Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  ‘Will you have Cynthia testify?’ Patrick asked. He knew that I’d been waffling on the subject because of Cynthia’s fame. Anything she said, no matter how affecting, could be described by the prosecution as a ‘terrific acting performance’, much in the way that Patrick’s testimony had been during his trial. I wasn’t sure if that had affected the jury because we’d never actually made it to a verdict.

  I decided that for once I’d find out what my client wanted instead of telling her what she should want. ‘What do you think, Cynthia?’

  ‘I’d be terrified,’ she said without hesitation.

  ‘I understand that,’ her brother told her, ‘but it might help convince the jury of your innocence. You are the best actress I’ve ever seen at evoking sympathy.’

  ‘The last thing we need is Cynthia acting on the—’ was as far as I got.

  ‘Aha!’ Jon said from his corner, hunched over his phone. He looked up at me, grinning. ‘Sandy, the charges against you have been dropped.’

  I blinked a couple of times, partially because I’d been so engrossed in Cynthia’s case that I’d forgotten I was an alleged criminal myself, but also because the news came so completely out of left field. ‘They have?’ That was the best I could do.

  ‘Yes.’ Jon stood up and brought his phone to where I was sitting. On the screen, which he indicated, was a message from Judge Evans, who had presided over my arraignment. It read: DA has withdrawn charges v. S. Moss. Documents forwarded to your email.

  ‘Well, that was heartfelt,’ I said. ‘What made this happen? What did you do, Jon?’

  ‘Surely the district attorney realized the charges were absurd,’ Patrick said. Like that ever happens.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Jon answered. Neither of us said anything to Patrick, who was speaking quietly to Angie at the moment. Emily, as was her habit, was looking displeased, mostly in my direction. ‘I mean, I had filed a brief calling for the charges to be dismissed due to lack of evidence, but it wasn’t with Judge Evans. This started happening while we were in session but I didn’t see it until just now.’

  That didn’t make much sense. The Los Angeles DA wasn’t going to reverse a decision based on a brief that probably hadn’t had time to be seen by anyone yet. I wasn’t that high a priority within the city’s criminal justice system.

  Was I?

  ‘I sense Lieutenant Trench’s presence in all this, but there’s no use in saying anything to him because he’ll deflect or deny it outright,’ I told Jon. ‘Either way, thank you!’

  Just then Jon’s phone pinged again and his face got more serious when he scanned it. ‘There appears to be one provision,’ he reported. This time he didn’t show me the screen. ‘They want a look at your client Madelyn Forsythe’s book.’

  Her book? Was Maddie an author? ‘What book?’

  ‘According to this, her book of clients. From her prostitution ring.’ Jon looked at me. ‘I thought you said she was innocent.’

  ‘She is! They’re being crazy and using me for leverage against Maddie for something she doesn’t have!’ I took a deep breath because crying seemed unprofessional and that’s when Will opened the door.

  ‘They’re ready for you,’ he said.

  I couldn’t try Maddie Forsythe’s case now, nor could I agree to the asinine provisions that Longabaugh (because it had to be the prosecutor) had attached in offering a possible end to my own criminal charges. If this was an attempt on some high-flyers to distract me from Cynthia Sutton’s murder trial … well, it was actually working pretty well.

  ‘I’d like to recall Isobel Sanchez,’ I told Judge Hawthorne when we resumed. This move had been included in my witness list to make it impossible for Valencia to leap up and object to my calling one of his witnesses when I’d already had a chance to cross-examine her after he’d finished his questioning. To his credit he didn’t even flinch. Hawthorne nodded and the bailiff, a guy named Bart, called Sanchez, who obviously knew that was going to happen. She walked to the stand and was reminded of her oath to tell the truth, which I have always thought was kind of funny. We’re told that we’re on our honor to be honest in the witness box and the penalties for perjury are rarely mentioned. This is mandated under the You Promised Act of 1958.

  Sanchez got herself comfortable in the witness chair, no doubt reminding herself that she had sort of resented me the last time she was here, so she should start by scowling. She was good but she couldn’t hold a candle to Emily, who was seated to the side of Patrick that wasn’t occupied by Angie. I wasn’t intimidated by either one, but it was a little odd to see from a witness before I’d asked my first question.

  ‘Mrs Sanchez,’ I began, remembering that Ms appeared to be a disliked term by the witness, ‘what were your hours when you were working as Wendy Bryan’s housekeeper?’

  ‘I lived in the house five days a week, and the schedule would vary,’ she answered. I saw Sanchez relax a bit, just a bit, after I’d asked such a mundane question. She didn’t know what was coming.

  ‘If Mrs Bryan had a dinner guest, would you always be on call? Did you have to work every evening she invited someone over for dinner?’

  It’d be interesting to see how she answered, I thought. Sanchez might have been getting an inkling of what I was going for and she didn’t want to lie, either for moral or practical reasons. The skin around her mouth got a little taut.

  ‘I would almost always be expected to work on those nights. We had a small staff and I would be called upon to help with the dinner parties.’ It was the almost that gave her away. She did know where I was going and she wasn’t happy about it.

  ‘Were you working a night not long before Mrs Bryan died when she had invited her executive manager Leopold Kolensky to dinner?’ I asked.

  Sanchez looked at the judge, perhaps to ask for permission not to answer, but thought better of it. ‘She had Mr Kolensky in for dinner many times,’ she said. ‘I was there almost every time.’ Again, that word almost.

  ‘But not this time. It was the first occasion that Mrs Bryan had invited Mr Kolensky in for a very long stretch, wasn’t it? They hadn’t really been social for quite some time, had they?’

  ‘I was not involved in Mrs Bryan’s social affairs,’ Sanchez said.

  ‘Do you recall seeing Mr Kolensky there many times in the year before Mrs Bryan died?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So on the night he came back for a dinner, just the two of them, were you working?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  I didn’t do the showy thing of looking surprised, because it wouldn’t have helped me and no one would have believed it anyway. I’m a lousy actress and would never have showcased my amateur skills in front of Cynthia Sutton and Patrick McNabb. Instead, I simply asked, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Mrs Bryan said she wanted it to be friendly and so she wanted them to be alone.’

  ‘Did you cook the dinner?’

  Her eyes flashed as she looked at me. She knew I knew. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Was there a full-time chef on the premises?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So who cooked that evening?’

  Sanchez, cornered, had no choice but to implicate herself in a crime she didn’t commit, or to give up her employer, and she wisely went for the latter. ‘Mrs Bryan did.’

  ‘Are you aware of what happened later that night?’ I asked.

  Very calmly and evenly, she answered, ‘Mr Kolensky passed away of a heart attack.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  Now Valencia, probably not knowing why he felt like he should, objected. ‘What relevance does this have to the case of Wendy Bryan’s murder?’ he asked Hawthorne.

  ‘It has a great deal of relevance, Your Honor,’ I said. ‘Because we have evidence that Leopold Kolensky did not die of a heart attack. He was poisoned at the dinner he ate in Wendy Bryan’s house that night.’ I’d cleared it with Trench before bringing this up.

  There was an actual gasp, a
n audible one, in the room. Even a couple of the jurors looked shocked, but no doubt they were also wondering exactly what Valencia professed to be next: ‘There is no evidence on the record that Mr Kolensky was poisoned but, even if he was, Your Honor, what does that have to do with Wendy Bryan being stabbed with a TeeVee award?’

  ‘Ms Moss?’ the judge said.

  ‘I believe it goes to motive, Your Honor, and if you’ll give us a little time to show that it is what happened, the court will see the relevance.’

  Hawthorne considered and Valencia got a little sweatier in this hot courtroom. ‘I’ll give you a little leeway, Ms Moss, but I don’t intend to turn this trial into an investigation of Mr Kolensky’s death, is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, Your Honor, and I’ll see to it that doesn’t happen. Now, Mrs Sanchez, were you aware of the implication that Mrs Bryan might have poisoned Mr Kolensky?’

  Sanchez, who had no doubt been hoping the judge would rule that she didn’t have to talk about Kolensky anymore, exhaled. ‘Not at the time, no,’ she said.

  ‘Not at the time. So you became aware of the possibility later?’

  Sanchez clearly didn’t want to answer that one. She looked up at the bench. ‘I don’t know anything, Your Honor,’ she said. ‘Do I have to say things I’m not sure of?’

  ‘You should just answer the question as honestly and clearly as you can,’ Hawthorne said. ‘If you feel that you would be implicated in a criminal act, you have the option of citing the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which says you can’t be compelled to do that.’

  The witness nodded and took a moment to collect her thoughts. ‘Mrs Bryan told me not to ask about the dinner with Mr Kolensky and to say that he left the house that night feeling fine if anyone asked me,’ she said. She did not look at me, Hawthorne, Valencia or any of the jurors. She seemed ashamed.

  ‘You also brought some vegetation to Mrs Bryan from your home, didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I knew that Mrs Bryan had asked me to pick some flowers for her because I live in the hills and she said the things that grew near her weren’t pretty. And she asked me for lily of the valley, but I didn’t think that was such a pretty flower. It wasn’t until she asked me again that I brought some.’

  I gestured to Jon, who brought a folder with him to the bailiff. ‘Your Honor, my associate has a revised autopsy report on Leopold Kolensky. It indicates that he was poisoned with lily of the valley, which can cause symptoms very similar to a heart attack in people who have already had some coronary conditions. I’d like to enter it into evidence.’

  ‘Your Honor, the prosecution hasn’t had a chance to review this report and wasn’t aware of its existence until this minute.’ Valencia didn’t want the autopsy report to be part of the trial and I didn’t blame him. It pointed at a great many things going on in Wendy Bryan’s household that Cynthia Sutton had absolutely no authority over or knowledge of.

  So I wasn’t surprised when Hawthorne said, ‘I think the prosecution should have time to study the report. But I’m still waiting to hear how it is relevant to the murder of Wendy Bryan, Ms Moss.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honor. Mrs Sanchez, let’s discuss another matter. What kind of car do you drive?’

  Valencia, who had been huddling over the autopsy report with his second chair, flung his hands into the air. (Some will ask how he caught them. We passed that joke in Jersey decades ago.) ‘What kind of car? Your Honor? Relevance?’

  Hawthorne gestured him down. ‘Go on, Ms Moss.’

  ‘I have a Prius,’ Sanchez said.

  ‘Yes, you do. In fact, you have a brand-new Prius you bought just a month after Wendy Bryan died. Now, given that you have already testified that Mrs Bryan was having some difficulty paying you in a timely fashion for months before she died, can you tell us how, according to the dealer where you bought that new Prius, you paid cash for it, and the car cost over thirty thousand dollars. Are you just that good at saving money?’

  Sanchez looked me straight in the eye. ‘I had some money saved, yes. Because I knew that the job wouldn’t last forever.’

  ‘Mrs Sanchez,’ I said. ‘Are you familiar with an eBay account with the name mujer poderosa? Roughly translated, “mighty woman”?’

  Sanchez got visibly flustered. Her cheeks reddened a little. She bit in on her lips. I saw some tremble in her head, as if she were holding back rage. ‘I don’t know about that account.’

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘Because eBay records suggest it’s registered to a Rosa Rodriguez. Isn’t Rodriguez your maiden name?’

  ‘Yes, but my first name is Isobel.’

  ‘And your sister’s name is Rosa. Mrs Sanchez, the eBay account I mentioned sold, over the past year and a half, a large number of items whose original bills of sale could be traced to Wendy Bryan. And, according to a clerk at Mighty Mike’s Pawn Shop on Sepulveda Avenue, someone came in six months ago trying to get cash for a TeeVee award whose nameplate suggested it was Cynthia Sutton’s. Are you aware of these sales?’

  Sanchez didn’t miss a beat. ‘Judge, I think I need to use the Fifth Amendment.’

  FORTY-ONE

  ‘She had a scheme with her sister,’ Nate Garrigan said. ‘It’s clear from the eBay records that Isobel was taking things from Wendy’s house, either with or without her permission, and selling them for cash. She must have taken a lot of jewelry and silver because those were the most prominent things on the eBay account over the last year and a half.’

  ‘If we could get bank records, we’d see the deposits, wouldn’t we?’ Angie asked.

  ‘Probably, but we’d need a subpoena for that,’ I told her. ‘If it comes to it, I’ll request one.’

  We were at a bar around the corner from the courthouse. Cynthia, exhausted from the day’s testimony, had gone home, as had Jon, but Patrick was there in his ‘civilian’ disguise, a baseball cap down over his eyebrows and sunglasses below that. I was having a margarita because I was an adult and I could; Nate had a beer (Rolling Rock, which he considers exotic because it’s ‘imported from Pennsylvania’), Patrick was drinking club soda and Angie had a glass of white wine which she was downing in swigs.

  Emily, life of the party that she always was, was drinking still water from the tap because why should bartenders and wait staff make a living?

  ‘How’d you find the eBay account in the first place?’ I asked Nate.

  ‘They actually tried to list the TeeVee there and then pulled it,’ he said. ‘The TV Academy doesn’t care much for something like that.’ He hadn’t been in court when Gail Adams had told us exactly the same thing, almost in those words, and I didn’t see the point in stomping on his good mood.

  ‘But eBay records are public?’ Angie said. ‘That doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask for records,’ Nate pointed out. ‘Once you get the name, and I got that from the attempt to sell the TeeVee, you can trace someone’s posts as far back as you want to go. I just didn’t know where to look until just now. And finding out that Sanchez had a sister named Rosa Rodriguez was very helpful.’

  ‘Does this really help Cynthia’s case?’ Patrick asked. His focus is always on the person he cares about, which is admirable even when it’s harshing your mellow.

  ‘The idea that they were trying to sell the TeeVee makes a big difference,’ I suggested. ‘Cynthia clearly wasn’t doing that. And if she’d found the fake TeeVee, the one that could be bent into a weapon …’ Suddenly it dawned on me.

  ‘She could get mad and kill the person she thought sold her TeeVee,’ Angie said.

  ‘But she didn’t,’ Patrick insisted. Cynthia wasn’t there to say it, so he had to take up the slack.

  We all sat there looking at each other for a long moment. I was already devising arguments against Valencia making exactly that insinuation. Nate took another gulp of Rolling Rock. Angie, to whom it would never occur to feel guilty, looked as though she felt guilty. Patrick, for the first time since I’d met him, appeared frightened.
Emily looked over at me and mouthed, ‘Bitch.’

  You know. Thursday.

  Judy, sitting at another table to have a better vantage point of the door, said nothing, but that was Judy.

  ‘Where’d they get the fake TeeVee?’ I asked no one in particular. No sense engaging with Emily.

  Nate answered because of course he would. He had the best chance of actually knowing. ‘Probably online, but those are records I can’t get without a subpoena. Or they could walk into any one of a hundred novelty shops in Hollywood and find something.’

  ‘That one was especially realistic,’ Patrick said. ‘It fooled Cynthia.’

  ‘There are probably only a couple of companies making fakes that good,’ Nate said, rubbing his chin. That was a ‘thinking’ gesture that was either meant for theatrical purposes or had morphed into a real thing over the years. He looked at me specifically. ‘Does it really matter where they got it? I can do some looking around.’

  But I was already on to the next thing in my mind and couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to consider it. ‘Patrick, how well did the people who worked for Wendy and Cynthia know each other?’

  Patrick didn’t look like he understood. ‘You mean were they sleeping together? Not that I know about.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean. Were there any people who were working for both of them, maybe on a part-time basis?’

  I don’t know why but suddenly Emily looked excited, like a third-grader who finally knew one of the answers for a favorite teacher.

  ‘The spiritual advisor,’ she said. ‘Crystalis.’

  ‘Chrysanthemum,’ Patrick corrected her. ‘What about her?’

  I was a few feet ahead. ‘Did she advise Wendy as well?’ I asked Patrick.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’ll text Cynthia and ask.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘But I am almost certain she didn’t.’

  But that hadn’t been my original idea anyway. ‘What about the manicurist?’

  Angie grinned.

  FORTY-TWO