sheets of paper with photocopied checks that had been dishonored on the account after it was closed. There were three checks to a page and six pages in all. Many of them appeared to have been written by an accountant with signature authority to cover routine household expenses such as water, power, maid, gardener, landscaper, pool guy, and a bunch of other stuff. I shook my head and marveled at the idea of having other people to do everything for you, even pay your bills. And then I thought that my own life might soon be like that, and then the idea didn’t seem so strange.
21
I awoke at ten in the morning and I knew it the second I opened my eyes: There was something in the bank records. I was out of bed and out to the couch in one swift movement. I flipped through the copied checks. It seemed to leap out at me. On the fifth page was a dishonored check to a lawyer in Palm Springs written by Sharon Steele three days before the murder. A check for five thousand dollars made out to The Law Offices of Marcus Murdock, Esquire with a memo line reading simply “retainer.”
I leaned forward and set the paper and my elbows on the coffee table. Why would Sharon Steele visit a lawyer in Palm Springs three days before she was killed? What’s more, why would she visit a lawyer for the very first time, which, I assumed, would have been the case if she wrote him a check for a retainer. Maybe it was nothing. Rich people had a lot of reasons to consult a lot of lawyers and did so all the time. But why in Palm Springs? No one had ever mentioned Palm Springs: not Steele, not Becky, none of the police reports, none of the people who testified. There was no connection. I scratched my head and thought back over the case. I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe it was nothing. But maybe it wasn’t. I took the page with the check on it and set it off to the side.
Energized, I flipped through the rest of the pages carefully. There were letters written from creditors about failure to pay on this or that account. There were past due bills from the power company, the phone company, the gas company, both Steele’s and his wife’s cell phones. A finance company had repossessed Steele’s Mercedes and his wife’s BMW, but still wanted to get paid for the missed payments. I went back through the credit card statements again. There seemed to be nothing else, nothing interesting. I turned my attention back to the check, staring at the name of the lawyer. Then I had an idea.
I flipped through the three telephone bills I had: the home phone, Steele’s cell, and Sharon’s cell. I scanned the long distance portions of each, looking for calls to Palm Springs in the days before the murder. I focused on the home phone and Sharon’s cell. The bill for the home phone was huge. There were calls all over the country and many international calls. I noted numerous calls to Alaska a week before the murder. I also noted several calls back east early in the morning following the murder. I assumed that was Becky contacting relatives. But there was nothing to Palm Springs.
Then, on Sharon’s cell phone bill, I found what I was looking for. Four days before the murder, there were two calls to the same number in Palm Springs. There was another call to the same number the day before the murder. I looked at the check made out to Marcus Murdock and headed for my computer. The Martindale-Hubbell website took about thirty seconds to locate a listing for Murdock. He practiced on his own and listed himself as an expert in family law. That was code for divorce lawyer.
When I called, I got an answering machine. I left a message telling Murdock who I was, what I wanted, and left him my home and cell numbers. Then I sat on the couch and wondered what I would ask him if he ever called back. Furthermore, as Sharon Steele’s attorney, I wondered if Murdock would tell me anything. The likelihood of there being anything to tell was probably slim.
I laid back on the couch, dreading the pile of books on the coffee table. I needed to study. Classes were barely two days away. My real life seemed so uninteresting after the