Sleight of Hand (27 page)

When it was over, Judge Wells called for the afternoon recess. Barbara left the defense table to walk in the corridor for a minute or two, and the reporter caught up to her. "Ms. Holloway, are those videos for sale? We'd like to buy one or both, play excerpts on the evening news maybe."

Smiling, she shook her head. "Later. Ask Wally himself later, after this is all over.

You saw the announcement at the end of the training video, available only to authorized law enforcement people."

"The guy puts on a good show," he said.

She smiled again. "You bet he does." She returned to her table to pick out the best of the many letters of appreciation. She got right to them when court resumed.

"Mr. Lederer, do you recognize this letter?" she asked, handing him the first one. He identified it. It was from the chief of police in Tucson. She asked the judge for permission to have it read, after passing it to him and then to Dodgson, who made his objection known. Judge Wells beckoned them forward.

"Ms. Holloway you may have your client identify all the letters, and have them admitted as defense exhibits. But then limit the reading to the four you consider representative. As you stated, they are very repetitious. Overruled, Mr. Dodgson."

One by one Wally identified the letters and then Frank stood up to read four of them. They all expressed appreciation and went on to order the training video. In various ways the letters all said the video would be a valuable training tool.

When that was done, Barbara asked, "Mr. Lederer, if you planned to make a longer training video, what was the purpose of the one we just saw?"

"Just to demonstrate that no one is immune, including the police. To give an idea of what kind of training might be helpful, a few of the tricks to be on the watch for. In the video you just played, no one knew ahead of time what I was going to do, but I couldn't very well go out and pick the pockets of unsuspecting strangers. I had to use actors for the training video." For the first time since he had taken the stand he smiled broadly, the same smile he had used in the videos, and he added, "I might have been arrested, picking the pocket of an innocent bystander."

"Did the actors know beforehand what you were going to do?"

He shook his head. "I never told them. I just told them to go somewhere, like a subway or a street corner, and mingle, and pay no attention to me or the camera.

After I did my thing, we would meet somewhere else and I'd give back whatever I had taken, and that was that. I never warned them what to expect. I had to use a lot of different actors," he added.

"Was your cameraman paid?" He said yes.

"In the video we just saw you say the training video is available at the cost of handling and mailing. Do you include the salaries of the actors and the cameraman in those costs?"

He shifted a little, then said no. "I didn't know how many I'd sell," he explained, "or even if I'd ever sell any. I wasn't sure how to include their costs, prorate them I guess, so I just didn't include them."

"The dates of those letters indicate that you have been putting on the exhibitions for about twenty years. How many a year do you usually do?" He said three or four.

"And how many of the videos have you actually sold?"

"I think it's around three to four hundred by now. I'm not real sure. I don't handle them myself."

"Do you charge for the exhibitions?"

He shook his head. "They pay my expenses, a hotel room, like that."

"So your work with the training film, the exhibitions are all in the nature of a public service, donations of time and skill for the public interest. Is that correct?"

Wally looked uncomfortable. "I never thought about it that way. It just seemed like something I should do because I could and no one else was doing the same thing."

She nodded. "All right. You and your wife were traveling a lot, putting on the exhibitions, performing in Las Vegas or Atlantic City or other places, then what happened?"

"I think we just got a tired of it...."

It was four-thirty, and Barbara didn't want to get back to the reality of a missing boat and murder that day Instead, she led him into talking about the old house they had found and how they had gone about making it livable. Wally was a superb witness.

He grasped instantly what she was getting at, and he was voluble as he described the old house, what it needed and how they had worked on it.

At nearly five she asked why they had gone to the coast in April.

"The paint smell," he said. "It was getting to us. On clear days I'd go out and work on the blackberry jungle, but just sleeping with those fumes was too much. We decided to go breathe some fresh sea air and let the house get some air. We wanted to check out some of the places we had loved as kids. Agate Beach, the Devil's Churn, the toffee pulling machine at old Nye Beach. We wanted to see if it was still there."

At that point Judge Wells tapped his gavel and said court would recess for the day.

Chapter 36

Barbara woke up with a start from troubled dreams that had involved being chased by an unseen enemy, struggling up a steep mountain trail, in as much danger from falling to her death as from being caught. It was still dark in her apartment. She turned over to go back to sleep, but as the dream images faded, her closing statement surged into focus. It was hopeless, she decided minutes later, her brain was swirling with worry and new phrases to add to her statement. She got up and pulled on her robe. It was five in the morning.

A long shower helped clear her head. A pot of coffee helped more. She sat at her desk and reread her statement, then began rewriting sections of it.

She printed out two copies of the statement, one for Frank. After dinner, she would try it out on him, the best critical advisor she could imagine.

"Hang in there," she muttered to herself. "Just a few more days."

That morning Wally appeared as relaxed as ever, and Meg looked exhausted.

Sleeping as little as she was, Barbara suspected, and repeated her own advice, this time to Meg. "Hang in there. Just a few more days." Meg managed a weak smile and nodded.

A few minutes later, with Wally on the stand again, Barbara began.

"After you revisited the places you remembered, you ended up in Florence for the night. Is that correct?" He said yes, and she asked, "Why did you go to the casino?"

"I wanted to check it out. I thought if they did shows, maybe I could do my act there."

"Please tell the court what took place that night at the casino."

After he described the encounter, she asked, "Did Mr. Wilkins appear troubled, worried?"

"No. As I said, at first he didn't remember us. He looked and acted okay, a little stiff at first, then he got friendlier." Wally said he and Meg had spent the next day down around the dunes, and returned home Sunday evening.

"Please tell the court about your visit to Jay Wilkins's home on Monday," Barbara said.

When he got to the scene at the display case, Barbara stopped him. "I have the state's schematic of the room," she said. "And a transparency we can mark. Mr.

Lederer, please show us exactly where the three of you stood when he opened the case."

Shelley put the room drawing on an easel and placed the transparency over it. Wally left the stand to go to the easel, where Barbara handed him a marker. "Just indicate where each of you was."

"Well, we moved back out of the way so he could open the case. He was here," he drew a circle near the case. "Meg was just about here, about four feet back, maybe five feet, and I was by her. He stayed at the case while we were looking at the boat.

Then I gave it back to him and he put it down again and the three of us moved on out to the bar room."

"When he returned the boat to the case, did he close the door?"

"No. He just set it down and stepped away."

"Was the door opened wide?"

"Yes. Straight out. It's about two feet wide, out that far. He had to open it all the way to reach the boat."

After he was seated again, she asked, "While you were in the study, did you look over his desk?"

"I didn't pay any attention to it."

"Did he show you the rest of the house?"

"No. Just the entrance foyer, the study and then the bar room."

"Did he show you or tell you about his security system?"

"No."

"How did Mr. Wilkins appear? Was he relaxed, pleased to see you?"

Wally shook his head. "He didn't seem to be. I was thinking that maybe he regretted his invitation. He was nervous, a little abrupt, and he seemed preoccupied, not interested in us. He never asked us a single question all that evening."

"All right. What happened at the bar?"

"Jay went behind the counter and mixed drinks. But suddenly he began to talk about his wife. He said he was worried because she hadn't turned up at her sister's house in Virginia. I thought we had walked in on a family spat and were in the way. He went out to get her picture to show us, and kept on talking about her. She had been sick, and he was afraid she was suicidal, he said. I had never met her, and I didn't know anything about their private lives, and I began to think that we should just finish our drinks and leave. That's what we did."

"When was the last time you saw Jay Wilkins?"

"That was it. I never saw him again. We left and had some dinner and went home."

She had him recount the day the detective and the insurance agent had come to ask him questions. "Did the detective say to hand it over and they'd forget the whole thing?"

"He said that, and I told him I didn't know what they were talking about. I didn't."

"Did you hear from the insurance agent after that?"

"Yes. We read about Jay's murder in the newspaper, and a couple of days later the agent called and told me the boat had turned up in the house."

"Now, on Saturday, April 26, do you recall what you did during the day and evening?"

"Same as every day. When it wasn't raining I cut brambles. It was starting to get dark when I quit. I took off my shoes and jeans on the back porch, put on a robe and went to take a shower. We ate dinner, and we watched a movie until about ten or ten-thirty, when we went to bed."

"Did you always change your shoes and jeans on the back porch?"

"Yes. Meg made me. She said I was worse than Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail everywhere I went. Sometimes the brambles were wet and a lot of stuff stuck to them, and it fell off as they dried."

"When the detectives arrived with a search warrant did you change clothes on the back porch again?"

"Yes. They said they wanted the jeans and I took them off and handed them over."

"When did you buy those jeans, Mr. Lederer?"

"Back in March. I didn't have anything to tackle those vines in and I knew they'd tear up anything, so I went to Goodwill and got the first pair I found that fit me. Dollar and a half. I didn't care if they got ruined."

"Did you own any other denim pants?"

"No. After the police took that pair I went back to Goodwill and bought another pair just about like them."

She nodded and went to stand by the defense table, "Mr. Lederer, you said that after you were sentenced to prison your wife told you if you crossed that line again, she would leave you. Have you ever crossed that line again?"

He shook his head. "Not once. I knew she meant it. Besides, I never was tempted again, I had a way to go with my life."

"When you first started to perform, were you making a living salary?"

"It took a while, two years."

"How did you live during that time?"

"My wife was working and she supported us."

"Exactly when did you send your first contribution to Joey Washington?"

He looked uncomfortable, the way he had before when talking about it, and that was what Barbara was after. She wanted to remind the jury that his gifts had been voluntary and that he in no way was boasting about them.

"We talked about it, Meg and I, when I got my first check, and she agreed that it was the right thing to do. It wasn't much, but I knew Joey could use it."

She paused a moment, then asked, "Mr. Lederer, did you steal that gold boat?"

"No."

"Did you kill Jay Wilkins?"

"No."

"Thank you," she said. "No more questions. Your witness, counselor."

"At this time we will have our morning recess," Judge Wells said before Dodgson could get to his feet.

After the jury was gone, Barbara turned to Meg. "This is going to be hard to watch,"

she said. "Are you okay for it?"

"Harder on him," Meg whispered, motioning. Wally had left the stand and was coming toward them. Barbara doubted what she had said was true. She moved out of the way for Wally.

"Honey," he said to Meg, taking her hand, "why don't you go buy me a shirt? I'll need a clean shirt before the week's over."

"Why don't you go pluck a duck," Meg said softly.

A huge grin spread across Wally's face, and Barbara suspected a private joke was responsible. Then Frank said, "Why don't we have something to drink? I'm taking orders. Shelley, want to come help carry things?"

"Just water," Barbara said. "I'll go wash my hands." She walked by Stephanie Breaux, once again seated in the back row, and her slight nod was not acknowledged. Stephanie did not move. She had lost weight, a few more pounds and she would start looking gaunt. She appeared not to have moved a muscle when Barbara returned.

When they resumed, Dodgson was more than ready. "Mr. Lederer, when you and Jay Wilkins were both boys, weren't you a bit envious of him? The boss's son, privileged and favored, with his path smoothed out by his father?"

"No," Wally said.

"You mean it didn't bother you that he had a car and you didn't? That he had better hours than you did? That he could take off when he chose?"

Barbara objected. "Multiple questions are difficult to answer. Heaping question on question is improper cross-examination."

"Sustained," Judge Wells said.

Dodgson asked the same questions, individually, and each time Wally said no.

"Didn't it bother you that you had to clean the bathroom, scrub the sink and toilet after him?"

Wally shook his head. "I never thought of it that way. I was doing the job I was hired to do. That's all."

"And didn't it bother you that a schoolmate, almost exactly your own age, inspected cars that you had cleaned to make sure you had done a good job? That didn't bother you?"

"No."

"Did you use a time clock back then?" Wally said yes. "And if you were late were you in danger of being fired?"

"Yes."

"Was Jay Wilkins ever late?"

"Yes."

"Was he fired?"

"No."

"Was he reprimanded? Bawled out?"

"I don't know."

"Did you ever hear of him being bawled out?"

"No."

"And that didn't bother you, upset you, that he was allowed to play by different rules?"

Wally shrugged and said no in the same even-voiced way. Dodgson was looking more and more disbelieving, incredulous as he continued to try to get Wally admit to envy. His voice grew louder and he moved in closer as he kept at the same subject with more questions.

"Objection," Barbara finally said. "The prosecutor is asking the same question repeatedly with one variation after another because he doesn't like the answer he keeps getting."

Judge Wells sustained the objection and asked Dodgson to move on.

With a disgusted look at Wally, Dodgson stepped back a few feet and looked at the jury as he asked, "What crime had your cell mate committed to put him in prison?"

"Objection. Irrelevant."

"I don't think so," Dodgson argued. "Was he a con man, a murderer, a child molester? It matters who the defendant relied on as his mentor. Obviously it was a serious crime for him to have been convicted and sentenced to a very long term, a crime that would see him die of old age and infirmity in prison. The crimes committed and criminals convicted of them are a matter of public interest, in the public record. What other advice did such a sterling character offer?"

"That is prejudicial," Barbara snapped. "I move that the prosecutor's remarks be stricken. Joey Washington's record is irrelevant to this trial," she said furiously.

Judge Wells beckoned them forward. "The objection is sustained and the comments will be stricken. I advise you, Mr. Dodgson not to refer to the matter again." He motioned them away.

Barbara was seething. The comments would be stricken, but the memories of the jurors could not so easily be wiped clean. The idea had been planted and would lodge that Wally had chosen a mentor who was possibly a child molester or a murderer.

Dodgson did not let up on the pressure until the luncheon recess gave them all a respite. That day, to Barbara's surprise, Martin showed up with a beautiful Greek salad and grilled salmon. His wife, Binnie, had added her specialty, raspberry tarts.

The strain was showing on Wally, now that he could relax a little, and Meg looked ready to fall over.

"A few more days," Wally said, putting salad and salmon on a plate. He set it down in front of Meg. "Next week we'll get to that henhouse, get it built. Do you buy chickens in the winter, or wait until spring?"

"Chicks in the spring," Meg said faintly. "And a warming box with a lightbulb for heat for them. That's how my dad always did it."

"And so will we," he said.

Frank began to tell about a case he'd had back in the early days that involved a dispute over a hen and a clutch of chicks. "Seems the hen took a notion to build herself a nest across a fence line on a neighbor's property and both parties claimed the chicks. Threatening lawsuits, probably oiling their shotguns, neither one willing to give an inch. And the chicks were coming right along, nice broiling size. Then a family of raccoons moved in and helped themselves to a fine chicken dinner. Case over. I was willing to share my fee with the coons, only I didn't get a fee. The old guy claimed it was my fault for not getting his chicks back for him while they were still real property."

Wally laughed and Meg smiled. Barbara was preoccupied but she did begin to pick at her food and even ate some of it.

"A clutch of chicks," Wally said. "A pride of lions, exaltation of larks, pod of whales. What else?"

"Pack of wolves," Frank put in. "Den of thieves. Warren of rabbits." They all became silent, thinking.

"A giggle of girls," Shelley said after a minute or two.

"You made that one up," Wally said, grinning. "I like it. There's a bevy of something, but damned if I can think of what."

Barbara left then. A few minutes later she heard Wally's laughter. She closed her eyes, recalling his words: "If it goes sour."

He knew, she thought, and he was trying his best to put on a cheerful face for Meg.

He knew how near the edge she was.