Just Take My Heart

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “Mr. Aldrich asked you to stop by the next day? That would be March third?”

  “Yeah, about four o'clock. He said the housekeeper would be gone by then. He told me he'd be standing at the corner outside his building and he would walk me up himself so that the doorman wouldn't have to announce me. He said to wear dark glasses and a hat. So I did, and he met me at the corner. Then he waited till some other people got out of a cab and went into the building and we went up with them in the elevator.”

  “You went to his apartment and he gave you five thousand dollars to kill Natalie Raines?”

  “Yeah, and he gave me the info on where she lived in New Jersey, and her schedule at the theatre.”

  “Can you describe Mr. Aldrich's apartment, Mr. Easton?”

  “It's on the fifteenth floor. Real fancy. You know, only two apart?ments on the floor. Big foyer. The living room was painted a kind of white, and had a big marble fireplace with lots of carving on it in the center. The rug was one of those Orientals, mostly blue and red col?ors. I remember there was a blue couch facing the fireplace and chairs without arms on either side of it. There was another small couch under the window and lots of paintings on the walls.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Not long. He never even asked me to sit down. I could tell he was real nervous. Then he opened the drawer in a little table by the couch and took out money, and counted out five thousand bucks.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I asked him how I'd get the rest of the money after I did the job.”

  “He said that the cops would probably be questioning him after her body was found, being that they were in the middle of a divorce, so a week after the funeral he'd call me from a lobby phone some?where and arrange to meet me at the movie house on Fifty-seventh Street and Third Avenue.”

  “That was the arrangement when you left Gregg Aldrich?”

  “Yeah. But then I got to thinking. Being Natalie Raines is so fa?mous, when something happened to her it'll be a big deal and the cops will be all over it. I could end up spending the rest of my life in prison. I mean, even when I was taking the five thousand bucks, I knew I probably wouldn't go through with it. I'm not a killer.”

  “How did you let Mr. Aldrich know that you wouldn't go through with it?”

  “I wrote him a letter saying that I didn't think I was the right per?son for the job he had in mind and I was grateful to him for the non?refundable advance he gave me.”

  The outright laughter in the courtroom caused an angry reaction from the judge, who once again warned against outbursts of any kind. Then the judge told Emily to continue.

  “What did you do with the five thousand dollars, Mr. Easton?”

  “The usual. I blew it all gambling.”

  “When did you mail the letter backing out of your deal to murder Natalie Raines?”

  “The morning of March twelfth, I sent it to Gregg Aldrich at his apartment. I mailed it in the post office box near my rooming house in Greenwich Village.”

  “Why did you write to him?”

  “ 'Cause he said not to phone him, that he had made a mistake calling me that one time. And I knew he'd get the letter. You know what they say, 'Neither rain, nor storm, nor dark of night will keep the postman from completing his appointed rounds.' And I've got to say he was always there with my bills.” Jimmy couldn't help turning and smiling at the jury, hoping they appreciated that little joke. He knew they were eating up everything he said, and it felt good not to be the one on trial for a change.

  “That letter backing out of your contract to murder Natalie Raines was mailed on March twelfth,” Emily said slowly and turned to look at the jurors. She hoped they were doing their own calcula?tions. Gregg Aldrich would have received that letter on Friday the 13th, or Saturday the 14th.

  She hoped they were remembering what she had told them in her opening statement. On Friday evening the 13th, he went to see Natalie's final performance and the witnesses who saw him there stated that he sat stone-faced in the last row, and was the only one who did not participate in the standing ovation for her. On Saturday the 14th of March, he rented a car and followed his estranged wife to Cape Cod.

  She waited a long moment then looked at Judge Stevens. “No further questions, Your Honor,” she said.

  Just Take My Heart

  20

  Richard Moore stood up slowly. For the next two hours, after reviewing Jimmy Easton's long criminal record with him, he began to attack his testimony. But the more Jimmy testified, the more he was actually strengthening our case, Emily thought with satisfac?tion.

  Moore kept trying to put a different spin on the facts that Gregg had met Jimmy in Vinnie's-on-Broadway, that Gregg called Natalie in Jimmy's presence, that a chance acquaintance, Walter Robinson, commented to Gregg about Natalie's performance in Streetcar, and that shortly afterwards Gregg called Jimmy on his cell phone.

  But skilled attorney that he was, Richard Moore could not rattle Jimmy or catch him contradicting himself. When he asked, “Isn't it a fact that Gregg Aldrich and you had only a casual conversation about sports?” Jimmy replied, “If you call asking me to kill his wife casual conversation, sure.”

  Moore's question: “Isn't it true that in a noisy bar it would be im?possible for you to hear what Natalie Raines said to Gregg?”

  Jimmy's answer was: “She was an actress. She knew how to project her voice. It's a wonder the whole bar didn't hear her scream?ing at him.”

  Jimmy's loving this, Emily thought. He's eating up being in the limelight. She worried about the fact that he was becoming too loquacious, and an increasingly irritated Judge Stevens kept remind?ing Jimmy to restrict his answers to the questions posed.

  “As to the phone call from Gregg Aldrich's cell phone to yours, isn't it a fact that when you were at the bar you told Gregg you had mislaid your cell phone since you arrived there? Isn't it a fact that you asked him to dial your number so your phone would ring and you could find it? Isn't that what really happened?”

  “Absolutely not. I never mislaid my cell phone,” Jimmy answered. “I always kept it in a clip on my belt. I told you, he called me while I was washing my hands in the can.”

  Jimmy's account of his visit to the apartment was what worried Emily as being the weakest part of her case. The doorman had not seen him. The housekeeper had not seen him. It was his word against Gregg's that he had been there, that the money had been handed to him, and that he had backed out of the deal later.

  There had been a number of magazine interviews with Natalie in the apartment when she lived there, and some of them had pic?tures of the living room. Emily was sure that Moore would make the most of those pictures to prove that the knowledge of the layout of the apartment and the way the living room was furnished was readily available.

  That was exactly Moore's strategy. He presented to Easton one after another of the pages that showed the living room, then asked him to tell the jury what he was seeing.

  Easton's answers were a word-for-word recital of what he claimed to remember from being in the room.

  “You met Gregg Aldrich in a chance encounter at the bar. Moore snapped at him. ”You knew who his wife was. Then when she was murdered, you put together a story for the next time you were caught stealing and had it ready to trade?"

  Scorn in his expression, derision in his voice, Moore continued. “Now read for the jury the underlined sentences in this article about Gregg Aldrich and Natalie Raines.” He handed a page from Vanity Fair to Jimmy.

  Completely unshaken by Moore's accusations, Easton pulled reading glasses from his pocket. “The old peepers aren't what they used to be,” he explained. He cleared his throat before reading aloud. “Neither Gregg nor Natalie has ever wanted live-in help. Their housekeeper arrives at eight a.m. and leaves at three thirty. If they are not going out for the evening, they have dinner in the club in their building, or room service from it.”

  He put down the page and looked at Moor
e. “So what?”

  “Isn't it a fact that anyone reading that article would know that the housekeeper would be gone at four o'clock, the time you claim you were in the Aldrich apartment?”

  “You think I read Vanity Fair?” Jimmy asked incredulously.

  Once again the spectators laughed and once again they were ad?monished by the judge. This time he was obviously very angry and said that if it happened again, he would point out to a sheriff's officer the people who had been laughing and they would be escorted out of the courtroom.

  The final blow to Moore's attempts to portray Jimmy as a liar came when he asked him to study the pictures of the living room again and tell him if there was one single thing in the room that he would not have known about if he had seen those pictures before he testified.

  Jimmy started to shake his head, then said, “Oh, wait a minute. You see that little table by the couch?” He pointed to it. “That's where Aldrich kept the money he gave me. I don't know if it still creaks but it sure was noisy then when he opened it. I remember thinking he oughta oil it or somethin'.”

  Emily glanced at Gregg Aldrich.

  His complexion had gone so pale that she wondered if he was about to faint.

  Just Take My Heart

  21

  B he had lied to Emily that his hours at work had been changed, Zach realized it was important she shouldn't see him or his car when she got home from the courthouse. And the problem was that now that the trial was under way, and court recessed at four p.m., she was getting home to her house early, between five thirty and six p.m. That meant he couldn't go home himself when he got off from work, but had to stay out until it was dark, then hope she didn't see him drive into his garage. It was one more reason to dislike her.

  Soon after he handed Emily back her key, she had installed a bolt on the door of her back porch. He had discovered that when he tried to sneak into her house, about a week after he stopped minding Bess. He had called in sick to work because he missed handling Em?ily's things. He tried to slip in her house one morning after she left, and was stopped by the new bolt. What she was too dumb to realize was that he had made a key that opened her front door, but he was afraid to try that. He knew it was very risky to be standing on her front porch. There was always the chance that a nosy neighbor might see him there.

  The only real contact he had with her now was to listen to her in her kitchen in the morning when she was talking to Bess. He had considered planting a microphone or maybe even a camera in a few places in her house, but decided that was also too risky. If she had found one of them, she'd have had half the prosecutor's office swarm?ing all over the place, and they'd have been on his doorstep in min?utes. He was almost certain that she'd never notice the tiny microphone over her refrigerator. It was out of her line of sight.

  Low profile, Zach reminded himself. Always keep a low profile. That means when the time comes I can do what I have to do, then disappear. It worked for me in Iowa and in North Dakota and in New Mexico. Charlotte, and Lou, and Wilma. Lou and Wilma didn't have families around when he got rid of them.

  When Emily's time came, it would be necessary for him to disap?pear from New Jersey. He started to formulate a plan about where he might move.

  One morning, toward the end of the third week of the trial, as he watched through the slats of the blinds, Zach saw Emily pour her first cup of coffee and get up suddenly. “Bess,” he heard her say, “no time to waste. This is the big day. Gregg Aldrich is going on the stand and I'll get to cross-examine him. I'm going to make mince?meat of him.”

  Then as she passed the refrigerator on her way to the stairs, her steps slowing, she added: “Bess, it's absolutely crazy but in a way I feel sorry for him. I must be losing it.”

  Just Take My Heart

  22

  Richard Moore had been confident that on the day he put Gregg Aldrich on the witness stand, Emily would get to her office early. That was why he was waiting for her at seven a.m. when she arrived at the courthouse. It was Friday, October 3rd.

  The minute Emily saw him, she knew the reason he was there. She invited him into her office and offered to get him some coffee. “If you get a cup when it's just made, it's not that bad,” she assured him. "But if you're craving Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, take a pass on it.

  Moore smiled. “With an endorsement like that, I don't know how I can resist, but no thanks, Emily.” The smile was gone as quickly as it came. “Emily, what I say now stays in these four walls, okay?”

  “Okay, I think. It depends on what you say to me.”

  “My client absolutely insists that he is innocent. He doesn't know I'm talking to you now and would undoubtedly be furious if he found out about it. But here's the question: Is an aggravated man?slaughter plea with a twenty-year sentence still on the table?”

  The image of Gregg Aldrich, pale and shaken, rushed into Emi?ly's mind but she shook her head. “No, Richard,” she said emphati?cally. “At this point, for any number of reasons, it's not. For openers, if Aldrich had taken the plea when it was offered months ago, I wouldn't have had to put Natalie's mother under all the stress and heartbreak of testifying.” Moore nodded slowly, as if he'd expected this response.

  Realizing how angry she sounded, Emily said, “Let me grab my own coffee. The pot is down the hall. Back in a second.”

  When she returned, she made sure to keep the emotion out of her voice. “Richard, you know the amount of preparation it takes to get ready for a trial. I've been working around the clock for months and now I have a lot of other cases piled up and waiting for some at?tention from me. At this point, I want the case to be decided by the jury.”

  Richard Moore stood up. “All right. I understand. And I repeat, Gregg Aldrich did not authorize this visit. He swears he is innocent and wants the jury to acquit him. Acquit? Actually, he wants to be exonerated.”

  Exonerated! He must be crazy, Emily thought. He'd better hope that at least one juror believes him and he gets a hung jury. At least that would buy him a few more months of freedom before a second trial. Without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, she said, “I sincerely doubt that Gregg Aldrich will be exonerated by this jury or any other.”

  “You may be right about that,” Moore replied, glumly. At the door, he turned back. “I admit that Easton was better on the stand than I expected, Emily. And I don't mind telling you that you've done a good job.”

  Richard Moore was not known to give compliments. Sincerely pleased, Emily thanked him.

  “And, Emily, one way or the other, I'm glad this will be over soon. It's really been a tough one.”

  He did not wait for her reply.

  Just Take My Heart

  23

  On the morning of October 3rd, Gregg Aldrich got out of bed at five a.m. Because he was going to be on the witness stand, he had gone to bed unreasonably early and it had been a mistake. He had slept for an hour until eleven p.m., then dozed fitfully for the next six hours.

  I've got to clear my head, he thought. I'll take a run in the park. I can't testify feeling this groggy and stupid. He raised the shades and closed the window. The window looked across the street to the opposite building. Park Avenue never does give much of a view, he thought. On Fifth Avenue, you looked over Central Park. On East End Avenue, you could see the river. On Park you look at a building filled with people like yourself who can afford the fancy prices.

  The view was better in Jersey City, he thought, wryly. I could get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from the old apartment. But after Mom died, I couldn't get away fast enough. Mom forced herself to stay alive until she'd seen me graduate from St. John's University. I'm glad she's not sitting in that courtroom now, he thought, turning from the window.

  It was cool out, and he decided to wear a light running suit. As he dressed, Gregg realized how much he'd been thinking of his mother lately. He found himself remembering how, after she died, he'd invited a few of the close neighbors like Loretta Lewis to come into their five-story walk-up to
help themselves to any furnishings they could use.

  Why was he thinking that? Because Richard Moore is going to put Mrs. Lewis on the stand as a character witness to say what a “grand” son I was and how helpful to all the old people in the build?ing. He seems to think that will create some sympathy for me. Father dead when I was nine, mother fighting cancer for years, working my way through college . . . Moore will have them in tears for me. But what has that got to do with Natalie's death? Moore says it could cre?ate doubt that I was capable of killing Natalie. Who knows?

  At 5:20, after gulping a cup of instant coffee, Gregg opened the door to Katie's bedroom and looked in on her. She was fast asleep, hunched in a ball under the coverlet, only her long blond hair visible. Like him, she loved a cold room for sleeping.

  But last night, after she had gone to bed, he heard her sobbing and went to her. "Daddy, why is that Jimmy Easton lying about you? she wailed.

  He sat on her bed and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Katie, he's lying because he's going to spend a lot less time in prison by spinning that story.”

  “But, Daddy, the jury believes him. I can tell that they believe him.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “No, of course not.” She quickly pulled herself up to sitting posi?tion. “How can you even ask me that?”

  She had been shocked. And I was shocked that I asked her that question, Gregg thought, but if I'd seen any doubt in her eyes, it would have finished me. It had taken a long time before Katie fell asleep. Now he hoped she wouldn't wake up until at least seven o'clock. They had to leave for the courtroom at twenty of eight.

  He let himself out of the apartment and began to jog the two blocks to Central Park, taking the path north when he reached it. Try as he would to organize his thoughts to prepare himself for the witness stand, his mind keep hurtling back to the past.