I had lost my chance for a win. All I could do was attempt to salvage a draw. With Wesley’s pawns threatening to become queens, themselves, I couldn’t afford to trade queens with him. I needed to be creative. I moved my king into the corner toward which his pawns were advancing in tandem and played cat-and-mouse with his king, checking him with my queen but backing off when he placed his queen between his king and my queen.
My opportunity came when he moved his queen into a position that shut off my king from all movement. I moved my queen next to his king, checking him and forcing him to capture my queen with his king. Ordinarily, losing the queen is disastrous, but in this case I was stalemated-not in check but not able to move without being in check. A stalemate is a draw.
Wesley threw up his hands and said, “They say a draw is like kissing your sister, but when you should have won it’s far worse.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a sister.” The game had been a lesson to me. Something like “patience is a virtue.” When do we get old enough so that we’ve learned all the lessons? “Are you free for dinner?” I asked. “I’m sworn not to do anything about the murder right now, but I’ll feel better if I can talk about it.”
“Are you sure this young fellow has enough experience to defend Mark adequately?” Wesley asked when I had given him a rundown on what I knew.
We were sitting alone at one of the small tables in the dining room. Tess was off somewhere with one of her children and we hadn’t invited anybody else to eat with us.
“He’s been defending murder cases for several years,” I said, “as well as other felonies: armed robbery, drugs, the everyday crimes. If he needs help there are attorneys in his office with more experience than he has. I think he’ll do fine. What rankles me is not being able to participate. I hate doing nothing.”
“Tell me about it.” Wesley smiled. “You are the original ‘I’d rather do it myself’ person. Did you ever let your husband do anything for you?”
“I let him buy me flowers once in a while. And other presents, as long as I picked them out. Seriously, though, we were a partnership. He had an independent streak, also, but we worked very well together. Just ask Albert. We always agreed with each other on how to raise him so he could never play one of us against the other.”
“Well, since you’re grounded for the moment, would you like to come over to my place? I’ll show you the latest calligraphy I’ve done.”
“That sounds suspiciously like inviting me over to see your etchings.”
“You may have seen the statistics that show more than half the men over 60 are impotent. At my advanced age, you don’t have much to worry about.”
“As a statistician, what worries me is people who use statistics to promote their own causes.”
“I’ll give you a flower from my Easter rose and I’ve got some delicious liqueurs. We can get pleasantly warm together and tell each other lies about great bridge and chess games in which we’ve played.”
So this is how seduction is carried out in a retirement community.
Chapter 20
“Thanks for coming, Aunt Lillian,” Burt Brown said as he gave me a hug and ushered me into his office. “I want to tell you everything I’ve found out and get your opinion. You know these people better than I do.”
That corresponded perfectly with my wishes because I had been starved for information since yesterday morning and wanted desperately to get back in the loop.
“When can you get Mark out of prison?” was my first question.
“Not so fast.” Burt smiled, running his hand through his dark hair. “It may take a few days. Murder is a serious charge. There will be a bail hearing, but I’d better warn you, it’s possible that the judge will deny bail or set it impossibly high.”
“And then Mark would have to stay in prison?”
“It could happen. Of course, if we can prove that somebody else killed Elise…”
“The Perry Mason approach.”
“Perry Mason, the idol of all defense attorneys. He never lost a case.”
“I guess I am trying to move too fast. That’s how I almost lost a chess game yesterday. Why don’t you tell me about the new evidence.”
“That’s what I want to do. It seems that this girl Donna went to the police Wednesday afternoon.”
“Donna?” I exclaimed. “Donna testified against Mark? Donna likes Mark. Donna has a crush on Mark.”
“That’s what she said in her testimony,” Burt said, glancing at some computer-printed pages. “In fact, that’s the reason she gave for not telling this before. Evidently, she was trying to protect Mark and hoped somebody else would be arrested for the murder. But her conscience got the better of her.”
“I talked to Donna Wednesday at noon. Everything seemed to be hunky-dory with her then.”
“Why don’t you let me tell you what she said and then we can discuss it. As I said, Donna went to the police. Detective Johnson and somebody else took her testimony. She said that on the evening Elise was murdered she, Donna, was getting ready to go to Club Cavalier to perform as the Shooting Star. Elise was also getting dolled up, as if she was going out.
“Donna asked what she was doing because Elise usually studied in the evenings during the week. According to Donna, Elise hemmed and hawed for a while and then said she had a date with Dr. Pappas.”
“But that’s impossible. Mark was lost on Mt. Mitchell at the time. And Elise had filed a sexual harassment charge against him so why would she go out with him? Besides, Mark has a girlfriend-Sandra.”
“All good points,” Burt said, smiling, “and we will address them. As to the harassment charge, Elise confided to Donna that she was dropping it and that it had been a mistake for her to file it in the first place. And of course Elise left a message for you saying somewhat the same thing.”
I couldn’t deny that. But it did seem to take away Mark’s motive for murdering Elise.
Burt continued, “Elise said Dr. Pappas was crazy about her and she was crazy about him and that’s all there was to it. Now let me finish Donna’s story. She said that she left for Club Cavalier before Elise left. When she returned a little before 11 p.m., as she pulled up in front of the apartment she saw another car pull away. She didn’t know who it was at the time, but a few days later she saw the car of Dr. Pappas and realized that the car she had seen looked a lot like it.”
“She saw Mark’s car at Albert’s farm because I was stupid enough to invite her there to brunch. Great. I gave her the ammunition for her story.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve saved the worst for last. When the police arrested Mark yesterday they searched his car, using a warrant, and found a carving knife in the trunk, wrapped in a towel. There was dried blood on both the knife and the towel. The police lab is matching the blood with that of Elise.”
It took me a minute to recover from that one. Finally, I said, weakly, “Donna could have put the knife in the trunk at the farm. Mark doesn’t usually lock his car-he jokes that he wishes someone would steal it-and you can open the trunk with a latch inside the car.”
“So you think Donna is the murderer?”
“She could be making accusations to save her own skin.”
“Actually, her skin didn’t seem to need saving before because there wasn’t any evidence against her, other than the fact that she discovered Elise’s body. Could somebody else have put the knife in the trunk when it was parked at the college?”
“Possibly. But I remember now that the police had searched Mark’s car before and hadn’t found anything.”
Burt made a note and said, “Of course we will explore all of this.”
“When can I see Mark?” I asked.