Courthouse Steps. Ginger Chambers
if he wants to see me? What should I do? Can I refuse?”
Amanda knew immediately who “he” was: the man who seemed to be on everyone’s mind—Ethan Trask. “Yes, you can refuse,” she said. “But he’ll subpoena you for the trial. He has the power of the state behind him. He can make you testify.”
“But what if he comes around before that...what do I do?”
“Am I your lawyer?”
“What do you... Of course you’re my lawyer!” Liza replied, catching on quickly. “Mine and Cliff’s both. Right, Cliff?”
Cliff straightened, his tall good looks emphasized by the diffuse light from the house windows. “Right,” he agreed.
“If you’re contacted, call me right away,” Amanda said. “Tell him you won’t be interviewed unless I’m present.”
Liza gave a devilish smile. “I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for the man!”
“Well, don’t. He knows a lot more about what he’s doing than I do.”
Liza sobered instantly. “I wish Cliff and I had never found the rug or that Joe Santori had never given me the bullet. I wish...no, I can’t wish that. If I’d never come back to Tyler, Cliff and I wouldn’t have met, and there’d be no Maggie. But if I hadn’t insisted upon redoing the lodge... It’s my fault, isn’t it, that this has happened? Leave it to me! Leave it to Liza to screw everything up!”
“Liza...” Cliff’s quiet voice cut into his wife’s frustration. “No one blames you.”
“It would have come out eventually, Liza,” Amanda agreed. “Granddad had thought several times about selling the lodge. It was only a matter of time before he did and before someone else started renovations.”
“But he looks so old now. What if he can’t stand up to the pressures of a trial? What if he collapses? What if he—”
“You’re tired,” Amanda said. “A lot has happened to you over the past few weeks. You’ve given birth, you’re trying to adjust to motherhood, both you and the baby are still chock-full of hormones. The grandfather you love dearly has been indicted for murder...just an ordinary month in the life of one Mary Elizabeth Baron Forrester.” Amanda patted her sister’s hand. “Go home, Liza. Go home with your wonderful husband, and let me worry about Granddad. I have reinforcements now. I’m not nearly as afraid as I once was.”
“Are you telling us the truth?” Liza demanded. “You’re not just saying that to make me stop worrying?”
Amanda crossed her heart, the sign the Baron siblings had used since childhood to signify truth telling.
Liza’s face brightened, but Cliff wasn’t fooled. Unlike his wife, Cliff didn’t want to be fooled. Amanda hesitated to look at him, but she felt her gaze drawn. In her brother-in-law’s black eyes she saw the truth. And she knew that he knew she hadn’t spoken it.
“THIS WAY, PETER. Over here,” Amanda urged. In her haste to get to the spot where Margaret’s body had been found, she drew ahead of the overweight professor. She moved agilely across the gently sloping hillside, while he proceeded more slowly. As she waited for him to catch up, she double-checked the accuracy of the location. To her left was the lake and the offshore wooden swimming float that she had known since childhood; to her right stood Timberlake Lodge—a large, rambling structure that had been built by her great-grandfather to host hunting parties for his friends, and which now was part of the Addison Hotel chain. Straight in front of her was the gnarled old pine tree she and Liza and Jeff had played under when they were young and had come to the lodge for a stolen afternoon. “This is the spot where they found her. A willow tree used to stand near here, but Joe took it down when he and his men were checking the water pipes.”
The professor wiped his pink cheeks. As he puffed from exertion, his alert eyes moved over the manicured lawn of the newly opened resort, then lifted to the multigabled structure that nestled at the top of the hill. “If she was running away, she didn’t get very far,” he said.
“No,” Amanda agreed.
“Why here?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know that, either.”
“What does your grandfather think? Have you asked him?”
Amanda hesitated. “My grandfather doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Peter’s answer was a displeased grunt.
“I know,” Amanda defended. “I just haven’t pressed him. He’s coming to my office this afternoon. We’ll talk then. He’s promised to tell me everything he can remember.”
“I hope his memory is excellent.”
“It is.”
She received another grunt, but this time Peter sounded more satisfied. She watched as he absorbed the quiet beauty of his surroundings. Timberlake Lodge always had the same effect on her. It was hard to believe that something as frightening and horrible as a murder could ever have taken place in such a sylvan scene.
She broke the silence that had fallen. “The police found her suitcase...did I tell you that? It was all packed and ready to go. Only for some reason, it was in the lodge’s potting shed. Well, not when they found it. Actually, it had been stolen. Whoever took it must have realized they didn’t have anything of value, so they dumped it on the highway between here and Belton. One of our police officers found it. It had her initials, M.L.I., and Granddad identified her clothing.”
Amanda lapsed into silence again, remembering the awful moment when Karen Keppler and Brick Bauer had come to the house, in uniform and on official business. And the way Karen had looked at her grandfather...suspiciously, as if she were already persuaded to believe that he had killed Margaret.
“Rather odd that it wasn’t with the body,” Peter mused.
“I know. If Granddad had done it, wouldn’t he have gotten rid of the suitcase, too? To make it look as if she had taken it? He knew Phil—Phil Wocheck was the gardener at Timberlake then. He knew Phil was in and out of the potting shed all the time, digging through things. Granddad couldn’t have expected the suitcase to stay hidden if he was the person who put it there...which he wasn’t.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m sure!” she repeated.
“This Phil Wocheck. He’s the man you said testified before the grand jury? The man whose testimony seemed to carry so much weight?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Peter frowned. “I wonder what he knows.”
“We all wonder that!”
“You need all the information you can get, yet the prosecution is required to give you only your grandfather’s statements to the police. If you want more, you’ll have to file a motion.”
“I’m working on it now.”
“Good girl,” the professor approved.
Amanda started back up the hill, this time making sure to go slowly enough so as not to outpace her companion. What Phil had said to the police and then to the grand jury had been the subject of much speculation, both within the family and without, for the past few weeks. But Phil, observing the grand jury’s injunction not to speak of his testimony, would say nothing.
Frustration curled in Amanda’s stomach. She had so little to work on! She had no idea what the prosecution would throw at them. She had only the charge included in her grandfather’s indictment: first-degree intentional homicide, the worst accusation the State of Wisconsin could issue against a person.
The