by Amanda Brown
In her emptied bag she found only Chanel’s nearly black blue polish, an annoyingly trendy purchase that she never should have made, and “Pink Alert,” which she kept in her bag to touch up her manicure. A woman should always carry clear nail polish for these blunders.
She hobbled to Mia’s desk, careful not to put stress on her right leg and lengthen the run. “Mia,” she pleaded, “tell me you have some clear nail polish.”
Mia opened the drawer of her desk and began removing its contents. Behind the pink and green Great Lash mascara and a blue jar of Nivea moisturizing cream, Mia grabbed a nail polish and brandished it happily. “Ultra Glaze Nail Enamel,” she said with a smile, but Elle’s heart dropped when she saw the bottle’s color.
“Mauve-black. That won’t work,” she sighed.
“Sorry, it’s all I’ve got.” Mia shrugged.
“That’s okay,” Elle said. “I guess I could dot it with mauve. At least I’d match.”
“I’d just leave it,” Mia advised, leaning over to assess the damage. “You don’t want a big spot there.” Elle’s nylons were white, and either course was a bad one.
“I’ve got clear polish, Elle, if you want to borrow it.” Elle heard Sarah’s voice behind her and turned around with surprise.
“It’s in my office,” Sarah offered simply. She started down the hall and motioned with her hand for Elle to follow her.
She walked meekly behind Sarah into her office, where she was prepared with a bottle of nail polish in her top drawer. “I keep it in here,” Sarah said. “I should keep an extra pair of nylons, too, for the really bad runs.”
Elle smiled in agreement. “Those horrible ones that rip down your leg before you know what hit you,” she laughed. “They’re the worst.” She took the nail polish from Sarah’s hand and stretched her leg out across the arm rest of a chair to determine the best place to paint.
“I’ve had some like cartoons, I swear.” Sarah smiled. “Like those cartoons where somebody catches a sweater by its thread and runs away and the whole thing unravels?”
Elle paused, tapping the bottle against her hand to shake it.
“I don’t know why we have to wear these silly things, anyway,” she muttered, balancing on one heel while dotting her knee with Sarah’s nail polish. “I mean, the old ladies wear them to hide their varicose veins. But when you’re young, what’s the point?”
“Maybe because your shoes would hurt otherwise.” Sarah shrugged.
“You’re right,” Elle said, glancing at Sarah. “Which raises the question of these painful shoes.”
“I don’t wear heels that narrow,” Sarah replied. “I don’t know how you can even stand in them.”
“Slave to fashion,” Elle said, noticing Sarah’s steady Ferragamo pumps and considering that she might have a point. Neither spoke for a minute as Elle waited for the polish to harden.
“I’ve gotta run,” Elle said as she stood to leave.
“I’ll say, but it’s not such a bad one now.”
Elle turned around to look with surprise at Warner’s serious fiancée suddenly turned punster. “Yeah, thanks to you,” she said and grinned, then left in a rush.
“You’re welcome,” Sarah said quietly.
Elle hesitated.
“Elle, will you wait a minute?” Sarah asked suddenly, gathering her papers. “I’m on my way too. Christopher asked me to go to the deposition.”
Elle waited at the entrance to Sarah’s office while Sarah grabbed a highlighted street map from her shiny briefcase. Unclipping from the map a sheet that had directions scribbled on it, Sarah frowned.
“I hope the office isn’t too hard to find,” she said, hurrying toward the hall where Elle stood.
Elle glanced down at the floor. She turned and started to walk away, then turned back as if she had remembered something.
“I know where it is,” Elle said quietly, not looking at Sarah.
Sarah didn’t respond.
“I’ll give you a ride over.” Elle shrugged her shoulders, insecure at having made the offer. “If you want.” Elle bit her lip and glanced uncertainly at the brunette.
Sarah turned her attention to the Brooks Brothers button on her navy blazer, which she fastened and unfastened. “That would be nice,” she said. “I don’t really know my way around the city yet.”
Elle tossed her hair behind her shoulders and walked ahead. “Let’s go, then,” she said, waving for Sarah to follow her.
On the drive over, Elle found out that not all of the interns were attending the deposition.
“Warner’s preparing witness books,” Sarah said, sensing Elle’s silent question. “It’s just you and me,” she added.
“His loss,” Elle said sarcastically, turning up the stereo.
Chutney Vandermark was extremely well coached, so the deposition was an exercise in futility. She would not reply to a question without first turning for a nod or motion from her lawyer, Henry Kohn, and even then she mumbled terse replies under her breath. Several times the stenographer, who was straining to hear her, had to ask Chutney to repeat herself. She balked even when Christopher Miles asked her for background facts about her education, scowling and behaving like a spoiled child. Most of the time she sat sullenly with her arms crossed.
During one of the several breaks in which Chutney asked to “be excused to the hallway to consult with counsel,” Christopher Miles left to check his messages. Elle sat alone in the room with Sarah.
“She seems really upset,” Sarah said, finally breaking the heavy silence. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like. She actually found his body.” Sarah quivered, dropping her gaze to the floor.
Elle studied her fingernails for a minute, then shook her head in a sharp motion. “She’s not crying.”
“No, she’s not,” Sarah agreed. “Poor thing, she seems bewildered. I bet she’s just shocked, losing her father like that. She found his body! Can you imagine?”
“No,” Elle admitted, “but still, I expected her to cry.” She paused, wrinkling her face, unsatisfied. “So she was working out at the gym and then home taking a shower when it happened.” Elle traced on her legal pad and spoke rather absently, repeated these facts as if to herself. “Must have happened awfully fast.”
“Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “God, I bet he was still bleeding. Can you picture that?”
“No,” Elle said, shaking with a cold shudder. “No, I really can’t. It must have been horrible.”
Christopher Miles reentered the room and pulled his interns aside.
“We’ve got a transcript,” he said, glancing at the stenographer to make sure he was off the record, “so you don’t have to take everything down. Listen”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“take note on her demeanor. Her motions, where she pauses, that sort of thing. The transcript won’t pick that up. Record anything that strikes you as odd. It’ll give me an idea where to go on cross-examination. Right now,” he muttered, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
The lawyer shook his head and returned to the table across from Chutney’s seat, hunching his shoulders in a weary slouch.
Tapping heels in the hallway announced Chutney’s return. Straightening, Christopher checked his watch and motioned to Henry Kohn as he stepped into the room with the solemn girl at his elbow.
“Henry.” Christopher stood up, smiling with light charisma and confidence. “Thanks for your patience. We’ll only be another fifteen minutes or so. I’ve got just about everything I need.”
Chapter Forty-three
When Christopher Miles was alone with Brooke in the room set aside for witness prep, his famously calm sea of patience burst as if through a dam.
“They will crucify you with this…with this so-called alibi of yours,” he said angrily, slamming her deposition with his open hand.
She stared at the lawyer silently.
“Jesus, Brooke, why do you have to make this so difficult? Do you know how close you came to spending your twenty-fourth
birthday making license plates?”
“Thanks for getting me out on bail,” Brooke sighed, eyes fixed on the floor. “I hated that place.” She paused, then glanced up sorrowfully at the baffled lawyer. “I didn’t do it, Christopher, I told you,” she protested. “Poor Heyworth was…” she choked, wiping her eyes. “I found him on the floor, lying there, and blood everywhere.” Brooke hid her face in her hands, shaking, unable to continue.
“Brooke,” Christopher repeated with frustration, “if you could just tell me who was at that meeting, I’ll move for a continuance. You don’t seem to understand how serious this is. You have no witnesses, Brooke. None. Nobody can corroborate what you say. You will lose everything that’s yours under his will, and unless you plead to a lesser charge, your chances—”
Brooke rose from her chair, indignant. “I will not plead to anything. I did not do it. Don’t you see? I can’t rat on the support group, I mean…we swore, you know? These people have an addiction. They were the only people who helped me get my life together. Christopher, I have an attic full of Norman Rockwell plates and china figurines and music boxes, synthetic rugs, juicers…I spent almost one hundred thousand dollars and hours and hours of my life just to hear those gentle voices take my orders. The Home Shopping Network has turned people’s lives upside down like that, and Shopper Stoppers came together for help. I can’t turn on them.”
“Brooke.” The lawyer shook his head wearily. “We’ve been over this ground before. They’d understand…Anyone would understand.”
“No.” She sat back down. “Please, why can’t I just tell the truth? Why won’t anyone believe me? Heyworth was the sweetest soul. I’d never lift a finger against him. He was my husband, and nobody understands that I really loved him.” She stared past Christopher, crying softly. “I lost my husband. I saw him dead, horribly, viciously murdered…” Her voice trailed off and the room was still.
“I believe you, Brooke,” he said. “I do believe you. I was only trying to prepare you for what I know will happen if you testify. They’ll string you up, Brooke. You have to understand that if you don’t give more information about where you were when your husband was murdered”—he paused gravely—“I might be the only one who believes you. And your inheritance will go to Chutney, or to one of his other wives.”
“Ex-wives,” Brooke corrected. “But why? I don’t get it. His will left everything to me. I know, he showed it to me. He cut that daughter of his right out when he changed his will. ‘Chutney will grow up,’ he said, ‘when she has to earn something.’”
Christopher began pacing again, going over the facts in his own mind. “He didn’t do it very well, Brooke. His will leaves his fortune to his ‘most beautiful wife.’ Not to Brooke Vandermark.”
“He called me that!” Brooke exclaimed. “‘Hello, my most beautiful wife,’” she impersonated. “Oh, Christopher, he just wrote it that way to be romantic.”
“Well, there’s a regular beauty contest outside of former Mrs. Vandermarks who think they fit the bill, Brooke.” Christopher threw his hands up in despair.
“If Heyworth knew that, he would turn in his grave.” Brooke scowled.
“This case could be the end of an illustrious career,” the lawyer muttered, already imagining the headlines. He sighed with fatigue, picking up his notes to walk Brooke through her doomed testimony.
Sarah chatted nervously with Warner, glancing at the crowd of hostile ex-Mrs. Vandermarks who were primping in compact mirrors to avoid speaking to one another. “Some first case,” she remarked.
“Yeah,” he responded. “Looks grim.” He searched the courtroom for Elle, who had not arrived yet. “Wonder where Elle is.”
Sarah had noticed Warner “wondering” about Elle a lot and was not oblivious of the fact that when it wasn’t Elle, he would still wonder about and wander toward other women. She felt weighted down by the Rock.
Cari shuffled papers importantly as she entered the courtroom, escorted by an especially morbid, black-suited Michael. She took her seat next to the other interns, leaving empty chairs at either end of the long table. Michael sat in the gallery amid a growing mass of Stanford law students whom the judge had allowed to sit in on the hearing. Judge Carol Morgan had closed her courtroom to the media but had permitted students to watch the proceeding for its educational value.
Mr. Heigh, characteristically sharing the experience with his wife, had arrived a full hour early to get a front seat. Mrs. Heigh had packed a lunch for them to share consisting of her famous sprout-and-pickle sandwiches, which she had reluctantly agreed to leave with the bailiff.
Fran was seated with John Matthews, complaining about the “false consciousness” that led Heyworth’s lineup of ex-wives to paint “tribal sex indicators” on their cheeks and lips.
Sidney had snuck in a Nintendo Game Boy, making him the envy of Aaron and Doug, who sat on either side of him. They had to be satisfied to peer over Sidney’s shoulder and participate as voyeurs, sitting behind him twitching their fingers on imaginary electronic buttons.
Claire and Ben sat together arranging a sign-up sheet for refreshments at the “Welcome to Law Review” party.
A. Lawrence Hesterton leafed through the New York Review of Books, tapping his foot idly. Gramm Hallman and Drew Drexler, seated with Larry toward the back of the courtroom, were engaged in a rapid, eager discussion of the Spanish Succession and how it compared to the English War of the Roses. Neither had the least bit of interest in what the other was saying, but both were happy to corner a willing ear for their thesis-topic expertise.
Elle surveyed the ragtag crowd of spectators, trying to decide where Eugenia could tolerably sit. She found a seat close to the front.
As Eugenia left to take a seat, Henry Kohn entered the courtroom. The confident lawyer strode to his table, opened a briefcase, and began removing stacks of files. Chutney followed her lawyer and took her seat behind him. She seemed apprehensive, nervously twisting a strand of chemically enhanced hair around her finger as she glanced at her mother sitting behind her.
“Mother,” Chutney greeted stiffly.
“Please, call me Emerald. You’re looking well, Chutney.”
“That’s not a compliment, Mother. That’s a second opinion.” Chutney turned her back on her mother, who sat near the end of the painted group.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the women had assembled chronologically in order of their marriages. Elle surveyed the troupe and decided they should be the first women to appear on Fashion Crimes, with charges ranging from reckless accessorizing to excessive use of cosmetic force.
Chutney’s mother, now Emerald Vandermark-Klein-Tearston-Allen-Meyers, was an artful self-made social climber. If she remarried, Emerald could pull into a tie with six-wife Heyworth.
Like windup dolls gone wrong, Chutney and Emerald, equally high-strung and difficult, avoided looking at each other. Objectionable first names were not all that Emerald and Chutney had in common. Heyworth’s third wife looked exactly like Chutney, though neither would admit it.
Beyond their achingly auburn mall-girl perms, both she and Chutney wore the signature ski-jump noses of Dr. Binky Blass, but on Emerald the pert nose of a teenager merely highlighted the taut, weary compression of the rest of her features. A fortune spent on surgeries fought years of wearying failed marriages for control of Emerald’s tight-as-a-trampoline face, and science had failed comically.
Nor was Emerald the only ex-Vandermark guilty of compulsive surgical attempts to imprison her youth. It looked as if Heyworth’s wives would rather repeatedly face the surgeon’s knife than face gravity. Heyworth’s first wife, now Dawn Vandermark-Kirkland-Schaffer-Price, stared fastidiously into her compact, caking whitish powder onto her nearly translucent skin. With jet-black hair, ghostlike skin, and bloodred lips, the woman was a dead ringer for Snow White’s wicked stepmother.
Whitney Vandermark-Warren-Sands, Heyworth’s second wife, had the sole distinction of a successful remarriage. “Three’s a char
m,” Whitney sniped at Chutney’s mother.
“No, dear. Bad things come in threes,” Emerald responded.
Ignoring Emerald’s remark, Whitney adjusted the aggressive squared shoulders of her blazer. Her silver eye shadow was ferociously applied: when combined with the flaming magenta of her cheeks and lips, Whitney was the apparition of a maniacal clown.
Heyworth’s fourth wife, Sonia Vandermark, appeared to be suffering from spandorexia. Her purple spandex cat suit left nothing to the imagination. Along with her tawdry jewelry, she had clearly overplayed her hand.
Heyworth’s fifth wife, Angela Vandermark, was a drastic contrast to the spandex stunner beside her. Pointedly simple in a Talbots dress and polished Ferragamo loafers, the Atherton suburbanite suggested Heyworth’s rebound marriage.
Elle took the empty seat at the end of the table directly across from Brooke, who looked pale, tired, and diminutive in the oversize courtroom chairs. Elle leafed through the pink pages of her legal pad to avoid looking at Warner.
Satisfied with the layout of his paperwork, Mr. Kohn approached the bench to speak with Christopher Miles.
Chapter Forty-four
After consulting with the lawyers, Judge Morgan pounded her gavel to call the court to order. “In the matter of Estate of Heyworth Vandermark.” She peered at the stenographer, who nodded to indicate that he was ready.
“First, petitioner’s motion to consolidate claims for relief is denied. The instant proceeding decides only the validity of the Vandermark will entered as Exhibit A. Without objection, so ordered.” The gathering of lawyers at the bench murmured but dispersed without filing any objection.
“You aren’t going to object?” Chutney said loudly enough for Henry Kohn to hear. “What am I paying you for? I could have done that for free!”
“So ordered.” The judge glared at Chutney, but did not comment on her outburst. “I’ll recess for five minutes or so to allow you”—she indicated the lawyers behind Henry Kohn—“to explain to your clients that they are free to leave today if they’d like. If I don’t admit the will to probate, we’ll evaluate their claims at that stage.”
