Miz Scarlet and the Acrimonious Attorney Read online

  Table of Contents

  Miz Scarlet and the Acrimonious Attorney | A Scarlet Wilson Mystery

  Book Information

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

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  About the Author

  Miz Scarlet and the Acrimonious Attorney

  A Scarlet Wilson Mystery

  By Sara M. Barton

  Book Information

  Draft2Digital Edition

  Copyright 2018 Sara M. Barton

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authorized publisher, Sara M. Barton, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously in the context of the story. They are in no way representative of real life and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers....” That thought popped into my head the minute C. Philip Grimshaw opened his mouth to speak. We were in his Hartford law office just an hour before, sitting across from one another in a conference room. I was furious when he announced that I should settle a nuisance lawsuit brought by a couple of con artists, completely ignoring the fact that the Four Acorns Inn had passed its safety inspections.

  “I’m saying this for your own good,” he chastised me with that annoyingly stern tone of his. “There’s no way for you to win in this situation, no matter what you do. The best you can hope for is to minimize the damage done.”

  “That’s preposterous,” I told him hotly. “The woman is a liar.”

  “Yes, but she’s a liar who is likely to win the case.”

  “How? By pretending she has an injury? It never happened, I tell you!”

  “That won’t matter to the judge or the jury, Scarlet,” he replied, frowning at me. “You have an unwinnable case. That’s it in a nut shell.”

  “I’m just supposed to fork over the money to shut her up?” I was aghast at the notion that the money I earned cleaning toilets and changing bed linens should wind up in the pocket of the deceitful woman wearing a flaming pair of pants, the common attire of a proverbial liar.

  “I’m afraid so.” He announced his decision like it was a done deal. Are you surprised that I begged to differ with that narrow-minded opinion?

  “No way, no how! I will not pay her for concocting such an outrageous fabrication. It’s just so...so wrong!” I sat there fuming as the minutes ticked on. At three hundred dollars an hour, they were quickly adding up to big money; at the very least, I already owed him a hundred and fifty bucks for the first half hour of consultation, but I was pretty sure he would charge me for the full hour. Maybe he thought that I was so frugal that I would quickly fold up my tent and run. It’s not the first time people have underestimated my determination to live by my principles.

  “That’s my advice,” Grimacing Grimshaw said. “You are welcome to take it or leave it.”

  “Take it or leave it?” Was the man delusional? I had busted my fanny to get the Four Acorns Inn up to code. How could I possibly now agree to settle? It would be an admission that the management was at fault.

  Back and forth we went, point by point, but the argument remained unresolved. I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said, but in my defense, I don’t think I would go back and change those words. C. Philip Grimshaw was a most deserving recipient of them. In fact, some of the things he said to me would have earned him much worse from any other client.

  In all honesty, it wasn’t as if I had any inkling of what was to come. People express their emotions every day. It doesn’t mean they intend to kill anybody. If you took the average person and put him or her in my shoes, you still wouldn’t wind up with a murderer. Sane people don’t go around whacking people. They might, if cornered, defend themselves, but they would draw the line at killing someone, even an irritating lawyer like Grimshaw.

  But that was then and this was now. C. Philip Grimshaw had left the building after my appointment. He had gone down to the parking garage and then he had really “left the building”. As in the man was dead. I stared down at the body on the ground. This was definitely murder. There was no mistake about that. Even Mr. Magoo, that old cartoon character, would have discerned that fact through those Coke bottle lenses of his.

  “Oh, crap!” I pulled out my cell phone with trembling hands and dialed 911.

  “Where are you and what’s your emergency?”

  “I’m...I’m in the parking garage on Asylum Street. I just found a man stabbed to death.”

  “I need your exact location.”

  “Um....” I quickly glanced around in the cavernous underground labyrinth, searching for a clue. I read off the number emblazoned on the closest wall.

  “Are you sure the victim is dead?” the dispatcher inquired.

  “Yes!” I panted, starting to hyperventilate. “He’s got a-a-a knife stuck in his chest and there’s blood....His fa-fa-face is all gr-gr-gray!”

  It suddenly dawned on me that I was kneeling beside a very dead body. Someone had deliberately plunged that blade into his chest. “Oh...what if the killer is still down here?”

  “Stay on the line with me. Don’t hang up. Keep talking to me.”

  I jabbered away as the shock set in. The dispatcher peppered me with questions. I answered each and every one of them. What was my name...my date of birth...my phone number...my address....And then she asked the big question.

  “Do you know the victim?”

  “Uh, yes. He’s...he was my attorney.”

  Those last few minutes with C. Philip Grimshaw came rushing back into my brain. I could still remember the fury I felt as I confronted him.

  “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers....” I had uttered that line to Philip in my last, desperate attempt to change his rigid mind, to convince him to stand up for what was right, to not be bowed by the willingness of the plaintiffs’ attorney to trample my good reputation.

  When Shakespeare wrote the memorable line for Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, he wasn’t actually advocating that anyone should commit murder. Dick’s inspiration was Jack Cade, who believed he could become king if he got rid of all the ethical judges and lawyers who fought for justice. It was more about the use of corruption and violence to intimidate people into accepting civil disobedience than it was about slaughtering barristers.

  Mind you, I might have raised my voice a decibel or two when I stormed out of the conference room and down the hallway. As my finger jabbed t
he elevator button in the lobby, I heard a woman gasp.

  “Did she just suggest she wants to kill Philip?”

  “It sounded like that to me,” said a second woman. I turned around, about to contradict them, but the moment they saw me glare at them, they scurried away like a pair of startled squirrels. No doubt they would continue their idiotic chatter in the ladies room, while they dug through their purses for the odd nut. Let them, I decided. After all, if they wanted to get their knickers in a bunch because they had overactive imaginations, who was I to stop them? Knock yourselves out, girls.

  But just a half an hour or so after I quoted those famous words in the lobby of the Law Offices of Martin, Dubinsky, and Moore, I went to collect my car from the parking lot on Asylum Street and stumbled upon Grimacing Grimshaw’s body. My own stupidity was about to bite me in the fanny, and I was pretty sure it was going to leave teeth marks.

  “This is such a nightmare,” I sighed into the phone. The voice at the other end immediately spoke.

  “A nightmare?” There was something in the way she echoed my words that made me nervous. Did she suspect I was the killer? I quickly covered my unfiltered comment with a lame remark. I had no idea it would make matters worse.

  “I was just in his office a short time ago.”

  The moment those words slipped out of my mouth, I thought about those two twittering squirrels at Martin, Dubinsky, and Moore. When the pair of them discovered that C. Philip Grimshaw was deceased, they would share their version of the last conversation I ever had with the dead man. I was scrod on a platter. Please pass the tartar sauce.

  “You were in the decedent’s office today?” The police dispatcher paused briefly. “What time was that?”

  “Um....”

  “Ma’am?”

  “It was....”

  The sudden screaming of sirens proved a welcome interruption to the conversation. I quickly took the opportunity to change the subject.

  “I think I hear the police coming now! How will they know where to find me?”

  “Don’t worry. You gave me your location. They should be with you shortly. Now, you said that you had a meeting....”

  And that was the moment that the tall, thin man in the black ski mask and blue ski jacket jumped out from behind the adjacent car and ran right at me. My stupefied mind suddenly realized something terrible was about to happen.

  Stranger danger! A tiny voice in my head warned me there was trouble headed my way.

  “What the....” I froze, unsure of what to do.

  Get up! On your feet! Now! The insistent voice was adamant.

  This time my mind went into overdrive. I tried to rise from my kneeling position, and figure out how to fight him off, but the sight of a masked man barreling towards me kicked in my flight instinct. Run! For God’s sake, run!

  Startled, I fell back on my fanny and tried to scoot my terrified booty across the cold concrete pavement in a pathetic effort to evade an assault.

  “No, no!” I cried out, cowering against C. Philip Grimshaw’s shiny black Cadillac Esplanade. “Please don’t hurt me!”

  The masked man never made a sound. When our eyes met for a few fleeting seconds, he seemed to sense I was no threat to him and turned his attention back to the corpse. Reaching a gloved hand into each of C. Philip Grimshaw’s pockets, he removed some items, including a thin, black billfold. These he tucked into the pockets of his blue ski jacket. Satisfied, he scooped up the black briefcase that lay beside the dead lawyer and simply walked away with his purloined goodies.

  When my brain realized I was not going to be victim number two, there was a brief moment of relief, followed by an unexpected return of my fight instinct. The killer was about to get away with stealing the victim’s personal effects. It’s not that I believe robbery is a more serious crime than murder. Obviously, my mind was muddled by the shock I had experienced.

  “Hey! Put those back!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I rose up from my squat. “You put those back this instant!”

  He took off, sprinting through the maze of Mercedes Benz, Subaru, Acura vehicles like he was Usain Bolt doing the hundred meter dash on the track. Complete idiot that I am, I actually thought I could catch him. Disregarding the instructions of the 911 dispatcher, I pocketed my phone, grabbed my purse, and launched my foolhardy pursuit. As luck would have it, that was the moment that the Hartford Police arrived on the scene.

  “Hands in the air!” hollered a uniformed figure pointing something at me as I rounded the corner on my way to the next parking level. It took a millisecond for my brain to recognize it was a real cop with a real gun.

  “But he’s getting away! The killer is getting away!”

  “Hands in the air!” he hollered again, this time moving towards me with a purpose.

  “You don’t understand!” I insisted, trying to make him understand the imperative need to catch the bad guy. “The killer’s getting away!”

  As I stood there, trying to convince the cop to take up the chase, I suddenly found my right arm grabbed from behind and yanked upward. I was unceremoniously pushed over the front of a gray sedan and pinned down. The din of sirens in the parking garage became deafening, heralding the arrival of several more police cars. When the crazy cacophony of confusion finally ended, I tried to figure out what my next move would be. How was I going to get the police to understand the dire situation? The killer was probably already running down Trumbull Street, on his way to freedom.

  “Oh, please tell me I am hallucinating!” said an unseen woman from ten feet away. I recognized that familiar voice instantly. It was music to my ears.

  “Larry!” Relief flooded over me. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Scarlet Wilson, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?” demanded Laurencia Rivera, the experienced Connecticut State Police special crimes investigator. Before I could answer her, she gave instructions to the cop who was holding me. “Let her up. She’s okay.”

  The minute I was no longer restrained, I grabbed my long-time friend by the neck and hugged her tightly, and then I let go. Larry was here. She would handle this. “You have to hurry! He’s getting away!”

  “Who is getting away?”

  “In the time it takes me to tell you everything, he will escape! The guy is wearing a black ski mask and a blue ski jacket. You have to catch him!” I urged her.

  That’s when her police radio crackled. “Rivera, come in.”

  “Rivera here.”

  “It’s a dead body alright. Probably not more than fifteen minutes.”

  “Copy that. We’ll be right with you.” She put her hand on my forearm. “Did you witness the murder?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. The killer is getting away!”

  Chapter Two

  “He is Caucasian...tall and thin. He probably doesn’t still have the mask on,” I told the senior Hartford police detective on the scene. He instructed his fellow cops to pick up anyone wearing a blue ski jacket in the vicinity.

  “Anything else?” He waited expectantly.

  “L.L. Bean,” I blurted out. “The insignia on the jacket he’s wearing, it’s from L. L. Bean.”

  “Good,” the detective nodded. He shared the information with the dispatcher.

  “And he’s wearing trail shoes,” I added.

  “Sorry?”

  “Trail shoes. They’re brown, with black soles.”

  “Suspect is wearing hiking boots.”

  “No, not boots. Trail shoes. They’re like sneakers, but they’re for running on trails in the woods.”

  “Okay.” He passed that along. “Anything else?”

  “He’s carrying a black alligator briefcase. At least he was the last time I saw him.”

  “Alligator? How, pray tell, do you know that?” Larry glared at me.

  “Well, I suppose it could be crocodile,” I admitted sheepishly. “I’m not really all that sure what the difference is between the two.
But it’s definitely the real thing, given that belonged to the victim. He was one persnickety....”

  I managed to shut myself up before I shoved my left foot into my mouth, not that there was much room left over after the right one went in. What word could I use to finish the idiotic sentence I had started? “...Man.”

  “Oh, spiffy. I can’t wait to hear your explanation of how you came to be involved in all of this, Miz Scarlet. I just know it’s going to be a doozy.”

  “Gee, Larry,” I replied, still feeling a little frazzled after my run-in with the killer, “you make it sound like I knowingly bought a ticket for a front-row seat to the slaughter.”

  “You mean you didn’t?” She set her sights on me with all that steely cop determination of hers. “You do have a terrible habit of being in the wrong place at the right time. Or is it the right place at the wrong time?”

  “Now that’s rather mean-spirited of you. I was minding my own business in a parking garage. Why would I ever expect to find a dead body down here?” I gestured with a sweep of my hand at the poorly lit concrete fortress. I was more than a little offended at the implication that I was the homicide equivalent of a rubbernecker at a car crash. “I don’t go sniffing around for corpses, no matter what people think. It just happens to me.”

  “That’s my point exactly. How does an amateur sleuth beat the cops to the dead bodies with such annoying regularity? You’re a murder magnet. You’re the Jessica Fletcher of Cheswick.”

  “I’m what?”

  “People drop like flies whenever you’re around. Do you pick up the scent of the killer’s impulse to strike and just hang out, waiting for him to act?”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “The victim is dead and you just happen to be the only witness who saw the suspect.”

  “It’s not my fault he was murdered, Larry!”

  “No, it’s not. I attribute it to the accumulation of a massive amount of dumb luck within the earth’s atmosphere that always seems to settle upon you. It’s the same dumb luck that makes sure I just happen to pull task force duty on the day that Miz Scarlet stumbles onto yet another homicide. What are the chances of that?” She posed the rhetorical question to the assembled group of men and women. A couple of them snickered, clearly amused. “You can’t show up on some other cop’s watch? It always has to be mine?”