The Innocent Woman

him into the john, but I wasn’t going to follow him into the stall.”
    Judge Wylie exhaled. “Jesus.”
    “Yeah,” Dirkson said. “What a mess.”
    Steve Winslow looked from one to the other. “And that, gentlemen, is that.”

49.
    “A RE YOU ALL RIGHT ?”
    There was a reason for Mark Taylor’s solicitude. Tracy Garvin looked decidedly pale.
    Not that she appreciated his asking. “Just fine,” she snapped. She flopped into his client’s chair, took her glasses off and pushed the hair out of her eyes. She rammed the glasses back on, almost defiantly.
    “No need to snap his head off,” Steve said. “You have every right to be upset.”
    “Me? Why me?”
    “Having someone blow his brains out like that is a little hard to take.”
    “Granted,” Tracy said. “But why me? What about you and Mark?”
    “Mark’s a hardened detective.” Steve shrugged. “Me, I’m a criminal attorney. I see stuff like that every day.”
    “Don’t joke,” Tracy said.
    “Hey,” Taylor said. “This is not some sexist thing. I’m sick to my stomach too. And when you figure this is your first firsthand experience with something like this.”
    “Oh yeah?” Tracy said. “Are you forgetting I found the body?”
    Steve shrugged. “Well, if the D.A.’s willing to forget about it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
    “Where do we stand on that?” Taylor said.
    “In the clear. Amy Dearborn’s innocent. You can’t aid and abet an innocent person.”
    Taylor grimaced. “Isn’t that a somewhat iffy position?”
    “It would be, if anyone wanted to press the issue. The way things stand, if Dirkson came after us now it would look like spite.”
    “You think he’d care what it looked like?”
    “To the voters, yes. Trust me, Dirkson will take all the credit he can on this one, and everything else will slide. You read the papers tomorrow, it’ll look like it was Dirkson’s doing that Cunningham cracked. You’d swear he was on to him all along. And anything connected with the Amy Dearborn arrest will quietly fade away.’’
    Taylor thought that over. Nodded judiciously, then cocked his head. “Think you’d have sold him? I mean, say Cunningham doesn’t blow his brains out, you think they’d have gone along?”
    “Eventually, yes,” Steve said. “I had Judge Wylie sold. Dirkson’s another matter. The guy would have loved to nail us, and hated to let go.”
    “How’d you get around the drawer?” Tracy said.
    Steve looked up. “Huh?”
    “The petty cash drawer. How’d you explain that?”
    “Just the way I did in court. Some crime scene guy did it and was covering up.”
    “But Dirkson would never buy that.”
    “Of course not. He knew I was lying. But there was no way I was going to admit Amy Dearborn had been there before. So that was the only argument I could make.”
    “So who did it?” Tracy said.
    “Who did what?”
    “You know what. Who closed the petty cash drawer?”
    “Ah, good question,” Steve said.
    The color had returned to Tracy’s cheeks. She snatched off her glasses, folded them up, cocked her head, looked at him. “Thank you. Now do you think you could be troubled to answer it?”
    The intercom buzzed. Taylor scooped up the phone, listened, said, “Thanks,” and hung up. “Amy Dearborn called. She’s on her way up.”
    “That was her?” Steve said.
    “No. The switchboard. She called, found out you were here, and she’s coming up.”
    “Why’d she call here? Oh, don’t tell me.” He turned to Tracy. “You have call-forwarding on?”
    “Sure.”
    Steve shook his head. “That’s funny. Since this case started, all I’ve heard is answering machines and call-forwarding. Every time I turned around. Finally the damn thing clicked.”
    “That really was the solution?” Taylor said. “That’s how he heard the message?”
    “I have no idea,” Steve said. “I’m sure Dirkson will check it out. Any maybe he did. Maybe it’s just as I said. But maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t even have call-forwarding. Maybe he just called her answering machine to see if she had any messages because that’s the type of nosy, jealous guy he was. But that doesn’t matter. However it happened, the fact is he got the message, went down there and killed him.”
    “Yeah, but what about the petty cash drawer?” Tracy said.
    “Not to mention the petty cash,” Taylor said. “Who took that?”
    “Larry Cunningham,” Tracy said.
    “Not that petty cash,” Taylor said. “I