“And that’s all it would take to introduce her to a ‘hot prospect’ worth killing for.”
“Only three problems with that theory,” Rick said, holding up three fingers. “One,” he said, ticking off a finger, “the playing field was too wide. The partners brought her in on meetings for at least fifty clients. Two,” he said, ticking off the second finger, “none of them admitted to having seen her outside those meetings. And, three, I had no proof that any of them were lying.”
“But you must’ve been able to eliminate at least some of them, no?” I asked.
“Tried to,” Rick replied with a shrug. “But it was mostly based on supposition, not hard evidence. Like, for example, I started by ruling out the female clients-”
I started to argue, but he held up a hand to stop me.
“You’re right,” he said with a little smile, “that’s biased and maybe wrong. Lilah might’ve been willing to swing that way-or maybe that’s the way she really did swing. But I had to play the odds. Odds were, since we didn’t have any indication she had girlfriends, and she’d been married to a man, she’d go for a male client. And I ruled out the smaller fish, the ones making less than five million per.”
“That means you ruled out the possibility that Lilah might’ve actually had feelings for one of these guys,” I said, though without much conviction.
“Way I saw it,” Rick replied, “someone cold-blooded enough to kill like that probably wasn’t looking for love. But like I said, I was just playing the odds, because I had to narrow the field.”
“What were you left with?” I asked.
“About thirty-five big players. CEOs, entertainment types, a pharmaceutical company, a lobbying firm, an accounting firm-”
I held up a hand. “I get it. Any of them run or owned by a single guy?”
“A few,” Rick replied. “But there was no evidence-and I’m including office gossip here-that Lilah had an inside track with any of them.”
I frowned. Since she was that beautiful, and probably that interested in money-I was willing to buy, for now, Rick’s theory that Lilah wasn’t the type to give it all up for love. But with so much access to big rainmakers, how could she not have found a likely prospect?
Seeing my expression, Rick nodded. “All that big game grazing around her, you’d think she could’ve bagged one. But every single person I talked to at the firm said she kept ’em all at arm’s length. Not a whiff of personal interest. From what they all said, I got the impression Lilah had zero concern with becoming dependently wealthy.”
At a seeming dead end on this angle, I moved on to Rick’s personal observations of Lilah. Rick had the chance to observe her for the duration-from the moment the case first broke to the very bitter end. A sharp detective can tell you a lot about a suspect that you’ll never find in a murder book, and from what Bailey’d said, Rick had been one of the best in the business. I asked him to tell us what he knew about Lilah personally.
“Maiden name Rossmoyne,” Rick said, leaning back on the overstuffed, nubby cotton reclining chair, the case file open in his lap. “I think she may’ve been the smartest I’ve ever seen…they usually blow it at the crime scene: either act too smooth or act too crazy. Not her, though. Acted pretty much like you’d expect a young wife to act,” he replied thoughtfully. “Made only one mistake that I could catch-”
“The inconsistent statement,” I said. “At first, she said that she stopped for lunch before she went home.”
“Right,” Rick confirmed. “A few minutes later, she changed her story and said she’d gotten her days confused. She actually didn’t have time to stop for lunch.”
“So the defense said it was the natural confusion of someone who’d just seen her husband all hacked up,” I surmised.
“Yep,” Rick agreed. “I predicted the jury would buy that, and they did. But my opinion? She wanted to say she’d stopped for lunch because it’d put more time between the murder and her finding the body. But she threw up at the scene-”
“So she realized you’d have the emesis analyzed, and that’d show she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.”
“That’s my take,” Rick said.
“You said she wasn’t too smooth or too rough,” Bailey said. “Did she cry real tears?”
“Oh yeah,” Rick replied. “And out of the ten or fifteen cops around at the time, I was probably the only one who didn’t buy her act.”
That was definitely saying something, though not necessarily what he intended. I was getting the feeling that both Rick and Larry had been a little too quick to believe that Lilah was guilty. And if that had been the jury’s take, the verdict had just gotten a little easier to understand.
“She try to work you?” I asked.
Lilah wouldn’t be the first beautiful woman to think she could play up to a detective. And if she had, that would’ve made a shrewd customer like Rick doubly suspicious.
“Not even a little,” Rick replied.
“She have any support people in the audience at trial?” I asked.
“No friends or coworkers,” Rick replied. “Just her parents. You talk to them?”
“Not yet,” Bailey replied. “Getting ready to, though.”
The parents of a defendant are never going to be the most cooperative of witnesses. And with hostile witnesses, it’s best to gather information before talking to them. That way, if they try to lie, you have a shot at catching them at it. Hopefully that inspires them to tell the truth-at least some of it anyway.
“They didn’t testify for her at trial?” I asked.
“Didn’t have to,” Rick replied. “They couldn’t help with her alibi, and the lawyer was sharp enough to see he had a winning hand with the ‘skinheads did it’ defense.”
“But they were on her side?” Bailey asked.
“Daddy for sure,” he said. “He never for one second believed she was guilty. Mommy…I never knew what she really thought.” Rick shook his head. “Pam was a piece of work. I gotta admit, I never heard a mom talk about her daughter that way. Ice must run in the family.”
“What way is that?” I asked.
“Well”-Rick paused and stared out at the ocean for a long moment-“probably jealous,” he finally said. “You saw Lilah’s picture?”
I nodded.
“I got the feeling it was about more than looks, though,” Rick said, his tone thoughtful, subdued. “Pamela didn’t strike me as someone who chose motherhood. More like someone who got stuck with it. And here’s Lilah, an attorney with a big, fancy career ahead of her. She had the life Pam wanted and never had a shot at.”
Women got to break out of the housewife mold in the ’60s, but what they hadn’t anticipated was that the bright promise of that iconoclastic time would only lead to a new mold every bit as pernicious as the old one. Because instead of society accepting the fact that some women could do without the 2.3 children, the new groupthink was that a woman who wanted a career not only could but should do it all-raise a family, run a household, and have a career. That was one hell of a daunting to-do list, and if a woman had the baby first, the demands of a new family left very little time-or energy-for career ambitions. But now that women were “allowed” to have careers, there was no sympathy for those who didn’t go out and get one, regardless of the obstacles. And so someone like Pam would feel not only stymied in her ambitions but blamed for not achieving them. I found it very easy to see how that could make for one frustrated and jealous mother.
Rick suddenly looked toward the tiny kitchen. “Hey, I’m a hell of a lousy host, aren’t I? Can I get you something? Hot tea? Iced tea? Water?”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “Bailey?”