Guilty Wives (13 page)

“I’VE GOT SOME
bad news, Mom.” Richie entered the jail cell beneath the Palais de Justice for our nightly visit before I was transferred to some undisclosed location. He held up his iPhone. “MonteCarloMistresses.com,” he explained. “Of the four of you, you were voted only the third hottest.”

My heart did a brief flutter, the adrenaline shot at the mention of bad news, before I settled into a smile. “How did
you
vote?” I asked.

Richie kissed my cheek. “Winnie won. She was your problem. You split the Caucasian-brunette vote. Bryah took second and Serena finished last. The Amazon-blonde thing must not be in these days.”

I laughed, only because my son was trying to cheer me up and I wanted him to know that he had. But I wasn’t thrilled that he was checking out websites like that one. I had hoped to insulate him and Elena as much as possible from what was happening. That, I suppose, was a pointless exercise at this stage. By various accounts, there were as many as five websites and six Facebook pages devoted exclusively to the four of us, the deadly-but-lovely assassins of the French president. At least two books were being written. Last week, on CNN International, I watched Larry King interview a former college roommate of mine who said I always had a rebellious streak but it was hard to imagine that I would kill someone. Score one for me, I guess.

Elena, looking like the young schoolgirl she was in a white sweater and pleated skirt, was reading from her iPhone as well. A frown covered her face and she didn’t respond when I asked her what she was reading. These kids, with their electronic toys. The Internet was all well and good, but I didn’t need to access it 24-7.

“Let me see.” I took her iPhone to read it. It was a blog from a
New York Times
reporter named Joseph Morro, who was covering the trial. I knew Morro because he’d repeatedly tried to interview me. “Mr. Ogletree’s testimony was devastating, in particular to the American, Abbie Elliot,” he wrote. “With his testimony that she wanted to ‘make a sex tape starring Henri Devereux,’ he showed her to be a schemer with a motive, as well as a liar.”

Wonderful. Great. But it was hardly the first time I’d read something to that effect, and anyway, I didn’t want to poison what little time I had with my kids with this negativity. I put her iPhone down on the bench in the cell and extended my arms. “Enough of the high-tech gadgetry,” I said. “Your mom wants a hug.”

We came together and held each other for a long time. I took in the warmth of her body, the smell of her shampoo, the indescribable feel of a child’s embrace. These were the truest moments, and therefore the cruelest. I felt Elena’s tears on my own cheek. How quickly we could roller-coaster from levity to despair.

“This is so unfair, Mom,” Elena managed with a shaky voice.

It wasn’t fair, not even close to fair, for these wonderful kids. I could only imagine what it was like for them at school, as they watched television, as they read media accounts such as the Morro blog, as they lay in their beds at night, visited by their darkest fears. But I couldn’t speak without losing all composure, and I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do that to them right now. They needed my strength more than I needed theirs.

“We’ll figure this out,” I whispered, the most I could muster. I didn’t know if it gave them any comfort.

And I didn’t know if it was true. But the truth was out there somewhere. Some piece of evidence had to materialize, right? Sooner or later the dam
had
to break, didn’t it?

“COLONEL BERNARD DURAND
of the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence,” said the next witness. Durand was Major Rouen’s partner—Square Jaw. He had been the intimidator, a role that came naturally to him. Even dressed in his courtroom best, he looked like a thug. He had a rough complexion that suggested a childhood illness or hard living or both, narrow eyes that emitted a cold glare, a military crew cut, and a thick neck. I knew firsthand that he was not a guy you wanted on the opposite side of a confrontation.

“The women had grown desperate,” said Durand. “Winnie Brookes was facing the end of her affair with the president and an obviously unhappy marriage. Abbie Elliot, her closest friend and neighbor, was also in an unhappy marriage, as she admitted, and as her husband admitted during the investigation. And, like Ms. Brookes, Ms. Elliot lacked independent wealth. For both Ms. Brookes and Ms. Elliot, leaving their husbands would lead to financial hardship. Thus the need for blackmail money.

“Serena Schofield acknowledged an unhappy marriage as well. And though she is wealthy, she and her husband, Simon, have a prenuptial agreement that would limit her to one million dollars in the event of a divorce. One million American dollars would be significant to most of us, but not to someone who is married to a man worth more than six hundred million dollars, like Simon Schofield.”

The presiding judge, for the record, referenced all the pages in the dossier that chronicled the interviews with each of us and our husbands. In the years I’d known her, Serena had never mentioned that she’d signed a prenup with Simon.

“The blackmail attempt obviously did not work,” Durand continued. “Winnie Brookes confronted the president with the video recording as he and Captain Cousineau were leaving. She shot the men in the Bentley convertible. Presumably, she did so because the president did not respond to the blackmail attempt to her satisfaction.”

“There are no living witnesses to the shooting,” said the presiding judge.

“That’s correct, other than Ms. Brookes, who has denied these facts.”

“Yes, yes.” The presiding judge’s eyes crept toward the defense cage. “Colonel, you can say with certainty that it was Winnie Brookes who shot the deceased?”

“Yes, we can, Mr. President. First, we can say so because of the statements signed by Bryah Gordon and Serena Schofield. They each swore that Winnie Brookes confessed to the murders when she returned to the yacht.”

“These are statements that Ms. Gordon and Ms. Schofield have since disavowed?”

Durand seemed amused. “Once they retained attorneys, Mr. President. Yes, at that point, they decided that they no longer wished to stand by those statements. But I can assure you that they were very clear with me at the time they signed them.”

The judge waved a hand, as if there were no need to elaborate, as if he fully agreed with Durand’s take on the matter. “In any event, Colonel, even if we disregarded the signed, sworn statements, you have other proof that Ms. Brookes shot the men?”

“Yes, Mr. President. We tested each of the women for the presence of gunshot residue when they were taken into custody.”

“And?”

“Ms. Brookes’s right forearm tested positive for the presence of gunshot residue.” Durand nodded. “Mr. President, there is no doubt that Winnie Brookes is the one who fired the weapon that night.”

PICTURE FOUR WOMEN
on vacation, strolling into the lobby of a gorgeous hotel in their sundresses, holding glasses of Champagne and full of anticipation for a four-day weekend in Monte Carlo. At the reception desk, the well-groomed hotel clerk says something to the tall blond woman and the other three women react, making faces and raising mock complaints to the blonde.

This was a scene everyone in the courtroom was watching on a large projection screen, courtesy of a digital surveillance tape from the Hôtel Métropole made on the day we arrived. I remembered the moment captured there; the receptionist had mentioned Simon’s name because he’d booked the suite for Serena, and we’d all recoiled at the mention of Simon, one of our husbands, on a trip that was supposed to be about everything
but
our husbands. Well, we’d certainly managed to make it about something else, hadn’t we?

“This was twenty hundred and forty hours,” said Colonel Durand, gesturing to the screen. “This was the moment on seventeen June when the four accused arrived at the hotel.”

He meant 8:40 p.m., near dusk, which jibed with my memory. Durand pointed to a stack of small black boxes that were contained in the glass evidence case. “Mr. President, we reviewed surveillance tapes for the entire week surrounding the morning of nineteen June, the day that the bodies of President Devereux and Captain Cousineau were discovered. As you can see, we were able to clearly see whenever hotel staff created a new key card for guests to enter their rooms.”

“And tell us what your review showed,” said the presiding judge.

“We identified every single person on the surveillance tapes who received a key card during that one-week time period. We were then able to interview guests at the hotel from that time period as well, to match names to those faces.”

“And what did your investigation yield?”

“Mr. President,” said Durand, “from the moment the four accused arrived at the Hôtel Métropole until the discovery of the bodies, nobody but these four women received key cards to their suite, the Carré d’Or.”

“Is it possible, Colonel, that one of the four women misplaced her key card and someone else picked it up and used it?”

“No, Mr. President. Each of the accused, when arrested, was in possession of her key card.”

“Very good, Colonel. And did you conduct any further investigation?”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Durand drank from his water glass. “We considered other claims the women argued during the investigation: that someone might have bribed hotel staff for a key card, so he wouldn’t have to walk up to the front desk and be caught on camera; or that one of the hotel staff broke in.”

The presiding judge turned to a page in the dossier and referenced it for the record. “Proceed, Colonel.”

“Mr. President, as the dossier indicates, the Hôtel Métropole interviewed each member of its staff in my presence. We focused most particularly on staff members who entered that suite during the time period for turndown service or cleaning. But every single staff member was thoroughly investigated. Each one submitted to a lie-detector test. And everyone passed the test. We are confident that no staff member, either intentionally or accidentally, permitted anyone other than those four women to enter their suite, and that those employees who did enter the suite committed no wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“So let us be clear.” The presiding judge closed the dossier and paused a moment. “During the investigation, the accused claimed that physical evidence found at the scene of the murders was planted.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That hair follicles found in the car must have been taken from their hairbrushes in their hotel suite and placed at the scene of the crime.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That mucus belonging to Ms. Brookes was taken from a used tissue found in the hotel suite. That Ms. Elliot’s cerumen—earwax—came from a cotton swab in the hotel room. That the blood droplet belonging to Ms. Schofield was taken from the hotel suite. You are aware of these claims.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And to those claims you would say?”

Durand nodded triumphantly. “Mr. President, I can say with utmost certainty that nobody received a key card to the Carré d’Or suite other than those four women. And no staff member from the hotel allowed anyone else into that suite during that time period.

“Mr. President,” he concluded, “there is no way anyone else entered that room to steal evidence and plant it at the murder scene. The defense’s claims are more than just absurd. They are impossible.”

I SPENT THE NIGHT
in a local jail on the south end of Paris. As always, I was assigned my own cell for security reasons, which meant I had the overflowing toilet and cockroaches all to myself. They didn’t have a mattress, but they scrounged up some blankets and laid them along the bench for me to sleep on.

The cops at the jail were passing around a French magazine called
Bruit
that, on its laminated cover, claimed to contain exclusive sexy photos of Winnie Brookes, who had briefly aspired to modeling back in her early twenties. Some British photographer realized that he had shot these pics of Winnie years ago and, not wanting to miss out on the ravenous frenzy for anything related to the Monte Carlo Mistresses, had sold them to the highest bidder. Winnie hadn’t posed nude, but she got as close as she possibly could—mostly bra-and-panties shots, including a few with another scantily clad female model, which were immediately identified by the Neanderthal cops as their favorites.

“Thanks, I’m good on photos of my friends in their undies for now,” I said to whomever was approaching my cell door. I was lying flat on my poor excuse for a bed, staring up at the ceiling, and not very interested in seeing another picture of Winnie.

“I don’t have any photos of your friends in undies. But I’d be willing to take some.”

I lifted my head enough to make out a man in a leather jacket and jeans, with an unshaven face and long red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“I’ve seen you in court,” I said.

“Joe Morro,” he said.
“
New York Times
.”

I put my head back down. “The blog. The guy who used to call me all the time.”

“Right.”

“The guy who trashed me in last night’s edition. ‘A schemer and a liar,’ I think you said. My daughter read that.”

“Maybe we can help each other.”

“How’s that? You going to break me out of here? Confess to the murders? Those things would help me out.”

He laughed. “Give me exclusive access to you. Talk to me, on and off the record. And I’ll be a resource for you.”

I rolled my head over toward him. “How did you get in here?”

He laughed. “I know, I know. Security’s tight. One of these cops is my friend. I wrote an article about his sister once. But don’t worry, they gave me a full-body search before they let me pass. I’m no threat to you.”

“Last I heard, the pen is mightier than the sword.”

He liked that. “How do you prove a frame-up?” he asked. “That central intelligence guy Durand—he says nobody else had a key card to the hotel suite. So how does anyone get your hair and mucus and all that stuff? Plus who even knew President Devereux was going to be in Monte Carlo? He was traveling incognito. An advance plan or frame-up is a tough sell, Abbie.”

“So now you’re going to tell me how much my case sucks?” I moaned. “Joe, I’m tired and I need sleep. If I can think of something I need, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I think you’re innocent,” he said.

That line, I had to admit, got my attention. I wasn’t hearing a lot of that these days. I looked at him again. “Don’t say something like that unless you mean it.”

“I mean it. I think Winnie did it, personally. She was on a pretty self-destructive path, don’t you think? I think the rest of you are getting screwed. She shot him and then came back onto the yacht and dumped the whole thing on the rest of you guys.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Okay, maybe not that exactly. But I’d bet my journalism degree that Winnie Brookes is the killer. And I’d also bet my degree that you aren’t sure whether I’m right or wrong.”

I didn’t answer. He was trying to goad me. It was working.

“I can help you,” he repeated. “I can be very resourceful when I need to be.”

“So you claim,” I said.

“I found you here, didn’t I? At your undisclosed location?”

He dropped his business card inside my cell.

“Call me,” he said.