by Amanda Brown
“Mrs. Vandermark, you haven’t been excused.” Judge Morgan motioned with her hand for Brooke to remain seated. “Are there any further questions, Mr. Kohn?”
“Just one, Your Honor.” Henry Kohn turned to the witness. “Would you please tell the court what your license plate reads, Mrs. Vandermark?”
“Objection, irrelevant.” Christopher Miles stood by reflex, staring puzzled at opposing counsel.
“Lay a foundation, Mr. Kohn.”
“Your Honor, Mrs. Vandermark will testify that her license plate on her Mercedes, purchased only weeks after the death of her husband, solicits new male companionship. It goes to state of mind.”
Judge Morgan narrowed her eyes into skeptical slits. “You may proceed,” she allowed.
“Mrs. Vandermark, what are the letters on your license plate, please?”
“California: I-S-O S-W-M. California,” Brooke added at the end, smiling at her spelling-bee imitation.
“Would you please tell the court what those letters signify?”
“Oh, everybody knows that,” Brooke dismissed.
Henry Kohn turned his palms skyward in a great affected shrug. Lawyers always knew the answers to their questions.
“Oh, excuse me,” Brooke said sarcastically. “Anyone who reads the personals. The in-search-of pages, in the classifieds. ISO SWM stands for ‘in search of single white male.’”
Henry Kohn arched one eyebrow, suggesting Brooke had retired her widow’s veil too early. She took the wrong inference.
“I couldn’t fit ‘no lawyers’ on the tag,” she sniped.
Christopher collapsed heavily into his seat.
Eyes glinting, Henry Kohn took pleasure in stating the obvious. “So you are, now, after the tragic death of your husband Heyworth Vandermark…on the market, so to speak? In the classifieds?”
Fran cleared her throat with a thunderous cough that echoed through the courtroom. Brooke cocked her head, staring coldly at Henry Kohn.
“Yes, in fact I am, as you say, ‘on the market.’ Not in the classifieds, just on my car. But I didn’t plan to be!” She scowled at law students hiding their chuckling faces, feeling her feminine allure had been questioned.
“I’m doing my best, Mr. Kohn,” Brooke explained, “to put together a new life thanks to some sicko who gunned down my husband.” She glared at Chutney, who stared indifferently at the floor.
“And anyway, Heyworth would have wanted me to remarry,” the witness sniffed, eyes rolling to heaven as if imploring his ghost. “All he ever wanted was for me to be happy.” Brooke’s shoulders shook with a sob. She peered red-eyed at the judge, quivering.
“Thank you, Mrs. Vandermark, I have no further questions,” cut in the lawyer, cursing himself for allowing Brooke to show tenderness.
“Your witness,” he motioned to Christopher.
“Your Honor”—Christopher rose—“I’d like Mrs. Vandermark to describe what she saw when she came home from her meeting.” He stepped gingerly toward Brooke. “Please,” he invited, “if it’s not too painful.”
“I’ll tell you,” Brooke nodded, wiping tears from her streaky face. She breathed deeply, gathering strength. “Oh God”—she cringed—“it was so frightening. I came home from my meeting, and the first thing I saw when I walked through the door was Heyworth. Oh, Heyworth!” She shook with a wail, face whitening as if witnessing the sight. Christopher stood frozen in passive sympathy, waiting, patient and practiced.
“I…I didn’t know at first. I couldn’t tell what had happened.” Brooke struggled to continue. “I saw him flat on the floor. I thought he might have had a stroke. When I got closer, I saw there was blood everywhere, and I knelt down. I tried to shake him but he didn’t move, and his eyes just stared.” Brooke halted, shuddering. She drew her breath but said no more, gazing blankly, the courtroom still.
“Brooke,” Christopher spoke gently, “I know this is hard. Please try to remember. Can you tell the court if you saw anything, or anyone, else in the room.”
“No.” Brooke dropped her weary head. “No, Heyworth was alone. I dropped to the floor and I grabbed him.” Her hands shot in front of her, cupped as if around her husband’s shoulders. “I shook him, like this, I tried to bring him to.” She choked, a sob gurgling in her throat. She stared blankly for a horrible, still moment.
She looked up to see Christopher nod his head, guiding her.
“Nothing worked,” Brooke sighed. “He was white, his face was empty, like a shell. His eyes were open, but he was…he was not there.”
The image before her eyes, Brooke’s face screwed up into a sour grimace. “Oh God, I kept talking to him, crazy, like he was playing a joke or something. I think I sat there with him for a while, I’m not sure.”
At that Brooke’s eyes blinked quickly, as if opening for the first time into light. “He must have been jogging!” Brooke exclaimed, slapping her forehead. She laughed, a strange, chilling cackle that resounded through the courtroom. Christopher’s jaw dropped.
“Of course! He was wearing his Adidas sweat suit. It looked so ridiculous on him. Oh, the poor thing, he was trying to stay in shape, because I was so much younger. He used to kid about it, taking up jog-walking, he said he’d outlast me. I think he did it just to spite the doctors!”
Brooke smiled warmly, the chummy joke remembered as if she sat among tennis partners or at Thanksgiving dinner. Deaf to the urgent throat clearing of her lawyer, Brooke seemed to forget it was a dead man she was kidding about, a dead man she stood accused of killing.
“Brooke. Brooke, please.” Christopher tried to pull his witness back to the crime scene, where her grief spoke with such compelling sincerity. Her vague, casual smile was unbearable.
“He bought it himself,” she shook her head sadly. “Oh, silly Heyworth! He thought it was cool to wear what the kids wore.” Accidentally, it seemed, the thought jolted Brooke. “Aieeee! Heyworth never could shop for himself!” she howled, plunging her head into her hands.
“Brooke.” Christopher raised his voice.
“It’s horrible!” Brooke shrieked, the crowning indignity of dying without style sending her into a spasm. “Heartless! My poor Heyworth, shot in that awful Adidas sweat suit!”
“Mrs. Vandermark!” Christopher yelled over her erupting wail.
Brooke turned to the lawyer, sobbing. “What?” she choked.
“Brooke, please, try to remember what happened after you saw Heyworth.” If he never saw an Adidas sweat suit again, Christopher thought, mopping his own sweat, it would be too soon. “Please, I know it must have been a terrible shock. I know it was,” he repeated, softening his voice with an effort. “But please, if you can remember what happened next, I’d like you to tell the court what you did. What you saw. Anything you remember.”
Brooke sniffed noisily, her face blotchy, agitated. “I’ll try,” she promised in a weak voice.
“Take your time, Brooke. I know this is difficult.”
Brooke trembled silently for a moment. “Okay”—she raised her head—“but I was so scared, after I realized…what happened.”
“That’s understandable, Brooke.”
“Okay.” Brooke gathered her arms around her body as if a wind blew through her.
“I guess at some point it hit me to call the police, so I went to the kitchen, where the telephone is. Chutney was in the kitchen, and she looked fine, you know, a little frizzy, but she wasn’t crying or anything. She was at the sink, washing her hands. I didn’t know how to tell her.” Brooke swallowed hard, another sob garbling in her throat. “I…I tried so hard to say something, but I was shaking, I was terrified. I couldn’t even make a word come out.”
“What did Chutney do then?” the lawyer prodded.
At that Brooke shot upright, staring wide-eyed at Christopher. She quivered with choppy breaths.
“Everything went crazy then,” Brooke gasped, still disbelieving. “Chutney started yelling things at me, she ran out of the room, and I don’t know
what happened. I fainted, I think, in the kitchen. The police woke me up, and the next thing I knew I was handcuffed, and there were all these people in my house, marking things around my Hey-worth…” Brooke’s shrill lament resonated through the room: “Oh, my husband, my poor Heyworth! How could anyone hurt you? My Heyworth, Heyworth…” Brooke murmured Heyworth’s name like a mantra.
For a long moment Christopher stood still. “Thank you, Mrs. Vandermark,” he sighed finally. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
Judge Morgan glanced uneasily at Brooke. The witness had embraced her knees like a child, swaying as if to a lullaby, repeating Heyworth’s name in a distant voice. Henry Kohn approached the bench with slow steps, wary of rousing another demented vision in the fragile witness.
“I’ll postpone cross,” he whispered to the judge, “but I ask your permission to call Brooke again later, if I need to.”
Judge Morgan looked at Christopher Miles, who nodded. “I have no problem with that, Henry,” Christopher agreed collegially. “I’d like Brooke to be able to pay attention to the witnesses, though, if she’ll be called again. Your Honor, can you break for a few minutes? Give Brooke a chance to pull herself together?”
Judge Morgan was more than happy to oblige, anxious to avoid another hair-trigger catharsis from Brooke. “Any objection, Counselor?”
Henry Kohn shook his head no. He intended to maintain a sympathetic appearance.
Judge Morgan’s pounding gavel startled Brooke out of her eerie meditation.
“Mrs. Vandermark,” Judge Morgan spoke, “you may take your seat. The court will recess for five minutes.”
Brooke accepted Christopher’s arm gratefully, following his steady steps past the interns to the private witness prep room outside.
Chapter Forty-five
Chutney’s hair and eyebrows were exactly the color of Romeo’s uneven burnt orange tan-in-a-can, Elle decided, staring at Chutney’s frizzy halo as she took her seat in the witness stand.
“With reference to the exhibits produced by Mr. LeBlanc and Ms. Maximillian, Chutney, please describe to the court where you were on the day of your father’s death.”
To corroborate Chutney’s activities on the day in question, Henry Kohn had called Philippe LeBlanc, the head stylist at Frize of Beverly Hills. Philippe had verified a page from the salon’s appointment calendar, showing that Chutney had been scheduled to get a permanent wave that morning. He had rolled her hair himself, and he testified that Chutney acted perfectly normal, no different from any of the several times he had styled her hair over the years.
Maxine Maximillian, of Max Fitness Center, had spoken with Chutney at the gym in the afternoon. She placed the time around 3:00, since she had just finished teaching her marathon step aerobics class, which ran two hours and began at 1:00.
Chutney testified that she had returned home to an empty house after working out on the StairMaster. She went upstairs to take a shower and ran downstairs to grab a drink from the kitchen. That was when she found Brooke, who was shaking, paralyzed with fright, trying to move Heyworth’s body. She surprised Brooke, who must not have heard her upstairs, and Brooke ran in a frenzy to the kitchen, where she fainted. Chutney called the police while Brooke was passed out. When she revived, they arrested her in the kitchen.
As her lawyer had advised, Chutney kept it short, leaving little territory for opposing counsel to investigate on cross.
When Christopher Miles began questioning the witness, his questions were unfocused, as if he were hoping for inspiration to strike him on his feet.
He asked Chutney to describe the layout of the massive house, a ploy to buy him time; then suddenly Christopher seized on something.
“You were surprised, you said, Ms. Vandermark, when you encountered your father downstairs.”
“I’d say so!” Chutney gasped. “For God’s sake, my father was…he was dead!”
“So you didn’t notice anything unusual, then, before you came downstairs.” The lawyer spoke methodically, getting the facts straight, it seemed, for himself.
“Mr. Miles, are you going anywhere with this?” Judge Morgan leaned forward with annoyance.
Absorbed, the lawyer didn’t respond immediately.
“And nobody was there when you got home,” he mused. “So…so it happened while you were upstairs.” His mind raced for another question, for anything to keep Chutney on the stand. Delay beat defeat, and he was down to the final witness.
Chutney glanced at her lawyer, who shrugged. Judge Morgan, losing patience, peered expectantly at Christopher Miles.
“Counselor?”
He held a finger in the air, motioning for the judge to wait, rubbing his chin as if deep in thought.
Elle twirled her hair, wondering if she should braid it to keep herself awake. Better not. She didn’t want it to frizz like Chutney’s. Glancing at Chutney, Elle remembered her first and only perm and wondered why anyone paid money to have her hair ironed into wrinkles.
Suddenly, Elle shot from her chair, knocking it backward with a crash. “Wait!” she exclaimed.
Judge Morgan glared and pounded her gavel. “Order. Order.”
Christopher, thankful for any excuse to delay, made no move to restrain his intern.
“Your Honor,” Elle implored the bench, “I’m an intern for Mrs. Vandermark’s defense team. May I ask Chutney a question?”
Judge Morgan, glancing at the student audience, decided to play to the crowd. She wanted an article in the Law Review, and it was so hard to get will probate research published in the current academic climate.
“Mr. Miles?” she asked. “Will you defer to co-counsel?”
Elle clasped her hands, pleading like a child yearning for one present on Christmas Eve.
All was lost already, the lawyer figured. This way, he could chalk the defeat up to an experimental inclusion of student lawyers.
“A fine idea, Miss Woods.” He smiled. Sarah gaped in horror.
“Your Honor”—Elle nodded seriously—“it’s relevant, I promise.”
She turned to Chutney, who grinned, more comfortable with the Intersorority Council than with a lawyer asking her questions.
“It’s about your hair,” Elle began. “It looks nice.”
“Thanks.” Chutney stared at Elle with curiosity.
“Did you just get a perm?”
“Yeah, before the trial. Philippe did it.” Chutney indicated the smug Philippe, who bowed his head to the gallery.
“I’ll have to get his card,” Elle commented, laughing. “He did your hair during college too, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes,” Chutney answered, “he’s permed my hair since the first time I went with Emerald.” Chutney’s mother nodded proudly from her seat. “In fact, I got Philippe to teach a hair-care class to the Kappas. Kappa Kappa Gamma. My sorority sisters,” Chutney explained to the judge. “Remember, Philippe, the THM class?”
“What’s THM?” Elle asked.
“Total hair management. It was my idea,” bragged the witness, tugging on her hair. “See, Philippe’s always done my hair, and he’s the best! He goes to hair shows in Paris, and he comes back with all these tips. I never do a thing to my hair unless he tells me it’s okay. And I do absolutely everything he tells me. He’s a total professional,” Chutney rattled on.
“And you’ve gotten, oh, I don’t know,” Elle wondered aloud, “how many perms?”
“Well, one every six months since I was about ten, when I tried out to be Little Orphan Annie in the school play.” Chutney scowled, remembering she hadn’t gotten the part. “Tons,” she changed the subject quickly, “like twenty at least.”
“And you got a perm the day that Heyworth…your father was murdered.” Elle walked toward Philippe, her back to Chutney.
“Yes,” Chutney answered. “It’s in the books, I was at Frize.”
“But your father was shot a little later, after you got home,” Elle recapped.
Sarah poked Warner with an
annoyed frown. “Do we need to go through this until Elle gets it straight?” she hissed.
Elle wheeled around, approached the witness stand with her hands on her hips.
“But you didn’t hear anything, not even a gunshot.” Elle punctuated the word loud and sharp, like a shot.
“Yes. For God’s sake, I told you. I was in the shower. I worked out after I left Frize, and when I got home, I took a shower. I’m sure I didn’t hear anything, any shot, because I was washing my hair. I wash it every day.” Chutney glared at Elle, her story tight. She saw no need to repeat it.
Elle walked casually toward the court gallery, smiling at Philippe. “Chutney, veteran of twenty-odd perms, graduate of total hair management”—she spun to face the witness—“it is absolutely elementary, absolutely the first rule of hair care, that you can’t wash your hair for twenty-four hours after a perm.”
Chutney gasped, raising her hand to cover her open mouth. Philippe nodded excitedly.
“Is that not a fact?” Elle demanded. “Chutney?”
“Yes,” Chutney sputtered, beginning to cry. “Never. You have to wait twenty-four hours.”
“And you were washing your hair?” Elle prodded the witness. “Three hours after you walked out of Frize?”
“No!” Chutney choked, hiding behind both hands.
Henry Kohn shot from his chair, objecting.
“You would never wash your hair right after getting a perm, would you, Chutney?” Elle persisted over Henry Kohn’s furious shouts.
Judge Morgan pounded her gavel. “Let her answer the question, Mr. Kohn.”
“No, no, no,” Chutney sobbed, “never! I wasn’t in the shower, of course not. I just got a perm!”
“You lied then, Chutney.” Elle folded her arms, staring at the witness. “Tell the court again where you were when your father was shot.”
Chutney spun violently in her chair, pointing at Brooke. “She is younger than I am!” she shrieked. “She was in my geology class, and she moved in with my father!”