Every Reasonable Doubt (24 page)

B
y the time I walked out of Tina’s front door forty-five minutes later, my stomach was a ball of knots and I felt queasy. I started up my SUV and dialed Neddy on her cell phone.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“What do you mean ‘where am I’? We’re at the office, just where I’d said we’d be.” She sounded irritated and exhausted. “So what did you find out?”

“Are Tina and David in the room with you?” My heart was beating as fast as the fluttering of a hummingbird’s wings.

“Yeah. Why don’t you call back on the office line and I can put you on the speaker—”

“No!” I shouted.

“Calm down,” Neddy said. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” I was practically hyperventilating now. “What I want you to do right now is act like everything’s fine and walk out into the hallway and close the door behind you.”

“What?”

“Please, Neddy. Just trust me.”

She told David and Tina to excuse her for a second. Then I heard the sound of the door closing.

“You’re scaring me, girl,” Neddy whispered. “What happened? Is the news from Kinga that bad?”

“It depends on how you look at it. She definitely heard the Montgomerys going at it. Lots of times. But she lied to the police about it.”

“So what’s the problem?”

I was so wound up I didn’t know which news to deliver first. “Tina and Max had a pretty nasty argument over the telephone the day before he was killed. And Tina was apparently furious enough, not to mention loud enough, for Kinga to hear every prophetic word of it. At least Tina’s portion of the conversation. To hear Kinga tell it, Tina has quite a little temper.”

“I can’t believe Tina didn’t tell us about that fight.” I could hear the frustration in Neddy’s voice. “Wait a minute, but if Kinga never told anybody about it, then we don’t have anything to worry about, right?”

“Yeah. But wait until you hear this. Guess what little hot mama Max was waiting for in that hotel room the night he was killed?”

Neddy didn’t say anything for a second. Then reality registered. “Kinga? Oh shit!”

“See why I wanted your ass out of that conference room.”

“Max was screwing her, too! What a lowlife!”

“You’re telling me? Kinga had sent him an invitation, an anonymous one, inviting him to the hotel for an evening of—let’s just call it romance.”

“So Max showed up there not even knowing who he was going to meet?”

“You got it.”

Neddy actually whistled this time. “Damn, he was a ho!”

I breathlessly recounted everything Kinga had told me. She had been sleeping with Max for about six months. Mostly in hotel rooms, but on occasion, when Tina was out, they had made love in the back house where Kinga lived.

“And to hear Kinga tell it,” I said, “the man definitely had some stuff he needed to bottle up and put on the grocery store shelf. She got tired of waiting for him to set up their next little tryst. So she decided to surprise him.”

I could almost see the astonishment on Neddy’s face through the telephone. As I approached a yellow traffic light, I hit the gas and sped through the intersection. I reminded myself to concentrate on the road before I ended up in an accident.

“Kinga’s little anonymous invitation told Max what hotel to go to, what time to be there, everything,” I said. “Apparently, Max got off on stuff like that. Anyway, when she walked into his hotel suite all dolled up and ready to sex him up, she found his bloody body slumped in the tub. Instead of calling the police, which would’ve required her to explain what she was doing there, she hightailed it home and kept her mouth shut.”

“Wait a minute,” Neddy said, “didn’t Kinga know Tina was holding her fundraiser at the Ritz?”

“Apparently not. For some reason, Tina didn’t ask her to help out on this one. And by the way, Kinga definitely has no love lost for the boss lady. Actually, she despises the woman.”

Neddy whistled again. “This is by far the most bizarre case I’ve ever handled.”

I made what was definitely an unsafe lane change and hopped onto the 405 Freeway. I prayed that there were no police in the vicinity. “Ditto for me. So what’re we going to do with this information?”

“We’re not going to do a damn thing,” Neddy said.

“Are you serious?” I said. “The fact that Kinga was seeing Max makes her a possible suspect. What if she’s lying about finding him in that hotel room already dead? We don’t know that she didn’t kill him. She was deceitful enough to be screwing Tina’s husband right under her nose…maybe she killed him. The way she sat there wailing over him, she was definitely crazy in love with the man.”

“Then why would she kill him?” Neddy asked.

“Maybe she was pissed off about his other women or maybe he’d promised to leave Tina, then changed his mind. I don’t know. But pointing the finger at Kinga could mean an acquittal for Tina.”

I waited as Neddy pondered my theory. “You’re jumping the gun,” she said finally, but not convincingly. “We don’t have anything solid enough to conclude that Kinga killed the man.”

“Since when does it have to be solid?” I said. “And I disagree. How about the fact that she doesn’t have an alibi? She supposedly went back to the Montgomery mansion after fleeing the hotel. But she couldn’t give me the name of a single person who could verify that. And one more thing, guess what size shoe Kinga wears?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Yep, a six.”

I allowed Neddy a few seconds of silence to mull over this information. “If we run to the police with this stuff, it could backfire,” she said. “Tina and Max had a terrible argument the day before his death and on top of that he was screwing the housekeeper. Those two pieces of evidence alone sound like additional nails in Tina’s coffin if you ask me. Kinga will point the finger at Tina and Tina will point it back at Kinga. And since Tina’s the one on trial right now, I’d say chances are, she’d lose the finger-pointing contest. So let’s just lock this info away and pray that it doesn’t come out at trial.”

The traffic on the freeway had slowed to a crawl and I was getting antsy. “I don’t know, Neddy. I think we need to think this through more carefully. You’ve been saying all along that you believe Tina’s innocent. Based on what I just told you, Kinga could be her scapegoat.”

“Sounds like now you’re the one who thinks she’s innocent,” Neddy said.

“I don’t know what to think,” I said, looking at the bumper-to-bumper traffic ahead and wondering whether I should take the streets. “I’m confused as hell.”

“This is too wild. Get back down here so we can talk. I need to hear the whole story one more time.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, “but you know how slow the 405 can be.”

“Well, I’ll be here no matter when you get here,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m giving Tina a piece of my mind for not telling us about that big shouting match she had with Max,” Neddy said. “Then I’m sending her home so we can talk.”

“What about David?” I asked.

“What about him? He
is
part of the defense team.”

“I know, but I really think we should keep this information between the two of us until we figure out what we’re going to do with it.”

Neddy gave my suggestion some thought. “Okay,” she said, exasperated. “I’ll send both of them home.”

N
eddy and I stayed at the office until one o’clock the next morning, wrestling with all the possible consequences of Kinga’s revelations. In the end, we agreed the information could do Tina more harm than good. If Kinga became a suspect, she would no doubt tell the police about Tina and Max’s last argument, giving Tina a clear motive for murder. The fact remained that Tina was the one allegedly seen outside Max’s hotel room with a knife in her hand, not Kinga.

Early that next morning, when I walked into the O’Reilly & Finney conference room where David, Tina and Neddy were waiting, Tina was the first to speak.

“What exactly did Kinga say to you yesterday?” she asked anxiously.

After I’d hung up with Neddy last night, she had given David and Tina a brief summary of Kinga’s revelations. Leaving out, of course, Kinga’s affair with Max. So why was Tina asking me to recount what Kinga had said?

“You must’ve really scared her,” Tina continued. “She left me a note last night telling me she had a family emergency and had to rush back to New York. Her mother’s been sick for quite some time, but I can’t help wondering if that was really the reason she left.”

Neddy and I shared a knowing glance.

“Well,” I said, joining them at a long conference table covered with boxes and documents, “like Neddy told you last night, she definitely heard a lot of the squabbles between you and Max about his affairs.”

Tina hung her head and massaged the back of her neck. “I’m just thankful that Kinga’s on my side,” Tina said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She probably left town so she couldn’t be subpoenaed. Now she won’t have to testify about the way Max and I argued. I really owe her.”

Neddy’s eyes flashed me strict instructions not to touch that fairytale. Not that I had planned to.

Tina rubbed her eyes and turned to Neddy. “I was thinking about the things you said last night. I know you don’t believe it, but I guess I just blocked out the last fight I had with Max. Anyway, we weren’t arguing about his affairs. Well, at least not directly.”

“Then what exactly
were
you arguing about?” I asked.

“He’d promise to escort me to the Crystal Stairs fundraiser. I’d been planning the event all year. I was the chairperson. He’d said he would go and then called me up claiming he’d been called away on business. I was pretty upset.”

“Wait a minute,” David said, “why would he meet some woman at the same hotel where he knew you were having that fundraiser?”

“I never had a chance to tell him where the event was being held. Max never would’ve shown up there knowing I could possibly run into him. He wasn’t that much of a louse.”

Neddy looked at me.
Oh yes the hell he was
, her eyes said.

True to form, the lack of sound made Tina uncomfortable. “Yes, I was angry with Max about standing me up,” Tina said, eager to explain herself. “But not angry enough to kill him.”

“If Kinga’s called to testify, we’re fried,” David said dejectedly.

“No,” Tina said sharply, “
we’re
not fried,
I’m
fried.”

“Hold on,” Neddy said, standing up. When her brain got going, she liked to pace. She had to step around boxes, but she found a nice pathway on the far side of the room. “Based on everything we know at the moment, Julie doesn’t know anything about your final argument with Max. And there’s no reason for us to believe she’ll find out.”

“But Julie’s called almost everybody on her witness list,” I said. There’s no way she’s going to close the prosecution’s case without putting on some evidence that points to a motive.”

“Maybe she doesn’t have any,” Neddy said smiling. “I thought it was weird that she never expressly stated that Tina knew Max was screwing around in her opening statement or at the prelim. She talked about Max’s philandering, but she never once said Tina knew about it.”

Neddy rummaged through one of the boxes on the table and pulled out a legal pad filled with her handwritten trial notes. “I wrote down Julie’s opening statement almost word for word,” Neddy said, flipping through the pages. “There’s nothing in here.”

“Julie’s not that sloppy,” I insisted. “She wants to win this case. She’s been in the media constantly. We’re underestimating her. She’s got a big surprise in store for us. And anyway, it may not be that big of a stretch for the jury to infer that Tina knew.”

David suddenly sat up in his chair and turned to Tina. “When you and your husband were arguing that morning, it was on the telephone, right?”

“Yes,” Tina said.

“How did he respond?”

Tina looked confused. “What do you mean ‘how did he respond’?”

David impatiently drummed two fingers on the table. “Did he raise his voice? Did he scream back at you?”

“Yeah,” Tina said. “Max was as much of a hothead as I was. We were both yelling at each other.”

“And you also said he was basically up front with the women he dated. That they knew he was married, but chose to see him anyway.”

“Yes…” Tina said, not making the connection. I didn’t know where David was headed either.

“During that conversation, did you accuse him of being with a woman?”

“Well…yes.”

“And did he deny it?”

“Of course.”

David stood up and turned to Neddy. “I bet I know who Julie’s going to surprise us with.” He had a horrified look on his face. “There’re still a couple of secretaries from Max’s firm on Julie’s witness list who haven’t testified yet. What if Max was with one of them when he made that call to Tina?”

Tina’s mouth gaped open.

“If someone was with him, I’d bet good money that Julie knows who she is. And I’d bet double-to-nothing that Julie’s going to call her to testify about the angry screaming match she overheard Max having on the phone with Tina the day before he was murdered.”

A
s we neared the end of the first week of testimony, we were no longer holding our collective breath, waiting for some classy vixen to stroll into the courtroom and recount Max and Tina’s final shouting match. Maybe David’s theory was wrong. I no longer had my fingers crossed for good luck, but I kept my legs tightly crisscrossed just in case.

We were feeling even more confident following the morning break on Thursday, when Julie advised the judge that she planned to close the prosecution’s case the following day. Most of that morning had been taken up with housekeeping matters and the testimony of Carla Winston, a secretary from Montgomery’s firm who proudly testified that she had slept with Max for several months. We were on pins and needles for the bulk of her direct exam, but if she knew anything about Max and Tina’s big blowup, she wasn’t telling. The closest Julie got to establishing Tina’s knowledge of her husband’s affairs was the secretary’s claim that Tina once saw her and Max at lunch together, which Tina told us was a lie.

On cross, it didn’t take Neddy long to attack the secretary’s character and render her testimony useless.

“Please forgive me, Ms. Winston, but I can’t remember if the prosecution covered this with you. You did know Mr. Montgomery had a wife when you started sleeping with him, correct?”

“Yes,” she said through tightened lips.

“And you knew Mr. Montgomery’s wife, didn’t you?” Neddy was purposely repeating the word “wife” to morally distinguish Tina’s relationship with Max from that of the secretary’s.

“I knew her, but it wasn’t like we were friends or anything like that.” Winston seemed anxious to show that she did have some scruples. She was a good-looking, thirty-something brunette with obviously fake breasts on full display through her sheer, low-cut blouse. Max was certainly consistent about that physical trait, I thought.

During Julie’s direct examination, Winston had gloriously lapped up her fifteen minutes of fame. Now she looked like she wanted to crawl under a table.

“You did volunteer to help Mr. Montgomery’s wife with a charity auction a couple years ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But only because Max asked me to. The firm encourages us to get involved in charitable activities.”

“And you even had lunch with Mr. Montgomery’s wife to plan that fundraiser, correct?”

She gently tugged on the sleeve of her blouse, which produced a more expansive view of her bosom. “Yes, but other people from the firm helped out, too.”

“And Mr. Montgomery’s wife bought you a Christmas present a few months after that fundraiser, didn’t she?”

Winston shuffled nervously, unhappy that Neddy was making her out to be a back-stabbing tramp. “The Christmas present was actually from both of them.”

“But Mr. Montgomery’s wife personally delivered it to you at your desk and thanked you for helping her with the fundraiser, right?”

“Yes,” she said meekly.

“And you never bothered to tell Mr. Montgomery’s wife that you were sleeping with her husband, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

Neddy moved closer to the witness box. “And, to your knowledge, no one else told Mr. Montgomery’s wife that you were sleeping with her husband, correct?”

“I guess not.”

“And do you think Mr. Montgomery’s wife would’ve bought you a Christmas present and personally delivered it to you if she’d known you’d been screwing her husband?”

Julie jumped out of her chair. “Objection. Calls for speculation. Argumentative. Badgering the witness. Irrelevant!”

“Okay, okay,” Judge Graciano said. “Sustained. You know better, counselor.”

Neddy was already on her way back to her seat. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I have no further questions.”

I enjoyed the scornful looks the jurors were shooting toward the witness box as Winston sulked out of the courtroom.

At the end of the day, Neddy, Tina, David and I convened in our courthouse meeting room, feeling the possible taste of victory. So far, things looked fairly good. Oscar Lopez, the waiter at the Ritz Carlton, had crumbled under a tough cross-examination by Neddy. On direct he testified that he had seen Tina in the hallway outside room 502, but after Neddy finished bouncing him around like a ping-pong ball, he wasn’t even sure he had even been on the fifth floor. He also admitted to telling more than a couple of his coworkers that he wasn’t exactly sure Tina was carrying a knife. And by the time he stepped down from the witness stand, he was no longer certain whether the woman he saw was wearing a long dress or a short one. Neddy’s cross-examination definitely scored major points with the jury.

So far, Julie’s case was totally circumstantial. Other than Tina being at the hotel for a very good reason and her size-six feet, there was no other evidence linking her to Max’s murder.

Neddy glanced at her watch. It was close to five. Just as we were trying to decide whether to head back to the office or call it a day, we heard a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Neddy said.

Sandy, Julie’s voiceless sidekick, entered the room. “We just got word that our investigator located someone we’ve been trying to track down for several weeks. He’ll be our final witness. Here’s a motion to amend our witness list.”

She placed a document on the table and turned to leave.

Neddy scanned the motion and handed it to David. “Wait a minute!” Neddy shouted, standing up. “This last-minute ambush stuff is so typical of Julie. And she doesn’t even have the balls to come in here and tell us herself. I’ll be opposing your motion. You had just as much time as we did to identify your witnesses. This unfair surprise is prejudicial to my client.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Sandy said, and left.

David was still reading the document. “Who’s Garrett Bryson?” He had not bothered to look up at Tina. If he had, he would have noticed that her silky brown skin had turned a frightening ash white.

Neddy glared at Tina. “Well, who is he?”

Tina’s shoulders noticeably sagged as we all waited for her to respond. “He’s someone I used to be involved with,” she said finally.

Neddy had a hand on her hip. “And why does the prosecution want to call him as a witness?”

“He’ll be able to testify that I knew about Max’s affairs.”

“Aw Christ!” David said, obviously seeing Tina’s acquittal as well as his book deal evaporate.

“Tell me what he knows,” Neddy said, grabbing a legal pad and sitting back down.

I thought Tina was going to cry, but she didn’t. “He knows that I was unhappy in my marriage.”

“How long were you seeing him?”

“About a year. But that was almost three years ago.”

“Is he married?”

“No.”

“We’re going to oppose the prosecution’s motion,” Neddy said, “but I doubt we’ll prevail. If the witness has some relevant information, there’s no way the judge is going to exclude it.” She briefly closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “We need you to tell us everything you can about your relationship with this guy.”

For the next hour, Tina took a grilling from her own attorneys. We asked for times, dates, and places. We also asked if there’d been any other men in her life. Tina assured us Bryson was the only one.

She described Bryson as one of Max’s male groupies—men who wanted his power and wealth but had no practical means to attain it for themselves. Hanging onto Max’s coattail was the closest they would ever get to his millions. Most times, Tina and Bryson met at his condo in Carson. Bryson claimed to be a real estate developer, but a flashy business card with his picture on it was the only sign Tina ever saw of that. He clearly envied Max and sleeping with his wife was a way to soothe his jealousy.

“Did you love him?” Neddy asked.

Tina laughed sarcastically. “No, not really. But sleeping with Garrett was my way of getting back at Max. Garrett was also good—very good—at making me feel like a million bucks. In and out of bed.” She didn’t seem at all embarrassed about discussing her own sexuality.

“Wait a minute, this might not be such a bad thing,” David said looking at Neddy. “If she were seeing another man, maybe she didn’t care what her husband was doing. We can argue that she went out and had her own affair. That she wasn’t some angry, scorned woman with a motive to kill.”

Neddy wasn’t impressed with David’s theory. She grimaced and looked sternly at Tina. “When we first met with you, we asked you to be completely honest with us. And you weren’t. First you neglected to tell us about that argument you had with Max the day before he died. Now this.” Neddy had been fuming ever since Sandy walked out of the room. I realized now that she was angrier at Tina than at the prosecution.

“We can’t do our best work when you’re not honest with us,” she continued. “Surprises like this could really hurt your case. What if I’d made an opening statement claiming there was no evidence that you knew about your husband’s affairs? That would’ve killed my credibility, and instead of viewing you as a sympathetic, cheated-on wife, the jury would’ve looked at both you and me as liars.” Neddy bit down on her lip. “Is there anything else we need to know about this Garret Bryson?”

“Yes.” Tina dropped her head so low it almost touched the table. “I told Garrett I wanted to kill Max for cheating on me.”