Falling Grace

by Melissa Shirley

  My attorney, the only lawyer I’d ever met, had been my best friend growing up and, though ten years had passed since we did more than make small talk on the phone, she took my case, no questions asked. Even though Grace Wade had been career dormant as of late, I sat next to her not at all worried. She’d always been wrapped in some karmically blessed aura of greatness. At least, that’s what I told myself that morning before I dressed for trial.

  She smoothed her skirt as we sat and waited for the prosecutor to begin his opening statement. At seventeen months older than me, Grace had movie-star beauty. Along with her dramatic good looks, she capitalized on her porn star figure by wearing short, mostly respectable skirts and blouses opened at the throat, thoroughly enhancing her pushed up C cup.

  Without looking at me, checking her notes or picking up a pen, she stared at the troll and waited. To anyone else, she appeared calm, poised for battle, but her fingers trembled as they sat idle against the table. A light sheen of sweat dotted her forehead and upper lip. We ignored the whirring of cameras, crinkling of papers, muffled coughs, hushed whispers in the court room, and most of our childhood friends on the witness list. For a former glory hound like Grace, ignoring it all said something.

  As much as I’d come to love Storybook Lake over the last year, we weren’t holding the trial at home. Storybook Lake would never let something so tainted as murder touch its cobblestoned, gas-lit streets. The proceedings had been transferred to neighboring Bloomington, and my friends and former neighbors, all with ready-formed opinions as to my innocence or guilt, elbowed for space in the tiny courtroom.

  Cal, whose grades in high school mirrored his initials, stood and walked to the center of the room, facing the jury, his back to me. While I understood it was the little troll’s job to prosecute me, it irked me that he’d been able to start without as much as a glance at the pile of notes on his table. Executing a perfect military turn in his too-shiny clown shoes, he took three paces toward the judge parallel to the jury, executed a military left turn, and stalked back to his original spot. He stopped abruptly and faced the twelve people prepared to hang on his every word.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Calvin Connor and I represent you, the good people of the State of Illinois.” I nudged Grace and mouthed the words, “suck up.” She shot me a glare and turned back to Cal. “Storybook Lake, Illinois is an innocent little tourist town with a quiet character based on works of literary greatness. Its existence celebrates the lives of those who let us borrow their words to transport ourselves through whatever carefully woven life they have created in their pages. On June fourth, this woman”--he pointed at me without ever turning around--“shattered the calm that normally floats over the quiet little city. She lured her husband away from his home in California with the promise he would get to see the son she kidnapped away from him.”

  I looked around for the Academy Award presenters and shrugged when no little gold statue appeared.

  Grace leaped to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Mrs. Turner had, and continues to have, sole custody of the child. There was no kidnapping involved and absolutely no evidence Mrs. Turner lured her husband here. In fact, all evidence points otherwise.” Grace turned to me, eyes wide, the hint of a smile on her lips as she waited for the judge to answer.

  The judge shifted her attention to Cal. “Mr. Cooper?”

  He simply lifted one shoulder, cocked his head toward it with an off-handed smile, offering no explanation. “Sustained.”

  The judge shot him a dirty look.

  He turned back to the jury and continued. “This woman, the defendant, is a cold, calculating killer who was involved in a relationship with another man while still married to Sean Turner. She knew in order to be free to be with the love of her life”--Air quotes?--“and raise her son with him, she needed to get rid of her husband. She had to make sure he wasn’t around to interfere. So, what did she do? She took a knife and stabbed Sean Turner not once, not twice, but seven times. And, just like that, she was free of the burden of marriage.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “But then, she wasn’t. Sean Turner refused to die, to let her take his son away and live with another man, refused to give up the tenuous hold on his wife and on his life, he was clinging to. She couldn’t let him live, especially not now. Attempted murder? She would have lost her son anyway. So, she ran to her purse, took out the gun she stole from her boyfriend, a former chief of police, and she shot Mr. Turner in the face.” He made a pistol with his fingers, flicked his arm out in aim, and shot me. “She lied to investigators, not once, but three times. She lied to her friends, her family, and to her son.”

  Grace shot out of her chair again. “Objection, Your Honor. May we approach?” Without waiting for an answer, she stomped to the front of the courtroom and stood, hands on hips, feet apart. Grace Wade, princess warrior, ready for battle.

  After an animated discussion--her hands flailing, his head bobbing, and the judge jerking her head back and forth ping pong style--she returned to her seat next to mine and picked up her pen. She scribbled, “No worries. I got this.”

  I aspired to worried.

  The judge looked at Cal, then the jury. “The objection is sustained. Ladies and gentleman, there is no evidence the gun used to shoot Mr. Turner was, in fact, the same gun that belonged to Simon Hunter.” Cal was the recipient of his second stink-eye from the judge in a matter of minutes. “Proceed, Mr. Connor.”

  “The point isn’t who this defendant lied to or whose gun she used, or why Sean Turner was here in Illinois. The point is she lied and she lied a lot. She left Mr. Turner in his hotel room bleeding to death.”

  Nope. By the time I arrived, he’d been stabbed and shot and died alone. The way I always knew he would.

  “The relationship between the defendant and Mr. Turner was born in the back of a limousine where the defendant conceived the couple’s child. After trying unsuccessfully to dupe Keaton Shaw into believing the child was his, a DNA test confirmed she lied to him and the baby actually belonged to Mr. Turner. Another lie in her long list. She sought out Sean Turner and married him, then quit her job.”

  I hadn’t quit my job. My job didn’t require a desk or an office, just a pen and piece of paper. I designed kids’ clothes for a living.

  “Then she moved to California to be with her husband. After a few months of fighting and quibbling over money, she left the marital home, taking the child with her. When she returned, over the Christmas holiday, she visited Storybook Lake with her husband, and while they were there, together, as a couple, she flaunted her desire to be with Mr. Hunter in Sean Turner’s face.”

  We had been fighting over my money and the way Sean spent it in big fat wads, but the tone of Cal’s voice suggested I was the greedy one. And for his information, during that trip, Sean found me talking to Simon for the sum total of one minute, then hauled me back to the hotel and hit me with such force my eyes rolled back. I thought he’d literally broken my face. The next morning, he’d cried like a baby, said he couldn’t stand the thought of losing me. I went home with him because he’d been sorry and because he promised to start over with me and make a life with me and Kieran. Plus, Simon went to the New Year’s party with Kelly Devlin, the big shot magazine writer he’d broken up with me to date.

  “Mr. Turner, by this defendant’s own admission, cried, begged, and pleaded for her to return to him so he could share in the life of their child. Reluctantly, by another of her own admissions, she returned home to Mr. Turner where the real fighting began.”

  Rage at the injustice behind Cal’s half-truths welled up inside me. Grace covered my fingers with her own squeezing hard, probably to stop the drumming against the table top. The fighting began because Sean was sleeping with every stripper in his employ, as well as some who worked for other clubs. Jeez! Where was a tiny-headed voodoo doll when I needed one?

  “By the time she was done with him, Sean Turner was as ready to be rid of hi
s wife as she was to be gone, but not his son. Oh no. Within hours of her leaving, he filed papers for custody of his child.”

  Sean had only done that to lure me back. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Grace had been forthright about how I should behave and eye rolling topped the no-no list.

  “But did this defendant call the police after the body was found to tell them she had, in fact, been in Mr. Turner’s hotel room that night? No. Did she one time mention her fable that Mr. Turner had been stalking her, taunting her, having her followed? No. Instead, she pretended she’d had no contact with him since she’d taken their son and run home to Storybook Lake some seven months earlier.” He shook his head and his pacing in front of the jury continued.

  “When investigators discovered otherwise, her story changed again, tailored to fit the evidence. She finally concocted this story of abuse toward not only her, but the child. She, in her desperation to stay out of jail, involved their four-year-old son in her web of lies.” He looked down most of the time, presumably to make sure his ugly, brown, clown shoes didn’t catch on one another and cause him to topple head over feet. “Danielle Turner is the worst kind of predator. She uses her beauty”--he looked up at the jury and stabbed a bony finger through the air in my direction--“to snare men into her web of lies.”

  His words curdled my blood.

  “She used her over-average intelligence to try to outwit cops and investigators. And she used her son as a weapon to get her way. In this case, her way was to kill Mr. Turner so she could embark on her new life with Simon Hunter in a town that celebrates its fiction. Don’t lump her in with the likes of Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or even Dr. Seuss. Show her that her fiction is as unbelievable as the evidence will prove it to be.” With a smirk, he raised one eyebrow at Grace and went back to his chair, needing a copy of the yellow pages on his seat to properly see over the top of his table. Without it, he seemed to have tucked himself almost underneath the smooth flat surface holding the mountain of notes and binders on the case.

  Grace stood and smoothed her skirt. “Mr. Connor.” She shook her head, long, blonde hair swinging along her back, soft curls dancing. “Shame on you.”

  “Your Honor.” Calvin shoved his legs against the fabric of his cushioned chair, shooting it backward into the short wall dividing us from the gallery. The clatter echoed throughout the high-ceilinged room. “Ms. Wade needs to speak to the jury, not the prosecutor.”

  The judge smiled at Grace. “Miss Wade, I know you know better.”

  Grace nodded, her lips pursing as she tried to wipe the smile from her face. “Yes, Your Honor.” She turned back to the jury and introduced herself, then began. “Mrs. Turner didn’t lure her husband to Storybook Lake. That was the last thing she wanted. Since the day of their wedding, Sean tortured Danielle, beating her and their son. There is irrefutable evidence to prove it.”

  She turned to Cal, with another quick shake of her head as though reprimanding him for his lie. “As soon as the private detective Sean Turner hired to hunt Danielle found her, bad, scary, dangerous things started to happen. Her home was vandalized then broken into. She received countless texts on numerous cell phones indicating Sean knew where she was and what she was doing. And the week he died, Sean bought a plane ticket and flew to Storybook Lake to step up his efforts to intimidate my client, her friends, and her family. The evidence will show you Danielle did not kill Mr. Turner. She was aware Mr. Turner was stalking her, but she didn’t kill him.

  “The evidence will show you that Sean Turner taunted her, threatened her life repeatedly, not only over that week, but during the entire course of their relationship. What the evidence will not show you is that she had a single thing to do with his murder. The prosecutor has no murder weapon, no eye witness, not a single, tangible thing to prove Danielle had so much as an inkling Sean Turner was in Storybook Lake.”

  She paused for a moment, looked from me to the jury. “You are going to hear things about Sean Turner that will make it seem as though he’s the one on trial, about his behavior, his job, and his sex life. Make no mistake. We’re not trying to smear Sean Turner’s name, but this is all information you need to walk into the jury room with a full picture of the events leading up to the night Danielle left her husband and returned home to the safety of Storybook Lake.

  “Danielle had the most to lose and nothing to gain by Sean Turner’s death. All she would inherit when he died was an almost bankrupt strip club and a pile of debt he ran up in the months since she’d left. She had an army of friends surrounding her to keep her safe from Sean and his henchmen, and because of the man Sean was, there were many, many people who wanted him dead. Danielle did not kill him, and Mr. Cooper cannot prove otherwise.”

  Grace smiled once more at the jury then came to sit beside me as Calvin stood. “Your Honor,” he said, with enough glee in his voice I imagined him about to spring into cartwheels. “I call Mr. Keaton Shaw.”

  Ugh. Keaton was no longer indebted to me and, no matter what he said about forgiving me, I had no idea what he would say or do on the stand. He raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and took his seat to the left of the judge. After he stated his name for the record, he shot me a half smile. I hoped against all other hope it was a good sign.

  When Keaton straightened his tie, adjusted his jacket then pointed a straight-forward gaze at the jury, several of the female jurors sat up straighter. His beauty inspired the same reaction wherever he went.

  “Mr. Shaw.” Calvin walked from his seat to the podium, almost wringing his hands together in evil merriment. This was his every nerd dream. He had the captain of every sports team in our graduating class sitting in front of him testifying against the homecoming queen. It played out like an after school special gone wrong. “How do you know Mrs. Turner?”

  Keaton’s eyebrows knitted together as though he’d never heard a question more stupid. “We all grew up together.” His tone clearly indicated he included Calvin in the group.

  Calvin chuckled. “Right. We did.” Though I’m sure Cal remembered growing up outside their circle a little differently than Keaton remembered growing up surrounded by Gatlin, Joss, Simon, Kelly, and Luke. “During that time, how well did you get to know Mrs. Turner?”

  Keaton smiled. “We were friends, then we dated in high school, and after high school we lived together for a while.”

  “And when you were living together, was it while you were still married?”

  Uh-oh. “I was in the process of getting divorced.”

  “But you were still married?”

  Cal’s question left Keaton no room to wiggle out of the answer. “Yes.” He ground out the word as one eyebrow cocked on his forehead, daring Cal to take it further.

  A bubble of anger formed in the pit in my stomach as Calvin asked, “And was that divorce precipitated by your involvement with Mrs. Turner?”

  Oh good Lord. I nudged Grace. Object, dammit. She’d never been good at hearing my mind messages, so I kicked her shin. She whirled to look at me and tilted her head. “Stop.”

  “My wife thought I was having an affair.” Explain, explain, explain, I silently commanded, hoping Keaton had the gift of telepathy Grace did not. Unfortunately, he remained sitting, hands clasped in his lap, waiting for the next question.

  Calvin continued grinding his ugly little axe to a razor sharp point. “During the time you lived with Mrs. Turner, was there any drug or alcohol use?”

  “Yes.” He looked at me and frowned.

  “By both of you?”

  “We didn’t do drugs.”

  I closed my eyes as memories of those days washed over me, well, dim, alcohol-fogged memories.

  “And it was during that time Mrs. Turner became pregnant?”

  I wanted to smack Cal’s self-satisfied smile right off his smarmy, thin lips. If eye rolling was a no-no, then smacking the prosecutor was off limits, but the desire itched inside my palm.

  “Yes.” Wel
l…

  “And she let you believe the child was yours for how long?”

  “It wasn’t like she did it on purpose. We lived together like couples live together.” I guessed that was his way of saying we’d had some sex. He was lying to defend me? Knowing Joss was seated a few rows behind me. I couldn’t decide if his untruth was helpful or hurtful. “She didn’t know he wasn’t mine, either.” Keaton frowned. Mr. Proper-grammar-at-all-times never liked the double negative.

  Calvin looked at the judge. “Your Honor, the witness is non-responsive.”

  The judge glared back at Calvin. “And your question was leading. Rephrase.” She shot a lifted brow look at Grace.

  “How long did Mrs. Turner let you believe the child was yours?”

  Grace stood up. “Objection. Relevance and foundation.”

  The judge looked at Grace, a half smile crooking her lips. “Sustained.”

  Calvin clarified the details. When had we lived together and where? How long after we began living together did I become pregnant? How long after I told him did I have the baby? Then he asked, “Did you believe the baby was yours?”

  “In the beginning? Yes.”

  “And how long was it before you discovered he belonged to someone else?”

  Grace stood again. “Objection, relevance.”

  “Your honor, it goes to her motive for seeking out Mr. Turner in the first place.”

  Grace almost popped her hip out of place coming around the desk, and for a split second, I thought she might wrap her hands around his neck instead of punching them against her waist. “Your Honor, we believed Mr. Shaw was going to be called because he was a first responder to the scene.”

  “She can’t tell me what to ask my witness.” Calvin’s voice climbed to a child-like whine.

  The judge cocked her head. “Approach, please.” They walked to the front of the courtroom, and I sat back in my chair, remembering.