The Muzac stopped, and Jill sat up.
“Judge Spencer’s office.”
Frustrated, she rolled her eyes. “I was on hold for the court reporter,” she said. “I’m calling in reference to a case Judge Spencer presided over. Jackson versus Celia Porter. It was six years ago.”
“Hold, please.”
She closed her eyes and moaned. It was so much easier to go down to the office and find it herself, but since the trial had been in Jackson, she was at their mercy. She turned the page of her notes and saw the names: Sheree Donolly and Lee Barnett. When she’d asked Celia if she’d ever had an idea who might have killed her first husband, she’d suggested these two names.
Sheree was a jilted girlfriend of Nathan’s who bitterly resented Celia. Celia admitted that, if she’d been a killer, she would have gone after Celia, not Nathan. And why would she want to come back after all these years and kill Stan—someone she’d never even met? Celia had thought that too far-fetched to be true.
Still, Jill intended to check her out, see if there was any history of mental illness, any other crimes she may have been charged with.
Her eye moved to the notes she’d taken about Lee Barnett. He had been a computer programmer, upwardly mobile in his profession, Celia had told her, and she had dated him for a year. But he’d had more than one downfall. He drank too much, loved to party, and she’d caught him one too many times with another woman.
“Besides, it couldn’t be him this time,” Celia had said. “He’s in jail.”
“Jail?” Jill had asked her. “What for?”
“One of those nights he drank too much, he got into a fight and killed somebody. He was convicted of manslaughter.”
“Was this before or after Nathan was murdered?”
“After,” Celia had said. “Believe me, they did question him about Nathan’s murder, but he’d been out of town at the time, and lots of people had seen him. A couple of years later he went to prison. I’m sure he’s still there.”
Jill wondered. She’d have to make sure.
The thing was, someone had set Celia up. This wasn’t just about murder. Whoever did it wanted Celia to look guilty. They’d gone to great pains, twice now, to point to her.
Celia had told her about the stacks of evidence they’d had against her in the trial. Arsenic in the house, journals on her computer, in which she’d supposedly planned out the murder…When she’d told her about them, Celia had sworn that she never used that computer and that she’d never even bought an insecticide for the house, much less arsenic.
Whoever the killer was, he’d done a good job. Jill supposed it was by the grace of God that the jury had acquitted her.
“Ann Hutchins.”
The voice on the telephone startled her, but she tried to refocus her thoughts. “Yes. I’m calling to order a transcript of a trial that Judge Spencer presided over about six years ago. Were you his court reporter then?”
“Yes, I was,” the woman told her. “What was the name of the case?”
“Jackson versus Celia Porter,” she said. “Could you tell me if it would be possible to get that transcript today?”
“I doubt it,” the reporter said. “You see, I rarely transcribe my notes unless one of the attorneys asks for it for an appeal. It should take a week or two for me to transcribe it.”
“No,” Jill groaned. “I can’t wait. I need it today. A woman’s life is at stake.”
The woman sighed. “Well, hold on, and I’ll see what I have on it.”
Again, the Muzac. She dropped her forehead against her desktop, waiting.
In just a few minutes, the woman came back to the phone. “Hello? Ma’am?”
“Yes,” Jill said. “I’m here.”
“You’re in luck. It seems that the defense attorney requested daily copies of the transcript during the trial, so I have it all done. Would you like me to mail it to you, or will you pick it up?”
She thought over the possibilities and realized she couldn’t rely on anyone to get it to her quickly enough. No, she was too anxious. “I’ll drive up and get it myself,” she said. She looked at her watch. It was just after noon. “I’ll be there around two-thirty.”
“All right. I’ll have it ready for you.”
She hung up the phone, trying to think. She needed several things in Jackson today, she concluded. She needed to speak to the attorney who had defended Celia in the first trial, and she needed to find out if Lee Barnett was still in prison.
Quickly, she threw the legal pad into her briefcase and locked it shut. Her secretary, Sheila, one of the angriest but most competent women she’d ever known, shot her a questioning look.
“Call Celia at Aggie’s house and tell her I’m on my way to Jackson to get some things I need from the clerk of the court, Sheila. Tell her I’ll call her when I get back tonight.”
Sheila muttered something under her breath, but since Jill couldn’t hear it, she didn’t worry about it. Sheila was always muttering. The fact that she was already dialing Aggie’s number was all that really mattered.
Aunt Aggie pulled her lavender Cadillac into her driveway and saw the photographer and newspaper reporter who had been there when she left. She got out of her car and slammed the big door. “Shoo! Get on outa here, Jed!”
“Aunt Aggie, can you ask Celia to give us a statement?” the reporter whined. “Just a little one? Then we’ll leave.”
“Celia ain’t givin’ you nothin’. Now leave!”
“But Aunt Aggie, if I go back to the paper without something, Hank’ll wring my neck. You don’t know him when he’s mad. And this is the biggest thing that’s hit Newpointe in a while. Give a guy a break, will ya?”
As he droned on, Aggie marched up the steps to her front door, turning from flashes of the camera. “Hank gon’ be real mad when he has to bail you out for trespassin’!”
She reached the door, and so did the photographer. He stood poised to snap a shot when she opened the door. She reached up and unsnapped the big lens protruding from the camera’s front. “You tell Hank I’ll give this back when my Celia’s cleared,” she said. “Now get off my prop’ty ’fore I have to start playin’ dirty.”
The photographer whined out his complaint, but she ignored him as she pushed through her front door.
She heard voices and looked into the living room. David, her nephew, was sitting there. “T-David!” she shouted. “Sha! You came!”
As they hugged, Celia asked, “Aunt Aggie, how is Stan?”
“Still out,” Aunt Aggie said, her face changing again. “His looney-bin folks hired a guard to stand outside his room. Threw me right out, me.”
“They threw you out?” David asked. “Why?”
Aunt Aggie hesitated. “They just real careful.”
“That’s not it,” Celia said. “They don’t trust you because of me. They believe that I did it, don’t they?”
“Honey, ain’t nobody thinkin’ rational.”
“That easily, they’d think the worst about their own daughter-in-law?” David asked.
“Why not?” Celia asked as tears pressed to her eyes again. “My own parents do. Why shouldn’t his?”
David looked as if he didn’t know what to say about his parents’ insensitivity. “You know how Mom and Dad are. Image control is a big thing with them.”
Aunt Aggie watched Celia’s face draining of color. “You feel okay, Celia?”
Celia laid her head back on the sofa and took a deep breath. “Aunt Aggie, do you think they would even tell us if he died?”
“Oh, they’ll tell us all right. That rat Sid’ll change your charges from attempted murder to murder so fast, heads be spinnin’. They’d tell us.”
“What if he wakes up?” she asked. “Will they let us know that?”
“Can’t say,” Aunt Aggie said. “But I ain’t gon’ let up callin’ there till he does. And he will, sha, don’t you worry.”
“How did he look?”
“Pale. Monitors hooked up to him, IV
, you got the picture. Medicine’s workin’ on him, darlin’. It’ll work. I know it will.”
“I wish you believed in prayer,” Celia said on a whisper. “I could use someone praying for me today.”
“I b’lieve in positive thinking,” Aggie said. “That’s all prayer is, anyway.”
“No, it’s not, Aunt Aggie. It’s much more than that. I need someone to pray for me, not think about me.”
“I’m praying for you,” David said.
Aunt Aggie tried to hide her surprise. She’d never known David to be a praying man. She’d believed him to be one of the few in the family who didn’t need religion. She’d half admired him for it. He took after her, she’d thought proudly. So now he’d changed his mind?
“I appreciate that, David,” Celia said. She looked up, still as pale as a Mardi Gras ghost. “Uh…excuse me.”
She dashed out of the room to the bathroom, and moments later, Aggie heard her retching again. “That girl got some poison, too, whether they found it or not! She gon’ have to black out, herself, ’fore they’ll listen.”
Slamming down her purse, she headed for the bathroom to help her niece.
Chapter Fourteen
Jill stared down at the trial transcript the clerk of the court had laid down in front of her. Jackson, Mississippi versus Celia Porter.
She flipped through the pages of transcript, saw the witnesses the prosecution had stacked against her. Expertly, she scanned the testimony, hoping to find the evidence they’d used against Celia. A computer journal, arsenic in the house, Nathan’s affair…
She froze on the testimony by Celia’s friend, who claimed that the week of the murder, Celia had learned that Nathan was having an affair. So, that was the motive they’d come up with, Jill thought, feeling the blood rushing to her face. Celia hadn’t mentioned that.
She flipped on through and found that the alleged girlfriend was Sheree Donolly. Hadn’t Celia said she was a former girlfriend?
She turned to the back, looking for the closing remarks that would give her a nutshell summary of the case. Instead, she found a motion for dismissal with prejudice. Apparently, the judge had complied. Celia had not been acquitted at all. Something had happened to cause the judge to dismiss, and the “with prejudice” wording of the dismissal had kept the prosecutor from trying it again.
She realized that her face was turning red and her hands were trembling as she flipped through. She looked up to see the court reporter watching her curiously. She cleared her throat. “Uh…thank you.”
“Wasn’t there something else you were looking for?”
She tried to clear her head and think. “Yes. Uh…Lee Barnett. I’m not sure if Judge Spencer was the one who presided over that case, but he was convicted of manslaughter a few years ago. I’m not sure of the exact date. I need to know his sentence, if he’s still incarcerated, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll see if that was one of ours,” the woman said, taking the information down. “If not, I can find those things out, anyway.” She disappeared into the records room.
Jill found a chair and sank down, and began reviewing the transcript again. She started from the last page of testimony and tried to trace her way back to whatever could have caused the charges to be dropped. It was too tedious and would take too long to get to the bottom of it, so she looked for the defense attorney’s name, checked her watch, then pulled her cellular phone from her purse.
She called information, got the attorney’s number, then quickly dialed it.
“Summers, Stockwell, and Graham.”
“Yes, uh…I need to speak to Robert Stockwell, please.”
“May I tell him who’s calling?”
“Jill Clark,” she said. “I’m an attorney in Newpointe, Louisiana, and I’m representing a former client of his—she went by the name of Celia Porter. I need to talk to him about that trial.”
The woman put her on hold, and within minutes, Robert Stockwell was on the phone. “This is Bob Stockwell.”
“Mr. Stockwell, thank you for taking my call.”
“No problem. My secretary said you were calling about Celia. How is she?”
“She’s fine,” Jill said. “Well, actually, she’s not. You see, her husband was poisoned with arsenic last night, and she’s been charged with attempted murder.”
The man was dead silent, and if she hadn’t heard him breathing, she would have sworn he’d hung up.
“Mr. Stockwell?”
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “Another husband poisoned?”
She knew the thoughts that must be coursing through his mind. Had he gotten a guilty woman off? Had he released her to kill again?
She knew her voice was too weak as she said, “She’s innocent, Mr. Stockwell. I know she is. But I came to Jackson to get a copy of the transcript of her trial, and I’m a little confused about how the trial ended. I was under the impression that Celia had been acquitted.”
“No, no. Is that what she told you?”
Jill honestly couldn’t remember if she’d ever used that word. Maybe she’d talked around it, with words like “not convicted.” She wasn’t sure. “I…I don’t think so,” she said. “I may have just jumped to that conclusion based on the fact that there was no conviction. But could you clear this up for me? Why were the charges dropped?”
He seemed shaken, and hesitated for a moment longer. Finally, he cleared his throat. “About three weeks into the trial, we put a police officer on the stand who had been one of the first on the scene when Nathan’s body was found. He swore that the supervising officer had made the comment that the wife is always guilty. And he had a string of other inflammatory remarks and innuendos about Celia. The jury was made up of eight women and four men, and during that testimony, you could see the anger on their faces.”
“So you moved to dismiss the charges?” she asked.
“Yes. It was the perfect opportunity. The testimony had hurt the credibility of the investigation, since the man in charge seemed to want to nail her. Even the judge saw that we’d never get a guilty verdict from that jury after that, so he dismissed the charges and the trial ended.”
She closed her eyes. “I wish you had let it go all the way. An acquittal would look a lot better right now.”
“Afraid what the Newpointe police will think when they find out?”
Jill nodded silently. “I’m afraid they’ll be as surprised as I was. One other thing, Mr. Stockwell. I noticed in scanning the testimony something about a computer journal. Could you tell me about that?”
“Yes,” he said. “There were some computer files on the PC in their home. Some journal entries were made in which Celia allegedly wrote out her plans to poison Nathan because of his affair. Celia claimed she didn’t even use that computer, that someone else had made those entries.”
Jill let that sink in for a moment. “What can you tell me about the affair?”
“That was the motive the prosecution used. Apparently, Nathan did have a girlfriend, though, I have to tell you. I was with Celia when she first heard of this, and she was shocked. It was no act. I really didn’t think she knew about it. But it came up every day of the trial. They turned it into a virtual soap opera. And when the girlfriend testified, it was quite a circus. She claimed Nathan told her the day before he died, that he’d asked Celia for a divorce and told her about his affair. Celia claims it never happened, and no one could verify if it was true one way or another.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Celia should have told you these things. They’re pertinent, don’t you think?”
“Yes, she should have. But her state of mind isn’t that great right now. She’s very worried about her husband, and she hasn’t slept. And I guess there could be an element of denial. It’s bad enough to have your husband murdered, but while you’re grieving, to be accused of that murder, and then be told that he was cheating on you?”
“Her second husband wasn’t cheating, was he?”
Jill frowned. “No. Not
at all.”
“I was just thinking…”
“That maybe her toggle switch was flipped every time she faced rejection? Come on, Counselor. You knew the same Celia I know, didn’t you? Besides, she’s sick with worry over her husband right now. All she can think about is getting to his side.”
“He’s not dead?”
“No. He’s in a coma.”
Silence again.
“Look, would you be willing to give me your file on that case? There might be something there that could help me to defend her.”
“Certainly. I have several boxes in storage. I can have my secretary pull them and have them ready for you as soon as you can come by.”
“All right. I’ll be there before you close today.” She paused, thought for a moment. “Look, Mr. Stockwell, I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if maybe you had her all wrong, if she really could have been a killer. But I can tell you that I’ve known her for the past few years, and she doesn’t have this in her. That killer is still out there somewhere. He’s simply struck again.”
“But why? Why, after all these years? Why another of Celia’s husbands?”
“That’s the mystery,” Jill said. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
The clerk was just coming back as she clicked off her phone. Jill got up and went back to the counter.
“Judge Spencer didn’t preside over the Barnett case,” the woman said. “But I made a phone call and learned that he was incarcerated at the Rankin County Correctional Facility, just about fifteen minutes away. He was released about two weeks ago.”
Jill caught her breath. “What?”
“That’s right. He served five years, and last week—”
“Do you have an address?” she asked. “Is there a phone number for a family member I could call?”
“No, I don’t think so,” the woman said. “There’s a former address, but this was five years ago. It’s an apartment, so chances are, he won’t be going back there.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, and jotted it down.
“Was there anything else you needed?”
She couldn’t think. Her heart was beating so hard that it drowned out the woman’s words. “Uh…thank you.”