Ellie Whelan declared that a pharmaceutical expert witness would take the stand. A short man with large tortoise-shell glasses walked through the courtroom and sat in the witness chair. Ellie led him through a direct exam that, while truly boring, further explained the mechanics of the drug, Propranolol, and the pharmacist’s opinion that numerous tablets had been crushed and put into the Mexican food ingested by Amanda Miller the night she died.
We wouldn’t be calling an expert witness in opposition, because there was no real disagreement on the use of Propanolol, but when Ellie was done, Maggie took the pharmacist through a few questions we might need for background later.
Soon, the pharmacist was done, and he left the stand.
“Next witness, counsel?” the judge said.
“Your honor, at this time, the state rests.”
“Sweet!” Maggie whispered under her breath.
The judge looked at Maggie and me. “Counsel, will you be calling any witnesses for the defense?”
“Yes, Your Honor, but they aren’t here right now. We’d ask that court be adjourned until tomorrow.”
The judge turned his gaze to Valerie. “Ms. Solara, do you intend to testify in your defense?”
Valerie looked at Maggie. We’d talked about this, and we thought that Valerie would not make a good witness, too nervous and skittish, although we hadn’t exactly put it like that to her. Maggie gave Valerie a light squeeze of the wrist, telling her to go ahead.
But Valerie had never spoken in the courtroom. She opened her mouth. No sound emerged. There were some murmurs from the press.
“Silence in the gallery,” the judge ordered. He looked at Valerie. “Ma’am, you do understand that you have a right to speak in your own defense, but it is not required?”
She coughed a little, as if to get her voice working. “Yes, Your Honor, I understand.”
He looked at the jury. “The fifth amendment of the United States protects witnesses from being forced to incriminate themselves. It is the right of every citizen not to have to answer questions. We all have a right to silence, if we choose.”
He looked back at us. “Ms. Solara, have you and your attorneys determined whether you will testify in this case?”
Maggie gave her another squeeze on the wrist, this time in a show of support, it seemed.
“Yes, I have,” Valerie said. “And no, Your Honor, I will not.”
Murmurs, questions from the crowd in the gallery. The judge ignored them, looked at the jury. “Very well. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, no inference of guilt or any other inference is to be drawn from Ms. Solara’s decision not to testify on her own behalf. I’ll instruct you further on this at the close of the evidence.” He crossed his hands on his desk. “Ms. Bristol, how many witnesses will you be calling and how much time do you need for them?”
“Two or three witnesses, Your Honor. We expect them to be short.”
“Do you anticipate we’ll be able to close tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Maggie said.
“Very well.” The judge dismissed the jury with admonishments not to talk amongst themselves or to anyone else about the trial. “Especially not to any members of the media.” He glared at the reporters in the gallery, then stepped down. “How are we going to avoid the press?” Maggie said under her breath. “Right now they have no footage, just my statement on paper. I don’t want to give them anything else to run on the news about you.”
I glanced at the gallery and saw the reporters chomping at the bit—bags collected, cell phones, voice recorders and notepads ready. “Then we’re not going to avoid the press. Not exactly.” I turned back to Maggie and gestured in the direction of the bench. “Follow me. I have an idea.”
I called Q from the hallway behind the judge’s bench. “Hi, what are you doing?” I said.
“The same thing I’m always doing these days. Watching The View on my DVR and contemplating suicide.”
“Put down the razor blade. Can you get to 26th and Cal in thirty minutes?”
“Why?” He’d said only one word, but I could tell his voice was excited, his interest piqued.
“I need you,” I said. “I want you to act as a publicist for the trial. Just for the afternoon. Sort of an acting job. And then tomorrow, I need you to do a real job and run our trial graphics.”
Maggie, standing next to me, shook her head no. We don’t need that, she mouthed.
I put my hand over the phone for a moment. “Yes, we do, Mags. We need to go splashy and big and knock this thing out, especially since we don’t have a ton of witnesses and especially since the press is here. Trust me on this?”
Maggie exhaled hard, but she nodded.
“Are you kidding?” I heard Q saying excitedly through the phone.
“Not kidding. We need you. Thirty minutes?” I gave him the number of the courtroom.
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
We met with the judge on scheduling matters. When we got out of the chambers, Q was in the courtroom, tapping his foot in anticipation, but at the same time, entertaining Valerie with stories about how he and I had worked together in the past. I couldn’t believe it, but I saw Valerie laugh, genuinely, her hand covering her mouth. With Q in a gray suit, his bald head gleaming under the lights, and Valerie in an ivory dress, setting off her brown skin, they made a striking pair, people who appeared as friends already. About half of the media was still in the gallery, watching them and jotting notes, waiting. The rest would be waiting outside with their cameras, I knew.
Q, Maggie, Valerie and I huddled up. I looked around and found Martin, who stood at the side of the gallery, as if wanting to leave the case to us now. I gestured him toward us. “Please,” I said.
Quickly, Martin was at our side. We all leaned in together.
“Here’s the plan,” I said.
When we were done, Layla walked back in the courtroom again. I wondered where she had been. She came over to her mother and linked arms with her. “We should get you out of here, Mom,” she said. “People are saying the media is camped outside the building.”
I was touched by her apparent sweetness, but I wondered what my father had meant about her knowing something. Or hiding something. I wondered if he had found out anything about her. What could there be to find, though? She was a nineteen-year-old girl. But I kept hearing my dad’s words—guilty affect. I would watch her, I decided.
“I think we have a way out,” I said to Valerie and Layla. “In a minute or two, you’ll follow me downstairs to the lobby and wait until I give you a signal.”
Valerie nodded, not asking for more details than I’d already given her, which I liked. She trusted me, I saw.
Their arms still linked, Valerie put her hand on Layla’s arm and looked with wide, sad, scared eyes at her daughter. “Shall we do dinner tonight?”
I knew she was thinking that this might be one of her last nights of freedom. We would likely close the case tomorrow. Which meant that the jury would start deliberating. Juries are highly unpredictable animals. They could deliberate for ten minutes or ten days. Valerie could be headed for prison as soon as tomorrow night, if they found her guilty.
But Layla didn’t seem to understand this. Or maybe she didn’t want to, something I could understand. “Tonight is my trivia night,” Layla said.
“Oh, that’s right.” Valerie’s voice had grown hard, despite her sweet tone—a brittle candy shell. “I know you love that.”
“I’m going to run to the restroom,” Layla said. “Be right back.”
As she left, her mother turned to me with an expression that seemed…helpless.
I wanted to say, It’s going to be okay. You are going to be okay, the way I would have yesterday or the day before that. But we were too close to the end of the trial now. I didn’t know that anything would be okay.
“Layla does this trivia thing every week with friends,” Valerie said. “It’s something that makes her feel normal, I guess, when our life has been nothing
but.”
I nodded. “Sure. I understand.”
I looked at my watch. We’d given Q and Martin enough time to uphold their part of the plan.
We took the elevators downstairs. When we got there, Maggie’s law clerk was waiting, and we directed her to take Layla and Valerie into an alcove. Then I inched toward the front door.
Q and Martin were holding a press conference on the plaza of 26th and Cal. Every reporter strained to hold out a microphone, every cameraman shined their gleaming electrical eye at the pair.
Some of the courthouse workers had gone to the doors to hear them, and with a number of the doors propped open, Q shouting his words, we could hear perfectly.
Q, stepping easily into the role of publicist on behalf of Bristol & Associates Law Firm, read a statement about the trial that we had whipped up in the courtroom.
“The state,” he said, sounding a bit like Jesse Jackson, the Early Years, “says this trial is about friendship, or the failure of it. They say it’s about envy, seduction. Well, those are simply words meant to inflame the jury. They have no physical evidence tying Valerie Solara to the crime. Nothing!” He scoffed. “That’s nearly impossible in today’s day and age, and yet the prosecution has nothing.” He punctuated the air with a rolled-up sheaf of papers. “We will be providing the media with statistics on the percentage of crimes that produce physical evidence in our contemporary times. It will be high. I’d ask everyone who wants that information to step forward when we’re done and give me your contact information.”
Hmm. That last hadn’t been part of the script. It sounded okay, I supposed. And I knew Q. If he said he’d do it, he’d do it. He’d find the research and provide it. And it would buy more time at the end of his little speech.
Q kept talking and introduced Martin, who basically gave a similar talk, in a more subdued way. There was nothing new the two were adding, technically, but with the press so hungry for “news,” every attention was focused on them. Maggie stood nearby, as if ready to con tribute something, although I knew she planned to say absolutely nothing.
I turned and sought Maggie’s law clerk who was hiding in the alcove with Valerie and Layla. I pointed to a side door, mouthing, Go, go.
We watched them leave fast, skirting the edges of the press. They made it across the street. Yes! No one had seen them.
I looked at Mags. “Go,” she said. “And then I’ll be following soon after you.”
I nodded. “We need to catch up about Sam,” I said.
“News?”
“Yeah. Bad news.”
“Oh, honey.” Maggie gave me a quick squeeze of a hug. “We’ll talk later. You better go.”
I dug in my bag and found the hooded sweatshirt I’d bought in the parking garage. I yanked it over my head, pulled my hair inside it, then added my helmet atop it. And quietly, my face downward, I pushed through a revolving door and slid down the side of the crowd, no one noticing me.
61
Theo and I walked into the club. Techno music pounded despite the mostly empty confines of the place. Laser lights swirled through the darkness. Later, the place would be insanely packed, Theo and C.R. had said, as if that were a good thing, but now was the time to get cheap drinks.
We walked farther into the club and into one of the deep seating pits that was sunk into the floor, circular, padded with colorful pillows. To me, it seemed the kind of decorating you might see in a college dorm, albeit a high-end one, but I kept my mouth shut.
We perused the bar menu, and I pointed out an item to Theo. “Blue Moon. That’s what Sam used to drink.”
Theo glanced at me, a little question in his eyes, and when the waitress came he ordered a Heineken.
Just then C.R. and Lucy arrived. They slid into the booth with us and ordered drinks. We all started chatting. Theo and C.R. seemed pleased by the club. And Lucy, in a miniskirt and a tank top, looked like she not only fit into the place physically, but was as pleased with it as the boys. And that’s exactly what Theo and C.R. seemed to me right then—boys.
I’d been dealing with a murder trial for weeks, with someone’s life in the balance. And Sam had returned, throwing my own life’s balance out of whack. I should have been happy for the levity in the room and with the group. C.R. and Theo ordered more drinks, kidding with each other, and joked with Lucy as C.R. tickled her and kissed her neck. But somehow it all made me feel weary, older.
I kept thinking about my dad’s words. Look at the daughter. I kept thinking about Valerie saying that Lucy was at a Trivia Night tonight.
While the boys and Lucy laughed and called to people at the next seating pit, I pulled out my phone and ran a search for Trivia Nights in Chicago. There were more than a few. Since Layla went to DePaul, I started focusing on a search for just that area, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. I found a couple, but only one that held their trivia games that night—Paddy Long’s Tavern.
I piped into the conversation. “Who wants to do some trivia?”
My suggestion was met with blank stares.
I explained that a bar on Diversey had trivia that night. I looked down at my phone and then mentioned the drinks specials for good measure.
“Yeah, sure,” C.R. said, looking around the place. “It’s kinda lame right now anyway. We can come back later.”
Soon, we were in another cab, pulling up to Paddy Long’s. In front, a few small trees and plants guarded patio tables. White lights hung from the leaves of the trees, and people sat at the tables laughing and talking. A striped awning hung over them.
Inside, the air-conditioning blasted onto at least a hundred people taking up the tables, peering at trivia cards, then consulting their tablemates and neighbors about it, writing down answers, calling questions to the host. Occasionally, cheers of celebration would erupt from a table.
“I guess it’s like bingo,” Lucy said.
“I guess so,” I said.
Neither Theo nor C.R. responded. I wondered whether anyone today still played bingo and if those two knew what it was.
A group got up from a table on our right, vacating it. We slid in.
I glanced up at the TV over the bar and saw a rugby game. “Sam played rugby,” I said.
Theo gave me a glance, but I was saved by a waitress who brought drink menus and trivia cards.
Lucy, C.R. and Theo immediately got into the spirit, writing down correct answers and consulting us on others.
“Which country first gave women the right to vote?” the host called out from a microphone.
“New Zealand!” Lucy cried.
“You’re so smart.” C.R. gave her a fake punch on the arm. “How did you know that?”
“Oh, I think I was probably a suffragette in a past life,” she said.
“Like that song, ‘Suffragette City’?”
“Yeah, I love Bowie,” Lucy said.
“Nah, that’s by Ziggy Stardust.”
“Well, sure, but it’s Bowie.”
CR’s eyes crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Ziggy Stardust is David Bowie.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m pretty sure.” Lucy shot me an Is-he-kidding? look.
I tried not to laugh and took a sip of my beer. Meanwhile, my eyes searched the place for Layla. Small lights dangled over each table and over the bar, but the gaps in between were dim and it was hard to distinguish one person from another. The bar stretched back and back. I couldn’t see the people at the end.
Still, I looked over people’s heads, craned my neck. Was that her, with the long hair? No. Was she with the group of girls on the left? I squinted and studied them as best I could, but finally decided, nope, no Layla.
“What does that suffragette song even mean?” C.R. said.
“I think it’s about being addicted to a woman,” Theo said. His hand slipped onto my lap and up my thigh. “I get it.”
“But what’s a suffragette?”
“It’s a woman,” Lucy said. “Someone wh
o thinks she should have the right to vote.”
“What does voting have to do with it?”
The trivia host raised his mike again. “What does the term prima donna mean in the opera?”
“A fucking bitch!” C.R. said. He laughed, as if he’d gotten the right answer.
“Hey, let’s get another beer,” Theo said, pulling C.R. from his stool.
The smile had already slid from Lucy’s face. “He doesn’t know what a suffragette is and he thinks prima donna means fucking bitch.”
“He’s young.” It was the only thing I could think of to say.
Lucy sighed. Her shoulders sank in her white tank top. “I’m not so sure I want young anymore.”
“Mayburn is an adult,” I offered.
She looked up, but her face bore a tinge of the distraught. “I think maybe I need to be alone for a while.”
“Alone, how?”
“Like alone with my kids. And my divorce lawyer. And my therapist. And my priest. And my house. Alone.”
She sounded rather certain. And very sad.
“Do you want to leave?”
An exhale of breath. “No. I’ll stay. I know you and Theo want to.”
“Are you kidding? I want Theo home, in my bed, so I can get up early tomorrow for the last day of trial.” So I can go to sleep and not think about Sam. Or maybe so I can sneak up to the roof and call him to confront him.
But I reminded myself that I’d dragged the group there for a reason. I heard my dad’s voice again. Look at the daughter.
“Luce,” I said, “let me go to the ladies’ room, then we’ll go.”
She gave a glum nod. Apparently, her foray into the world of younger men had come to an abrupt halt.
I got up and walked slowly toward the back, my head swiveling as I looked for Lucy. That wasn’t her in the corner, and no, not that girl by herself. Maybe “trivia night” was just an excuse Layla gave her mom so she could head somewhere else. She probably shouldn’t even be here, since the drinking age was twenty-one, and Layla was nineteen.
And then I saw something familiar. A shift of black-brown hair over one shoulder, a chin lifted into the air as a woman laughed. I kept moving toward her, walked slowly between the tables, not wanting to draw attention. Everyone was so intent on the trivia and listening to the host that it wasn’t hard.
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