Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  ‘Why, Lieutenant? I don’t mean why won’t you talk to a judge. I mean why are they doing this? Why would they be so afraid of Maddie Forsythe that they would actually plan to kill her in prison and kill her lawyer?’ I tried not to remind myself who that attorney might be.

  ‘Excellent questions, Ms Moss. And I promise you that I will do my very best to find the answers.’ Trench broke his ‘at ease’ stance and turned toward the door, apparently thinking that was his best exit line.

  ‘And when you do, you’ll tell us?’ I asked.

  ‘I sincerely doubt it,’ he answered.

  Now certain that he’d put a cap on the scene (in LA, even the cops are aware of the mechanics of a good story), Trench reached for the doorknob.

  ‘Lieutenant.’ Angie got off the barstool and took a few steps toward Trench, which forced him against his will to turn back toward us.

  ‘Yes?’

  Angie gave me a long look. ‘Would you like some chocolate cake to take home?’

  NINETEEN

  ‘I didn’t kill anybody,’ Cynthia Sutton said.

  I was a prosecutor in New Jersey for years, so I had heard those words (and variations on ‘kill’ like ‘steal’, ‘sell’, ‘run over’ and, once, ‘electrocute’) many times from people who had been accused of crimes. I rarely believed them, and most of the time had been proven correct by the verdicts reached by juries and sentences carried out by the Department of Corrections. But this time, coming from Cynthia, I was fairly well convinced, although I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why that was the case.

  Sitting in her painfully tasteful living room with twenty-foot ceilings, an atrium, an actual indoor palm tree and not a bookshelf in sight, Cynthia actually looked out of place today. She was wearing no makeup, her hair was just brushed and not professionally styled, and her right pinkie nail actually had a chip in its polish. In the realm of entertainment royalty this was a desperate plea for help. I was reminded of staying home during lockdown, when everyone took to sweatpants and stayed in them. Cynthia’s were probably silk.

  ‘OK, but just saying that isn’t going to be enough of a legal defense, so we need to go through some questions to get closer to something I’ll be able to use in court when we get there,’ I told her. ‘Remember that we have attorney/client privilege, which means I am required to hold anything you say in the strictest confidence. So you can feel free to tell me anything.’

  ‘She already told you she didn’t kill anyone,’ Patrick said. ‘Cynthia has nothing to hold back from you.’

  Yes, Patrick. I have no idea how Patrick had found out about the conference in Cynthia’s house, why he was not required on the set of Torn or why Angie (who had already informed me she would not divulge anything about Patrick’s workday to me because he had to trust her implicitly) was not present if Patrick was there. I guess he figured he wasn’t going to need any assistance.

  Patrick just shows up. That’s what I’ve learned. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.

  ‘I appreciate that, Patrick, but you’ll recall I said you could stay for the meeting as long as you stayed quiet.’ I still hold some mystical qualities for Patrick because I defended him in court, which he considers a magical power. And I was not about to disabuse him of that notion because it gave me the only modicum of control I had over our relationship.

  Which was professional in every way.

  Patrick mimed a key turning on his lips, which was cute in 1966. I’m guessing. But he folded his arms and sat back on the extremely cushy armchair. That would buy me maybe five minutes of silence on his part, so I immediately turned my attention back to Cynthia and tried my best to force eye contact with her. Patrick, her old friend (I guessed) was hard to ignore under the best of circumstances, which these were not.

  ‘So tell me again why you went to Wendy’s house that night,’ I said.

  ‘Like I said, Michael texted me about six.’ I had told Cynthia that the time when things happened would be important, so it was a good sign she remembered that without prompting. ‘He said he wanted to work out the divorce, that we could be civil about it and just decide between ourselves and that it would be easier and much less unpleasant. He sounded like the man I married, not the one I was trying to divorce.’

  ‘And that’s why you agreed to go to Wendy’s house? I know Michael said that was neutral ground, but you didn’t think so, and you could have said that. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Stop victim blaming,’ Patrick said. Five minutes had been an optimistic estimate.

  ‘Patrick, please go into the kitchen or something,’ I said. ‘You’re making this much more difficult than it should be and as Cynthia’s lawyer I’m asking you to go wait in another room until I call you back in.’

  Patrick put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he said.

  ‘Right, because you’re going to be in another room. Now, go.’

  To Cynthia’s amazement but not mine, Patrick nodded and extricated himself from the armchair (which meant his abs were working far better than mine and that I should start running every day again), then walked out of the living room without speaking another word.

  Cynthia watched with wide eyes. ‘Wow. How’d you do that?’ she asked when Patrick was out of earshot.

  ‘He knows I mean it.’

  ‘Amazing.’ I had removed the distraction and gained some respect from my client. All to the good.

  ‘So. Why not? Why didn’t you tell Michael you wouldn’t go to his mother’s house? Why not meet in a Starbucks or something?’

  ‘Michael was so insistent.’ All of a sudden Cynthia didn’t want to make eye contact. That’s never a good sign. ‘He kept telling me to trust him.’

  I stood up to better take advantage of a superior (that is, taller) position to Cynthia’s. ‘Come on. You’re in the middle of a divorce that hasn’t exactly been amicable, if such a thing is possible. You knew perfectly well not to trust him. So why did you go to Wendy Bryan’s house, Cynthia?’ I used the same tone of voice I use in court to give the jury the impression that I don’t believe what a witness is saying. Although sometimes I do, but that’s not my job.

  Cynthia was a fairly major star in Hollywood (which I knew because I had looked up her IMDb page) and she was not used to being treated with anything but deference. But she was also far from stupid and she knew I was her best chance to stay out of jail. So she was willing to take some lip from me, particularly because she’d just seen Patrick do the same. She seemed to take her emotional cues from him.

  She looked me directly in the eye so I’d know it wasn’t acting. ‘I wanted my TeeVee back, OK?’ she said. ‘It had always annoyed me that Wendy had it and I made it a condition that if I showed up, she’d give it back.’

  That was the opening I’d been looking for. ‘You’re sure it was your TeeVee?’ I asked Cynthia.

  The question seemed to mystify her. ‘Of course it was. It has my name on it.’

  ‘Yes, but was it the authentic one?’ If Richard from Patrick’s dinner party was right, that would be questionable.

  Still Cynthia looked puzzled and I believed her. ‘Authentic? Is there another kind?’

  ‘Are there places you – anyone, a person – could buy a fake TeeVee?’ I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed, not to show irritation but because she was thinking. ‘Why would someone want to do that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a really good question.’ I told her what Richard had told me about the TeeVee award. ‘You must have held onto it at least a little, when they gave it to you certainly. Did you get the impression a person could bend it like that?’

  ‘Like what?’ Cynthia still didn’t remember anything after she’d discovered Wendy’s body.

  ‘With the globe and the figure pointed down, forward, out of the way, so the wings could be used as blades.’

  Cynthia’s eyes seemed to remember why they were there and widened considerably. ‘Oh, no. That’s not possible. The
statue is too solid and heavy.’

  ‘Let’s get back to the night it happened,’ I said, taking the opportunity to sit back down. It was, after all, a very comfortable sofa. ‘You walked into the house and you found Wendy right away? Is that what happened?’

  She shook her head, indicating that she didn’t want to remember. Cynthia was a woman of crossed signals. It must have driven her lovers crazy. ‘Not exactly. I went in and looked first …’

  ‘You went looking for the TeeVee.’ It wasn’t exactly a difficult guess.

  Cynthia looked down at the floor, which was impeccably clean and sported a lovely Persian rug that was probably vacuumed every hour on the hour. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

  ‘And you found it?’ I was playing prosecutor now. I wanted to see how she would respond on the witness stand when it was suggested that she might indeed have killed her mother-in-law.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I knew she kept it in the den so I went straight there through the foyer, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.’ Cynthia got up and started wandering around the room, which was large enough to lend itself to wandering. If she didn’t speak up, I soon wouldn’t be able to hear her and might actually have to worry about her bolting out the side door never to be seen again. ‘The space on the shelf was there, dusted and everything, but the TeeVee wasn’t there. So I went into the center hall and that’s when …’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘That’s when you found the body.’ A good prosecutor wouldn’t allow for that scenario, but as I kept reminding myself, I was working for the defense. And, by the way, shouldn’t Holly replace Jon as second chair? I mean, it was a little cold but I needed the help. I made a note on my phone to ask her.

  Cynthia just nodded. She started walking back in my direction, which was helpful. I wouldn’t have to talk as loudly or listen as carefully.

  ‘And you found the supposed TeeVee there too, or was that in the den when you went in?’ Three answering options. Either of those was possible, or she’d found the statuette somewhere else. Not leading the witness, Your Honor.

  And of course, the answer was, None of the Above. ‘I really don’t remember, Sandy. I can picture walking in through the library entrance to the center hall, I remember seeing something, but I didn’t know what, on the floor, and then it’s a blank.’

  Blanks, I should inform you, play very badly in a court of law. Juries always think a person who says they have memory lapses is lying.

  Cynthia had told me this juicy tidbit before so I knew to move on. ‘Now, tell me how you got from the center hall to the den.’ This was key. The trail of blood (or lack thereof) made her moving from one room to another questionable if Cynthia was not the killer, which – let’s face it – was our contention in court.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember. I told you, Sandy.’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ I answered. ‘It’s important that we establish this. There’s no physical evidence of you getting from Wendy’s body to the place where the police found you, and you had the TeeVee in your hands. No footprints, no trail, nothing.’ I thought it was wise to leave out the whole ‘of blood’ reference. ‘So if we can figure out how you got there, we might be able to prove that you weren’t the one who stabbed Wendy with the wings from the TeeVee.’

  Cynthia stopped in her pacing and stared off into the middle distance for a second as if this scene were being blocked by a really hacky director. Then she looked at me and said, ‘There’s only one way that makes sense, really.’

  She didn’t follow up so I delivered the straight line. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Someone must have carried me.’

  Patrick stuck his head in from the kitchen. ‘Is it safe for me to come back in yet?’

  TWENTY

  ‘I’ve made some inquiries.’

  Judy the intimidating guard was walking to my left, on the curb side, and a hair behind me as we walked from Cynthia’s front door to my prehistoric Hyundai half a block up and across the street. Patrick, who had wanted to stay at Cynthia’s for lunch and would have been better off doing so in my estimation, had instead insisted on coming with us, so he was to my right. But it was Judy doing the talking.

  I’d asked her to check around with her friends in the LAPD so I knew what she was talking about. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked. I got the impression Judy was walking especially slowly (for her) to allow for my typical human gait, while she could have been to the car, driven to Burbank, picked up a sandwich, eaten it, driven back and found another parking space in the time it was taking me to walk perhaps a hundred and fifty yards. (That’s 137.16 meters, rest of the world.)

  ‘Your name has not been mentioned specifically, ma’am,’ Judy said in a measured but low-volume tone. ‘But the case of the alleged prostitute is apparently of keen interest to people in the department, specifically in the chief’s office.’

  That didn’t make any sense even given what Trench had said. ‘The chief’s office? What do Maddie Forsythe’s divorce and the deputy chief have to do with the chief’s office?’

  ‘That is an excellent question, ma’am.’ Not a missed step, but you knew she wanted to break free, like a racehorse being walked out to the track.

  ‘Any idea who’s been shooting at us, Judy?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet, ma’am. Sorry.’

  I could have told Judy she had no reason to apologize, but I’d done that about thirty-five times since I’d met Judy and I’d only known her for a couple of days. Patrick, keeping pace but also more fit than I was (I really did have to start that running again!) wasn’t even breathing heavily. ‘You say Lieutenant Trench thought it had to do with the deputy chief of police?’ He could barely hide his excitement. For Patrick, being hated by one of the top cops in a huge city would be a weird sort of validation, that he was important enough to merit such a high level of attention. For me, it was more a source of unmitigated terror. Each to their own, I say.

  ‘That was confidential, Patrick. I shouldn’t have told you at all.’ A couple walking on the other side of the street (which was odd, because nobody in LA walks anywhere – that cliché is actually true because the city is set up for cars) seemed to recognize Patrick, which was not very unusual at all. The woman pointed a phone in our general direction and probably was working with her zoom lens to verify the Celebrity Sighting. Tourists. ‘But yes, that’s what the lieutenant said.’

  ‘And you believe it to be tied to the prostitution case I heard you argue in court?’

  The one you lost, Sandy? ‘Yeah.’

  Patrick didn’t speak for a while, which was not his practice. ‘So shouldn’t that case be your priority right now?’ That was unexpected; usually Patrick’s tunnel vision on what he cares about is almost absolute. His asking about Maddie’s case took me by surprise.

  ‘I’m working on the appeal and that won’t be in court for weeks if not months.’

  We reached the car and Judy unlocked it, but I walked to the driver’s door. Patrick had come by car service and was in need of a ride, which was his way of monopolizing my time on the way home. And that was fine with me. I actually enjoy Patrick’s company.

  ‘Please don’t get in just yet, ma’am.’ Judy walked to the door, opened it, and hit the hood release.

  ‘Is this necessary, Judy?’ I asked. ‘I have a meeting coming up in an hour.’

  ‘Better to be safe, ma’am.’

  Judy had been checking under my hood and occasionally under the car itself for any evidence of an explosive device since she’d been seeing to my safety. I’d actually had a car blow up in my vicinity before, and still I considered this something of a drag.

  She looked carefully through the engine compartment and then dropped down to her knees briefly to check the undercarriage. She stood up and put the hood down, nodding. ‘All clear, ma’am.’

  I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes because Judy was in fact doing her job and doing it well. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and got into
the car. Patrick sat in the back because Judy insisted on riding shotgun and I don’t think she meant that to be a metaphorical term.

  ‘Angie said you and Nate went to see Cynthia’s husband,’ I said to Patrick once the GPS told me where I should be going. I could negotiate New Jersey roads practically in my sleep (and had almost done so a couple of times) but Los Angeles’s highway and road systems had all the logic of a Salvador Dalí painting. Besides, I didn’t have experience driving in LA for more than twenty years. ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘Not very much,’ Patrick answered. He didn’t seem to mind riding in the back because that was where he always rode in a limo. ‘Michael Bryan is about as average a man as one could meet, frankly. I have never understood what Cynthia saw in him, but she saw it, so I am conceding the idea that it’s there. She is a woman of considerable insight.’

  That, in my opinion, was yet to be seen, but I let it go. ‘What did Nate ask him about when you let him get a word in edgewise?’

  Patrick half-smiled, an acknowledgement that what I was implying was true. ‘It’s not my fault that the man doesn’t ask the right questions.’

  ‘He does,’ I countered. ‘The problem is you think our job is to solve the crime when in fact our job is to prove that Cynthia didn’t do it.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

  There was no use explaining it. Again. ‘What did Nate ask Michael Bryan about?’ I repeated.

  ‘Mostly about his whereabouts on the night of the murder. Michael said he had been called to a meeting at his office, which I assume Mr Garrigan is attempting to verify.’

  He already had, according to a recent text message. ‘Is that why he texted Cynthia to come to his mother’s house but never showed up?’ I asked.

  Patrick looked at the back of my head (I could see him in the rearview mirror) for some time. ‘He texted Cynthia?’