Every Reasonable Doubt (31 page)

I
decided to take a couple of much-deserved days off while we awaited the jury’s verdict. The downtime was long overdue, but it allowed my every thought to linger on my husband. It felt like I had a big hole in my heart. I missed Jefferson desperately.

I was trying as hard as I could to follow Special’s advice. Jefferson wanted space and I was giving it to him. But the house was like a mausoleum without him.

When we were first married, we would occasionally play hooky from work and lie in bed and watch cartoons. I turned on the Cartoon Network, which had our favorite lineup, but for some reason, Scooby Doo wasn’t as funny without Jefferson’s play-by-play.

To keep myself from calling Jefferson, I dialed Special’s office.

“Hey, want to go see a movie after you get off from work?”

She was munching on something crunchy. “Since when do you have time to see a movie during a weekday?”

“Since we closed yesterday and the jury’s deliberating.”

“Sorry, homey. Have to go get my wig done when I get off and you know Shawnta’s going to have me up in there half the night,” Special said. “So what you think? Is homegirl going to get off?”

“Hope so,” I said. “And stop saying ‘get off.’ It makes it sound like she’s getting away with something.”

“You know that heffa killed her husband.”

“I’m going to ignore that comment because you’re my friend.”

We gossiped about the trial for a few minutes, then I turned to the real reason for my call. “Special, I really think it’s time for me to call Jefferson and ask him to come home.”

“Don’t do it,” she warned. “That would definitely be a mistake. It hasn’t even been that long yet.”

“Yes, it has. It’ll be two weeks on Saturday. This is nuts.”

“He ain’t called you at all?”

“He called me a few days ago, but only to tell me he read about the Montgomery trial in the newspaper.”

“Girl, you ain’t reading between the lines,” Special said. “That brother didn’t call to talk about that case. He called to talk to you and the case was the only way he could do it and still keep his balls.”

“Yeah, but we’re still exactly where we were when he left. I’m going to call him and ask him if he wants to see a movie.”

“No!” Special ordered. “Let the brother stew a little bit longer. He’s got to really miss your ass. Just give it one more week.”

One more week?
There was no way I could hold out that long.

I hung up and called Neddy’s house, but she didn’t answer. She had decided to take a few days off, too. I decided not to leave a message. I hoped she was out with Detective Smith having a good time.

I stayed in bed until one o’clock and then went to 24-Hour Fitness to work out. On the way home, I rented a couple of DVDs and spent a lonely evening watching two of my favorite movies,
Splendor in the Grass
with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, and
Friday
with Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. A sad love story to bring me down and a hilarious comedy to take me back up. I ate a whole bag of Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunk cookies and half a container of Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip ice cream. If Jefferson stayed away too long my hips were going to be as wide as our living room.

From force of habit, I woke up around six the next morning and vowed not to spend another day moping around. I decided to devote the morning to some of the tasks I’d neglected around the house. First on the list was going through my closet and getting rid of all the old clothes I never wore. Jefferson constantly complained about my over-stuffed closet and the fact that I didn’t wear half of the clothes I owned. Luckily, we had separate closets. I began stuffing worn-looking blouses and pants that no longer fit into a large, plastic garbage bag that I planned to drop off at the Goodwill. When the bag was full, I decided to store it in Jefferson’s closet, which wasn’t nearly as packed as mine.

The second I clicked on the light, the empty space in front of me almost brought me to my knees. I rarely had a reason to enter Jefferson’s closet and the last time I had, just after he’d moved out, only a few items were missing. But he’d apparently been back within the last few days because only a few items remained: a couple pair of pants which were too tight in the waist, and a bright green shirt, which I knew he hated. He’d taken everything else.

I walked out of the closet, ran over to the dresser we shared, and checked his drawers. They were empty. All of them. I sat down on the side of the bed as tears began to roll down my cheeks. He’d taken all of his clothes because he wasn’t coming back. Special was wrong. Jefferson wasn’t trying to teach me a lesson. He’d never been one to play games. That was what I liked about him from the start. He always put his cards on the table. There was no way I was going to reel him back home.

Without thinking about it, I picked up the telephone and dialed Jefferson’s cell phone. He answered groggily, which surprised me. He should’ve been at work.

“Good morning,” I said.

“What time is it?” He sounded annoyed at being disturbed.

“After nine,” I said.

I was disappointed that he didn’t sound glad to hear from me. “I just wanted to talk,” I said.

“About what?”

“About us.”

He didn’t say anything at first. “Uh, my head’s not on straight right now. I was out pretty late last night. How ‘bout if we do this some other time?”

The rejection hit me hard. “No problem,” I said, quickly hanging up the phone.

This time, I was too shocked to cry.
Out pretty late last night.
It was a weeknight. Had he already moved on that fast? Jealousy filled my head with visions of some sleek young body lying in bed next to him. That was probably the only reason he couldn’t talk.

This was crazy. We loved each other. There was no reason Jefferson shouldn’t be lying in bed next to me. The truth was, he was devastated about being sterile and blaming everything on my career.

I tried to get angry at him, but there was too much fear in my heart for any fury to take hold. I wanted my husband back. But short of begging him to come home, I had absolutely no idea how to get him there.

A
fter a few days off, I was anxious to get back to work. It was simply too lonely at home. This was the jury’s fourth day of deliberation and we were beginning to worry. I had just dropped by Neddy’s office to chat when the court clerk called, notifying us that the jury had reached a verdict. The judge wanted everybody back in the courtroom by ten o’clock. Neddy, David and I all piled into Neddy’s BMW. Detective Smith agreed to pick up Tina.

Once both sides had arrived, Judge Graciano wasted no time calling things to order. A heavy tension filled the air as the jurors filed back into the jury box. As a group, they seemed anxious to get to their seats. None of them made eye contact with anyone, not even each other. Juror No. 7 had her lips formed into a severe frown. The same position they’d been in during most of Garrett Bryson’s testimony. I didn’t know whether that was a bad sign for us or the prosecution.

The judge asked both sides to rise. I nervously shot up out of my chair, which made a loud screeching sound. It would have tumbled to the ground if I hadn’t grabbed it in time. I felt everyone staring in my direction.

“Jury foreman, have you reached a verdict?” Judge Graciano asked.

“Yes we have?”

Juror No. 11, the only African-American male on the panel, turned out to be the jury foreperson. I definitely wouldn’t have predicted that, and in my mind, it didn’t bode well for Tina. We watched as he passed a sheet of paper to the court clerk, who passed it to Judge Graciano. She briefly read it and handed it back to the court clerk, who passed it back to the foreman. The eyes of the entire courtroom tracked the path of the paper holding Tina Montgomery’s fate as it floated from one hand to another to another.

I was wearing a new pair of extra-pointy-toed pumps and my feet hurt. I gingerly shifted my body weight, trying not to attract more unwanted attention. I was on the end, closest to the prosecution table, next to Neddy. Our arms touched, but we were mentally oblivious to the physical contact. Tina was flanked on one side by Neddy and on the other by David. I looked over and saw that Julie’s posture had lost its former haughtiness but her head was still held high, her chin jutted slightly outward, signaling a contrived confidence. A newcomer to the room might have assumed that Julie was the one on trial. Sandy was completely obscured from my view by Julie’s leggy frame.

“In the matter of The People versus Tina Montgomery,” the jury foreman began, “we find the defendant, Tina Montgomery…not guilty of the charge of murder in the first degree.”

A combination of cheers, groans, and claps swept across the courtroom. Tina’s head snapped backward, as if she were looking up to God, then fell low to her chest and she began to sob. David and Neddy simultaneously embraced her. Without even thinking about it, I reached over and grabbed her hand, taking it into mine and squeezing it hard.

A rush of pent-up emotions impaled my body. I wanted to cry, too, but the tears did not fall. This ordeal was finally over and we had accomplished the task we’d been paid to perform. But what had I accomplished? Another feather in my professional cap. One that would surely lead to partnership and a coveted place among a list of very select attorneys. Would it be worth it?

After the celebration that was sure to follow the verdict, I would have to face the reality that my husband would not be coming home tonight, or very possibly, any other night. And despite what the jury had just declared, I still had my doubts about Tina’s innocence. While I believed that Max Montgomery had actually suffered a ruptured aneurysm the night of his death, I was still convinced that it was Tina who had fanatically attacked him in that bathtub with the intent to kill. His ruptured aneurysm made her innocent in the eyes of the law, but not in God’s eyes. My nagging fears about Tina’s role in the death of Neddy’s husband only made my conscience ache more.

“We won,” I finally heard Neddy mumble ever so softly. “We actually won.” The astonishment that saturated her words told me her reservations about Tina’s innocence had run much deeper than Neddy had been willing to reveal.

Neddy was still protectively holding onto Tina, whose body shook in tearful surges, strong enough to have hurled her to the ground had Neddy and David not been propping her up.
Had Neddy forgotten that the woman in her arms might have killed her husband?

I wasn’t sure how long the judge had let our jubilation go on. A couple of reporters created a ruckus dashing out of the courtroom, causing Judge Graciano to finally pick up her gavel and demand order. There were still a few important administrative matters to attend to before we could all leave.

I glanced over at the prosecution table. Julie was consumed with organizing papers into a folder on the table in front of her. She occasionally glanced hatefully in the direction of the jury. When she finally looked my way, I could see a anger in her eyes. All of a sudden she stopped and turned toward the bench, “Your Honor, may we please have the jury polled?”

I could swear I heard Judge Graciano curse under her breath. “If you would like, counselor,” she said, her tone indicating that she thought it was a useless request. Both sides had the right to have each member of the jury state out loud how he or she had voted. Perhaps it was Julie’s hope that her evil gaze could intimidate one or two of them into reversing their decisions. That would mean a mistrial, and the prosecution would get a second shot at trying to prove Tina’s guilt. But I had never known of any jury polling to produce such a result.

One by one, each member of the jury responded to the question, “Do you find Tina Montgomery guilty or not guilty of the charge of murder in the first degree?” By the time we’d heard the twelfth “not guilty,” Juror No. 7 was glancing toward our table with a humongous smile on her face. The others, too, seemed to be wearing a look that said they were proud to have performed their civic duty.

“If there’s nothing else, I’d like to dismiss the jury,” Judge Graciano said.

“We have nothing further,” Neddy said.

“Ms. Killabrew?” the judge asked.

“Thank you, Your Honor, nothing further,” Julie said in a weak, defeated voice.

After the judge explained what an important role jurors play in an organized society and thanked them for their service to their community, the jury panel quickly cleared out of the courtroom while the spectators’ section emptied more slowly.

“Just get me out of here,” Tina finally said, her voice hoarse from sobbing. “Get me the hell out of here.”

A
fter talking to the press and celebrating at Tina’s house, Neddy and I decided to treat ourselves to a late lunch at the Houston’s restaurant near Tina’s house.

We were slowly coming down from the high of our victory and reality was setting in with a stone-hard edge. At least it was for me. There were still lots of questions that needed to be answered. But we had to accept the fact that we might never know for sure whether Tina had stabbed Max in that hotel room. That, I could accept. What I couldn’t swallow was not knowing if Tina was responsible for Lawton’s murder.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” I began, as we sipped strawberry margaritas from gigantic cocktail glasses, “but we need to talk to Tina about Lawton. Don’t you want to know if she had anything to do with his murder?”

“Not really,” Neddy said, reaching for a piece of sourdough bread and slapping it with butter. “We need to just let it go. We don’t have any real evidence of her involvement. All we have is a hunch. If we did a casting call for everybody who wanted Lawton dead, we’d need the Staples Center to hold the crowd.” She took a bite of bread and kept talking. “And even if Tina told us she did kill him, the attorney-client privilege prevents us from doing anything about it. So why bother finding out?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “But the woman was screwing your husband and never mentioned it to you. After we found out about Bryson, we asked her if there was anybody else she was seeing and she lied to us. We need to confront her about that.”

“She was probably too embarrassed,” Neddy said. “And we aren’t exactly squeaky clean here. We had obligations to her that we breached, too.”

I frowned. “Like what?”

“Tina obviously didn’t know Kinga was sleeping with Max, or she would’ve fired her a long time ago. We kept that information from her and I’m not sure it was the right thing to do—ethically or legally.”

There’s no way I wanted to broach that subject with Tina. Kinga had wisely quit her job and skipped town. That sleeping dog needed to keep slumbering, and I told Neddy as much. But I still felt there were things we needed to discuss with Tina. “I still can’t believe you don’t want to know whether she killed your husband,” I said.

Neddy rolled her eyes. She looked more exhausted than I felt and that was hard to do. “I’d like my entire life with Lawton to remain buried. Discussing this with Tina will dredge up a whole new crop of emotions that I’m not sure I can handle. If Tina did kill Lawton, it’s not going to change anything.”

“Okay, then,” I said, “I’d like to know if she was the one who stabbed her husband in that hotel room.”

Neddy’s shook her head. “We have no right to ask her that.”

“I don’t care. I want to know.”

“Well I don’t. And even if she did it, she’s not going to be stupid enough to admit it to us.”

It took another round of margaritas and considerable prodding, about twenty minutes’ worth, before Neddy finally agreed that Tina owed us some answers. We finished our meal and headed back to Tina’s house.

When we rang her doorbell, Tina answered the door looking refreshed and smelling of rose-scented soap, holding her gaudy wine goblet. The sleeveless, cinnamon-colored pants suit she was wearing glowed against her skin. She could have walked right out of a Revlon ad. Tina embraced us so enthusiastically you never would have known we had just left her place an hour or so ago.

She was so happy and relieved about her acquittal that she didn’t notice that our mood had changed dramatically since our earlier visit. She assumed we had returned to continue the celebration. She led us back into her purple living room, practically floating in a pair of beige ballerina slippers.

“What would the two finest attorneys in L.A. like to drink?” she asked merrily.

“Nothing for right now,” Neddy said, taking a seat. I joined her in an adjacent chair. “There’s something we need to talk to you about,” Neddy began. “You’re not obligated to answer, but we hope that you do. Everything you tell us is protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

Tina’s smile disappeared. She set her goblet on the coffee table, then immediately reached for it again, confirming for me that her drinking was the security blanket I’d always assumed it was.

Neddy looked first at me, no doubt for encouragement, then went on to tell Tina about Detective Smith’s report and how it had detailed her affair with Garrett Bryson. When Neddy noted that the report had also listed the names of two other lovers, Tina’s eyes fell to the floor. She raised the goblet to her lips and took a long sip.

“The fact that you were seeing Lawton and never mentioned it to us made us wonder if the reason you didn’t was because you had something to do with his death.” Neddy spoke as gingerly as possible. “And I’d like to know if that’s the case.”

I examined Neddy’s face. I could still see vestiges of the agonizing years of her own abusive marriage. I also saw something that told me she wanted to hear Tina’s answer to her question as much as I did.

Tina didn’t speak for a long while. “Wow,” she said, “this is quite a surprise. I thought you were going to ask me if I killed my husband.”

She went silent again, this time for much longer. Neddy and I anxiously waited her out.

“First, let me tell you why I stabbed my husband in that hotel room,” Tina said, placing her wine goblet on the coffee table. She looked earnestly at Neddy. “Then I’ll answer your question about Lawton.