Defense for the Devil (25 page)

“I understand that you have a great number of admirers, Ms. Holloway. I confess that against my will and my determination not to be drawn into their circle, I have found myself joining them. I found myself helpless to resist admiring and, yes, appreciating your cleverness and dedication in pursuing the interests of your former client. I trust you wouldn’t now nullify all the very fine work you’ve done or jeopardize her future enjoyment of her new wealth through any indiscretion, however minor it might appear.” He sounded pleasant, musing aloud as he went on. “I didn’t order the world we find ourselves in. I never would have made it such a dangerous world for the indiscreet.”

“I can assure you, I am very discreet,” she said coolly. “Now, if there’s nothing else on your mind, I have to go. I have work to do. Good-bye, Mr. Palmer.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’re through yet, Ms. Holloway,” he said, sounding almost lazy. “Let me talk to Trassi.”

She handed over the phone and picked up her wine. Trassi said, “Yes.” After a moment he said it again, then hung up. Without another word he rose and left the table, walked out through the lounge.

“Good wine,” Barbara said. “Good music, too.” She was glad Frank couldn’t see how clammy her palms were; she hoped he didn’t notice that her hands were trembling.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Frank said.

It was very late when Barbara went to bed that night. The last thing she did was look in on Alan Macagno, who was reading a book in the other apartment, John’s apartment. When Bailey said Alan would be staying over for the next few nights, John had said dubiously that he supposed someone could sleep in the extra bedroom on his side. “He isn’t being paid to sleep,” Bailey had said. And
Alan hadn’t looked a bit sleepy at two-thirty; he had looked like a college kid cramming for an exam. He would prowl around a little now and then, he had warned Barbara, but he’d try to be quiet about it.

For the duration of the trial Shelley was staying at Bill Spassero’s townhouse, where security was okay, Bailey had said after looking it over. And every morning a driver would pick up Frank and Shelley, then come to collect Barbara and take them all to court together.

She was unable to account for the way she barely had time to close her eyes before the alarm went off, and how she dragged through the morning routine of shower and breakfast, only to come wide awake instantly when court convened. Another one of Pavlov’s dogs, she thought, disgusted; bell rings, saliva flows, except in her case it was adrenaline.

Roxbury called his witness, and they began.

Winnie York was a young woman, handsome without being pretty, sensibly dressed in a navy wool skirt with a pale blue cardigan, low heels, her only jewelry a single strand of cloisonne beads.

Roxbury led her through the preliminaries quickly: she was thirty-four, had been born in Newport, and had lived there until she was about sixteen, and she had known all the Arnos and the Folsums. Now she was employed as a sales representative for a publishing company; her territory was the Northwest. She had been transferred to Portland in the spring this year, after working in California for a number of years.

“Please tell the jury what happened last May,” Roxbury said. He was being very pleasant to this witness, not rushing her, not pressing.

“Yes,” she said. “During a regional book fair here in Eugene, one of the girls I had known as a child suggested we get together for dinner with a couple more old friends. We did that, and went to a micro brewery pub. I hadn’t been back to the coast or heard from any of them for nearly twenty years, and they talked about who married whom, children, divorces, gossipy things like that. One of them mentioned Maggie Folsum, and I asked if she had had the baby and if it had been a girl. Maggie had been pregnant when I left. They told me about Maggie and Mitch, and how Ray had beaten him up, and that whole story. I hadn’t known any of it. I said that it was a wonder Ray hadn’t killed Mitch then, that if he had known about Mitch and Lorinne, he probably would have killed him.” She gave her testimony in a steady, uninflected way, as if she had rehearsed it until all the emotion had been wrung out of the words. She kept her gaze on Roxbury throughout.

“What happened next?”

“Sue grabbed my arm and shook her head. A man and a woman had come out of the next booth and walked past us. When they were gone, Sue said that was Ray and Lorinne. I hadn’t recognized either of them.”

“Did they hear your conversation?”

Barbara objected, and it was sustained. He rephrased the question.

“At the time did you believe they had heard your conversation?”

“Yes. We were not speaking in whispers; we might have been a little loud at times, recounting the past.”

“Ms. York,” Roxbury said then, his voice dropping to an almost confidential level, “exactly what did you mean by what you said, that if he had known about Mitch and Lorinne, he might have killed Mitch?”

For the first time she hesitated, and her voice was less steady when she answered, “I meant that Mitch had slept with Lorinne several times.”

“How did you know that?” Roxbury asked softly. “Mitch told me.”

Roxbury nodded to Barbara with a smug expression. “Your witness.”

At first Ray Arno had gone very still when Winnie York was testifying, then he had started scribbling notes. Barbara glanced at them and nodded.

“Ms. York,” she said, “let’s back up a little to the summer of 1978, the summer that you moved away from the Oregon coast. You said you were almost sixteen? When is your birthday, Ms. York?”

“October twenty-ninth.”

“So you were fifteen that summer. Were you a friend of Maggie Folsum, in classes together?”

“No. Not really. She was older, a year ahead of me in school.”

“Were you a friend of Lorinne Talbot, now married to Ray Arno?”

She shook her head. “No. She was a lot older. I knew who she was, that’s all.”

“Eighteen years ago Newport was a much smaller community than it is today, wasn’t it?”

“Much smaller,” Winnie York said, nodding.

“And Folsum is quite a bit smaller than Newport, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“In those days, before you left, did the local residents pretty much know what was going on in one another’s lives?”

“It was a tight community,” Winnie said after a brief pause. “I doubt there were many secrets.”

One of the women on the jury nodded slightly.

“Were there places where the young people, kids in their teens, hung out together? Danced, played music, things of that sort?”

“Yes, a couple. In Newport, not in Folsum.”

“Did Mitch Arno hang out with the young crowd?”

“Sometimes.” She had grown cautious now and was watching Barbara intently.

“Did he hang out after he married Maggie?”

Winnie hesitated, then said, “Sometimes.”

“Can you tell us exactly when and where Mitch made his comments about Lorinne?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, we know from testimony that he left the area early in May that year, so it must have been before that. Is that right?”

“I guess so.”

“All right. Were other people present who heard him?”

“I… No. Just me.”

“Were you a good friend of his?”

“He just liked to talk to me.”

“Do you know how old Mitch Arno was that spring?”

Roxbury objected on the grounds of irrelevance.

“But it’s relevant,” Barbara said. “If Mitch Arno was making claims of conquest, we have a right to know something about the circumstances.”

“Overruled,” Judge Waldman said.

“Do you know how old he was?” Barbara asked again.

“Twenty-two,” Winnie said in a low voice.

“And you had become his confidante when you were fifteen? Is that what you’re telling us?”

“I… He said there weren’t many people he could really talk to, and he liked to talk with me.”

Barbara nodded and went to stand by her table. “Did the two of you leave the group and go off to talk alone?”

“Sometimes,” Winnie said in a very low voice.

“Do you recall now what led up to his comment about Lorinne?”

“Yes. I said I wouldn’t see him alone because he was a married man with a pregnant wife. He said the marriage was a big joke; as soon as the baby was born, it would end. He said Ray told him he’d beat the crap out of him if he didn’t do right by Maggie, and he laughed and said if Ray knew about him and Lorinne, the times they had gone to bed together, he might try to make him marry her, too, and turn him into a bigamist.”

“Did Mitch say he loved you?”

She looked startled, then ducked her head and gazed at the table before her. “Yes, he did.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you he was going away?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say he wanted to take you with him?” It was a long shot into a very dark place, but she asked it and didn’t hold her breath for fear someone would notice.

“Yes,” Winnie said in a near whisper.

“Did Mitch Arno seduce you when you were a fifteen-year-old girl and he was twenty-two?”

Winnie hesitated and Roxbury yelled an objection. Before Judge Waldman could respond, Barbara said quietly, “I withdraw the question.”

Instead, she asked, “Did he borrow money from you?”

“Yes.”

“And did he pay you back?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“After Mitch left in early May, did he get in touch with you at any time?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you good-bye?”

“No.”

“Did he lie to you?”

“He lied.”

“All right. Last May, when you met your friends at the brew pub, did the conversation continue after Ray and Lorinne left the restaurant?”

“Yes, for a long time.”

“Did anyone refute what you had said about Mitch and Lorinne?”

She nodded. “They all did. They said people would have known, but besides that, she was too old for him. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen when she left to go to college, and she never was back much after that.” She stopped, but looked as if there had been more, and Barbara waited for her to continue. “They said he just liked young girls, very young girls.”

“Was his nickname brought up?” Barbara asked when Winnie stopped again.

“Yes,” she said faintly. “They used to call him Mitch the Cherry Picker.”

“Thank you,” Barbara said. “No further questions.”

After a brief recess, Roxbury called the next witness: Judith Ludlum. She was seventy, bent with osteoporosis, and she had sharp features, a long bony nose, sharply pointed chin, frail-looking wrists and fingers. Her hair was gray, in a frizzy perm; she wore bifocals.

She stated that she lived in Corvallis, where she owned and managed an apartment building, two quads for college girls. Her voice was high-pitched and wavery.

“Do you recall a time when Lorinne Talbot lived in one of the quads?” Roxbury asked.

“Yes, back in the seventies, seventy-seven and seventy-eight. Two years.”

“Is there a particular reason for you to recall her?”

“Yes, there is. I thought she would be a steadying influence on the younger girls. She already had some degrees and she was going to Monmouth to get her teaching certification. She must have been about twenty-eight then. The others were all real young, hardly old enough to be away from home.”

“Was she a steadying influence?”

“For a while I thought so, but then I changed my mind.”

“Why was that?”

“Well, she got engaged, you know, and they were out all hours, her and Ray Arno. Then she took off with his brother Mitch for a weekend or two. I changed my mind, all right.”

“Tell us about when she took off with his brother Mitch,” Roxbury said softly, glancing at the jury as if to make certain they were listening.

“Well, I live downstairs in the building, and the quads are on the second and third floors. All women, no men allowed except in the front room. This was on a Friday, in early April; I was out front weeding in the daffodils when a man drove up, and he began to blow the horn. I don’t allow that. If they come for a girl, they can go in the front room like civilized people. I was just starting to go over and tell him to stop. I thought at first it was Ray, but it wasn’t. I heard Lorinne yell out the window at him. Mitch, she called him, and she told him she was coming. Then I heard her tell one of the other girls she’d be back Sunday night, and she came out with her suitcase and got in the car. He leaned over and kissed her, and they took off.”

“That was on a Friday afternoon?”

“Yes, before dark; I was still out weeding.”

“Did you see her come home on Sunday?”

“Yes. I heard the car stop out front, and I looked out just to see if someone was about to come in. It was late, after ten, and they were in the car kissing and hugging. Half an hour or longer. Then she came in all smiling. And he took off.”

Roxbury nodded gravely. “I see. You said she went with him more than once. Can you recall another time?”

“Yes. A few weeks after that. She put a lot of camping stuff in her own car that afternoon, and he called her on the telephone. One of the girls told her it was Mitch on the phone, and she came down to talk to him. She said she would meet him as soon as she got off work. She didn’t come home that time until Sunday late.”

“You didn’t see them together that time?”

“No. I just heard her ask him where he was, and she said she knew where it was, and would be by as soon as she got off work at nine. I thought at the time that was a pretty late hour to be meeting someone, but I didn’t say anything to her.”

“Did you overhear anything else she said to him?”

“Yes.” Her lips tightened until they nearly disappeared. “She said, ‘Don’t tell Ray anything.’ I thought maybe she was fixing to break off with Mitch and was afraid he might tell his brother about them and their meetings.”

Roxbury finished with her soon after that, and Barbara stood up. “Ms. Ludlum, you said at first you thought it was Ray Arno blowing his horn that afternoon, then you saw that it wasn’t. What made you change your mind?”