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  Scott cocked an eyebrow. He had their interest. “This is high-profile, career-making stuff. You can’t let these cases get away and if they start to slide, you’ve got to go proactive.”

  The first male clerk spoke again. “How is it getting away?”

  “It’s been four weeks, and our friends in the police department don’t have a suspect. After that amount of time, the odds say they never will. That’s how.”

  One of the female clerks checked in. “But they must be looking? Isn’t it just a matter of time?”

  Scott conceded that sometimes it was. “But in this case, the original inspector, Carl Griffin, was working solo and got himself shot to death—apparently unrelated— just a few days after Bree was killed. The new guys, Batavia and Coleman, haven’t found anything, and it doesn’t seem like it’s bothering them. And until they bring us a suspect, we’ve got no job.”

  Scott let them absorb the facts for a moment. “So if you’re me and you want this case, I mean you really want this case, what do you do?”

  This was the kind of information the clerks came here to lap up. They were rapt as he continued. “I’ll tell you what I did do. I went to Ms. Pratt”—San Francisco’s district attorney, Sharron Pratt—“and told her, promised her, that if she gave me my own investigator, I would bring the case before the grand jury to get an indictment.”

  The second young woman spoke up. “How?”

  Scott flashed a grin. “I’m glad you asked that question, Kimberly. And here’s the answer: The grand jury is your friend. You know how it works—no defense lawyers allowed, no judge in the room. You present your case to twenty average citizens and do it without worrying too much about legalities. If you’re not brain dead, you get your indictment.”

  “But if the police don’t have a suspect, who do you call as witnesses?” Kimberly asked.

  “Everybody I can think of, including Kerry, his campaign manager Al Valens; Jim Pierce, this Caloco oil vice president who was Bree’s old mentor. Then I go after the personal connections—and remember that no matter what else might be involved, murder is usually personal.

  “So I subpoena Bree’s husband, Ron, Ron’s friends and friends of friends, her professors, colleagues, lab partners. Somewhere I’m betting I’m going to pull a break.”

  “So it’s a fishing expedition,” the first clerk commented. “But we’ve always been told not to—”

  Scott was brusque. “Forget the garbage they taught you in law school. Here’s Real Life One-A. There’s lawyers who win in front of juries, they’ve got careers. All the others wind up pushing paper or crunching numbers. Your choice. So I’m going to take this murder of Bree Beaumont and get my name on the marquee. The grand jury’s my vehicle. I’m riding it and taking no prisoners.”

  Scott’s eyes were bright. “This time next week, mark my words, this case is front burner. And it’s mine.”

  Scott had served his witness, a Mrs. Frannie Hardy, at her home on the previous Friday. The subpoena had instructed her to call if her time on the witness stand presented a conflict or hardship. If that had been the case. Scott would have rescheduled—he’d done so with several other witnesses. If Mrs. Hardy had called, he would have told her how long he expected her to be on the stand, what kinds of questions he was likely to ask.

  Scott had no indication that the witness had ever met Bree Beaumont. He got her name from Ron, Bree’s husband, who’d said that he and Mrs. Hardy had been having coffee together on the morning of Bree’s death. So she was Ron’s primary alibi and as such Scott wanted to talk to her. But it wasn’t going to be the Inquisition. Frannie Hardy was not a suspect. If she’d called to discuss anything, Scott would have reassured her.

  But no call.

  So this morning, when Mrs. Hardy had arrived late at the grand jury room, ten minutes after it had gone into session at nine-thirty, Scott had already begun talking to James Pierce, a senior vice president and Caloco’s community relations officer. He had worked closely with Bree before she’d left the company and had known her since she’d been recruited from Cal. If there were any bones in her closet, Scott thought Pierce would know where they were hidden.

  Ironically, Scott’s initial plan had been to take Mrs. Hardy before Pierce, thinking that hers was probably going to be a much shorter questioning—Scott hadn’t wanted to hang her up for the whole day. But when she hadn’t been there on time and Pierce had, that was too bad for her—she’d brought it on herself.

  So now Scott was going to let Mrs. Hardy sweat it out. No, he’d told her during a break in Pierce’s testimony. He didn’t know how long it would be until he got to her. No, she couldn’t come back another day. He trotted out his favorite phrase. This was not a parlor game. This was a murder investigation.

  “I know all about murder investigations,” she told him. “My husband’s an attorney, too.”

  “Then you know how serious this is.”

  Mrs. Hardy did not seem convinced. “I know how important you all think it is,” she said mildly. “Look, Mr. Randall, I’m just trying to find out how long this will be. I’ve got to pick up my children at school. If I’m not going to be out of here by one o’clock, I’m going to have to make some phone calls.”

  “I think that’s a good possibility,” he said with conscious ambiguity.

  She didn’t think it was too important, did she? Well, she’d find out.

  As it developed, he began with her just before noon. She had just decided to make her phone calls when Scott called her to testify. She thought it couldn’t be too long. She’d have plenty of time. There was no need to call.

  After he administered the oath that she tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Scott had her identify herself, and then started right in. “Mrs. Hardy, were you acquainted with the deceased, Bree Beaumont?”

  “No. I never met her.”

  “But you did know her husband, Ron?”

  “That’s correct.” Mrs. Hardy was sitting at a table in the front of the room, facing the twenty jurors. Now she looked up at them and explained. “Ron is the full-time parent in their family, so we saw each other mostly at school and other child-related events.”

  “And how long have you known him?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A couple or three years.” Another explanation to the jury. “He’s kind of an honorary mom. We tease him about it.”

  “We?”

  “‘You know, the other moms at school.”

  Scott was just fishing, talking about whatever came up. Here before the grand jury, strict relevancy wasn’t much of an issue. “Does he seem to resent this role?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, being Mr. Mom? Did he ever talk about resenting that his wife worked and he didn’t?”

  Mrs. Hardy gave that a minute’s thought. “No. I don’t think it bothered him.”

  “Did you find that strange?”

  “What? That he took care of the kids or that he didn’t resent taking care of them?”

  “I don’t know. Both. Either.”

  Another beat while she reflected. “Not any more than anybody else.” Mrs. Hardy broke a smile to the jurors. “I think sometimes our little darlings get hard for anybody. ” Then, back to Scott, more seriously. “But with Ron, he seemed fine with it. His wife did her job, he did his. He’s a good father.”

  “She made the money and he didn’t?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Randall. It happens here in the nineties.”

  “And that didn’t bother him? Being the man and not making any money.”

  “I just said that. It didn’t seem to.” Her voice took on a sharp edge. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed Mrs. Beaumont.”

  “Well, it wasn’t Ron. He was with me when she died. We were having coffee at the Starbucks on Twenty-eighth and Geary, near Merryvale School.” This seemed to remind her of something and she glanced up at the wall clo
ck, pursed her lips.

  Scott Randall pushed ahead. “And how did that come about?”

  “What?”

  “Having coffee.”

  “I don’t even understand that question. We just decidedto go get a cup of coffee. There wasn’t anything sinister about it.”

  “I didn’t say there was.”

  “Well, it seems to me you implied it. We met at school dropping off the kids, and Ron said he felt like a cup of coffee and I said I thought that sounded good. So we both went.”

  Again, she glanced at the wall clock. “Look, I’m sorry, but are we almost done here? I’ve got to go pick up my kids pretty soon.”

  “When we’re done,” Scott replied. “After we’re done.”

  Scott did not view himself as a cruel person, but a woman’s tears on a witness stand were as unimportant as the temperature in the room, or the lighting. Sometimes you had to deal with them, that was all. But you had no feelings about them one way or the other.

  Frannie Hardy, on the stand before him now, crying, did not make his heart go all soft. True enough, she was quite lovely, well dressed, with striking green eyes and bright red hair, and if he’d been anywhere but in a courtroom with her, he might have had other thoughts. But not now. She’d brought her troubles upon herself and now she was paying the price.

  She wasn’t sobbing. Scott was sure these were tears of anger. He didn’t care.

  “You have to let me make my phone call.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. You’re staying here.”

  “You told me we’d be finished by now.”

  Scott shrugged. “I said we might be. It was possible. I thought we would be, but you’re not answering my questions. That’s slowing things down.”

  It was already half an hour past when she was supposed to have left to pick up her children. She’d been on the stand for two hours.

  “Let’s go over this one more time, all right?”

  “I’m not saying anything until you let me use the phone.”

  It had devolved into a pitched battle of wills, and Scott held the high ground. He made the rules in this room, and Mrs. Hardy was going to play by them.

  Scott had long since abandoned the casual approach. He was standing at one end of the front table so he could look now at Mrs. Hardy and now at his jurors.

  “Mrs. Hardy, you’re putting me in an awkward position. As it stands now, if you don’t answer my questions you’re going to force me to go to a judge in the Superior Court and get a contempt citation issued against you. You might very well get thrown in jail, do you understand that? If that happens, if it gets to there, then you’ll get your phone call to your attorney. But I’m not letting you off this stand in the middle of your testimony. We can be finished here in ten minutes if you cooperate, but if you don’t, it’s going to be a long afternoon.

  “Now,” Scott pressed her. “Let’s try again one more time. You have testified that you knew—Ron Beaumont had confided in you—that his relationship with his wife was in a difficult stage. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, he told me that.”

  “And did he tell you the nature of these difficulties?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Did Mr. Beaumont tell you anything that suggested he was unhappy or angry with Mrs. Beaumont?”

  Frannie shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say so. But really I have no idea how he felt. We didn’t talk about them.”

  “But he did tell you he was having difficulties?”

  “I would say so.”

  Scott Randall turned over a few pages on his yellow legal pad. He looked at the jury, then back to the witness. “Mrs. Hardy, do you find Mr. Beaumont attractive?”

  Her lips went tight. “I have never thought about it.”

  Scott conveyed his disbelief clearly to the jury. “Never thought about it? You obviously had a relationship with him, a close relationship, isn’t that true? And you didn’t notice if he was attractive or not?”

  “I may have noticed, but I didn’t think about it. We were friends, that’s all.”

  “And yet he chose you, and you alone, to confide in about his marital problems.”

  “I don’t know that. He might have confided in other people. I don’t know if it was only me.”

  “Were you two having an affair, Mrs. Hardy? Is that it?”

  Frannie Hardy was biting down hard on her lower lip. She clipped out the words. “I’ve already told you, we were friends.”

  Scott Randall remained matter-of-fact. “That’s right— that’s what you told me. But friends have affairs all the time. Did his wife find out about you, was that it? Was she going to make problems for the two of you?”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

  “Well, you’d better dignify something with an answer, and pretty soon. You’re digging yourself into quite a hole here, don’t you realize that?”

  Frannie was shaking her head back and forth wearily. How had it all come to this so quickly? She closed her eyes and forced her voice to remain calm, rational. “Look, Mr. Randall, what do you want me to say? I’m late picking up my children, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m not having any affair with Ron Beaumont, and never did. I never met his wife. I don’t think Ron’s problems with his relationship led to his wife’s death.”

  “Let us decide that, Mrs. Hardy. You’ve admitted that the problems existed. Just tell us what they were.”

  Frannie didn’t know it, but Scott Randall and the grand jury had already heard Ron Beaumont say that Bree and he were getting along fine, there were no problems between them. Scott thought it might be a good time to mention this to Frannie. She sat still, her face a blank now.

  “Mrs. Hardy?”

  “I promised him it would remain between us. I wouldn’t tell anybody. I gave him my word.”

  Scott sensed an opening. “Mrs. Hardy, let’s be realistic. No one believes that promises are that sacred anymore. This could be a crucial element in a murder investigation. Are you sure you haven’t mentioned what Mr. Beaumont told you to your husband or one of your girlfriends?”

  She was staring at him, trying to keep her anger in check. More tears threatened. A drop escaped from her right eye. “I promised,” she repeated. “I gave my word.”

  Scott looked back out to the jurors. He took a beat and sighed. “All right, Mrs. Hardy,” he said, “you don’t leave me any choice.”

  By four-thirty, Superior Court Judge Marian Braun had already had a long day on the bench presiding over an unusually depressing murder trial. Members of a Gypsy clan had convinced several wealthy old people that they were their friends. They had persuaded them to sign over their assets, and then poisoned them with “magic salt”—digitalis. The magic salt was a big yuk—the defendants had giggled as they sprinkled it on. Marian Braun was used to bad people committing heinous crimes, but this one got under her skin.

  Today had been particularly dispiriting because a dozen or more very tough-looking relatives of the defendants had put on a show of force by appearing in her courtroom just in time to intimidate the state’s main witness, another of the clan who hadn’t been able to live with her conscience and who’d been promised immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony. But the thugs in the courtroom got their message across—the woman suddenly couldn’t remember witnessing any of the defendants sprinkling salt on anything. Now it seemed possible that these heartless killers were going to go free.

  When Judge Braun’s bailiff came to her chambers and told her that Scott Randall had a contempt citation for her at the end of her already lousy day, she grabbed her robes, breathing fire, and strode impatiently through the hallways to the grand jury room.

  “No, ma’am. As Mr. Randall has explained to you, you don’t have a choice unless you’re claiming a Fifth Amendment right. But you’ve told me that your testimony will not incriminate yourself, which rules out that option. You’ve got to tell him what you know.”

  Fra
nnie Hardy shook her head. This had been going on for so long that all her patience was used up. “I can’t believe this is the United States.” Her eyes scanned the faces of the jurors, went to Scott Randall, finally rested on Marian Braun. “What’s the matter with all you people? You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t you have any real lives? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  This line of discourse turned out to be a tactical error. Judge Braun wasn’t about to have the validity of her life and work called into question by some nobody witness. She snapped out her reply. “First, in this room you address me as Your Honor. Next, as to doing something wrong, you are refusing to cooperate in the investigation of a murder case. Like it or not, that’s a crime. Now for the last time, young lady, you answer the question or you go to jail.”

  “I’m not your young lady.” A pause. “Ma’am.”

  Braun slapped at the table. “All right, then, I’m ordering you held in the county jail until you decide to answer Mr. Randall’s questions.” Judge Braun half turned. “Bailiff ...”

  But Frannie was on her feet now, her voice raised, color high. “You want to talk contempt? I hold you in contempt. God help the system if you cretins are running it.”

  Braun’s steely gaze came back to her. “You just got yourself four days before this grand jury citation even starts to run. You want more, young lady, just keep talking. Bailiff.”

  The guard came forward.

  4

  Hardy got Frannie’s call at six-twenty and made the half-hour drive downtown to the Hall of Justice in seventeen minutes. On the way, he stopped fuming long enough to think to call Abe Glitsky on his car phone, see if he could work some magic. The county jail and the Hall of Justice were on the same lot. Maybe Glitsky could get the ball rolling.

  But the lieutenant was waiting for him by the back door of the Hall, at the entrance to the jail. He wasn’t wearing his happy face.

  Hardy came up at a jog, slacks and shirtsleeves, no coat, knowing before he asked. “She still in there? She really in there?” Though he never doubted she was. This wasn’t the kind of funny birthday prank Frannie was likely to pull on him.