Every Reasonable Doubt (32 page)

N
eddy and I listened for close to an hour as Tina recounted the intimate and distressingly sad details of her life with Max Montgomery and Lawton Joseph Brown. The only two men she had ever loved.

From the moment she began her story, anguish crept into her eyes and assumed her voice, forcing her to speak when her lips seemed unwilling or unable to form the proper words. After a minute or so into her monologue, Tina never allowed her eyes to settle on Neddy’s face or mine. It was as if she was making a confession before some invisible television camera positioned across the room. She constantly wrung her hands and I could hear a soft patter as her right foot nervously tapped the shiny maple floor. Tears would sporadically roll down her cheeks, then dry up to make room for a fresh stream.

Tina started her tale with a different version of the facts she had fed us during our first meeting. Though her voice cracked at times, she did not speak in a tone that solicited sympathy. Her intent was to explain, not justify, her actions.

Tina admitted now that she wasn’t exactly sure when Max’s philandering had begun. She doubted that it had started after their marriage, as she had told us before. She assumed Max saw other women during their whirlwind year of dating, but she was simply too contented with her new life to notice. She’d landed a gorgeous, incredible man whose very presence in a room, even when he was only in his twenties, radiated charisma and power. It didn’t make sense to go searching for a dark cloud when her ordinary, lackluster existence had been presented with a silver lining so bright it sparkled like a diamond.

But in no time, the naïve young wife came to realize that she was not the only woman in her charming husband’s life. In the beginning, Tina would angrily confront Max with her suspicions. At that point, she’d had nothing more than suspicions to go on as Max, particularly in the early days, had been very careful with his affairs. His assertions that her suspicions stemmed from her own childhood insecurities, not any infidelity on his part, had actually seemed plausible to her. Max would convincingly deny her accusations, pamper her with gifts, and bestow upon her what she cherished most—his time. But weeks and sometimes only days later, his focus was back on business and other women.

By their fifth or sixth year of marriage, Tina had grown tired of tracking his whereabouts. She had also tired of his broken promises. But not so tired that she had ever contemplated leaving. At some point, she convinced herself that she had a worthy role to play in Max’s life and slowly morphed into the kind of wife she convinced herself that he needed. She worked hard at being the elegant hostess and developed into an admirable role model for other young wives in the local philanthropic community.

In the eyes of onlookers, she was a smart, beautiful, vibrant woman, even as the gray hairs and age lines made uninvited appearances. But in private, she was a pathetic, lonely little woman whose self-esteem was being slowly eroded by her husband’s growing neglect.

While she prayed things would change, the older Max got, the sloppier he became. Though she tried, she could not ignore the late-night ringing of his cell phone, the smell of perfumes she didn’t wear, and her inability to contact him for hours at a time. Over time, she had been forced to shy away from friendships with other women because she feared that her acquaintances, and none of them had been any more than that, would become the target of Max’s insatiable lust. She had never been particularly close to her family, so that left her no one to turn to. Predictably, she eventually sought companionship outside of her marriage.

There had been four other men in her life, she told us now, not three. None of them of any real significance except for Lawton. The first affair happened in her eleventh year of marriage. The brief reunion with Ken Harris, a lover from her college days, was a failed attempt to recapture something from a past she usually kept hidden. The second affair, the one missing from Detective Smith’s report, was a meaningless fling with Martin Young, a long-time colleague of Max. Had she chosen to stay on that path, there could have been many, many more, as Max’s business associates were both plentiful and willing. But except for Martin and Garrett Bryson, she had rebuffed their advances. It greatly surprised her that Max had become enraged when she revealed during an angry confrontation that she had slept with Martin. His double standard aside, she interpreted Max’s heated show of emotion as a sign that he still loved her.

But soon an awkward distance began to develop between them. As amazing as it sounded, he treated her as if
she
had violated
him.
They continued to share occasional intimate moments, but Max was becoming more and more aloof and uncaring.

In time, they argued more than they got along, usually about his being away so much and Tina’s suspicions about him sleeping around. Even though she knew it was a lie, he continued to insist that she was just paranoid. Tina began occupying her time with philanthropic activities, and the more visible she became in the community, the more Max made the rounds.

That night at the Ritz-Carlton, simply by chance, Tina had spotted Max standing at the registration desk. At first, seeing him had filled her heart with excitement. She immediately assumed that he’d shown up to surprise her. But then she noticed that he wasn’t wearing his tux. She also remembered that she’d never told him where the fundraiser was being held.

Tina stopped to take a sip from her wine goblet, then realized that it was empty. This was the first time Kinga was not around to instantly refill it.

Neddy and I remained engrossed by her story, both of us perched on the edge of our seats. For me, it was like watching a movie. My mind had a clear picture of every scene.

Seeing Max in the hotel lobby and knowing that he was probably there to meet another woman had filled Tina with a rage so intense it temporarily immobilized her. As he walked off toward the elevators, she returned to the ballroom, resumed her seat at the head table, and tried to finish her bland chicken dinner. Minutes later, buoyed by anger and her second glass of brandy, she decided she had to confront him. To catch him in the act, once and for all. He would not be able to accuse her of paranoia this time. When she marched out of the ballroom, confrontation—not murder—was her only goal.

Gaining access to Max’s suite had been easy. The month before the fundraiser, she had been practically living at the hotel and made friends with two of the desk clerks as well as one of the bellmen. That night, she simply told the desk clerk that she had forgotten her room number which, of course, wasn’t written on the plastic key card. Two Montgomerys appeared on the computer screen that held the list of registered hotel guests. “Was it 420 or 502?” the clerk had asked.” Since she was in room 420, the other room had to be Max’s. It was as easy as that.

I was captivated by her story and had a dozen questions rolling around in my head. I couldn’t help myself and blurted one out. “But how’d you get into his room?”

She smiled as if that was no big deal either. Earlier in the day, the hotel manager instructed one of the bellmen to give her access to the freight elevator so that she could transport items into the ballroom. After the fourth trip, the bellman got tired of the interruptions and handed her the pass key, making her promise not to tell anyone about his flagrant violation of hotel policy. The pass key opened every room in the hotel.

As she made her way to Max’s room, her heart was beating so furiously she could hardly breathe. When the elevator doors opened onto the fifth floor, her feet refused to move and the doors began to close. Just before they did, she pressed the fifth floor button a second time and stepped off the elevator. As she entered the hallway, she noticed a used room service tray on the floor outside one of the rooms. A steak knife sitting on a plate of half-eaten food practically called out to her, she said. She scooped it up, grasping the handle with a soiled dinner napkin.

“So Oscar Lopez did see you in that hallway with a knife in your hand,” I said.

“Probably,” she replied.

I looked over at Neddy to see how she was taking all of this. I couldn’t tell a thing from her expression. It was as blank as a sheet of paper.

Instead of knocking on the door to Max’s room, she let herself in using the pass key, being careful to use the napkin to turn the door handle. Murder was not on her mind when she entered the room, she told us again. She had planned to surprise Max and his whore, threaten them with the knife, and tell him she was going to divorce him and take him for everything he owned.

When she stepped inside the room, she found no one there. She remained just inside the door, examining every inch of the suite. One of Max’s suits hanging over the back of a chair was the first thing that caught her eye. When she noticed the red teddy lying across the bed, her rage intensified.

A noise from the bathroom startled her and she assumed that Max and his mistress were in there together, naked. She tightened her grip on the knife and gathered her courage. She had not been paranoid all these years—she’d been a fool. As she tiptoed to the doorway of the bathroom, she braced herself for the sight of Max and his mistress in the act.

But there was no woman in the bathroom with Max. He sat alone in the tub, surrounded by candles, submerged in a pool of rose petals, a bottle of Dom Pérignon sitting on the floor. The bathroom looked like a scene from some romance movie. He was obviously waiting for his little slut to arrive.

“Why, Max?” she said to him in a teary whisper. “Why wasn’t I enough?”

He looked in her direction, but there was confusion, not shock on his face.

As we listened, tears began to fill Tina’s eyes, making the image of her standing in that bathroom doorway so real that I was right there with her.

Max’s failure to respond only enraged her more. “So, I’m the one who’s paranoid!” she screamed. Still no response. As she took a step closer to him, he seemed to be in a drunken stupor.

“I don’t deserve to be treated like this!” she cried. “And you’re not going to treat me like this anymore!”

Tina said she did not stop to think. She felt like she was caught up in a trance and someone else controlled the movements of her body. She darted over to the tub and began furiously jabbing at Max with the steak knife. He did not fight back or attempt to escape her blows. She stabbed and stabbed until her arm tired. When the fury of it all had completely exhausted her, she wiped the handle clean with the dinner napkin, dropped the knife to the marble floor, and fled from the room.

After taking only a couple of steps into the hallway, Tina realized that her shoes were tracking blood. She slipped them off and tucked them underneath her arm. Her chest covered in blood, she dashed for the stairwell and rushed to her own room, one floor down, terrified of running into another hotel guest. She made it safely there without being spotted and immediately shed her clothes. She wrapped her dress, stockings, underwear and the dinner napkin inside a plastic bag and hid them at the bottom of her suitcase. After cleaning her shoes, she slipped into another black dress, one almost identical to the one she was wearing. Luckily, she had brought it along because she hadn’t been able to decide which one to wear. She then headed back to the ballroom and resumed her role.

Her absence from the dinner had only lasted about forty minutes, not an hour as one of the witnesses had testified. She made sure to slip the pass key underneath some papers on the bellman’s desk without being noticed. Later that night, Tina mentioned to the bellman that she had returned the key earlier in the evening, hoping that he had not gotten around to looking for it yet. She was afraid that her access to the pass key would come out during the trial. The bellman, who had worked at the hotel for years, probably never came forward with that information because he feared losing his job.

Tina stopped and finally looked over at us, signaling the end of her tale.

“So, Max really was in the midst of the aneurysm when you stabbed him?” I asked.

“Probably. I think that’s why he never answered me.”

“So you didn’t kill him,” I said encouragingly. “The aneurysm did.” My own words surprised me.

“No,” Tina whimpered, as more tears rolled down her cheeks. “I killed him. I can’t blame his death on the aneurysm. If the aneurysm hadn’t happened, the stab wounds would’ve killed him. The jury let me hide behind the aneurysm, but I’m not going to allow myself to do that. This is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. I know it sounds crazy, but I loved him
so
much.”

Neddy got up and moved over to the couch next to Tina and wrapped her arms around her. I went to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of wine and returned to refill Tina’s goblet.

She took a sip, then looked at Neddy. “I’m so sorry about Lawton,” she sobbed. “Yes, I was seeing him, but I swear I had no idea you were his wife.”

Neddy was crying now, too. As they hugged and rocked each other, my own eyes began to moisten.

Tina finally pulled away from Neddy and, without our prompting, began explaining how Neddy’s husband had come into her life. Their chance meeting happened at the Barnes & Noble bookstore not far from her home, about six months before Max’s death. He stood behind her in line, struck up a conversation about the copy of the Walter Mosley novel she was buying, and invited her to continue their conversation over coffee at the Starbucks across the street. After exhausting the subject of their literary interests, they turned to their own lives. That first bookstore chat lasted two hours and was soon followed by regular coffee house encounters, all premised on their mutual love of literature.

Lawton told her from the start that he was trapped in a bad marriage and that leaving his wife would have meant leaving his two kids. Something he could not—would not—do. Tina was willing to accept his situation because she had no desire to give up her own lavish lifestyle. Being with Lawton made her predicament with Max bearable. He was the first man in years who seemed to enjoy just being with her. Sex had come later, after she had fallen in love with him. And when they had finally made love, Lawton treated her like delicate china, loving her in a way that Max had not, as if they had had some spiritual connection to each other’s soul.