Death of a Prince Read online

  “I just want to sleep.” Lizzie slurred her words.

  “Have you slept at all?”

  “A few hours.”

  “What happened?”

  “We had a fight.”

  “What about?”

  Lizzie pursed her lips. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I couldn’t stay with him. He threw me out.”

  “What time was that?”

  Lizzie pulled the rag from her face. “Why the Spanish Inquisition?” Her swollen eyes wouldn’t open all the way. Clearly, she’d been crying for hours.

  Sandra couldn’t tell Lizzie that she wondered whether she’d murdered Phillip. “I’m just concerned about you, that’s all. Would you like to come down and have breakfast with us? I scrambled some eggs.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Lizzie said, holding the washcloth to her mouth.

  “Here, let me help you.” Sandra supported her by the shoulders as Lizzie staggered into the bathroom and collapsed on the floor next to the toilet. Sandra lifted the lid. Lizzie heaved and hugged the bowl.

  Sandra felt her own stomach roil and tried to ignore it by searching for some clean washcloths. When Lizzie was through, Sandra tidied her up and helped her back to bed.

  Hoping to catch a small breeze to clear the odor out of the room, Sandra pushed open a window. The ocean rippling against the bulkhead a few hundred yards away might soothe Lizzie to sleep.

  “Be sure when we get upstairs that you look in every room for bloodstained clothes.”

  Sandra recognized the lieutenant’s voice outside, below the window. So they definitely suspected one of the people who had spent the night.

  A woman’s voice said, “But we don’t have a warrant. What if they won’t let us examine their stuff?”

  “You let me worry about that. You guys just do as I tell you. Don’t let any of them pack up without you seeing what’s in their gear.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.” A man’s voice.

  “With what happened to that man’s face, somebody’s gotta have blood—” Truman’s voice became unintelligible as they apparently walked away from the window.

  When Sandra turned back to the bed, Lizzie had her hand wrapped around the glass on the bedside table.

  “You’ve had enough of that, girl.” Sandra took it from her.

  Lizzie looked as though she might cry. “But I’ve got a splitting headache. Can you get me something for it?”

  “Lizzie, what are you going to do, drink yourself to death? Face reality. Phillip is dead.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” Lizzie closed her eyes, covered her ears with her hands, and lay back down on the pillow.

  Sandra took the bottle of vodka and the glass into the bathroom and emptied them. She shook out three painkillers. She wasn’t much at nursing, but she wanted to help Lizzie if she could. It took a little persuasion to get them down her with a glass of water. She only hoped they wouldn’t make Lizzie any sicker on top of all that vodka.

  Lizzie lay back on the bed. “I just want to die.”

  “You’d feel a lot better if you ate something. Killing yourself isn’t going to help matters.” Sandra knew she probably wasn’t saying the right thing. She was better at legal arguments than nurturing but felt she had a moral obligation not to leave Lizzie in this condition. Who would look out for her now that Phillip was dead?

  Lizzie covered her eyes with the back of her hand in a classic martyr pose. “What am I going to do without him? How am I going to live?”

  Phillip had been dead only a few hours. Sandra had thought Lizzie mourned him. Now it sounded like she mourned his money.

  “I’m sure he made provisions for you, Lizzie.” Sandra really had no idea, but it would be only logical and she wanted to reassure Lizzie.

  Lizzie pushed up the cloth. “I don’t know of any. And look at me, Sandy. I’m not young anymore. I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve been with Phillip for ten years. My hair is fading; my skin is getting wrinkled. Who would want me? Even Phillip was growing tired of me.” She burst into tears. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  Sandra stayed long enough to make sure Lizzie wasn’t going to regurgitate the painkillers. She didn’t think Lizzie would commit suicide, at least not until she found out what was in the will. When Lizzie wouldn’t stop crying, Sandra gave up and went back downstairs. Stuart had gathered everyone and was playing host. He, Bubba, Raymond, and Kitty sat in a row at the long glass table in front of the picture window. They were eating, but their faces looked like someone had hypnotized them.

  When Sandra sat down next to Stuart and tapped him on the arm, he shrugged. She stared at them. One must be the killer—either that or the woman upstairs. Which one? “Is the food okay?” she asked no one in particular.

  “Fine,” Raymond answered in a monotone.

  “The eggs aren’t rubbery? Sometimes I cook them too long and they’re rubbery. Cooking is not exactly my long suit.” Sandra looked at the congealed mess on her plate and suddenly lost her appetite. She chewed on a piece of toast while she decided what to do.

  Stuart patted her arm just like she’d seen him pat an old lady client’s once. Kitty turned red-rimmed eyes on her for only a moment. Bubba was totally unresponsive. She wanted to jump up and object, but there was no one to rule. She waited a few minutes to see if anyone else was going to attempt conversation. Failing that, Sandra asked, “So did anyone hear or see anything last night after I left that would give us any clues as to what happened?”

  Tears streamed down Kitty’s cheeks. As she patted her face with her napkin, her eyes darted at Raymond.

  “We went to bed right after you left, Sandy,” Raymond said.

  “Well, I was hoping that’s what Stuart did. Alone, I hope?”

  “Definitely,” Stuart said.

  “Okay, so someone has to know something.” She glanced at each of them again. “Bubba, you didn’t hear anything?” His eyes slid slowly in her direction. “No, ma’am.” He shoveled some food into his mouth and chewed slowly as he stared. Washing the food down with a slurp of coffee, he said, “Cleaned up the joint a little and went downstairs to bed.” There was scrambled egg caught between his teeth.

  “It’s pretty amazing that someone could be busted up practically into little pieces outside in the yard and no one inside the house heard a thing. Didn’t anyone hear any screams or any hollering?”

  “You forgot that all the bedrooms are on the opposite side of the house and one floor down from Phillip’s suite,” Stuart said.

  “Oh, that explains it.” Sandra still thought someone should have heard something, but decided not to press the point. She was ready to get out of there. “Well, the cops are coming upstairs in a few minutes. I suggest that each of you be prepared to give them a detailed statement of what we did last night, especially what you did after I left.”

  “And I thought I told you not to discuss this case when you came upstairs,” Dennis Truman said from behind her. “I ought to run you in.”

  Sandra wondered how long he had been standing there.

  “I’m getting a little tired of you, Miss Salinsky.”

  “Dennis, I—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  Stuart stood. “Now look here, Lieutenant, I—”

  “You sit down, Mr. Quentin.”

  “Yes, sit down, Stuart,” Sandra said.

  “Salinsky, get your ass outside on that porch. I want to talk to you.” He went out the glass door and left it open for her.

  Sandra had seen Dennis angry before. She wasn’t worried. She only hoped that Stuart would calm down and keep out of it. She patted his arm. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” No sense in everyone getting even more worked up. She went outside onto the porch and closed the sliding door. “I apologize, Dennis, I was wrong.”

  “You sure as hell were. What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just come into a crime
scene and act like you’re still with the D.A. Damn, Sandra.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “You gotta let me do my job without interfering. Now I’m going to take your statement and then you get the hell out of here.”

  “Yes, sir.” She leaned against the banister, the wind blowing her hair across her face.

  “I’m not playing with you.” Truman frowned and pulled out the slim pad of paper he’d had earlier. “Right now, I have Bubba Carruthers, Kathryn Fulton, Raymond Rivers, Stuart Quentin—your boyfriend?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “And Elizabeth Haynes.” He glanced back at his paper. “And Robert Earl Bradshaw, the off-duty cop that was assigned to Mr. Parker last night, is waiting for me down at the station. Anybody else around when you were here?”

  “A few, but they’d all left before I did. Everyone else was fixing to go to bed.”

  “Why didn’t you stay?”

  Sandra laughed. “That’s really none of your business, Lieutenant.”

  “You and the boyfriend have a fight?”

  “Hey, since when is my personal life public property?”

  “Okay. Okay. What was going on when you left?”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “I told you. Everyone was fixing to go to bed. Bubba was cleaning up. He lives downstairs, you know.” She pointed toward the underneath of the house. “He’s the caretaker. Phillip closed that in and made it into an efficiency apartment a few years ago.”

  “Yeah, Bradshaw told me that much. Salary and a place to stay. Pretty good deal if you can get it.”

  “Phillip could afford it. It’s not like he wasn’t insured, but with the constant string of beach house burglaries, he just didn’t want to deal with all the hassles. What’s another thousand or so a month to someone like him?”

  “What do you know about Carruthers, anything?”

  “He’s kind of a slime. I don’t know where Phillip dug him up. Twenty years ago I would have said he was probably a client of Erma’s, but not any more. You might ask Erma later or else Lizzie. She’d probably know.”

  “Elizabeth Haynes?”

  “Yes. Phillip’s girlfriend.” The impact of what had happened started to really sink in. Life without Phillip Parker. Was he really lying downstairs, dead? As hardened as she’d become as a felony prosecutor and later a defense attorney, the deep sense of sadness she suddenly felt surprised her. Perhaps talking to the police made it seem more real.

  “Okay,” Dennis said, “so Carruthers is cleaning up. I assume that he comes downstairs as soon as he’s finished. That leaves—”

  “Well, Stuart and me, but I was heading home. Kitty and Raymond. Raymond is an associate of Phillip’s. Was, I mean.”

  “How long was he with the firm?” Truman studied her.

  “Raymond? Couple of years, I think. Nice guy. Worshiped the ground Phillip walked on, for some ungodly reason.”

  Truman, nodding, made notes. “Think he’s capable of murder?”

  “Everyone is capable of murder, Dennis.” Sandra stared at him a moment. “Look, it doesn’t take a genius to know that Phillip probably didn’t fall off the balcony. He sure as hell didn’t jump, not with his millions and the new fame the asbestos case would bring him. He was an egomaniac. Wanted to be like Joe Jamail.”

  “The so-called Texas Tort King?”

  “Yeah, Jamail, who seemed to make millions and millions off every case he touched, hence the allusion to King Midas. Phillip called himself the Prince of Personal Injury, though Jamail’s fortune dwarfed his.”

  “Oh, poor guy. How many millions less did he have?”

  “I have no idea.” Sandra smiled.

  “What’re you smiling at?” Truman leaned back, his elbow on the banister, and stared at her.

  “I knew you thought he didn’t fall.”

  He shrugged. “So what? A moron could have figured that out. What about Kathryn?”

  “Kitty?” Her turn to shrug. “I don’t know that much about her. She’s been dating Raymond for a while. They appear to be in love. She’s some kind of a model.”

  “She makes a lot of money herself?”

  “I’m sure she must. I don’t really know her that well. We don’t socialize, if you know what I mean.”

  “Something wrong with her?”

  “Well, she’s not exactly a mental giant, Dennis. We don’t have a lot in common. I mean, she’s a clotheshorse. I’m an attorney.”

  “And a snob.”

  She fanned herself with her hand. “Aw, big shit, so what else is new?”

  He shook his head. “Tell me about Stuart.”

  “Stuart?” she smiled. “Well, he’s probably got an IQ exceeding one hundred and fifty. Can take one look at a situation, analyze it, and draw conclusions in a matter of moments. Did he push Phillip off the balcony? I doubt he’d be capable. He’s pretty mellow, participated in all that peace stuff at the federal courthouse during the beginning of the Iraq thing. Works his butt off, morning, noon, and night. Hardly enough time for anything else.”

  She had been thinking of their sex life but didn’t say so. When it was there, it was very, very good. The man seemed insatiable. But it was the frequency that was the issue between them, or rather, the lack thereof. He seemed to be less and less available lately. Not that any of that was relevant to what Dennis Truman wanted to know.

  Dennis grinned. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  She started away.

  He pulled her back. “Okay. Your personal life is off-limits. For now. So is Stuart Quentin an associate, too?”

  Sandra crossed her arms. “Partner, bought in last year. But I have no idea what their partnership agreement says. He couldn’t possibly be getting an equal share. Probably some stock. You’d have to ask him. Brought a bunch of lucrative cases with him.”

  “You sure you aren’t just prejudiced in his favor?”

  She ran her hands through her damp hair. “No. I definitely am. Don’t go by what I say.”

  “And that leaves Elizabeth Haynes.”

  “Yes, Liz. Lizzie. She and Phillip have been together for eons. She’s mad about him. Was mad about him. I always thought they’d get married, but . . . Anyway, why would she harm the man who lavished money, jewelry, cars, etcetera on her for years? You know they have his and hers Mercedes, don’t you?”

  “Lifestyle of the rich and famous—”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where do you fit in, Miss Salinsky?”

  She grinned. “Just a working girl trying to make a buck.”

  Truman laughed. “And trying to catch a husband?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve had two and that’s enough to last any woman a lifetime.”

  “Is there anything else you think I need to know?”

  She thought of Phillip’s naked body, including his naked hand, and shook her head. “Can I go now?”

  “I guess, but in the future,” Dennis pointed his pen at her, “you’d better remember what I said about messing in crime scenes. One of these days you’re going to go too far.”

  “In the future, I hope I won’t be at any more crime scenes,” she said. “Adios.” She saluted Truman and turned to go back inside so she could tell Stuart goodbye.

  “Tell that Raymond Rivers to step out here,” Truman said.

  All heads turned her way when Sandra entered. “Raymond, he wants to see you next. I’m out of here y’all. If you need a criminal defense lawyer, you know where my office is.”

  Stuart turned an angry face toward her. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “I guess not.” She leaned down and pecked him on the cheek. As she headed for the stairs, the door below opened. It was the medical examiner, a fellow who greatly resembled Hollywood’s version of Moses. She met him at the halfway point on the stairs.

  “Leaving so soon, Sandra?”

  “Yes, Hank. Already told the cops what I know, except for one thing. Have them check on the missing wat
ch and ring. The decedent’s missing watch and ring. He always said he’d never be caught dead without them.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Late the following afternoon, Sandra worked at home finishing a set of interrogatories designed to irritate the hell out of her opponent in an immensely ugly divorce case. It was payback for the nasty things he’d implied about her client at the hearing on temporary orders. As soon as she finished running spell check, she hit the print button so she could see a hard copy before she faxed it to the guy’s law office. Her laser printer hummed loudly as it kicked out the thirty questions. She had just time enough to go to the john and fetch a bottle of water.

  When she returned, Sandra proofed her work and faxed it over. That would serve the S.O.B. right. That’s what he got for leaving his fax machine running over the weekend. When he arrived at his office on Monday morning, her surprise would be waiting for him. She laughed and felt maniacal as she turned her own fax machine off. After preparing copies for her client, addressing the envelope, and reviewing her to-do list to make sure she’d completed everything she’d brought home, she shut down her computer. After all, it was Sunday.

  Sandra punched in Stuart’s home number but got no answer. She tried his office and cell numbers again. She’d been phoning all afternoon. A client had dropped off five pounds of extra-large shrimp. After a dinner Stuart had treated her to recently, not to mention the hot dessert, she thought it might be nice to reciprocate. Besides, Stuart was a whiz at grilling shrimp. She was best at gulping them down. He still didn’t answer. For someone who kept hinting at permanent commitment, he sure seemed to make himself scarce at times.

  Gathering her portable phone and a bottle of water, Sandra went out onto her balcony, slid onto a plastic chair, and wove her toes into the wrought iron railing as she admired the rolling waves. The sun had begun its descent, but it still wasn’t cool outside. There wouldn’t be a significant drop in temperature until the following winter. Usually the island skipped fall entirely, except for hurricane season, and went directly from hot, damp summers into cold, damp winters.