The fatal robbery of downtown furniture merchant Donald Carter was set up using his office phone minutes before he was killed, according to court testimony Tuesday.

During a preliminary hearing in Suffolk District Court, A’unique White, a prosecution witness who does not face charges, said she was in the company of one of the three defendants, Naomi Lambert, and another female friend when she first encountered Carter that September night.

They were walking back to a St. James Avenue house after visiting a store on Wellons Street when Carter stopped his car alongside them, White said.

After a conversation between the two in which Carter offered her liquor, Lambert climbed into the front passenger seat beside the respected 82-year-old businessman, White said.

She and the other friend sat in the back, White said, and they drove to Taco Bell, where Carter bought everybody food.

White said Lambert told her they were going to “hit a lick” — street slang for do a robbery.

White said they left the eatery and dropped the friend off at a house on Truman Road, then Carter drove her and Lambert to his furniture store on East Washington Street, where police would find him shot to death shortly after 1:12 a.m.

Lambert asked to use a phone inside the store, and spoke to someone for five or 10 minutes, White said. Lambert didn’t say who she was calling, she added.

White said she and Carter were also in the back of the store, and Carter went into a bedroom for five or 10 minutes after Lambert’s phone call.

After getting off the phone, Lambert told her “Leon’s outside,” White said.

Tuesday’s procedural hearing, which resulted in Judge James A. Moore sending to the grand jury murder and other charges against Lambert, 22, Leon Hayes, 33 and Katron Walker, 32, included few details on what was said inside the furniture store. But according to interview transcripts, Lambert told police Carter offered to pay for sex.

Lambert told police that while Carter was drinking vodka and “brown liquor” was also available, she and White did not partake.

The friends decided to leave after Carter’s sex offer, she said, and declined his further offer of a ride home.

White told the courtroom that when she left the building to run across the railroad tracks back to the St. James Avenue house, she saw Hayes and the third accused, Katron Walker, emerge from behind bushes and advance toward Carter, who had also moved toward the door of his store.

She said she heard someone — she didn’t know who — ask for money, followed by two gunshots.

The autopsy report reveals one gunshot entered Carter’s abdomen, while another gunshot grazed his chest.

According to the transcripts, Walker told police, “I never knew he (Carter) was that nice of a person. … People say he used to let people come sleep in the stores if they ain’t had nowhere to go.”

Walker told police he had met up with Hayes on Wellons Street before they walked to Carter’s store to try to rob him.

White said that after running away from East Washington Street, everyone met back at the St. James Avenue house. Hayes asked Walker why he shot Carter, she said.

Several times, Moore told the courtroom that it was a preliminary hearing to determine whether the prosecution had enough evidence to show a crime was committed and it was reasonable to believe the defendants were responsible. It was not a trial, he said.

Moore, only a few feet away from her, several times asked White to deliver her testimony in a louder, clearer voice.

Outside the courthouse after the hearing, Berninita Johnson, who identified herself as “kin” of Hayes, said White’s testimony was unconvincing, describing her body language as “wobbly.”

Johnson maintained Walker was the shooter.

The three defendants are each charged with first degree murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, attempted armed robbery and two counts of use of firearm in the commission of a felony. Walker also faces a petit larceny charge.

Johnson said Hayes has asked for his family to show up and support him at every court appearance.

“He ain’t talked about the case,” she said.