I remained silent while Julius briskly walked the five blocks down Pinckney Street to Charles Street. After hearing about Norma Brewer’s murder I started building simulations that modeled different scenarios that would explain Julius’s behavior since accepting the case. There was one scenario that stood out as having the highest probability. I asked him about it. Whether he was lying low waiting for the brother to kill Norma Brewer, knowing that if that were to happen it would make it easy for him to earn his fee, since all he’d have to do is wait for the police to arrest the brother and then have the courts vacate his guardianship.
“Are you asking whether I expected Lawrence Brewer to murder my client?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”
“No, that’s not what I was expecting.” A young couple were passing us on the sidewalk, and Julius took out his cell phone so he wouldn’t appear to be an insane person talking to himself. Somewhat amused, Julius asked, “Archie, what would be Lawrence Brewer’s purpose in doing that?”
“Because she engaged you. Maybe he was afraid you’d find some leverage that you’d be able to use against him. Maybe he thought if his sister were out of the way, you’d be also.”
“It’s possible, Archie, but he’d have to be a dolt to think that. Then again, the way he was acting at the dog track, as well as his behavior regarding his mother’s well-being, he could very well be a dolt.”
“So you think he murdered his sister?”
Julius made a face. “It’s a possibility, Archie. But it’s just one of many and there’s no point engaging in idle speculation now. The next few days are going to be hectic enough and this could be my last decent meal before this matter has been put to bed. So please, Archie, no more discussion of this, at least not tonight.”
I wanted to ask him the obvious question, which was, if he hadn’t been waiting for Lawrence Brewer to murder his sister, then what had he been waiting for? What stopped me was detecting a hint of a threat in his voice that if I continued this line of conversation he would turn me off. That would be twice in three days, and I didn’t want to set that type of precedent. I remained quiet while he walked to Le Che Cruand took a seat at the bar. The maitre d’ came over with a complimentary bottle of a Chardonnay that he knew Julius favored, and apologized profusely that he wasn’t able to arrange for an earlier table for his favorite patron. Before leaving, he told Julius that he would have an order of seared sweetbreads in chestnut flour brought over immediately, on the house, of course. Julius graciously accepted all this. The sweetbreads were brought over within minutes and, while Julius was having his second glass of wine, a Detective Mark Cramer from the Cambridge Police Department called. I connected the call to Julius’s earpiece so he could listen in. Rather gruffly, the detective asked to speak to Julius.
“I’m afraid Mr. Katz isn’t available,” I said.
“Yeah, well, get him available!”
“I would if I had any idea where he is, but I don’t, so I can’t.”
The detective used some choice invective on his end of the line, ending with the phrase “son of a bitch.”
“Is that all, Detective?” I asked, to Julius’s obvious amusement.
“No, that’s not all,” he said, his voice growing more exasperated. “Your boss is a material witness in a murder case—”
“There’s been a murder?”
“Shut up,” he ordered, his exasperation growing. “I know damn well you called the victim’s sister within the hour, just as I know your boss is probably with you right now getting a good laugh over all this. The Boston PD filled me in on what to expect, so don’t think you’re fooling anyone with this, okay? You better just tell Katz to come in to Central Square station within the next fifteen minutes or I’ll be getting a bench warrant for his arrest. Ask him how he’d like a few days in lockup for contempt of court!”
Detective Cramer hung up on me. Julius shook his head, a thin wisp of a smile showing. “The man’s a fool,” he said.
“Dolts and fools, huh?”
“Precisely, Archie. That’s what you’ve gotten me mired in.” He took a sip of his wine and sighed heavily. “They probably have a squad car waiting in front of my townhouse.”
“Probably a fleet of them.”
Julius was going to say something else, but instead another long, heavy sigh escaped from him. He sat almost comatose for several minutes, not moving as much as a muscle, not even blinking. When he finally came out of it he appeared relaxed. Shortly afterward he started chatting with two women sitting nearby. One of them was a redhead with a smooth, cream-colored complexion who gave her name as Lily Rosten. She closely resembled the actress Lauren Ambrose. The other woman gave her name as Sarah Chase. She was a brunette and I was able to match her physical characteristics to actresses who were considered extraordinarily beautiful according to online surveys. Both women, according to their DMV records, were twenty-nine. While Julius was charming and polite with both of them, his attention was primarily focused on Lily, which surprised me since I had rated Sarah as the more attractive of the two. When Julius’s table became available, he invited them to join him for dinner. They both accepted, but Lily indicated that she needed to use the ladies’ room and dragged her friend with her. When they returned, Sarah Chase reluctantly informed Julius that something had come up and she wouldn’t be able to join them. Julius didn’t seem to mind, and neither did Lily.
Dinner was a long, leisurely three-hour affair, and Julius was in rare form; maybe somewhat subdued at times, but even more charming than usual. It was an odd effect the way Lily’s eyes appeared to glisten when she laughed, and even when she simply smiled. I also noted how they maintained eye contact almost continuously. When dinner ended, Lily announced to Julius that she lived in the Back Bay section of Boston off Marlborough Street, and Julius suggested that they take advantage of the pleasant weather, and that he walk her back to her apartment instead of calling a cab. I had already looked up her address and mapped it out to seven-tenths of a mile distant from where we were. Earlier, when I had tried filling Julius in on what I was able to find out about her — the amount in her bank account, the fact that she was single and never married, where she grew up and went to college, as well as her present job as an administrator for a local nonprofit organization — he stopped me with a hand signal.
Just as dinner had been leisurely, so was their walk to her apartment building, maybe even more so. Somewhere along the way, they started holding hands. When they reached her address, they were still holding hands. I recognized the pattern — the way she looked at him and blushed and how Julius responded. It was clear that she was going to invite Julius for the night, and this would allow him to bypass the police, which I figured was what he’d been after all along. I was astounded when he gave her a quick and somewhat chaste kiss on the mouth and told her he’d like to call her in a few days. She looked equally astounded for a few seconds, but smiled and blushed even brighter than before and told Julius she would like that. Julius stood on the sidewalk and watched as she disappeared inside the building’s vestibule. Only then did he turn back towards Beacon Hill and his townhouse.
As I said, I was astounded. His actions didn’t make sense. They didn’t fit his past patterns.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“What, Archie?”
“Why didn’t you go up to her apartment with her?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Wasn’t that the point?” I asked. “So that you could elude the police until morning?”
He shrugged. “If that were the case, couldn’t I simply check into a hotel for the night?”
“You could, but the police might have a watch on your credit cards.”