me. It was only a few years, and what difference does it make anyway if people are nice to each other?”
“Did Keegan and Rockley know each other?”
She looked at Bongiovanni again.
“It’s okay, Carol. If he asks you something I don’t want you to answer, I’ll tell you.”
“I saw them talking to each other all the time, but that doesn’t mean they were friends. Johnny was nothing like Rockley. Johnny was sweet and good. He made me laugh. Rockley was dirt. He came on to me because he knew about me and Johnny. He said if I was giving it to Johnny, there wasn’t any reason I shouldn’t give it to him too. So he took it.”
“Did you tell Johnny about Rockley?”
“Sure I did. Johnny was royally pissed. He said he’d take care of Rockley.”
“Is that when you told your cousin Vince about Rockley?”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t tell him about Johnny, did you?”
She shook her head. “I knew Mark would go crazy and I didn’t want to get Johnny in any trouble.”
Carol had made the same mistake Fish had made when he decided not to tell Mason there was a body in the trunk of his car. She told her lawyer what she wanted him to know and hoped that what she didn’t want him to know wouldn’t matter. She was too naive to realize that the first thing Charles Rockley would tell Lari Prillman was that Carol was having an affair with another Galaxy employee. Lari was smart enough to keep that card in her back pocket, waiting to play it until it would do the most damage. Her strategy may have worked too well. It may have cost Charles Rockley and Johnny Keegan their lives. Even as he considered the possibility, he still couldn’t come up with a reason for Mark Hill to hide Rockley’s body in Fish’s car.
“Did your husband ever mention Avery Fish’s name?”
“I don’t think so. Not that I remember, anyway.”
“Did your husband buy a time-share for a vacation in Florida?” Mason asked, searching for any possible connection between Mark Hill and Fish.
“That’s real likely. The only vacation he ever took was on a bar stool.”
“What about Keegan? Did he ever talk about getting away, taking a vacation with you to Florida?”
Carol’s eyes grew wet and she wiped them with her sleeve. “He said he wanted me to leave Mark and that he would take me away. He said he was working on something big and he’d have the money so we could start over somewhere else. It was going to be more than a vacation. It was going to be a new life.”
“Did he tell you what his big deal was?”
She sniffled and shook her head. “No. He just said it was okay if I lost my case because he’d have enough money for both of us. He said he was going away. I thought he would take me with him.”
Mason leaned forward. “Carol, this is very important. Did Johnny act like he knew you were going to lose your case?”
Bongiovanni sat up as well, taking a keener interest in Mason’s questions. Carol hesitated, looking at Bongiovanni, then at Mason.
“I don’t know. All he said was it didn’t matter. I thought I was going to lose anyway after everything came out about Johnny and me. I’m sorry,” she said to Bongiovanni. “I know how bad you wanted to get Galaxy and I should have told you about Johnny. I’m sorry.”
Bongiovanni put his arm around her, drawing him to her and comforting her. “That’s okay, honey. The judge hasn’t ruled yet. If we lose, we’ll just get ’em next time.”
Mason said, “One last thing, Carol. Did Johnny ever say that he needed to hire a lawyer?”
Carol pulled herself up, brushing off her T-shirt. “No. Why would he?”
“Because when the police found his body, he had a piece of paper in his hand with my name and phone number on it.”
“And I’m guessing that you’d never heard of Johnny Keegan,” Bongiovanni said to Mason.
“No, but he had obviously heard of me.”
“Sounds like somebody went to a lot of trouble to make sure the two of you never met,” Bongiovanni said.
FORTY-THREE
Mason left the suite accompanied by Bongiovanni. The elevator was empty as they rode down to the lobby. The hotel piped in Tom Jones singing “It’s Not Unusual.” It was too early in the day for lounge singers, but the lyric was on the money. Nothing in this case was usual.
“Do you really think Mark Hill flipped out and became a jealous psycho killer?” Bongiovanni asked.
“Most murders are committed close to home-not physically but psychologically. Spouses, lovers, friends, coworkers. Somebody or something gets off the tracks. That makes Hill the popular choice.”
“But this isn’t a popularity contest, is it?”
The elevator reached the lobby and they stepped into a throng of retired veterans checking in for their chance at something for nothing, many of them wearing caps with their service insignias on the bill. Mason led Bongiovanni away from the crowd.
“No,” he said. “It’s Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s about finding the dog that didn’t bark. What time was it when Mark Hill came home Friday night and started smacking Carol around?”
“Carol said it was a few minutes after nine. She was watching some reality show that had just started.”
“Keegan got off work at eight. The cops showed me a picture of his body they took at ten. That’s not much time, but it’s enough for Mark to have popped Keegan before he went home to work on Carol. He’ll need an alibi once the cops connect him to Rockley and Keegan. That should take until about lunchtime today.”
“But you don’t buy it, do you?”
“I don’t have a better idea, but there are a couple of things that don’t add up. First, Rockley’s killer cut off his head and hands and dumped the body in the trunk of my client’s car. I haven’t found anything to connect Rockley to my client and I don’t believe in bad luck. Second, Keegan’s body was left in a parking lot a mile from the casino still wearing his head and holding on to a piece of paper with my name and phone number on it. There’s no pattern to the murders and I don’t know any reason Keegan would have my name. It would help if I could find out more about those two guys.”
“I’ve got Rockley’s employment records from the arbitration. You’re welcome to them.”
“Thanks. Lari Prillman let me look at hers Saturday night. There’s nothing in either one of them. I even called Rockley’s previous employers. All five of them gave him great references-said he was a great guy, great employee, sorry to lose him.”
Bongiovanni studied Mason, his mouth curling at the corners again. It was a look that said gotcha.
“Mason. I’ve been handling personal injury and employment cases for fifteen years. I talk to employers all the time. They’re scared to death of lawyers and lawsuits. I’m lucky if they’ll confirm someone actually worked for them. No employer says a word about what kind of employee the person was. You got five employers to give you a goddamn reference over the phone. That sounds like a barking dog to me.”
“Yeah, but the dog is barking up the wrong tree. Each company was in a different city and there’s no connection between them. How do you make that work? Besides, I have very good telephone manners.”
“You ought to get a nine hundred number and start charging people. And another thing, you saw Prillman’s files Saturday night and you called me bright and early this morning to see Carol. What did you do, call Rockley’s former employers at home on Sunday?”
Mason realized his mistake. He didn’t answer, waiting to see how far Bongiovanni would push with his next question
“Okay. You don’t want to tell me. Fine. Here’s the way it looks to me. I got a phone call about Rockley around seven o’clock Friday night. First anonymous tip in my career. Very exciting. You called me after midnight, told me about Keegan, and warned me that Mark may go after Carol. This morning, you told Carol that you talked to Mark Friday evening and he told you that she and Keegan were having an affair. Am I right so far?”
“Right enough.”
