The Perfect Alibi (Robin Lockwood #2)(71)

Sheffield’s law school was definitely third tier, and Robin couldn’t understand why Harrison had gone there. A graduate of Columbia would be able to go to a better law school than the one at Sheffield even if he had terrible grades. And why Arkansas? And how had a graduate of Sheffield’s law school landed a position at a prestigious New York firm that would do most of its hiring at top ten law schools?

Then Robin remembered where Sheffield had come up before. She felt light-headed. After taking a few deep breaths, Robin mulled over the implications of her discovery. When she was calm, Robin found the phone number for Greta Harrison, Tyler’s widow.

It was nine at night in New York, still early enough to call.

“Mrs. Harrison?” Robin asked when a woman answered the phone.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to call this late. My name is Robin Lockwood. I’m an attorney in Portland, Oregon.”

“What is this about?” Greta asked in the tone Robin often used when she suspected that a caller was a solicitor.

“You know Detective Herschel Jacobs?”

“Yes,” Greta answered warily.

“Frank Nylander was an attorney in Portland. He met with your husband in New York to negotiate a case during the week your husband was killed. Detective Jacobs called me a while ago to ask me to help him with your husband’s case because I was representing an attorney in Oregon who was the partner of Frank Nylander.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re calling.”

“I ran across something odd that might help Detective Jacobs, and I have a strange question to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“I was going through a file and I noticed a photograph of Mr. Harrison’s diplomas. I saw that he graduated from Columbia, which is a very prestigious university, but he went to a small law school in Arkansas. Can you tell me why your husband went to law school at Sheffield instead of a more prestigious institution?”

“How could that possibly be relevant to finding my husband’s killer?”

“It may not be. I may be way off base.”

There was dead air for a moment. Robin waited.

“The answer to your question is very simple. Tyler and I met at Columbia. Although I was in medical school and he was a freshman, we were almost the same age because Tyler had been in the army for several years before he went to college.

“The year Tyler graduated from Columbia, I decided to go to a rural county in Arkansas that was in dire need of a physician. Tyler had excellent grades and could have gone to law school anywhere, but we were in love and he insisted on applying to Sheffield’s law school so we could be together. Tyler graduated number one in his class and edited the law review. Several people at his law firm knew him from Columbia. They told the partners about him when he applied. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Thank you. That’s very helpful. I have one more question: What year did your husband graduate from Sheffield?”

Mrs. Harrison told Robin. The sick feeling she’d experienced when she saw the photograph of Harrison’s diploma returned.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with finding the person who murdered Tyler,” Mrs. Harrison said.

“To be honest, I’m not certain it will help. If it does, you can count on me telling Detective Jacobs what I’ve discovered.”

Robin said good night and hung up. She spun her chair around so she was looking out the window, but she wasn’t seeing any of the sights. Doug Armstrong had gone to the Warren E. Burger School of Law at Sheffield around the same time as Tyler Harrison. He and Harrison were the only lawyers she’d heard of who had gone there. In fact, Robin had never heard of Sheffield or its law school, and she doubted that anyone who didn’t live in Arkansas had heard of the school. Anyone, that is, but Frank Nylander. But what did that mean?

Robin let her imagination run wild. Frank is in Tyler Harrison’s office negotiating the Voss case. He sees Harrison’s diploma and he says, “What a coincidence. My law partner went to your law school at the same time you were there. His name is Doug Armstrong. Did you know him?”

What had Harrison answered? The class at Sheffield was small, so it would have been odd if Harrison didn’t know Doug. Robin bolted upright in her chair. After a few minutes, she did a web search for the Warren E. Burger School of Law alumni association.





CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE


Robin was too distracted to work, so she went to the gym. An hour of exertion left her exhausted but did not bring her peace of mind. It had rained for most of the day, but the rain stopped by the time she started walking home. It was not uncommon for Robin to solve problems in her cases during a long walk, and she got a few ideas before she arrived at her apartment.

Jeff was interviewing witnesses for Mark Berman, her law partner, so Robin whipped up a quick dinner of leftover Thai food. She paid very little attention to her food because the implications of what she’d discovered kept tumbling around in her brain. She had brought a chopstick’s worth of pad thai halfway to her mouth when she remembered the bullet. As Robin sat up, she forgot to grip the chopsticks, and the noodles dropped back onto her plate.

Detective Jacobs had told her that the bullet that killed Tyler Harrison and the bullet that killed Rex Kellerman had come from the same gun. That made no sense if Rex had nothing to do with the New York case, unless …