by D. W. Buffa
“You kept track of her schedule, made some of her appointments, made sure she had whatever materials she might need for a meeting – are those the kind of things you did as her personal assistant?”
“Yes; and I kept track of her social calendar as well.”
“So you knew who she was spending time with, who on any given evening she might be seeing?”
“It wasn’t quite like that. If she had something she had to do, an event she had to attend, or a dinner at someone’s house, I would make whatever arrangements had to be made. But if it was something about her personal life, I didn’t always know about that.” She said this with modest reserve: there were things that Gloria Baker, like anyone else, kept to herself.
“But there were times, I take it, when she did tell you things about her personal life, about who she was seeing?”
“Yes; not always, but often.”
“The night she was murdered, were you with her earlier in the day?”
“Yes, that morning. She had a luncheon meeting somewhere in town. But, yes, that morning; the last time I saw her alive.”
“And did she happen to tell you what her plans were that night, who she expected to see?”
“Yes. Driscoll Rose was coming over. She didn’t know exactly when. I remember she laughed about it, said that when Driscoll said he was coming by in the evening the only thing you knew for certain was that it might be just after dinner or sometime after midnight.”
“And do you know why he was coming over, why he wanted to see her?”
“They were supposed to go over the movie project the studio wanted them to do together. But that was only an excuse. He wanted her back. She told me that. It was the last thing she ever said to me.”
Michael Harlowe sat back, his reading glasses halfway down his nose. Judge Bannister, with his usual polite formality, was asking if he wished to examine the witness, but Harlowe did not look up at the bench and did not reply to the question. The eager expression on his face, the look of keen anticipation in his eyes, was the only answer he needed to give. Then he seemed to change his mind. Instead of jumping to his feet, he put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on the heel of his hand. The intensity, the nervous excitement, had vanished; he appeared to be struggling with a doubt.
“Driscoll Rose was coming over, but Gloria Baker did not know when – is that what you just said?” he asked with a slight tilt of his head.
Yolanda Ross had been warned that when Harlowe asked a question it was always for a reason, and usually a different one than anyone thought. A ‘master of misdirection’ was the phrase with which to his own immense satisfaction Hector Alfonso had explained Harlowe’s method. Alfonso had not needed to tell her twice. Fully prepared, she challenged with cold reserve the validity of the question.
“That isn’t what I said. Gloria told me he was coming over that night.”
“But she didn’t know exactly what time that night. That’s all I’m trying to be clear about.” Harlowe had not moved from his chair. His hand still resting on the heel of his hand, he picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser twice on the table. “You said she told you about a lot of things she was doing – including even things about her personal life – but not everything. Is that what you said, Ms. Ross?”
Slowly, Harlowe got to his feet, but instead of moving closer to the witness or the jury box, he stood next to the back corner of the counsel table.
“Is that what you said, Ms. Ross?” he repeated when she hesitated.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“And you said she laughed when she told you Mr. Rose was coming over because she never knew when he said something like that what time he might show up. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“So she expected him, but she didn’t know when – correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Who else was she expecting that night?”
“No one: Driscoll Rose, no one else.”
Harlowe searched her eyes in a way that suggested she might not be telling the truth. She did not understand why he would think that, but she resented that he did.
“But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
“I wouldn’t know that? I told you what she said: Driscoll was coming over. She was expecting him, no one else.”
“You also said that while Ms. Baker told you a lot of things, she didn’t tell you everything. And that means - doesn’t it, Ms. Ross? - that she might very well have been expecting someone else that night, but for reasons of her own decided not to tell you.”
“No, not if she was expecting Driscoll; not if -”
“Because if she were with Driscoll Rose she wouldn’t want to be interrupted; because, contrary to your testimony, they were both interested in getting back together again. Isn’t that right, Ms. Ross? Isn’t it a fact that she was still in love with Driscoll Rose; that despite what may have happened between them before they were talking about trying to make it work? Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Ross, that when Gloria Baker told you Driscoll Rose was coming over and she didn’t know exactly what time he might arrive you knew that he would be spending the night?”
“No, I didn’t know that; I don’t know what she might have done.”
Harlowe lifted an eyebrow and smiled. “Let’s go back to that other night, the one the district attorney was so eager to talk about: the night that Ms. Baker suffered those unfortunate injuries, the night -”
“The night he almost beat her to death!”
“The night he lost his temper, made a terrible mistake and did something he should never have done. By the way, Ms. Ross, the house in Malibu, the house where she was murdered – how did Ms. Baker happen to acquire it? It belonged to the defendant, Mr. Rose, didn’t it?”
“It was his house, yes,” she admitted with some reluctance.
“They lived there together for a while, didn’t they?”
“Yes, for a while; until he….”
“Until he did what he should never have done. That’s when he gave her the house, signed over the title: a gesture of contrition on his part, an attempt – perhaps not enough to make up for what he had done – but still, an attempt to show how sorry he was. That’s true, isn’t it, Ms. Ross?”
“He gave her the house, that’s true,” she replied in a sullen voice.
“Because he hit her?”
“Hit her? – Almost killed her! She was in the hospital for -”
“Yes, we know all that. The question is why he hit her: what sent him into that kind of rage?”
“She broke off their engagement, told him she didn’t want to marry him.”
“That can’t be true.”
She stared at him, incredulous. “It can’t be -?”
“She had broken off the engagement a few weeks earlier. He had already moved out of the house – his house – because she changed her mind and decided she did not want to get married. No, something else made him go crazy that night. She told you a lot of things – that’s what you told us – didn’t she tell you that? It was because she had started seeing someone else, wasn’t it?”
“She went out with a number of different people. There wasn’t….” Her voice trailed off.
“There wasn’t anyone in particular? Is that what you were about to say?”
“No; I mean, yes….I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure there was someone she had started spending time with, or you’re not sure who it was?”
“I can’t answer that. I thought there was someone – the way she was acting, like she had this big secret – but she never talked about it. And if there was someone, she was still seeing other people; nothing serious, just people she went out with. But I did think there was someone, and that whoever it was she was serious about him.”
Harlowe tapped his knuckles on the edge of the table. He bent his head to the side as if to study her from a new and different angle.
“And then she changed her mind again,
didn’t she?”
Yolanda Ross did not know what he meant. “Changed her mind?”
“Yes. She broke off her engagement to Driscoll Rose. He discovers that she’s been seeing someone else. He believes that is the reason she broke off the engagement: because she’s in love with someone else. He goes crazy – because of course he’s still in love with her – and in a blind rage, blind with jealousy, he hits her. But then, months later, something has happened, hasn’t it? Suddenly she’s talking about getting back together with Driscoll Rose. Don’t you see what this means? You don’t know if someone was there the night of the murder; you don’t know if, driven by the same kind of jealousy that had once made Driscoll Rose do something he should never have done, someone else, this mysterious stranger she had once been in love with, didn’t kill her instead, do you?”
Hector Alfonso was screaming in protest. “He isn’t asking questions of the witness, your Honor – He’s making a speech!”
Bannister was forced to agree. He bent forward and wagged his finger back and forth, a silent lecture on the rules of procedure.
“Cross-examine the witness, Mr. Harlowe. Limit yourself to that.”
Unlike Hector Alfonso, who tended to ignore the court when he was trying to impress the jury, Harlowe turned square to the bench and with an almost courtly bow promised to do what he had been asked. Nodding his head, as if to remind himself not to make the same mistake twice, he ran the fingers of his right hand over his tousled brown hair, trying, as it seemed, to remember exactly where he had left off. Nothing he did was ever quite perfect: there was always some hesitation, some pause to take stock, some off-hand gesture to show that something he had done had not, in his own judgment, been quite up to the mark. It made him seem modest and hard-working both; none of the slick arrogance that bragging lawyers thought advertised their competence and juries really hated. Harlowe was the likeable neighbor, the fellow who lived down the street, the one who would do everything he could for you and apologize because he could not do more. You would pay to hear Hector Alfonso give a speech to a partisan crowd in a packed hall; you would not mind buying Michael Harlowe a beer in a quiet bar. That the women he had married had all divorced him, that scarcely anyone who worked for him ever lasted more than a year, that the only real friends he had were the one he had known from childhood and had seldom seen since, did not change the fact that everyone else thought he was a lawyer that everyone, including lawyers on the other side, could not help but like. He lived for what he did, and what he did was often quite extraordinary, or at least unexpected.
Scratching the back of his head, a strange, enigmatic smile on his lips, Harlowe looked at the witness and then looked down at the floor. The smile became deeper and more mysterious. Then he looked up.
“Where were you that night, the night Gloria Baker was murdered?”
He could have struck her across the face and she would not have looked more astonished.
“What -?”
“Where were you the night Gloria Baker was murdered?” he repeated with a harsh, penetrating stare.
“I was home; I….”
Harlowe’s eyebrows shot up, his mouth turned down at the corners. His eyes taunted her with disbelief.
“You were home. I see. You were with her earlier that day, but you left – what time was that again?”
“A little after eleven. She had a luncheon meeting, and I -”
“You left, and you didn’t go back until the next morning when you found her dead on the living room floor. Yes, we all remember what you said.” A sharp, biting smile that seemed to call into question more than her honesty, her value as a human being, cut across Harlowe’s mouth. “And we all remember what you said when you first took the stand, how convinced you are that Driscoll Rose murdered Gloria Baker. But if anyone had a motive, if anyone murdered her out of jealousy, wasn’t it more likely to have been you?”
“Me? Why would I -! She was my friend, my –”
“Your lover! Isn’t that true, Ms. Ross? You weren’t just her personal assistant, you weren’t just her friend. You had a relationship with her, an intimate relationship, a relationship you had had with her for a very long time. That’s why you hated Driscoll Rose! That’s why you were so upset when she told you the two of them were getting back together again. – Because it meant the end of that relationship, the end of everything you cared about. You were her lesbian lover and -”
It had started as a low din, a voiceless noise, but now, suddenly, as Hector Alfonso leaped to his feet, the crowded courtroom exploded. Bannister pounded his gavel, and when that had no effect, pounded it again, harder, more insistent. With a glance that threatened immediate retribution he ordered it to stop.
“One more word, one more sound, and the courtroom will be cleared.” He turned immediately to the district attorney. “You were about to make an objection.”
“Yes, your Honor. Defense counsel is badgering the witness, accusing her of something without any proof, without -”
“The objection is sustained. Mr. Harlowe, I don’t wish to have to warn you again.”
Harlowe listened, and then, nodding in the way of someone disappointed with himself, crossed from the counsel table to the far end of the jury box. He stood there a moment, ready to make a fresh start.
“Ms. Ross, did you or did you not have an intimate relationship with Gloria Baker?”
Yolanda Ross seemed to shrink inside herself, looking for a place to hide, not because she was ashamed of anything she had done, but because she was being forced to make public, and in that sense betray, her only real possession, the love she had had.
“Yes, Mr. Harlowe,” she said with quiet dignity. “I did.”
“You were lovers?”
“And friends, too; but yes, Mr. Harlowe, we were lovers. I loved her, and she loved me.”
“You were jealous when she went out with other people, weren’t you? You were jealous when she got engaged to Driscoll Rose, jealous when -”
“No, Mr. Harlowe; you’re wrong about that. I was never jealous, never. She loved me, and I loved her, and she loved other people, and so did I. We were not – we never expected to be - monogamous. We gave each other what we needed when we needed it. That was only a part of the lives we led. I don’t expect you to understand that, Mr. Harlow, and frankly I’m rather glad you don’t. We did not – either one of us – believe anyone would. It was our secret, Mr. Harlowe. We didn’t pass judgment on other people’s lives, and we weren’t interested in whether anyone would have approved of ours. It was no one’s business what we did.”
Harlowe had wanted to show that Yolanda Ross had the same motive to murder Gloria Baker as the prosecution was trying to use against Driscoll Rose, but anyone who watched the way she responded had to know that even had she been jealous, the last thing she would have done, the last thing she would have thought of doing, was to murder her lover and her friend. There was, strangely enough, too much honesty about her, too much anguish in her voice, to allow any doubt about that. On this point Harlowe had been beaten and he knew it.
“Let’s go back to the beginning. You testified that she expected Driscoll Rose but she didn’t know what time, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And you testified that because she didn’t tell you everything – because there were apparently some secrets she didn’t share with you – she had been seeing someone before she broke off her engagement with Mr. Rose?”
“I said I thought she might have been. She didn’t talk about it.”
“And because she didn’t tell you everything, she might have expected someone else that night, someone besides Driscoll Rose. That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“What’s possible… that she expected someone else? Yes, I suppose.”
The questions were coming right on top of the answers. Harlowe did not give her time to think.
“So someone other than Driscoll Rose could have come – and it’s our contention tha
t someone else did come – and that person could have murdered Gloria Baker. That’s possible, isn’t it?”
Yolanda Ross threw up her hands in frustration. “How could I know that? All I know is what I saw when I got there in the morning.”
“Yes, when you got there in the morning. The door was unlocked, you found her on the floor. There was blood on her body, blood on the floor, blood on the wall a short distance away. That’s what you saw, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I saw that – blood everywhere.”
“No, Ms. Ross, there wasn’t blood everywhere. The picture, the portrait of Gloria Baker, the one that previous witnesses have told us was slashed to pieces, there wasn’t any blood there, was there? There wasn’t any blood anywhere near that picture, was there?”
She started to deny it, to say that there must have been, but suddenly she was not sure.
“I don’t know; I don’t remember.”
Chapter Eighteen
Hector Alfonso was not in a mood to be generous. He was angry with Yolanda Ross who seemed to think the trial was all about her, angry with Michael Harlowe for being even better than he had been before. More than anything, he was angry with Walter Bannister for this last minute summons to meet in chambers to discuss, once again, some point of law that mattered to absolutely no one except an overly cautious judge. Alfonso could not help himself: he was too much the politician not to want to get even, to go after an adversary at what he thought his weakest point. He did it, of course, with his habitual smile.