Three Blind Mice

2

I’m the only black man in Calusa with a high-top fade,” Warren Chambers said.

Matthew thought he was talking about an automobile. A High-Top Phaed. Some kind of foreign convertible. Automobiles were very much on his mind this Friday morning. He was waiting for a call from his insurance adjustor.

“Next one I’m going to get will be a ramp,” Warren said, and ran his hand over the top of his head. It was then that Matthew realized he was talking about his haircut. A high-top fade. Which looked like a flower pot turned upside down and sitting on top of Warren’s head, the hair below it shaved very close to the scalp. He did not want to ask what a ramp might possibly be. He figured a man’s hair was as sacrosanct as his castle; too many battles had been fought over hair in the sixties. This was the here and now.

“How was your trip?” Warren asked.

“Wonderful.”

“So you came back to this, huh?” Warren said, and indicated the copy of the Calusa Herald-Tribune lying on Matthew’s desk. There was another picture of Stephen Leeds on the front page; the paper had been running his picture every day since his arrest. The headline read: WITNESSES SAW LEEDS. The Subhead read: Wife Questioned Again.

“Who’re these witnesses?” Warren asked.

“Bannister hasn’t yet sent me his list. I’ll be stopping by there later today.”

“You think they’ve really got anyone?”

“I hope not.”

“Why do they keep questioning the wife?”

“She’s his alibi. But there’s also a rumor running around town. To the effect that they were in it together. Leeds and the wife.”

“Uh-huh,” Warren said, and nodded thoughtfully, giving the impression that the idea might be worth consideration.

He was a soft-spoken man in his mid-thirties, his shy, reserved manner and horn-rimmed glasses giving him the look of an accountant (even with the high-top fade) rather than what one imagined a private eye should look like. Beanpole tall and thin, a former basketball player for the University of Missouri — which he’d attended for two years before joining the St. Louis P.D. — Warren still moved like an athlete and somehow appeared graceful even when he was sitting, as he was now. He was a meticulous investigator and a dead shot; Matthew had seen him put away a raccoon and a human being with equal aplomb. His eyes were the color of his skin, as dark as loam, pensive and serious now.

“How’d the rumor start?” he asked.

“In yesterday’s Trib. Some guy wrote a letter.”

“A nut?”

“Sure. But you know the Trib.”

“And this time around they’ve got a real ax to grind.”

“Oh?”

“Leeds’s father once tried a hostile takeover. This was ten years ago, before he died. A big chain in the South won out. But the publisher’s still pissed about the old man’s move.”

“Where’d you learn this?”

“At the Trib’s morgue,” Warren said, and grinned.

“So you think we may be in for a media trial, huh?”

“Let’s say you might start thinking about a change of venue. How’d Leeds explain his wallet at the scene?”

“He said he may have left it on his boat.”

“When?”

“The afternoon of the murders.”

“Very flimsy,” Warren said, shaking his head. “If a person plans to do murder, he doesn’t first go to the Leeds boat on the off chance he’ll find a wallet there.”

“Not necessarily a wallet. Anything personal.**

“Even so.”

“Something he could plant at the scene. To link the murders to Leeds. It’s easier to get onto a boat than into a house, Warren.”

“Granted.”

“We’ve got to find out how that wallet got at the scene. Because if Leeds himself dropped it there…”

“Goodbye, Charlie,” Warren said.

“Mm,” Matthew said, and nodded gravely. “So what I’d like you to do…”

“Where does he keep the boat?” Warren asked.

In the city of Calusa, Florida, the State Attorney’s office used to be a motel. It still sat across the street from a ballpark that once was used for big-league spring training before the team moved to Sarasota; nowadays, teams sponsored by beer companies played there. The old motel sat behind what used to be the biggest hotel in town. You could still see the twin white towers of the hotel — now an office building — from a courtyard surrounded by what used to be motel units but were now offices for the State Attorney’s staff.

The sun at eleven a.m. that Friday morning beat down unmercifully into the courtyard. The motel-now-office units served to form a sort of wall around the courtyard, preventing any circulation of air, boxing in the area, giving it the feel of a small, suffocatingly hot prison cheerfully planted with palm trees, bougainvillea, and hibiscus the color of blood. The sign outside read:

Matthew was relieved to discover that the air-conditioning system in Skye Bannister’s office was working; in Calusa’s government offices, bureaucratic red tape often made a mockery of maintenance. Bannister’s receptionist, a dark-haired girl in her early twenties, asked him if this was about the witness list and statements. Matthew told her it was. The receptionist said the case had been turned over to an Assistant State Attorney and added that Matthew could go next door to see her if he liked, her office was in room 17.

The Assistant S.A. was Patricia Demming.

“Oh dear,” she said.

She looked a lot less wet this morning than she had last night. Long blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail fastened with a ribbon that matched her blouse, her tailored suit, and her startling blue eyes. She was wearing as well high-heeled blue leather pumps, blue pantyhose (he guessed), and silver earrings with turquoise stones. No mascara or eye shadow here at work, only lipstick. She looked cool and efficient and very State Attorney-ish, albeit enormously surprised to discover that Matthew was defending the man she’d been assigned to prosecute. Matthew was thinking that Skye Bannister had been confident enough of his case to turn it over to an assistant. A new assistant, at that; Matthew came in and out of the State Attorney’s offices on an almost-daily basis, and he’d never seen her here before.

“How’s your car?” she asked, and smiled.

“I’m supposed to hear from the adjustor today,” Matthew said.

“I barely made it home from the party last night. They think I’ll need a new engine.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How was the party?”

“Very nice. Do you know the Berringers?”

“End of the street. Yes.”

“Nice people.”

“Yes. A doctor, isn’t he?”

“A dentist,” she said, and smiled again. “You’re here about the witness list, I’ll bet. And the statements.”

“Yes,” he said, and took off the gloves. “Miss Demming,” he said, “I have to tell you that I don’t like to be surprised by newspaper stories.”

“I’m awfully sorry about that, really, but…”

“Because, you know. Miss Demming, it’s a little disconcerting to learn that documents are being released to the press…”

“No one released any documents to the…”

“… even before the man’s attorney has seen…”

“Mr. Bannister merely answered some questions put to him by…”

“Is Mr. Bannister prosecuting this case, or are you?”

“I am. As of this morning. But yesterday…”

“But yesterday Mr. Bannister was handing out press releases, right?”

“Wrong. A reporter called to ask if there’d been any witnesses to the…”

“So the State Attorney felt it was okay to release this information before I had the witness list, before I had the witness statements.”

“I admit that may have been premature. Are you looking for a fight, Mr. Hope?”

“I’m looking to protect my client,” Matthew said.

“I was only assigned the case this morning. I didn’t even know you were the defense attorney till you walked in here. In any event, I planned to send the…”

“I’m here now. May I have them please?”

“I’ll ask my secretary to get them,” she said.

“Thank you.”

She picked up the phone receiver, pressed a button in its base, and asked someone named Shirley to bring in the Leeds witness list and statements. Putting the receiver back on its cradle, she looked up at Matthew and said, “It doesn’t have to start this way, you know.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Really. If you like, I’ll ask Mr. Bannister to let me handle any further contact with the press.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Done.”

“Tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“Why’d he turn the case over to you?”

“Why not? I’m a very good lawyer.”

“I’m sure,” Matthew said, and smiled.

“Besides, it’s a sure thing.”

“All the more reason for Mr. Ambitious to try it himself.”

“Maybe he’s got bigger fish to fry,” she said, and then, immediately, “Oh dear, forgive me. That was unintentional.”

“What can be bigger than a pillar of the community killing three little Vietnamese immigrants?”

“Watch the newspapers,” she said, and smiled secretively.

The door opened.

A redhead came in carrying a sheaf of papers. She put them on the desk, asked if there was anything else before she went to lunch, and then smiled at Matthew and went out again. Matthew looked at the cover sheet on the top batch. The witness list. He glanced at the other stapled papers. Witness statements. Two of them. Asian names on both.

“What nationality are they?” he asked.

“Vietnamese.”

“Do they speak English?”

“No, you’ll need an interpreter. Also, one of them’s out of town just now, visiting his son in Orlando.”

“When will he be back?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. Would you care for some coffee?”

“Thank you, Miss Demming, but I have an early lunch date.”

“Patricia,” she said.

He looked at her.

“The other stuff is for the movies. We can be antagonists without being enemies, can’t we?”

“I’m sure we can,” he said. “Patricia.”

“Good. What do people call you? Matthew? Matt?”

“Matthew, usually.”

“Is that what you prefer?”

“Actually, yes.”

“May I call you Matthew?”

“Please,” he said.

“Matthew,” she said, “I’m going to put your man in the electric chair.”

From a pay phone on the sidewalk outside, Matthew called his office and asked the firm’s receptionist, Cynthia Huellen, to put him through to Andrew, please. Andrew was Andrew Holmes, twenty-five years old, a recent law-school graduate who had taken his Florida bar exams last month and was now waiting to learn whether he’d passed them or not. Andrew had his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan and was currently earning forty thousand dollars a year as a so-called legal assistant at Summerville and Hope, with the promise that they’d jump him to fifty the moment he was accepted to the bar — a foregone conclusion in that Andrew had been editor of the Law Review at U Mich and had graduated from the school with honors.

He came onto the phone sounding breathless.

“Sorry, I was down the hall,” he said.

“Andrew, I need everything you can get me on Patricia Demming, she’s the A.S.A. who’s been handed the Leeds case. I want to know where she went to law school, where she practiced before she came to Calusa, whether she’s ever handled a murder case, what her track record is, her courtroom style, and so on.”

“Demming, did you say?”

“Demming. Double m, i-n-g.”

“How old is she, would you say?”

“Thirty-six.”

“When do you need this?”

“I’ll be back in the office by two.”

“Mmm,” Andrew said.

“Also, line up a Vietnamese interpreter for me, I’m going to need one when I talk to these witnesses.”

“Vietnamese interpreter, right. Easy to come by in old Calusa.”

“Do I detect a touch of sarcasm, Andrew?”

“No, no, Vietnamese interpreter, right.”

“Switch me over to Frank, will you?”

“Hold on.”

There was clicking on the line, and then Cynthia’s voice saying, “Hello?” and Andrew asking her to transfer the call to Mr. Summerville’s office, and then Cynthia saying, “Just a sec,” and then Frank’s voice saying, “Matthew, where are you?”

“I just came out of the S.A.’s office. Bannister’s assigned the case to someone named Patricia Demming. Ring a bell?”

“Never heard of her.”

“I’ve got Andrew running her down. I had to pry loose the witness list and statements…”

“I saw the Trib this morning.”

“Two witnesses, Frank. Both Vietnamese.”

“We’ll be fighting the goddamn war all over again.”

“Did the mail come in yet?”

“Hours ago.”

“Anything on my demand for discovery?”

“Little early for that, Matthew.”

“I just don’t want to read all about it in the paper again.”

“Want me to call Skye?”

“No, I’ll take care of that.”

“Where are you headed now?”

“To the farm,” Matthew said.

The farms out on Timucuan Point Road were rapidly succumbing to the developers’ bulldozers. Where once fruit and vegetables had grown in abundance, there were now artificial lakes surrounded by houses with their own swimming pools and tennis courts. Country estates, they were called. Once upon a time, you could drive three miles east out of Calusa and you’d be in real country. Now you had to drive out at least twenty miles toward Ananburg before you began seeing the ranches and the citrus groves and the farms.

Jessica Leeds had invited Matthew to a twelve o’clock lunch.

He got to the farm at ten minutes before the hour — in August, the roads in and around town were virtually deserted — drove through the wooden posts on either side of the main gate, and then parked his rented Ford alongside a red Maserati. The customized license plate on the car read JESSIE 1. He assumed there was a JESSIE 2, but it was nowhere in sight. Out on the fields, a tractor moved slowly against a vast blue sky. Not a cloud in sight. Not yet.

The farmhouse was a vast and sprawling one-story building, the sort of structure that had been added onto over the years, room by room, with connecting links and passageways that jigged and jogged this way and that to create an architectural labyrinth. There were several doors here and there on the rambling facade, but the front door was clearly identifiable, painted a bright red that announced itself as the entrance. Matthew went to it and pressed the bell button. Chimes sounded within. He waited in the noonday heat, hoping the closed door signaled air conditioning inside, hoping too that Jessica Leeds would ask him to take off his jacket and loosen his — the door opened.

She was a woman in her late thirties, he supposed, several years younger than her husband, tall and slender and tanned by the sun, casually dressed in sandals, skirt, and a white blouse that revealed one bare shoulder.

“Mr. Hope?” she said, and extended her hand. “Please come in.”

Wedge-cut auburn hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a wide mouth, her grip firm and dry. They shook hands briefly, and she led him into the house, her sandals slapping on a cool lemon-colored tile floor. He had expected a wooden floor. Pegged. This was the country, this was a farmhouse. But now there was modern furniture, all leather and stainless steel, another surprise. And what looked like a genuine Miro was hanging on the living room wall over a leather sofa the color of milk chocolate.

“Something to drink?” she asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Lemonade?”

“Well, yes.”

“Allie?” she called, and a young woman came from what Matthew supposed was the kitchen. She was wearing jeans and a white blouse with red embroidery decorating its scalloped scoop neck. In her early twenties, Matthew guessed, “Could you bring in the lemonade, please?” Jessica said, and the girl smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and went out into the kitchen again.

“You don’t know how happy you’ve made me,” Jessica said.

“Oh?”

“Taking on the case. Sit down, please. Take off your jacket, won’t you?”

“Thank you,” Matthew said, and took off the jacket and folded it and draped it over one of the leather easy chairs. Jessica sat at one end of the sofa, tucking her long legs under her. Matthew sat opposite her, in the other easy chair. The sliding glass doors behind her showed acres and acres of fields rolling away toward the horizon. He could no longer see the tractor. A sprinkling system watered rows and rows of plants growing in the sun. Allie came back with a tray bearing a pitcher of lemonade and two tall glasses brimming with ice. She set the tray down, said, “Lunch is ready when you are, ma’am,” and went back into the kitchen. Jessica poured. She handed the glass to him. He waited for her to pour her own glass full, and then they both drank.

“Good,” he said.

“We have more sugar, if you’d…”

“No, no, perfect this way.”

“I should have asked her to bring in the bowl. And some spoons.”

“Really, it’s fine.”

“We’ll eat whenever you like,” she said. “It’s a cold lunch, just some cucumber soup and chicken and our own tomatoes, of course.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Whenever you like,” she said.

It occurred to him that she was extremely nervous.

“This is a tomato farm, you know,” she said.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well, we also plant squash and cucumbers, but tomatoes are our real crop. Fresh market tomatoes. We’ve got three thousand acres…”

“That I did know.”

“… of arable land, with thirty-six full-time people on salary. Including the migrant workers who do our picking, we employ some three to four thousand people a year. That’s a big operation.”

“Sounds like it,” Matthew said.

“Yes,” she said.

Behind her, way off in the distance, the tractor came into sight again, plodding its way across the fields. And now, far out on the horizon, Matthew could see the first faint beginning of the rain that would come later in the day, the sky darkening to the north.

“We’ve got twenty-three of those tractors,” she said, nodding toward the fields, “and almost as many trucks, including four ten-wheelers. There are bigger farms, of course, but not many out here on Timucuan Point. And not many of them have their own greenhouses and packing house, the way we do, out near Ananburg. That’s where our sales office is, too, Ananburg. We grow good tomatoes — prune them, stake them, and tie them, same as they do in Arkansas. We don’t let them ripen on the vine the way they do up there, we harvest them green. But ours are better, if you ask me. Well, maybe I’m biased. We do a sixty-million-dollar annual gross, though, and we net something like thirty million, so those have got to be pretty good tomatoes, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would guess so.”

“Not many people in Calusa like us making so much money — well, nobody really likes rich people, do they? Especially if the wealth was inherited. That’s why the newspaper’s after us,” she said, and fell silent.

They sipped at their lemonades.

The horizon seemed suddenly darker, the storm moving in more swiftly than Matthew had anticipated.

“Have you seen today’s paper?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“They say they have witnesses.”

“I know. I already have their names.”

“Oh?” she said, surprised.

“They have to supply them,” Matthew said. “Anyone they plan to call. We have to do the same.”

“Who are they?”

“Two Vietnamese men. One of them saw your husband going in, the other saw him coming out.”

“They say.”

“Yes, of course. And, of course, we’ll contest anything they say. Meanwhile, they have him going in at eleven…”

“That’s absurd. He was lying asleep beside me at that time.”

“And coming out at a little after midnight.”

“Stephen didn’t leave the house all night long. We had dinner, watched the movie he’d brought home…”

“Which movie was that?” Matthew asked.

“Casablanca,” she said.

Exactly what her husband had told him.

“He fell asleep watching it, in fact. He was asleep by nine-thirty, ten o’clock.”

“What time did he go out on the boat?” Matthew asked.

“Around five,” she said.

“And came back when?”

“Well, we had dinner at six-thirty, seven. So he was home before then.”

“Just took the boat out for a spin, he told me.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“He also said he may have left his wallet aboard.”

“That’s a possibility, I suppose.”

“He thinks someone may have found it on the boat.”

“Well… that seems farfetched, doesn’t it?”

“How do you think it got at the scene?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been going over that same question again and again in my mind. I have no answer. Stephen was here with me. But they found his wallet in that house with those three…”

She bit off the word before it left her mouth. But her flashing green eyes said the word. The curl of her lip said the word.

“Mrs. Leeds,” Matthew said, “the prosecution is going to make a big deal about you being your husband’s only alibi. Now that they’ve got these witnesses…”

“Who are they? What are their names?”

“I’m sorry, they’re difficult names to remember. I’ll phone you when I get back to the office, if you…”

“No, I was merely wondering if they’re relatives or anything. Half the Vietnamese in Calusa are related. If these two…”

“That’s a good point.”

“Because they couldn’t possibly have seen Stephen going in or out of that house. That’s flatly impossible. They have to be lying.”

“Or merely mistaken.”

“Then they should have kept their mouths shut! If they weren’t sure! Because I hope you know… I hope you realize that those… those three bastards…”

She shook her head.

Kept shaking it.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He said nothing. He kept watching her. Her head was bent now. She was staring at her hands. Behind her, the clouds were rolling in swiftly. The tractor was heading back in this direction. The rain would soon be here.

“They’re saying I was with him, aren’t they?” she said at last.

Her head was still bent. She kept twisting her fingers, one hand in the other, long fingers with bloodred nails.

“There’s a rumor to that effect,” Matthew said.

“What do the witnesses say? Did they see two of us?”

“No. Only your husband.”

“Does that make me innocent?”

“A man writing a letter to a newspaper…”

“Well, I’m guilty,” she said. “In my heart, I’m guilty.”

She lifted her head. Her eyes met his.

“In my heart, I would have done the same thing,” she said. “Slit their throats, put out their eyes, cut off their…”

She turned away sharply.

A flash of lightning sundered the summer sky. A man in a straw hat and bib overalls was running toward the house, the abandoned tractor behind him. There was thunder on the left.

“Shall we have lunch now?” she asked.

The rain came in over the water in blinding sheets. Warren stood in the small marina office and waited for Charlie Stubbs to come back in from where he was pumping gas into a twenty-five-foot Boston Whaler. Warren liked this about Florida. The drama of it. There’d been drama in St. Louis, too, by way of tornadoes, but down here the action was more varied. And sudden. One minute you had sunshine that could scorch your eyeballs, and the next it was pouring down raindrops the size of quarters. Pelting the wooden dock outside the office, banging on the tin roof, sliding down the louvered glass windows, lashing into the canvas on sailboats caught unawares. This was one hell of a frog strangler.

Stubbs was wearing an orange poncho, one of those plastic things that weren’t worth a damn in a true storm. The poncho kept whipping around his knees, the wind trying its best to rip it clear off him. Stubbs knelt there unperturbed, a dead cigar between his lips, the hose in his hands, the nozzle stuck into the open mouth of the Walkaround’s tank. Warren was happy to be inside.

The owner of the boat was wearing grey walking shorts, a white T-shirt, and brown Top-Siders. He was soaked through to the skin. He kept talking to Stubbs as he filled the tank, the words lost to Warren, Stubbs nodding every now and then to let the man know he was listening. Finally, Stubbs got up, hung the hose back on the pump, put the cap back on the boat’s tank, gave it a tightening twist with his key, and then came walking back swiftly toward the marina office, his poncho flying all orange and angry around him, the boater following him drenched.

Stubbs was talking as they came in.

“… wait it out the ten minutes or so, I was you,” he was saying.

“Looks to me like it’s gonna be longer’n that,” the other man said. “You take American Express?”

“Just Visa or MasterCard,” Stubbs said.

“I’ll have to give you cash then,” the man said, and glanced at Warren, and then took out his billfold and said, “What’s it come to?”

“Eleven-sixty,” Stubbs said.

“Can you break a twenty?” the man asked, and turned to look at Warren again. “Somethin’ interestin’ you here?” he said.

“You talking to me?” Warren said.

“Ain’t but three of us here in this room and I’m lookin’ straight at you, now ain’t I?”

“I suppose you are,” Warren said.

“This money transaction interestin’ you?”

“Oh, yes,” Warren said. “What I plan to do is hit you upside the head and steal your big twenty-dollar bill.”

Stubbs burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” the man asked.

“Nothin’,” Stubbs said, still laughing.

“Man’s standin’ there watchin’ me take out my money…”

“Come on now, come on,” Stubbs said soothingly.

“How’s a person to know whut’s goin’ on inside his head?”

He handed the bill to Stubbs and stood there glowering while Stubbs rang up the sale and made change from the register. He seemed to be debating whether he wanted to start up with Warren or not. He was still debating it when Stubbs brought back his change. He counted it, gave Warren a dirty look, and went out into the rain. His transom hit one of the pilings while he was backing the boat out. Good, Warren thought.

“You get a lot of that?” Stubbs asked.

“Enough,” Warren said.

“I thought that was history.”

“Sure. Where?”

“I just thought it was. That kind of bullshit.”

“Well,” Warren said, and let it go. “You were telling me about Leeds taking the boat out…”

“Right.”

“This was Monday afternoon, correct? Sometime Monday afternoon.”

“Around a quarter to five. Was when he drove in. Time he untied the boat and went off, it was maybe ten minutes later.”

“What time did he come back in?”

“Around six? Thereabouts?”

“Tied up here at the dock?”

“Same as usual. His usual slip. Number twelve.”

“What time did you leave the marina that night?”

“I don’t leave it. Not any night. My house is right there past the storage sheds. I’m here all the time.”

“Would you have seen anyone going onto Mr. Leeds’s boat after he’d brought it in that night?”

“Except him, do you mean?”

“Yes, I mean after he brought it in.”

“I know, but…”

“Anyone else is what I mean.”

“I know. But what I’m saying is I was asleep after he tied up the second time.”

Warren looked at him.

“He took the boat out twice,” Stubbs said.

“What do you mean?”

“Once in the afternoon, and again later that night.”

“When later that night?”

“Well, he called me around nine o’clock…”

“Leeds?”

“That’s right, Mr. Leeds. Told me he’d be taking the boat out again for a little moonlight spin, said I wasn’t to be alarmed if I heard him out there on the dock.”

“And did you hear him on the dock?”

“I did.”

“At what time?”

“He drove in sometime between ten and ten-thirty. Like he said he would.”

“You saw him drive in?”

“I saw his car.”

“Did you see him getting out of the car?”

“Yes, I did. Moonlit night, it was Mr. Leeds, all right. Locked the car and went straight to the boat.”

“What time did he bring the boat back in?”

“I don’t know. I was asleep by midnight, it had to’ve been after that. Boat was here in the morning when I woke up, tied up as usual.”

“What kind of a car was Mr. Leeds driving?”

“A red Maserati,” Stubbs said.