A Class Action (18 page)

Way down at the bottom of the last report is an investigator’s note scribbled in the margin mentioning that the witnesses are prepared to bring into court proof of each payment that they made to have the repairs done.

What does that mean? Was Joe stupid enough to take their checks? I don’t want to bring any unnecessary attention to this little detail, so I assign Jack B. the task of contacting each of these witnesses and making photocopies of whatever they claim to be proof of payment to Joe.

While waiting for Jack to round up those copies, I’ve made an appointment to pick up Joe and bring him with me to where the wrecked Suburban is, so that he can check out my information about the right front brake caliper. I offer to take him to his apartment first so that he can rest up for a while, but he insists on getting right to the investigation. He wants very much to completely clear his name, and I don’t blame him.

He looks pretty good for having spent some time in custody. He credits it all to his Seal training. When we get to the police impound garage, the same surly tattooed gate attendant who directed me to Stuart’s Camry is there to greet us with a frown. After making us sit on a couple of grimy chairs for about fifteen minutes while he calls someone at another location, he grudgingly buzzes us through to the large out-door vehicle storage area.

Impounded vehicles that are subjects of criminal investigation are stored in an indoor ‘evidence’ garage, which is kept locked at all times. Smiley opens the locked door for us and we go inside. There are only two other vehicles in the garage, both probably recovered stolens. I remind myself to mention this fact to Stuart so that he can start keeping track of local police auctions.

The Suburban is on an alignment rack. It would be a lot easier if it was all the way up on a hoist, but the rack is okay because we see what Joe refers to as a ‘creeper’ nearby. I know what he means when I see him go over to get the thing. It’s like a little furniture dolly with wheels that a mechanic can lie on and roll himself under a vehicle, for a look at the car’s bottom.

Joe doesn’t waste any time. Using the flashlight that he asked me to bring in from my glove compartment, he lies down on the creeper, rolls himself under the Suburban and starts investigating whatever there is to investigate down there.

After a few minutes of poking around he gets up and tells me that in order to do a more thorough job he’ll need some tools from his cabinet at the dealership. I’ll have to take his word for it, because I still don’t even understand what a caliper is.

When we pull into the dealership, it looks like old home week with a hero returning from the war. Obviously not one person in the whole place believed that Joe had anything to do with those explosions, and he’s tremendously well liked by everyone there. We don’t see Eaton around, but that’s no surprise. He probably knew that we’d be coming by today so he made himself scarce.

Our appearance is during the middle of everyone’s lunch break, so Joe is having a nice time making the rounds and saying hello to all his fellow employees. While he was gone his service bay was closed, so he has to use his security key to unlock the roll-down gate and lift it up in order to enter the bay. It was a clean workspace when he left it, and it stayed that way.

Like most journeymen mechanics, he has a six-foot high red metal tool cabinet on wheels, with plenty of different sized drawers. I don’t know too much about tools, but judging from the size of that cabinet, I’d bet that he has whatever could possibly be needed for just about any vehicle repair.

Joe looks a little confused at first and has to open several drawers before he finds what he needs. I’m curious about this.

“
What’s the matter Joe, forget where you put some things?”

“
Naw, I don’t do brake work in my bay. We have a separate department on the other side of the lot that does alignment, brakes, shocks, mufflers, and stuff like that. I haven’t used my brake-pulling tools in a long time, and for some reason they’re not in the drawer I thought they were in.”

He fumbles through another couple of drawers and finally locates the tool he was looking for. Suddenly, out of pure reflex action, I shout out to him. “Wait, Joe, don’t touch it.”

He’s got good reflexes. His military training kicked in to obey my command and he doesn’t touch the tool.

“
Sorry about that Joe, but remember what we were talking about? Well, if you didn’t do anything to those vehicles, then it’s a good possibility that after hours someone else did. If that’s true, then we’ve got to get that tool dusted it for prints.”

“
That’s a good idea Mister Sharp, but you know what grease does… it destroys a hard surface’s ability to accept a print.”

“
Yeah Joe, I know that, but you told me that you haven’t used that tool in quite some time, so if you’ve haven’t done much work with it, maybe we can get lucky and it’s in a like-new condition without much grease on it.”

We take that tool and some of the others that might have possibly been used to sabotage a brake system and put them into a plastic souvenir bag we borrow from the dealership’s gift shop. I’ll have Jack B. take the bag out to Victor’s place.

I purposely avoid discussing the note that the D.A.’s investigator made about proof of payments to Joe. No sense in asking questions I don’t know some answers to. I want to be able to know the facts, so that when we start to discuss the matter I’ll be able to find out once and for all whether or not Joe’s been lying to me. I’d rather go along with the Ronald Reagan slogan of ‘trust, but verify.’

Joe and I both agree that it would be best for him to lock up his service bay and go home to wait for some word from the dealership as to the status of his employment there. That Suburban will still be available for Joe to inspect next week. As for Joe’s job, I don’t think that Eaton will want him to stay, because that might look too much like Joe’s innocent of the murders, and he’s too convenient a suspect to let off the hook right now – at least until the insurance and estate monies come in for Eaton, at which time he probably won’t care about much. He’ll be long gone and far away.

After several days of nothing happening, Mister Berland’s family attorney Socrates Gutsue calls to let me know that the Probate Court has set a hearing date for the objection he filed on Berland’s behalf. This means that if we can’t give the court some reason not to go ahead, they will accept Mrs. Berland’s Will into probate and start the process that will make Ralph Eaton a multi-millionaire.

The next phone call that comes in is from Victor.

“
Peter, I’ve got news for you. Do you want to hear the bad news or the bad news?”

“
I get the idea Victor… let’s get it over with. What’ve you got?”

“
First, I haven’t been able to figure out who died first - Nancy Eaton or her mother. Next, I did manage to get some prints off of one of your client’s brake tools, but the locals have nothing to match it in the California database. I’ve sent it to the Feds, but that takes longer, so we’ll have to wait a while, until AFIS sends an answer. And last but certainly not least, I’ve been subpoenaed to testify at the Probate Court’s Will Contest Hearing later this week.”

“
C’mon Victor, they can’t be serious about that. If you don’t know enough to advise me, what can they think you’ll be able to tell them?”

“
I don’t know either, Pete, but the papers they served on me require that I bring all the photos along with me to the hearing, so maybe there’s something there I haven’t noticed yet.”

This is a fine mess. Not only do I have nothing at all to use in support of Mister Berland’s objection to the probate proceeding, my only possible witness has been ordered to come in and testify against us. I make arrangements to meet Victor at the courthouse an hour before the hearing and start to prepare myself mentally for an embarrassing loss. I warned Mister Berland that we might not stand a chance.

There’s a knock on the hull. Jack B. is here with copies of the medical records on Nancy Eaton and her mother. I call a friend of mine who used to practice internal medicine and after about thirty minutes of reading a foreign language to him he tells me that Nancy Eaton had a heart condition resulting in an irregular heartbeat. I don’t know if it helps me, but it’s all I’ve got.

At the Probate hearing I introduce myself to the dapper Socrates Gutsue, Berland’s family lawyer. He’s been handling the Berland personal and business affairs for the past thirty years and also prepared both of their Wills. He asks me what we have to work with on the objection, and I sheepishly confess that we haven’t been able to come up with anything substantial.

“
Well Mister Sharp, should we just call this whole objection hearing off, or do you want to go in there and give it a shot?”

I tell Socrates I’ve never won a card game that I didn’t play in, so we all enter the courtroom together and see Ralph Eaton with his lawyer already seated at their respective places behind the counsel table. He’s retained an attorney named Paul Larkin, who I’ve been up against in the past. He’s a first class schmuck. They both look confident, and I don’t blame them. As a matter of courtesy I go over and say hello to them, but there is no shaking of hands. Before returning to our side of the courtroom, I take the opportunity to ask Larkin one question. “Why did you subpoena Victor Gutierrez to come in today? Do you think he has some important information that will show which one of them died first?”

Larkin smirks as he answers me. “Not really, Sharp, I know he has nothing that can help you, so I wanted to make sure he was here to help you make a fool out of yourself.”

Great. That’s the kind of moral support I really need before starting a hearing that’s a guaranteed dead-bang loser. It also proves the old saying about birds of a feather. A jerk like Eaton found an attorney he could identify with.

Being an informal hearing, there is no armed bailiff to call the court to order, and rightfully so, because we’re the only ones in the room. The judge walks in, steps up and sits down behind the bench. The court file has already been placed in front of him, so he calmly looks up and starts the proceeding.

“
In the matter of the Will of one deceased Estelle Berland, the file indicates that there has been an objection filed concerning the time of death. The moving party contends that Estelle Berland’s primary beneficiary, her daughter Nancy Eaton, pre-deceased her, therefore requiring that portion of her estate intended for the daughter instead to be re-directed to her alternate beneficiary, her husband.

“
Mister Gutsue, you’re the attorney of record for the moving party. You’ve appeared before me many times and I’m sure you know the way it works. It’s your objection, so it’s your burden of proof. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

“
Thank you Your Honor. At this time I’d like to have attorney Peter Sharp take over the presentation of evidence. He is our special co-counsel in this matter.”

This is the moment every lawyer dreads… being called on in open court to say something when you have absolutely nothing to say. And not only do I know I have nothing to say, opposing counsel knows it too. Caving now would let the court know that we’ve wasted its time with a frivolous objection, and that’s the type of insult no member of the bar wants to give to any judge.

I stand up and start talking. Nothing special, but I must be talking because I hear some words coming out of my mouth, and there’s no one else standing up but me. The only chance I have is to put Victor on the stand and hope that I can get him to admit that it’s possible that the daughter predeceased the mother. That’s not going to cut it in this court and I know it, but it’s all I’ve got.

Victor takes the witness stand and is sworn in. He looks relaxed. He should look relaxed. He’s got nothing to lose today because he gets paid his seven-hundred-fifty-dollar witness fee whether he talks or not. I might as well make him work a little for it, so I start in with the usual questions. We cover every word in the police accident investigation reports, and I concentrate on the fact that the daughter was thrown clear of the car while the mother stayed in it all the way down the hill. My only hope is to try and get the judge to believe that because the daughter was thrown clear of the car, she probably died instantly, leaving the mother alive in the car for the rest of the way down the hill.

Naturally, Larkin is up and down like a jack-in-the-box, objecting to every question I ask Victor. The judge probably feels a little sorry for me fighting such a losing battle, but if asked, he would have to admit that I’m at least giving it my all.

Victor had some enlargements made of the accident scene photos, and one of them is propped up on an exhibit easel near the judge’s bench. As I’m questioning Victor, I keep looking at it and see that it’s a shot of the car after it came to rest. The front windshield has been shattered inward, probably as the result of hitting a tree branch on the way down the hill. Mrs. Berland is still in the vehicle and the photo shows her covered with broken glass and her own blood. This must be a terribly uncomfortable thing for Mister Berland, sitting there directly in front of these grim pictures showing his dead wife and daughter. The old man’s holding up pretty well though, and I give him credit for that.

On the other hand, Ralph Eaton seems more interested in whispering strategy into his lawyer’s ear. He doesn’t seem the slight bit bothered by the picture of his wife lying on top of a boulder.

We show another enlargement of the Suburban’s interior, after Mrs. Eaton’s bloody body was removed. I can see that both front airbags had been deployed and deflated. That probably happened when the vehicle crashed through the road’s guardrail and started its descent.