Canyon of the Sphinx (31 page)

“My God,” he breathed, taking her
wet head and shoulders into his arms. He was stunned. “Honey, why didn’t you
tell me before this?”

She was half-in, half-out of the
tub, her face in the crook of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just hoping
I was wrong. But, Jesus Christ, Marcus, we screw like rabbits. Not that I’m
complaining, but you know we do. That’s all we’ve done since we got back
together. Then when I started barfing this morning, I just knew.”

He cupped her face in his
enormous hands, his thumbs on her cheeks. “I’m so happy, Kathlyn. This is such
good news during a time where we’ve not had much. I’m just so sorry this had to
hit you all at once.”

She sniffled, seeing the joy in
his cobalt blue eyes. It made her feel better.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, her
voice hoarse from crying but more in control of herself. “After Robert’s
defense today, I’m much more confident than I was before about being acquitted.
He really was good.”

Marcus’ eyes twinkled. “I see a
lot of you in him and vise verse. You Trents are all alike with your cunning
minds and slick presentation. But I can tell you this; Robert wasn’t nearly so
brilliant as I’ve seen his sister at times.”

That brought a smile to her lips.
She touched his face, admiring his male beauty in both features and character.
She didn’t know what she would do without the man. He was her rock.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“Supporting me. Calming me. Not
smacking me around when I get out of hand. Everything.”

He kissed her gently, lovingly.
He washed her hair and she invited him inside the tub. But they soon ended up
out of the tub and on the floor of the bathroom, making love under the pedestal
sink.

It was at midnight that they
received the call that Al Burton had passed away.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Robert put the defense to rest
the next day. After Mike Sutton’s testimony, he saw no reason to call Jensen to
the stand. More than the testimony, he had the physical evidence. The jury had
sifted through Jensen’s history, her lying about her education to get the job
at SCU, and receipts from a commercial printing company in Agoura Hills where
Jensen’s cousin worked at the press. It seemed that everyone was in on Jensen’s
plot to bilk money out of Dr. Trent, which is exactly how Robert summed it up in
his closing argument. It had been nothing short of dazzling.

As concerned as Kathlyn was about
the case going to the jury, she was more concerned about Marcus and his mother.
They sat together in a sad pair directly behind Kathlyn, Marcus with his big
arm around his mother’s frail shoulders. Every time she turned around to look
at them, she would start to cry. He would wink at her and motion for her to
turn around. Lynn, Dennis, Juliana, Debra Jo and the rest of the gang sat
beside and behind Marcus and his mother, forming a protective barrier. Jobe, as
usual, sat on Kathlyn’s opposite side, patting her arm now and again.

When the case went to the jury,
Jensen cleared out of the courtroom. Her presence was no longer required, and
after that, they never saw her again. The judge gave final jury instructions
and dismissed his courtroom. Now it was in the hands of the jury and there was
nothing left to do but wait.

The entire trial had taken less
than two weeks. For the media frenzy it caused, it had definitely been one of
the more high-profile cases in a city that had more than its fair share of
them. As Kathlyn and her entourage left the courtroom and congregated in the
hall to plan their next move, Marcus pulled his wife aside and hugged her fervently.

“It shouldn’t take long,
sweetheart,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s open and shut as far as I’m
concerned.”

Kathlyn nodded, glancing over at
his tiny mother, now with Lynn’s arm around her. “As much as I need you right
now, you really need to be with your mother. Did you talk to her about taking
her over to Forest Lawn? My mother offered to buy your parents a crypt.”

He shook his head. “Dad wanted to
be buried up in Modesto. We already have two plots up there.”

She looked at her husband for a
long moment. “How are you doing, honey?”

He shrugged weakly. He handled it
better when the focus wasn’t on him. “I’m okay. I just want to make sure Mom is
taken care of.”

She touched his cheek. “Of course
you do. We’ve got three cars outside; take your mom out of here. Go help her
make whatever arrangements you need to make. My mom has the babies, so the kids
taken care of.”

He gazed at her, his cobalt blue
eyes soft. “What about you? Who will take care of you?”

She smiled at him, her face
without the paleness it had been shaded with for so long. She was finally
getting some color back. “Look around you. We have many friends who love us.
They’ll take care of me.”

“I really hate to leave you.”

“Your mother needs you more. In
fact, take Lynn and Juli with you. Your mother adores Lynn.”

He looked over at his best
friend, holding his mother protectively. “Maybe you’re right,” he said
reluctantly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, though.”

She hugged him, kissed him. “No,
you won’t. You’ll stay with your mother and comfort her. She just lost her
husband of forty-five years, Marcus. I… I don’t know what I’d do if I lost
you.”

“You’ll be okay? I mean until I
get back. And I’ll always have my cell phone on.”

“I’ll call you if I need you, I
promise. I’m going to stay with my mom until all of this is over.”

“Good idea. I don’t want you in
that apartment, pregnant and alone with the babies.”

Kathlyn didn’t say anything. She
was looking down the hall. “Look,” she said softly. “Want to see your mother
feel better in a hurry?”

Marcus followed her focus.
Kathlyn’ mother, Sallie, was walking down the cold, long hall with Eden in one
hand and the twins in the other. She held Ethan’s little hand and Ethan held
his brother’s. It was like a little train.

Trent broke free when he saw his
mother and went racing down the hallway, calling her name. Kathlyn scooped her
son up and kissed him furiously. He slithered down before Marcus could get a
grip on him, but the baby was crying so he took Eden from Kathlyn’s mother. He
took her over to his own mother, who quickly transformed from the grieving
widow into the doting grandmother.

Marcus watched his mother with
the children for a moment, his eyes misting. Kathlyn put her arm around him.

“Take your mom back to Modesto,”
she murmured. “We’ll be fine here. We’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine.”

He left before the hour was out.

***

 “They’re televising it?”
Kimberly Levine struggled with the rabbit ears on the only television they had.
“This station doesn’t come in very good. So they’re actually televising her
verdict?”

Christopher shushed her. He had
been back on his dig for a week, having spent the previous week watching
Kathlyn’s lawyer brother make an idiot out of Jensen Elder and her merry group
of IRS lawyers. It really had been something to watch. They were picking up a
station from Mexico City, which in turn was picking up a Spanish-speaking Los
Angeles television station via satellite. The case had been with the jury for
two days and a verdict had been reached.

“Can you hear it okay?” Kimberly
asked.

Her husband grabbed her by the
hips and pushed her aside so that they could see the picture. It was the
exterior of the courthouse in Los Angeles. There were people holding signs up
and one guy with a sign saying that God was punishing Kathlyn Trent for her Biblical
Archaeology relic hunting. The guy wore a green curly wig and a robe. Only in
Los Angeles, Christopher thought wryly.

The cameras cut to the door of
the courthouse as the audio switched to what was going on inside the courtroom.
Since cameras were not allowed inside, audio was all they would receive.

“Look at all of the people,” Adam
muttered. “It’s like a movie star is on trial.”

Christopher sat quietly, his
beloved Cincinnati Red’s baseball cap on backwards, as usual. “She’s more than
that.”

Kimberly looked at him, knowing
how he felt about the woman. When he’d returned from Los Angeles, it was all he
could talk about. Then, a couple days after his return, he sank into a deep
depression. He was still in it.

“She should be absolved, right?”
Kimberly asked.

“Acquitted,” her husband
corrected her. “This isn’t the Catholic Church.”

“Acquitted, then,” she made a
face at Adam. “You said she was innocent.”

Christopher nodded, his eyes
never leaving the television screen. “Let’s hope the jury thinks so, too.”

Adam shushed them both. “Quiet. I
think it’s starting.”

Muffled voices sounded on the
audio portion as the camera continued to focus on the doors of the courthouse.
The next voice they heard was that of the court clerk.

“On this day of June 11 in the
Superior Court of Los Angeles, Judge Richard L. Nelson presiding in the case of
the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Government of the United States of
America versus Kathlyn Isobelle Trent Burton and Burtrent LLC for the charges
of Fraud or Intent to commit Fraud, Conspiracy and Tax Evasion, the decisions
rendered are as follows: To Charge Number One for Fraud or Intent to commit
Fraud, we of the above and entitled jury do hereby render a verdict of Not
Guilty. To Charge Number Two for Conspiracy, we of the above and entitled jury
do hereby render a verdict of Not Guilty. To Charge Number Three of Tax
Evasion, we of the above and entitled jury do hereby render a verdict of Not
Guilty.”

Christopher didn’t know why he
felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off his chest, but he did. He lowered
his head and said a small prayer of thanks while Adam and Kimberly chatted up a
storm about the trail and verdicts.  Even the Mexican workers were excited,
understanding that something good had happened to the famous Dr. Trent.

If they, in their own small
little way, were feeling such relief, Christopher could only imagine what
Kathlyn was feeling.

***

The entire morning had been a
nightmare for Marcus. They were supposed to bury his father at two p.m. in the
small cemetery off of Highway Ninety-Nine that passed through Modesto, but a
news brief had come on and announced the Trent verdicts were going to be read
later than day. They didn’t say when. Marcus was terrified he was going to miss
the readings, cursing himself for not being there to stand by his wife in her
darkest hour. His mother, sensing his turmoil, told him to get in the car and
drive as fast as he could to Los Angeles. But he wouldn’t leave her.

When the verdicts were finally
read at eleven a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Marcus, Juliana and Lynn were able
to hear them. Marcus sat in his dad’s old EZ chair and wept.

***

With the first Not Guilty
verdict, Robert clasped Kathlyn’s hand and didn’t let go. When the next two
verdicts were read, there were cheers in the courtroom. Judge Nelson banged his
gavel a few times to restore order before commencing to poll the jury, but
after that, everything was a blur to Kathlyn. The blur didn’t stop until after
the jury was polled and the judge dismissed the gallery.

Robert stood up and hugged his
sister fiercely, followed by Bill doing the same. Next came Jobe, then Mark,
then Debra Jo, then Otis and Larry. Andy was the only one who did not move in
to congratulate her, too ashamed that his brother had been part and parcel to
this circus. But Kathlyn hugged him anyway and the young man shed a few
relieved, embarrassed tears.

The only person who hadn’t hugged
her was Dennis. He stood off to the side, waiting until everyone had been given
the chance to embrace her. He and Kathlyn made eye contact and she went
directly to him, never one to be stand-offish. When Dennis finally put his arms
around her to congratulate her, he wouldn’t release her until both Mark and
Otis pried his arms free. It seemed that Dennis didn’t deal very well with
stress or emotion, both of which they had all been through during this time. He
never blamed Kathlyn. He just felt so bad with what she, and Marcus, had gone
through that he hadn’t been able to reconcile it in his own mind. With
everything over, his emotion was flooding out like a waterfall.

Kathlyn’s mom and children were
there. She took Eden from her mother and scooped Ethan into her other arm.
Turning to Jobe, who had hold of Trent, she spoke simply and to the point.

“Call the SCA, Jobe. Get Marcus
his dig back.”

The phone calls were in the works
before they had even left the courthouse.

***

Kathlyn made it up to Modesto by
late afternoon. Her brother, Bill, had driven her all the way up to Central
California. She had talked to Marcus after the verdicts had been read, briefly,
and he was a wreck. She was desperate to get to him. It was as if now that all
of her trials were over, he finally stopped being strong. Now he needed her to
be strong for him as he faced one of the most crushing things he had ever dealt
with.