Lovers and Takers (36 page)

“Veronica, this is Lucy Kentucky and Harvey Weimann,” he said.

The two attorneys stood up.
 

“Oh,” Roni said, extending her hand.
 
“No introductions needed.
 
Nice to meet both of you.
 
It’s an honor.”

They all shook hands.
 

“And this is Kara,” Jake added, “Roni’s cousin and my son’s good friend.”

“Hello, Kara,” both attorneys said.
 

Dena looked at the younger woman.
 
“You’re a friend of Aubrey’s?” she asked Kara.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kara said.

“And this is Dena Varnadore, Kara,” Jake reluctantly added.
 
“She’s Aubrey’s mother.”

Aubrey’s mother?
 
Kara asked.
 
She thought Aubrey hated his mother.
 
“Hi,” she said to the woman.

“Sit down, please,” Jake said.
 
Kara hurried to Pam and hugged her, sitting in the seat Jake had vacated.
 

“You can sit over there, babe,” Jake said to Roni, effectively giving Harvey’s seat to her.
 
They had quickly run out of seats, so Hudson just as quickly retrieved two from the library.
 
He sat one beside Roni, which Jake took, and one beside Lucy, which Harvey sat in.

“I’m afraid we may need to work out the logistics here,” Harvey said with a smile.
 
“We need to make clear who will be the lead attorney and who will sit second chair, etcetera.”

 
Jake looked at Roni.
 
“You said you found something out?”

“Right,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s video of the altercation between Aubrey and Troy,” Roni said.

“Video?”
Pam said as if she’d just been knocked over by a truck.
 
“Of Aubrey killing Troy?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean to imply that,” Roni said.

“Then what are you implying?” Dena wanted to know. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, too.”

Roni looked at Jake.
 
“Kara foolishly had some cameras placed around Aubrey’s apartment.”

“Cameras?”
Dena asked.
 
“Why would she place cameras around my son’s apartment?”

“It was Druce’s idea,” Kara quickly pointed out.

“No, it was not!” Pam just as quickly interjected.
 
“Why are you saying that?”
 
She didn’t want Druce’s name to come up at all.
 
That was the plan, and they were sticking to it.

“Go on, Roni,” Jake said.

“The cameras may show Aubrey becoming enraged with Troy after Troy attempted to kiss him.”

Jake’s heart dropped.
 
“Geez,” he said.

“You’ve got to get inside of your son’s apartment before the police, Jake,” Roni said.
 
“If the police gets in they will declare that altercation was motive for murder.”

Jake ran his hand through his hair.
 
“Geez,” he said again.

“Not a problem,” Harvey then said, and motioned to Lucy.
 

Lucy pulled a set of tiny cameras from her purse and tossed them on the coffee table.
 
Everybody looked at those cameras.

“Any attorney worth their salt,” Harvey pointed out, “will always send investigators to their client’s home as soon as they get the case.”

Roni looked embarrassed.
 
Dena looked elated.
 

“Didn’t I tell you she didn’t know what she was doing?” she said to her ex-husband.
 
“Now do you believe me???”

“Hudson!” Jake yelled out and, almost immediately, his trusted butler came hurrying out.

“Yes, sir?”

Jake reached for one of the cameras, but Lucy corrected him.
 
“This is the one with the actual video, sir,” she said, removing the tape from the camera.

“Play this,” Jake said to Hudson as he retrieved the tape from Lucy and handed it over.

Hudson hurried to the wall-sized entertainment system and popped in the tape.

“What is this supposed to show?” Pam wanted to know.

“It shows your brother in an altercation with the decedent.” Lucy said.

“With who?”
Pam asked.

“Troy Brackston,” Roni said.

“May I have the remote, please?” Harvey asked Hudson.
 
Hudson looked at Jake.

“It’s a long tape,” Harvey explained.
 
“I happen to know where the action begins.”

Jake nodded, and Hudson handed the remote to Harvey.

Once Harvey fast-forwarded on and on, he finally found action.
 
Aubrey was opening the door.
 
Jake and Roni were on the edge of their seats as they watched Troy mention that Druce told him to bring those papers over for his signature.
 
Then, as Aubrey turned toward Troy, the kiss took place.
 
Then the knock down.

But Troy got up talking, and it was all about how Druce had set the whole thing up.

“He’s lying,” Pam said, but Dena shushed her.

Troy talked about Druce’s hatred of Aubrey, and how he wanted Aubrey’s job.
 
“He said you told him you wanted to be with me!
 
He hates you, Mr. Varnadore.
 
He wants to be second in command.
 
He wants your position.
 
He hates you!”

“Just leave,” Aubrey said to Troy.

“He wants to marry the daughter and take over the whole company when your old man dies, which Druce will try to make happen sooner rather than later.”

“That’s a lie!” Pam screamed as Aubrey, disgusted, slammed the door in Troy’s face.
 
“That is such a lie!
 
Druce said he lied on him.
 
He was lying, Daddy!”

But when the tape stopped, Jake wasn’t at all convinced that Troy was lying at all.
 
And neither was Roni.

“I don’t know if that was true, Pam, but Druce is a problem,” she said.

Kara and Pam both looked at Roni, and then everybody else did, too.

“What kind of problem?” Dena asked her.

“Don’t ask her that!” Pam said.
 
“I told y’all it’s not true, why are you asking her about something that’s not true?
 
Druce has nothing to do with this!
 
Troy was his assistant, that’s all.”

“That’s not all, Pam,” Roni hated to say.
 
And then she pulled out her own set of tapes.

“What are those?” Jake asked as she tossed them onto the table.

“An attorney worth their salt,” she said, purposely echoing Harvey Weimann, “always go back to the scene of crime, and see what she can see.
 
With the help of my investigators, who went with me, we were able to recover these.”

Hudson, pleased that Roni was showing up the arrogant lawyers, hurried to the table.
 
“Which one should I play first, Miss Wingate?” he asked her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Roni said sadly, looking at Pam. “They’re all the same.”

Hudson took a tape, popped it in, and they all watched.
 
And if there was any doubt about Druce’s veracity before, it was swiftly gone now.
 
Troy was naked in
bed,
his ass in the air, and Druce, naked too, was pounding it.
 

As soon as Pam saw it, she nearly lost it.

“No!!!” she screamed, and Jake ran to her.
 
Kara tried to comfort her, but he moved her out of the way and pulled his daughter into his arms.
 

“No,” Pam was still crying as he held her.

“Turn it off,” Jake said, his face buried in her hair.
 
“Turn that filth off!”

And Hudson did, as even he was floored.
 
Dena even seemed caught off guard, as she rubbed her daughter’s back.

“He said Troy was lying on him,” Pam said, her face buried in her father’s arms.

“I know, baby,” Jake said, comforting her.

“And I believed him, Daddy.
 
I believed everything Druce said to me.”

“It’s all right, darling.
 
It’s all right.”

“I believed him.
 
That’s why I called Aubrey, because I believed Druce.
 
He said they would give him the death penalty if I didn’t say it was me.”

Jake stopped rubbing his daughter’s hair, Dena stopped rubbing her back, and all manner of motion ceased in that room.
 
Everybody, even Hudson, was staring at Pam.

Jake moved his daughter back so that he could see her teary-eyed face.
 
“Druce was there the night Troy was killed?”
 
He asked her the question they all wanted to ask.

Pam looked at her father, and then reluctantly nodded her head.

Kara covered her mouth with shock.
 
Dena moved up to the edge of her seat.
 
Roni immediately reached into her purse, and pressed on the recorder she always carried with her.

“What are you saying, baby?” Dena asked her daughter.
 
“Aubrey didn’t kill that man?”

Pam shook her head.
 
“No, ma’am,” she said.

“Was it Druce?” Roni asked her to clarify the record.
 
“Did Druce Lincoln kill Troy Brackston, Pam?”

Tears began to drop from Pam’s big eyes.
 
She nodded her head.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“We went over to Troy’s apartment to talk to him.
 
Druce said he had told a pack of lies on him, and if we could get him to see reason, he might confess and tell the truth.
 
So we went over there.
 
Just to get him to tell the truth, that’s all I thought we were doing.
 
But Druce became so angry so quickly.
 
And Troy was so scared of him.”

Pam hesitated, as the memories flooded back.

“Go on, Pam,” Roni said.
 
She couldn’t shut down now.
 
For Aubrey’s sake, she had to tell the truth now.

And Pam continued to tell it.
 
“I told Druce he had to settle down.
 
I told him we wouldn’t get anywhere if he didn’t settle down.
 
So he told me to go into the kitchen and get him a drink.
 
He said he needed a drink.
 
And I went and got it.
 
When I came back into the living room, he had already done it.”

Roni stared at her.
 
“Who already did what, Pam?” she asked, needing the specificity.

“Druce had already slit Troy’s throat,” she said agonizingly.

“Druce
killed
 
him
?” Jake asked. “Aubrey wasn’t even there?”

“No, Daddy, he wasn’t even there.
 
Druce told me if I didn’t say I killed Troy, they’d give him the death penalty.
 
They wouldn’t believe it was self-defense, he said.
 
But they would believe me.
 
So he cleaned his fingerprints off of the knife, and told me to call 911 after he left.
 
He knew his prints would be all over Troy’s house, since he’d been there before, but he would admit that.
 
Troy was his assistant and went to his house many times.
 
So he didn’t try to clean up the whole place, he just had to get his fingerprints off of that knife, and put mine and Troy’s on the knife.
 
So he did.
 
And then he left.”

Another tense pause.
 

“But I was too shaken and scared to call 911.
 
I called Aubrey instead.
 
And told him on the phone that I had killed Troy Brackston.
He told me not to call anybody, and that he was on his way.
 
When he got there, he told me to say I was never there.
 
He cleared the prints off of the knife, and put his prints and Troy’s prints on the knife.
 
Then he made me take his car and go home.
 
Then he called 911.”

Everybody in the room was stunned.
 
Especially Dena, who had a
new
found respect for her son.
 
The idea that he would take the fall for his sister.
 
He understood Pam taking the fall for Druce.
 
That was what lovers did, and she understood that kind of love.
 
But to take the fall for his sister?
 
That was something entirely new to Dena.

Jake, however, was too elated to care what Dena thought.
 
He looked at Pam.
 
“Are you willing, sweetheart, to tell the prosecutor what you just told us?”