Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  Penelope’s eyes narrowed to slits. She wasn’t mad; she was thinking. ‘Between six twenty and eight o’clock? That’s a long time. We were in various rooms, I guess.’

  Time to increase the pressure. On Pete. ‘Well, you said you started out in the den talking to Mrs Bryan, and then you were in the center hall, where you saw the TeeVee on a shelf that doesn’t exist. So where did you go after that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Pierre.’

  ‘I intend to. But I think the question that finally needs to be answered is whether it was you or Mr Chirac who stabbed Wendy Bryan, because it sure wasn’t Cynthia Sutton.’

  Valencia didn’t even have time to object. Penelope was literally vibrating in the witness chair and she just couldn’t contain herself. ‘It was Pierre!’ she said. ‘He got mad about the money and stabbed her after he bent the statue down!’

  That was what I’d needed. ‘So you’re saying Cynthia Sutton did not—’

  Valencia was on his feet before I could finish the sentence. The courtroom went from murmur to tumult quickly, but it got worse when Pete Conway stood up and shouted, ‘It was her! Penelope stabbed her! I was an innocent bystander!’

  The only thing I remember right after he said it was that Patrick McNabb was grinning from ear to ear and I didn’t blame him. It was the most TV moment I’d ever been part of in my life.

  FORTY-FOUR

  ‘We find for the defendant,’ said Judge Madison.

  Madelyn Forsythe’s appeal had been completed in record time. I’d managed to get a panel of three reasonable judges, they heard the ‘merits’ of the case the prosecution had brought and found in Maddie’s favor in approximately six minutes. Once and for all I’d proven that the DA’s office had been incredibly overzealous and had targeted the wrong woman.

  Even Longabaugh walked over and offered to shake my hand, which I declined, citing sanitary standards. I did nod graciously in his direction.

  ‘Sandy, I can’t thank you enough.’ Maddie was all warm smiles as we packed up to leave the courthouse. Patrick, who couldn’t be persuaded to leave me alone for a minute since Cynthia’s trial, stood grinning near the door and gave me a thumbs-up. Philip, ever discreet, was ‘chatting’ with Judy. I wondered if now that Maddie’s trial was over, I wouldn’t need to have Judy around anymore. ‘I don’t think any other lawyer could have gotten me off,’ Maddie said.

  Flattering though that was, I couldn’t take credit. ‘They had no case,’ I said. ‘The idea that you were convicted in the first place should have gotten me fired. I appreciate your sticking with me.’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t your fault,’ Maddie said, waving a hand. ‘The chief of police wanted me convicted, and he generally gets what he wants. I’m sorry that ended up getting you arrested for nothing.’

  I stopped and looked at her closely for a moment. I hadn’t told Maddie about my arrest because I didn’t want her to feel it was her responsibility. I thought she’d had enough to worry about. ‘You knew about that?’ I asked.

  Her face indicated I was being amusingly naïve. ‘Of course I did,’ she said. ‘They wanted my book and they were using you as a bargaining chip. But you were so smart getting these three judges. They couldn’t be bought. And the DA so didn’t have a case. You really are brilliant.’

  Right now I felt about as brilliant as a ten-watt lightbulb. ‘Your book?’ She knew about that crazy ploy too?

  ‘Yeah. I keep client records exactly for situations like this. They want to put the screws to me? I can make it very uncomfortable for some very highly placed men.’ She winked. ‘A few women, too.’

  ‘But the man with the knife came after you,’ I protested, trying to convince Maddie that she really wasn’t in the sex-for-money business.

  ‘I know. You inspired me! After you were attacked, I thought that would work great so I called a guy, and he was worth every dime I paid in sympathy and deflection. Nice touch, right?’

  She started up the aisle toward Patrick. ‘So you really are a prostitute.’ The words just slipped out of my mouth.

  Maddie turned and gave me a haughty look. ‘I am not a prostitute,’ she said. ‘I’m a madam. Besides, they’re called sex workers these days. Thanks a lot, Sandy. The check will be in the mail.’

  I stood there, unable to do anything but shake my head in wonder for two full minutes, before Patrick came over, looking concerned. ‘Are you all right, love?’ he said.

  ‘She really is … you know, she really is …’

  ‘I tried to tell you,’ he said. ‘I know a few producers and at least one studio executive who have availed themselves of her services.’

  The only thing I could think to say was, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Are you all out of courtrooms to be in?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘For the time being.’

  We walked toward the door but Patrick stopped me. ‘I still don’t understand what happened in Cynthia’s trial,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m grateful she’s free, but everyone was accusing everyone else. I never really got the whole story.’

  I didn’t blame him. By contrast to Maddie’s turbo-speed appeal, it had taken another two days after Pete Conway had accused Penelope of Wendy Bryan’s murder for the trial to be ended by Judge Hawthorne and the charges to be dropped by whoever Valencia’s boss was.

  At first the prosecution had refused to accept the confession as authentic, I told Patrick. ‘Valencia was so determined to believe that Cynthia had killed her mother-in-law that he dismissed Pete’s outburst as emotional and coerced. It wasn’t until Penelope said Pete had committed the same murder that he asked Trench to step in and “assist” Brisbane, who looked for all the world like there were tiny airplanes circling his head.’

  ‘It’s always good to summon the lieutenant,’ said Patrick, suddenly Trench’s biggest fan.

  ‘Wendy Bryan almost certainly poisoned Leopold Kolensky over dinner at her house,’ I went on. ‘But she wasn’t alive, so Trench didn’t have anyone to charge in that murder. He could have been petty and brought charges against Isobel Sanchez, but he’s not a petty man. Anyway, Sanchez was facing charges of theft because she’d taken items from Wendy’s house when Wendy was alive and pawned or sold them in lieu of the salary she was supposed to have been paid. It’s even unclear whether Sanchez had told Wendy what she was doing and was cutting her in on the profits. Wendy Bryan’s business is indeed buried under piles of debt.’

  Nate Garrigan’s assertion that Wendy had been borrowing from organized crime figures (Why are they always ‘figures’? Why aren’t they ‘organized criminals’? It’s like how everyone who makes a dirty movie is a ‘porn star’. I guess there are no porn character actors.) had panned out and four arrests had been made, but the accused weren’t exactly Don Corleone. These were low-level guys who thought they’d get their hooks into a big art dealer and instead got Wendy Bryan, who wasn’t going to pay off for anybody. Even an attempt to try to cash in with Wendy’s son Michael was caught on a recording. Michael told his contact that his mother would claim any money he got in a divorce settlement and that his attorney was working it out with Cynthia’s as they spoke. It turned out Cynthia’s lawyer, who was subsequently disbarred, had worked with her mother-in-law when Wendy had suggested that she get any money recovered in the divorce and Michael, doormat that he was, had agreed. Cynthia wisely fired her attorney even without knowing that and hired me, and that was a problem for Wendy, Michael and the lawyer. Any idea of coming after Cynthia’s money was sort of put on hold when she’d been accused of killing the debtor. For the LA mob, this had not been a successful operation. They could have used a few lessons from the guys back in Jersey.

  ‘You’re adorable when you speak legalese,’ Patrick said, thinking that was an endearment. ‘Go on.’

  To avoid any more words like ‘adorable’, I did. ‘Once Valencia had finally given up on his fantastical quest, I asked the judge to dismiss the charges and she did with the DA’s blessi
ng, seeing as they’d gotten dual confessions from Penelope and Pete and had to sort out what had actually happened. You know that part.’

  ‘How did they sort it all out? That’s the part where I got lost. Everyone accusing everyone else.’ Patrick sat down in the last row, figuring this part might take a while.

  ‘I wasn’t present at the questioning of course, but Nate and Judy checked in with their sources at the LAPD, who confirmed that the two were accusing each other, each presumably attempting to shield him-/herself from the long arm of the law. Unfortunately, it was fairly obvious after a few hours of this that both of them had played a role in Wendy’s murder.

  ‘Pete got there first, the night before the killing. We knew that. Their neighbor reported Penelope and Pete had gotten into a major argument that night and Pete had stormed out. Penelope claimed the fight was about Pete’s loyalty to Wendy and that he had killed Wendy when he realized she wasn’t so loyal to him, which in Pete’s case meant she wouldn’t give him any money.’

  ‘She didn’t have any money,’ Patrick pointed out.

  ‘True, but Pete didn’t entirely know that. Pete doesn’t entirely know anything. He admitted he’d used the key from having lived there previously to get into the house and set up camp in an upstairs guest room. He had not told Wendy or anyone else in the house he had returned because Wendy had been, let’s say, less than enthusiastic about him ever coming back to live there again.’

  ‘Once again, I can’t blame her,’ Patrick said.

  I nodded, but there was some element of charm in Pete that other people clearly got and I didn’t. ‘Do you want to hear this?’ I asked Patrick.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, settle in. It’s not a short story. Pete admitted he’d slept in that day until two in the afternoon because of course he did. Then Pete had to decide what to do, and being Pete, decided wrong.

  ‘Naturally his first choice was to go downstairs, announce himself to Wendy and cook himself some breakfast. To be honest, Pete’s first choice was to have someone else cook him breakfast in Wendy’s kitchen, but no such servant – including Wendy, who refused – was available, and that’s when the arguing began.

  ‘Wendy, who strikingly was opposed to having someone break into her house demanding an omelet, expressed this thought to Pete and suggested in no uncertain terms that he vacate the premises immediately after turning over the spare key she’d forgotten she’d given him. Pete, who had an angry Penelope waiting for him in her apartment and wasn’t sure if he actually had a home at this point, refused, saying room and board was in lieu of (although I doubt he would use those words) the fifty thousand-dollar payment he felt he was owed via a prior arrangement he’d made with Wendy.’

  ‘Cheeky bastard, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s not how we’d say it in Jersey,’ I informed him. ‘Wendy adamantly demanded Pete leave, saying she would call the police if he didn’t. Pete, who didn’t know that Wendy had been borrowing from the Gang That Couldn’t Loan Straight, said he would complain to her bank. Apparently he also didn’t understand that banks don’t work like that.’

  Patrick settled back in his chair, so it was obvious to me that we weren’t going anywhere for a while. I put down the briefcase he’d offered to carry for me, gave Judy a glance through the window in the courtroom door, and leaned on the seat across the aisle from Patrick. I wasn’t going to sit down. That was my way of establishing authority, I decided. Why I needed to establish authority was something I’d no doubt talk to a therapist about sometime in the future.

  ‘OK. So Wendy was on edge because she did know from whom she’d borrowed a great deal of money with the express purpose of showcasing Pete’s works. I can only guess she felt he was being ungrateful about the lengths to which she’d gone for him and said she’d call the cops to have him arrested for breaking and entering. Pete – and keep in mind this was from his own admission – said he hadn’t broken anything because he had a key.

  ‘Instead he decided to call in the cavalry and phoned Penelope, who was still mad but wanted the money. She said she’d get to Wendy’s as soon as she could. Apparently that meant the minute she’d had a bath, dressed, gone out to get her hair done and stopped along the way for a quick bite at a local coffee shop, where she said the chicken salad was “too mayonnaise-y”.’

  ‘This part I know from what Cynthia told me,’ Patrick said, sounding like the pupil who finally had a correct answer after a long lecture he only partially understood. ‘Penelope finally got to Wendy’s house and found her and Pete yelling at each other because he wouldn’t leave and had ruined a frying pan because he didn’t know how to make an omelet, right?’

  ‘Yes, but that wasn’t what really got everyone into a heated state. Penelope told Wendy she and Pete would sue her for two hundred thousand dollars. That led to Wendy telling the artist and his manager that she was going to cancel his show, sell the gallery and recoup her losses by selling the rights to his work, which she owned via their contract. She said she would give them to Isobel Sanchez to sell, as her housekeeper had made quite a nice profit selling some of Wendy’s belongings and splitting the money with her.’

  ‘Well yeah, but she was selling everything on eBay and in pawn shops,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Have you seen Pete’s artwork?’ I asked.

  ‘Good point.’

  (Wendy didn’t know the half of it: Isobel and her sister Rosa had wildly inflated the prices on Wendy’s jewelry, electronics, a few small pieces of furniture, decorative knickknacks and – completely unbeknownst to Wendy – Cynthia’s TeeVee award, which had been tracked down to its new owner and retrieved since the trial. The TV Academy, in case you hadn’t heard, doesn’t look kindly on people buying TeeVees. They’d found buyers with deep pockets and bad shopping skills and had netted some six hundred thousand dollars from their efforts, then told Wendy they’d gotten half that, so her cut was one hundred fifty thousand. Perhaps Trench might recommend fraud charges after all.)

  ‘All that was beside the point,’ I told Patrick. ‘Wendy threatening to cancel his big breakthrough and “steal” his work enraged Pete, but here’s where the stories diverged depending on who might be doing the telling. Pete said he had idly picked up the statuette pretending to be Cynthia’s TeeVee while they were arguing and, once he started getting angry, had bent the head of the figure down without even noticing he’d done so. Nobody disputed that, but when Wendy made her pronouncement, Penelope said Pete said he got so enraged that he touched the wings on the “TeeVee”, decided they would hurt someone if they were struck with it hard enough, and in a fit of rage plunged them into Wendy’s back and then, when she fell to the floor, her chest.’

  ‘But Pete said no,’ Patrick guessed.

  ‘Absolutely. His version differed in the details, mostly in the casting. Pete said he had indeed bent the statue into a weapon shape, but it was totally idle, he was just mad, and that Penelope was the one who’d used it on Wendy. That apparently led to some brouhaha in the examination rooms even though they were questioned separately.’

  Penelope’s statement that I’d seen typed up suggested that Pete had taken the statue and thrown it out of the den in a fit of rage and into the center hall. She said then that Wendy, upset that the symbol of her power over her daughter-in-law (the award for Cynthia that Cynthia couldn’t have) had been damaged that she hurried into the center hall to get it. Pete said he followed Wendy and got to the ‘TeeVee’, but not before Penelope, that angry accusations and the occasional ethnic slur about the Irish had followed, and that Penelope Hannigan herself had become enraged and stabbed their hostess to death.

  ‘Who did it?’ Patrick asked. ‘Pete or Penelope?’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Once the initial rush of adrenaline had subsided, no matter who had done the stabbing, our heroes realized exactly what they were in and how deep they were in it. They were heading for the garage to find something in which they could transport and dispose of the body.’r />
  ‘And that was when Cynthia showed up and provided the perfect fall guy,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Exactly. Cynthia came in while the two actual murderers (or one and an accomplice, if you want to go that way) were out of the room, found the body of a woman she had detested bleeding out on the floor and completely crumbled. She ran into the den and sat there until someone – Penelope – came in and handed her the bloody trophy, which she still doesn’t remember happening.

  ‘Once they heard Cynthia, Penelope (everyone was in agreement it was Penelope) suggested a plan of action: They picked up the bent, sad little false statuette and wrapped it in a towel because Pete said it would be a shame to stain the rug any further. They dropped the TeeVee in Cynthia’s lap from behind, and she never even turned to see who had done that. Then they took the towel back to their apartment and burned it.

  ‘The cops were alerted when Penelope picked up Wendy’s cell phone, called nine-one-one and reported a murder in the house, smashing Wendy’s phone to bits immediately after disconnecting the call.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘It all seemed so complicated and now it all seems so stupid. Wendy was killed by two people who really had no idea what they were doing.’

  I shook my head. ‘They knew enough to cover their asses. They took Penelope’s car back to their apartment and started planning for the questions from the police that wouldn’t start coming for days because the Santa Monica police were positive they had apprehended the killer.’

  ‘I’ll ask one more time,’ Patrick said. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Trench did his usual thorough job, pored over every possible piece of physical evidence that Brisbane had glanced at before and recommended to the DA that Leopold Kolensky’s death be reclassified as a homicide, that Wendy Bryan be recorded as the killer, that Wendy had indeed borrowed money from mobsters and that she had done so on the recommendation of Penelope Hannigan, who – he suggested – had been in some debt to the sharks of her own accord.