Heart of the Night

by Barbara Delinsky

  “No.”

  “Then you had had others.”

  “One.”

  Blatantly skeptical, Woodward stared at her. “Only one lover up to the age of twenty-five?”

  “That’s right,” Megan said. She was never more grateful for Savannah’s coaching than at that minute. Without it, she’d have been totally unsure of what to say. With it, she spoke in a quiet, confident voice. “We were together for three years during college. He went home to graduate school in San Francisco. I stayed east.”

  Woodward mulled that over. “Have you been faithful to your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t taken any lovers since you’ve been married?”

  “No. I love my husband.”

  “I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about sex. Have you ever taken a lover?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever wanted to take a lover?”

  “No.”

  “Your eye hasn’t ever wandered, even the slightest bit?”

  “No.”

  He let the space of several breaths pass undisturbed, then scratched the side of his head and said, “Frankly, I find that hard to believe. You’re an attractive woman. You run in circles that allow for a certain amount of freedom—”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “You see free sex all around you—”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “—and you’ve never been tempted?”

  “No,” Megan said.

  “Not by some of the brawny young men Matty employs?”

  “No.”

  “Not even when you wanted Matty Stavanovich to do your bidding?”

  “No!”

  “Look at him, Mrs. Vandermeer.” Woodward turned toward his client. “Do you think he’s an attractive man?”

  Matty was wearing a crisp white shirt, a striped tie, navy blazer, and gray slacks. As he’d been doing since the start of the trial, he was sitting straight in his chair, looking appropriately concerned.

  Megan’s lip curled. “No.”

  “Not even the tiniest bit?”

  “No!”

  Woodward shrugged. “I suppose you wouldn’t have to find him attractive. If you wanted something from him badly enough—”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “No further questions, your honor.”

  * * *

  Matty Stavanovich was the sole defense witness. Guided through his story by Woodward’s questions, he claimed that Megan Vandermeer had approached him about the kidnapping during her second visit to the shop. She had it all planned out, he said, from the ransom note, which she made herself, to the point of entry into her home, to the day and time of both the staged abduction and the exchange of the money. Under the plan, Matty was to hold the three million until she contacted him, at which point she would bring her car in for servicing, and her share would be placed in its trunk. He claimed he’d done that, and that his share, $250,000, had been deposited in small amounts in banks in each of six states strewn around the country.

  As for the rape, Matty claimed that his accomplice had been the one to use force. He had, himself, never once manhandled Megan. He admitted that he’d had intercourse with her, but swore that it had been a pleasurable experience for them both.

  Savannah began her cross-examination that afternoon. Her major objective was to prove Stavanovich a liar. To that end, she produced his past criminal record and questioned him on it at length. Then she asked him about each of the burglaries that had taken place in the state since he had arrived. Though Woodward vigorously objected to each reference and the judge sustained each one, Savannah made her point.

  She questioned Matty about the alibi he’d originally given the police. “It was intricately thought out. You had airline tickets, hotel and tour receipts, even photographs. Not that I’d have expected less from a man who has successfully pulled off so many burglaries—”

  “Objection,” Woodward called.

  “Sustained.”

  “You’re a clever man, Mr. Stavanovich. You pride yourself on the brilliance of your thefts—”

  “Objection!”

  Savannah walked back to the prosecutor’s table to lift up a file folder. “I’m quoting from the report of the court psychiatrist who evaluated the defendant before his 1981 conviction in California. Shall I enter this into evidence?”

  “Not necessary, Ms. Smith. The objection is overruled. Continue.”

  Savannah dropped the folder on the table and returned to Matty. “Is it fair to say, Mr. Stavanovich, that you are a careful man?”

  Matty considered that for a minute. “Yes. I’d say that.”

  “Is it, therefore, fair to say that you would never have agreed to collaborate with Mrs. Vandermeer unless you felt that her plan was sound?”

  Matty tipped up his head a fraction. “Yes.”

  “Yet you took elaborate steps to create an alibi. Was that to cover the burglary you staged in Cranston the night after the kidnapping?”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “Why,” Savannah went on undaunted, “was it necessary for you to concoct such an elaborate alibi if the plan you’d worked out with Mrs. Vandermeer was so sound?”

  “Because women can be flighty,” Matty answered without pause. “I wanted to cover myself just in case.”

  “You wanted to cover yourself. Yourself. What about her? What was her alibi?”

  “I don’t know. That was her problem.”

  “You didn’t check it out? A brilliant thief like you didn’t check it out? Or,” she said more loudly, “were you only concerned with yourself because Mrs. Vandermeer was, in fact, nothing more than a victim? Isn’t this simply one long cock-and-bull story you’ve come up with to save your hide?”

  “No, it is not.”

  “You’re a very clever man, Mr. Stavanovich. A master. Not many people could come up with a story like yours, particularly after the supposed mastermind of the scheme winds up brutally raped. Was that in the original plan?”

  “I’ve already said that my accomplice was the violent one.”

  “Your accomplice. Where is this accomplice?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t want him to verify your story?”

  “He would have done that.”

  “But you couldn’t find him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because he knew he was in big trouble well beyond the rape—”

  “Objection.”

  Savannah moved on. “Strange, this accomplice business. You always work alone, Mr. Stavanovich. If, as you claim, Mrs. Vandermeer was willing, why did you need an accomplice?”

  “It was simply a convenience—”

  “For when Mrs. Vandermeer was tied hand and foot to the bed,” Savannah finished with a look of distaste for the jury to see. “But I do agree with you. A kidnapping takes two men—”

  “Objection,” Woodward called. “The prosecutor’s opinion has no place in the cross-examination of this witness.”

  The judge agreed. “Sustained,” he said.

  Savannah moved on. She went through every inch of his story, questioning it, throwing doubt where she could. By the time she’d finished with him on Thursday morning, she was repulsed by his smugness and offended by his arrogance. She could only hope that the jury was as turned off as she.

  After Matty’s appearance on the stand, the defense rested its case. Woodward delivered his closing argument shortly after lunch. It was relatively brief as closing arguments went and involved a simple recapping of the facts as Woodward saw them. His client, he concluded, had spoken in his own defense and, as sworn, was guilty neither of kidnapping nor of rape. Clearly, he claimed, the state had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

  Savannah spoke for two hours, delivering one of the most impassioned arguments of her career. When s
he was done, the judge briefly charged the jury, then sent them off to deliberate.

  The hours of deliberation were always difficult for the parties involved. For Savannah, this time, it was pure hell.

  CHAPTER 22

  The jury deliberated until shortly after ten. During that time, Savannah remained in her office. Jared was with her. Her assistants wandered in and out, as did Anthony Alt, whose ascerbic comments only added to the stress. Paul called from time to time. Megan was at home with Will.

  When it became clear that there would be no decision that night, Savannah and Jared left for his house. Neither of them said much during the drive, and when they arrived, they went upstairs to the living room and took possession of separate chairs.

  Slipping out of her shoes, Savannah folded her legs in front of her and pressed her face to her knees. After several minutes, she looked up to find Jared’s watchful eyes on her. Her own were tormented.

  “Have I made a mistake?” she whispered.

  Jared didn’t answer at first. He was going through a torment of his own, wondering just how honest he should be. The seeds of doubt that had plagued him since the defense first aired its claims had grown until he was sure that Megan had been the one calling him for emotional support in the heart of the night. He hadn’t been positive until the start of her testimony, when he’d easily recognized the voice. He added to that the fact that she could have gotten his private number when Savannah had called him from Marco Island. And the fact that she’d been skittish when, at the end of that day in court, they’d finally been introduced. And the fact that he hadn’t received a call since the start of the trial.

  It all fit together like a puzzle, and it gave him the uneasy feeling that Megan did have something to hide.

  More than once, he’d opened his mouth to tell Savannah. But she’d been embroiled in the trying of her case, and, for what it was worth, the case was strong. Moreover, Megan staunchly proclaimed her innocence. Now that the work was done, though, and the immediate tension of performance had passed, Savannah looked as torn as he felt.

  He had to know what she was thinking when she wondered whether she’d made a mistake. “In what sense, babe?” he returned softly.

  “Is she innocent?”

  “Do you have doubts?”

  The look in her eyes said she was weighing her words on the knowledge that once spoken, they would be irretrievable. But the doubts were too strong. “There are some things about this case that have bothered me from the start. I couldn’t find an explanation for them, so I ignored them, because they were really small things. All the larger things made sense.” She paused, frowned, blurted out, “If I buy into the Cat’s defense, those small things fall right into place.”

  “What things do you mean?”

  “The alarm system, for starters. It was broken. Stavanovich is an expert at disengaging alarms, yet he made no attempt to do it at Megan’s. The alarm system hadn’t been touched. Like he already knew it was broken. But there was no way he could have known that for sure—unless Megan told him.”

  She hugged her legs tighter. “Then there’s the way it was done so cleanly. Sammy and Hank went through that library with a fine-tooth comb and couldn’t find a thing. That doesn’t usually happen. Usually there’s a hair or a thread, something to link the perpetrator to the crime, especially if the victim puts up a fight. Megan did that, but was it a staged one? The Mercedes they used tested clean in the lab, too. There should have been microscopic pieces of the laundry bag she was supposedly stuffed in. But there weren’t.

  “And the business of the ransom note,” she said with a new breath. “Megan could have made it. In a minute. She had all the materials right there at her fingertips, including supermarket bags. She had plenty of those. The house was loaded with food. I mean, when I went there after the kidnapping, I found three bags of coffee beans. Three bags of coffee beans. Don’t ask me why she needed three bags of beans, or why she had so much other food in the refrigerator. Unless she was planning to be gone for a while.

  “Same thing with neatness. Megan was always a slob. The office upstairs where she’d been working on the books had papers strewn around, typically Megan. Not the rest of the house. It was neat as a pin. Again, like she was planning to be away. She knew that Will liked things neat; she always felt guilty that she wasn’t a better housekeeper. Maybe she cleaned things up to make up to him for what she was doing.”

  “Do you think she did it on her own?” Jared asked.

  “I don’t want to think she did it at all!” Savannah cried, then lowered her voice. “But I doubt Will could have been involved. I saw him through a good part of the time Megan was gone. He couldn’t possibly have faked that anguish. Of course,” she said facetiously, “if I was wrong about Megan, I could be wrong about him.”

  Her eyes grew beseechful. “Do you think I was wrong, Jared? Do you think I got so wrapped up in punishing the man who raped Megan that I overlooked things I should have seen?”

  Lately Jared had spent a lot of time contemplating questions like that. “I think you acted on the facts as you saw them.”

  “But were they wrong?”

  He came forward in his seat and let his hands fall limply between his knees. “She was raped. Do you have any doubt about that?”

  “None at all,” Savannah said. “Even if she did plan the kidnapping, she didn’t plan the rape, and I don’t give a flying shit about what Stavanovich says, she wouldn’t willingly let him touch her.” She dropped her voice and muttered, “Kinky sex, hah. The only way Megan would let that piece of scum near her would be if he tied her hand and foot, which we know he did. She would never, never be unfaithful to Will. She loves him too much.”

  Her voice trailed off. After a minute’s silence, she said quietly, “That would have been her reason for doing it. She loved him. She wanted him to have enough money to get the business back on its feet. She wouldn’t have stolen the money for herself, but she might have stolen it for Will. If she stole it at all.” Releasing her legs, she sat back in the chair with a tired sigh. “There’s still no sign of the money. We’ve found the two hundred and fifty thousand that Matty told us about, but the rest? Nothing. We’ve checked every possible outlet, and we can’t find a cent. Now, does that make sense, if the woman staged her own kidnapping for the sake of recovering money to pour into her husband’s business?”

  It didn’t make sense to Jared, but then, he feared some would think his judgment as warped as Savannah’s. After all, he wasn’t going to tell her about the phone calls. He wouldn’t add to her doubt. It wouldn’t serve any practical purpose. Megan Vandermeer had been cruelly raped. On that fact alone, Matty Stavanovich deserved to be convicted.

  * * *

  He was. Late Friday afternoon, the jury returned with verdicts of guilty for both kidnapping and rape. Sentencing was set for two weeks later.

  At Anthony Alt’s urging, Paul faced the press with Savannah. Given the doubts she’d had, and those she continued to have, she relished the support. Somehow she could tell herself that if Paul DeBarr, the next governor of Rhode Island, was sticking up for her, she’d done something right.

  * * *

  Matty Stavanovich was sentenced to twenty years for each offense, to be served concurrently. While there was some talk around town that Savannah should have fought for an even tougher sentence, she ignored it. She was comfortable with the knowledge that Matty would serve the same amount of time he would have if he’d been convicted of rape alone.

  * * *

  Within two weeks of the sentencing, Megan called Savannah to say that Will had sold the business, that they were putting the house on the market and leaving Providence.

  It was the first time they had talked since the sentencing. Savannah was having trouble reconciling the fact that, very probably, Megan had used her. The closeness they had once shared seemed tainted by truths unspoken and trust betrayed. It was the sad ending of a dear friendship, and Savannah, who was feeling mo
re susceptible to her emotions than usual, wasn’t sure how to say goodbye.

  That was why, on the Sunday after Megan’s call, when Sam, Susan, and Courtney were spending the afternoon with Savannah and Jared on the boat, Savannah suggested that Susan and she take a few minutes out for a quick visit with Megan. Since the men weren’t about to be left behind, and Courtney certainly couldn’t be left alone, the five of them piled into the Pathfinder.

  The house that had been in the Vandermeer family for years looked old and tired, since Will no longer made even token attempts at upkeep. Left without hope of a facelift, it seemed to sag more than ever.

  Inside, the rooms were strewn with packed cartons. What furniture hadn’t been sold was covered with padding. The walls were a checkerboard of squares where pictures that had hung for years hung no more.

  Will was on the phone. Diplomatically, Jared and Sam took Courtney out to explore the backyard, leaving Savannah and Susan inside, on the carpeted steps with Megan.

  Wearing jeans and shirts, the three of them looked as they might have looked, sitting together, chatting, ten years before. Their faces were more mature and somber, though, and the chatter was more a quiet, sad talk.

  “Where will you go?” Savannah asked.

  Megan gave an awkward shrug. “We’ll be leaving for Saint Croix tomorrow. The Websters have loaned us their villa for as long as we want it. Will has been in touch with some people about buying into a textile business in North Carolina. If it pans out, we’ll be moving to Winston-Salem.”

  “Winston-Salem, North Carolina,” Susan drawled. “Sounds good enough.”

  Megan looked down at her hands, which were sandwiched between her thighs. “I can’t stay here. Rhode Island is too small. I’d never escape—” she lifted a shoulder, “—everything.” Her shoulder returned to normal, but she didn’t take her eyes from her hands. “Between the sale of the house and the business, we’ll have a nice kitty. We can start over somewhere where they won’t look at us and stare.”

  Savannah couldn’t help but think that if what she suspected were true, an odd kind of justice had been served. Megan was being punished. She’d suffered through the rape, through the ordeal of the trial, through endless days and nights of private agony. She and Will had a long road ahead of them, particularly given Will’s track record as an entrepreneur. If he’d failed once, he could fail again. Savannah prayed he’d either go into something with partners who knew what they were doing, or hire a business manager.