Read Online Silent Thunder by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B

yesterday. Leslie was impressed, too, based on his meeting with you last night. I think it would take a lot to make you give up an investigation.”
    “More than you’d think.”
    “I guess I really am a coward. If I weren’t I’d fire Leslie because of my faith in you. But—”
    “But the hearing is in less than three weeks and a retired Supreme Court justice couldn’t do the necessary homework in that time to bring himself up to where Dorrance is now. You could get a continuance, but not in Iroquois Heights, and not in an election year, and not when the father of the man you killed is Doyle Thayer Senior. You don’t owe anyone any explanations, Mrs. Thayer. Least of all me.”
    She picked up her purse, opened it, and laid a bank money order on the desk. It was made out to A. Walker Investigations in the amount of three thousand dollars. I’d been wrong about the purse being only a prop.
    The ante was going up.
    “Naturally,” she said, “the court has frozen our joint assets, Doyle Junior’s and mine. But as you can see, I have my own sources.”
    I didn’t pick up the money order. I took the cap off the bottle and freshened our glasses. Said nothing.
    She said, “For months I’d been selling off the jewelry Doyle gave me and putting the money in an account he didn’t know about. I had paste copies made so he wouldn’t miss the pieces. There’s much more where that came from.”
    “Does Dorrance know that part?”
    “He’s my lawyer, not my confessor.”
    “Tell him.”
    “Why? It’s not his business.”
    “Your business is everybody’s business when you’re on the hook for murder. In this case he’ll need to know it for when the prosecution throws it at you as motive.”
    “Doyle gave me the jewelry. I had a right to sell it and I have a right to use the money as I see fit.”
    “That’s how you see it. The other side will say you’d been deceiving Doyle for months and were afraid he’d catch on. Then they’ll use his history of wife-beating against you. They might even say you’d been planning to kill him all that time, that you were preparing a getaway stake. Given the time lapse between your last workover and when you shot him, your self-defense plea is already too shaky to withstand that kind of reasoning.”
    “They won’t know about it. Unless you tell them.”
    I scribbled four names on my telephone pad, tore off the sheet, and slid it across the desk. “Is one of these the jeweler you sold the stuff to?”
    She looked at the sheet. Her expression said it all.
    “What you’ve been doing isn’t new,” I said. “Those four specialize in buying jewelry from housewives in Grosse Pointe, Bloomfield Hills, and the Heights, making good copies, and reselling the originals outside the state. That last part’s important. Their sources can’t afford to have the diamond choker Hubby gave them last Christmas show up in the local stores on Valentine’s Day.” I pointed at the money order. “That’s your maiden name?”
    She hesitated, then nodded.
    “If Cecil Fish, who is the Iroquois Heights prosecutor, hasn’t run your married and maiden names and every possible combination past every bank in the area in search of a secret account, he’s a lot more stupid than he was the last time I saw him. By now he knows about the money, has put two and two together, which is what two and two are for, and is already working on those four names. Crooked politicians aren’t always dumb. Not even usually.”
    The speech had had its effect. Her fingers shook a little when she took the pack of Pall Malls out of her handbag and put one to her lips.
    “That’s the trouble with being basically honest.” I lit it for her. “When you do get tricky you haven’t had any practice.”
    She blew smoke deliberately at the money order. “Do you think it was a getaway stake?”
    “It doesn’t make any difference what I think. People are always asking anyway.”
    “Well, that’s just what it was.