A Crime of Passion Read online

  “What about your client? Are you going to tell him?”

  “Nope. I’m not saying a word.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  “Actually,” I said with my mouth full of a roll, “I don’t. I tend to believe Alex Pappas. I think Lana contracted the killing and wanted to kill Paul, too. I just can’t prove it.”

  “It looks pretty bad for Paul, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, mainly because he’s been such a man-whore. But they’ll have trouble getting that kind of evidence in. These are two of the worst people I’ve ever dealt with, Caroline. Paul and Lana Milius are a real match made in hell. Both of them should probably be in prison. Lana for murder and Paul for stupidity.”

  “You’ll win at trial,” Caroline said. “You’ll get the jury to see what’s true and what isn’t, and you’ll win.”

  Caroline ate half the food on her plate and we walked outside to the car Lana had loaned us. As soon as she climbed into the passenger’s seat, she took four huge pills—her new medication—out of a bottle in her purse and began taking them and washing them down with a cup of water she’d carried out of the restaurant.

  “They said to be sure to take them with food,” she said, “but they’re so big they aren’t going to leave much room in my stomach.”

  I’d scheduled a meeting at Charlie Story’s office with Charlie, Jack, and Paul Milius. Caroline said she felt like she was losing touch with the case and wanted to sit in so we started in that direction, but less than five minutes after we pulled out of Arnold’s parking lot, she started frantically telling me to pull over. I did, and she opened the door, stepped out, and started vomiting on the sidewalk. I got out of the car, walked around, and patted her back while she bent over and continued to wretch. It was so frustrating, being utterly unable to help her. We stood there for several minutes while cars whizzed by and people stared. A couple even honked their horns, probably thinking she was drunk. When she was finished, she got back into the car, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin she’d taken from the restaurant (just in case, she told me later), and announced that she wanted to go back to the hotel and lie down.

  “I’m going to withdraw from this case,” I said. “Lilly was right. I shouldn’t have taken it in the first place.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Caroline said. “My husband does not quit just because things get a little tough.”

  “You’re puking in the street, Caroline.”

  “So what? I’ve done it before.”

  “That was years ago when you first started the chemotherapy.”

  “This new medication is a form of chemo,” she said. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Yeah, I was listening, but what I heard was ‘pill form’ instead of intravenous, and I assumed the side effects wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “You assumed wrong, and so did I. I have medication for nausea. I should have taken it before I ate. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “What? Are you kidding? After everything else we’ve been through, puking in the street is nothing. Piece of cake. You want to embarrass me, get naked and dance on the roof of the car while you’re puking.”

  She reached over, squeezed my hand, and smiled. “Don’t tempt me,” she said. “And you’re not withdrawing from anything. I mean it. I’ll deal with this. I just have to get used to the new medication. Before you know it, I’ll be as good as new.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Charlie and Jack were waiting for me when I arrived at Charlie’s office. Paul Milius hadn’t yet shown up, which didn’t really surprise me. Milius was turning out to be one of those clients who wanted to act like nothing was really going on. He was sticking his head in the sand and leaving pretty much everything up to us. Some clients wanted to be in the middle of everything; some wanted to control the investigation and the strategy and the tactics. They were, for the most part, both annoying and guilty. But others, like Milius, left it up to the lawyer. He didn’t call, he didn’t second-guess, and he didn’t double-check. He just wanted to make believe his life hadn’t changed at all. His attitude was, “Call me when it’s over. In the meantime, leave me alone.”

  But we had to talk to him occasionally, so we’d set up this meeting. Charlie and Jack and I talked about Caroline for a little while—I didn’t mention the little incident in the street—and then I spent some time filling them in on the details of my detour to Ecuador before Paul walked in just after two fifteen. He seemed angry and irritable.

  “So where are we?” he said after we’d all settled into chairs around a table in Charlie’s conference room. “The press is crucifying me, especially that crazy Nicole Gacy. I’m on her show every night. Have you read the paper, watched television, listened to the radio? They have me tried and convicted. They’ve dug up every woman I’ve ever had a conversation with and are turning all of them into torrid sexual affairs. So please, tell me you’re making some progress. Tell me you’ve found out who really killed Kasey and that this is going to end soon.”

  “It isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, Paul,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just isn’t going all that well, but we still have some time. Maybe something will come up.”

  “Like what?” Milius said. “Do you think someone is just going to come forward and raise their hand and say, ‘Oh, I did it? You’ve got the wrong guy.’”

  “That’d be nice,” I said, thinking about the crooked offer Ronnie Johnson had made.

  “So what have you been doing? What am I spending a million dollars on?”

  “Time, Paul,” I said. “You’re spending your money on our time. And we’re trying to use it to your best advantage.”

  “What have you been doing? Give me specifics.”

  I shrugged and looked at Jack and Charlie. “Who wants to start?” I asked.

  “I’ll go first,” Jack said. “I’ve been spending my time interviewing people in and around the industry.”

  “I know,” Paul interrupted. “It seems like somebody in my office gets a phone call every half hour wanting to know if it’s okay to talk to you.”

  “I hope you’re saying yes,” Jack said.

  Milius nodded. “Most of the time.”

  Jack picked a thick file up from his lap. “I’ve talked to twenty-six people so far,” he said. “The consensus seems to be that you’re a pretty good guy for the most part and an excellent businessman, but that you have a great deal of difficulty resisting the urge to…how should I say this? Seduce women. You’re apparently some kind of sex addict.”

  “That isn’t a crime,” Milius said, shifting uneasily in his seat. “What else?”

  “It might not be a crime, but it’s damned sure a problem,” I said, miffed that he would just blow off his indiscretions so lightly.

  “How is it a problem?” he said. “You’re a lawyer, supposedly a good one. You’re not going to let the prosecution turn this into a trial about my sex life, are you?”

  “It depends,” I said honestly. “It depends on whether the prosecution can come up with any proof that you were having sex with Kasey—who was underage, by the way—and whether the judge says it’s relevant.”

  “Then make sure they don’t come up with anything, and if they do, make sure the judge doesn’t let it in,” Milius said.

  “You don’t ‘make sure’ a judge does anything,” I said. “They do what they want. They have to follow the law, but sometimes it’s a close call and they do what they want. And the appeals courts usually back them up. They protect their own.”

  “Bribe him.”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” I said.

  “I’m serious. I have millions and millions of dollars. Find a way to get to him.”

  “Listen, Paul. I don’t bribe judges. I don’t take part in fraudulent scams, I don’t manufacture evidence, and I try very, very hard not to lie unless I absolutely have to. When I first met you, you told me you k
new my record in court. I can try cases. I can’t guarantee we’ll win this one, but I can guarantee you I’ll do the best I can, and I’ve had some good results in the past. I can also guarantee you that we won’t cheat. If you want a lawyer that lies and cheats, go hire one. There are plenty of them out there. We’ll go into court and tell the judge we can’t get along and you want a new lawyer. He’ll probably let you do it, and he’ll probably give you some more time. But I’m keeping your million dollars. You and your wife both signed the contract that said the fee was nonrefundable, and after all the crap I’ve already had to put up with in this case, I’m not giving it back.”

  “Believe me, I’ve already looked around,” Milius said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people about this, people with money and power, people whose opinion I trust.”

  “Yeah? And what do they tell you?”

  “They tell me that the first thing about 99 percent of the lawyers out there will want to know is how much money I have. Once they find out, they’ll figure out a way to spend just a little bit more than I have. So if I’m worth $400 million, which is about what I’m worth today but it’s dropping by the hour, they’ll figure out a way to bill for $400.1 million before everything is over. They’ll scare the shit out of me by telling me I’m going to prison for the rest of my life if I don’t do exactly as they say, then they’ll delay the trial for years and gather huge piles of worthless information while they double- and triple-bill me every step of the way. Then, when it comes down to actually going to trial, they won’t be any better at it than you are and I’ll have a fifty-fifty shot at best.”

  “Sounds like you got some pretty good advice,” I said.

  “Yeah, so I’m going to stick with you, but I’m not paying you a dime beyond the million. If I get convicted, I’ll still have the rest of my money when I get out in ten years. And I’m going to tell you again—all three of you—I. Did. Not. Kill. Kasey.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. I almost admired him for a minute. Almost.

  “What about you?” Milius said, looking at Charlie. “Have you been looking into my sex life, too?”

  “It just seems to keep popping up,” Charlie said. I watched her as an involuntary smile spread across her face. “Sorry about the pun,” she said. “It wasn’t intentional.”

  “Charlie has run down all the women who have borne your children,” I said. “She’s also talked to the prosecution’s witnesses, at least the ones that would speak to her. She handled the independent DNA expert, too, and he says we can’t legitimately challenge the match.”

  “Do you have any suspects?” Paul said.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I wanted to tell him about Lana, but I was afraid of what he might do. Ricky Church’s story had checked out, so he was off the suspect list. Cameron Jones had a rock-solid alibi. The estate manager, Oliver Payne, had turned out to be an overeducated, overpaid snit who spent most of his time jetting from Connecticut to Palm Beach to Franklin so that Paul and Lana wouldn’t have to deal with pedestrian matters having to do with the management of their households. And I hadn’t yet been able to get in to see Carl Browning.

  “There are some possibilities,” I said. “We’ll let you know if we get anything solid. In the meantime, do you happen to know where Alex Pappas might have gone?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Milius said.

  “His father is Greek, correct? Like you?”

  “I’m not Greek. My family has been in this country for more than a hundred years. I’m as American as you are. But yeah, I think he mentioned something about his father being Greek. And his name is Alex Pappas. That’s pretty Greek.”

  “What about his mother?”

  “What about her?”

  “Any idea where her family is from? He worked for you for three years. Did he ever mention his mother’s family?”

  “He might have, but if he did it went in one ear and out the other,” Milius said. “I didn’t hire him to chit-chat about his family. I hired him to help me keep everything organized, to do whatever I needed when I needed it done. We weren’t friends. I was the boss and he was the employee. Why do you want to know about his mother, anyway?”

  “Just trying to figure out where he might be.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can talk to him and get him to trial if we need to.”

  “Alex barely knew Kasey, and he wasn’t even around the night of the CMT show. He’d already split.”

  “But don’t you find that coincidental?” I said. “Why would he and Tilly disappear just a couple weeks before Kasey was killed?”

  “Because they didn’t want to go to jail for stealing $200,000 of my money.”

  “You have proof of that?”

  “I do. Lana has every receipt.”

  “Then why haven’t you told the police about it?”

  “Because I didn’t want the press getting a hold of it. I was hoping they’d come back, and we could work out a way for them to pay back the money. We would have fired them both, of course, but I was hoping we could work something out without involving the police. Then Kasey got killed, and everything turned on its head.”

  I pushed myself away from the table, stood, and stretched, signaling that I was finished.

  “That’s it?” Milius said. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know, Paul. A lot of things you don’t need to know and don’t want to know. As the trial gets closer, there are going to be offers made, attempts at deals. There will also be some last-minute fireworks. It never fails. So my advice to you is to just let us handle it. Go about your daily routine, try to ignore the press, and don’t say a word to anyone about this case. How are things going between you and Lana?”

  “We’re not talking. I moved all my things out of our bedroom into a spare down the hall.”

  “Try to placate her as much as you can. Don’t antagonize her. I probably won’t call her as a witness because if she says you’ve been a good husband, it opens the door for the prosecution to get into your sex life, but there’s no point in risking that she’s going to come in and testify that you told her you killed Kasey. You haven’t done that, have you?”

  “What? Told Lana I killed Kasey?”

  “In a moment of weakness?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t kill Kasey, so I’m not going to confess to anyone that I did.”

  “Good. That’s good. Stay in touch, and I’ll see you again soon.”

  Milius got up and started toward the door, muttering under his breath.

  “By the way, Paul,” I said. “You’re going to have to tell the jury what Kasey said to you. You’re going to have to explain to them what made you so angry.”

  “Not gonna happen,” he said.

  “Yeah, it is gonna happen,” I said. “You’re going to have to tell them something, and it better be good.”

  After he’d walked out the door, Jack looked at me and said, “You just told him to lie.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  I turned to Charlie. “Did you hear me tell him to lie?” I said.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Not in so many words, but—”

  “I told him he’s going to have to tell them something. That something could be the absolute truth.”

  “We’re going to get hammered at trial, aren’t we?” Jack said. “They’re going to convict him and send him to prison.”

  “They might,” I said, “but not without a scrap.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I’d asked Charlie to check out Carl Browning and had been pleased with the results. Charlie had done an extremely thorough investigation, going so far as to find old classmates and two ex-wives. What she found was that Browning had been raised the son of a macho Navy pilot in Newport News, Virginia, but had grown up an asthmatic child, unable to do many of the things other kids his age were doing and overly protected by his mother.

  Once
he hit adolescence, though, the asthma symptoms disappeared, and Browning went at everything with a vengeance. By the time Browning entered the ninth grade, his father was attending the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and Browning was attending the prestigious Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. He was a star in baseball and hockey, graduated from there at the top of his class, and went on to the University of Virginia, where he majored in political science and economics and graduated summa cum laude. From there, it was off to law school at Yale and then to a ten-year career as a political and military analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency.

  He left the CIA in 2000, but none of the people Charlie talked to were able to tell him why. What they did say was that his relationship with his parents ended at the same time his career ended at the CIA. Browning spent a few months in New York City after he left the CIA and then, out of the blue, he left his wife and moved to Nashville and hooked up with an old law school buddy named Reed Cummings. Browning was given an immediate partnership in the law firm of Allen, Parks, Browning and Cummings, a firm that specialized in intellectual property law, entertainment law, and telecommunications law. He married a Nashville socialite late that same year, and two years after that began representing Lana Raines-Milius. I’d been trying to set up an appointment with him, but his secretary wouldn’t do it without his approval, and he wasn’t approving.

  So I decided to call one last time.

  “This is Joe Dillard,” I said for the fifth time in six days. “I’m Paul Milius’s attorney. May I speak to Carl Browning, please?”

  “Hold, please,” the faceless secretary said. She came back on the line a few minutes later. “May I ask why you would like to speak to Mr. Browning?” she said.

  “You already know why I want to talk to him because I’ve told you FOUR FREAKIN’ TIMES!”

  “Please don’t take that tone with me, sir.”

  “I’m in Nashville, and I’m going to come down there if you don’t let me speak to him right now. I’m going to barge in. I’m going to make a scene. Somebody might get their ass kicked. Tell him that.”