door wheezed open, letting Louis out on the ninth floor. He was in a plain, uncarpeted hallway. A sign with an arrow pointed left to DUVALL AND BERNHARDT, ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

He had expected a hotshot lawyer like Spencer Duvall to have an office in one of the new buildings on Jackson Street overlooking the river. But Duvall’s address turned out to be an old building on a side street just off Martin Luther King Boulevard.

He found the entrance and went in. It was nice inside compared to the exterior. Hushed, tasteful, lots of dark mahogany and framed prints of English hunting scenes. The blue carpet gave like a sponge. The receptionist’s desk was empty, but there was a lipstick-ringed Garfield coffee mug on it.

Louis went to the window. Nothing to see but the tarred and tiled roofs of downtown Fort Myers with a glimpse of the green-gray Caloosahatchee beyond. No view for the hotshot either.

“Can I help you?”

Louis turned and looked down at a tiny woman with a fluff of gray hair. She was in her sixties, wearing a tan suit with glasses dangling from a chain around her neck.

“I’m Louis Kincaid. I have an appointment with Mr. Bernhardt,” Louis said.

The woman’s eyes swept over him. “Mr. Bernhardt had to leave early. I called your office but there was no answer.”

Office. . it was his home phone. He had to get an answering machine. He stifled a sigh at the wasted trip. He was hoping to at least get a look at Duvall’s office. He glanced at the closed door over the secretary’s shoulder. Damn Bernhardt. He was probably in there, ducking him.

He thought about trying a smile, but then realized it wasn’t going to break the ice with this old biddy. “Look,” he said, “I really need to see Mr. Bern-”

“Ellie?”

The secretary jumped to her desk and punched a button.

“Yes?”

“Is Pearson here yet?”

“Is that your boss?” Louis asked.

The old lady ignored Louis. “No, he’s not, Mr. Bernhardt,” she said into the phone, “but Mr. Kincaid is.”

There was no answer. The secretary hung up and gave Louis a frown. “I hate lying for him,” she said.

Louis was about to speak when a man in a blue suit appeared. He was short, overweight, about fifty but looked older, with thin gray-blond hair and the ashy skin of a future coronary patient.

“Lyle Bernhardt,” he said briskly, extending a hand.

Louis accepted the soft, damp handshake. “Louis Kincaid.”

“I don’t appreciate being strong-armed,” he said.

“I had an appointment,” Louis said calmly.

Bernhardt frowned. “Well, come in, then,” he said, motioning Louis toward his office.

“I was hoping I could see Spencer Duvall’s office,” Louis said.

Bernhardt hesitated. “What? Why?”

“It’s just routine, Mr. Bernhardt. Part of any investigation.”

Bernhardt pursed his lips and glanced at the secretary. She was watching him closely.

“I don’t think that would be proper,” he said. “Besides, it’s all been cleaned up now anyway.”

“The scene’s been cleared?” Louis asked.

“Yes, thank God. Terribly distracting, if you know what I mean. Our clients were most uncomfortable. Why don’t you come into my office?”

Bernhardt led Louis into a large office done in the same pseudo-English manor style as the reception area. Louis took a chair across from Bernhardt’s imposing desk. The desk was heaped with papers and fat legal files. Bernhardt stared at the piles for a moment, as if confused.

“Sorry for the mess. Things have been in such an uproar since. .” Bernhardt’s voice trailed off. “The police don’t seem to appreciate the fact that business must go on no matter what.”

“It was just you and Mr. Duvall, right?” Louis said.

Bernhardt nodded. “That’s the way it’s been for almost twenty years now. I wanted to expand, but Spencer wouldn’t hear of it. Now I’m left with all of it.”

“You could hire someone now,” Louis offered.

Bernhardt looked at him like he was nuts. “You don’t just go out and find someone overnight. At least not someone who can handle the kind of cases Spencer did.”

He was rubbing the spot between his eyebrows. “What a mess he left me with,” he muttered, staring at the files on the desk.

Finally, he looked up at Louis. “Ellie said you’re a private investigator. For whom?”

“Ronnie Cade.”

“Ronnie? He doesn’t have any money. He’s nothing but a lousy mow-and-blow guy. And his father is broke. You’re wasting your time, son.”

Bernhardt made a point of looking at his watch. Louis felt himself starting to bristle.

“Just because a man’s broke doesn’t mean he isn’t entitled to a decent defense,” Louis said.

Bernhardt’s expression was piteous. “Oh, come on. Don’t start with that liberal claptrap.”

“Jack Cade-”

“-is a lying, murdering sonofabitch who should have been electrocuted twenty years ago. If he had, my partner would still be alive right now.”

Bernhardt began rubbing vigorously at the spot between his eyebrows again.

“Your partner was the one who got Cade the plea bargain that kept him alive,” Louis said. He could hear his words, but it was almost like someone else was saying them. Being on the other side was going to take some getting used to.

“I don’t need you or anyone to remind me of that.” Bernhardt leaned forward. “Look, Cade is an ungrateful moron. He should have gotten down on his knees and kissed Spencer’s shoes. Do I think Cade shot him? Yes, I do. He’s as guilty of shooting Spencer as he was of killing that girl twenty years ago.”

“You weren’t involved in that case, Mr. Bernhardt?” Louis asked.

Bernhardt shook his head. “Spencer was working alone in those days. We got together about a year later. I would have never defended a man like Jack Cade. But Spencer, well, he never could resist a challenge.”

“Do you think Cade really intended to sue your partner?”

“No, he intended to kill him. Revenge is a powerful, primitive emotion, and Jack Cade is a primitive man.”

The phone intercom beeped. Bernhardt punched the button. The secretary’s voice came on. “Mr. Pearson’s here.”

“Send him in,” Bernhardt said. He rose. “I’m sorry, but I have a client to see.”

Louis pushed himself out of the chair. “Thanks for your cooperation,” he said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Of course.”

Louis left, passing a burly man in a business suit. The door closed behind him. Louis stood there for a moment, collecting his thoughts. What there was to collect anyway.

He felt someone’s eyes on him and looked over to see the secretary staring at him.

“Do you want to make another appointment?” she asked.

“Think it will do me any good?”

“Nope.” The intercom buzzed. “Yes, Mr. Bernhardt?”

“Ellie, where’s my Rules of Court?”

“On the shelf where it always is, Mr. Bernhardt.”

“No, it’s not. I looked-”

“The shelf to your left, Mr. Bernhardt.”

“What? Oh. Here it is.” He clicked off.

She looked up at Louis. “His regular secretary is out on maternity leave. I’m filling in.”

Something clicked in Louis’s head. Ellie. . he remembered the name from the newspaper articles. Ellie Silvestri had been Duvall’s secretary.

Louis watched as she busied herself with some papers. It occurred to him that she had the air of someone in mourning. The newspaper article said she had been with the firm for twenty-five years. . a long time to work for one man, longer than most marriages. He suddenly remembered that Ellie Silvestri had found Duvall’s body when she came to work the next morning. Gunshot to the head. He knew what that could look like.

“Mrs. Silvestri-”

She looked up at him, surprised he knew her name. “It’s Miss.”

She had clear green eyes, unclouded by age. Eyes that probably didn’t miss much.

“I was wondering if you’d be willing to answer a few questions,” Louis began.

“About what?”

“Your boss.”

Something shifted in her expression. Then, suddenly, she teared up. She yanked a Kleenex from the box on her desk.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to apologize,” Louis said.

She blew her nose. “What did you want to ask me?”

He wanted to ask her about finding Duvall’s body, what the scene had looked like, but that was out of the question for the moment. “That elevator,” he said, pointing out the glass doors. “Is it locked after hours?”

“No, the building is filled with attorneys and they come and go at all hours. The downstairs lobby is always open too.”

“Did Mr. Duvall normally work late?”

She smiled wanly. “A man doesn’t become a legend working a mere forty hours.”

“Besides Jack Cade, did Mr. Duvall receive any threats recently? Maybe from dissatisfied clients?”

The secretary shook her head slowly. “The police already asked me that, and that woman defense attorney.”

“What can you tell me about the relationship between Mr. Duvall and Mr. Bernhardt? How did they meet?”

“In law school at Tallahassee, I think. But they didn’t become partners until 1968.” She sighed. “It was just Mr. Duvall and me in the beginning. It was very hard in those days, let me tell you. Mr. Duvall did all his own investigative work. He was very good at it, better than Matlock, I think. Some weeks I didn’t get paid. We both ate a lot of baloney sandwiches.” She fell silent again, lost in memories.

“But business picked up,” Louis prodded.

She smiled slightly. “Oh yes. Mr. Duvall was very, very good at what he did. Word got out, especially after the Cade case.”

She teared up again.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” she said softly, staring off at the rooftops. “I mean, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

She hadn’t said it, but he could see it there in her eyes. She meant she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“Miss Silvestri,” Louis said gently, “are you going to lose your job here?”

She grabbed another Kleenex. Louis felt like kicking himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was-”

She waved a hand. “No, it’s all right. Fact is, I’m an old dinosaur here. Lyle will let enough time go by to look decent, then he’ll hire some young thing with big boobs.” She grimaced. “Lyle is big on appearances.”

He noticed she had switched to calling Bernhardt by his first name. “And Spencer Duvall wasn’t?” Louis asked.

She smiled slightly as she shook her head. “Not at all. I mean, even after the money started coming in, Mr. Duvall didn’t change. He was born and raised here. He never got the sand out of his shoes.”

Her eyes drifted to the hallway, toward Lyle Bernhardt’s closed door. “Come with me,” she said.

“Where?”

“You said you wanted to see Mr. Duvall’s office.”

He followed her down the hall, passing Lyle Bernhardt’s door. At the end of the corridor, she slipped a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. She ushered Louis quickly inside, shutting the door behind them.

The office was larger than Bernhardt’s, but it couldn’t have looked more different. A massive old cherry desk dominated the room, with a pair of well-worn wing chairs and a small round table facing it. The floor had been left uncarpeted and the rich oak planks were covered with a softly faded Persian carpet. The lamps were brass, the walls a sun-bleached moss green paper. On the wall behind the desk, there was a framed degree from Florida State School of Law. On the wall opposite the desk was a group of old photographs of Fort Myers street scenes and a Victorian beach house. There was a scarred wood glass-front bookcase, its shelves filled not with books but with carefully displayed conch shells. The place looked more like the den of somebody’s eccentric old uncle than a law office.

“Nice,” Louis said, turning.

Ellie Silvestri was staring at the room. “My God,” she said softly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve never seen it this. . clean.” She came forward, scanning the old furniture and walls. “Mr. Duvall was a pack rat and he hated it when I tried to tidy up. He didn’t even like the cleaning lady coming in here.”

Ellie moved to the desk. It was clean; the crime scene technicians had taken everything. She was looking at the powder smudges.

“That’s from the fingerprint techs,” Louis said, feeling the need to explain.

Ellie nodded slightly, her eyes still scanning the room. Again, Louis wondered what Ellie Silvestri had seen that morning when she walked in.

He glanced behind the desk, trying to visualize the scene. There was an old credenza, marked with smudges. The chair was gone; the police probably had it.

The newspaper article said only that Duvall had been shot in the head. A big chunk of the Persian rug under the desk had been cut away, a bloodstain probably. Louis looked at the desk. He spotted something dark in a crack and bent down for a closer look. It was blood. Which meant Duvall probably had fallen forward.

“Damn,” he said under his breath. There was nothing here to see, nothing to give him a sense of what had happened.

He smelled smoke. He turned and was surprised to see Ellie Silvestri lighting a cigarette.

“I’m sorry, do you mind?” she asked softly. “Lyle doesn’t let me smoke in the office. Mr. Duvall never cared. He always let me come in here when I needed my fix.”

“Go right ahead.”

She drew on the cigarette, her eyes wandering over the office. Louis went to the window and pushed back the curtain. The view was of a dilapidated building next door. At least you could see the river from the lobby window. There was nothing to look at from here. But maybe that’s the way Duvall wanted it; some driven people worked better with nothing pretty to distract them.

“Miss Silvestri, can we talk about the night Spencer Duvall was killed?” Louis asked, letting the curtain fall.

She looked at him beseechingly. “I already told the police. .”

“I know. But sometimes things can be missed.” Or at least he hoped so, in this case.

“You were here when Jack Cade came in for his appointment that morning?” Louis asked.

She nodded, her eyes darkening. “It was just before lunch. It was so strange seeing him. I mean, I hadn’t seen that man in twenty years. He looked so different. His hair was longer. And his face had changed so much.”

“Did you hear anything that was said?”

“Spencer’s door was ajar so-” She paused. Louis was amazed to see her blush. Then he realized it was the first time she had called Duvall by his first name.

She pulled in a deep breath. “Jack Cade was furious. I heard him say he was going to sue Spencer for legal malpractice.”

“How did Mr. Duvall react?”

“I couldn’t really hear what Spencer told him because Spencer didn’t raise his voice at all. Which was unusual because he could bellow back on occasion. But Spencer was quiet.”

“Then what happened?”

“Cade got louder, so I went in and asked Spencer if he wanted me to call security.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t have to. Jack Cade started to leave.” She paused, tears springing to her eyes. “But he stopped and looked back at Spencer and said, ‘I’ll get you, Duvall, one way or the other.’ Then he was gone.”

She snuffed her cigarette out in the ashtray on the small round table.

“What happened after Cade left?”

“Nothing really. We all went back to work.”

“No one else came to see him?”

“He had one appointment after Jack Cade left, but he told me to cancel it. Spencer was in here with his door closed the rest of the day. We were preparing for the Osborne case and I figured that’s why Spencer didn’t come out. I stayed late to finish typing the brief.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Just before nine. I remember because I was thinking that I was going to miss Matlock.”

“Was there anyone else in the office?”

“No, everyone was gone.”

“Did Mr. Duvall say anything to you before you left?”

“He said he was staying over and asked me to order him a sandwich from Moe’s across the street.”

“Staying over?”

“Spencer kept an apartment here in town. He often stayed there when he worked late because he hated driving home to Sanibel.”

“So you got him a sandwich?”

She nodded slowly. “Corned beef on rye with thousand island dressing and a cream soda, same as always. Then I left.”

She paused. “No, wait. That isn’t right. After I brought the sandwich back, Spencer asked me to go down and get the Cade file.”

Louis had been looking around the room and he turned. “He asked to see Jack Cade’s old file?”

Ellie nodded. “We store the old files downstairs. I went down and got it.” She nodded to the desk. “Last time I saw the Redweld, it was right there.”

“Redweld?”

“Redweld. That’s what we call them. It’s a brand name for the file folder.”

“You told the police this?”

She nodded. “I guess they took it, with all the other files and stuff that was in here.”

Louis had a million other questions, but he knew Ellie Silvestri couldn’t answer them. He had to get his hands on the police file, and he knew the only way he was going to do that was to go through Mobley.

Ellie was staring at the desk, arms wrapped around herself. Louis knew she was seeing Duvall’s shattered head lying on top of the file.

“Miss Silvestri,” he said gently, “did Mr. Duvall tell you why he needed the old file?”

She shook her head slowly. “That was the last time I saw Spencer. I mean, besides the funeral. But the casket was closed.”

Suddenly, she looked tired, every bit her sixty-some years. He had one more question. He touched her arm and she looked back at him.

“Why do you think Mr. Duvall asked you to get him that old file?” Louis asked.

“I told you, he didn’t say.”

“I know. I was asking your opinion.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. Spencer knew Cade would get nowhere with a suit because of the statute of limitations. He had nothing to worry about from that old case.” She paused, shaking her head.

“What is it?” Louis said.

“But he was worried,” she said. “Maybe worried isn’t the right word. I mean, he was fine that morning, then after Jack Cade left he stayed in here all day and I didn’t even see him until I brought him the sandwich. He was upset about something.”

“What do you think it was?” Louis asked.

“I thought it was because Cade threatened him. But I don’t know. When he asked me to go get that old file, it was more like he was just. .”

“What?” Louis prodded gently.

She looked at him. “Sad,” she said.

Her eyes drifted to the closed door. “I’d better get back out front,” she said.

He followed her back past Lyle Bernhardt’s door and out into the outer office. Ellie paused behind her desk. Louis realized she was looking at him oddly.

“You’re working for Jack Cade, aren’t you,” she said.

Louis hesitated.

“Everybody thinks he did it,” she said.

There was something in her voice and Louis had to ask, “Do you?”

“I think Jack Cade killed that girl twenty years ago. But Spencer kept Jack Cade out of the electric chair.” Her brows knitted. “Why would you kill the man who saved your life?”

Louis was silent for a moment. “Miss Silvestri, you probably knew Spencer Duvall better than anyone on earth. If you were me, who would you talk to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who else would want Spencer Duvall dead?”

Ellie trained her green eyes on Louis. “Candace?”

Louis tried not to let his disappointment show. The old thing had seen too many episodes of Matlock. “What makes you suspect Mr. Duvall’s wife?”

“She wasn’t very good to him,” Ellie said, her mouth pulling into a thin line. “Personally, I think she’s crazy.”

Oh great. Overly protective secretary secretly in love with powerful boss and hates his wife. Episode 502.

“Spencer was going to divorce her,” Ellie said.

Louis couldn’t hide his surprise. “He told you this?”

“Well, no, but I knew something was wrong between them,” Ellie said. “He had been staying at the apartment more and more.” She paused. “She was here that morning.”

“The day Spencer was shot?”

Ellie nodded. “I was shocked to see her. She never came down here unless she had to. She never even called. Not like she used to when they were first married. He married her right after college, you know. I thought it was strange to get divorced after all that time.”

Louis shook his head. “But you have no proof your boss was getting a divorce.”

Ellie was staring at the desk. “Wait,” she said. “I made an appointment for him. It was with another lawyer here in town, a man named Brian Brenner. He handles a lot of divorces.”

“They could have just been meeting for lunch,” Louis said.

Ellie looked dubious. “No, I knew Spencer. Something was wrong at home.”

“Did Mr. Duvall keep the appointment with the other lawyer?” Louis asked.

“No, it was for the following week. I’d look it up for you, but the police took Spencer’s appointment book.”

Louis heard voices and turned to see Bernhardt coming down the hall, leading his client out. Bernhardt’s eyes darted between Louis and Ellie.

“I need to see you. Now,” he said to Ellie. Bernhardt went back down the hall to his office. Ellie let out a big sigh.

“Are you going to get in trouble for this?” Louis asked.

“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug. “I could never work for a man like Lyle. Maybe I’ll retire. My daughter lives over in Clewiston and says she has a room ready for me.” She paused, her green eyes hopeful. “I’ve never been there. Have you?”

Louis shook his head.

“Clewiston,” she said softly. “I think I’d miss the water.” She started toward Bernhardt’s door.

“Thank you,” Louis said.

“For what?”

“For helping me. You didn’t have to, and I appreciate it.”

She hesitated. “Do you believe Jack Cade killed Spencer?”

“I believe a man has a right to be believed until the evidence proves he shouldn’t be.”

She gave him a small smile. “That sounds like something Spencer would say.”