Authors: Sara Walter Ellwood
Heartland (26 page)
We had been fighting over my money and the way Sean spent it in big fat wads, but the tone of Cal’s voice turned the greed around on me. And, for his information, during the trip in question, Sean found me talking to Simon for the sum total of one minute, 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 started because Sean slept 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 finished with him, Sean Turner couldn’t wait for Danielle to leave, but he wanted his son. Within hours of her leaving, he filed papers for custody of his child.”
Sean had used custody as leverage 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 cooperate after the police found the body? Did she ever tell them she had, in fact, been in Mr. Turner’s hotel room? No. Did she tell them she stalked him to the hotel, fought with him? No. Instead, she pretended she’d had no contact with him since she’d taken their son and run home to Storybook Lake 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 stared down most of the time, presumably to make sure his 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 stabbed a bony finger through the air in my direction and gazed up at the jury--“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, to get her way she had to kill Mr. Turner. Otherwise, she couldn’t embark on her new life with Simon Hunter. In a town which celebrates its fiction, don’t lump her in with the likes of Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or even Dr. Seuss. 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, blond 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, 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. She didn’t want him anywhere near Storybook Lake or her son. Since the day of their wedding, Sean tortured Danielle, beating her and later Kieran. 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. He had her home vandalized, then broken into. She received countless texts on numerous cell phones indicating Sean knew exactly where to find her and exactly how she spent her days. 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.
“Instead you’ll see how Sean Turner taunted her, threatened her life repeatedly, not only over the last week of his life, 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 anything to do with Sean’s murder. She admitted to seeing him. She admitted to being in his hotel room, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t shake her story about what happened after she got there.”
She paused for a moment, her eyes pivoting from me to the jury. “You are going to hear things about Sean Turner which are going to 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. When he died, she inherited an almost bankrupt strip club and a pile of debt he ran up in the months since she left. She had an army of friends surrounding her to keep her safe from Sean and his henchmen. The fact is, many, many people had a reason to want Sean dead. Danielle didn’t 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’s debt to me had been repaid, 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 he tightened 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 had to be his 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 moved toward the center of his forehead 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.
“Growing up, how well did you get to know Mrs. Turner?”
Keaton smiled. “We were friends, then we dated in high school. 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 of my stomach as Calvin asked, “And your divorce stemmed from 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 hoped 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, did either of you use drugs or alcohol?”
“Yes.” Keaton looked at me and frowned.
“Both of you?”
“We didn’t do drugs.”
I closed my eyes as memories of those days washed over me…dim, alcohol-fogged memories.
“And during your time away, Mrs. Turner became pregnant?”
I wanted to smack Cal’s self-satisfied smile right off his smarmy, thin lips. If eye rolling topped Grace’s no-no list, I had to assume smacking the prosecutor was off-limits, but the desire itched inside my palm.
“Yes.”
“And she let you believe the child belonged to you for how long?”
“She didn’t do it on purpose. We lived together like couples live together.”
I guessed that was his way of saying we’d had some sex. Knowing Joss had a seat a few rows behind me, I couldn’t decide if his lie helped or hurt either of us.
“He could have been mine.” Keaton frowned.
Calvin peered up 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 you’d fathered her child?”
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?
“And how long 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.
Meet the Author
Although
Sara Walter Ellwood
has long ago left the farm for the glamour of the big town, she draws on her experiences growing up on a small hobby farm in West Central Pennsylvania to write her contemporary westerns. She’s been married to her college sweetheart for over 20 years and they have two teenagers and one very spoiled rescue cat named Penny. She longs to visit the places she writes about and jokes she’s a cowgirl at heart stuck in Pennsylvania suburbia. Sara is a multi-published and international Amazon bestselling author of the anthology series Cowboy Up. She also publishes paranormal romantic suspense under the pen name Cera duBois. Please visit her at www.facebook.com/sarawalterellwood.ceradubois, follow her on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/sara_w_ellwood
and read her blog,
www.sarawalterellwood.com
.
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