Girl, Under Oath (Michael Gresham Series) Read online

  Here’s the condensed version. Many years ago, I walked into the Paris Ritz bar to find Vincent D’Orion, emeritus bartender, polishing the stemware in preparation for the evening crowd. At that time, I was spending a year in France, zooming around on my Vespa, searching for my future.

  We spent a long, slow June afternoon, lo those many years ago, commiserating over wine coolers—him on the business side of the bar and me on the other, when—I don’t know, around four o’clock —the place was suddenly overrun with seventy-year-olds who’d just debussed in the hotel’s no-parking zone and were streaming into the bar looking to get out of the heat and ease the parch.

  Without a word, Vincent tossed me an apron that said RITZ above the pocket; he indicated I should pitch in. Imagine me, a sort-of-into-college student sitting out her sophomore year, serving drinks to folks old enough to be my grandparents but filled with the same wanderlust that had kept me twisting the throttle on my scooter.

  I hopped tables the rest of the night. Next day, I returned, waitressed again, and the next, loving every minute of that exciting, wonderful old haunt that once accommodated Ernest Hemingway and Charlie Chaplin.

  That first night around ten, I’m guessing it was, I was still serving and getting just a little ready for a cigarette break when a soldier wearing desert fatigues suddenly reached and touched my elbow as I was taking drink orders one table away. “Miss, can I ask you a question?”

  I tilted my head at him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked all innocence, like a tourist asking directions to the Louvre.

  “My name is Jennifer. And you’re with the woman who just went to the powder room.”

  “I’m with Natalie? Nope, just a friend. Why don’t you put your number on my tab and let me double it with your tip?”

  I couldn’t keep from smiling. “Nice try, soldier.”

  “Joe. Just Joe. I was sent here by the US Army to meet you and sweep you off your feet. We’ve just got to meet and talk. What time do you get off?”

  “No, thanks. I’m not looking, and you’re not my type even if I were. I don’t like guns, and I don’t like soldiers.”

  “I don’t do guns. I’m a medical assistant. No guns, only STDs.”

  “So long, Joe. I’ve got customers waiting.”

  “Remember tab, telephone number. I’ll only call once, and you can hang up, or we can talk and go from there. It’s fate.”

  “It’s not fate, Joe. It’s a bar, and you’re lonely.”

  An hour later, he signaled they were leaving, and he needed his tab to settle up. Helplessly—yes, helplessly—I watched as my hand scrawled my name and number at the bottom of his bar tab. Maybe, like Joe, I was lonely, too. Perhaps he looked a little like Bruce Willis in that year’s Pulp Fiction. It turns out I had a low-level crush on Bruce, and Joe could’ve been his double.

  Later that night, he called after I got off work. I was bone-tired, alone in my hotel room, listening to an all-night FM station broadcasting Lena Horne.

  Joe sounded bright and sober, not unlike a friendly travel agent. “So, listen, Jennifer, we need to meet. Are you busy right now?”

  “I’m exhausted and climbing into bed as we speak. Make it snappy, Joe.”

  “Natalie’s an army asset. She’s a civilian code-breaker, an expert in Arabic. She wanted to see the Ritz, so I brought her by. No boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. Purely friends. We need to meet, you and I.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In her room. On her own dime. At least I think she is. She might also be out for a night on the town, for all I know.”

  “Why the heavy pursuit, Joe?”

  “I’ve dreamed your face before. I think we knew each other before.”

  “Right. Okay, nightie-night, Joe. Thanks for calling.”

  “All right. You remind me of pictures of my mother at your age.”

  “That’s sick. I don’t date men who think I’m their mother. Your turn.”

  “All right. You’re gorgeous, and I’m lonely. I have to get back to Kuwait in two days, and I wanted to meet someone for a roll in the hay. So, hang up on me and tell me to go screw myself.”

  “Joe, you’re cute, very Bruce Willis-y, but I’m not like that. Not interested.”

  “You working tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we have a drink on your break?”

  “You don’t quit, do you?”

  “Not with you. What about it? One drink?”

  “Who’s paying?”

  So, there we were. Sure enough, the next night, we did have that drink and several more drinks after I got off work at the Ritz.

  I also violated one of my own rules. It turned out I was that kind of girl, especially once I got to know him and fell in love on the third drink.

  All right, then, this was the same story I told to my lawyer, Michael Gresham, to the first detective who paid me a call, to the district attorney, and the jail psychiatrist.

  I doubted if so much as a word of it changed, person to person.

  4

  Michael

  Jennifer was horrified she was going to be convicted of murder for Joe's death. Of course, she was horrified; I would’ve been, too. I never understood how my clients get through it. So, she called me on the phone and told me she was between patients and needed to talk. It was always like that. They needed to hear my voice. It was all right; that’s what they paid me for, to be there for them when they couldn’t be there for themselves.

  "Am I free to talk openly with you?" she asked me.

  "Of course," I told her. "As your attorney, please tell me everything. What's up?"

  "Well, it turns out that Joe had taken on another family in Paris."

  “Another family? Who is she?” I asked.

  “As he was dying, he told me to give half of the insurance money to somebody named Elise. I've been going back through his records and snooping around his things. It has begun to dawn on me how blind I was. I should've seen right through him."

  "And if you had seen right through him, what would you have seen?"

  “Joe had another wife. I guess you could call her a wife. He had married this woman in Paris and been shacked up with her for I don't know how long. This is the woman he was talking about when he was dying. I'm waiting every day for her to come calling. I know she's going to want part of what Joe owned, and it's going to be a mess. I go to work every day with my heart in my throat, filled with worry. I don't know what I'm going to tell my staff when she comes calling. I don't even know what I need to tell her when she does. Do I just avoid her altogether and refuse to talk to her, Michael?"

  "I don't think I’d do that. I think I would talk to her and find out what she has on her mind. Maybe it's something as simple as the insurance money. Maybe, given a little time and distance from your anger at Joe for this, you'll feel like sharing with her. For me, I always encourage my clients to buy their way out of situations if possible. Over the long run, it's always much, much cheaper than getting involved in lawsuits. Lawsuits tend to drain bank accounts, and, in the end, only the lawyers are better off. So yes, I would encourage you to talk to her and see what she has on her mind."

  "I hate her already. I want nothing but bad things for her. Anybody who would sneak around with another woman's husband deserves nothing but bad. And even worse, what if he has children with her? That's possible, you know. Joseph always wanted to have children around. I think it made him feel virile or something. I don't know what I would do if it turns out he has a child in Paris. I would die. Or someone else would die."

  "Please, let's not get into talking about others dying. That makes me very uncomfortable when my clients say stuff like that. I should advise you up-front that lawyers must come forward and tell the police and the court when a client is getting ready to commit a crime. Especially a crime of violence. So when you tell me that someone deserves to die, it scares the living crap out of me. My first thought is always to ask whether or not you'r
e serious and whether or not I need to take steps."

  "I don't know that I'm serious. But I am very angry. Joe has hurt me beyond repair. I'm going to do everything I can not to run him down in front of our kids. But inside, I'm going to be hating him for this mess he left me with."

  "Well, let's leave it at this, that you're going to talk to her and hear her out. At that point, you and I will talk, and we’ll come up with a plan. That's always best. Is there anything else you need to share with me?"

  "Not really, and, no, I don't really want to see somebody dead. But if it happened, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it."

  We hung up then, ending our conversation.

  When I looked back through my file, I realized I didn't make any notes of the conversation, which was too damn bad, given what was coming down the track. I always made notes in an attempt to protect myself.

  But this time, I violated my own rule and didn't paper the hell out of her file.

  My mistake.

  5

  Jennifer

  Elise Ipswich came to my medical office, just like I had told Michael she would. I was on break from seeing patients—it was stomach flu day for the little ones. There I sat, hidden behind the pile of paperwork on my desk and inhaling an apple. The receptionist buzzed and told me Elise Ipswich had appeared without an appointment. She was insisting upon seeing me without delay. She was, said Misty, the receptionist, "Dressed to the nines. Also, she says she's come from Paris, France, Doctor Ipswich."

  I told Misty, "Stall her five minutes." My fingers flew on my keyboard. I pulled up Joe's Visa card statement year-to-date. I sorted by Paris. My gaze raced down the Visa card statements for the last six months of his life. One thing became clear quite fast: the Ritz was his favorite eatery. My mind was flying now. Aha! Every last one of the damned charges on his Visa was for two meals. Never just one. Elise was more real than real. And you know what the worst part was? He hadn't made any attempt to cover up his binary dinners. Always two diners, never just Joe. The charges didn’t come right out and name her, but they didn’t have to. I knew my Joe, and his Elise knew me as well. He never could eat alone. Or sleep alone. Or watch TV alone. The woman out there in my waiting room had made it a double. And now she had come to collect on his bar tab.

  My part of the medical practice was pediatrics. Joe's was infectious diseases, and he spent quite a bit of time overseas with a focus on French-American medicine. For years, Joe had spent two weeks each month in Paris at his foreign practice. The French patients loved him. I couldn't ever go because the kids needed me home and, besides, I hated jet lag, I didn’t do well with abrupt changes, and Joe thrived on the ten or eleven hours of uninterrupted work time he got flying from Chicago to Paris and home two weeks later.

  I buzzed my receptionist. "Show Elise in."

  I steeled myself and wished I were six inches taller in my chair.

  She swept grandly into my office and settled, without being asked, into a patient chair, folding her hands on her knees and meeting my gaze. Two silver combs held her hair back in waves from her face, her neck was Audrey Hepburn, and her smile was all Michelangelo. It was too much. My gaze dropped to her ring finger. Sure enough, engagement and wedding rings purchased at Les Beaux Diamants de Charvel, one block north of the Ritz on Place Vendôme. I would know that princess cut anywhere because it was the exact same set as mine.

  It was then I knew.

  We had lost our husband.

  "I'm here for my one-half," Elise said coolly in a thick French accent, placing her hand on the surface of my desk as if staking a claim.

  "Your half? Excuse me?"

  "Our husband. He said you would gladly give me one-half when you learned about our daughter and her medical needs."

  My heart froze in my chest. What was this? Daughter? As in Joe's daughter? With medical needs yet?

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Miss. Joe and I have been married since my early twenties. He wasn't married before me, and I know we were never divorced."

  "No, but he was married under French law—Miss. To me." She held out her hand as if to shake. "I'm Elise."

  I took her hand and shook it. Anything else wouldn't be like me. I was happy, gregarious, outgoing, and a people person. I extended my hand to shake even though I knew it was all downhill from there.

  I plunged ahead. "Well, he might have been married to you under French law, though I doubt it was legal, but his U.S. assets belong to me. If you're here for money, you'll leave an unhappy widow. I know American and Illinois law and none of it consists of exceptions for victims of a bigamist." When I said the words, I realized, with a start, that my feelings toward Joe had shifted tectonically. I was actually starting to dislike him intensely. Bastard, leaving me with this mess to clean up!

  "Our daughter needs daily injections, a medication that runs one-thousand euros a week. Joe always laid in a good supply whenever he was home. But we've about run out, a month after his death."

  "That sounds terrible. Do you work?"

  "LVP Partners. Associate level. Very low pay. Not enough to live on and take care of Çidde."

  "Is there more?"

  "My husband supported us mostly. Of course, I have my work at LVP Partners."

  "You mean Joe supported you?"

  "That's exactly what I mean. Joe—my husband."

  I cringed as the building began burning down around me. While Joe and I were technically medical partners, we kept our medical practices separate. We were two LLCs practicing in partnership in name only. We had done it to get a huge break on our medical malpractice insurance, and it stayed that way throughout our time in the same office. Why was this particularly relevant just then? Because, as separate entities, we also kept our own books, our own accounting systems in place.

  The bottom line was I knew no more about Joe's finances than he knew about mine. True, we each contributed ten-thousand a month to our joint bank account for household needs, but beyond that, we never actually knew each other's bottom line. Could Joe have been supporting a second family without my knowledge? Hell, he could've been supporting a half-dozen families, and I would never have suspected. It just wasn't my business to know. Nor did he know—or need to know—how much money I sent out to orphans in Latin America, diasporic polar bears, or blue whales threatened with extinction by Japanese sailors. Go Sea Shepherd! I had my things. Evidently, Joe did, too.

  Nevertheless, I was stunned by what I heard despite our economic sovereignty. Joe didn't have orphans, polar bears, and whales; no, Joe had a second wife and a third child. A wife who was sharpening her knives as she surveyed my office out the corner of her eye, taking in my Louis XIV pieces, Chinese rugs, and Qing vase that had been used as a milk bottle in someone’s kitchen. My buyer brought it to me for $2.3 million. Where did I get that kind of money for a Qing vase? Joe's insurance money. That's right, I spent every last dime of the insurance money—and then some—on the Qing vase. A ridiculous purchase, but it completed my financial bucket list.

  Elise's eyes rolled back in her head as she recognized my treasures for what they were: Ka-ching! The worst had happened. Joe had not only taken up with another woman and married her under the laws of a foreign nation, but the woman was also a connoisseur of expensive and rare art. It was all she could do to tear her gaze from my Qing vase and re-establish a more or less vacuous manner of eye contact with me.

  "Well,” I sniffed, "Joe didn't support me. I worked our entire time together, contributing my fair share. I felt I owed him that."

  "Exactly! Which was our plan, too, until Çidde's problems developed. My degree is in finance, Mrs. Ipswich. My Ph.D. is from the London School of Economics. It's all I can do to scare up enough time to write scholarly papers at work. It must be wonderful to be the mother of such healthy children as yours."

  "Fate has certainly blessed our marriage," I tossed off, referencing Joe's love of fate, which I had begun to detest—both him and his fate mojo. It had been so charming in our
youth but now seemed a gas bubble from Joe's ass. Damn him to hell! What else had he left me with but a Ph.D. in economics who possessed a practiced eye for Qing Dynasty pieces and a troubling tale of motherhood guaranteed to give even the most hardened Chicago jury pause?

  Suddenly I realized she loved our husband much more than I. It was time to end our visit.

  "Elise, I don't know why you've come here today, perhaps to introduce yourself to me and clear some air you believed needed clearing. Whatever your purpose, I have patients to see and obligations to fulfill, so I'm afraid we'll need to break this off now. I wish you all the best and my prayers for your Çidde, but I really must return to my calendar."

  A hasty smile returned and then faded. "Of course. My lawyers will be in touch, Mrs. Ipswich. Please keep my husband's things intact, including his tangibles and intangible assets like stocks, bonds, and funds. I'll be seeking a full accounting as well as one-half of all life insurance proceeds."

  "Life insurance?” I said it with the sound of one swallowing walnut shells.

  "Certainly. We surviving spouses will recognize codicils to Joe's will and beneficiary amendments to his insurance policies, won't we? Just to keep peace at home?"

  "You have a codicil to his will?"

  "Of course. Joe remembered everything, just like the dutiful husband he was."

  "You have beneficiary amendments?"

  "Of course. New York Life, Hamilton Life, Fidelity, J.M. Watt, Inc. I have it all in my safe in Paris. Oh, and I want that Qing vase."

  My breath snapped in my throat. I stood and spread my arms as if taking a bullet for the president. "Impossible! That is my personal asset, not Joe’s!”