William Deverell - Kill All the Judges

“And while he was on bail, did you seek him out to express those feelings?”

“No.”

“No phone calls? No love notes?”

“I have been acting on advice, Mr. Beauchamp.”

Arthur looked long and hard at Shawn. “Yes, I can imagine.”

Hamilton had retreated behind his wooden mask, but Wentworth saw rancour in his eyes. Ebbe, though, was enjoying this.

“I believe it’s generally known, Ms. LeGrand, that in your youthful years you had a habit of running away from home.” Another quick shift, deflecting her from the prepared script.

“A few times. You had to know my situation…I don’t want to get into it.”

“Once to join a cult in Oregon, from which you were rescued and deprogrammed. Deprogrammed , madam.” Getting lots of juice from that word, letting the jury know she was susceptible to fantastical beliefs.

“The media made a lot out of a simple religious experience.”

“Another time, you ran off to Mexico.”

“I was seventeen, Mr. Beauchamp. I was restless, immature, and all the other illnesses of youth.” A good answer, she’d quickly adjusted to this new line of attack. Point for her.

“While in Mexico, on a farm near Guadalajara, you were arrested on serious drug charges.”

“I was arrested as an accessory, but I wasn’t really, I was just…there.”

“Just there? A shed full of pot, cocaine triple-wrapped in feed sacks, ecstasy from a lab in Mexico City. Visitors coming by, smugglers with money. And you only stood by and watched?” A tone of utter disbelief, but she stuck to her story that she played no role.

Kroop asked where this was going, and Arthur urged patience. Carlos Espinoza, Carlos the Mexican, that’s where this was going. For six months she’d cohabited with Carlos at this drug depot, which was run so lackadaisically that Wentworth wondered how they expected not to get busted. Maybe they weren’t paying the Federales enough. The LeGrands more than made up for that, probably to someone high up. Flo was deported after two weeks in the cooler.

Arthur showed her a photo of Carlos, the one where he was handcuffed to a grinning cop. “A dashing buccaneer, a cunning risk taker, two escapes to his credit. Handsome fellow. One could see why you were so drawn to him.”

“Well, I was. He was the first man I loved.”

“First love. And what happened to this admirable chap?”

“He took the whole blame. He exonerated me, everyone else. He paid for it, did five years.”

“And did you correspond during that time?” He turned to Wentworth, who made a show of pulling a file folder from his briefcase. Flo darted an anxious look at Shawn as Arthur put his glasses on and picked through the various folded letters. This was a decisive moment: could Florenza be seduced into believing some of her prison letters had been intercepted? Mexican jails were notorious for undelivered mail.

“Yes, we wrote letters, I sent him money.”

The boss had got a foot in the door. “Of course you did. And you talked on the phone.” He was studying a printed page, not a long-distance telephone record but a list of recipes for making healthy soups and stews from Wentworth’s doting mother.

“Yes, we spoke on the phone.” Another look at her deadpan lawyer. Not a flicker from him, maybe because Ebbe was scrutinizing him.

“And you flew down and visited him in the jail.”

A gamble, but it paid off. “Yes, as I’m sure you know.”

“Time and time again in your letters you expressed your undying love for each other.” Flipping through pages.

“I’m sure we did.”

Arthur adjusted his glasses, pretended to read. “‘Our love is rapturous.’” He looked up over his glasses. “That fairly sums it up, madam?”

“I probably wrote something like that.”

“And you planned to meet after his release.”

“That’s right.”

“And in fact you did get together.”

“Yes, we did.” Softened up now.

Arthur took another leap. “Quite a few times.”

“A few times.”

“Where?”

“Here and there. I did a lot of travelling. So did he. Mexico. Honduras. We met in Paris one time.”

She wasn’t sure how much Arthur knew and didn’t want to risk being seen a liar, that’s what Wentworth intuited. So she even admitted to recent liaisons in the States, L.A., San Francisco, Aspen. A few weeks here, a couple of days there, long weekends, posh hotels, beaches, ski hills, financed mostly by Flo, but occasionally by Carlos when he was flush. She made no bones about his trade, drugs; he loved the danger, the freedom. “He wasn’t interested in my money, that was rare among the men I’d known.” Even the dumbest juror had to see this was not just some sporadic affair, Arthur had opened up a lot of territory thanks to Wentworth’s possessive, letter-writing mom.

“He wasn’t interested in your money, but you did send him money.” Looking at another sheet of paper, a series of figures, Wentworth’s budget for 2005, he’d ended up $800 in the hole.

“I sent money.”

“How much all told?”

“Over the years, a few hundred thousand.”

“More than that.” A confident smile. “What was the last payment?”

“I can’t remember. It was cash.”

“Oh, you handed it to him. Where was that?”

“Seattle.” She’d lost eye contact with Arthur by now. Losing points big time.

“Ah, closer to home. When?”

She looked at the ceiling, found no answer there, then said, “That would be August, year before last.”

“A little break from your boring husband-to-be, was that it?”

“We weren’t engaged yet. I told Carlos I was seeing Rafael, I told him I wasn’t, you know, going to be…able to carry on with him.”

“And how long were you in Seattle with him?”

“A few days.”

“Separate bedrooms?”

“We shared a hotel suite. I was a free woman. I wasn’t shackled to anyone.” Getting back her pluck. “We knew it couldn’t go on. He had a different life, a rebel life. I was in the mood for something different.”

“So you paid him off, is that what we’re to believe?”

“I gave him…maybe three hundred.”

“Thousand.”

“Yes.”

“And you mutually agreed not to continue your fifteen-year affair?”

“We did.”

“But you did see him again, during your marriage, after you’d decided you’d had enough of it.”

“No, we didn’t, we didn’t write, didn’t talk on the phone until…after Rafael died. I contacted him during the Christmas holidays, I was lonely.”

Wentworth suspected she was covering her ass-if they’d conspired to do in Raffy, they’ve have planned it out. But Arthur couldn’t budge her, she must have felt on safe ground.

Arthur took one of his little detours. “Earlier that year, you decided this marriage was not for you. The bloom had gone, you said.”

“That’s true, I can’t lie about that.”

“I don’t know why not, madam, it seems second nature.” Kroop let this zinger pass, maybe he was running out of gas. “So you must have been contemplating a divorce.”

“Well, no, I…I didn’t have grounds.”

“You didn’t have grounds for an amicable divorce? Surely they aren’t hard to come by. Incompatibility.”

“I’d lose millions…” A quick look at Silent Shawn, she’d gone off script.

Arthur leaped into the lurch. “Millions. Hundred of millions. A good lawyer could get a settlement of half your fortune, your shares in your father’s shipping empire, the mansion on Lighthouse Lane. But a dead man, Ms. LeGrand, can inherit only the grave.”

A long spell of quiet. “The thought never struck me, Mr. Beauchamp.” Weak. Five-point loss.