The Troubled Man: A Q.C. Davis Mystery, page 3
“No. Against whoever might be responsible who’s not Santiago. You can’t file a lawsuit right away because you don’t have a defendant. But if Alexis hires you, you’ve got a built-in reason to ask questions. Get documents. See evidence.”
A wrongful death suit is a civil lawsuit. People file them to get money damages from whoever is responsible for a death. I sipped my wine, savoring the smoky undertones. “I’ve never handled one.”
“Mensa Sam can walk you through,” Danielle said. “You’ll owe him a big favor, but I bet he’ll do it. And I did some of them with my first partner when I went out on my own. I can give you a little guidance. Unless it turns out there’s a conflict with defending Santiago.”
Sam was our office suite landlord, a personal injury attorney we both found annoying, including because of his obsession with his membership in the high I.Q. society Mensa. But he knew a lot about personal injury law. It was all he did.
“But what if I find things that point to Santiago? I’m sure Alexis doesn’t want to sue him.”
“That’s the challenge. But she can drop the civil suit if it turns out Santiago did kill his wife. He needs to support her anyway, and he won’t be able to inherit from Ivy if he caused her death.”
“She has an older sister who would have to agree, too.” I swirled another chip in the salsa. “I don’t have to turn over what I find to the prosecution, do I?”
“No duty to do that. But keep to yourself everything you can so they don’t follow your footsteps and find what you found.”
5
Alexis hadn’t told her aunt and uncle anything about me yet, so she didn’t want me to come to their house. She took the train downtown from Geneva after school Tuesday afternoon, telling them she was spending the day with Eric at the skateboard park near Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue. They didn’t ask too many questions because they liked Eric. I couldn’t imagine who wouldn’t.
And they did go to the skate park for a while, then met me around five at Café des Livres.
We all sat at one of the wrought iron tables outside.
“You understand if we do this, I'll be representing you, not your dad," I said.
Alexis’ hair hung in chunky blocks. I guessed she hadn't styled it in days. The blue streak was fading to a dusty gray. Eric sat next to her, his chair an inch from hers, his right hand resting on her left knee.
She wore frayed blue jeans shorts that were ripped in just the right places to show they were bought that way, not worn out. It was a style I associated with people who never had to worry about money and so could wear torn clothes for fashion. In college, I had too often, with the help of costume designers in the small theaters where I got parts, sewn decorative beading over carefully shaped patches to cover holes in my jeans and get another few months’ wear out of them.
All of which made me wonder about the uncle’s claim that there was not enough money to cover both a bond and a lawyer.
I started explaining what I could and couldn’t do if I acted as her lawyer.
Alexis clenched her hands into fists and bounced them on her thighs as she jiggled her feet. "But you said on the phone — "
I pushed my cup of Earl Grey tea to one side. “I said the lawsuit would give me a reason to ask questions and gather facts and documents. But your dad won’t be the client, you will. And your sister. And your dad is Danielle’s client, not mine.”
Danielle had talked to Santiago Jimenez-Brown this morning by phone. He hired her. Santiago’s sister had sent Danielle money for the retainer.
The metal chair legs wobbled as Alexis shifted position. “Okay.”
“Also, because you’re a minor, the suit will need to be in an adult’s name on your behalf.”
“My dad’s?”
“Usually a parent would do that. But here there’s a possible conflict, so the court won’t let him.”
“Because the police arrested him?” Eric’s chin jutted forward. “The court just assumes he did it?”
“Not assumes. But he’s a suspect. The judge will need to protect you, Alexis, because you’re a minor. Which means being very careful to see that your chance to recover in this lawsuit is protected. The judge has no way to know if the police are right or wrong in arresting your dad. But if they’re right, he has a conflict because he won’t want the truth to come out.”
Alexis’ lower lip puffed out and for a moment she looked more like four than fourteen. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not, and I’m sorry. But remember, the judge doesn’t know you or your dad. It’s not a judgment about him or the facts. It’s a way for the courts to be very, very careful.”
“Your aunt or uncle?” Eric said.
The corners of her mouth sagged. “They’ll never do that.”
That was all right with me. Anyone around Alexis who had been in town during the time her mom was killed was a suspect. And therefore not someone I wanted as a client.
“Why not?” Eric said.
“They think Dad did it.”
Eric's hand fell away from Alexis’ knee, but she clasped it with her own.
“I was thinking of your sister,” I said. “You told me on the phone she’s twenty-one. And she lives in Illinois.”
“I don’t know. She and Mom didn’t get along at all, and she’s really mad about everything.” She stirred more sugar into her cappuccino. “What about my Aunt Perla?”
“Your dad’s sister? She lives out of state, so she can’t. Is there some reason you don’t want your sister?”
Alexis studied her fingers. “It’s stupid.”
“How you feel isn’t stupid,” I said.
“It’s just, she, like, only stayed a day after Mom’s funeral. Then went right back to school. She doesn’t care what happens to me.”
I remembered feeling abandoned when my oldest sister went away to school. It wasn’t easy to be left behind, especially in a family filled with grief.
“I don’t know your sister, so I can’t say what she cares about. I do know people grieve in very different ways. Could it be she rushed back to school because she felt so sad and upset and couldn’t handle it?”
Alexis shrugged. “Maybe.” She took out her phone. “I’ll text you her number.”
“Good. Let’s all talk together at first, though,” I said. “We’ll pick a time.”
Alexis picked at loose skin around her nail bed. Little beads of blood sprang up. “We can always drop it, right? If you find out anything that looks bad for my dad?"
“In the long run, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes. But you should know that because you’re a minor, the court might want to weigh in on that first. To make sure your sister and I are protecting your interests.”
I’d spent much of Sunday afternoon after the singing job researching issues about minors bringing lawsuits. The next morning I quizzed Mensa Sam, the personal injury lawyer, to be sure I understood what I learned. It meant working late last night so I could keep up with my paying clients’ cases, but it was worth it. Because now I felt confident answering all Alexis’ and Eric’s questions.
“But if the court thought he did it, wouldn’t it be protecting Alexis’ interests to go ahead?” Eric asked.
“If her dad has money he’s not using to support her and her sister, and the lawsuit is the only way to get those funds, then yes. The court might not let us drop the suit.” I inched my chair closer to the table. “In that case, I could withdraw as your attorney but the court would look for someone else to handle it. But from everything you’ve told me, and your uncle told you, your dad doesn’t have money stashed away to get. So there’d be no reason for the court to do that.”
“And you’re not going to look for bad things about him? Like the police are doing?”
For someone convinced of her dad’s innocence, she expressed a lot of concern. Like me at that age, she knew to look around the corners of life for what might be coming next.
“I’ll look for the truth. And any information that shows who’s responsible for your mom’s death.”
In a perfect world I’d discover some weird chemical reaction that poisoned Ivy but was the fault of a manufacturer, not anyone Alexis knew and trusted.
No, that was wrong. In a perfect world, parents wouldn’t die and leave their children.
Eric folded his arms over his chest. “But if something points to her dad, then what?”
Alexis looked at me, hands still for once, her eyes narrowed. She wanted a real answer, not stock reassurances.
“I won’t tell you to sue your dad, and I won’t do anything the law doesn’t require me to do to bring that evidence to light. But I’m not going to manufacture evidence against anyone else or pretend that someone else is responsible. You understand that?"
"Yeah." She started picking at her nail bed again.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure." Blood ran down the side of her finger.
"Okay.” I took a clean tissue from my shoulder bag and handed it to her. “We’ll talk to your sister, and if she agrees I’ll put something in writing.”
“How’s my dad going to support us if he’s in jail?” Alexis said.
I sighed. “It’s a problem a lot of defendants have. If they have a job before being arrested and can’t afford to bond themselves out, they usually lose their jobs.”
“But they get them back, right, once they’re released?” Alexis said.
“Lots of them do.”
I decided not to add that if they got out after pleading guilty to any crime, the employer might not take them back. And it wasn’t easy looking for work with a criminal record. That was an issue for down the road.
“Don’t worry,” Eric said. “Truck drivers are in big demand now. I just read an article about it.”
I wanted to hug him right there, he was such a good kid. He wasn’t wrong about truck drivers. I had a client who ran a trucking company and lamented finding qualified people. If Santiago pled to any sort of felony, though, I doubted he’d still be employable.
Eric offered to go in and get another cappuccino for Alexis and hot water for me. We both said yes. Then I took out my legal pad and started asking Alexis questions.
6
Alexis rubbed her hands together. “I didn’t see my mom the day she died. I don’t know what happened.”
"That’s okay. Why don’t you tell me about your mom. What she was like?”
I wanted to start with something Alexis might feel more comfortable with than the facts surrounding her mom’s death. Also, in law I learned early on that open-ended questions are almost always best when you're trying to get information. It lets the witness tell the story in their own way, which usually means the person relaxes and talks more.
"My mom had more money," Alexis said. “When they met.”
"What do you mean?" I wrote a dollar sign and a plus next to Ivy’s name. That the topic of money came to mind first when I asked about her parents’ relationship told me a lot.
Alexis twirled one of her rings, a thick metal one. "I don't know why I said that. My uncle always says it."
"Why does he say it do you think?"
"He never got over Mommy – Mom – marrying a truck driver.”
Eric returned and set fresh, hot drinks on the table.
"Did your mom have her store when they met?"
I was pretty sure she hadn't. Though I hadn’t had much chance to research Ivy, I had found her bio as the owner of a vegan cosmetics store. The store was inside a block-wide building near the Chicago Board of Trade. Its anchor tenants were Starbucks and the Wintrust Bank. I had cut through that building pretty often during winters when I worked at my old firm and had never seen the store.
"No. She only started it, like, a year or two ago. She and dad had to work out a bunch of things. Something about marital property?"
I made a note to look for anything about the store when I pulled the domestic relations court file. It was already on my To Do list.
A driver near the intersection of Dearborn and Harrison laid on the horn, blasting our ear drums. I waited until the noise stopped and asked, "So what did your mom do for a living when she met your dad?"
After the question was out I realized it contained an assumption that Ivy’s money had come from work rather than being family money.
"Something in banking. Or finance? Money or investments. But she quit a long time ago."
"Before you were born?"
That was the measuring stick for most kids. Maybe most adults, too. For my Gram, who is in her late seventies, anything from 1980 on still feels recent.
"Between when my sister was born and I was born, I think. They moved here from Boston. And lived with my aunt and uncle for a while until Mom got a job somewhere.”
“Also in finance?”
“Um, yeah, I think so. But she said she was unhappy not being home with us, so she decided to stay home full time."
"And did your dad work during that time?”
"Yeah. He always says moving to Chicago didn’t really change work for him. He still drove over-the-road and was just based out of a different office. And he got a lot of time off, like six weeks in summer.”
“But you said he only drives in the Chicago area now.”
“Right. He switched two or three years ago. Said he got tired of being on the road so much. He wanted to feel like he lived somewhere, not out of his truck.”
I circled the timeframe in my notes. And wondered if his decision to be home more contributed to his marriage ending. Maybe Ivy and Santiago had gotten along better in smaller doses.
“So when your uncle said your mom had more money – does that mean she saved a lot when she was in the financial world? Or she inherited money?”
“Not inherited.”
Alexis told me she had never met her grandparents on her Mom’s side. Ivy hadn’t talked much about them, other than that they were both dead by the time she reached college and she had to make her own way.
"Do you know how your parents met?" I said.
"Bowling? I know Dad was in, like, a league. Mom and her friends hung out at the bar. I think her friend’s boyfriend did standup comedy. Something like that. Mom saw Dad bowling and thought he was cute and went over to talk to him."
"Did they date very long before they got married?"
"Like two years? Maybe less. I'm not sure."
After a few more questions about her family, I asked about the house. Her mom, she said, lived in a three-flat in Andersonville, a Chicago neighborhood about seven miles north of downtown. She and Santiago bought it with another couple. The Jimenez-Browns lived on the second and third floor, and the other couple on the first. They all shared the basement.
Alexis added that she thought maybe only her mom owned it, which I found interesting. In Illinois, any property you get or income you earn while married is marital property, meaning it’s legally owned by both of you. If you want to keep assets owned before marriage separate, they need to stay totally split. The other spouse can’t contribute to them.
I don’t do divorce law, but I guessed keeping a house separate would be a challenge. If Santiago made part of the mortgage payments or paid for remodeling, it could easily become marital property. Another point to check out in the court file. Plus I moved the owner of the first floor near the top of my interview list.
“Any idea why your uncle believes your dad is guilty?” I said.
“Just that my dad was at the apartment alone to take care of the dog the Friday before Mom died.”
Alexis sat straight in her chair, her hands wrapped around her cappuccino.
“We can stop talking any time,” I said.
“No, you know, let’s keep going. I want you to get started.”
“Okay. If it gets too upsetting, though, let me know. Do you know who found your mom?”
“Her friend from downstairs. Ellison. She lives alone there now. She and her husband got divorced. She called the police because Ralph – that’s Mom’s dog – kept barking and barking. Mom didn’t answer her phone or the door. So Ellison called the police and they broke in.”
I wondered why Ellison didn’t have a key if they were such good friends. My friend Lauren and I own condos in the same building – a converted printing factory in Chicago’s Printers Row neighborhood. We have each other’s keys in case of emergencies.
“Do you know if the police figured out what type of poison was used?”
“Antifreeze? I think that’s what they told my uncle. But I don’t know if it was in her food or a drink or what.”
“Did they find the antifreeze in her home?”
“Not sure.”
“Eric said your dad still had a key to your mom’s place?”
“Yeah. He was there every other week or so. He fixed things for her. Like if a cabinet door broke or something.”
So it wasn’t unusual for Santiago to be there, which to me made his visit the day before she died less suspicious.
“Did he work on her car?” I said.
“She doesn’t have a car anymore. He took it with him.”
Less reason for antifreeze to be at Ivy’s home at all, then.
“How long ago did he move out?”
She fiddled with the cup, spinning it in the saucer. “Uh, about two years ago.”
“And you said before they get along?”
“I—not as good as when they were together. But Dad still got along better with Mom than most people.” She pulled at the edges of the Kleenex wrapped around her finger.
“People didn’t get along with your mom?”
Alexis’ shoulders drew together. “You had to do things Mom’s way. You know, she wanted help loading the dishwasher, but the forks had to be turned tines down and not fall against each other. She called it nesting. Don’t let the silverware nest. And food had to be passed left to right at the table and if you were putting an egg in a cake mix, this is before she was vegan, you had to break the egg first in a separate bowl and sniff it to make sure it hadn’t gone bad. If you missed a step, she got really mad.”
“OCD?” I said. “Obsessive –”
