The Swap Ch. 02

"By the way," I said to Jeanine, "why did Mrs. Warner pick you to come here today? You're a divorce attorney, not a criminal defense legal beagle."

"I... I shouldn't tell you this." Jeanine Olivet said. "But Mrs. Warner has consulted me twice in the last couple of weeks, and I guess I was the only lawyer in her speed dial. I can't tell you any more, the ol' lawyer-client privilege, ya know."

"I understand. Thanks, Jeanine." I said, my mind in deep thought until Cindy broke me out of it as Jeanine left. Once the door closed, we were able to go through the other door to the hallway towards the MCD room.

"Gonna be at the party, Cindy?" I asked.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world." Cindy replied. "By the way, do you regard it as suspicious that Mrs. Warner wouldn't leave her daughter's side and let us question Karen separately?"

"Not really." I replied. "Karla still sees Karen as her little girl, needing motherly protection from big bad police wolves. I'm much more interested in how Karen emphasized that Warner was her stepfather.

"Of course," I continued, a huge grin on my face, "from what we just saw, Karen can hold her own. She's out of her mom's league..."

"Stoppit, stoppit, stoppit!" Cindy cried out as we both broke down laughing in the hallway, officers looking at us as if we'd lost our minds.

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"Oh, this should be fun!" my mother Phyllis said as I called her to Police Auxiliary duty and asked her to verify Seth's alibi, which she did. She then came to the Headquarters to fill me in. We talked in the Chief's office so that Chief Griswold could hear my mother's story also.

"Yes, son, I went to Shayla Belle's home." Mom said. "I had met her before at one of the Ladies Auxiliary meetings. She invited me into the house, and I did explain right off the top that I had to speak to her confidentially of a very private matter. At that, she suggested we drive around in my car and not talk at home."

"Once in the car, she said she was afraid her husband had bugged her house. She then said she knew why I had come to see her on behalf of the police, and asked if I had to make anything public. I said that I would be discreet and would only tell you in order to prove that young Seth did not kill his father."

"Shayla Belle told me that her husband had caught her cheating in the past, and that he threatened to divorce her if he ever caught her again. Since then, he'd hired private detectives to watch her at times and she thought the house was bugged. She said if she had any money of her own, she'd divorce 'the bastard' -- those were her words."

"But yes, son, she did confirm that she and young Seth were having sex from about 8:00pm to well 11:00pm. Her husband was out of town. She said that Seth was a wonderful young man, that she liked him a lot in addition to him being good in bed. She said he was...'worth the risk'... of getting caught with. "

"So she confirms the alibi." I said. "That's great. You're a great detective, Mom!"

"Yes, my son had to inherit his abilities from somewhere, Chief Griswold." my mother said, looking at the Chief, who just smiled under his mustaches. "Now I have to go help finish the arrangements for your party tonight, Don."

Part 10 - Prequel To A Party

"I heard you've been beating people up." said Steven Ikea as he strolled into the MCD room at 3:55pm.

"Would you like to join the list of people I've beaten up, Ikea? Oh that's right... you're already on the list, aren't you?" I replied.

"That lawyer Sommes from DynaCorp is about to bury your ass in legal shit, buddy." Ikea said, his voice haughty.

"Sommes? Who's that? Only lawyer I can think of right now is Jeanine Olivet." I said, deeply aware that Ikea was attempting to trap me on Sommes's behalf. The mention of Mrs. Olivet was to let Ikea know she could still sue him or throw him to the wolves for physically attacking her during questioning.

"Guys, we have a meeting." I said, getting out of my chair. "Ikea, if you'd like another demonstration of getting the shit beat out of you, just let me know, anytime, anyplace."

"Bring it on, buddy." Ikea said, his body posture one of confrontation as Teresa Croyle hurried into the room to grab him. "Remember, neither you nor your crowbar can outrun a bullet--hey!" He was interrupted as Teresa grabbed him and literally began pulling him out of the room.

"What the fuck are you trying to do?" Teresa said to Ikea as she got him out of there and back to the Vice room.

"Never seen him like that." Cindy said as we headed to the conference room. "Why does he think he can be so arrogant like that? What's he know that we don't?"

"Not a damn thing." I said. "He's trying to start trouble on behalf of his benefactors. You're seeing a proxy fight between Town & County Council members."

It was precisely 4:00pm as we gathered in the main conference room for the afternoon meeting.

"Some dipshit lawyer named Sommes went to D.A. Krasney about a couple of officers beating the shit out of him this morning at DynaCorp. A blue crowbar was mentioned." Chief Griswold growled. "Fortunately, the D.A. does not like Mr. Sommes, they go way back... and the D.A. told Sommes to eat shit and die, and he did use those exact words."

"Then Sommes tried to call Internal Affairs, but Lieutenant Allgood is out of the office, having given his staff a well-earned early start on the weekend at noon today. So this lawyer is going to find out about crossing Town & County Law if he goes one mile per hour over the speed limit. All that being said, I do not want to hear any more reports of crowbar abuse by unnamed police officers. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?"


"You do, sir." I replied, knowing that the Chief had just admonished me and covered his legal ass at the same time... but he had also enhanced my reputation with the crowbar, and the word would travel 'unofficially' amongst not only the Police Force, but also throughout legal circles in the County. Good.

The chief hurriedly moved people through their reports, then said "Anyone have anything new?"

"I have just one question, for Tanya." I said. "Tanya, confirm for me the safety system on Mr. Warner's car. If anyone was in the locked car as he approached it, doesn't he get a warning beep or light on his car key buttons?"

Tanya consulted her notes. "Yes, that's true.... oh wait!" Her eyes glowed as she looked at me, having caught on. "Damn, Don, I see what you're getting at! That has to suggest that its not likely the perp was hiding in the car, or Mr. Warner would've known something was up."

"Yep, but there is of course one other possibility." I said. Even Tanya didn't catch on, so all I said was "It could also be that the system was somehow defeated."

"I'll check on that." Tanya said, making a note. Everyone else looked blank, except Cindy Ross, who was staring at me.

"Don, put this together for me so we can get out of here and get ready for your party tonight." Chief Griswold said.

"First, the Schelle case." I began. "Everything in the world would point to the husband. The electrical set-up, the frayed extension cord, Mr. Schelle is an electrical engineer and could make that set-up. Then we have Mr. Schelle's increasingly bad finances, his wife getting tenure, and their deteriorating marriage. By the way, folks, the tenure thing is still not announced, so don't say anything to anyone about it."

"She's dead, so it doesn't really matter anymore." Britt Maxwell correctly pointed out. "And President Wellman is going to go ahead and make the tenure announcements today, if he hasn't already, in order to pre-empt any leaks that might come out. But how do you know their marriage was going bad?"

"He's been sleeping on the sofa in his living room for months, while his wife stayed upstairs in her office and slept in the bed." I said. "That was obvious from our walk-through the night of the murder."

"You know," Martin Nash said, "I wonder if Robert thought Michelle was going to divorce him. Once she got tenure, she sure didn't need him or his money, but he sure needed hers."

"Good thought, Nash." the Chief said. "These cross-current meetings are doing us some good, Don. The problem of course, as I understand it, is that he has an alibi. You think he hired someone to kill his wife, Don?"

"We'll have to find it and prove it." I said. "And so far, everything suggests that every dime he had to his name was tied into his business, trying to save it. How is he going to pay someone a hundred grand to kill his wife for him?"

"Keep digging into his finances, Sonali." the Chief said to the lovely Indian computer analyst, who was sitting next to Myron. This was her first big conference, and she was wide-eyed as the Chief continued. "Okay, what about the Warner murder? Do I need to mention that I'm getting a little heat from powerful people about this one?"

"No sir, you do not. I'm getting it too." I said. "And once again, our two best suspects, his wife and his sister, have alibis. Ditto that for the Warner kids. The Board Vice Chairman, Mr. Willoughby, his name has popped up a couple of times, but eyeballs were on him continuously during the time of the murder".

"Myron is going to have to melt the ethernet trying to find something plausible for this one. So far, we haven't traced anything to suggest a payment for a hired hit. Mrs. Wilson was being cut out of her husband's company, and she has no real money of her own; she was basically living off her brother since her divorce. Mrs. Warner was even more financially dependent upon her husband. We're going to have to start looking into Willoughby and other business associates, and that's going to be a bear."

"How do we know the son has an alibi?" asked Cindy Ross. I love Cindy, but she definitely can ask the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"You can rely upon my word and my discretion for that." said the Chief, the only person beside myself and my mother who knew the truth about trophy wife Shayla Belle. "There are times that discretion is needed, and I'll be the judge of that. This is one of those times, but we've ruled out young Seth as the killer. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir." replied Cindy, not mollified at all, but unable to say any more about it.

"Okay," said the Chief, "where do we go from here, Don?"

"To my party." I said. "I have some instructions for Myron and Sonali here to make some data searches, but there really is little else we can do right now, today."

Cindy Ross whirled and was peering at me. "Don, do you know something that we don't?"

"Nope, you've seen or have been informed about everything I have." I replied.

"Okay guys, check in with the Desk Sergeant in the morning." Chief Griswold said. "Don, you get until noon, I expect you're going to have a long, hard night tonight." Everyone laughed at that. "I'll see you all at the party. Detective Ross, would you come to my office now, please?"

Uh oh, I thought. Cindy's face showed no emotion nor surprise.

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Downstairs in the I.T. 'Dungeon', I told Myron and Sonali and our other new I.T. whiz, a goth girl named Mary, what I'd like their computer data searches to be about.

"Are you kidding me?" Myron said.

"Nope, I want you guys to see if you can find a connection between those two people. Any connection that ties them together, even if it's a shared cab ride. If we make that connection, we have a good chance to bring the killers in both these murders to justice."

I told them to say nothing to anyone about the nature of the instructions and their searches unless something popped up, whereupon they were to tell me first.

"See you all at the party." I said as I left the I.T. room.

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"Have a seat please, Miss Ross." the Chief said as they entered his office. Once they were seated, the Chief got started.

"First, I want to apologize if it seemed like I came down heavy-handed on you about Seth Warner's alibi. I can assure you that we did check him and his alibi out, and also that there is a very real need to keep the information confidential, like a Press source. So I wanted to shut down talk of that, and I hope you understand that."

"I understand, sir." Cindy replied.

"The second thing was your last comment to Don." the Chief continued. "I understand your concern, that Don knows something and isn't telling us, and we're wasting time searching for something we needn't be. Believe me, I have had that conversation with him on more than one occasion."

"What he told me, and I generally agree with, is that if he talks about one of his, as he said in his own words 'hair brained ideas' without anything to back it up, some of you might try to investigate and prove or disprove his thesis, and end up truly wasting your time if he's wrong, -OR- information might leak out before he has a chance to consolidate what he has, which would let a perp know that the Iron Crowbar is after him or her."

"Don does work very hard to make sure you do not waste your time. He does let me know what he's thinking, which he should, and he lets you guys know as soon as he has something solid. Good or good?"

"Good enough, sir. Thank you for telling me." Cindy said.

"I'll tell you this, also, and off the record." the Chief said. "He thinks extremely highly of you, more than anyone else in the entire Detective branch of the Force. He intends to bring you upwards with him, and he intends to break you through some of the glass ceilings that you are having to endure, if you know what I mean."


"Uh, yes sir." Cindy said.

"Trust him, Cindy." the Chief said. "When I'm finally able to retire, I know that this Police Force will be in good hands. His... and yours, as well. Now get out of my office. See you at the party."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Cindy said, acting upon the Chief's dismissal.

To be continued.