Face Value (9 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Benny broke the silence with a chuckle. “Now that is what I call genuine cluster fuck.”

A moment of silence, and then Stanley spoke. “If by the term ‘cluster fuck,' Mr. Goldberg, you are referring to the military slang nomenclature for a confusing or chaotic situation caused by a failure of communication, often involving an excessive amount of personnel attempting to accomplish a given task, then you are mistaken, sir. What you witnessed was not a cluster fuck. What you witnessed was confirmation of Mr. Teever's motive for killing Sari Bashir.”

“Is that so?” Benny said. “Please enlighten us, Mr. Holmes.”

“To recap: based on Mr. Teever's time of departure on the evening of Ms. Bashir's death, he is a suspect. In order to proceed—namely, to evaluate the likelihood of his role as the murderer—we must first identify his motive for killing her.”

“Aren't you assuming too much?” Benny asked.

“The assumption is purely arguendo, sir. We assume that he is the killer purely for the purpose of determining whether he had sufficient motive to commit the homicide. The existence of a compelling motive is essential to the analysis. One does not hurl a young woman off the eighth floor of a parking garage without a motive unless one is insane—and our four suspects exhibit no reliable indicia of psychosis. Thus if Mr. Teever did not have a discernable motive, we can eliminate him from our list of suspects and focus our attentions on the other three. If, however, we conclude that he did have a sufficient motive, then we proceed accordingly.”

“And that interview convinced you that Teever had a motive?” Benny asked.

“That is correct, sir. Or at least a potentially sufficient motive.”

“What was his motive?”

“You saw it for yourself, sir. That videotape confirms that Mr. Teever was engaged in a clandestine, professionally unethical, and presumably undisclosed sexual relationship with a client of the firm.”

A pause.

“Oh?” Benny said. “And who was he banging?”

“Claire Hudson. She is, as confirmed in the video, a client of the firm and the spouse of another client of the firm, both of whom Mr. Teever is currently representing in the preparation of their wills, trusts, and other estate plan documents.”

“You're telling me you deduced all of that from this videotape?” Benny said.

“I am merely stating that this videotape confirms prior suspicions.”

“And what were those prior suspicions based on?”

“Evidence, sir. Evidence.”

“What evidence, Stanley?”

Stanley stood and walked toward the side wall. He stopped a few feet from the wall and began stretching his neck.

I turned to Benny. “Among the documents we obtained are Teever's expense reports for the last three months. Actually, the expense reports for all four of the lawyers. It was Stanley's idea.”

“And what did they show?” Benny asked.

“The other three lawyers had physical receipts for each charge,” I said. “If they took someone out to lunch, their expense report for that lunch would include a copy of the lunch bill. But Teever didn't seem to save his receipts, so each month his secretary would turn in a single comprehensive expense report that would include a copy of his American Express bill for that month. She would circle and number each of the charges that were business expenses, and then would attach some pages giving the details for each of those expenses.”

“And?” Benny said.

I turned to Jerry. “Do you have copies?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Jerry rummaged through his folder of documents. “Here is the one for the last month.”

He removed a photocopy of the four-page American Express bill and fanned the pages out on the table so that Benny and I could see them. Stanley was still over in the corner facing the wall. Jerry removed a three-page typewritten document that was stapled in the upper right corner and set that document on the table in front of him.

“Give them an example of an annotated charge,” Stanley commanded.

Jerry leaned over the first page of the American Express bill and ran an enormous forefinger down the column of merchants.

“Here's one,” he said. “Tony's Restaurant. Do you see the number three here?”

Benny leaned forward to look where Jerry was pointing. There was a handwritten numeral 3 in the margin to the right of the final column, which showed a charge for $278.00.

“Here's the explanation for number three,” Jerry said, turning to the second page of the three-page document. “Dinner with Harold Townsend,” he read, “Senior Vice President, American Pipe Corporation. Charge: Client Entertainment.”

Benny picked up the four pages of the American Express bill and studied them one by one.

“So he claimed fourteen of these charges as business expenses?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lot of other charges on this bill besides those fourteen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Groceries, drug store, cleaners, Starbucks—personal stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even his barber's here.” Benny looked up at me. “Christ, sixty dollars for a fucking haircut? Who's cuts his hair? Vidal Sassoon?”

“That is impossible,” Stanley announced, turning from the wall to face Benny. “Mr. Sassoon died on May ninth of 2012. That was a Wednesday.”

“A Wednesday, eh?” Shaking his head in amusement, Benny looked down at the American Express statement. “So what did you spot here, Jerry?”

“Well, sir, I didn't really spot anything. This was for Stanley. He was curious about this hotel charge on page three.”

Benny found it. $247.43 for the Marriott Hotel in downtown St. Louis on the third Wednesday of that month.

I said, “That was two weeks before Sari's death.”

“So what's the issue there?”

“Stanley,” I said, “can you explain it to Benny?”

Stanley turned toward Jerry. “Her timesheets.”

“Oh, right,” Jerry said.

Jerry pulled a set of documents—about thirty pages' worth—out of the folder. They were held together by a binder clip on the top. About a dozen little colored flags were affixed to the right sides of the pages.

Jerry said, “Stanley saw some entries that might have been related to the hotel charge.”

“What kind of relation?” Benny asked.

Stanley announced, “Ms. Bashir worked on an estate-planning matter for Mr. Teever. The clients are David and Claire Hudson. On the same date that Mr. Teever incurred the hotel charge, Ms. Bashir billed seven-point-five hours to the Hudson estate-planning matter, along with approximately eight hours to other matters. The following day she billed another eight-point-two hours to the Hudson matter, plus nearly nine hours to other matters.”

“So,” I said to Benny, “it was possible that Teever had obtained a room for her so that she wouldn't have to drive home late at night.”

“Possible,” Stanley announced, “but unlikely.”

“Why unlikely?” Benny asked.

After a moment of silence, Stanley said, “Because on the first Wednesday of that month Mr. Teever incurred the identical charge—$247.43—at the same hotel but, according to Ms. Bashir's timesheets, she did no work on the Hudson matter any day that week. Moreover, Mr. Teever incurred three such hotel charges the prior month, all in the same amount, and none of those five hotel charges was submitted to the firm for reimbursement. In short, they were personal charges.”

“Okay,” Benny said. “So?”

“Jerry made inquiries.”

Benny looked at Jerry. “What kind of inquiries?”

Jerry cleared his throat. “It was Miss Gold's idea. I called the Marriott and pretended to be an assistant to Mr. Teever. I explained that he'd misplaced the receipt for that particular stay and that I needed a replacement receipt. I told them that I would be happy to drop by to pick it up. They agreed to print off a duplicate for me.”

“And?” Tony said.

“Here it is.” Jerry removed a sheet of paper from the folder and set it on the table between Benny and me.

As Benny leaned over to study it, Stanley said, “You will note three charges. One for the room, one for room service, and one for parking. Ms. Gold had Jerry call back to ask for the specifics of the room service charge and the parking charge.”

“And?” Benny said to Jerry.

“The room service charge was for a bottle of champagne and a cheese and fruit plate. The parking charge was for three hours.”

“Thus it appeared from the charges,” Stanley said, “that the purpose of the hotel room was not for a night's rest but for an illicit assignation during the middle of the day.”

Benny said, “Why a nooner?”

Stanley stretched his neck. “If by the term ‘nooner' you are referring to an assignation that takes place during business hours, the first clue is the parking charge. One car, three hours. The offices of Warner & Olsen are less than four blocks from the Marriott. Thus it is highly unlikely that Mr. Teever would have driven there. Instead, it is far more likely that Mr. Teever's companion drove to the hotel, parked her car there, and had the charge billed to the room. Further confirmation is contained in Mr. Teever's American Express bill, which includes two charges that evening—one from Starbucks, one from Straubs grocery store. The Starbucks and the Straubs on his statement are both located within walking distance of his residence in the Central West End. Indeed, charges from those two establishments appear frequently on his credit card bills. Thus it would appear that Mr. Teever concluded his three-hour sojourn at the Marriott prior to his departure from the law firm at the end of the day, all of which supports the inference that this transaction took place
during
the day, and involved a companion who drove to the hotel and who participated in the consumption of the alcoholic beverage and the array of dairy and fruit products that comprised the room service order. Given that the Hudson estate-planning matter is the only client matter associated with Mr. Teever on which Ms. Bashir worked, the search for a motive pointed toward a possible illicit sexual tryst with either the husband or the wife. Because Mr. Teever exhibits no indicia of either a homosexual or bisexual predilections and because Mr. Hudson's office is approximately five blocks from the Marriott, it seemed unlikely that Mr. Hudson would have driven his car to the hotel to engage in a furtive homosexual liaison with Mr. Teever. Thus I focused on Mrs. Hudson. Confirmation that she was Mr. Teever's hotel companion that day, and presumably other such days, occurred when Mr. Hanratty asked Mr. Teever to describe his relationship with Claire Hudson.”

“Ah, yes.” Benny grinned. “That question seemed to come out left field.”

Stanley stared at him.

“Actually, Mr. Goldberg,” he finally said, “that particular question came out of the script I prepared for the interview.”

“It sure pissed him off,” Benny said.

“Actually,” Stanley said, “Mr. Teever's facial actions in response to that question momentarily registered guilt and then fear.”

“How?” Benny asked.

“Mr. Teever initially looked down and away, which is a reliable indicator of guilt or shame. As for fear, when he looked up at the camera his lower facial muscles, and specifically, his Risorius, known as the lip stretcher, and his Labii, known as the lip depressor, were activated. According to the dictionary, panic means a sudden strong feeling of fear that prevents reasonable thought or action. Guilt is defined as remorseful awareness of having done something wrong. Juxtapose them and you have compelling evidence that Mr. Teever is involved in an illicit sexual relationship with a client who also happens to be the spouse of another client.”

Silence for a moment.

“Okay,” Benny said. “So he's banging his client's wife. Got it. How does that fact get Sari killed?”

Stanley said, “That fact alone does not provide sufficient motive for Ms. Bashir's murder. But for our purposes here, that fact creates a plausible first event in a chain of events that could result in her murder. The second event, which we cannot yet establish, is that Ms. Bashir discovered the existence of that illicit relationship. If that occurred, and if Mr. Teever believed that she might disclose that fact to others, he would have had sufficient motive.”

“How so?” Benny asked.

“Mr. Teever is on the Missouri Bar's Board of Governors and is the chair of the Professionalism Committee. These are highly prestigious positions within the legal profession, and Mr. Teever is an individual whose entire persona conveys great concern with the preservation and expansion of his prestige within the legal profession. Moreover, his positions with the Missouri Bar provide him with oversight duties in the enforcement of the Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct. His conduct with Mrs. Hudson violates several provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct and, if exposed, could result in his disbarment and thus his disgrace and concomitant loss of prestige. For example, Rule 4-1.8, which is entitled Conflict Of Interest: Prohibited Transactions, expressly states in subsection j that, quote, ‘a lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced,' closed quote. In this case, even assuming that the sexual relationship existed prior to the commencement of the client-lawyer relationship, the existence of that relationship at the time he also represented her husband violates at least two other Rules of Professional Conduct. In short, if Ms. Bashir had discovered this misconduct, she would have a professional obligation to report him to the chief disciplinary counsel of the Missouri Bar. The likely repercussions from that would have given someone in Mr. Teever's position sufficient reason to silence her permanently.”

Benny leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned to me. “Son of a bitch.”