Published in The Murder Hole in October 2001

I’ve tied and fished the same fly for twenty years, and for the last five years I’ve used the same patch of bleached elk hair. I was taking a break from calling potential witnesses, tying a caddis while I listened to the radio, almost by rote, but something was wrong, the elk hair’s gray was darker than I remembered it. I opened the box of flies in my drawer. They all looked darker. I rubbed my eyes, but the gray-white stayed more gray than white. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they weren’t my flies. I was cogitating on this sensory-memory disruption when the door opened.

"You look confused," she said.

"I am."

"Anything I can help with?"

I shook my head and motioned to the chair while I put the flies away. I focused on the new shade of gray in her hair, in fact, more than one shade.

She watched my eyes. "Purple and yellow."

"Really becoming," I lied.

She laughed, because she knew I didn’t have a clue.

Denise Richards is the queen legal secretary for the lawyers of Whitman, Howard, Ormand, Masters and Edmonds, a.k.a. WHO-ME. She’s the best of a pool of sweet young things who look like they were assembled by a television casting department. I’ve heard it’s led to a lot of inter-office intrigue, but I don’t get involved. Denise is always egging me on, but she doesn’t mean it. She knows I’m one of those guys it’s better to tease than to catch. Still, some days ...

"What’s up?"

"Walt asked me to bring you over. We’ve got a hot one." Walt is Walt Edmonds, Denise’s boss, the number one rain-maker in the firm. Walt’s got all the characteristics of a good lawyer, and a lousy human-being. Denise is his human front.

I stated the obvious, to us, that is. "He’s already got me on a case."

They know I don’t work multiple cases if I can help it. "That’ll wait, CB. We got a woman who’s going to be charged with killing her husband in a couple hours. A witness placed her at the scene of the crime. Even worse, she’s got a great motive, he was going to divorce her."

"Means?"

"It was her gun."

I put the question on my face.

"She wasn’t there. She was home, alone."

"Come on. That’s what they all say."

She cut loose with the big one, "Walt believes her."

Walt doesn’t believe anyone. "Is she a relative, lover?"

Denise shook her head in a scolding fashion. "No, none of those. He talked to her, he believed her." She addressed the shock in my face, "Hey, I’m telling the truth. Anyway, I was taking notes."

"And?"

"I believe her too."

I’ve learned to trust Denise’s intuition. She has this thing, like ESP, but it isn’t. Her brain picks up life’s little signals, body language, word inflections, tenseness, processes them and comes out with conclusions that seem like they’re out of the blue, but they’re really just prescience, the calculated kind. I’d need good reason to ignore Denise’s intuition.

We took the cab to her office, then the elevator up thirty stories. We didn’t stop at the receptionist’s desk as we made our way to the corner office, decorated just like my all black and white and gray working space, but then that’s its own story. Walt, he isn’t color-blind, but that doesn’t me he can see.

I was surprised to see the woman seated in the visitor’s chair. Walt usually likes to brief me without the client there. It’s his way. I took her in. She was maybe thirty-five, five-five, one-ten, dressed to the nines in Dior and Chanel. She was pretty in a subdued way, neck-length cap of soft black hair, transparent two-toned gray eyes, well-arranged features on an oval face. She didn’t look scared at all, just serious.

I knew who she was. Janice Peyton. The husband, mega-millionaire Robert Payton, had come to Walt’s partner, thinking about a divorce. That was a year ago. He thought she was having an affair. I did the dirty work. She was clean as a whistle, and a really good person. She went to church, worked once a week in a soup kitchen, gave blood every six weeks, was on the boards of the symphony and opera and countless other organizations.

She didn’t know me from Adam’s off ox, but that’s expected since I’m pretty good at what I do. She shook my hand when Walt introduced me.

I was wondering how her husband had died that I hadn’t heard about it. Walt answered it for me. "CB, Robert Payton was found murdered this morning, in a hotel by the airport."

I turned to the woman. "Why was your husband staying at the hotel, Mrs. Payton?"

She darkened a little under my stare, setting off even more her mismatched eyes. "We’d come to an agreement." She seemed to think on the next words, then, "He said he didn’t love me anymore, that he wanted a divorce. He wouldn’t stay in the house one more day. He said his lawyer would call me in the morning. Mr. Whitman did, and I came here, then we heard about Robert’s death. Mr. Edmonds was good enough to talk to me. He said I’d have to surrender myself to the police after you and I talk."

"So talk to me."

Her hands squirmed in her lap, the black nails doing a strange dance. I reached over and held them still. I turned to Walt. "So, talk to me."

Walt said, "The police have a witness, a housekeeper, who identified Mrs. Payton from a photograph. They’ll put out an alert if they don’t find her soon."

I turned my attention to the woman again. "You weren’t there."

She shook her head. "I was home. My stepson needed money, so I was waiting for him to call so I’d know where to send it." She looked over my shoulder at Walt. "I came here to get my divorce."

My skepticism showed. "So now you get it all instead of half."

She took it without flinching. "It was never half, Mr. Green. I signed a pre-nupt ten years ago. I get a flat payment of one million, adjusted upward for inflation."

Walt chimed in, "Yes, about two-and-a-half million, CB."

"What’s your husband worth?"

"Three hundred million, maybe more."

"Do you get it now?"

She shrugged thin, expensive shoulders. "I don’t know."

"What do you think?"

"No," but it was uncertain, "maybe. He wasn’t talking with his kids, from his first marriage. I just don’t know." A tear worked its way down her cheek.

I had to ask it. "Are you glad he’s dead?"

She wiped the tear, and the next one. "My husband was a good man, Mr. Green. He didn’t love me. I didn’t love him. It was time to part, you know what I mean?"

I nodded.

"We were going our separate ways, almost friends."

I looked at Walt who picked up the phone and turned his back to speak into it. We waited when he hung up. A tall bald man came in. He nodded to Denise who hadn’t stopped writing. She tipped her pencil at him. His name was John Whitman. They discussed some preliminaries, to be sure they weren’t overstepping their obligations to the dead man.

When that was done, not entirely to the divorce attorney’s satisfaction, Whitman acknowledged Mrs. Payton, then spoke to me. "Mr. Payton called me last night and said he and his wife had agreed to a divorce. He said he would give her five million dollars, but that offer was contingent on not paying alimony." He did not bring up the previous surveillance.

The woman was defensive, "I wouldn’t want alimony."

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders, like, so say you.

I looked from the attorney to the wife. "Did Mr. Payton have someone else?"

Whitman looked at the wife. He seemed conflicted. "He’d changed his will."

The wife raised her eyebrows.

"And?" I asked.

"He left twenty-five percent to each of his two children, and the remaining half to a Louise Jordan, but only after they were married."

"Who’s she?" I asked.

Janice Payton answered, "His secretary."

To the lawyer, "So who will it go to now?"

"Mrs. Payton, so long as she’s not convicted of his murder, else it all goes to the children."

Whitman left, and we all fidgeted, not quite knowing where to go next.

I broke the silence, "You’ve got some big problems, Mrs. Payton."

She looked from Walt to me, and back. "Are you going to help me?"

Walt nodded. I nodded. She nodded. Walt reached for the phone and called the police. They agreed to a time. We talked for an hour-and-a-half before the cops arrived. She told me about her life, her relationship, her day. There wasn’t really anything more to be learned.

When I got back to the office I transcribed everything on my computer, embellished, edited, rearranged, looked at it from every angle. I called Walt and asked if I could meet with the DA’s witness. He said no way they’d let us talk to her.

I called Assistant DA Patti Walker anyway. It was her case. She said the cops were interviewing the woman again after their first session with Payton’s wife. I could have the statement once if was available to Walt, not one minute earlier. I asked her to question the woman about her day, where she’d been, who she’d seen, the like. She wanted to know why. She sounded interested, like she had an idea where I was going with it. She said she’d talk to the officers.

According to Janice Payton, the son and daughter both went to college in Boston, and their father paid for the house they rented. DA Walker said that she talked to the boy, and they would be flying back the next day.

I dialed Denise’s direct line. "Denise, it’s CB. I need you to do something for me."

She flirted, "I need you to do something for me too."

I got by it. "Look, I want you to call Payton’s kids, Ben and Caitlin, in Boston. The numbers are in your notes."

She growled at me. "I know where they are."

Did I mention she never forgets anything? "Yes, of course you do. I need you to talk to Walt and come up with some excuse for the two of them to call you back tonight, at the office. Make it really important."

"You don’t think ..." I said she was a prescient girl.

"I don’t think anything, Denise. Can you do it?"

"Not a problem."

"I’ll take the cell phone, so call me."

I drove to the Payton estate in the West Hills. There were cop cars everywhere. The detective in charge was Maureen McMartin, one of my favorite people. This isn’t how she feels about me though.

Maureen is five-four, nice boyish body, short hair I’ve been told is a distinctive red, and much too pretty to be a cop. The pretty part doesn’t need any color. Still, a cop she is, and a good one at that.

Suspicion clouded her light gray eyes. "What do you want here, Green?"

I defended myself. "Hey, Detective, Mrs. Payton’s lawyer sent me down, to look around." I saw the big black guy, Bobbins, the chief evidence guy packing up. "You can escort me around if you don’t trust me."

She pointed at one of the patrolmen, who put a question on his face. "Yeah, you, come here." She took his elbow, then pointed at me. "See this guy, he’s on the other side. I want you to follow him around the house. He can look, but he cannot touch." She gave him a little push. "He’ll steal this case from under our noses if we’re not careful."

I meandered with my tag-along cop, keeping my ears open for the cop-to-cop conversations all around me, but there was nothing to learn. In the master bedroom there were pictures on the dressers of the two children, and in the dining room, a portrait of the whole family. The girl, Caitlin, was the same height as her step-mother, blond, heavier, not so pretty, but there was an unexpected resemblance. The people all looked a little stressed, like the only person really having a good time was Janice Payton.

My cell phone shook in my pocket. "Denise?"

"Yes, CB. I got through to the boy, Ben. He said his sister was out, shopping for things they’d need for the trip home to Portland." She paused, but I waited through it. "When they called me back, they were in a car, on a cell phone, and ..."

Denise knows how to pull my strings. "And what?"

"In the background I heard, ‘is for loading and unloading only,’ like at the airport. How’s that for stupid."

I laughed. "Pretty stupid," then, "That’s good, Denise."

"That’s all you’ve got to say?"

I put some feeling into it. "It’s really great, Denise, now can you keep it to yourself?"

Suspicious, "Why?"

"Trust me, okay?"

She parted with a begrudging "Okay."

No, I wasn’t certain, not in a metaphysical sense at least, but close enough.

I collared Maureen. "Hey, Detective, how about you and I catch a bite to eat?"

"What, I don’t look busy to you?"

I jabbed her with my finger, in the middle of the chest, as close as I’d ever get. "Detective, you want to have a bite."

She wasn’t a stupid girl. She followed me in her car down the hill to the sandwich shop on the corner of Vistaview and Burnside. I bought a turkey sandwich and sodas. We split the sandwich.

"So what the big news?"

"This is just supposition, Detective, a mere notch short of guessing, but I’d like to say it all the way through. That okay by you?"

"Sure, just don’t waste my time."

"Hey, you got a sandwich out of it. Don’t complain."

She motioned me to get on with it.

"Here’s how I read it, Maureen. Ben and Caitlin Payton, they didn’t care much for their step-mother, and I’m thinking there was no love lost with their father either." She started to complain, but I raised my hand. "No, I don’t know the reason. Now Caitlin, I’m guessing, has in the recent past obtained another identification and the necessary paperwork to prove it. She flies to Portland, puts on a wig and make-up to look as much as possible like her step-mother, then makes sure she’s seen. The son, Ben, he’s got step-mom waiting at home for his call, sans alibi. Caitlin kills her father, then hops a plane back to Boston where she was picked up twenty minutes ago by her brother. I think you might want someone to nab them when they get home, before any more evidence disappears."

The detective looked a little stunned. "You sure of this?"

"No, not sure, but I’d bet a lot on it."

"This is going to be tricky." She meant arresting them, getting search warrants, the like.

"That’s your job. You’re good at it."

"Okay." She stood. I stayed seated. "You coming?"

"It’s got nothing to do with me, McMartin. I think it’d be best if no one ever knew I was involved."

McMartin shook her head. "Sometimes I wonder at you, CB. Doyle, he thinks you walk on water." She checked out my sized-sixteens beneath the table. "Me, the jury’s still out." She looked out to her car, then back to me. "You sure about this?"

I nodded, and she was gone.

It all played out just like I thought. The kids will get theirs, so to speak. The woman who identified Janice had, by coincidence, breakfasted at the same restaurant as Janice, and it wasn’t such a great leap to connect her face with the step-daughter’s disguise, reinforce it. So much for eye-witness testimony. Sort of like my off-gray flies.

Janice got the fortune, but she didn’t want it, so she gave all but her originally agreed to two-and-a-half million to charity. She paid me out of her portion. She’s a good person.

Denise read me the riot act for not taking the credit, thereby denying her any too. I told her I was as famous as I wanted to be. She said she wasn’t. I got by it. You don’t want to be too well-known in my business. Walt was pretty happy with the outcome since some of the inter-case contact was questionable.

Anyway, the person I work for, really work for, she was happy. The scales of Justice were just a little less cockeyed, but only for a while.

- the end -