Annie located two attorneys named Phillip Greene in the Spokane telephone book, but only one spelled his name with an “e” and specialized in domestic relations. Since her appointment with Dr. Montgomery wasn’t until four, Annie decided to try an informal drop-in, to see if Greene would see her without an appointment. But first, she needed to place a quick call to Val O’Hara.
About a hundred times a day, Annie thanked Val for coming back out of retirement. It might have been possible to run a law practice without her, but it certainly wouldn’t have been easy. Within minutes, Val was able to pull up a prior brief on her computer, and read Annie the case citations she needed before she talked to Greene. She’d run by the county law library to make photocopies on her way to Greene’s office.
Val also passed along a couple of messages. Dr. Butterick, at St. Elizabeth’s, needed to talk to her about Taylor. He would be assisting in surgery until five, but she could have him paged at the hospital after that.
The second message was from Jed. He told Val to tell Annie, if she called in, that the court records and police reports were all negative for any incidents of reported violence between Steve and Taylor, but that he was “hot on the trail” of another lead.
“Did he say what it was?” Annie asked.
“No,” said Val. “Only that there was some link to a guy named Martin… I didn’t quite catch the last name…. Gerbermeister, maybe?”
“Grubenmacher?”
“That was it. He didn’t tell me what he was working on, only that you shouldn’t worry if he wasn’t back at the motel when you got there tonight.”
***
The Gable Building, with its chrome escalators and off-white walls could have been any nondescript office building in any medium sized city. Greene’s office, which Annie found on the twelfth floor, was as nondescript as the building—white walls, beige industrial-strength carpet, budget furniture. There were no clients waiting in the reception area, and a bespectacled, thirty-ish man in a white shirt and loosened tie sat behind the reception desk talking on the telephone. He looked up, smiled, and held up one finger for her to wait.
After he hung up, he turned to Annie. “Hi,” he said with more enthusiasm than the typical front office person. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’d like to speak with Mr. Greene, if that’s possible. I don’t have an appointment.”
“That’s do-able,” he said, without looking at an appointment book. “My next client isn’t due until three o’clock. As long as you don’t mind my catching the telephone if it rings.”
“Oh,” she said in surprise, “you’re…”
He held out his hand. “Phil Greene. Pleased to meet you. And no, I don’t usually run a one-person office from the reception desk. My staff’s throwing a baby shower for my paralegal, and they decided that my gift would be answering the phones for a couple hours so they could all go to lunch together. So, were you referred by someone?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.” She gave him her card, and explained, as briefly as possible, her relationship to Taylor, Steve’s murder, and the information she was after.
Phil Greene stood up and came around to the front of the desk and sat in the chair next to Annie. He was a small man, very boyish in appearance. Annie noticed for the first time he was wearing jeans and Reeboks. He tapped her business card against his teeth while he thought. “Let me think about this for a second. You say the wife is suspected of killing Steve?”
“At this point she seems to be the only suspect, although no arrest has been made.”
“And you think the prosecutor will try to prove a financial motive, that she wanted to kill him to avoid a division of property?”
“If I were prosecuting the case, that’s what I’d do.”
The lawyer shifted in his chair. “Then my file is certainly relevant. Steve was my client, so there’s confidentiality to think about. I’ve never had a situation come up where I’ve been asked to reveal information after a client’s death.”
Annie nodded. “I knew you’d be concerned about that. But this is something that does occasionally come up in murder investigations.” She handed him the photocopied statutes and case law she’d obtained at the library.
“Boy, you come prepared, don’t you?” He read through them, and seemed satisfied that he could discuss Steve’s file. “Hold on just a second.” He locked the door, and hung a sign saying that the office was closed for lunch. “Let’s go back to my office, and I’ll pull Steve’s file. Coffee? Take anything in it?”
“Please. Black is fine.”
Greene’s office was little more than a cubbyhole big enough for a desk, chair, and computer. Files lay in stacks on practically every inch of floor space. He squeezed around behind his desk and offered Annie a chair, also filled with files. “You can just throw those anywhere.” She moved them to the floor and sat down. Greene swiveled in his chair, gazed at the teetering stacks for a moment, and then reached for a file about two-thirds of the way down the first pile. Miraculously, he had put his hands right on Steven Vick’s file. He shrugged and grinned. “It’s kind of a talent I have. Like that old game, Concentration. Comes in handy.” Annie agreed. It was a talent she needed, but didn’t have. She waited while Greene flipped through his papers, refreshing his recollection of Vick.
“It sparked my interest, when you were describing what the prosecutors would try to do. Because the way I see it, there wouldn’t have been much of a financial motive for the wife in this case. I really felt sorry for the guy when he came to see me for just that reason. If his wife really wanted to go through with the divorce, I told Steve that he was basically going to get screwed.”
Annie was interested. “How so?”
“He first came to see me, let’s see, I’ve got the date here. It would have been six months ago, right after his wife asked him to move out. ‘Asked’ is a euphemism in this case. From what I understand, she moved all of his stuff into storage and changed the locks.” Greene stirred his coffee with the end of a Bic pen. “Steve was really distraught. He hadn’t seen it coming. He knew there had been problems, but nothing that he thought was that serious. The way he described it, they’d always had a volatile relationship—lots of screaming matches and tantrums—but they usually made up within a few days. This time seemed different, she wouldn’t take him back. He’d recently lost his job at a chemical supply house, and that wasn’t helping his state of mind, either.”
Annie scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad. “What about community property? Wouldn’t there have been a division?”
“That’s where things got complicated. They had been living together, as man and wife, for many years, and had one daughter together. But for whatever reason, they hadn’t actually gotten married until three years ago.” It was the same story that Annie had just learned from Keith Curran. “There are no significant assets other than the house and farm. And Taylor North inherited those, equally with her brother, before she and Vick were legally married. Now, you said you do some domestic relations work, so you know there’s no such thing as common-law marriage in the state of Washington, although there is a recent precedent for the kind of lawsuits that have been termed ‘palimony.’ ”
“But it’s not clearly defined.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told Vick. I said that his legal claim to her share of the property was pretty thin, although there would be ways to fight it. It could be an expensive lawsuit, without any guarantees. I told him that I personally wouldn’t take on the case without a thirty-five hundred dollar retainer, and that I wouldn’t promise I could get results for him. He said he’d think about it.”
Checking back through her earlier notes, Annie said, “When I talked to Taylor’s brother, Gerald, about the property, he got very defensive. I didn’t get the impression he owned any interest in Taylor’s business.”
“Okay, here again, it gets a little messy. This family apparently didn’t have a very high regard for lawyers, because they drew up their own business transactions without any help. If they’d gotten a little bit of legal advice, a lot of headaches could have been avoided.” Greene flipped back in the file until he found what he was looking for. “The father died a little more than twelve years ago, without a will, so Taylor and her brother inherited the property equally. The brother, Gerald, is some kind of artist. He had no great love for the farm, but wanted cash. Something about going to study painting in New York. Steve had about fifteen thousand dollars set aside—remember, this is before they’re married—and he agreed to buy Gerald’s half. Gerald was so desperate, that he didn’t even bother to get a valuation on the property, he just took the money Steve was offering. At that time, the farm hadn’t been worked in a couple of years, the buildings were run-down. Gerald went on ‘intuition’ and didn’t think the land was worth very much. He spent his money living and studying in New York for a year, and came back penniless. Taylor and Steve, on the other hand, were well on the way to building a decent business. According to Steve, Gerald was convinced he had been conned.”
“Had he?”
“I don’t think so. It was a sloppy deal, but neither party was guilty of any wrongdoing.”
“But if Steve owned half the property, wouldn’t Taylor have had a financial motive to kill him, rather than go through a divorce?”
“I don’t think so,” said Greene. “Because of one other fact. Steve’s interest wasn’t recorded properly. The title was still in Gerald’s name. When they did this transaction, they went to the stationery store and got some forms. Drew up a bill of sale and a quitclaim deed. Basically, handled it as if they were selling personal property, like a car or piece of furniture. When I looked at the documentation, I just cringed. The purchase agreement wasn’t notarized and the signatures weren’t even dated. I told Steve that a sharp lawyer would make mincemeat out of the deal. At best, he might prove that he’d invested fifteen thousand in the business, but he’d be lucky if he could even prove that.”
“So, if Taylor divorced Steve…”
“My guess was that with a savvy lawyer, Taylor could have walked away with everything. With him dead, basically what she saved herself was some protracted litigation. You tell me. Is she the type of person who’d off her husband just to save herself the hassle of a lawsuit? There wasn’t even any life insurance. I remember asking Steve that. He said the only insurance he had had was through his job, and that ended when he was terminated. Now, her best position from a financial standpoint was to do exactly what she was doing—nothing. Stay separated from Steve, but not divorce him. He wasn’t pressuring her for a divorce, and she could use her cash flow to build the business, not pay lawyers to litigate a property settlement.”
“But Taylor was ready to start divorce proceedings. At least she said she was. That was the reason she invited me here.”
Greene sipped his coffee and closed the file. “I guess that’s what makes domestic relations work so interesting to me—we give advice regarding what the best business or financial decision would be—then our clients go and do just the opposite. It’s important that we lawyers don’t forget that these cases aren’t business transactions. They involve love, marriage, parenthood, companionship. If Taylor was willing to divorce Steve, even though staying married was a better deal for her, then the chances are she had some reason other than money for not wanting to be married to him anymore. He was out of the house, willing to give her some space… What do you think?”
“She wanted to marry someone else?”
Greene shrugged and smiled. “That sounds like a good guess to me. Love makes us all do crazy things sometimes.”