“Monica and I want no deal,” said McDonald.
“Monica doesn’t even have to be here. I didn’t invite Monica, did I, Mr. Herlihy?”
“Not specifically,” said Herlihy, momentarily confused. “As she is a codefendant, I assumed…”
“This is only partly about the McDonalds’ crooked editing operation. This is about Barbara Chesko.” He 160
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paused for effect. Herlihy put a hand on his client’s shoulder. “Don’t play coy, Jack. Avery’s already told you he doesn’t know anything about that. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think this grand larceny case will create a witness against Bob Rosserman.”
“Oh,” said McCoy, “the larceny case is another matter altogether. Your client can contemplate its nuttiness in his upstate cell. But it might turn out to be the least of his worries, isn’t that right, Mr. McDonald?”
McDonald’s eyebrows both rose. He seemed to want to stare down McCoy, but gave it up quickly, turning to Herlihy, then to his wife. “Barbara was our client.”
“Mr. McDonald, you told us you were home on the night of Wednesday, August twenty-first, that you weren’t in the city in the early morning hours of the twenty-second, when Mrs. Chesko died.”
“Yes,” said Herlihy, “and Mrs. McDonald confirms it.”
“He never left the house all day,” said Monica McDonald. “We ate leftover pizza and went to bed early.”
“It gave me heartburn,” nodded Avery.
“But both the bartender and Bob Rosserman say that Mr. McDonald was in Teddy’s Tumbler, until about seven.”
“They’re wrong,” said Avery.
“The bartender admits he isn’t sure,” said Herlihy.
“But we’re sure,” said McCoy. “Have you got something to tell us?” he asked McDonald. “I can throw in an obstruction of justice charge, if you like.”
“Don’t say anything, Avery,” said Herlihy. “If you’re 161
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going to accuse him of lying, you’d better have a basis.”
“Mr. McDonald,” said McCoy, “has a cell phone.
Mr. McDonald’s cell phone placed four calls that Wednesday night.”
“You can’t identify where a phone was calling from,” said Herlihy.
“You’re right. But I can identify where it was calling to, can’t I?” He let that sink in. McDonald looked at Herlihy and shrugged. McCoy shoved a sheet of phone records across the table. “Three of those calls went to your home in Peekskill. Do you call the kitchen from the bathroom?”
“I went to the grocery to get the frozen pizza, and then I was reminded of something I needed to tell Monica.”
“Oh, come off it,” said McCoy. “One call is at 5:46.
The next is at 7:10. The third is at 9:02. That’s a long trip to the grocer’s. The first and last calls are only a minute long. The one at 7:10 is only two minutes.
Barely enough time to discuss whether to have pepp-eroni or sausage.”
“Wait, Avery,” said Monica, grabbing his arm.
“August. Isn’t that when you lost a phone on the subway?”
“Mrs. McDonald,” said McCoy sharply, “I can add obstruction to your charges like that!” He snapped his fingers. “It’s the same cell phone he used this morning.
Now you can stop covering for him immediately, or I can name you an accessory.”
“Be quiet, Monica,” said Herlihy. “Accessory to what?”
“A wife can’t testify against her husband,” snapped Monica.
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“But she can go to jail for participating in the crime as an accessory,” said McCoy.
“Perhaps,” said Southerlyn, “Mrs. McDonald should have separate representation, Mr. Herlihy. They might have conflicting interests. Don’t you think that’s the ethical thing?”
“A cheap trick isn’t going to tear us apart!” said Monica.
“Please,” said Herlihy. “I’ll handle this. What are you saying, Jack?”
“Why don’t you let Mr. McDonald explain?” said McCoy.
Avery McDonald had watched the exchanges blinking, twisting his cane, his prodigious eyebrows bobbing, as if trying to create some explanation that would get him out of this.
“Or do I have to bring up the fourth telephone call, the one—” he tapped the list “—at 7:13?”
McDonald didn’t move.
“The one to the Waterloo Hotel.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
McCoy decided to bluff. “There are security cameras in the Waterloo Hotel. They were operating that Wednesday night.”
“All right, then,” said McDonald. “I was there.”
McCoy had chosen not to mention that no one had been able to make out Avery McDonald between seven and eight. A busload of tourists had been streaming in just before 7:30, as others poured out of the hotel for an evening in the Big Apple. It might have been possible to enhance the tape and spot McDonald, but the quality was so poor there was no guarantee that it would work.
“Yes,” he said, “I went to the Waterloo Hotel.”
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Monica lowered her head and squeezed her flattened hands between her heavy thighs. “So what?” snorted McDonald.
“You don’t need to say anything, Avery,” said Herlihy.
“No,” he said defiantly, “I want to clear this up.”
“You and I need to talk,” said Herlihy.
“No, I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Bob told me how upset she was, Barbara. I knew that publishing had become her obsession and, frankly, I was worried about her.”
“I’ll bet you were,” said McCoy.
“I was, whether you believe that or not. Barbara and I had worked quite closely on her novel.”
“How closely?” said Southerlyn.
“She engaged me to do a complete restructuring of her novel and some time later I did a detailed line edit with her.”
“And was it good for you?” asked McCoy.
“What do you mean?” said McDonald. “It took a three-day weekend both times. Dawn to dusk. She rented a place in the Adirondacks so we wouldn’t be disturbed. It was exhausting.”
“I’ll bet it was,” said McCoy.
“We’re not going to discuss editing,” said Herlihy.
“Not while you have charges pending trial.”
“I want to know what that sneer of yours implies,”
demanded McDonald. “Monica spent half of one of those weekends in the Adirondacks with us as well.”
“How inconvenient,” said McCoy. He laced his fingers and leaned across the desk. “Mr. McDonald, I’ve questioned drug dealers, wife-beaters, Ku Kluxers and just about every kind of human being that breathes, but you are, by far, the most brazen I’ve 164
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ever met. Do you really think that we won’t be able to match the DNA on the bedspread from the Waterloo Hotel with you?”
McDonald blinked. “You haven’t got any DNA from me.”
“Just because Barbara provided the condom doesn’t mean you didn’t leave any trace of your ‘off-the-page’
activities.”
“Whoa!” said Herlihy. “And exactly what are you comparing the DNA in the hotel with? You haven’t given them a sample, have you, Avery?”
“You can get DNA off a water glass, did you know that?” said McCoy. “From a hair that has fallen on a table. Or from a Starbucks cup that was left behind.”
McDonald’s eyes widened. The bluff had struck its target.
Southerlyn had been carefully watching Monica.
The woman had been sitting with crossed arms, but looked up and rested her hands on her thighs when she recognized that they were talking about sex. When she noticed Southerlyn staring, her face twisted in anger. “What are you looking at?” she snapped. “You think this is supposed to be a big surprise to me?”
She crossed her arm
s again. “Avery and I are working it out. We love each other.”
Herlihy raised his hands. “Monica! I think I’d better have a conference with my clients.”
“No. I want to clear this up,” said McDonald. “Yes, I’m fallible, what man is not? Maybe a man with no zest for life!”
“Or maybe a man with a sense of decency,” said Southerlyn.
“Art is not about decency,” sneered McDonald.
“Picasso, Hemingway, Diego Rivera…”
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McCoy sneered. “Mr. McDonald, you’re the author of Death Watch, The Man’s Guide to Studliness, and a Happy Hours novelization. Don’t try to wrap yourself in the cloak of genius.”
McDonald’s eyebrows twitched as he fought back his fury. “And what have you published, sir? What have you published? ”
“Whoa!” said Herlihy. “We’re getting a bit afield, aren’t we? Jack, I’m not going to sit still as my client is insulted. I think we’d better go. If you have some specific questions…”
“I’d like to know what Mr. McDonald did in Barbara Chesko’s hotel room,” said McCoy, “It’s a simple question.”
“You’ve got no reason to believe my client was with Barbara Chesko on the day she died.”
“Oh, really?” said Southerlyn, who had fixed her cool stare on Monica McDonald. The woman was staring down at her shoes.
McCoy turned toward McDonald. “You can cooperate in the investigation.”
Herlihy began to rise, but McDonald, without turning his gaze from McCoy, grabbed his attorney’s arm.
“No,” said McDonald, “I said I wanted to clear this up. I have nothing to hide.” Herlihy begged with his eyes, but McDonald continued. “I admit to being fallible,” he said, “I embrace my own fallibility.”
Southerlyn couldn’t help rolling her eyes.
“A writer is finished if he is afraid of being fallible.”
He touched Monica’s shoulder. “And I know that often, in pursuing those feelings, I have hurt those I shouldn’t—the woman I love most, a woman I don’t deserve. She knows everything.”
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Monica looked at him and weakly smiled.
“I did indeed go up to Barbara Chesko’s room.”
“When?” asked McCoy.
“After speaking with Bob in Teddy’s Tumbler. Bob had just come from meeting with her. He said she was a little calmer than earlier, but that she was very upset, especially with me.”
“Because you had fleeced her for over eighteen thousand dollars?”
Herlihy raised a hand as if to block McDonald’s answer. “Jack, I won’t let Avery talk about the editing contracts in any way. Not until you drop these crazy larceny charges.”
“In fact,” said McDonald, “she was not upset about the editing. She was angry that Bob had turned down her book.”
“So she was angry,” said McCoy. “Not depressed?”
“No. She wanted me to make certain that Bob was serious about giving her another chance.”
“Another chance?”
“To reconsider her novel.”
“She said he had promised to think about it, but that he couldn’t guarantee anything. This is what he told me in the bar.
I told her that she didn’t need Kirstner and Strawn.
They are hardly the only publishers. I told her she needed to put Kirstner and Strawn behind her and begin knocking on agents’ doors.”
“Avery, I really object to your discussing anything to do with Redux,” said Herlihy.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” said McDonald. “I advised her to begin writing another book, so that she would be ready to follow up on the success of her first.”
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“So you could take more of her money?” said Southerlyn.
“We’re leaving,” said Herlihy.
“I could charge Mr. McDonald with murder,” said McCoy.
“On the basis of what?” said Herlihy.
“He was there, he had a motive.”
“I had no reason!” protested McDonald. “She was quite, well, I’d say happy, when I left. Or at least content.”
Southerlyn watched Monica’s reaction, which was to glare defiance.
McCoy picked up a pen. “And when did you leave the hotel?”
“After nine.”
“How late after nine?”
McDonald thought for a moment. “About half past.”
“Nine-thirty?”
McDonald widened his eyes. “Well, it might have been nine twenty-five or it might have been nine thirty-five, mightn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
“He has told you,” said Herlihy. “At or about nine thirty.”
“And you called home after you left?”
McDonald shook his head. “I called before I left the room.”
“So you called your wife while you were in a hotel with another woman?”
Monica sneered. “Don’t project your hang-ups on us.”
Southerlyn and McCoy exchanged a glance. Herlihy shrugged as if to say, “What can I tell you? It takes all kinds.”
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Southerlyn crossed her legs. “What did Avery say to you?”
“When he called? He said he would catch the ten oh-two and be home by eleven-thirty.”
Avery interrupted. “Unfortunately I didn’t get to Grand Central until five past. I didn’t get home until around midnight. Well past midnight, actually. The train ran slow.”
McCoy turned to Monica. “And you picked him up at the station?”
“I was asleep,” she said.
“I walked home,” said McDonald. “It’s only a few blocks.”
“We have separate bedrooms,” said Monica.
They both caught something they didn’t like in the way McCoy was studying them.
“Apnea,” said Avery.
“My snoring’s awful,” she explained.
McCoy laid down his pencil. “So no one can verify you were in Peekskill around midnight?”
“Maybe someone saw me at the station,” said McDonald.
“Do you use a rail pass?” asked Herlihy.
“Cash,” said McDonald.
McCoy rolled his pencil under his palm for a second. “I’d like to hear in detail what happened in the hotel room, Mr. McDonald,” he said slowly.
“After I talked to Bob, I left the bar and was going to go home, but I began to get worried about her state of mind. I began to think of her alone in that hotel.
Well, I tried to tell myself it was merely my imagina-tion, but, as it turned out, my instincts were correct.”
“How did you know which room to go to?” asked McCoy.
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“I used the house phone in the men’s room.”
“Of the bar?”
“In the Waterloo. She seemed glad to hear from me. She started pouring out her soul so I went straight up.”
“So she opened the door, I assume, and you went in?”
“Her eyes were red. She told me Bob had betrayed her. I explained he had done everything he could, and so on. At first, as she spoke of it, she got more disturbed, but gradually she calmed to the point that I thought it would be safe to leave.”
Southerlyn placed her elbow on her knee, resting her chin on her knuckles. “And at what point did you throw her on the bed?”
McDonald raised an eyebrow. “It was more the opposite, I’m afraid. I was holding her, trying to calm her, and she shoved me back. The tender moment evolved into a passionate one.”
Monica crossed her arms and looked out the window.
“Maybe you’d rather not hear this,” said McCoy.
“Get off it,” she said. “He always comes home to me.”
“Aren’t you lucky?” said Southerlyn.
“Yes, I am,” said Monica fiercely.
“Sex isn’t love,” said
McDonald. “Monica knows how much I love her.”
There was a long silence.
“Are we through?” asked Herlihy.
“When you were in the room, did you see Barbara’s purse?”
“What now?” snorted McDonald. “Are you going to accuse me of stealing that?”
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“Did you see it?”
“I might have. I don’t remember. No! I do remember. She took the condom from her purse.”
“And you opened it?”
“Her purse?”
“The condom, Mr. McDonald.”
He looked at Monica and then at Herlihy. “She tore it open with her teeth.” He repeated his glances at Monica and his attorney. “She put it on me.”
“Did you see her laptop in the room?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice it. She carried it with her everywhere. It must have been there. A very fancy bit of machinery. Not that equipment has anything to do with writing!”
McCoy was trying to decide whether to ask about the details of the intercourse. It could make Herlihy finally shut the questioning down. He proceeded gingerly. “We have some medical evidence or I wouldn’t ask this,” he said.
“I have nothing to hide,” said McDonald.
“How many times did you—?”
“Did he what, Mr. McCoy?” interrupted Herlihy.
“Engage in sexual intercourse. No, correct that.
How many times did you penetrate Mrs. Chesko?”
“Twice,” he said. Monica McDonald showed no expression.
McDonald cleared his throat. “I was trying to leave, I was calling home in fact, but she came out of the bathroom and wouldn’t let me go. It’s why I missed the train.”
“But you said she was happy when you left,” said Southerlyn.
“Yes. She was. I have no idea why she might have killed herself. Perhaps she felt lonely, knew that I 171
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wouldn’t leave Monica, felt the disappointment about her book. I’ve asked myself a thousand times. Perhaps now someone will publish her book.”
“You’re breaking me up,” said Southerlyn.
“I don’t see why we should be subjected to any more of this,” said Monica. Serena thought Monica was repressing the urge to slap her.
McCoy moved his head to indicate he couldn’t think of anything else. “See you in court,” he said.
“I’ll buy you some chicken soup to make you feel better afterward,” said Herlihy. He held the door for the McDonalds. When they had gone into the outer office, he stepped back toward McCoy. “And, by the way, if you should take a notion to bring fraud charges against my clients, I don’t want to hear a word about Barbara Chesko in the prelim or any other venue, Jack.”
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