“It’s pretty,” Ehrengraf said.
“Damn pretty. It’s around for a while and then it melts. And then it’s gone.” He made a fist, opened it, looked at his palm. “Gone, like everything else. Like my career. Like my damn life.”
For a moment Ehrengraf thought the big man might burst into tears, and rather hoped he would not. The moment passed, and the little lawyer suggested they talk about the late Mrs. Starkey.
“Which one? No, I know you mean Claureen. Local girl, born and bred here. Went away to college and got on the cheerleading squad. I guess she got to know the players pretty good.” He rolled his eyes. “Came back home, went to work teaching school, but she found a way to hang around football players. I’d been here a couple of years by then, and the Mastodons don’t lack for feminine companionship, so I was doing okay in that department. But it was time to get married, and I figured she was the one.”
Romeo and Juliet, Ehrengraf thought. Tristan and Isolde. Blaine and Claureen.
“And it was okay,” Starkey said. “No kids, and that was disappointing, but we had a good life and we got along okay. I never ran around on her here in town, and what you do on the road don’t count. Everybody knows that.”
“And the day she died?”
“We had a home game coming up with the Leopards. I went out for a couple of beers after practice, but I left early because Clete Braden showed up and joined us and I can tire of his company pretty quick. I drove around for an hour or two. Went over to Boulevard Mall to see what was playing at the multiplex. They had twelve movies, but nothing I wanted to see. I thought I’d walk around the mall, maybe buy something, but I can’t go anywhere without people recognizing me, and sometimes I just don’t want to deal with that. I drove around some more and went home.”
“And discovered her body.”
“In the living room, crumpled up on the rug next to the fireplace, bareass naked and stone cold dead. First thing I thought was she’d had a fainting spell. She’d get light-headed if she went too long between meals, and she’d been trying to drop a few pounds. Don’t ask me why, she looked fine to me, but you know women.”
“Nobody does,” Ehrengraf said.
“Well, that’s the damn truth, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I knelt down and touched her, and right away I knew she was dead. And then I saw her head was all bloody, and I thought, well, here we go again.”
“You called the police.”
“Last thing I wanted to do. Wanted to get in the car and just drive, but I knew not to do that. And I wanted to pour a stiff drink and I didn’t let myself do that, either. I called 911 and I sat in a chair, and when the cops came I let ’em in. I didn’t answer any of their questions. I barely heard them. I just kept my mouth shut, and they brought me here, and I wound up calling you.”
“And it’s good you did,” Ehrengraf told him. “You’re innocent, and soon the whole world will know it.”
Three days later the two men faced one another in the same cell across the same little table. Blaine Starkey looked weary. Part of it was the listless sallowness one saw in imprisoned men, but Ehrengraf noted as well the sag of the shoulders, the lines around the mouth. He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn at their previous meeting. Ehrengraf, in a three-piece suit with a banker’s stripe and a tie striped like a coral snake, wondered not for the first time if he ought to dress down on such occasions, to put his client at ease. As always, he decided that dressing down was not his sort of thing.
“I’ve done some investigation,” he reported. “Your wife’s blood sugar was low.”
“Well, she wasn’t eating. I told you that.”
“The medical examiner estimated the time of death at two to four hours before you reported discovering her body.”
“I said she felt cold to the touch.”
“She died,” Ehrengraf said, “sometime after football practice was over for the day. The prosecution is going to contend that you had time before you met your teammates for drinks—”
“To race home, hit Claureen upside the head, and then rush out to grab a beer?”
“—or afterward, during the time you were driving around and trying to decide on a movie.”
“I had the time then,” Starkey allowed, “but that’s not how I spent it.”
“I know that. When you got home, was the door locked?”
“Sure. We keep it so it locks when you pull it shut.”
“Did you use your key?”
“Easier than ringing the bell and waiting. Her car was there, so I knew she was home. I let myself in and keyed in the code so the burglar alarm wouldn’t go off, and then I walked into the living room, and you know the rest.”
“She died,” Ehrengraf said, “as a result of massive trauma to the skull. There were two blows, one to the temple, the other to the back of the head. The first may have resulted from her fall, when she struck herself upon the sharp corner of the fireplace surround. The second blow was almost certainly inflicted by a massive bronze statue of a horse.”
“She picked it out,” Starkey said. “It was French, about a hundred and fifty years old. I didn’t think it looked like any horse a reasonable man would want to place a bet on, but she fell in love with it and said it’d be perfect on the mantel.”
Ehrengraf fingered the knot of his tie. “Your wife was nude,” he said.
“Maybe she just got out of the shower,” the big man said. “Or you know what I bet it was? She was on her way to the shower.”
“By way of the living room?”
“If she was on the stair machine, which was what she would do when she decided she was getting fat. An apple for breakfast and an enema for lunch, and hopping on and off the stair machine all day long. She’d exercise naked if she was warm, or if she wore a sweat suit she’d leave it there in the exercise room and parade through the house naked.”
“Then it all falls into place,” Ehrengraf said. “She wasn’t eating enough and was exercising excessively. She completed an ill-advised session on the stair climber, shed her exercise clothes if in fact she’d been wearing any in the first place, and walked through the living room on her way to the shower.”
“She’d do that, all right.”
“Her blood sugar was dangerously low. She got dizzy, and felt faint. She started to fall, and reached out to steady herself, grabbing the bronze horse. Then she lost consciousness and fell, dragging the horse from its perch on the mantelpiece as she did so. She went down hard, hitting her forehead on the bricks, and the horse came down hard as well, striking her on the head. And, alone in the house, the unfortunate woman died an accidental death.”
“That’s got to be it,” Starkey said. “I couldn’t put it together. All I knew was I didn’t kill her. You can push that argument, right? You can get me off?”
But Ehrengraf was shaking his head. “If you had spent the twelve hours preceding her death in the company of an archbishop and a Supreme Court justice,” he said, “and if both of those worthies were at your side when you discovered your wife’s body, then it might be possible to advance that theory successfully in court.”
“But—”
“The whole world thinks of you as a man who got away with murder twice already. Do you think a jury is going to let you get away with it a third time?”
“The prosecution can’t introduce either of those earlier cases as evidence, can they?”
“They can’t even mention them,” Ehrengraf said, “or it’s immediate grounds for a mistrial. But why mention them when everyone already knows all about them? If they didn’t know to begin with, they’re reading the full story every day in the newspaper and watching clips of your two trials on television.”
“Then it’s hopeless.”
“Only if you go to trial.”
“What else can I do? I could try fleeing the country, but where would I hide? What would I do, play professional football in Iraq or North Korea? And I can’t even try, because they won’t let me out on ba
il.”
Ehrengraf put the tips of his fingers together. “I’ve no intention of letting this case go to trial,” he said. “I don’t much care for the whole idea of leaving a man’s fate in the hands of twelve people, not one of them clever enough to get out of jury duty.”
Puzzlement showed in Starkey’s face.
“I remember a run you made against the Jackals,” Ehrengraf said. “The quarterback gave the ball to that other fellow—”
“Clete Braden,” Starkey said heavily.
“—and he began running to his right, and you were running toward him, and he handed the ball to you, and you swept around to the left, after all the Jackals had shifted over to stop Braden’s run to the right.”
Starkey brightened. “I remember the play,” he said. “The reverse. When it works, it’s one of the prettiest plays in football.”
“It worked against the Jackals.”
“I ran it in. Better than sixty yards from scrimmage, and once I was past midfield no one had a shot at me.”
Ehrengraf beamed. “Ah, yes. The reverse. It is something to see, the reverse.”
It was a new Blaine Starkey that walked into Martin Ehrengraf’s office. He was dressed differently, for one thing, his double-breasted tan suit clearly the work of an accomplished tailor, his maroon silk shirt open at its flowing collar, his cordovan wing tips buffed to a high sheen. His skin had thrown off the jailhouse pallor and glowed with the ruddy health of a life lived outdoors. There was a sparkle in his eyes, a spring in his step, a set to his shoulders. It did the little lawyer’s heart good to see him.
He was holding a football, passing it from hand to hand as he approached Ehrengraf’s desk. How small it looked, Ehrengraf thought, in those big hands. And with what ease could those hands encircle a throat . . .
Ehrengraf pushed the thought aside, and his hand went to his necktie. It was his Caedmon Society tie, his inevitable choice on triumphant occasions, and a nice complement to his cocoa-brown blazer and fawn slacks.
“The game ball,” Starkey announced, reaching to place it on the one clear spot on the little lawyer’s cluttered desk. “They gave it to me after Sunday’s game with the Ocelots. See, all the players signed it. All but Cletis Braden, but I don’t guess he’ll be signing too many game balls from here on.”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“And here’s where I wrote something myself,” he said, pointing.
Ehrengraf read: To Marty Ehrengraf, who made it all possible. From your buddy, Blaine Starkey.
“Marty,” Ehrengraf said.
Starkey lowered his eyes. “I didn’t know about that,” he admitted. “If people called you Marty or Martin or what. I mean, all I ever called you was ‘Mr. Ehrengraf.’ But with sports memorabilia, people generally like it to look like, you know, like them and the athlete are good buddies. Do they call you Marty?”
They never had, but Ehrengraf merely smiled at the question and took the ball in his hands. “I shall treasure this,” he said simply.
“Here’s something else to treasure,” Starkey said. “It’s autographed, too.”
“Ah,” Ehrengraf said, and took the check, and raised his eyebrows at the amount. It was not the sum he had mentioned at their initial meeting. This had happened before, when a client’s gratitude gave way to innate penuriousness, and Ehrengraf routinely made short work of such attempts to reduce his fee. But this check was for more than he had demanded, and that had not happened before.
“It’s a bonus,” Starkey said, anticipating the question. “I don’t know if there’s such a thing in your profession. We get them all the time in the NFL. It’s not insulting, is it? Like tipping the owner of the restaurant? Because I surely didn’t intend it that way.”
Ehrengraf, nonplussed, shook his head. “Money is only insulting,” he managed, “when there’s too little of it.” He beamed, and stowed the check in his wallet.
“I’ll tell you,” Starkey said, “writing checks isn’t generally my favorite thing in the whole world, but I couldn’t have been happier when I was writing out that one. Couple of weeks ago I was the worst thing since Jack the Ripper, and now I’m everybody’s hero. Who was it said there’s no second half in the game of life?”
“Scott Fitzgerald wrote something along those lines,” Ehrengraf said, “but I believe he phrased it a little differently.”
“Well, he was wrong,” Starkey said, “and you proved it. And who would have dreamed it would turn out this way?”
Ehrengraf smiled.
“Clete Braden,” Starkey said. “I knew the son of a bitch was after my job, but who’d have guessed he was after my wife, too? I swear I never had a clue those two were slipping around behind my back. It’s still hard to believe Claureen was cheating on me when I wasn’t even on a road trip.”
“They must have been very clever in their deceit.”
“But stupid at the same time,” Starkey said. “Taking her to a motel and signing in as Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland Brassman. Same initials, plus he used his own handwriting on the registration card. Made up a fake address but used his real license plate number, just switching two digits around.” He rolled his eyes. “And then leaving a pair of her panties in the room. Where was it they found them? Wedged under the chair cushion or some such?”
“I believe so.”
“All that time and the maids never found them. I guess they don’t knock themselves out cleaning the rooms in a place like that, but I’d still have to call it a piece of luck the panties were still there.”
“Luck,” Ehrengraf agreed.
“And no question they were hers, either. Matched the ones in her dresser drawer, and had her DNA all over ’em. It’s a wonderful thing, DNA.”
“A miracle of modern forensic science.”
“Why’d they even go to a motel in the first place? Why not take her to his place? He wasn’t married, he had women in and out of his apartment all the time.”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to be seen with her.”
“Long as I wasn’t the one doing the seeing, what difference could it make?”
“None,” Ehrengraf said, “unless he was afraid of what people might remember afterward.”
Starkey thought about that. Then his eyes widened. “He planned it all along,” he said.
“It certainly seems that way.”
“Wanted to make damn sure he got my job, by seeing to it that I wasn’t around to compete for it. He didn’t just lose his temper when he smashed her head with that horse. It was all part of the plan—kill her and frame me for it.”
“Diabolical,” Ehrengraf said.
“That explains what he wrote on that note,” Starkey said. “The one they found at the very back of her underwear drawer, arranging to meet that last day after practice. ‘Make sure you burn this,’ he wrote. And he didn’t even sign it. But it was in his handwriting.”
“So the experts say.”
“And on a piece of his stationery. The top part was torn off, with his name and address on it, but it was the same brand of bond paper. It would have been nice if they could have found the piece he tore off and matched them up, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
“Perhaps they haven’t looked hard enough,” Ehrengraf murmured. “There was another note as well, as I recall. One that she wrote.”
“On one of the printed memo slips with her name on it. A little love note from her to him, and he didn’t have the sense to throw it out. Carried it around in his wallet.”
“It was probably from early in their relationship,” Ehrengraf said, “and very likely he’d forgotten it was there.”
“He must have. It surprised the hell out of him when the cops went through his wallet and there it was.”
“I imagine it did.”
“He must have gone to my house straight from practice. Wouldn’t have been a trick to get her out of her clothes, seeing as he’d been managing that all along. ‘My, Claureen, isn’t that a cute little horse.’
‘Yes, it’s French, it’s over a hundred years old.’ ‘Is that right? Let me just get the feel of it.’ And that’s the end of Claureen. A shame he didn’t leave a fingerprint or two on the horse just for good measure.”
“You can’t have everything,” Ehrengraf said. “Wiping his prints off the horse would seem to be one of the few intelligent things Mr. Braden managed. But they can make a good case against him without it. Of course much depends on his choice of an attorney.”
“Maybe he’ll call you,” Starkey said with a wink. “But I guess that wouldn’t do him any good, seeing as you only represent the innocent. What I hear, he’s fixing to put together a Proud Crowd of his own. Figure they’ll get him off?”
“It may be difficult to convict him,” Ehrengraf allowed, “but he’s already been tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion.”
“The league suspended him, and of course he’s off the Mastodons’ roster. But what’s really amazing is the way everybody’s turned around as far as I’m concerned. Before, I was a man who got away with killing two women, but they could live with that as long as I could put it all together on the field. Then I killed a third woman, and they flat out hated me, and then it turns out I didn’t kill Claureen, I was an innocent man framed for it, and they did a full-scale turnaround, and the talk is maybe I really was innocent those other two times, just the way the two juries decided I was. All of a sudden there’s a whole lot of people telling each other the system works and feeling real good about it.”
“As well they might,” said Ehrengraf.
“They cheer you when you catch a pass,” Starkey said philosophically, “and they boo you when you drop one. Except for you, Mr. Ehrengraf, there wasn’t a person around who believed I didn’t do it. But you did, and you figured out how the evidence showed Claureen’s death was accidental. Low blood sugar, too much exercise, and she got dizzy and fell and pulled the horse down on top of her.”
“Yes.”
“And then you figured out they’d never buy that, true or false. So you dug deeper.”
“It was the only chance,” Ehrengraf said modestly.