Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Page 19

“Interference with a police investigation?”

  “No.”

  “Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened here Saturday, when the author Charlotte De Laguerre was arrested in your newsroom?”

  “Mrs. De Laguerre was in violation of a protection order filed by my reporter Marcus Henning. She is a suspect in the shooting of Mr. Henning’s wife Kay.” OK, Flagg, wind it up. This is nothing you couldn’t have gotten out off the Web site.

  “One more question—”

  Behind Flagg, Graham stood in the newspaper’s front window and gestured for me to come inside. I could see Pat Robinette behind Graham, his Nikon camera fitted with what he called his “stalkerazzi” lens. Had the judge decided to open Rowan’s grave?

  “I’m sorry, I have a newspaper to run,” I said politely, stepping around Flagg and toward the door.

  The camera kept running.

  “There you have it,” Flagg continued to talk into the camera lens. “Addison McIntyre, editor of the Journal-Gazette denies she had anything to do with the Rowan Starrett suicide cover-up. Although McIntyre hasn’t been charged with anything, she could face up to ninety days in jail for obstruction of justice, should authorities here in Plummer County decide to pursue them. We’ll continue to follow this complicated story as it unfolds.”

  I took a final, precious drag off my cigarette with one hand and exhaled as I reached for the door with the other hand.

  “Hey Flagg,” I called.

  “What?”

  I flicked my cigarette at his fancy Italian shoes and he jumped back like a batter avoiding a bad pitch.

  “Fuck you.”

  Inside, Graham pulled me aside, away from the waiting advertising staff, who wanted to ask about the interview.

  “We have a bit of a conflict.” Graham was somber.

  “Oh, me telling another reporter on camera to fuck off isn’t a conflict?” I asked sarcastically.

  “No, seriously. The probate judge agreed to open Rowan Starrett’s grave. Charlie’s arraignment is in twenty minutes. Can you get one of these? I can’t get them both.”

  “Sure. Let me run up to the newsroom and get a notebook,” I said. “Pat, get me whatever photos you can and as close as you can. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I know Birger said Saturday he wasn’t going to be real welcoming to any media.”

  Pat nodded.

  Mike Flagg and his cameraman were still on the sidewalk in front of the paper as I pulled out of the alley leading from the employee parking lot.

  *****

  I pulled my Taurus through the vine-covered wrought iron gates of the city’s cemetery, trying to remember where I’d stood ten years ago to cover Rowan’s fake funeral.

  The cemetery had been founded as a final resting place for Jubilant Falls’ Civil War dead. That lawn of white government-issue headstones, crowned with the statue of a Union soldier leaning wearily on his weapon, was still the centerpiece of Plummer County Historical Society’s spring walking tours, much like Dad’s Victorian neighborhood near the downtown.

  Other sections fanned out from the center, reflecting the county’s history. Sometimes that history wasn’t anything to be proud of: For many years, Section 4A was only where blacks could be buried, next to Section 4A, was 5B, where Irish immigrants found their eternal rest. Those sections extended along the black, wrought-iron fence, with the more socially prominent members of early Jubilant Falls closer to the Civil War dead, their tall monuments overlooking the peaceful banks of Shanahan Creek, named for Jubilant Falls’ founder McGregor Shanahan.

  Another gentler rise in the rolling cemetery property became the resting place for the town’s more modern leaders, next to veterans’ graves from the two world wars, Korean, Vietnam, and more recently, Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, Rick and Rowan chose to begin their fraud and where a granite tombstone stood, marked the dates of Rowan Starrett’s fictional birth and death, engraved with an image of the Stanley Cup.

  Two unmarked police cars, the coroner’s van, and a cemetery dump truck towing a backhoe on a flatbed trailer were parked at the bottom of the rise. Pat Robinette’s aging MG was about two hundred feet back, far enough around the curve of the narrow cemetery road that he couldn’t quite be seen. I pulled my Taurus in behind his car.

  “It doesn’t look like anything has happened yet,” Pat said as I stepped beside him, notebook in hand.

  “Good.” I pulled the cap off my pen with my teeth and flipped open my reporter’s notebook.

  “I can walk up there”—Pat pointed toward the weary Union soldier—”and get a good shot, particularly with this lens. We probably have a few minutes before the actual digging starts.”

  “That’s provided there aren’t any obstructions. They could move the trucks and the cars around the gravesite if they see you.”

  “And I can stand on the base of that statue.”

  “OK.” I shrugged and nodded. Pat would do anything it took to get the shot he needed. That’s what made him the best I’d ever worked with.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to sit right here until I see that backhoe open the grave. Then I’m going to wander up and start asking questions.”

  Pat nodded, shifted the camera strap on his shoulder and began walking toward the statue.

  Ten minutes passed before the engine rattled on the backhoe, bringing the yellow monster to life. It rolled off the flatbed, onto the ground and between the other graves, with a procession of cops, cemetery administrators and workers with shovels on their shoulders behind it. I recognized JFPD Assistant Chief Gary McGinnis, and Detective Mike Birger, along with Plummer County Coroner Dr. Rashid Bovir, in the march towards the grave.

  The backhoe stopped in front of Rowan’s headstone and four yellow steel legs extended, insect-like, to the ground to steady it. The operator shifted the engine into a lower gear and the bucket began to cut into the dirt, my cue to wander up to the site.

  Gary McGinnis nodded in my direction as I approached. No one spoke, or seemed to care that I was there, somber with the responsibility of their actions.

  While the odds of Rowan’s body being in the grave were slim to none—there was too much evidence that he was alive—there was still the chance that someone could be in that coffin. If that was the case, that body deserved respect—and all of law enforcement’s attention for what could be a new homicide. That possibility was what brought Dr. Bovir to the gravesite.

  In a few minutes, the sod was pulled back to expose the concrete vault covering the coffin. Workers stepped in to wedge their shovels around the vault lid and lift it high enough for industrial green straps, now hanging from the bucket, to be slipped beneath each end of the lid. The backhoe’s engine groaned as the concrete slab came up and was laid on the sod beside the grave. Still silent, two workers slipped the green straps off the vault lid and jumped into the concrete vault.

  As one worker lifted the head of the coffin, another slipped one of the green straps underneath. Then they shifted to the bottom of the coffin, repeating the procedure. They scrambled out of the vault and signaled to the backhoe operator to raise the coffin.

  As the bucket rose, the backhoe’s engine groaned, bringing the mahogany coffin to the surface. Birger and McGinnis stepped closer as the workers guided the coffin, hanging in mid-air, to the opposite side of the open grave, working to set it down gently on the green grass where Dr. Bovir stood, pulling on latex gloves.

  Suddenly, the bucket jerked and the engine’s gears made a grinding sound. The coffin swung dangerously in the air, the foot of it tilting toward the ground. The bucket jerked alarmingly again as the engine gears ground and the operator fought to get the backhoe to react.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”

  Another jerk of the bucket, another swing and we gasped collectively as the coffin struck the ground with a thud. A bottom corner struck first. There was a sharp crack as the mahogany lid split in half, revealing the red and white satin liner—and noth
ing else.

  Chapter 33 Marcus

  “All rise. Court is now in session.”

  The bailiff opened the door from the judge’s chambers and stood until Judge Susan Vernon entered.

  “Be seated,” she said.

  Prosecutor Steve Adolphus and I, standing at the plaintiff’s table, and Charlie, at the defense table with her public defender, a pony-tailed young man named Poe McGee, complied. A representative from the victim-witness department, here for my support, sat behind Adolphus and me in one of the gallery seats. The courtroom door opened and closed quietly. It was Graham Kinnon, who slid into a seat near the door.

  Charlie did not look like the flamboyant woman I’d met en route to Seattle. Gone were the stylish bulky sweater and thigh-high boots she’d been wearing when she was arrested in the newsroom Saturday. Today, she was dressed in a somber black business suit, a pink blouse and sensible black flats. She wore no jewelry and her jaw-length brown hair was flat, but clean. She looked more like someone Calpurnia taught school with, rather than a crazy stalker.

  I could not believe I’d agreed to what was going to happen, but I didn’t think I really had much choice. Adolphus and Birger both believed it was the only way to locate Rowan Starrett, provided Charlie’s story and Rick Starrett’s story were both true. I hoped there was no body in the coffin I knew was being opened as this hearing progressed.

  “This might be the one way we have to solve Virginia Ferguson’s murder as well,” Birger said to me, before departing for the cemetery.

  The judge began to read Charlie’s charges into the record, one misdemeanor count of menacing by stalking, which carried a sentence of up to six months in jail, and a one thousand dollar fine.

  “It’s my understanding that the parties have come to an agreement?” she asked, looking over her reading glasses at the attorneys.

  “Yes, your honor.” Adolphus and McGee spoke in unison.

  “Miss Deifenbaugh, you are pleading guilty to this charge of your own free will?”

  “Yes, Judge,” she said. The voice that sounded like it had been filtered through two Kentucky distilleries and three cubic feet of gravel was oddly out of sync with her submissive manner and conservative clothing.

  “Mr. Henning, you agree to this plea agreement? This is being done of your own free will?”

  “Yes, your honor,” I answered.

  “Provided the conditions of the plea agreement are adhered to,” Adolphus said.

  “Yes, Mr. Adolphus,” Judge Vernon looked sharply over her glasses. “Miss Deifenbaugh, you are hereby sentenced to six months in jail and a one thousand dollar fine. I am suspending both of those, provided you keep your word on the plea agreement. Any further violations and this case will be treated as a felony.”

  With a sharp crack of her gavel, it was over.

  “All rise!” The bailiff called out again. Judge Vernon stood and left the bench.

  McGee, beaming like he’d just kept his client from the electric chair, grasped Charlie by the elbow and walked toward us. Adolphus stepped forward to shake hands, but I stepped back.

  I looked at Graham, whose jaw hung slack with shock.

  “ OK, folks,” Adolphus said. “Let’s go over here to the conference room. Miss Deifenbaugh, you’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

  *****

  “I met Deke in rehab, in Chicago. He’d come in from the burn unit at Cook County Hospital, after his arms and hands were badly burned.”

  Adolphus, McGee, a stenographer and I sat around a gleaming conference table in the Plummer County courthouse. The light from the cold, winter sun shone through the tall stained glass window, bathing Charlie in shades of yellow and blue. She sat with shoulders hunched, voice low and subdued. Her hands picked at a pack of menthol cigarettes, alternately tapping and spinning it on the table’s shiny, waxed surface. She wouldn’t look at any of us.

  I wondered how much of her speech was an act.

  “How did his arms get burned?” Adolphus asked.

  “He said he spilled brandy on the sleeves of his shirt. He was smoking a cigarette, which fell onto his arms and caught fire. He told everybody in group it was the event that made him realize he had an alcohol problem.”

  “Was that the truth?”

  “I thought so at first. Later I learned it wasn’t true.”

  “ What was the truth?”

  “He’d meant to burn his hands only, to burn off his fingerprints, so no one would know his true identity.”

  Adolphus pulled two photos from a file in his briefcase. One was a glossy promotional photo of the former goalie in his Blackhawks’ uniform, smiling for the fans. His hair was thick and wavy, and his smile was perfect, just like his brother’s. The other photo was of a more battered, beaten man, overweight from bad prison food. He was holding a placard with his name and prisoner number in front of him. His forearms were marked with prison tattoos and his black hair was thinner and shot with gray. His nose, once thin and aquiline, was flattened.

  “Which of these photos accurately represents the man you met in rehab?”

  Charlie pointed to the prison photo, and then turned away in sorrow.

  “Go on,” Adolphus said.

  The story was long and tawdry.

  Following his release from federal prison and his faked suicide, Rowan Starrett sought to reinvent himself as a clean and sober man. He returned to Chicago, where his hockey career began, assumed the name of Deke Howe and found a modest apartment, funded by his brother Rick, and a job working construction.

  Construction was good for Rowan—it kept him active, and too tired to drink at nigh. Staying sober, he was able to keep his urge to gamble at bay. After a few years, he worked his way up in the company to sales, traveling to homes where he spoke to the owners about building their new bathrooms, kitchens or patio rooms.

  “He handed them an estimate and they handed him a down payment check,” Charlie said. “It wasn’t long before those checks weren’t making it back to the office and he was using again. Then a stack of company checks got stolen and he got fired.”

  “Was he gambling?”

  Charlie nodded. “And using. He knew his boss was going to file charges against him for stealing the checks and that would expose his real identity, so just before he was arrested, he tried to burn his hands to remove his fingerprints. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way he planned and burned his arms really badly.”

  We each grimaced around the table, imagining the pain.

  “Did he not think about CODIS?” Adolphus asked. CODIS is the national DNA database, originally designed to identify sex offenders, but now includes anyone convicted of, or simply arrested for a felony, in some states. “If he was in federal prison, they would have had his DNA on file.”

  Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. I know he told me that some states didn’t take a DNA swab until after you were convicted of a felony, but I don’t know if Illinois was one of them. After he got out of the hospital, he was formally charged. It was bargained down to misdemeanor, with a few months in Cook County Jail suspended if he promised to go to rehab. That’s where I met him.”

  “And you married him after you were both released?”

  She nodded.

  “What were you being treated for?”

  “I’m a drunk,” she said flatly. “My agent with my first two books dumped me after I did some pretty crazy things.” She looked up at me sheepishly and continued.

  “ When did you learn your husband’s real identity?”

  “It wasn’t for a few years. We had some good times. My books were selling—he didn’t have to work. He couldn’t get a job anyway, not with the stolen checks conviction on his record. I didn’t care—I loved him.” Charlie stopped and stared at the ornate painted ceiling. A single tear ran down her cheek. She sighed deeply and continued.

  “Then things changed. My publisher didn’t like my third book, Death Among the Celts, and demanded a complete rewrite. So, I rewrote the whole
thing, even though I was finding it harder and harder to stay sober and so was Deke. We’d stay sober for weeks on end, and then we’d have minor relapses. Then we’d get back on the wagon and help each other stay sober for a couple months, and one of us would relapse, then the other. The book came out and I convinced my publisher—the same one who published Marcus’s book—that I was in good enough shape to go do the book tour. I promised I’d stay sober. Then, right before I leave for Seattle, Rowan reads a news article that this guy, Rick Starrett, was being considered for a cabinet position with the Ohio governor and he went nuts.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got really drunk and told me the whole story, that his real name was Rowan Starrett, that he’d been banned from hockey for life and this other guy was his brother.”

  “Did you know about Rowan Starrett?”

  “The black heart of the Blackhawks?” she asked sarcastically. “Sure. Everybody did, even folks like me, who never watched a hockey game in their lives. I thought, like everybody else, he’d committed suicide. Even the Tribune ran that story on the front page when it happened. Before he told me the truth, we used to have this joke between us: I used to say ‘You look like this hockey player I used to know.’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, I get that a lot,’ and then we’d both laugh. It wasn’t funny after that.”

  “What all did he tell you?”

  “That he didn’t make all those bets he was convicted of, that Rick was just as big a gambler as he was and he was responsible for some of those bad bets. They used to split the winnings. Rick was living high on the hog, with some bimbo on the side and he needed the extra money to keep her happy. He’s the one who told him to throw those games.”

  Adolphus sat back and whistled low. “Wow.”

  “Rowan said he was tired of living in Rick’s shadow and hiding behind the lie that he’d committed suicide. After all, Rick was sailing into this great future and Rowan wasn’t.” Charlie looked me dead in the eye.

  “ He wanted to get back at Rick, and then when things got really crazy, he wanted to get back at you.”