Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3) by Margaret Truman Read Free Book Online Page B

know much about opera, but I’d like to go to… what’s it called?”
    “Cav-Pag. That’s great. I’ll talk to you during the week.”
    He watched her drive off, then got in his own car and drove to M Street, Northwest, in Georgetown. He parked illegally even though the new police commissioner had called for a crackdown on cops taking advantage of their position, walked a block and turned into Club Julie.
    It was dark, smoky and crowded. The room was long and narrow, and a bar ran half its length on the right. In the center of the left wall was a tiny bandstand. Seated on it was the Julie of Club Julie, surrounded by keyboard instruments, an organ, acoustic and electric pianos and an electronic rhythm machine that duplicated the sound of percussion instruments.
    “Hello, Marty,” Julie said as Teller sat at the only empty stool at the piano bar. There were ten stools, seven of them occupied by middle-aged women, all of whom knew him. A waitress brought him gin on the rocks without being asked, and Julie launched into a medley of old sing-along tunes—“If You Wore a Tulip,” “Down by the Riverside,” “Ain’t She Sweet,”… Teller sang along with the others. One hour and four gins later, he was holding a microphone and doing his best Frank Sinatra act, pulling notes up from the heart, closing his eyes and belting them out to the delight of the crowd.
    “Good night, Marty,” Julie said as Teller stood unsteadily and waved to hangers-on as he headed for the door.
    “Sing ‘My Way,’” a drunk at the bar muttered.
    “Next time,” Teller said. He took deep breaths of chilled night air, found his car and went home, singing “My Way” all the way to the front door.
    “Generation gap, my ass.”

CHAPTER 9
    “Let’s go over it,” Teller said to detectives gathered in his office. A sizable contingent of them had descended on the Supreme Court and had taken preliminary statements from almost everyone, including the nine justices.
    “I felt like a fool asking a Supreme Court judge for his whereabouts the night of the murder,” one of them said.
    “What did he say?” Teller asked.
    “It wasn’t a he, it was a she, Justice Tilling-Masters.”
    “What did she say?”
    “That she was at a party with her family.”
    “Did it check out?”
    “Yup.”
    “Who else?” Teller asked.
    They ran down a list. Of the nine justices, six had alibis that could be confirmed.
    “Whose alibi has holes?” Teller asked.
    “Conover, Poulson and Childs.”
    “They lied?”
    “No, but they aren’t solid,” a hefty detective named Vasilone said. “For instance, Marty, Poulson was supposed to be at a party too, but I talked to somebody else who was there and he puts Poulson’s departure at a different time than what Poulson told me. I’m still trying to get hold of other people who were there.”
    “What about Conover?”
    “Says he was home alone working on a manuscript.”
    “Wife?”
    “Out at a party, at least that’s what her husband says. I asked him about household help and he told me he gave them all the night off.”
    Teller twisted a little finger in his ear. “How about Childs?”
    Another detective reported on Childs. “He says he was tinkering with his airplane at the airport that night.”
    “At that hour?”
    “That’s what I said, Marty, but he told me it’s the only time he can get away.”
    “Any corroboration?”
    “An airport guard says he saw him earlier in the evening but doesn’t know what time he left.”
    “Okay, that takes care of the top. What about everybody else in the Court?” He was handed a list of people who could not definitively account for their activities.
    “There’s lots more to interview,” Vasilone said. “You can only do so much.”
    “I know,” Teller said. “Keep plugging. I want daily reports.”
    When they were gone from his office he sat back, feeton the desk, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he looked at framed