‘It is not for me to determine whether it was right or wrong, but your statement is correct,’ Meadows told him. I loved the answer – it not only insulted Cates, but also confused the jury.
But Cates wasn’t letting go. ‘So you slept with her?’ Sensing that Meadows might correct his usage again, he added, ‘You had sexual relations with her?’
Meadows might have been asked if he’d played tennis that morning. ‘I did,’ he said simply. ‘Once.’
‘Can you describe the circumstances surrounding that encounter?’
Meadows didn’t bite his lip or twitch or do any of the things witnesses do on TV. He looked dispassionately at Cates and answered, ‘It was one of the nights when Mr McNabb and Ms DeNunzio were apart. He was filming late that night, and she had argued with him on the phone. They weren’t getting along well.’
‘Had that been going on for some time?’ Cates asked.
‘Yes.’ Meadows didn’t nod – it would have been beneath him. ‘They argued often.’
‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’
Meadows widened his eyes in an expression that could only be described as appalled. ‘A good servant does not eavesdrop, Mr Cates,’ he said.
No, but he shtups the lady of the house the first chance he gets, I thought.
‘Please go on,’ Cates managed.
‘Ms DeNunzio was upset, and she came to my quarters after I had retired for the evening. She expressed a desire to be … held, and I tried to resist, but I confess, I had always found her quite attractive. Eventually, my better judgment escaped me.’
‘You had sex with her.’ Cates practically spat the words out, trying so hard to get Meadows to say it himself.
‘Yes,’ was all the reply that came.
‘Were you aware she was pregnant when she was murdered?’ Cates asked.
‘No. I had not been in contact with Ms DeNunzio at all, in any way, since Mr McNabb moved out of the house. I had gone with Mr McNabb.’ Follow the money.
‘Were you aware you were the father of her child?’ Cates dropped the bombshell so he could control it. The jurors still demonstrated surprise, leaning forward to hear Meadows’ calm, controlled, but quiet answer. A feather dropped on a pillow would have seemed like a cannon blast in the silent courtroom.
‘Until you told me about the police report, I had no idea,’ Meadows said. ‘As I said, there had been no contact between us at all.’
‘Before the night you spent with Ms DeNunzio,’ Cates said, ably changing the subject, ‘had you witnessed any arguments between her and Mr McNabb?’
‘Yes.’ Meadows was clearly more comfortable discussing domestic strife than his own sex life, but not much. ‘They argued frequently in the months before the divorce.’
‘I know you didn’t eavesdrop,’ Cates allowed, ‘but surely you couldn’t help hearing some of what they were fighting about.’
‘I’m aware that Mr McNabb suspected his wife was unfaithful to him,’ Meadows said.
And you’re living proof she was, I thought.
‘Did you ever hear him threaten her physically?’
‘I don’t recall hearing any threats of violence, but he did say he would stop paying her debts. He said that more than once, but I know he was at least paying off some of them.’ Meadows was clearly forced against his will to tell this detail of his employer’s life. I braced myself. Cates must have something up his sleeve, or he wouldn’t have asked a question he knew would be answered that way. He’d have preferred a threat of violence.
‘Did you ever see Mr McNabb threaten Ms DeNunzio?’ Uh-oh.
‘Yes,’ Meadows answered immediately. ‘He raised his hand to strike her once when she said she’d liquidate his collection of … memorabilia.’
‘Thank you, Mr Meadows,’ Cates said, and sat himself down. Meadows turned a cold eye toward me as I approached.
‘Mr Meadows, when Mr McNabb raised his hand, did he actually strike Ms DeNunzio?’ I was breaking a rule – I didn’t know for a fact that Patrick hadn’t hit Patsy – but I thought Cates would have emphasized it if Meadows had told him otherwise.
Sure enough, ‘no’ was the answer from the butler. ‘He stopped himself before he made contact, and then he apologized.’
‘Now then, Mr Meadows, about this affair you had with Mr McNabb’s wife …’ Meadows didn’t exactly cringe, but his eyelids did flicker. I continued, ‘What happened after you two were intimate?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Meadows said. ‘What do you mean, what happened?’
‘You said it only happened once. Why only once?’
‘It was a mistake, an accident,’ Meadows said, for the first time appearing flustered. ‘It shouldn’t have happened once. It certainly wasn’t going to happen again.’
‘Was that your opinion, or Ms DeNunzio’s?’ I asked. ‘Did you want to continue the contact?’
‘No. Ms DeNunzio was very clear it was a one-time event, and I agreed with her.’ Meadows looked briefly at Cates, hoping there would be an objection. There wasn’t.
‘So Patsy told you the next morning, or later that night, that that was the only time you’d make love to her, and you accepted that.’
‘Yes,’ Meadows said. ‘I accepted it.’
‘If she’d said it could continue, would you have accepted that?’
Now, Cates did stand. ‘Objection. She’s asking the witness to speculate on a situation that never presented itself.’
‘I’m talking about the witness’ feelings, Your Honor,’ I said. ‘This is calculated to produce relevant testimony.’
Franklin thought for a moment. ‘I’ll allow it, but don’t go too far, Ms Moss.’ Cates sat.
‘Thank you, Your Honor. Mr Meadows, if Patsy had said you could continue the affair, would you have done so?’
Meadows had taken the break to compose himself, and now was the complete butler again. ‘I would have liked that,’ he said. ‘But I knew it was impossible, and I accepted it.’
‘So you weren’t jealous of other men Patsy slept with? You didn’t get just a little bit angry when Patrick came home and you knew they were making love to get over the argument?’ I knew I was pushing it, and I knew the next word I’d hear shouted.
‘Objection!’
I turned and walked back to the defense table. ‘Withdrawn, Your Honor. No more questions,’ I said, and sat down next to Patrick, who was shaking his head.
‘What?’ I said to him.
Patrick watched Meadows walk by, fully erect and pressed, as he left the courtroom. ‘Poor bugger,’ he said. ‘She broke his heart.’
THIRTY-NINE
‘I got her!’ Evan was like an eight-year-old who’d just managed an autograph from his favorite baseball player. ‘Mrs Bach! She said it! Now you can get a subpoena.’
He sat down at the table in the conference room where Angie, Patrick, and I were having lunch, which had been ‘brought round’ by Dolce Enoteca at Patrick’s insistence (and expense). Evan eyed my risotto hungrily. I allowed him a forkful, but no more. A girl’s got to have priorities.
‘That’s great, Evan. Did she buy the office roast story?’ I was grateful, but this was expensive food.
‘Hook, line, and sinker. She offered up a few choice tidbits to anyone who might want to roast Bach a little more well-done. Like, he brushes his teeth with five-dollar-a-bottle imported water.’
Angie and I chuckled and, after a moment, Patrick joined in. He was probably wondering what was funny about that – didn’t everyone?
‘This is huge,’ I said with my mouth full, making glances at Angie’s calamari. ‘I have to put on a real show about being outraged at Bach’s testimony, then bring on Mrs Bach to undermine it. If I play it properly, it’ll work. Evan, can you request the subpoena?’
‘Depends,’ he said, looking a little hurt.
I understood immediately. ‘Oh, all right.’ I passed him the rest of the risotto.
‘Be happy to,’ Evan said with a smile
.
By all accounts, Melanie DeNunzio was the dullest witness to appear in the trial so far. CNN actually cut away from the trial after twenty minutes of her testimony to show the arraignment of a man accused of stealing his neighbor’s washing machine. When told about it afterward, I said I considered it a good programming decision – if only because a viewer then could find out how someone steals a washing machine.
Cates tried to make Melanie seem interesting, playing up her closeness to her sister and the fact that she, Melanie, had been at the party the night Patrick McNabb had showed off his bow and arrow acquisition from The Searchers. But in the end, the jury, as did the rest of the courtroom, saw Melanie as a rather ordinary woman whose sister had treated her like a rather ordinary woman.
The one moment that made the courtroom perk up was when Cates asked Melanie if she knew about the arguments between Patsy and McNabb. ‘I know they were upset,’ Melanie told him. ‘Obviously, things weren’t going well.’
‘How was it obvious?’ Cates said, clearly salivating at the thought of an insider revelation.
‘Well, they were getting a divorce, you know,’ Melanie told him. He quickly dismissed her and handed me the reins.
‘Did Patrick McNabb ever hit your sister, to the best of your knowledge?’ I asked Melanie.
‘Oh, no.’
‘Did he ever act violently, or in any way threaten her?’
‘Well, there was one time he said he was going to cut up her credit cards,’ Melanie said after some thought.
‘Thank you, Ms DeNunzio.’
The week’s main event was clearly going to be Junius Bach’s testimony. But, because most of the jury had no idea who Bach was, there was not the anticipated gasp of recognition when his name was called as a prosecution witness. This probably irritated Bach, but he was far too professional to let it show. He did refuse to look at me as he walked by my table on the way to the witness stand.
‘Mr Bach, you are the managing partner of the law firm Seaton, Taylor, Evans and Bach, are you not?’ Cates began with the obvious.
‘I am,’ Bach said definitively.
‘And that is a very prestigious law firm devoted to family law, including divorce proceedings, child custody matters, and things of that nature, isn’t it?’ Cates asked the question with little inflection, but Bach treated it as somewhat condescending.
‘Yes,’ was all he said.
‘Lawyers at your firm represent many prominent celebrities, do they not?’
If he continues to question the man this slowly, we may be here until the next Olympics.
‘That’s correct,’ Bach said, agreeing with everything so far.
‘Among those people is the defendant, Patrick McNabb. Isn’t that right?’ Cates was watching the jurors, and it took a few moments for that information to sink in with them. Luckily, Bach was a practiced attorney as well, and he waited until the jurors’ eyes told him to speak.
‘That’s correct. We were representing Mr McNabb in the divorce proceedings.’
‘And the attorney handling Mr McNabb’s defense in this case, Ms Moss, is a member of your firm, isn’t she?’
The jury took longer to digest that, and again, Bach waited, but this time, his gaze was aimed at me. ‘Yes, she is an associate at the firm,’ he said, but he didn’t seem happy about it.
‘Isn’t it rather unusual for the managing partner of a law firm to appear as a witness against his own client with one of his own attorneys on the other side of the case?’ Cates asked, as if it had never occurred to him before.
‘It’s extremely unusual,’ Bach answered. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it happening before.’
‘So why are you appearing here today?’ Um, because you called him as a witness. Was I the only one paying attention here?
I couldn’t take any more. I stood up. ‘Your Honor, I don’t see how this witness’ testimony can be seen as anything but a conflict of interest, and I request that you disallow it.’
‘Please approach the bench, both of you.’
Cates and I walked to the bench, and the judge put his hand over the microphone to keep the conversation from being recorded or heard in the courtroom. ‘The witness is appearing voluntarily, Ms Moss, and as far as I know, your only basis for asking me to throw him out is that he’s going to say things you don’t like. Now, do you have another reason?’
‘Your Honor, Mr Bach is playing office politics, and his appearance here is merely an indication of how badly he wants me to fail.’ Miraculously, I managed to spit the accusation out while looking the judge right in the eye, and I didn’t vomit. That was the extent to which I was succeeding.
‘Ms Moss, Junius Bach is the managing partner of the firm you work for. If he doesn’t like you so much, why doesn’t he just fire you?’ It was a good question.
I shifted my weight, which had increased with the risotto, from one foot to the other. I felt like I’d been called in front of my second grade class. ‘Because,’ I said, ‘Mr McNabb is a wealthy client, and Mr McNabb doesn’t want me fired, Your Honor.’
Cates barely concealed his laughter. ‘Doesn’t this sound just a little bit paranoid, Your Honor? Everyone’s out to get poor little Ms Moss, aren’t they?’
‘Your Honor, I would not be surprised if Mr Bach and the district attorney discussed this matter at length during witness prep, and for that reason alone, I think Mr Bach’s testimony should not be allowed.’
‘Ms Moss, that is paranoid. Step back, both of you.’
I wasn’t surprised at Franklin’s decision, but protocol required me to go through the motions of his rejection.
‘I’m going to allow Mr Bach’s testimony. Your motion is denied, Ms Moss.’
I nodded, chiefly because bursting into tears would have seemed unprofessional.
Cates continued his questioning. ‘So, Mr Bach, why are you appearing here today, testifying as a witness hostile to your own client?’
‘I was present at a meeting before Ms DeNunzio was murdered that might have some relevance to the case.’
‘That was the divorce settlement conference, correct?’ Cates asked.
‘Yes. It was the meeting at which a settlement of the distribution of assets to the marriage was to be devised.’ Bach was as emotionally inscrutable as a beach ball – and at least a beach ball has interesting colors.
‘There was no settlement agreed to, was there?’ Cates asked, as if he didn’t know the answer.
‘No. The conference did not go well, and there was a considerable argument between Mr McNabb and Ms DeNunzio, which I did my best to mediate.’ Yeah, by throwing gasoline on it, I thought.
‘What was the argument about?’
‘As far as I could tell, it was about who would own a pair of tap dancing shoes owned by James Cagney. Ms DeNunzio told Mr McNabb he couldn’t have them, and he became very agitated.’
‘Agitated? In what way?’ Cates asked. How many ways are there to become agitated?
‘He told Ms DeNunzio he’d kill her before he saw the shoes end up in her hands.’ A couple of the jurors, both women, gasped. They all looked at Patrick. He responded by looking as guilty as a man could look. I closed my eyes and tried to picture myself on a beach in Bimini. Alone. Or maybe with Evan.
‘Those were his exact words?’ Cates was relishing the moment.
‘Objection, Your Honor. Asked and answered,’ I said.
But the judge wasn’t buying. ‘We need to know if there was any possibility that Mr McNabb was misunderstood. I’m allowing it, Ms Moss.’
‘His exact words were, “You touch so much as a shoelace, you cheap whore, and I will personally see to it that it’s the last thing you touch. I’ll see you dead before I let you have those shoes. You understand, Patsy? I’ll kill you.”’ Bach might have been reading his tax return for all the emotion he was showing. Actually, he might have shown more emotion reading his tax return.
‘How do you remember the exact words?’ Cates asked. I
thought of objecting strictly by citing on the ‘oh, please’ statute, but savored the thought of my moment to come.
‘I had my assistant make a transcript of the meeting. I always do,’ Bach seemed quite pleased that he could do such a thing.
‘Do you think Mr McNabb meant his words literally when he said them, that he really would kill Ms DeNunzio?’
‘Objection!’ was out of my mouth so fast I had to check to make sure it was my mouth, and not some stranger’s that had opened. ‘Asking the witness to speak to Mr McNabb’s thoughts now?’
‘Sustained,’ Franklin said.
‘No further questions,’ said Cates, and Bach turned his emotionless, shark-like stare toward me as I stood.
‘Mr Bach, have you ever said you were going to kill someone?’
He stared at me. ‘No.’
‘Never? Even as an expression? “I’m gonna kill you?” That sort of thing?’
‘Never,’ Bach said.
‘Never said it to your wife, for example? People say that when they don’t really mean it, if they get mad at someone close to them. You never told your wife you’d kill her?’
‘Never,’ Bach said with a touch more emphasis.
I made my best ‘OK, then …’ face, and said, ‘No further questions, Your Honor.’
Bach was dismissed, and on his way out, he managed to look at me even less than the not-at-all he had on the way in. I tried not to take it personally.
FORTY
‘I told you that you were ready,’ Angie said as we ate dinner that night in my cramped kitchen. Taking a break from preparation, research, and Evan, we were wearing T-shirts and shorts, and eating large bowls of pasta with Paul Newman’s sauce, the only kind I would buy (he gives the money to charity) and the only supermarket sauce Angie would deign to eat (‘it’s almost like real sauce if you don’t taste too hard’).
‘Don’t get cocky,’ I replied. ‘We’ve had some good days and some not-so-good days.’
‘But no bad days,’ Angie reminded me. ‘Even when Cates has made a point, you’ve managed to punch holes in it. And he doesn’t know what’s on its way.’
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