Evidence of Love

by John Bloom

  “Okay, God,” she said quietly, “there’s nothing else I can do. I’m quitting. You do it now.”

  She lay her head down on the prison cot and was overcome by a real sense of peace. She fell into a deep sleep.

  At four in the morning, a deputy banged on the hard metal door and swung it open.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting a piece of paper at her. “We need you to sign this. You forgot to sign your fingerprints.”

  Candy didn’t get angry, or even say anything. She sat up on the cot, took the paper, and slowly wrote out her name.

  I’m tougher than they are, she thought to herself. There’s nothing they can do to me that I can’t take.

  20 Notorious

  From the moment the first photograph appeared in the Dallas Morning News of June 27, Candy Montgomery became the archetypal Scarlet Woman. As long as she was simply a faceless “female friend of Allan Gore,” the public imagination had been content with idle speculation about a lurid crime of passion. Photography and videotape changed all that. There were so many photographers and cameramen at the surrender, and again at the bond reduction hearing the next day, that Candy’s every expression and attitude was recorded for posterity. It didn’t help that she had spent the previous eight hours being shuffled from office to office, and looked tousled and tired by the time she got to the jail, but that wasn’t what condemned her in the minds of so many. It was her arrogance. It was apparent from all the dozens of photos taken that night that this was no mousy housewife, cowering before the hand of justice. She exuded a haughty independence, beginning with her Little Orphan Annie hairstyle and round, oversized designer eyeglasses. She had worn a striped pullover blouse and faded blue jeans, like an aging hippie, but, worst of all, she looked like she was enjoying everything. This time Candy’s perpetual look of elfin mischief, accented by her thin, pointed nose and rounded chin, hadn’t served her well. For, in almost every photo, Candy Montgomery appeared to be grinning behind her tight lips. The brazen hussy had a smirk on her face.

  In oil-company offices and beauty shops and chic North Dallas restaurants, the talk was all of Candy. They called her “Candy” from the beginning, since the name emphasized even more her air of blithe indifference. It filled out the image of a seducing murderess with ice in her veins. And as more and more was revealed about her personal life—including the news that she had been a friend of Betty Gore, a leader in the church, a mother of two, a PTA member—she seemed all the more two-faced. Friends quickly rallied to her defense, unable to believe that she would be capable of such a crime. Invariably, they told reporters that she was “an inspiration,” “selfless,” “devoted,” “articulate,” “the type you would never even suspect of shoplifting.” One of the most adamant defenders of Candy’s character was Ron Adams.

  “She’s a very pleasant, very loving sort of person,” he told the Times Herald. “That she would be guilty of what they say she is, is incomprehensible. She’s not capable of committing murder. The members of the church are appalled. There’s not a person out here who believes for a moment that she’s guilty.”

  Don Crowder called Ron when he read those remarks in the paper. Ron was doing a great job.

  Candy had been roused that Friday morning by a jailer who brought her breakfast. Even though she was hungry, the food looked stale and cold, so she drank the black coffee and then pushed the tray back out into the hallway. A few minutes later the jailer returned.

  “She didn’t eat,” he said.

  “They never do when they first come,” said another one, a little too loudly. “Give her a while and then she’ll eat.”

  Far from scaring her, remarks like that only redoubled her anger. It sounded theatrical, as though they were performing for her. They were saying lines out of B movies, lines that would be laughable if she didn’t know that they were intended for her. The one thing she couldn’t forgive them for was intentional cruelty.

  After breakfast a deputy named Mary came to take her to a holding cell, where Candy would await her first court appearance. When it was time to cross the parking lot to the new courthouse, some two hundred feet away, Mary swung the cell door open and extracted her handcuffs.

  “Do you really have to do that?” Candy pleaded.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think you should be prepared, though. There are a lot of cameramen and reporters outside.”

  “Will we have to go by them?”

  “I think so. But just stick close to me.”

  Mary opened the side door to the jail, and almost instantly the cameramen started crowding around to get pictures of Candy. Mary tried to push her as fast as she could, but the mob kept the two women from moving very briskly. The farther they went, the closer and closer the cameramen came.

  “Mary, I’m afraid I’m gonna fall down.”

  “Just hold on to me.”

  “Please tell me where the steps are. I can’t see.”

  “Step,” she said as they came to a curb. “Mrs. Montgomery, don’t all these people make you nervous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. So let’s just go real fast and we’ll get there.”

  Mary kept up her cadence of “step … step … step,” ever more loudly, as they fell into a rhythm and somehow negotiated the two hundred feet without coming to a dead stop. Once they reached the foyer of the building, they hurried past the elevator and flew up the stairs together, to the relative safety of District Judge Tom Ryan’s courtroom.

  Rob Udashen was already there; his was the first friendly face she’d seen in hours.

  “We’ve taken care of it,” he told her. “We’ll have you out this morning.”

  She was enormously relieved. She scarcely heard the words that Judge Ryan read from his prepared text. But she flinched when he came to the word “murder.”

  “How do you plead?” he said at last.

  Candy looked at the judge, a bearded, white-haired man with glasses, and realized he was speaking to her. She turned and looked at Rob, not sure what to answer.

  He whispered. “Not guilty.”

  “Not guilty,” she said meekly.

  “For God’s sakes, Candy, have you looked at the paper? You sure look like a murderer.”

  Don had decided it was time to take charge of Candy Montgomery’s life. He called her at home as soon as he got the afternoon paper.

  “Don’t you get emotional when you’re being booked for murder?”

  “It’s not my manner to get upset, Don. I can’t help it. I didn’t want to look weak.”

  “Well, look, Candy, from now on you’re out of it. Understand? We’re going to make all the decisions for you, and I don’t want you to interfere.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to defer to me on everything from here on out.”

  “Okay.” She sighed. “I don’t feel like trying to figure it all out anyway.”

  “All right. Now the first thing I want you to do is change your appearance. The least you can do is not look like a murderer. I want you to grow your hair out again and get those kinks out of it. Didn’t you used to wear your hair different?”

  “I had it short and straight before Sherry gave me the permanent. I think what happened is Sherry left the permanent on too long, so it looks hard.”

  “Okay, get it back to like it was.”

  “That’s all right with me. The curls make me look too identifiable anyway.”

  “And I want you to lose some weight. Your arms look flabby. If you go to trial, I don’t want you looking as big as Betty Gore. And I want you to stop smoking.”

  Candy didn’t say anything.

  “Okay?”

  “I guess so, Don, but I need the cigarettes. I’m so nervous.”

  “I don’t care. It makes you look too tough. At least don’t smoke in public.”

  “All right, I’ll try.”

  Don had a plan. Like most of Don’s plans, it was aggressive and t
wo-fisted and theatrical. It was obvious from the way the arrest was handled that Rob was going to need help on the case. Rob had all the legal knowledge you could ever want, but Don had to face the fact that when it came to one-on-one head-knocking, people could railroad him. Rob was too young and a little too naive. He tended to believe the other guy’s bullshit. He was a nice guy in a case that needed a son of a bitch. The morning after the surrender, Rob had finally gotten Candy out of jail by arranging a deal between Swidler and Bob Hendricks, a McKinney state legislator and bail bondsman, who agreed to cosign. But Don was still angry about the way his people had been treated. The slopehead cops and Judge Tom Ryan had won the first round.

  Don spread out the newspapers on the desk in front of him. He carefully studied all the accounts of the surrender and was pleased to find a ground-swell of support for Candy among the members of the church. The wisest thing he’d done so far was to get Ron to break the news to the church before it hit the papers. Nobody believed Candy was capable of such a horrible crime. Enough publicity would create at least the suspicion that the police were the villains in this story. Don was pleased with the direction the reporting was taking, and he thought perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to keep the story alive. So when Doug Swanson, the Times Herald reporter, called Rob that afternoon, Don intercepted the call himself.

  “What they’re doing to this woman is not right,” said Don.

  “Are you still maintaining that Mrs. Montgomery is innocent?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even in view of the bloody fingerprint found on the refrigerator, and the bloody footprints that match her shoe size?”

  “I’ll tell you what, Doug,” said Don, affecting an intimacy, “anybody who’s looked at this crime for more than five minutes knows it had to be performed by a man. Probably a big man. Betty Gore was a big woman, and that was a big ax. I knew Betty Gore. That woman probably weighed one-forty, one-fifty. Candy Montgomery couldn’t even lift an ax like that, much less swing it. I’ve started my own investigation of this case, and I believe in a few days I’ll have some new developments to tell you.”

  “But how do you explain the bloody fingerprint?”

  “Oh, that may be her print, I’m not denying that. She was in the house that day. But I don’t believe they’ve got any bloody fingerprint.”

  “What do you think happened then?”

  “Well, we’ve got a number of people we’re investigating, but I’m not at liberty to use any names.”

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Rob Udashen picked up a newspaper and realized what Don was doing. Shocked, he called Don at home.

  “Don, I don’t think these comments in the paper are a good idea,” he said. “We’ve got enough problems with the cops and the courts without making ’em madder.”

  “I don’t know, Rob, I think it puts pressure on ’em, to see that the community is behind us and everything. They’ve been leaking stuff to the press ever since this thing started—fingerprints, shoeprints, cuts. The bastards.”

  “I’m just saying I don’t think it’s a good idea to advertise our intentions. We may be able to beat this thing quietly, with motions and arguments. We may be able to keep it from going to trial at all. Candy hasn’t even been indicted yet.”

  “Okay, I see your point. You’re the expert. I’ll hold off a little bit. But I wish we could do something about these leaks.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a gag order down the line. But whatever we do, let’s play strictly by the rules, so we don’t make ’em mad.”

  “Okay, I got ya.”

  That wasn’t Rob’s only surprise that Saturday, though. After the call to Don, he left for his dentist’s office, where he intended to take care of something he’d been putting off for months: all four of his wisdom teeth needed to be pulled. But just as the surgeon was about to put him under, he got a call from one of his secretaries.

  “You need to call Pat Montgomery right away,” she said. “He says the police are at the house.”

  Stephen Deffibaugh had been officious and polite when he rang the Montgomery doorbell late that morning.

  “Mr. Montgomery, I have a search warrant here that gives me the authority to take your car for inspection.”

  “All right,” said Pat warily. “Why don’t you come in for a moment?”

  “That’s all right, I’ll just wait here.”

  “I’m going to have to call my lawyer before I let you have the car, so you’re welcome to wait in the living room.”

  Reluctantly, Deffibaugh stepped into the foyer, looking a little nervous. Pat went to the kitchen phone and called the number Rob had left for them. The secretary promised to have him call right away.

  “Who’s there?” asked Rob.

  “He’s one of the sheriff’s deputies, and he wants the station wagon.”

  “Is that the car Candy had on the thirteenth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Read me the warrant.”

  After Pat read through the document, Rob said, “Okay, go ahead and let ’em have it. But watch everything they do.”

  “All right,” Pat told Deffibaugh, “you can take the car. It’s in the garage.”

  “We’d appreciate it if you would back it out of the garage, Mr. Montgomery, so that we can tow it to McKinney. We have a wrecker here.”

  “All right.”

  Deffibaugh walked outside to give instructions to the wrecker, then came back in to wait while the arrangements were made.

  “Gee, this is really a nice house,” said Deffibaugh, looking around at the cathedral ceilings and Alpine architecture.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame,” said Pat, “because we’re probably gonna end up losing this house.”

  After Deffibaugh left, Candy came downstairs to find out what had happened.

  “I guess they wanted to check the station wagon for evidence,” said Pat.

  “Didn’t you just wash that car last weekend?”

  “Yeah, washed it and cleaned it, while we were over at the Clecklers.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Candy had entered a new phase. She was remote and a little nervous, but she remained under control. She hadn’t broken down since the arraignment hearing, and there was no further evidence of nightmares. In jail, on Thursday night, she had turned everything over to God, and on Friday afternoon, just to make sure, she had turned everything else over to her lawyer.

  “I can’t deal with it anymore,” she told Pat. “I’m going to let other people deal with it.”

  But if Candy had reached a new sense of peace, Pat was starting to come apart at the seams. All along he had felt that the next day would bring the one piece of evidence that would clear his wife and end the public ordeal. Now, after a panicky night spent wondering what was happening at the Collin County Jail, he was wracked by fear and frustration. On Friday morning, he had had to wake up the kids and tell them Candy still wasn’t home.

  Ian didn’t seem particularly impressed by the news; he didn’t understand it. But Jenny was upset.

  “When is Mommy gonna be home?” she asked.

  “I think either today or Monday.”

  “Is Mommy gonna be home for Christmas?”

  “Of course she is.” But as soon as he answered, Pat doubted himself. Was it possible? Was it possible that Candy, of all people, could go to prison?

  Later that morning the lawyers had called to comfort him and to tell him that Candy would be home around noon. Sherry came over to wait with him. When Rob finally brought Candy home that afternoon, they had a tearful reunion, and then Pat plied Rob with all sorts of questions. Rob tried to assuage him by saying they were doing everything humanly possible.

  But Pat couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the investigation. That night he tried to get Candy to talk about the case, but she was just as standoffish as Rob had been.

  “Don says I’m not supposed to discuss it with anybody,” she sa
id.

  “Not even your husband?”

  “It’s not that we’re hiding anything, Pat. He just thinks it’s better for me not to discuss it.”

  “I don’t understand that, Candy. How can I help if I don’t know everything that’s going on?”

  “I’ve left all the decisions up to Don. I can’t talk about it.”

  The next day, while Candy was cooking dinner, Pat unobtrusively walked upstairs and quickly started looking through his wife’s closet. He was looking for her “thongs,” the ones she usually wore in the summer, because he was beginning to wonder whether they made the same type of footprint that was found in Betty Gores’ utility room. He looked in the closet, then checked the bathrooms and a few other likely places in the house, but couldn’t find them.

  “Candy,” he said over dinner, “whatever happened to those thongs you used to wear?”

  “I gave them to the police.”

  “No, not those, the other pair.”

  “Oh, I threw ’em away.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t remember. A while ago.”

  Pat dropped the subject.

  This was also the weekend that Jackie Ponder came for one of her periodic visits, and Candy was looking forward to it. The visit was all the more welcome, now that Don had forbidden Candy to sing in the choir or go to church that Sunday. He wanted her to stop appearing in public altogether, but she insisted that, once the news media stopped showing up at church services, she would start attending again.

  Jackie had been overwhelmed by the news. She was in San Antonio, visiting her parents, when she first heard the name “Betty Gore” on a newscast. She had called everybody at Lucas who had known Betty, to get the details, then grieved for two days. She kept thinking of Betty’s terror. She remembered the last time Betty had touched her, the time Betty had run into her arms at the church service. Then a week later, one of Don’s private investigators had called Jackie to ask her about Betty, and in the course of the conversation she learned that the prime suspect in the case was Candy. Jackie didn’t know what to think. She tried to imagine some circumstances in which those two women would fight, but she couldn’t come up with any.