by Sydney Bauer
The fact that the suburb was once literally a ‘back bay’ for Boston – a tidal waterway that was eventually filled following the construction of the old mill dam – did nothing to diminish its historical superiority as the earliest of New England architects took great care to line its streets with uniform and well-integrated three- and four-storey brownstones, stylish late nineteenth-century constructions which still stood firm today.
So, as David and Sara climbed the stairs of Katherine de Costa’s well-preserved residence, giving the now standard ‘no comment’ to the handful of press who had been camped out front all morning, they had a feeling the décor inside would match the successful TV executive’s elegant address. And they were not disappointed when the attractive de Castro opened her door and led them into her stylish designer abode.
‘Wow,’ said Sara, who was a big fan of minimalist chic. ‘Your home is beautiful, Ms de Castro.’
‘It’s Katherine, and thank you,’ said their host, an exotically beautiful Latin–American with long dark hair and golden skin. She was dressed in all black – the only hint of colour was the myriad of brightly hued bangles that trailed up her slender right arm. They gave the otherwise conservatively dressed woman a hint of ingenuity – a creativity she no doubt called upon when executive-producing what this morning’s Tribune had described as one of the ‘most entertaining talk shows on TV’.
‘I decorated it myself,’ de Castro went on. ‘With some sound advice from some very talented designers.’ She smiled as she led them up a set of stairs and towards the back of the house. ‘I spent a weekend with Francois Lecoure who gave me a tip or two,’ she added, referring to the famous French interior guru who Sara later explained to David was a designing legend with his own program on one of those popular cable channels. ‘He even helped me source some special pieces from Europe, such as the white leather lounge from Milano and the complementary hand-woven Belgian rug.’
‘They’re amazing,’ said Sara.
‘Yes,’ smiled de Castro, gesturing for them to take a seat on the lounge. ‘But not at all child friendly, I’m afraid.’
‘So that’s why I grew up in a house where every carpet, rug and piece of furniture was black or grey or brown,’ smiled David, not sure as to how else to enter this conversation.
‘Your mother sounds like a very sensible woman,’ said de Castro, as she poured them a cup of tea from the gold-rimmed pot before her.
‘Let’s just say that with three kids causing constant havoc, she had no choice but to forego style for practicality.’
A few more minutes of chitchat and a round of deli-fresh cinnamon cookies later, David had to admit he was getting a little curious about the whereabouts of Stephanie’s children. De Castro had been right; this was not exactly a ‘young-person-friendly’ residence, and he was wondering where Chelsea and J.T. Logan might be hiding.
‘Chelsea and her brother are upstairs in the sitting room,’ de Castro said, as if reading his mind. ‘Watching some music video special on someone or other unplugged. They have been remarkably good . . . considering.’ She stopped there, as if not sure how to continue.
‘Ms de Castro,’ David began. He did not want to offend the obviously intelligent and hospitable woman before them, but truth be told, all this politeness and pleasant conversation was starting to frustrate him. He knew de Castro was Logan’s friend but he also got the sense that she might tend to look at things more practically than emotionally which, at this point in time, could be exactly what they needed.
‘We understand you and Doctor Logan are friends – and we can assure you that, as his attorneys, we only have his best interests at heart.’
De Castro nodded, a perfunctory gesture which suggested she knew this was coming.
‘But you were there last night, Ms de Castro, and I think we are safe in assuming that you realise your partner’s actions were, well, extremely altruistic to say the least.’
‘David,’ she replied, placing her tea cup on its saucer before looking him directly in the eye. ‘Allow me to begin by getting one thing straight. I have known Jeffrey for a very long time, and while I am dedicated to helping him as much as possible, I also – as do you – see things as they are rather than the way that I wish them to be.
‘I am a selfish woman by nature, David. You do not become as successful as I have in the industry that I work in being otherwise. In fact, I spent the better part of the morning on the telephone to the network CEO trying to salvage our professional future, and I am not ashamed to admit it.
‘But this morning, much to my surprise,’ de Castro went on, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, her bracelets jingling as they fell down towards her wrist, ‘I discovered that I am not the hardened executive I thought myself to be. For while I could have, and probably should have, described to my bosses the situation as I knew it, I found myself supporting Jeffrey’s version of events to a T.’
‘You told them your business partner killed his wife?’ asked Sara.
‘Accidentally – yes, I did.’
‘Risking the possibility the network might drop him from their stable?’
‘Drop us – yes,’ she said, turning her attention to David. ‘But before you go labelling me a Good Samaritan I must warn you that my decision was not entirely gallant. For I told the CEO that I wanted to discuss something with you and Miss Davis here first, before I spoke of the other matter – a matter which Jeffrey has specifically asked me to keep in the strictest of confidence.’
David looked at Sara, wondering where in the hell this might be going.
‘I am sorry Ms de Castro, you are going to have to . . .’
‘Of course,’ she interrupted. ‘Forgive me. But if I am to explain I shall need your patience. You see, things are not as simple as they seem. In many ways it is much safer for me to stick to Jeffrey’s account of what happened, for despite what you might expect would be the fallout from him killing his wife, in many ways it is the best scenario for him professionally.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sara. ‘How can Jeffrey’s killing his wife not have a negative effect on his reputation?’
But de Castro was already shaking her head. ‘Because an accident is an accident,’ she said. ‘And as strange as it may seem, once the dust settles, the sympathy sparked by such a tragedy may even see a rise in his popularity.’
‘You think the American public will embrace Jeffrey Logan for what he is supposed to have done?’ asked David, incredulous.
‘I think it is better than the alternative.’
‘Or rather,’ said David, ‘the truth.’
De Castro looked at him, before finally nodding.
‘You are right,’ she said. ‘If Jeffrey – a man who has built his entire career on his ability to advise families on how to hold it all together – is exposed as the father of a child who . . .’
‘Blew his mother to bits,’ interrupted David. He could not hold it in. All this talk of how Stephanie’s murder would affect ‘poor Jeffrey’ was slowly making him sick to his stomach. ‘Yes, I can see how that would rankle.’
There was silence as David took a breath before going on.
‘Here’s the thing, Katherine,’ he began, leaning forward in his seat. ‘First up, Stephanie used to be a friend of mine, and a good one, so forgive me if equating her murder with ratings points doesn’t exactly sit right where I am coming from.
‘Secondly, whether you support Jeffrey’s version of events or not, it isn’t going to change the sequence of the inevitable. The forensics will not adjust themselves to suit Jeffrey’s image concerns, and I am afraid the good doctor is going to have to live with that, professional reputation or not.
‘Finally,’ he took a breath. ‘If there is something you have to tell us, if you have any information that has some bearing on this case, then you need to share it and you need to share it now. Because if you don’t, I can guarantee you, the ADA will find it and take great pleasure in using it against us.
’
Katherine de Castro said nothing, just ran her left hand up her right arm so that her bangles chimed against one another in sequence.
‘I am sorry,’ she said softly. ‘It is just that for so many years my job has been to pre-empt problems and shut them down before the public gets even an inkling that they exist. But in this case, once the truth is out, once the media are made aware of what really happened and more to the point why then . . .’
‘What?’ David could not believe his ears. He shot a glance at Sara. ‘Why? Not just what really happened but why?’ he repeated. ‘You think J.T. Logan shot his mother deliberately and you think you know why?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, her brow now furrowed as if suggesting there was never any argument to the contrary. ‘But please don’t think that his actions in any way make me feel ill of him – for in all honesty, if I were in his position, I would have picked up that rifle myself.’
12
‘You look like crap,’ said Amanda Carmichael, as she pushed forward into Tony Bishop’s apartment – the bed still unmade, the smell of stale coffee emanating from the small yet surprisingly spacious German-designed kitchen. ‘You haven’t seen her for years, Tony. She was an old college fling – and one of many, I’m sure.’
Amanda Carmichael hadn’t planned to see Tony Bishop this afternoon – in fact she had intended to spend the entire day at her office, preparing for Monday’s all-important arraignment. But every now and again a twist of fate provided you with the possibility of an advantage over your opponent, and if that was what this fortunate coincidence was, she intended to make the most of it.
‘I know it was a long time ago,’ said Tony. ‘But Stephanie was something special. She had this incredible sense of optimism, this insatiable zest for life.’
‘She was great in bed, was that it?’ asked Amanda – and then, perhaps sensing she should tone it down a little, moved towards him with her arms outstretched.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not wanting to deter him from sharing his thoughts with her. ‘I hear she had a lot of promise in her day – until she got married and had kids.’
‘Yeah,’ said Tony then, taking her hand and leading her towards the kitchen. ‘It’s funny how people end up, you know. I mean, we used to joke how she’d be running the country by her fortieth birthday.’
‘Maybe she wanted the easy life. Maybe marrying the successful TV star was all part of the plan.’
‘No,’ he said, tipping the old coffee into the sink before switching on the machine to make a fresh batch. ‘She wasn’t like that. First up, she was filthy rich – her dad owned . . .’
‘Rockwell Wineries,’ she finished. ‘I know.’
‘And secondly, Stephanie was definitely not one to live vicariously through anyone else.’
Amanda nodded, taking it all in. ‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘God, I don’t know, which is kind of ironic given our firm handles her family’s business affairs.’
‘But you have nothing to do with her account.’
‘No. Charles Harrison looks after the winery stuff,’ he said, referring to one of Williams, Coolidge and Harrison’s senior partners. ‘And our media division handles the doctor’s interests so . . .’
‘Didn’t she accompany her husband to the Law Society ball in February?’
‘Apparently, but I didn’t see her. I was on a table with some of my own clients and Cavanaugh who . . .’ His face showed the slightest trace of a smile at the memory.
‘Who what?’ she asked, her brow furrowing.
‘Well, he switched seats because . . .’ he began.
‘He didn’t want to sit on our table,’ she finished.
‘It wasn’t you, it was Katz.’
‘It’s okay, Tony. If I recall correctly, you did a bit of seat switching of your own that night.’ She smiled. ‘And besides, Cavanaugh and I aren’t exactly pitching for the same team.’
He nodded.
‘Kind of strange, isn’t it?’ she added, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.
‘What’s strange?’ he asked, moving to the refrigerator to collect the milk.
‘That he is defending the man who killed his old friend.’
‘It was an accident,’ Tony said, stopping in the middle of pouring her a long strong black, her raised eyebrows allowing him to read the uncertainty on her face. ‘Hold on a minute. Are you saying there is a chance the TV guy . . . ?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, taking her coffee before turning her back on him and moving towards the open plan living room beyond. ‘Did you ever meet her kids?’ she followed up after a pause.
‘No,’ he said, joining her on the living room sofa. ‘Well, actually I did meet them once.’
‘Really? When?’ she asked with interest.
‘I was in New Zealand on a skiing trip and . . . that must have been the last time I saw her. I ran into her at Auckland airport. Her little girl was a toddler and the baby boy brand new.’
‘She gave birth to her son in Auckland?’
‘Yeah. She wasn’t that long out of college. She’d taken that big corporate job and then bailed on it as soon as she met the husband. She would only have been twenty-six, twenty-seven . . .
‘Anyway, I was in the lounge with a couple of work buddies. One of them had family in the South Island so we took advantage of the early winter and headed for Mount Hutt. Stephanie walked in with a toddler in one arm and a newborn in the other. Her husband was on his cell phone so we were never properly introduced.’
‘And this was in the New Zealand winter?’ she probed a little further.
‘Just before, if my memory is correct, about this time of year. Her husband was launching his show there or something, so she flew down with the other kid and I guess the baby came while she was there.’
‘Kind of odd, isn’t it?’ she queried, the steam of her coffee lifting around her flawless face. ‘Making such a long trip when you are so close to the end of a pregnancy?’
‘I guess,’ said Tony with a shrug. ‘Maybe the kid came early.’
Amanda nodded. ‘So was she pleased to see you?’
‘Sure,’ said Tony. ‘Although I remember thinking she looked kind of harried. You know – skinny, tired. But then she’d just given birth to a kid in a foreign country so . . .’
‘I guess that’s what happens when you make the mistake of swapping the conference room for the nursery,’ Amanda replied, and then, sensing by his expression that she might have gone too far added, ‘I mean at such an early age.’
Tony nodded. ‘Do you ever think about it?’ he asked her. ‘You know, what it would be like to pack it all in, make a commitment to someone, have a couple of kids?’
‘Ah . . .’ she began, wondering why Stephanie Tyler’s death had her mercenary blue chip attorney boyfriend talking like a bona fide metrosexual sap. ‘Not yet.’
‘But some day maybe?’ he asked, taking her hand.
And in that moment she knew he was falling in love with her, and simultaneously realised how stupid she would be – at least at this point – to rock the status quo.
‘Some day, Tony. Maybe. Sure.’
13
‘The woman was a tyrant,’ said Katherine de Castro – plain and simple, just like that.
David knew she could read the surprise on his face, the complete and utter disbelief.
‘I know how this sounds to you, David,’ she went on. ‘I spoke to Jeffrey on the telephone around lunchtime – it is J.T.’s birthday, you see, and he was allowed to make one call to wish him a happy day and . . . anyway . . .’ She stopped there, as if the irony of this statement required a mandatory pause in its wake.
‘I told Jeffrey I wanted to tell you about it and he warned me that your past association with his wife would make it extremely difficult for you to believe. But then I suggested that not telling you would be worse, that we were way past the platitudes, that unless we acted now, this whole sorry
mess would come crashing down upon us, destroying several lives in the process, including Chelsea’s and J.T.’s.’
‘So Jeffrey gave you the go-ahead to explain this to us?’ asked Sara.
‘Not in so many words, but . . .’ Katherine took a breath. ‘You have to understand that, at least at this point, it is essential to Jeffrey that we stick to his story – for any suggestion of impropriety on Stephanie’s part simply provides the District Attorney’s office with the one thing against J.T. that they do not have, even after the forensics report comes in.’
‘A motive,’ said David.
‘In one.’
‘So you are saying that Stephanie was . . .’ Even speaking of it was difficult.
‘Abusing J.T., yes,’ she said with determination, ‘and Chelsea, and Jeffrey too to a certain extent. She was a mistress of emotional manipulation, David – the worst kind of bully. She ran that household like a dictator, wielding her delicate fist with skill – berating and criticising and belittling and threatening and using that brilliant but sadistic mind of hers to control her children with the purest of psychological fear. So much so, that J.T. took it upon himself to liberate the family the only way he knew how.’
David felt the anger well up inside him. He was in shock – at the audacity, the ridiculousness of it all.
‘I’m sorry, Katherine,’ he said. ‘But there is no way the girl who I once knew . . .’
‘But that’s just the point, isn’t it,’ interrupted de Castro. ‘You knew the girl, David – the girl who grew into a woman determined to quash the spirit of others in order to take control.’
