A Midnight Clear Read online

  I focused on forcing my fingers into the gloves, remembering how Eli used to put them on and pull them off as if he did it dozens of times every day. Which, of course, he did.

  “Eli passed in February this year. We had this huge Victorian in Locust Point and it was a bit much for me on my own, both space-wise and financially. Judge Beck needed somewhere for him and the kids during his divorce process, and I needed a tenant if I was planning on keeping the house.”

  Justine stood there, gloves still balled up in her hands. “You didn’t know him before he moved in?”

  “No, not at all. I mean, I’d heard his name as a circuit court judge, but I’d never met him personally. My husband was in a bad accident ten years ago about the time he and his family moved to the area. We might have met socially here and there if I hadn’t been focusing on the care of my husband, but maybe not. Eli wasn’t much of a golfer, and neither of us were the country club types.”

  I could feel Justine’s eyes on me as I walked over to the mirror, carefully examining the gilt trim.

  “He’s a good man, you know,” she said, her voice casual. “Kind of old fashioned in some ways, but honest, kind, and loyal. If he thinks of you as a friend, then you can count yourself lucky. If he thinks of you as more than a friend, as family, then you can count yourself more than lucky.”

  “I definitely think of him and his children as family.” I hooked my fingers on the mirror to peek behind it and nearly fell over when it swung open.

  There was the door with the round hole where the knob had been. I gave it a gentle push and heard it bump against the bookshelf. With a slightly harder push, I felt the shelf move a bit on the casters.

  I didn’t want to do anything more, afraid that I’d dislodge the shelf or books to a point that Trent would be tipped off that someone was snooping in his office, or had discovered the old washroom door.

  He’d taken a huge risk that the police wouldn’t search the office adjacent to the restroom, but I was sure he hadn’t expected Reynolds’ body to be discovered so soon. And he was no doubt confident that the police wouldn’t do more than dust the mirror for prints, and perhaps test the handle on his office door to make sure it was locked. He would have had time to dispose of the bloody clothes and shoes, and to make sure any trace of blood in his office was gone. And he’d done that, except for that bit of blood by the edge of the bookshelf.

  I replaced the mirror and turned to Justine. “I wonder what Judge Reynolds would have been looking for in Trent’s office?”

  Justine shrugged. “Whatever it was, I’m guessing Trent didn’t want him to find it. Or if he found it, Trent didn’t want him to tell anyone about it.”

  Judge Beck had said that Reynolds wasn’t a contender for the appellate court position, in spite of his nomination. Trent Elliott, on the other hand, was a serious contender. The only motive I could think of for Reynolds to be snooping in Trent’s office, or for Trent to kill Judge Reynolds, was because he’d found something that could ruin the other man’s chances at the promotion. Or possibly ruin his career altogether.

  I wondered if Ruby had gone through the things in her father’s house yet. Did Judge Reynolds have anything there on his computer or in his files about what he had on Trent Elliott?

  Not that it mattered at this point. Murder would probably put Trent Elliott in jail for a whole lot longer than whatever else he’d done in his past. And a crime in the hand was definitely worth two in a deceased man’s house.

  Chapter 13

  Justine and I actually did have lunch at the club. It seems that my new friend never joked around when it came to food. That’s how we found ourselves discussing our next steps while eating Cobb salads and drinking perfectly sweetened iced tea.

  “It has to be him,” I insisted between bites of salad. “Reynolds was getting something out of his office, using the door behind the mirror.”

  “But how did he know about the door behind the mirror?” Justine pointed her fork at me for emphasis. “If he wanted something out of Trent’s office, why didn’t he just pick the lock like I did? Or get a master key.”

  “I don’t know the answers to those questions, not yet anyway.” I frowned in thought. “What I do know is that Reynolds was in the restroom for a reason, and I doubt it had to do with any biological necessity. He was near the mirror, because the pool of blood was against that wall. There was no sign of any drops of blood leaving out that bathroom doorway, or anything on that beige carpet in the hall.”

  “Maybe the killer cleaned up before leaving the restroom,” Justine suggested.

  “Where would he have stashed his clothing? He must have had a way out of that restroom that didn’t involve going out the door. Trent’s office has vinyl flooring. He’s got a change of clothing. It would have been easy for him to go through, change, do a quick clean-up, then be back downstairs before anyone knew he was gone.”

  “I still have doubts about Reynolds knowing the existence of the door behind the mirror. And there are a lot of holes in this Trent theory. If the blood was against the wall, maybe it seeped under the secret door and that’s how it got on the office floor. Maybe none of this had to do with the door or Trent. Maybe the killer…I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t at the party. Maybe he came in from outside the building, killed Judge Reynolds in the bathroom, then put some plastic bags on his feet and managed to leave without leaving any blood trace.”

  “The police would have checked the door security logs as well as entrance cameras. It had to have been someone at the party, and my money is on Trent.” I knew exactly what Justine was saying. And the more we talked, the more my enthusiasm fell.

  She was right. I didn’t know why Reynolds was in that bathroom. I didn’t know why anyone would have wanted to kill him. And my whole theory about the mirror door and the change of clothing was nothing but a theory based on less than circumstantial evidence.

  Suddenly this Cobb salad tasted like cardboard. I’d taken a whole day off work for this. I’d chased down my silly fantasies. I’d involved my new friend in something that quite a few law enforcement officials might consider breaking and entering. Yeah, Justine and I had fun, but in the end, I was an amateur, a newly minted private investigator tilting at windmills.

  “I’ll call the detective on the case and give her a heads’ up on this whole thing,” Justine said, spearing a forkful of salad. “I figure it would be less suspicious coming from me than you, given that you were the one who discovered the body. I wouldn’t want them thinking you were snooping around, trying to solve this case behind their backs.”

  The last was delivered with a wink. I understood her reasoning, but I wasn’t sure what she intended to tell the police, so I asked her.

  “Just that I was at the office today to pick up some files, and when I was using the restroom on the way out, I accidently moved the mirror and noticed there was a door behind it leading into the adjacent office.”

  I choked back a laugh. “Oh, because that sounds so believable. They’ll think you were in the restroom out of some morbid sense of curiosity, and that you were ransacking the place looking for clues.”

  Justine shrugged. “So they think a judge’s wife got nosy while running an errand for her husband. They’re not going to scold me or anything, especially when I tell them I found a secret doorway their crime scene folks somehow missed.”

  “True.” I nodded thoughtfully. “But I thought you’d decided this theory was all hooey.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way I think the police should know. We were only in that office a few minutes. Maybe they can shine blue lights on stuff and find blood traces we missed, or find the bloody clothing hidden up in the ceiling tiles or something.”

  She had a point. We could lob this all over to the police and let them apply their expertise. If it turned out that I was right, then I could feel a little bit of vindication as well as satisfaction in my newly licensed investigative skills. If not, well no harm except for a waste of some pol
ice time.

  “You and Justine did what?” Judge Beck ran a hand through his blond hair, making it stand on end. I eyed him, thinking that if Madison saw him right now, she wouldn’t think her father looked so staid.

  “Nosed around the restroom where Judge Reynolds died.” I winced. “And we looked around the office next door.”

  “Which was unlocked.”

  He’d said that like it was a statement. I knew this was one of those “I don’t want to know” things, but too bad.

  “No. Justine picked the lock.”

  The judge let out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair once more.

  “But look.” I turned my phone for him to see the breaking news headlines. “The police were able to use the information that we—I mean Justine—gave them, and they took Trent in for questioning.”

  Judge Beck took the phone from my hand. “All this because you and Justine snooped around and found a door between the office and the restroom?”

  He and I both knew that wouldn’t be enough to bring Trent in for questioning. Actually I was doubting anything we’d found would be enough to bring Trent in for questioning.

  “The police must have found more than we did,” I told him.

  “And what exactly did you find?”

  Here’s where I told him my wild theory and all the shaky circumstantial evidence to support it.

  “When Justine first told me about that restroom at the party, she’d said it used to be an executive washroom. I didn’t remember it until later, but if it was an executive washroom, then the door to the hall was added later, and there would have been a door leading to one of the adjoining offices. I remembered thinking it was weird that there was no blood trace I could see leaving the washroom or out on that beige hallway carpet, and wondered if the door to the office was still there.”

  The judge nodded. I went on to tell him about what looked like a bit of blood on the office floor by the bookshelf, about the pants hanging in the closet. I went over my entire theory while he fixed me with that stern, attentive, flat stare I imagined he presented to prosecutors and defense attorneys.

  I was sweating with anxiety when I finished, and neither my career nor my client depended on the judge’s decisions. I had no idea how attorneys faced this man in the courtroom and didn’t wind up having a panic attack.

  “If there was a door under that full-length mirror, then there was enough of a space at the threshold for blood to have seeped into the office from the crime scene,” he commented.

  I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead. “I know. That’s a possibility.”

  “Trent rearranging his bookshelf or dry cleaning his jacket without the pants aren’t exactly incriminating,” he added.

  “I know, but it makes sense that the killer knew about that doorway, that Judge Reynolds knew about that doorway. If he’d used it to gain access to Trent’s office to find something incriminating, and Trent caught him leaving through the doorway, then it’s logical to think Trent would have killed him to hide the evidence, and changed his clothes before heading back down to the party.”

  Even as I said it, it sounded implausible.

  “But why kill Reynolds? Snooping isn’t exactly a rock-solid motive for murder.” He must have seen the look on my face, because the judge stepped close to me, putting his hands on my arms. “Kay, I’ve seen your deductive skills at work. I’ve seen how thorough you are in your investigations. I know this is you thinking things through, discussing possibilities out loud, but don’t jump the gun on this. Don’t go to the police unless you have enough proof to back up your ideas. And please, for the love of God, don’t go breaking into offices. Or buildings. Or cars.”

  He was right, and I was a bit ashamed of myself for racing ahead on such shaky evidence. I knew better than this. If I’d submitted this story back in my journalism days, I would have been fired. Not enough proof. Not anywhere near enough proof.

  But then why had the police taken Trent in for questioning?

  Chapter 14

  Trent was out of the police station almost as fast as he went in, making me wonder if they truly were just questioning him and not considering him a suspect. Since the whole thing had been splashed all over the news last night, I wasn’t shocked to see a press conference in the morning from Trent Elliott and his lawyer—who did the talking. Trent stood beside the man in an immaculate suit, his dark hair silver at the temples.

  It seemed that Trent was horrified to find out that Judge Reynolds’ killer had used his office to escape from the scene of the crime. The lawyer went on to say that although he couldn’t reveal any details, both Mr. Elliott and the management at Sullivan, Morris, Stein and Callahan were cooperating fully with the police and helping in any way they could to bring the murderer to justice.

  At the end of the press conference a few reporters shouted out questions, but the lawyer waved them away and followed Trent Elliot from the stage.

  I had a few thoughts as I parked the car and walked into the office. One—that in my opinion, Trent Elliott looked weak having his lawyer deliver the press conference. That was fine for a regular defendant, but for an attorney who was most likely going to be appointed to the appellate court? The guy should have had enough confidence and oratory skill to speak for himself.

  Two—maybe the reason Trent was in and out so quickly was because he might not have even known about the door to the restroom. Yes, he’d been with the firm for a long time, but when had that restroom been converted? Maybe I needed to look at people who worked at SMS&C before that had happened.

  Maybe I needed to look into who had that office at the time it was converted.

  “Look what I have.” I held a plastic carrier aloft as I walked through the office door.

  “Muffins?” J.T. sniffed the air. “I’m guessing ginger and vanilla?”

  “Scones?” Molly squinted, trying to see through the carrier. “Or banana bread?”

  “Cookies.” I put the container down next to the coffee maker and opened it up. I’d been making cookies all week and storing them. This was a mix of all of them—gingerbread, peanut butter blossom, coconut balls, candy-cane sugar cookies, and chocolate macadamia.

  “Cookies?” Molly wrinkled her nose. “For breakfast.”

  I laughed. “Not much more sugar than muffins, scones, or banana bread. Besides, it’s almost Christmas. Cookies for breakfast are part of my holiday tradition.”

  I left the two of them to descend on the cookies like a pair of piranhas and went to see what we had going on for the day. We were only two days until Christmas, and work was beginning to slow down as people took off early for the holiday. The workload for the day was low enough that Molly could handle it on her own. That would leave me to keep working on the Reynolds case—or rather the Irene O’Donnell case.

  J.T. went out to meet with bail bonds clients. I got Molly set up with her work for the day, then called the cell phone number Irene had given me.

  “Thought the heat was off me for a moment,” she said. “When I saw on the television last night that they’d taken Trent in, I was ready to break out the bubbly.”

  I told her about the hidden door, the blood by the shelf, and my theory that the killer went through Trent’s office to clean up rather than head down the hallway.

  “There’s a secret door between Trent’s office and the restroom? And there was blood in his office?” She let out a muffled curse.

  “I don’t have access to the police reports, but I definitely know about the door. That restroom used to be an executive washroom connected to Trent’s office, and when they converted it for public use, they didn’t bother to drywall over the door—or even take it out.”

  “I didn’t know any of this. I’ve worked there for five years and never knew.”

  “Do you think Trent knew about the door?” I asked.

  “Probably not. I’m thinking if he knew about it he would have insisted the thing be walled over. I mean the idea that someone coul
d get into his office from the restroom would completely freak the guy out.”

  It was a good point, and made me think once more that maybe the killer was someone who’d been there when the restroom was converted.

  “Um, full disclosure here,” Irene continued, “my prints are in Trent’s office.”

  “Of course they are. You work there. You were probably in his office—”

  “No. My prints are all over his office. Other…stuff too. On the desk, on the floor, on the chairs, up against the wall.”

  Oh my.

  “You and Trent were….”

  “Screwing like monkeys. Nothing serious, you know.”

  Wonderful. “Is there anything else I need to know, Irene?”

  “No, but if I think of anything, I’ll call.”

  I hung up and poured myself a coffee, grabbing a couple of chocolate chip cookies. It was time for sugar.

  I needed to know when the restroom was converted, and who had Trent Elliott’s office at that time, and there was only one person I knew who had quick access to that information and would be happy to share it with me.

  Justine.

  “Ready for another caper?” Justine asked when I called her. “What office are we breaking into this time? Should I bring a gun?”

  A gun? Yikes.

  “No breaking and entering this week,” I told her. “Actually I’m looking for some information. I need to know when that restroom was converted and who had Trent’s office at the time.”

  “Oh, excellent idea! I remember the restroom was converted around twenty years ago, but I’m not sure the exact year or who had that office. Let me make a bunch of phone calls and get back to you.”

  I hung up and eyed the few files on my desk. The way things were going, I might actually end up going home early today. There was nothing more I could do on the Reynolds murder until Justine got back to me.

  Molly and I went out to lunch together, then we split the remaining skip trace files and finished up around two o’clock.