Irritated, she tuned in to the client once more. Werner Brigham was still waxing lyrical.
“She runs, so she has that athletic build but,” he pronounced in an approving tone, “she’s still feminine and graceful. She probably had ballet lessons as a girl. You can see that in the way she holds herself.”
Ballet lessons. This was the first time she had ever heard a sex offender speculate on his alleged victim’s background in dance. And Brigham was an offender; Jules felt dead certain about that. He had freely admitted to stalking Rhianna Lamb and to an incomplete sex act he insistently described as “a consummation.” In his version of events, these actions were the culmination of a courtship and a preliminary to marriage. Brigham was a man who believed his own fiction.
“She has similar refined tastes in clothing to my mother,” he shared in a reflective tone. “I think the two of them will be good friends. That’s an important consideration.”
And a sentiment best left unshared with members of the jury. Brigham was apparently a stranger to the norms of dating. Was he also a stranger to reason? Several of the senior trial attorneys on the team thought so. Their private notes, for her eyes only, were circumspect but ominous.
Mr. Brigham displays a marked inability to perceive his actions as they may be interpreted by others…
…if the client was not a well-connected man of wealth and education, he would be at risk of certification…
…the manner in which the client professes his devotion to the plaintiff must be adjusted and controlled by counsel if he is to take the stand.
Finally, there was Sid Lyle’s assessment. Never one to mince words, he’d passed her a scrawled note during her first pre-trial conference. It read, This guy is a fucking fruitcake.
In a half-decent world, they would plead him out and he would serve time, or at least end up in a state mental hospital. But Salazar, Hagel & Goldblum had a reputation to keep up and high-end real estate to pay for. They took cases to trial.
Jules had no problem with such pragmatism. She hadn’t worked her ass off for the shingle on her corner-suite door to start sweating about shades of guilt and innocence. If she didn’t like defending well-heeled clients who had made errors in judgment, or were innocent and targeted for the wrong reasons, she could always trade in her Mercedes, sell her costly hideaway on Lake Tahoe, and cross the street to the DA’s office. None of which were options she planned to explore anytime soon.
Werner Brigham had retained the best legal team money could buy, and she was the lead trial attorney who would walk down the courthouse steps with him when he was acquitted. Jules could sleep okay with that. She was paid handsomely to do a job, and she made a point of doing it better than most of her rivals.
“I understand you intended to propose marriage to Ms. Lamb the night of the incident,” she said.
“I had the ring custom-made for her. She wouldn’t even try it on.” Brigham looked aggrieved.
“That must have been upsetting.”
The client extracted a narrow gold case from inside his jacket; at first glance it could have passed for a lipstick. He flipped it open, extracted a slender silver toothpick, and set about working it between his front teeth. Between oral forays, he said, “That ring cost me fifty thousand dollars, not that money is an object. I knew from overhearing a conversation between Rhianna and her best friend, Mimi, that blue diamonds are her favorite. So I chose one with a blue diamond in the center and white princess diamonds on the sides. Princess…to express my vision of her.”
Jules ran through the argument. Does a man purchase a fifty-thousand-dollar diamond engagement ring for a woman who has not encouraged him? Does he risk embarrassment by informing family and friends that he is planning to marry in the near future if he has no hope of such a union?
Werner Brigham is accused of a heinous crime. But his only “crime” was to mistake the mixed messages of a respectable, inexperienced single woman for natural shyness. You see, ladies and gentlemen, my client, in this day and age, is an old-fashioned man. A man from a prominent Denver family. A man brought up to respect women, but also to believe that men must take the lead in matters of romance and courtship…
Jury selection would be critical. They needed older women, preferably seven or eight of them, women who devoured Harlequin romances and still did their sons’ laundry. And they needed young, poorly educated men who would find nothing remarkable in the idea that one of their sex could be confused by a woman and innocently do the wrong thing. With good management, they would be able to identify the closet Neanderthals who thought “no” meant a woman was playing hard to get and male sexual aggression was “normal.” The world was full of them.
“Why do you think Ms. Lamb turned you down?” Jules was unable to take her eyes off the glinting toothpick. There could be nothing left to dislodge, but Brigham was probing almost viciously around his gums.
“She was overwhelmed,” he replied. “It’s been like that throughout our relationship. When you consider our different positions in life, that’s hardly surprising. Women have always chased me for my money.”
“Did Rhianna chase you?”
“No, quite the opposite,” he said with disdain. “That’s my point.”
“You’re saying Rhianna was not impressed by your wealth?”
“Exactly.” He nodded.
“Do you have any idea why not?” Jules invited, wanting to see how Brigham would approach the topic without coaching.
“She’s sensitive and unassuming. Obviously she is anxious about the social gulf between us and does not want me to see her as the grasping type. That’s why my flowers embarrassed her.” When Jules raised an eyebrow in query, he explained, “Each week, I sent her a large bouquet. She asked me to stop.”
“And did you?”
“Of course not. I knew she was only worried about the extravagance.” He flicked a dismissive hand through the air as he laughed this off. “She genuinely didn’t realize that a two-hundred-dollar bouquet is nothing to me, yet it could fill that second-rate abode of hers with beauty. That’s all I ever wanted for her…to surround her with beauty. Isn’t that what all truly feminine women want?”
He studied Jules with faint derision, leaving no doubt that she had failed the true-femininity test herself and was now being invited to speculate on the motives of her more acceptable sisters. Jules wondered what he saw in her that he disapproved of. At work, she kept her hair loose and shoulder length to send the right signal to clients and juries. She always wore a suit and a few carefully chosen items of jewelry—a simple gold initial pin her grandmother had given her when she graduated, a signet ring, small, thick gold cuff earrings. Today she was in Armani, a dark charcoal jacket and pants teamed with a patterned claret silk blouse.
She would have worn a skirt and classic Chanel or Ferragamo pumps if she had to appear before a judge. For a trial, she also changed her color scheme. A shell in ivory, pale pink, or soft olive green, and a less austere suit with a feminine cut. Juries appreciated eye candy, and she made sure to offer just enough, wearing her jackets a little shorter and her skirts slightly tight around the hips, so male jurors got to see a firm ass as she strolled back and forth. At the same time, for the benefit of the women she needed to win over, her skirts were long enough that she wasn’t flaunting legs better than theirs, and she kept her jackets buttoned to disguise breast perkiness and nipples that made themselves obvious when her adrenaline surged.
“It sounds like you consider Ms. Lamb the ideal woman,” Jules said. “Could you tell me why?”
The toothpick hung in the air an inch from his mouth, firmly clamped between thumb and forefinger. He wore a pinky ring on the hand in question, a smooth bloodstone cabochon set in pink gold. The ring drew attention to the affected angle of his pinky finger, which pointed straight up at the ceiling. That would have to change.
“Well, for a start, she’s completely natural. Most women with her hair color get it from a bottle, but I happen
to know she sees her hairdresser for only a cut. I personally checked that.” He eyed Jules’s jet black hair suspiciously, then continued his musings with the confidence of a man who knew his topic well. “I suppose people would call her a blonde, but I like to call her hair ‘moonbeam’ in color, a personal vanity.” With a self-effacing chuckle, he explained, “Poetry was my major at Columbia. You could say Rhianna is my muse.”
Jules winced. Oh, yes, the jury would have plenty to talk about over their hot lunches. “You have some works published, don’t you?” She recalled an entry amidst her voluminous file notes.
“In the Columbia Poetry Review and, most recently, in Pleiades.” He paused, as if to allow this information to sink in. When she did not react, he said with faint condescension, “Obviously, you are not acquainted with the belles lettres or you would recognize the prestige of those publications. I also won the Maxine DeKamp award for best undergraduate poet in my year.”
Or, in jury-speak, Brigham is a Mommy’s boy who writes poems instead of holding down a man’s job. Jules had already reworked that angle in her mind.
Mr. Brigham is a published, award-winning poet. While this is strictly a personal passion rather than an occupation, his hobby provides evidence of his romantic side. Ask yourselves this question: What is a sensitive man with a fifty-thousand-dollar diamond ring in his pocket planning when he takes a limousine to the home of the woman he is in love with? That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, he is planning a romantic dinner and a marriage proposal.
Mr. Brigham had reservations at the elite Palace Arms Restaurant for that evening and, as you have heard, the restaurant manager knew in advance that the dinner was an engagement celebration. My client placed a prepaid order for two bottles of high-priced champagne and a red-rose bouquet from the city’s leading florist. Who does this without a reason?
The man you see before you made an error in judgment. He’s only human. For his trouble, he has had his heart broken and his reputation destroyed by a malicious media. He has resigned from his job, lost friends, and seen his hopes of marriage and children go up in smoke. Hasn’t he been punished enough?
“So you see, calling her a blonde gives the wrong impression.” Brigham was still glued to his theme. “I don’t know about you, but I always picture a tramp when people talk about a blonde. And that’s not my Rhianna at all. She’s morally impeccable, or I would not have decided to marry her.”
“How can you be certain about her morality?” Jules inquired blandly.
“I used to watch her house in the evenings. No male visitors. And I took pains to be present at the social events she attended to make sure she was unmolested by men.” He paused, seeming to bask in his own certainty. “Sometimes she has female friends visit, but never a man.”
“You watched her house.” As soon as Brigham stepped into the courtroom, the jury would smell Eau de Creep.
Fortunately, he seemed to grasp that he was entering hazardous terrain. With earnest indignation, he explained, “I wasn’t watching her house to spy on her. I care for her. These days genuinely virtuous women are rare and their innocence makes them vulnerable. I was only trying to protect her from afar, before I have a husband’s right to do so.”
“I see.”
He colored. Lowering his voice to a wet hiss, he said, “I have every reason to believe my future wife was a virgin when we met. How many do you suppose there are these days? Wouldn’t you want to protect that asset?”
Jules made sure her face betrayed nothing. He sounded very sure about the virginity, too sure for a man who claimed he had not been “fully intimate” with the woman in question. How she was supposed to stop Brigham from convicting himself was a sobering prospect. They could keep him off the stand, but in a case like this, with a Pollyanna plaintiff like Rhianna Lamb, the defense strategist thought it would be a mistake and Jules agreed. Somehow she had to find a way to cast this client sympathetically. It would be essential to undermine the object of his one-sided fantasies. A virgin rape victim was every defense attorney’s worst nightmare, and this client couldn’t wait to proclaim Lamb’s virtue.
“How often did you and Ms. Lamb actually date?” Jules asked.
Brigham resumed picking his teeth as he considered the question. Jules must have showed her faint distaste because he said, “Excuse me. Mommy is always telling me to confine my oral hygiene to a bathroom.” He lowered the pick and rolled it between his fingers. “This was a gift from my late father, a small heirloom handed down in my family. I believe it belonged to Thomas Jefferson originally.”
Jules nodded, disinterested. “Your dates with Ms. Lamb?”
“Well, I was seeing her almost every day until she…left town.” Rage made his eyes gleam pale silver-gray, the pupils near pinpoints. “I blame the police for that, filling her head with ridiculous distortions of the truth. They have their own agenda.”
“Why do you feel that way?”
“It’s everywhere. Political correctness.” He got busy with the toothpick again. “The feminists run things now, and they’re out of touch with the way normal men think.”
Jules studied the files on the tabletop as she counted to ten. “Tell me something, Mr. Brigham. Are you comfortable having a woman represent you at your trial?”
His eyes narrowed as if he suspected a trick question. “Why not? You come highly recommended.”
“I’m also a feminist.”
A bark of laughter expelled the toothpick from its parking spot between a couple of teeth on the lower jaw. Brigham pounced on the tiny silver spear before it could roll across the table. Snatching it up, he tenderly inspected it.
“I’m not threatened by women like yourself,” he declared in a condescending tone. “In fact, I have the utmost respect for those of you with accomplishments that set you apart. The thing is, my mother considers herself to be a feminist, but you don’t hear her blaming men for everything wrong in this world.” As proof of his enlightenment, he said, “When I marry Rhianna I will give her the choice to be a stay-at-home wife or have a suitable job.”
“You still wish to marry Ms. Lamb?”
“I’m willing to overlook her mistakes, and I take full responsibility for my own failings.” He gave a pained sigh. “She wasn’t ready, and instead of being patient and understanding, I became overwhelmed. But Mommy has spoken to me about this matter and it will not happen again. I guarantee it.”
“Are you saying Ms. Lamb’s allegations are true?”
“No! Absolutely not. I’m saying my behavior was not without blemish, but the police blew it up out of all proportion and persuaded her to press charges.”
“You did not rape her?”
He flushed dark red.
“You will be asked that question when you take the stand,” Jules said without emotion.
“I know.” He mumbled something beneath his breath. “I realize the prosecution will try to trick me into incriminating myself. It’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Jules reminded herself that she was being paid a pile of money to keep this client out of prison, whether he made it easy for her or not. And just in case she needed a bigger incentive than usual, Audrey Brigham’s performance bonus was two million dollars. The sum would be split between members of her son’s defense team for a not-guilty verdict, with half earmarked for Jules.
Focusing once more on the information she needed to gather, she said, “Getting back to your dates with Ms. Lamb. Is there one that was especially memorable for you?”
He pondered for a moment, as though weighing many such occasions. “We had lunch together when she got her promotion to senior buyer.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
“It was destiny. We ran into each other at a café. There were no tables and she asked if she could share mine. The connection was instant. I carried her parcels to her car. From that day forward, I knew we were meant to be together.”
“How did you know that?”
“I took one look at her face and I realized she was the woman I had been waiting for, the angel of my hopes. It was love at first sight.”
Holy crap.
Ladies and gentlemen, this case should never have come to trial. It should have been resolved in private like any other personal misunderstanding between adults. If Ms. Lamb were a different type of woman, more experienced in the ways of the world, more knowledgeable about men, she would have handled this situation very differently. I have no doubt of that. But Ms. Lamb did not know how to be assertive. She is a kindhearted person. She did not want to hurt Mr. Brigham’s feelings by saying no, clearly and unambiguously. Because of her decency and sweet nature, she sent my client mixed signals that would give any man the wrong impression. And here we are.
Chapter Five
Jules was not a daydreamer. But that didn’t prevent her from lapsing into vivid sexual fantasy when she was supposed to be all over Werner Brigham’s defense prep. In the ten days since her brief sojourn in Palm Springs, these slips in concentration had made her crazy, and they were only getting worse. She was waking up in the middle of the night, lying sleepless with need until she got herself off. In meetings with the chief defense strategist, a woman who bore a fleeting resemblance to Kate, all she could think about was sex. Three days ago, she had stalled her Mercedes at a set of lights, causing a rear-ender. She didn’t even bother to dispute responsibility. In a sea of rush-hour traffic, she had been miles away, deep in fantasy, thrusting her tongue inside a woman she knew nothing about. A woman who didn’t want to see her again.
Her imagination had embroidered a vivid tapestry of sweaty, relentless sex that made her so moist, so constantly, she had to increase the changes of underwear in the overnight bag she kept at work. This week, certain that someone would detect the musky evidence of her arousal, she’d swapped her panties for fresh ones each lunch hour. Disastrous scenarios rotated in her mind: Herself exuding pheromones that caused chaos in meetings. A married partner hitting on her in an elevator. The hunky butch who made the FedEx deliveries losing control and locking her office door so they could fuck on her desk.
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