Missing Pieces (8 page)

“Twenty,” she replied, looking as if she weren’t altogether sure.

“And how long had you known Wendy Sabatello?”

“We’d been best friends since the fourth grade.”

“Who’s Wendy Sabatello?” I asked.

“One of the victims,” Jo Lynn said, the words sliding out of the side of her mouth.

I stared into my lap, not sure I wanted to hear more.

“And can you tell me what happened on the night of March 17, 1995?”

“We went to a party at someone’s house. Her parents were away, and so there was this big party.”

“What time did you get there?”

“About nine o’clock.”

“And the party was in full swing?”

“It was starting to heat up. There were lots of people; the music was very loud.”

“Did you know everyone?”

“No. There were a lot of people there I’d never seen before.”

“Did you see the defendant?”

Reluctantly, Angela Riegert glanced toward the accused, then looked quickly away. “Not at first,” she whispered.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I didn’t see him till later.”

“But you did see him?”

“Yes, he was in the backyard. I saw him when we went outside to get some air.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“He talked to me.”

“You wish,” Jo Lynn scoffed.

“What did he say?”

“Not much. ‘Nice party,’ ‘nice night,’ that sort of thing.”

“Was Wendy Sabatello with you at the time?”

“Yes. She thought he was cute.”

“Objection, your honor,” one of the defense lawyers protested, jumping to his feet. “Can the witness read minds?”

“She told me,” Angela Riegert said clearly.

“Objection,” the lawyer countered. “Hearsay.”

“Overruled.”

The witness looked confused, as if she weren’t sure what exactly had transpired. She wasn’t the only one.

“Did she say anything else about him?”

Angela Riegert nodded. “That he had incredible eyes.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought he was cute too, a little older than most of the other guys there.”

“What happened then?”

The witness swallowed, bit down on her lower lip. “We went back inside.”

“And did you speak to Colin Friendly again?”

“I didn’t, no, but later on, Wendy said she was going back outside to talk to him.”

“And?”

“It was the last time I saw her.”

“She never came back in?”

“No. When I went to look for her later, to tell her I was ready to leave, she was gone.”

“And the defendant?”

“He was gone too.”

The prosecutor smiled. “Thank you, Miss Riegert.” He nodded toward the defense. “Your witness.”

The defense counsel was already on his feet, buttoning
his jacket. He was an athletic-looking man, blond and thick-necked, the muscles of his arms clearly evident beneath the jacket of his gray silk suit. “Miss Riegert,” he said, biting off each syllable, “was there any drinking at this party?”

Angela Riegert shrank back in her seat. “Yes.”

“Drugs?”

“Drugs?” she repeated, clearly flustered.

“Marijuana? Cocaine?”

“I didn’t see anyone doing cocaine.”

“Were you drinking?” the attorney pressed.

“I had a few beers, yes.”

“Were you drunk?”

“No.”

“Did you have any marijuana?”

“Objection, your honor,” Mr. Eaves protested. “The witness is not on trial.”

“Goes to state of mind, Judge. It directly affects the witness’s ability to identify my client.”

“Objection overruled. Please answer the question, Miss Riegert.”

She hesitated, looked close to tears. “I had a few tokes,” she admitted.

“A few tokes off a marijuana cigarette and a few beers, is that what you’re saying?” the defense attorney repeated.

“Yes.”

“Were you stoned?”

“No.”

“But you did go outside to get some air.”

“It was hot inside, and very crowded.”

“And outside?”

“It was better.”

“Was it dark?”

“I guess.”

“So,” the defense lawyer stated, positioning himself directly in front of the jury, “it was dark, you’d been drinking and smoking marijuana …”He paused for effect. “And still you claim you can positively identify my client.”

Angela Riegert pulled back her shoulders, stared directly at Colin Friendly. “Yes,” she said. “I know it was him.”

“Oh, Miss Riegert,” the lawyer asked, almost as an afterthought, “do you wear glasses?”

“Sometimes.”

“Were you wearing them that night?”

“No.”

“Thank you. No further questions.” The lawyer quickly returned to his seat.

“Well done,” Jo Lynn said, and I was forced to agree. In less than a minute, Colin Friendly’s attorney had neatly skewered Angela Riegert’s testimony, introducing at least a modicum of reasonable doubt.

“You may step down,” Judge Kellner instructed the witness. Angela Riegert took a deep breath, then stepped off the witness stand, Jo Lynn’s eyes glaring at her as she walked past us out of the room.

“What a loser,” Jo Lynn pronounced as the next witness was called.

“The state calls Marcia Layton.”

I looked toward the center aisle at the same precise moment as Colin Friendly. For a fraction of a second, our eyes met. He winked boldly, then looked away.

I
t was almost four-thirty by the time we reached our mother’s apartment, located on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, several miles west of 1-95.

“What’s the big rush?” Jo Lynn asked, teetering on pencil-thin high heels behind me, as I ran across the parking lot toward the yellow structure that resembled nothing so much as a large lemon pound cake. “It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”

“I told Mrs. Winchell we’d be here by four o’clock,” I reminded her. “She wasn’t happy. She has to be out of here by five.”

“So, whose fault is it we’re late?”

I said nothing. Jo Lynn was right. The fact that we were almost half an hour late was at least partly my fault. And Robert’s.

He’d been waiting for me when we exited the courtroom at the end of the day. “I’m sorry I missed you at lunch-time,” he apologized immediately, while I tried not to notice how clear his hazel eyes were. “I had to rush off to a meeting.”

“How are you? What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than usual. I was grateful that Jo Lynn wasn’t beside me to witness my regression to adolescence,
that she was still poised at the side of the courtroom doors, waiting for her chance to accost one of Colin Friendly’s attorneys. She’d spent the better part of the lunch break composing a letter to the monster, having decided her phone number wasn’t support enough. Colin Friendly needed to know why she was so convinced of his innocence, she told me. I told her she needed to have her head examined.

“What am I doing in Palm Beach or what am I doing in court?” The lines around Robert Crowe’s eyes crinkled in a way that told me he was well aware of his effect on me, as he’d always been, and that he was amused, possibly even touched, by it. “I might ask you the same thing.”

“I live here. In Palm Beach. Well, actually in Palm Beach Gardens. We moved here about seven years ago.” Had he really asked for so much information? “And you?”

“My family moved to Tampa right after I graduated high school,” he said easily. “I went off to Yale, then joined my folks in Florida after graduation, met a girl, got married, moved to Boca, got divorced, moved to Delray, got married again, moved to Palm Beach.”

“So you’re married,” I said, and immediately wished the scales of justice would come crashing down on my head.

He smiled. “Four kids. And you?”

“Two girls.”

“And a husband?”

“Oh yes, of course. Larry Sinclair. I met him at college. I don’t think you know him,” I babbled, wishing someone would stick a gag in my mouth. All my life, I’ve wanted to be a lady of mystery, one of those women who smile enigmatically and say little, probably because they have little to say, but everyone always assumes it’s because they’re so deep. At any rate, mystery has never been my
strong suit. My mother always says you can see everything on my face.

Robert Crowe shook his head, revealing a number of gray hairs around his temples. They made him look more distinguished, I thought. “Just the one husband?” he asked.

“Pretty boring,” I said.

“Pretty amazing,” he countered. “So, what brings you to court today?”

I glanced toward my sister, still waiting anxiously by the courtroom doors. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. What about you? Are you a reporter?”

“Not exactly. I own a radio station, WKEY.”

“Oh, of course.” I hoped I didn’t sound as impressed as I felt.

“Normally I wouldn’t be here. We have reporters covering the trial, of course.”

“Of course,” I concurred.

“But I had a lunch meeting nearby, so I thought …” He broke off. “You’re very beautiful,” he said.

I laughed out loud. Probably to keep from fainting.

“Why are you laughing? Don’t you believe me?”

I felt my cheeks grow crimson, my knees go weak, my body temperature rise. Oh sure, I thought, great time to turn into a red, quivering mass of sweat. That should impress the hell out of him. “It’s just been a long time since anyone told me I was beautiful,” I heard myself say.

“Larry doesn’t tell you how beautiful you are?” He smiled, curling his lips around my husband’s first name. He’s playing with me, I thought.

There was a slight commotion at the door. Colin Friendly’s attorneys were leaving the courtroom. “Mr. Archibald,” I heard my sister call out, thrusting the letter she’d spent the lunch break composing at the lawyer in the
gray silk suit, “I was wondering if you could make sure that Colin receives this. It’s very important.”

“Pathetic,” Robert Crowe pronounced.

“What is?”

“Courtroom groupies. Every trial has them. The more gruesome the crime, the more ardent the bimbos.” He shook his head. “It makes you wonder.”

“About what?”

“About what kind of lives these poor deluded souls live. I mean, look at that woman. She’s not bad-looking; she probably wouldn’t have any trouble getting a man, yet she chooses to go after a guy who gets his kicks from killing and mutilating women. I don’t get it. Do you?”

I shook my head, although, in truth, I was barely aware of anything he’d said after “she’s not bad-looking.” Moments before he’d told me I was beautiful. Jo Lynn was merely “not bad-looking.” Shallow thing that I was fast becoming, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“So, what does Larry’s wife do when she’s not attending sensational murder trials?” he asked.

The second mention of my husband’s name snapped me out of my reveries. “I’m a therapist.”

“That’s right, I remember you were always interested in that sort of stuff.” He managed to make it sound as if he’d actually been listening to anything I’d had to say thirty years ago. “So little Kate Latimer grew up to become the woman she always wanted to be.”

Had I? I wondered. If so, then why was she such a stranger?

“Well, Kate Latimer, it’s been very nice seeing you again after all these years.” He leaned his face close to mine. Was he going to kiss me? Was I going to let him? Was I a total idiot?

“It’s Kate Sinclair now,” I reminded us both.

Cocking his head to one side, his eyes never leaving
mine, he took my hand in his and brought it slowly to his mouth. His lips grazed the back of my hand. I don’t even want to describe the effect this had on my body, which was already struggling to remain upright and in one piece. “Uh-oh,” he said.

I froze. “What’s the matter?”

“The bimbo is headed this way.”

“Okay, we can go now,” Jo Lynn announced, arriving at my side, eyes wandering between me and Robert Crowe.

“Jo Lynn,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Robert Crowe. Robert, this is my sister, Jo Lynn Baker.”

“Please shoot me now,” Robert said simply, and I laughed. It felt good to be in control again.

“Am I missing something?” Jo Lynn asked. Her voice was light, but her eyes flashed a familiar combination of anger and hurt. She didn’t like to feel left out. She hated being laughed at.

“Your sister and I knew each other in high school,” Robert said, as if this were explanation enough.

For some reason, this seemed to satisfy her. “Really? Well, then I guess you can thank me for this mini high school reunion. I’m the one who dragged her down here, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.” She leaned forward to shake his hand, her breasts all but spilling into the air between them.

“Yes, I seem to recall that it’s pretty hard to get Kate to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” Robert’s smile grew wicked. He’d spent six months in high school trying to seduce me, then dropped me like the proverbial hot potato when it became apparent I was a lost cause.

“We should get going,” Jo Lynn stated, then leaned toward Robert, conspiratorially. “Our mom is terrorizing the tenants of the old folks home she lives in. We have a meeting.”

“Interesting family,” Robert Crowe said, as Jo Lynn led me away.

“So, did you sleep with him?” she asked on the way to the Palm Beach Lakes Retirement Home.

“No, of course not.”

“But you wanted to,” she persisted.

“I was seventeen; I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“You wanted to sleep with him, but you were such a goody-goody that you didn’t, and you’ve always regretted it.”

“For God’s sake, Jo Lynn, I haven’t thought about the man in years.”

When I refused to discuss him further, Jo Lynn launched into a recap of the day’s proceedings. Angela Riegert was a disaster as a witness, she pronounced; her testimony had been more helpful to the defense than to the prosecution. It didn’t matter that she’d placed the defendant beside the victim shortly before the girl’s disappearance; all the jury would remember was that Angela Riegert was a beer-guzzling, marijuana-smoking, half-blind half-wit.

Marcia Layton was similarly gutted, then tossed aside, as were the rest of the day’s witnesses, all of whom put Colin Friendly squarely in the vicinity of the murdered girls at the time they went missing. “Inconclusive,” Jo Lynn pronounced stubbornly. “Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.”