Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf (25 page)

“I’ve never played a video game.”

“Nor did you play this one,” Ehrengraf said smoothly, “because in fact you didn’t shoot anyone. It was Maureen McClintock who did the shooting, then pressed the gun into your hand and slipped out the door. Perhaps she told you that you’d wake up when you heard a doorbell, and rang it just before getting into her car and driving away. You heard it, you returned to full consciousness, and what else were you to believe but that you’d caused the mayhem before you?”

“So you were right, Mr. Ehrengraf. I really was innocent. But the police—”

“Did everything one might have hoped for, once they were steered in the right direction. They’d never had reason to take a good look at Maureen McClintock, whose connection to the matter seemed limited to her having shared a table with you earlier. But once they did, they found no end of evidence to implicate her and exonerate you.”

“She’d studied hypnotism.”

“She owned over a dozen books on the subject,” he said, “all of them well-thumbed, along with a fifteen-lesson correspondence course. And they weren’t out on display where anyone might have noticed them. They were tucked away out of sight, as if she didn’t want anyone to know of her interest in the subject.”

“Which she denied, according to the papers.”

“Stoutly,” said Ehrengraf. “Maintained she’d never seen them before in her life.”

“Then how did she explain them?”

“She couldn’t. She also maintained she’d never had any contact with the Kuhldreyers, or with Patricia Munk. And yet there was a newspaper clipping, news of a promotion Mr. Kuhldreyer had received. And a photograph of the couple, and a rather startling letter from Patricia Munk.”

“I read as much in the paper. But they didn’t go into detail.”

“They couldn’t,” Ehrengraf said. “It was quite graphic in nature. Evidently Munk and McClintock had had an affair, and Munk wrote about it at some length, and in some detail. You couldn’t reproduce it in a family newspaper.”

“I didn’t know Maureen well,” Cheryl Plumley said, “but I had no idea she was gay.”

“Something else she denies, but her denial is severely compromised, not only by Munk’s letter to her but by several letters she seems to have written to Munk, found in a hat box in the dead woman’s closet. Of course she swears she never wrote those letters. Oh, it’s a sad case indeed, Ms. Plumley. What did she have against the Kuhldreyers? Was it some sort of love triangle, or quadrangle? And why choose you as a cat’s-paw for her adventure in triple homicide?”

“So many questions, Mr. Ehrengraf, and I can’t answer any of them. But I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Oh?”

“For the book.”

“Ah, the book,” said Ehrengraf, and drew a document of several pages from a manila folder. “I’ve looked this over, Ms. Plumley, and I believe it’s ready for your signature. The publisher has agreed to improve his terms, and they’re now quite generous. You’ll work with an accomplished author, a very talented and personable young woman named Nan Fassbinder, and I’ll vet the final document to make sure the words she puts in your mouth are acceptable. Now if you could sign your name here, Cheryl Jonellen Plumley, that’s right, and here, and here as well. And now you’ll be able to tell your story to the world.”

“The part I remember,” she said, “which isn’t very much at all, but the wonderful part is that now I’ll be able to pay your fee. I was worried about that, you know, but you told me not to worry, and I had a thought that, well, it seems embarrassing now. I don’t know if I should mention it.”

In Ehrengraf’s experience, a mere pause was often all it took to prompt a fuller explanation. Such was the case now.

“What struck me on our first meeting,” Cheryl Plumley said, “was what an attractive man you are. When you told me I was innocent, I quivered with a sensation that was more than mere relief. And then, when you rescued me from what looked to be an absolutely hopeless situation, I was overcome by the desire to express my gratitude in, um—”

“Physical form?”

“Yes. But to do so when I was unable to pay your fee, well, that wouldn’t be proper, would it? It would look as though, well, you know how it would look.”

“Yes.”

“But now, with the book deal taking care of your compensation, and, oh, this is so awkward, Mr. Ehrengraf, but—”

“My dear Ms. Plumley,” Ehrengraf said, and took her hand, and brushed it with his lips. What a sweet little hand it was, so soft, with tapering fingers. “I do believe,” he said, “that we’d be more comfortable on the sofa.”

E
hrengraf had just finished knotting his Caedmon Society necktie when his client returned from the lavatory. She was nicely dressed once again, after having been ever so nicely undressed. He looked at her, and his gaze brought a blush to her cheeks even as it put a smile on her lips.

“I feel quite wonderful,” she said. “Everything’s worked out perfectly, hasn’t it?”

“It has.”

“For everyone but Maureen McClintock,” Cheryl Plumley said. “I don’t suppose I should sympathize with her, after what she did to those people and what she tried to do to me. But I was locked up myself until very recently, and I know how awful that is.”

“Indeed.”

“And while I never knew her terribly well, she always seemed like such a nice person. I ask myself how she could have done what she did, and the answer that pops into my head—well, you’ll just think it’s silly.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe the Devil made her do it,” she said. “But that’s perfectly ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“P
erfectly ridiculous,” said Maureen McClintock. “As I didn’t
do
any of the things with which I’m charged, there’s nothing for the Devil to have made me do.”

“I know,” Ehrengraf said.

“I’m supposed to be the worst woman since Lucrezia Borgia,” she said, “with the possible exception of that woman who drowned her two little boys, and she at least was clearly demented. Is that how you propose to save me? Because I’m not crazy.”

“I know.”

“Though how can I be sure? ‘I’m not crazy’ is, after all, one of the things crazy people say. And what’s the point of saying it? The people who already know you’re sane don’t require reassurance, and the others won’t find your proclamation convincing.” She frowned. “One can almost see the Devil’s hand in it, can’t one? Because the whole affair is truly diabolical. All the evidence in the world points to my guilt as a multiple murderess. And yet I’m innocent.”

“I know.”

She looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. Ehrengraf, his usual natty self in a gray flannel suit, a French blue shirt, and a navy tie, took the opportunity to look at his new client, and liked what he saw. Her drab outfit notwithstanding, she was a fine-looking woman, and he could see strength and purpose in her facial features.

His recent experience in his office provided him with an interesting image—Maureen McClintock, divested of her garments, stretched out upon his brown leather sofa.

All in due time, he told himself.

“‘I know,’” she echoed him. “You keep saying that, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

“I suppose I do.”

“I said I was innocent, and you said, ‘I know.’”

“I did.”

“Were you acknowledging my remark? As if nodding to keep the conversation moving?”

He shook his head. “I was acknowledging your innocence. Because I know you didn’t kill anybody, my dear Ms. McClintock, nor did you persuade anyone else to do so, through hypnotism or another of the dark arts. You were artfully—one might even say diabolically—framed, by someone whose intent was to commit murder and get away with it.”

“Cheryl Plumley.”

“Certainly not,” said Ehrengraf. “Ms. Plumley was my client.”

“But—”

“And my clients are innocent, Ms. McClintock. I did not endure the tedium of law school or brave the rigors of the bar exam in order to serve as cup bearer to the guilty. I represent—gladly, proudly—the innocent.”

“You’re saying that Cheryl and I are both innocent.”

“I am.”

“And someone else—”

“Framed you both, so arranging matters that Ms. Plumley appeared to have committed the murder while you appeared to have hovered in the background pulling the strings. Those books on hypnotism, Ms. McClintock. Did you buy them? Study them in detail?”

“I never even laid eyes on them,” she said, “until the police searched my home and pointed them out to me.” She frowned at a memory. “I
was
hypnotized once,” she remembered, “if that’s what it was. I wanted to lose a few pounds, and a friend had gone to a hypnotherapist, and she said it helped. So I went, and I guess he hypnotized me, but I can’t say I felt any different afterward. I picked up a pint of ice cream on the way home.”

“So it didn’t work.”

“Well, maybe it did,” she said, “because two weeks later I joined a gym and booked sessions with a personal trainer, and
that
worked. Maybe that man put me in a trance and told me to join a gym.” She straightened in her chair. “I didn’t buy those books, I didn’t hypnotize Cheryl, I didn’t do any of those things.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Ms. McClintock.”

“But how can you prove it in court?”

“I am rarely called upon to prove anything in court, Ms. McClintock. I find courtrooms airless and joyless venues, and make a point of staying out of them. What I intend to do, my dear woman, is so arrange matters that the facts of the case become known. When that happens, the innocence which is now so obvious to me will become evident to one and all.”

And toward that end, he told her, he’d need to know something about her life and the people in it.

“W
hitley Pleskow,” Maureen McClintock said, on their next meeting. “Why, I can barely picture what he looks like. It’s been years since I saw him, and our relationship never amounted to much of anything. I’m not even sure you can call it a relationship. We had a couple of dates, and I should have ended it at that point because I knew the chemistry wasn’t there.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, and the next time I saw him I went to bed with him, and that confirmed what I’d already realized.”

“The lack of chemistry.”

“And when it’s not there, it’s never going to be there, is it? But that’s not knowledge one is born with. You have to learn it, and Whit was part of my education. I saw him a few more times, and we went to bed, and I guess he liked it enough to want to keep on seeing me, but I didn’t.”

“And you broke it off.”

“In a pleasant and painless way,” she said, “or at least that’s what I always thought. But I guess it wasn’t that pleasant or painless for him.”

Ehrengraf fingered the knot in his Caedmon Society necktie. “Swinburne,” he said.

“Swinburne?”

“The Nineteenth Century British poet, Ms. McClintock. ‘One love grows green when one turns grey.’ But it seems to have been Mr. Pleskow who turned green.”

“With jealousy?”

“Or envy,” he said, “or something of the sort. To all appearances, Mr. Pleskow went on with his life. He dated other women, and eventually he married one of them. The marriage failed, and again he went on with his life. And yet, throughout it all, he remained fixated on one woman. And that would be you, Ms. McClintock.”

She shuddered. “It seems impossible,” she said. “And yet I saw that photograph.”

“The little shrine. Photographs of you, and newspaper clippings. A little altar, on which he’d burned black candles.”

“What does it mean, burning a black candle?”

“It can’t mean anything good,” Ehrengraf said. “He was entirely obsessed with you. The police found notebooks filled with letters he wrote to you but never sent. They found little stories of his. Fantasies, really, in which you were a principal player.”

“I read about them.”

“But the press couldn’t reproduce them, because they were relentlessly obscene. And violent as well—in some of his writings you were abused and tortured and murdered, while in others you were the villain, having your way with men or women and dispatching them horribly once you were done with them.”

“How awful.”

“In one particularly inventive episode,” Ehrengraf recalled, “you and Cheryl Plumley were lesbian lovers, and the two of you impaled a young woman upon a sharpened stake and made love while she slowly bled to death. Your victim is referred to only as Patsy, but her description is that of poor Patricia Munk.”

“I never had any idea. I’d forgotten him, and I assumed he’d forgotten me. It’s harrowing to think I could have played that sort of unwitting role in his personal mythology.” She drew a breath. “I guess we’ll never know how he managed to do what he did. Putting Cheryl in the Kuhldreyer house, planting incriminating material in my home. It’s amazing he worked it all out, let alone carried it off.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Ehrengraf said, “that he’s not able to give an account of his actions. It pains me to say it, but I blame myself.”

“You? But why, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

“When my investigations began to bear fruit,” he said, “I should have gone straight to the police. But one hesitates to do so while the possibility of innocence still exists. And so I’m afraid I had a conversation with Mr. Pleskow. I hoped to secure information without divulging any myself, but I fear I left him aware that he was under suspicion. And thus, after I left him—”

“He took the easy way out.”

Easy, thought Ehrengraf, may not have been the most appropriate word for Whitley Pleskow’s fitful little dance at the end of a rope. But he let it go.

“In a sense,” Ehrengraf said, “he may be said to have done us a favor. Some unscrupulous defense attorney could have turned the courtroom into a circus arena. Why, for all we know Pleskow could have fabricated an alibi, could have chipped away at the mountain of evidence against him. But his final act, bolstered by a suicide note in his own hand, removes all doubt. While we may now know precisely how he brought it off, we know that the triple homicide on Woodbridge Avenue was his work and his work alone. Cheryl Plumley is entirely innocent. And so, my dear Ms. McClintock, are you.”

Her hand fastened on his arm. “Mr. Ehrengraf,” she said, not quite purring. “I don’t know how to thank you.”