Chapter 62: Counter-Parry
I looked up at the man and decided to bluff it out. We hadn’t discussed this sort of thing in depth with Chanel, but I guessed, “Never went to trial.”
He gave me a small considering nod, saying, “That’s right, but the arresting officer is certain he caught her in the act.”
I replied, “And yet…” letting it trail off, the implication clear.
He shrugged, stood, and carefully wrapped the towel around his hips, then addressed me in a cultured, formal tone, “Ms. Gutierrez, I am assistant district attorney Martin Wexler. I was charged with finding out if this is the sort of massage business where certain extra services may be had.”
As he bent over the patio table to dig in his jacket pockets, presumably for an ID, I said coldly, “It is not that sort of place.” I couldn’t say no extra services could be had here, but I wasn’t going to explain to him the sort we did offer.
He found the ID wallet without losing his towel’s meager cover and handed it over. As I was studying it, he said, “I’m going to go get dressed now. I want to see the other two out here when I get back,” then held his hand out to me to recover his ID.
It looked legit to me, so I handed it back and watched him walk backwards behind the dressing screen, his clothing bundled against his chest, the ID wallet in one fist atop the clothes, a black cherry on a bureaucracy cupcake. Bleah!
Once I heard the first rustles of clothing behind the screen, I stood and went inside to let Chanel and Davie know what was up out here. It felt more like rounding up my posse than bowing to the man’s demand to see them, but maybe that was just because I felt I needed a posse around me at the moment.
Wexler pointedly left the arrest record copy with me, so I took it with me and showed it to Chanel in the living room first, who handed it across to Davie, reading at the other end of the couch, our shishya clearly realizing there was no point in trying to keep the information from him now.
Davie surprised me, asking, “We still have half of that cinnamon tea cake in the fridge, right?”
“We do,” I said warily.
“I think we can get four slices out of it. Nuke them,” he told me, “and I’ll get some tea brewing. A chai blend, I think.”
We had the dining table on the deck set with a proper English tea, pats of butter melting into the warmed tea cake slices when a fully re-suited Martin Wexler sidled nervously around the dressing screen, facing the three of us sitting on our raised dais. Somehow this flipped the power dynamic despite our casual outfits; he was now the supplicant, bringing his case before those that would judge its merits.
Perhaps it was the echo of a familiar courtroom setting, or perhaps it was just curiosity about what we were up to, but his attempts to look stern faded away.
Davie spoke first. “Do you take sweetener in your tea, Mr. Wexler?”
The man looked startled, clearly dithering, so I suggested, “We have local honey,” motioning at the warming dispenser in the center of the table. “My parents’ neighbor makes it,” I added with a smile.
“Sure, sure, honey is fine,” he almost mumbled, bewildered.
Davie lifted the teapot to pour while the setting sun spilled warm light over the landscape, our house’s east-facing back wall casting soft shadows over the yard.
After we were all served and everyone had taken a bite or two of Chanel’s tea cake, I reopened the earlier topic, “So, what was it you wanted to ask us about, Mr. Wexler?”
“That arrest record, for one,” he said, brushing crumbs from the corners of his mouth.
Chanel barked, “That never went to court, and you know it!”
“Easy,” I said, putting a hand on her knee.
To the ADA, I added, “Chanel here is a student enrolled at the local USU campus, living with us to help pay her way through school. I assure you, there has never been anything like this,” waving dismissively at the paper on the table between me and Chanel’s plate, “going on in our house. No special guests, no mysterious sources of cash, no covert late-night rendezvous.”
“She’s not working for you?” he demanded, putting a special emphasis on the verb.
“I’m trying to be civil, Mr. Wexler,” I said, my tone chilling again. “I warned you about making such implications before, but since this is an official investigation, no, she is not our employee in any sense at all. In fact, she’s paying us, renting one of our spare rooms, doing household stuff to defray the cost further. She made the cake, by the way.”
That last comment finally cracked his shell, and he pinked up again. “It’s, ah, very good, Miss Brantley.”
“Thank you,” Chanel replied with a nod. “I’ve been experimenting with the recipe for months now, ever since I found out how much Davie likes tea.”
Hubby added with a shrug, “Born in India. They’d deny me re-entry if they found out I’d stopped drinking tea.”
Wexler actually laughed at that, finally appearing to relax.
Deciding to capitalize on this, I guessed, “You’ve had professional investigators following her,” referring to Chanel, “and they have yet to see her do anything like what you’re suggesting. True?”
The man’s eyes squinted a bit in a measuring sort of way, then he finally nodded and said, “That’s right.”
“Thus this visit,” I continued, chasing my deductions.
He just nodded again.
Then remembering how hard it had been to do magic on him, I pointed at the briefcase still on the low table by the garden and asked, “Mind if I have a look inside that?”
I half wished that I’d thought of this earlier while he was showering, but I wasn’t sure I’d’ve snooped even if I had. I decided to just fold my arms in an I’m-not-asking sort of way.
He sighed, got up, retrieved the soft-sided briefcase, and tilted its mouth toward us while pushing the button to release the top flap, then pulled its maw open for us to see down into. There along one of its triangular sides was what I’d expected to see: a tape recorder riveted to its interior, micro-cassette wheels slowly turning, a rosette of holes poked into the leather above for its microphone, done artistically so it appeared merely to be a decoration. Above it was a little boxy action camera, its lens poking through a rather larger hole in the side of the bag above the others, a crudely taped-over LED on its top side. If I’d noticed the lens’ glint at all, I must’ve just chalked it up to another decoration, to be sure.
After I nodded my satisfaction at this revelation, he flipped the flap closed and set it on a nearby patio box, where we kept the spare seat cushions to keep them from sun-rotting when not in use.
On turning and noticing me noticing that he’d pointed both recording instruments across the patio back at us, he asked, “Not going to ask me to turn them off?”
“No, Mr. Wexler,” I said evenly, looking into his eyes rather than into the camera, “because you might as well have my next deduction on the record: you’re reacting to a complaint from a Mr. Edward Goetz.”
He kept his face bland, a skill he must have learned long ago to achieve his current office, but he admitted to it anyway. “Yes, I am.”
“Well,” I told him in a no-nonsense tone, “I suggest you use your prosecutorial powers to go digging around in police arrest records to look into his past, rather than Chanel’s. You’ll find that he was arrested just about 25 feet o’er thataway,” I said, hooking a thumb over my shoulder at the juniper maze separating the yard from our pea gravel parking area, “for voyeuristic trespassing, and unlike Chanel here, he was convicted.”
He looked about to say something, but I then interrupted, “Then you can send your underlings over to the BLM and talk to my boss Sherry Richardson and ask her why she fired his worthless ass.”
Wexler’s lips parted again, but I plowed on, now with some heat, “And after that, you can ask her boyfriend and our good personal friend Officer Poulsen of the Moab P.D. about both events!”
That finally closed the man’s mouth.
Seeing that I was done, Davie added, “Poulsen officiated at our wedding, you know. Doesn’t fit too well with your theory of the case, does it, Prosecutor?”
“So,” I continued, calming, “Mr. Goetz has a history with us, you see, and he’s trying to get back at us. He tried complaining to the police, but then when Lt. Carlisle cleared us a few weeks back, he went to you.”
That put a bit of a scowl onto his face, knowing he’d been played as by a toddler going to daddy when mommy says no.
Davie offered, “I suppose if all of that doesn’t convince you, you can also go talk to Poulsen’s little sister Miki, who is our part-time boss at the hospital. I’m certain she’d vouch for us again, as she did with Lt. Carlisle.”
“Miki’s a doctor of physical therapy,” I supplied, then suggested, “Also go see Ann Johannsen, my parents’ neighbor, a good friend and one of our first clients.”
Davie nodded, which widened Wexler’s eyes, now locked to my hubby’s own. The prosecutor said to him, “You’ve seen…” then let it drift into a shocked silence. He recovered by saying, “I mean, I know Mrs. Johannsen. She and my parents are good friends, going way back. I’m just thinking of… Ah, never mind.”
I knew just what he was thinking of and didn’t want to say, but we didn’t roast him further. Instead, I asked, “How’s that lower back and foot pain, Mr. Wexler?”
His eyebrows shot up, and he looked thoughtful for a while, then said, “I don’t feel anything from them.” Then realizing what that meant, he added, “Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez!”
With a cheeky smile, I said, “Tip jar’s on the cabinet behind the dressing screen.”
He just looked back at me for a few seconds, then belted out a belly laugh.