A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Read Free Book Online

bleating. “About ten years ago. Sally Skyler, her name was. She fell from the balcony of their house onto the rocks overlooking the ocean in Eldora.”
    “And Sam fell onto the rocks from a bluff in Quiero,” I murmured. Avenging spirits floated through my mind, prickling the hair on the back of my neck with their flight. This was getting too spooky.
    “Everyone in the legal community thought the man did it, but people were placing bets that he’d get off.” The third splinter came out. Painfully. “Skyler married Sally not long after her first husband died. Her first, very rich husband. Then she was a very rich widow. And Sam became a very rich widower.”
    “But it still could have been an accident,” I argued. “Rich wives can fall by accident, can’t they? Why were people so sure he did it?”
    “There was a witness, but the defense discredited him, got him to say he wasn’t absolutely certain.”
    “Ah,” I murmured. A witness. Then I noticed Wayne was looking down at his feet again. And he’d stopped torturing my hand. He was holding something back. I could tell.
    “And?” I prodded.
    Wayne sighed and squirmed in place awhile, his eyebrows low on the horizon of his eyeballs.
    “Tell me,” I ordered, my voice deep with threat. Threat of what I’m not really sure. But it seemed to work.
    Wayne turned to me, eyebrows rising. He sighed again.
    “You have to promise to keep this part in confidence,” he said, his voice deepening, too.
    “But what if it has a bearing on Sam Skyler’s death?” I asked. I don’t make promises lightly. Especially not to Wayne.
    His brows dropped again.
    “All right, all right,” I gave in. “This part in confidence. But the rest is public knowledge.”
    “Shouldn’t even know this myself,” Wayne started off, grabbing my hand again. “Had a friend from law school, Joey—” He cut himself off and started over again. “Had a friend from law school who was interning in a prominent defense firm at the same time I was at the P.D.’s Office. He called me one day and we got together for lunch. At his house. He said he had to talk to someone and made me promise never to say anything to anyone.”
    Wayne turned to me again, glaring. I nodded my understanding.
    “He was an ethical guy, more ethical than most, and he was bugged. He’d been in the room when Skyler’s attorneys— Skyler had a whole team—were talking with him. For some reason, one of them asked the question you’re never supposed to ask: ‘Did you do it?’ And Skyler answered, ‘Does it matter? By the time I’m through with the jury, no one will believe I did it.’ Not an actual admission, but still. And my friend was supposed to work on the team defending this man. This man he was sure had murdered his wife.”
    “So what’d your friend do?” I asked, now lost in his ethical dilemma myself.
    “He got himself transferred to another case. But he never forgot the remark. Or Sam Skyler.”
    And with that, Wayne pulled the last splinter from my hand. That hurt. And it brought me back to the case in point. Even as Wayne bent down to kiss my palm before dabbing on the last of the alcohol.
    “But Sam Skyler got off,” I prompted.
    “You’ve seen him, Kate,” Wayne growled. “He could charm anyone. Joey said he actually used hypnosis techniques when he got on the stand. By the time Skyler finished with the jury, they thought he was a grief-stricken widower, oppressed by an insensitive legal system, who deserved a medal for what he’d been through. Certainly not a man who had pushed his wife off the balcony.”
    “So that’s why you kept glaring at him,” I murmured finally.
    “Did I?” Wayne asked, brows rising. “Didn’t think it was that obvious. But the man gets to me—got to me. Seven months after the trial, his book Grief into Growth was published. It was an instant bestseller. He must have been writing it all through the trial. And then he started his seminars based on the