After the celebration that was sure to follow the verdict, I would have to face the reality that my husband would not be coming home tonight, or very possibly, any other night. And despite what the jury had just declared, I still had my doubts about Tina’s innocence. While I believed that Max Montgomery had actually suffered a ruptured aneurysm the night of his death, I was still convinced that it was Tina who had fanatically attacked him in that bathtub with the intent to kill. His ruptured aneurysm made her innocent in the eyes of the law, but not in God’s eyes. My nagging fears about Tina’s role in the death of Neddy’s husband only made my conscience ache more.
“We won,” I finally heard Neddy mumble ever so softly. “We actually won.” The astonishment that saturated her words told me her reservations about Tina’s innocence had run much deeper than Neddy had been willing to reveal.
Neddy was still protectively holding onto Tina, whose body shook in tearful surges, strong enough to have hurled her to the ground had Neddy and David not been propping her up. Had Neddy forgotten that the woman in her arms might have killed her husband?
I wasn’t sure how long the judge had let our jubilation go on. A couple of reporters created a ruckus dashing out of the courtroom, causing Judge Graciano to finally pick up her gavel and demand order. There were still a few important administrative matters to attend to before we could all leave.
I glanced over at the prosecution table. Julie was consumed with organizing papers into a folder on the table in front of her. She occasionally glanced hatefully in the direction of the jury. When she finally looked my way, I could see a anger in her eyes. All of a sudden she stopped and turned toward the bench, “Your Honor, may we please have the jury polled?”
I could swear I heard Judge Graciano curse under her breath. “If you would like, counselor,” she said, her tone indicating that she thought it was a useless request. Both sides had the right to have each member of the jury state out loud how he or she had voted. Perhaps it was Julie’s hope that her evil gaze could intimidate one or two of them into reversing their decisions. That would mean a mistrial, and the prosecution would get a second shot at trying to prove Tina’s guilt. But I had never known of any jury polling to produce such a result.
One by one, each member of the jury responded to the question, “Do you find Tina Montgomery guilty or not guilty of the charge of murder in the first degree?” By the time we’d heard the twelfth “not guilty,” Juror No. 7 was glancing toward our table with a humongous smile on her face. The others, too, seemed to be wearing a look that said they were proud to have performed their civic duty.
“If there’s nothing else, I’d like to dismiss the jury,” Judge Graciano said.
“We have nothing further,” Neddy said.
“Ms. Killabrew?” the judge asked.
“Thank you, Your Honor, nothing further,” Julie said in a weak, defeated voice.
After the judge explained what an important role jurors play in an organized society and thanked them for their service to their community, the jury panel quickly cleared out of the courtroom while the spectators’ section emptied more slowly.
“Just get me out of here,” Tina finally said, her voice hoarse from sobbing. “Get me the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER 67
After talking to the press and celebrating at Tina’s house, Neddy and I decided to treat ourselves to a late lunch at the Houston’s restaurant near Tina’s house.
We were slowly coming down from the high of our victory and reality was setting in with a stone-hard edge. At least it was for me. There were still lots of questions that needed to be answered. But we had to accept the fact that we might never know for sure whether Tina had stabbed Max in that hotel room. That, I could accept. What I couldn’t swallow was not knowing if Tina was responsible for Lawton’s murder.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” I began, as we sipped strawberry margaritas from gigantic cocktail glasses, “but we need to talk to Tina about Lawton. Don’t you want to know if she had anything to do with his murder?”
“Not really,” Neddy said, reaching for a piece of sourdough bread and slapping it with butter. “We need to just let it go. We don’t have any real evidence of her involvement. All we have is a hunch. If we did a casting call for everybody who wanted Lawton dead, we’d need the Staples Center to hold the crowd.” She took a bite of bread and kept talking. “And even if Tina told us she did kill him, the attorney-client privilege prevents us from doing anything about it. So why bother finding out?”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But the woman was screwing your husband and never mentioned it to you. After we found out about Bryson, we asked her if there was anybody else she was seeing and she lied to us. We need to confront her about that.”
“She was probably too embarrassed,” Neddy said. “And we aren’t exactly squeaky clean here. We had obligations to her that we breached, too.”
I frowned. “Like what?”
“Tina obviously didn’t know Kinga was sleeping with Max, or she would’ve fired her a long time ago. We kept that information from her and I’m not sure it was the right thing to do—ethically or legally.”
There’s no way I wanted to broach that subject with Tina. Kinga had wisely quit her job and skipped town. That sleeping dog needed to keep slumbering, and I told Neddy as much. But I still felt there were things we needed to discuss with Tina. “I still can’t believe you don’t want to know whether she killed your husband,” I said.
Neddy rolled her eyes. She looked more exhausted than I felt and that was hard to do. “I’d like my entire life with Lawton to remain buried. Discussing this with Tina will dredge up a whole new crop of emotions that I’m not sure I can handle. If Tina did kill Lawton, it’s not going to change anything.”
“Okay, then,” I said, “I’d like to know if she was the one who stabbed her husband in that hotel room.”
Neddy’s shook her head. “We have no right to ask her that.”
“I don’t care. I want to know.”
“Well I don’t. And even if she did it, she’s not going to be stupid enough to admit it to us.”
It took another round of margaritas and considerable prodding, about twenty minutes’ worth, before Neddy finally agreed that Tina owed us some answers. We finished our meal and headed back to Tina’s house.
When we rang her doorbell, Tina answered the door looking refreshed and smelling of rose-scented soap, holding her gaudy wine goblet. The sleeveless, cinnamon-colored pants suit she was wearing glowed against her skin. She could have walked right out of a Revlon ad. Tina embraced us so enthusiastically you never would have known we had just left her place an hour or so ago.
She was so happy and relieved about her acquittal that she didn’t notice that our mood had changed dramatically since our earlier visit. She assumed we had returned to continue the celebration. She led us back into her purple living room, practically floating in a pair of beige ballerina slippers.
“What would the two finest attorneys in L.A. like to drink?” she asked merrily.
“Nothing for right now,” Neddy said, taking a seat. I joined her in an adjacent chair. “There’s something we need to talk to you about,” Neddy began. “You’re not obligated to answer, but we hope that you do. Everything you tell us is protected by the attorney-client privilege.”
Tina’s smile disappeared. She set her goblet on the coffee table, then immediately reached for it again, confirming for me that her drinking was the security blanket I’d always assumed it was.
Neddy looked first at me, no doubt for encouragement, then went on to tell Tina about Detective Smith’s report and how it had detailed her affair with Garrett Bryson. When Neddy noted that the report had also listed the names of two other lovers, Tina’s eyes fell to the floor. She raised the goblet to her lips and took a long sip.
“The fact that you were seeing Lawton and never mentioned it to us made us wonder if the reason you didn’t was because you had somethin
g to do with his death.” Neddy spoke as gingerly as possible. “And I’d like to know if that’s the case.”
I examined Neddy’s face. I could still see vestiges of the agonizing years of her own abusive marriage. I also saw something that told me she wanted to hear Tina’s answer to her question as much as I did.
Tina didn’t speak for a long while. “Wow,” she said, “this is quite a surprise. I thought you were going to ask me if I killed my husband.”
She went silent again, this time for much longer. Neddy and I anxiously waited her out.
“First, let me tell you why I stabbed my husband in that hotel room,” Tina said, placing her wine goblet on the coffee table. She looked earnestly at Neddy. “Then I’ll answer your question about Lawton.
CHAPTER 68
Neddy and I listened for close to an hour as Tina recounted the intimate and distressingly sad details of her life with Max Montgomery and Lawton Joseph Brown. The only two men she had ever loved.
From the moment she began her story, anguish crept into her eyes and assumed her voice, forcing her to speak when her lips seemed unwilling or unable to form the proper words. After a minute or so into her monologue, Tina never allowed her eyes to settle on Neddy’s face or mine. It was as if she was making a confession before some invisible television camera positioned across the room. She constantly wrung her hands and I could hear a soft patter as her right foot nervously tapped the shiny maple floor. Tears would sporadically roll down her cheeks, then dry up to make room for a fresh stream.
Tina started her tale with a different version of the facts she had fed us during our first meeting. Though her voice cracked at times, she did not speak in a tone that solicited sympathy. Her intent was to explain, not justify, her actions.
Tina admitted now that she wasn’t exactly sure when Max’s philandering had begun. She doubted that it had started after their marriage, as she had told us before. She assumed Max saw other women during their whirlwind year of dating, but she was simply too contented with her new life to notice. She’d landed a gorgeous, incredible man whose very presence in a room, even when he was only in his twenties, radiated charisma and power. It didn’t make sense to go searching for a dark cloud when her ordinary, lackluster existence had been presented with a silver lining so bright it sparkled like a diamond.
But in no time, the naïve young wife came to realize that she was not the only woman in her charming husband’s life. In the beginning, Tina would angrily confront Max with her suspicions. At that point, she’d had nothing more than suspicions to go on as Max, particularly in the early days, had been very careful with his affairs. His assertions that her suspicions stemmed from her own childhood insecurities, not any infidelity on his part, had actually seemed plausible to her. Max would convincingly deny her accusations, pamper her with gifts, and bestow upon her what she cherished most—his time. But weeks and sometimes only days later, his focus was back on business and other women.
By their fifth or sixth year of marriage, Tina had grown tired of tracking his whereabouts. She had also tired of his broken promises. But not so tired that she had ever contemplated leaving. At some point, she convinced herself that she had a worthy role to play in Max’s life and slowly morphed into the kind of wife she convinced herself that he needed. She worked hard at being the elegant hostess and developed into an admirable role model for other young wives in the local philanthropic community.
In the eyes of onlookers, she was a smart, beautiful, vibrant woman, even as the gray hairs and age lines made uninvited appearances. But in private, she was a pathetic, lonely little woman whose self-esteem was being slowly eroded by her husband’s growing neglect.
While she prayed things would change, the older Max got, the sloppier he became. Though she tried, she could not ignore the late-night ringing of his cell phone, the smell of perfumes she didn’t wear, and her inability to contact him for hours at a time. Over time, she had been forced to shy away from friendships with other women because she feared that her acquaintances, and none of them had been any more than that, would become the target of Max’s insatiable lust. She had never been particularly close to her family, so that left her no one to turn to. Predictably, she eventually sought companionship outside of her marriage.
There had been four other men in her life, she told us now, not three. None of them of any real significance except for Lawton. The first affair happened in her eleventh year of marriage. The brief reunion with Ken Harris, a lover from her college days, was a failed attempt to recapture something from a past she usually kept hidden. The second affair, the one missing from Detective Smith’s report, was a meaningless fling with Martin Young, a long-time colleague of Max. Had she chosen to stay on that path, there could have been many, many more, as Max’s business associates were both plentiful and willing. But except for Martin and Garrett Bryson, she had rebuffed their advances. It greatly surprised her that Max had become enraged when she revealed during an angry confrontation that she had slept with Martin. His double standard aside, she interpreted Max’s heated show of emotion as a sign that he still loved her.
But soon an awkward distance began to develop between them. As amazing as it sounded, he treated her as if she had violated him. They continued to share occasional intimate moments, but Max was becoming more and more aloof and uncaring.
In time, they argued more than they got along, usually about his being away so much and Tina’s suspicions about him sleeping around. Even though she knew it was a lie, he continued to insist that she was just paranoid. Tina began occupying her time with philanthropic activities, and the more visible she became in the community, the more Max made the rounds.
That night at the Ritz-Carlton, simply by chance, Tina had spotted Max standing at the registration desk. At first, seeing him had filled her heart with excitement. She immediately assumed that he’d shown up to surprise her. But then she noticed that he wasn’t wearing his tux. She also remembered that she’d never told him where the fundraiser was being held.
Tina stopped to take a sip from her wine goblet, then realized that it was empty. This was the first time Kinga was not around to instantly refill it.
Neddy and I remained engrossed by her story, both of us perched on the edge of our seats. For me, it was like watching a movie. My mind had a clear picture of every scene.
Seeing Max in the hotel lobby and knowing that he was probably there to meet another woman had filled Tina with a rage so intense it temporarily immobilized her. As he walked off toward the elevators, she returned to the ballroom, resumed her seat at the head table, and tried to finish her bland chicken dinner. Minutes later, buoyed by anger and her second glass of brandy, she decided she had to confront him. To catch him in the act, once and for all. He would not be able to accuse her of paranoia this time. When she marched out of the ballroom, confrontation—not murder—was her only goal.
Gaining access to Max’s suite had been easy. The month before the fundraiser, she had been practically living at the hotel and made friends with two of the desk clerks as well as one of the bellmen. That night, she simply told the desk clerk that she had forgotten her room number which, of course, wasn’t written on the plastic key card. Two Montgomerys appeared on the computer screen that held the list of registered hotel guests. “Was it 420 or 502?” the clerk had asked.” Since she was in room 420, the other room had to be Max’s. It was as easy as that.
I was captivated by her story and had a dozen questions rolling around in my head. I couldn’t help myself and blurted one out. “But how’d you get into his room?”
She smiled as if that was no big deal either. Earlier in the day, the hotel manager instructed one of the bellmen to give her access to the freight elevator so that she could transport items into the ballroom. After the fourth trip, the bellman got tired of the interruptions and handed her the pass key, making her promise not to tell anyone about his flagrant violation of hotel policy. The pass key opened every room in the hotel.
As she made her way to Max’s room, her heart was beating so furiously she could hardly breathe. When the elevator doors opened onto the fifth floor, her feet refused to move and the doors began to close. Just before they did, she pressed the fifth floor button a second time and stepped off the elevator. As she entered the hallway, she noticed a used room service tray on the floor outside one of the rooms. A steak knife sitting on a plate of half-eaten food practically called out to her, she said. She scooped it up, grasping the handle with a soiled dinner napkin.
“So Oscar Lopez did see you in that hallway with a knife in your hand,” I said.
“Probably,” she replied.
I looked over at Neddy to see how she was taking all of this. I couldn’t tell a thing from her expression. It was as blank as a sheet of paper.
Instead of knocking on the door to Max’s room, she let herself in using the pass key, being careful to use the napkin to turn the door handle. Murder was not on her mind when she entered the room, she told us again. She had planned to surprise Max and his whore, threaten them with the knife, and tell him she was going to divorce him and take him for everything he owned.
When she stepped inside the room, she found no one there. She remained just inside the door, examining every inch of the suite. One of Max’s suits hanging over the back of a chair was the first thing that caught her eye. When she noticed the red teddy lying across the bed, her rage intensified.
A noise from the bathroom startled her and she assumed that Max and his mistress were in there together, naked. She tightened her grip on the knife and gathered her courage. She had not been paranoid all these years—she’d been a fool. As she tiptoed to the doorway of the bathroom, she braced herself for the sight of Max and his mistress in the act.
But there was no woman in the bathroom with Max. He sat alone in the tub, surrounded by candles, submerged in a pool of rose petals, a bottle of Dom Pérignon sitting on the floor. The bathroom looked like a scene from some romance movie. He was obviously waiting for his little slut to arrive.
Every Reasonable Doubt Page 33
