Page 15 of Pro Bono

Warren moved on. He made his way from room to hall to room through the house. The most important thing he was looking for was any indication that Vesper Ellis might have been injured or killed or had left her house under somebody else’s power. He touched nothing, and he kept looking down to be sure he wasn’t about to step on any spot thatmight contain evidence. Before entering each room, he studied it from the doorway, first to be sure there was not a security camera. There seldom was one on the upper floor of a residence, but he didn’t want to be wrong and get recorded. He looked for anything that seemed to be out of place, any sign that a rug had been removed, or a spot on the floor that might have been cleaned with too much care.

The ground floor was perfect—too perfect. It was not strange that the spare bedrooms upstairs were perfectly clean, neat, and looking untouched. It wasn’t surprising that a woman like Vesper Ellis kept her own bedroom impeccable. The ground floor was not different, and it should have been. It had nothing out of place. The living room had no magazines or books on a table, no signs that it had been inhabited. There were a couple very good vases, but no flowers in them. He looked inside the mouths of both and could tell that in the past there had been water for plants that had left rings. It seemed to him that if a criminal wanted to mask the fact that the woman who lived here was gone, it would have been a good idea to remove any flowers, which would have wilted in a couple days.

The dining room looked as though it hadn’t ever been used, but that didn’t mean much. A young widow might not arrange formal dinners very often—might even have given it up when her husband died. He was eager to keep going to reach the kitchen. Almost anything on her counters or in her cupboards might tell him more than he knew now. What he was almost certain to learn something from was her refrigerator. Most of the food packages would have labels with dates on them, and if anything was out of character or out of place, he might spot it.

As he walked toward the doorway to the kitchen, he passed a tall wooden sideboard. He looked more closely as he walked by, and saw the slim silvery profile of a cell phone. It was lying on the top of oneof the small glass-fronted cabinets that supported the big mirror of the sideboard, nearly six feet above the floor.

Warren’s gut tightened. Nobody, and especially no woman, would knowingly go anywhere for two days or more and leave her phone on top of a sideboard. He turned toward the window across the dining room. Why hadn’t he or Officer Porter seen the phone through the window? They had both looked, and both had suspected there was something strange going on.

He looked at the top of the sideboard again. The light had changed since they’d walked around the house. As the afternoon sun had sunk lower, its rays had shone more directly in the window and through the thin white curtains. The phone was almost fully in a ray of bright light now. He looked at his watch and noted the time. It was five eighteen exactly.

Warren turned, walked to the staircase, and climbed back up to the second floor. He went into the master bedroom, climbed out the window, walked along the roof to the overhanging limb of the big tree, lowered himself to hang by his arms, and dropped to the ground.

He walked around the outside of the house and looked into the dining room window to be sure. Then he took out his phone and called Sergeant McHargue.

When McHargue answered, Warren said, “Hello, Sergeant. This is Charles Warren. I think that Officer Porter and I missed something when we were doing the walk-around at Vesper Ellis’s house. I’m at the dining room window, and I see something on top of the big sideboard that might be a cell phone. I don’t know if it’s hers or not, but if it is—”

“I get it. I’ve got the address,” McHargue said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

8

Detective Sergeant McHargue arrived at the house in about twenty minutes. He pulled up at the curb behind Warren’s car and walked toward the driveway. As Warren joined him, he said, “What made you look in the windows a second time?”

Warren said, “I’ve never had a paying client with a legitimate need for my help drop out of sight before, and I’ve never gotten shot at. She was eager to get my call, but then she didn’t answer any calls. Her doors were locked, but the alarm wasn’t armed. Officer Porter, who did the welfare check, was thorough, but I just didn’t feel satisfied, so I took another look.”

“You didn’t go inside or anything, right?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Not exactly an answer.”

He had to lie. “The answer is no.”

They reached the dining room window, and Warren said, “There’s a big piece of furniture along the wall on the other side of the dining table. There’s a metallic object on the top left side of it. When I lookedthe second time the sun was low and shining straight inside, and I could see a reflection. I think it’s a cell phone.”

McHargue stepped up, shaded his eyes and looked in. He stepped to the left side, then the right. “There’s no sun shining on it now.”

“I know, but there was at 5:18P.M.”

McHargue turned to look at him for a second. Then he walked back down the driveway to his unmarked car and came back with a large black flashlight and a black object that looked like a small suitcase. He stepped in front of the window again, set the case on the pavement, and stepped up on it. He pushed the lens of the flashlight against the glass and switched on the light. The dining room was lit up with a glare that made Warren squint.

After a few seconds McHargue switched the light off and stepped down. “Bad news.” He picked up the case he’d been standing on.

“Wait,” Warren said. “I’m sure I saw the phone, and—”

“Yeah, me too,” McHargue said. “That’s what I meant by bad news. People who take off voluntarily seldom leave their phones behind. I’m going to request a warrant to search the house, and to have the tech people take a look at what’s in the phone. I’ll also get a search going for her car. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks,” Warren said. He resisted the impulse to say anything else. He watched McHargue get into his car and drive off fast. Police departments were big and ponderous machines, but he could tell McHargue was determined to get the machine moving, and that was all Warren could hope for.

When he arrived at the office, business hours were over, and the parking levels were nearly empty. He parked in a visitor’s space on the level above the Warren & Associates spaces, hoping that if criminals were watching for him, they wouldn’t identify the rental car. He tookthe elevator up to his office’s floor and found that Martha was still at her desk.

“Hi,” he said. “Why are you still here?”

“Or you could say, ‘Martha, once again, you’re employee of the month. You stayed fifteen whole minutes to help me freeze Vesper Ellis’s accounts.’ ”

“You anticipated that I was going to freeze her accounts?”

“She still hasn’t called back. What else can you do? So I’ve gotten a start on it. I copied some of the letters you used during the Bagler divorce, and some others fromRice v. Scorton. Where there was an overlap, I copied both, so you’d have a choice. I haven’t dug up the requests for court orders. I figured it was too soon for that.”

---