A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

“There’s someone to see you,” Wanda said.

Lily was at her desk, taking care of the odds and ends of the Lightfoot case.  She looked up at the knock on her door, in time to catch a strange expression on the receptionist’s face.

“Yes, who?” she inquired.

Wanda stepped aside, and Randy Hitchens came into view.  “I think I need a lawyer,” he said.

“Yes, I expect you do,” Lily replied.  “But you’ve come to the wrong place.  I can’t represent you.”

“Why not?” he asked.  “Your case is over.  Your client is free.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Okay, I admit it, I didn’t do a very good job of investigating the damn case,” Hitchens said, his pale blue eyes looking directly into her hazel ones.  “But I didn’t kill my partner.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you because -- ?” Lily inquired.

“Okay, so maybe I didn’t like him very much.  I guess you could even say I despised him -- especially after I found out what he was doing to Lauren -- but that doesn’t mean I killed him.  I didn’t kill him.”

“I know,” Lily said.  “You didn’t kill him, and you didn’t plant the bullet, and you were at home all that night with a head cold, too.”

Hitchens sighed.  “All right, look, I’m not going to lie to you anymore, whether you’ll represent me or not.  I messed up.  I got in over my head and then I didn’t know how to get out.  Yes, we had a fight that night.  Yes, I planted the bullet.  But I swear to God I didn’t kill him.”

“No, of course not, and now I suppose you’re going to tell me that you were only trying to --” Lily stopped abruptly, because, suddenly, it all made perfect sense.  “Of course you were,” she murmured.

He shrugged helplessly.  “So tell me -- what else could I do?”

“Sit down,” she said.

. . .

At exactly the same time that Lily was meeting with Randy Hitchens, Maynard Purcell came wandering across the lawn of his Morgan Hill home and onto his next-door neighbor’s patio.  Diana Hightower had wheeled Carson outside to get a breath of fresh air while she cleaned the library.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” the physician said.

“Sure is,” Carson agreed.  “Never thought I’d ever yearn for the weather to go cool.”

Purcell nodded.  “But it was nice while it lasted.”

“What -- you mean the Indian Summer?” Carson asked.

The physician chuckled.  “Ironic, don’t you think?” he said.  “All things considered.”

“Ironic, indeed,” the former prosecutor agreed.  “So what are you up to -- taking the day off?”

“I guess so,” Purcell replied.  “Thinking about maybe taking the rest of my days off.”

“You’re going to retire?”  Carson was truly surprised.  The physician was in excellent health and ten years younger than the seventy-four-year-old former prosecutor.

“Maybe.”

“Never thought I’d hear you say it.  Always thought the heavenly angels were going to have to carry you out of your examining room, kicking and screaming.”

“Things change,” Purcell said.  He looked up at the trees that ran between his property and his neighbor’s, and sighed deeply.  “Look, can I talk to you -- about a matter?” he asked.  “I mean, in confidence?”

“A legal matter?”

“Potentially.”

“Sure you don’t want to talk to my daughter?  She’s the lawyer in the family now.”

“It might come to that,” Purcell said.  “But right now, I’d just like to talk to you, friend to friend, if that’s okay.”

Carson eyed his neighbor thoughtfully.  He could sense a fair amount of stress, and perhaps something else, lurking just below the surface.

“Sure,” he said.

. . .

“You’ll never guess who came to see me today,” Lily began the dinner table conversation that evening.

“That wouldn’t be a certain Port Hancock police detective, would it?” Carson suggested, hazarding a guess, but not a far-fetched one.

Dancer smiled.

Lily blinked.  “How did you know?”

Her father crunched the left side of his body in what nowadays passed for a shrug.  “After court yesterday, it seemed likely the young man would be looking for an attorney.”

“He says he didn’t kill Dale,” Lily reported.  “And you know what?  I’m inclined to believe him.”

Carson nodded slowly.  “I think we may just have found ourselves in an interesting predicament,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maynard came to see me today.”

“Why?  Is he upset that Jason isn’t going to hang for killing his son-in-law?”

“Not exactly,” Carson said.

“Oh my God,” Lily breathed.  “I was right.”

“Right?  About what?”

“I got the feeling Randy was protecting someone.  I think he wanted to tell me, almost told me, but stopped just short.  And now, with Maynard getting into the picture, it’s getting clearer.”

“Maybe not as clear as you think,” her father said.

“Why?”

“Maynard is willing to say that he killed Dale -- beat him to a pulp and shot him in the head.”

“That’s nonsense,” Lily declared.

“You know it, and I know it, but that’s what he’s prepared to say.”

“And Randy is willing to say that he covered it all up, but that he didn’t kill Dale, and won’t implicate who did.”

“And if we believe that,” the former prosecutor said, “then we’re left with only one option.”

Lily nodded.  “Two men trying to save one woman.”

“Which means there may be a little more to the detective’s relationship with the widow than simply transporting her to and from the hospital.”

“So what do we have,” Lily wondered, “three lives ready to be destroyed over one bad cop?”

“I don’t like those odds,” Carson said.

“I don’t, either,” his daughter agreed.  “But I guarantee you John Henry won’t let it go.  He took too big a hit over Jason.”

“That’s the least of my worries,” Carson declared.  “But I have an idea.”

“What sort of idea?”

“One that might just take care of everything,” her father informed her.  “We’re going to have a small dinner party.  Right here.  Tomorrow night.  You issue the invitations.  I’ll tell Diana.”

Dancer listened intently, but said nothing.

. . .

It was an odd group that gathered round the dinner table at the Morgan Hill home on Tuesday evening -- the physician and his wife, their daughter, the detective.

The bodyguard was absent.  His job was over, and it