Suggestion of Death

  For a FREE copy of a suspense story entitled “The Rules,” click on the link at the back of this book.

  Books by Susan P. Baker

  http://www.susanpbaker.com

  Novels:

  Death of a Prince

  Ledbetter Street

  My First Murder

  Suggestion of Death

  The Sweet Scent of Murder

  UNAWARE

  Nonfiction:

  Heart of Divorce

  Murdered Judges of the 20th Century

  SUGGESTION OF DEATH

  SUSAN P. BAKER

  Chapter One

  “Hold the elevator!” Jim Dorman slammed his hand between the closing doors and yanked it back out. The elevator doors stopped and reversed. He pushed himself inside the already crowded car and punched the button for the floor of the courtroom where he was headed. As he did, his eyes came to rest on his ex-wife, Patty, scrunched up between his right arm and the button panel. “Well, look who’s here. Hi-ya, honey.”

  Patty clutched her purse in front of her and wiggled away from him as if she thought she could get any closer to the wall. She didn’t look up.

  Her perfume smelled like the flowers lining the sidewalk on the way into the courthouse, light and breezy and cheery. Her face, however, was a stark contrast.

  “Aren’t you even going to say hello? After all, you’ll have to say goodbye when they drag me off to jail.” Jim leaned over her, one hand resting on the wall above her head. He’d prefer to put it around her neck and squeeze and squeeze. How could she do this to him? He gave her just about everything in the divorce. Now she wanted him to go to jail because he lost his job?

  “If you’d pay your child support, you wouldn’t have to go to jail.” She spoke in the direction of the floor but loud enough for him to hear.

  “Patty, honey, if the paper hadn’t closed I’d be paying the child support.” He pushed off from the wall. “You know I don’t want us to live this way,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  “I don’t know any such thing.” She glanced past him, her eyes directed at the numbers above the elevator door.

  He struggled to breathe evenly. She would not get him riled up before he went into the courtroom. “Just as soon as I get a job, I’ll pay up, but if the judge puts me in jail, how am I going to find a job?”

  “That’s your problem. My problem is feeding and clothing our children and keeping a roof over their head, not that you care.”

  “Umm hum,” a woman’s voice sounded in the back of the elevator. “I know that’s right.”

  The elevator came to an abrupt stop, and Jim stepped to the right. He kept one hand on the door to keep it open for the women and men behind him, mostly for Patty, who pointedly walked around him as she exited. She headed down the hall, and Jim released the door and followed. He wished she didn’t look so good, that she’d let herself go, that she’d gotten fat or that her bottom sagged, but no such luck. She looked as good from the back as she ever did. He wished he didn’t, but he wanted her just as much as he ever did.

  When he got inside the courtroom, Patty had crossed to the far side and sat next to a huge black woman. He’d never been in that courtroom, in that type of courthouse proceeding, though in his years as an investigative reporter he’d been in many courthouses, both state and federal, and in many courtrooms, large and small, modern and outdated, in overpopulated counties and rural ones.

  Though the layout was normal and common, in that particular courtroom all the women sat on the far side near the windows. The men sat opposite, near the door. It was like a wedding with the bride’s side and the groom’s side except the brides and the grooms were the ones sitting in the pews and glaring across the aisle at each other. Or, he corrected himself, the ex-brides and the ex-grooms, though he supposed in modern times many of them had never been officially married.

  Jim climbed over a couple of men and sat in a space on the front row behind the long bar that separated the spectator section from the court officials. The chair on the judge’s bench stood empty, but the first thing he noticed was the absence of men in official capacities.

  In front of the bar, a woman in a skirt and jacket stood next to one of the two counsel tables piled high with file folders. A pant-suited woman hovered over a court-reporting machine in a small alcove in front of the bench. A third woman sat at the clerk’s bench, yellow files stacked on the counter in front of her. And between the clerk’s bench and the jury box stood someone familiar-looking who towered over everyone else.

  Cropped black hair, face devoid of expression, bulging arms in a short-sleeved deputy sheriff’s uniform all caused Jim to misidentify her as a male at first until he realized those protrusions below the epaulets, below the small transmitter affixed thereon, below the name tag bearing the name WINK, were breasts, not additional sheriff’s equipment. And then he realized where he’d seen her before, in criminal court when he was a reporter covering the court beat before his newspaper shuttered its doors. She had accompanied a prisoner from the courtroom to the lockup and kidney punched the guy before shoving him inside. Now her presence dominated the room. He’d hate to get on her wrong side.

  The front of the courtroom was loud with rustling of papers and murmurs between the women preparing for the hearings. The rear of the courtroom, where the men and women sat in rows of pew-like hard benches behind the bar, was quiet. People exchanged infrequent whispers and were as wooden and still as the benches on which they sat.

  “Jim Dorman,” he said to the man next to him who wore jeans and mud-caked boots and smelled like organic fertilizer.

  “Richard Cook.” They shook hands.

  Jim wrinkled his nose. No wonder there had been an empty seat. He glanced at the bailiff and found her staring at him as though he’d committed a felony.

  His gut grew hard like someone had pumped a bellows full of air into it. He focused on the tiled floor and wiped his hands on his pants. When the butterflies settled down in his stomach, he glanced back at the front of the courtroom. What was the worst thing that could happen the first time he attended court?

  He tore his eyes away from the deputy, away from the empty, black leather chair centered high in the front of the courtroom, away from the nameplate that read Maria Luisa Lopez, and away from the Texas and United States flags hanging from poles on each side of the judge’s bench like a picture frame.

  “Bam-bam-bam,” the gavel in the deputy’s left hand struck wood. Her right hand rested on the butt of the firearm holstered on her hip. “Hear ye, hear ye, all rise for the Honorable Associate Judge Maria Lucia Lopez.”

  Jim stood with the rest of the people and watched as a dark-skinned, black-robed woman, who looked half the size of the bailiff, entered and climbed the stairs to the bench. The Honorable Maria Lucia Lopez glanced at the people in the gallery, her strange-colored eyes glowing in the florescent light. They traveled all the way around the room from the women sitting under the windows to the men by the door, pausing briefly on a face here and there. When her eyes paused at Jim’s face, their intensity sent a shockwave from his armpits to the ends of his fingers. He sucked in a breath, feeling like he’d just been nailed for something he didn’t do.

  The judge’s eyes released his and continued down the row before sweeping across the faces of the court officials standing in the space immediately in front of the bench. She settled in a chair that dwarfed her and arranged her robe as a monarch would have. When she was ready, she nodded at the bailiff.

  “Be seated,” Deputy Wink announced in a voice that reverberated through the crowded courtroom.

  Jim slunk into his seat. He pulled the folded up papers with which he’d been served from his back pocket and opened them, the p
aper crinkling in the quiet. Cook elbowed him. When Jim glanced over, Cook nodded in the direction of the bench. Jim stopped what he was doing and didn’t look up. If either that weird little judge, with her even weirder eyes, or the bailiff, with her hand constantly resting on her gun, were focused on him, he didn’t want to know. What he wanted, what he truly wanted, was to be beamed into another dimension where he wasn’t on what he thought of as the wrong side of the bench. He swallowed several times until his throat dampened and steadied his breathing, but he didn’t look up. He stared at the floor between his feet.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Peterson,” the judge said.

  Jim sneaked a peek. The judge had picked up a pen and held a computer printout.

  The tall, dough-faced woman to the judge’s right still stood, a file folder clutched to her chest.

  “Good morning, Attorney Wilcox,” Lopez said to the stocky woman in the jacket and skirt who stood at counsel table. “Good morning, Ms. Baskett,” she said to the court reporter. The words that came out in the judge’s squeaky high-pitched voice held just the hint of an accent.

  “Good morning, Judge Lopez,” the women replied in unison.

  Like a well-rehearsed play, the women seemed to know their lines. Jim scooted forward to the edge of the bench seat, wanting to catch everything that was said and done.

  “From the looks of things, we have a full schedule this beautiful Friday morning,” the judge said.

  “Yes, Your Honor, a full schedule.” Peterson’s grim expression mirrored the judge’s.

  Lopez cleared her throat. “Well, let’s get on with it.” She adjusted her glasses and read into the microphone. “Number thirty-nine, four-o-four. Klein versus Klein.” The words bounced around the room like a hard hit racquetball. Peterson handed the file she’d been holding to the judge. Wilcox pulled out her own file before stepping up to the bench.

  Judge Lopez took the file and glanced again at those seated in the same section as Jim, but Jim stared at a place over her head so he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to get ahold of himself before he went up before her. Though he was unable to put his finger on it, something didn’t quite ring true.

  The judge licked her lips. “Klein,” she called again, her voice booming from the speakers embedded in the ceiling in various parts of the room. She leaned over the side of the bench and said to Peterson in a voice clearly designed to be heard by everyone, “Am I going to have to issue a capias for Mr. Klein’s arrest for failure to appear?”

  She pushed her glasses up on her forehead and peered toward the group of women sitting on the benches. “Ms. Klein? You back there?”

  When no one responded, the judge said to Ms. Peterson, “Where’s the movant?”

  The door at the back entrance to the courtroom opened wide and a middle-aged woman in a pink flowered blouse and white slacks rushed in and worked her way down a row and into the aisle, her blond hair in what Jim’s mama would have called finger curls, bouncing around her head.

  “Ms. Klein. You’re late.” The judge’s voice said she was plainly annoyed.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I just drove from the airport. I’ve been in Minnesota with my mother.” She hurried past the bar and stopped at the bench, her shoulder bag swinging. “She’s been awfully sick and me and the kids have been up there for the last month.”

  Still one more woman came through a side door by the bench and handed some papers to Mrs. Peterson. Men sure seemed to be in short supply in that courtroom. Why was that?

  Judge Lopez said, “Where’s your ex-husband, Ms. Klein?”

  The woman turned and scanned the faces of the men on Jim’s side of the courtroom. “He’s not here, Judge. I haven’t seen him since last month when we were here. He didn’t call the kids or anything while we were gone.”

  “I realize you’re no longer his keeper, but he’s usually quite prompt.”

  Jim whispered to Richard Cook. “You been here before?”

  The man nodded but stared straight ahead.

  “Who is this Judge Lopez? I looked in the phone book and got the name of the elected judge, and that’s not her.”

  Cook put his head down and whispered. “She’s a special child support judge.”

  A nervous knot hardened Jim’s insides. Something about the whole process didn’t seem right. Could she possibly put him in jail on his first day in court without giving him more time to pay? “Does she really send people to jail?” Maybe it was just some kind of pressure ploy.

  Cook concealed his mouth with a creased, white, number ten envelope. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “But this is a civil matter, right? Not criminal? They can’t keep you in jail, can they?”

  Cook shook his head like Jim was a child in need of a quick education, and he was just the one to give it to him. He held up one finger then pulled out a pen and wrote on the back of his envelope and showed it to Jim. “Men in the county jail serving more time for nonsupport than murder. I kid you not. Quit talking to me before we’re sent to join them.”

  Peterson stood and pushed several stapled sheets of paper at the judge. She beckoned to the attorney and handed her a set as well.

  Judge Lopez took one look at the paperwork, cleared her throat, and spoke into the microphone again. “Cause Number thirty-nine, four-o-four. In the Matter of the Marriage of Lois Klein and Oliver Klein. Let the record reflect that Mr. Adolph Eisler, court-appointed attorney for Mr. Klein in the instant contempt action, just filed a Suggestion of Death.” She peered over her glasses at the former Mrs. Klein and the woman’s shoulders sagged. Judge Lopez continued her recitation. “Attached thereto is a certified copy of the death certificate signed by the county medical examiner. The Motion for Enforcement by Contempt is hereby dismissed.”

  “That’s brutal,” Cook muttered. “He was here last month. Sitting right where you are.”

  Jim’s scalp bristled right down to the roots. He stared at Richard Cook, open-mouthed.

  The judge dropped the document into the court’s file and handed it back to Mrs. Peterson. Jim had covered the courts enough over the years as a newspaper reporter to know Mrs. Peterson, the court clerk, took care of the court files.

  Ms. Klein stood facing the judge, but the judge didn’t seem to see her anymore. Lopez took another file from Mrs. Peterson and called, “Johnson versus Johnson.” She waved her fingers at Ms. Klein as though flicking away a fly. “You can go.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?” Ms. Klein asked, standing her ground.

  “What are you supposed to do about what?” Judge Lopez asked, her chin tucked under and peering down her nose at the woman.

  “My kids. What am I going to do with no child support?” Ms. Klein glanced from one woman to the next, but none of them looked at her.

  “You’re a member of WiNGS, aren’t you?” the judge asked. “Bitsy? Is Ms. Klein a member of WiNGS?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” The bailiff shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Well, take care of this.” Judge waved the back of her hand at them and picked up the file that lay in front of her. “Johnson versus Johnson.”

  Bitsy Wink made for the door nearest the bench.

  Ms. Klein turned around, red-faced. She held her chin high and marched toward the back of the courtroom, her eyes sweeping the rows of people like she was searching for someone in the gallery. Jim stepped over Cook’s feet and opened the little swinging door in the bar that separated them from the front of the courtroom. Taking her by the elbow, he whispered, “Are you all right?”

  She stumbled over the feet of the people who lined the front row as she worked her way toward the door. “I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Jim held the door at the back of the courtroom for her. Before she reached the elevator, Deputy Wink accosted her. He let go of the door, and when he turned back, a black man, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt and jeans, and the huge black woman who Pat had hid
behind, stood before the bench. The woman held a purse the size of a satchel over her arm, separating her from the man. A little navy blue hat with tiny flowers perched atop her head. She wore a white blouse and her black skirt was hiked up in the back because of her more than ample bottom and revealed the rolled down tops of stockings.

  Pat, in clear view now, sat straight and tall. He tried to catch her eye, hoping for some sign that she was sorry to be in court, but she pointedly faced forward. He retook his place on the first row.

  “So what’s your story this month, Mr. Johnson?” Judge Lopez asked the man who stood before her.

  Johnson twisted a grimy gimme cap. Huge sweat circles stained the underarms of his shirt. “I done got laid off, Your Honor. I couldn’t help it. I done reapplied for a job at the employment office since then.”

  “They find you a job, sir?” She raised her eyebrows as though hoping against hope that he could have gotten a job.

  He spread his feet apart and moved his hands behind his back. “No, ma’am, Your Honor. But I went on ever’ interview.”

  “Aw, he’s lying, Judge.” The huge woman stomped her foot. “I seen him up at the HEB grocery slugging down a beer in the parking lot with his boys.”

  “That ain’t true, Judge, ma’am.” Mr. Johnson ducked his head and leaned away from his ex-wife.

  “It is so true. Make him give me my money, Judge. He owes me fifteen thousand dollars.” Ms. Johnson repeated herself as if she thought the judge couldn’t comprehend. “Fif—teen thou—sand dol—lars.”

  Judge Lopez glanced at a sheet of paper in front of her and back at Ms. Johnson. “He did make payments in May and June.”

  “Uh huh, a hundred dollars each time. Big deal. He’s supposed to make payments like that ever’ week. I got four kids to feed.”

  “Can’t help it, Judge. I’m doing the best I can.” He sidestepped a bit farther from Ms. Johnson but ran out of space since Deputy Wink had returned and stood next to him.