Where Love Has Gone (41 page)

“Yes,” she almost whispered. “He said that between the kid and her mother, he didn’t know which was going to break his back first.”

“By that I assume he meant that he was having sexual relations with both?” “Yes.”

“During that time did he also have relations with you?” Anna looked down at the floor. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You didn’t object to his behavior with Miss Hayden and her daughter?”

“What good would it have done if I had?” she asked in a dull voice. “He told me he had to do it.

It was part of the job.”

“That’s a lie!” Dani shouted suddenly. “It’s a dirty lie!”

The judge rapped his gavel sharply. “Be quiet, Danielle,” he admonished her. “Or I’ll have to send you out of the courtroom.”

Dani’s face froze and she glared at me. Now I knew how Judas felt when he looked into the face of Christ. I turned back to Anna.

“When was the last time you saw your fiancé alive?” I asked. “About two weeks before he died.”

“What did he say to you at that time?”

“He gave me a large manila envelope and asked me to keep it for him,” she said. “He said it contained letters from Miss Hayden and her daughter and that before long the letters would be worth a lot of money to us. Enough for us to get married on.”

“Did you read those letters?”

“No,” she said. “The manila envelope was sealed.” “What did you do with them then?”

“I put them away,” she said. “Then one night my brother told me that Tony wanted them back and I gave the manila envelope to him. It wasn’t until my brother had left that I found out that Tony was already dead.”

“What did your brother do with those letters?” “He sold them.”

“To whom?”

“To Miss Hayden.”

“But Miss Hayden didn’t get all the letters, did she?” I asked. “No. My brother held out two of them.”

“And what did he do with them?”

She looked into my face. “He sold them to you for one hundred dollars.” This time it was Nora who came out of her seat. “The dirty little thief!”

Gordon pulled her back down and I could see that he was as surprised as anyone else. He probably hadn’t even known that the letters existed.

I took them from my pocket. “Are these the letters that your brother gave you to deliver to me?” I asked.

She looked at them. “They are.” “That’s all, Anna. Thank you.”

She got up from the chair and started out. She stopped in the open door and looked back for a moment, then the door closed behind her.

“I would like to read an excerpt from one of these letters,” I said, then read the last paragraph from Nora’s letter without waiting for permission from the judge.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to marry him, Mother!” Dani said. She looked down the table accusingly. “You didn’t tell me!”

“Be quiet, Dani!” The probation officer put her hand on Dani’s arm.

Gordon was on his feet again. “I move that the entire testimony of that woman and the excerpt

from the letter be stricken from the record as irrelevant and immaterial!”

“Sustained,” the judge said casually. “It is so ordered.” He looked at me. “Have you any further surprises, Colonel Carey?”

“I have, Your Honor. I’d like to question Miss Hayden.” Gordon was on his feet again. “I object, Your Honor.”

“Overruled.”

“I request a short recess to confer with my client,” Gordon said.

The judge leaned forward on the bench and looked down. “You seem to have a plethora of clients in this court, Mr. Gordon. Which client are you referring to?”

Gordon’s face flushed. “Miss Hayden, Your Honor.”

The judge nodded. He rapped the desk with his gavel. “The court declares a fifteen-minute recess.”

We all stood up as he left the courtroom. Miss Spicer took Dani out into the girls’ waiting room.

The moment the door closed behind her, Gordon turned to me.

His voice was gruff and angry. “What the hell are you trying to do, Luke?”

3

__________________________________________

“Your job, Counselor,” I retorted. “Defend my daughter!”

“You’re being a fool, Luke. You’ll only make it worse for her!” “How much worse can it be? The judge is ready to send her away.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “He hasn’t handed down his decision yet. And if he did go against us we’d petition to reopen tomorrow. We have that right.”

“What good would it do?” I asked. “Dani would still be locked up. Why should you be so afraid that I might dig up the truth? Or are you in on it, too?”

“In on what?”

I could see that he was genuinely puzzled. “Nora was afraid I might stumble onto the truth of what really happened that night. That’s why she had Coriano frame me when I went to pick up the letters.”

“Frame you?”

I took the pictures from my pocket, showed them to him, and explained what had happened. His face paled as I put them back in my pocket. “She warned me to keep out of it or she’d send them to my wife.”

“I should never have given them back to you!” Nora said angrily. “I must have been out of my mind!”

Gordon was angry too. He grabbed her arm, almost roughly, and pulled her away.

I watched them walk to the rear of the courtroom. The sibilants of their whispers reached back to me but I couldn’t get what they were saying. I sat down and reached for a glass of water. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t know if I was allowed to smoke in the courtroom.

“Your daughter is being very upset by this, Colonel,” Dr. Weidman said.

I looked up. There seemed to be genuine sympathy in his eyes. I drank the water. “I’d rather upset her a little now, Doctor, than try to repair the damage done by three years in a reform school.”

Weidman didn’t speak. I reached for a cigarette and lit it. The hell with the regulations. I could feel my hand shaking.

The old lady reached out and put her hand over mine. Her voice was as soft and as kind as her touch. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Luke.”

I looked at her. She seemed the only one of us to have kept her sanity. I returned the pressure on my fingers. “I hope so,” I said.

Suddenly I wished Elizabeth were here. She would know what I ought to do; she would be able to calm the sudden fears and doubts that began to well up inside me. Maybe Gordon was right. Maybe I would do more harm than good. I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so much alone.

The door to his chamber opened and the judge came back into court. We stood up until his gavel signaled for us to be seated. Gordon and Nora had come back to the table. I could see Gordon’s face still flushed and angry.

“Let the bailiff summon the child,” the judge said.

The deputy sheriff walked over to the girls’ waiting room and knocked on the door. In a moment Dani and the probation officer came back into the room.

The blue circles seemed deeper under Dani’s eyes. I could see that she had been crying again.

She didn’t look at me as she slipped into her seat.

“You may resume, Colonel Carey,” the judge said.

Gordon was on his feet before me. “I must again protest this procedure, Your Honor. It is highly irregular and, if permitted to continue, could lead to charges of bias and prejudice on the part of this court.”

Judge Murphy’s eyes were suddenly cold and frosty. “Are you threatening this court, Counselor?”

“No, Your Honor. I’m merely voicing a considered legal opinion.”

“The court respects the opinion of the learned counselor,” the judge said, his voice still cold. “It appreciates his concern. But the court wishes to point out that if it is accused of bias and prejudice in favor of the minor appearing before it, it is only fulfilling its function. This court’s avowed purpose, according to law, is to protect fully the minors appearing before it.”

Gordon sat down silently. The judge looked at me. His voice was mild. “You may resume, Colonel.”

I rose from my chair. “I would like to question Miss Hayden, please.”

“Miss Hayden, will you take this seat near the bench?” the judge asked, indicating the chair that Anna had occupied.

Nora looked at Gordon for a moment. He nodded and she got up and walked to the chair. The clerk came forward to administer the oath.

Nora sat down and looked at me. Her face was calm and impassive, almost as if it had been carved from one of the slabs in her studio.

I took a deep breath. “Nora,” I began, “at the coroner’s inquest last week you testified that you had been quarreling with Tony Riccio the day he was killed. Can you tell us what time those quarrels began?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Approximately. Was it eight o’clock in the morning? Ten? Twelve? Two in the afternoon?”

I could see the light dawn in her eyes. She knew what I was getting at. “It’s difficult for me to say exactly.”

“Perhaps I could help you refresh your memory,” I said. “You were in Los Angeles all day Thursday. Western Airlines tells me that you were listed on their passenger manifest on the flight

from Los Angeles that arrived in San Francisco at ten minutes after four on Friday afternoon. Allowing for reasonable traffic delays, you would have been home at, say, five o’clock. Was that about the time the quarrel began?”

Her eyes began to turn cold and angry. “About that time.”

“So the quarrel you referred to did not go on all day but began at approximately five o’clock in the afternoon? Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

Gordon was up again like a jack-in-the-box. “Your Honor,” he said, “I fail to—”

“Mr. Gordon!” The judge’s voice crackled angrily. “Please refrain from further interruptions in this court! As the attorney ostensibly representing the minor appearing before this court you should welcome any information that might shed light on her actions and aid in her defense. It is beginning to appear to this court that you are trying to serve too many masters and prejudging too many facts. Let me reiterate that I am the judge in this court and that you will have every opportunity to give voice to your opinions in due course. Now, please resume your seat.”

Gordon sat down. His face was almost purple with rage. The judge turned back to me. “Please continue, Colonel Carey.”

“Was anyone at home when you arrived there?” I asked.

For the first time Nora hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Were any of the servants at home?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Was Dani or Tony Riccio there?” “Yes.”

“Both of them?” “Both of them.”

“Did you see them when you came in?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I went directly to the studio. I wanted to sketch out some ideas I had before I lost them.”

“What time did you finally see them?”

She looked at me. For the first time I saw a look of pleading come into her eyes. She seemed to be begging me to stop.

“What time?” I repeated coldly. “About—about seven thirty.”

“Then the quarrel didn’t begin until seven thirty, not five o’clock?” I asked. She looked down at her hands. “That’s right.”

“You also testified at the coroner’s inquest that your quarrel with Tony Riccio was over

business matters,” I said. “That wasn’t the real reason, was it?” “No.”

“And when you told Miss Spicer that you didn’t know about Dani’s affair with Riccio,” I said, “that wasn’t the truth either, was it?”

She began to cry silently, the tears gathering on the lower lids and rolling down her cheeks. Her hands began to twist nervously. “No.”

“Where did you see them?”

“When I went upstairs to change for dinner,” she half-whispered. “Where, not when. In what room?”

She didn’t look up. “In Rick’s room.” “What were they doing?”

“They were—” Her voice was shorn of all feeling. Her eyes were dull and glazed. “They were in bed.”

I looked at her. “Why didn’t you say so at the inquest?”

“It was bad enough the way it was,” she whispered. “I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think!” I interrupted angrily. “That’s just it. You
did
think. You knew if you told that much you would have to tell the whole truth. About everything that happened that night!”

“I—I don’t understand,” she said, a puzzled, frightened look in her eyes.

“You understand!” I said brutally. “I don’t know how you got Dani to agree to it, but you knew if you told the truth, the rest of it could not be kept silent … that you were the one who stabbed Tony Riccio, not Dani!”

I could see her grow old before my eyes. Her face froze and lines came into it that I’d never seen before.

Then a scream came from behind me. “No, Mommy. No! He can’t make you say that you did!”

I half turned toward Dani but she was already out of her chair and running to her mother. She hugged Nora to her and stood there with her arms around her protectively. The tears were still running down Nora’s cheeks but Dani’s eyes were flashing anger and hatred at me.

“You think you know a lot!” she shouted. “You come back after all these years and you think you know everything. You’re a stranger. Nothing but a stranger. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. All we know about each other is our names!”

I stared at her. “But, Dani—”

“I told you the truth!” she cried. “But you wouldn’t believe me! I told you it was an accident, that I didn’t mean it, but you didn’t believe me. You hated my mother so much that you wouldn’t listen!

“You want to hear the truth so much, Daddy, then listen to it! It wasn’t Rick that I tried to kill that night in the studio. It was my mother!”

4

__________________________________________

I looked around the court. The room was deathly still. Everyone was watching Dani. Even the court stenographer, whose face had been imperturbable all morning, his eyes gazing unseeingly into space as his fingers flew rapidly over the keys of the stenotype.

“We were in Rick’s bed with Mother found us,” she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “We knew that it was late but I wouldn’t leave him. He wanted me to go but I wouldn’t. We didn’t hear anything so we thought we were still alone. We’d been in bed for almost two days, except for meals, ever since the servants left. And still I didn’t want to go.”