The Best Defense (40 page)

Poor Gerald Fierst, Barbara thought with almost malicious satisfaction. He had little left to do with this witness.

She could imagine the long list of questions, accusations, innuendoes he had prepared, and would not be able to use. He tried, however.

“Dr. Lipscomb, did you visit Mrs. Kennerman in jail?”

“Objection,” Barbara said.

“Improper cross-examination;

the matter has not been brought up in direct testimony.”

“Sustained.”

He had her talk about her practice. Did she treat women said to have battered-wife syndrome? Survivors?

Rape victims? Janey talked fluently and well about her practice, but he could not connect her in any way to Paula. Finally he sat down.

“Just one more question,” Barbara said.

“How is Annie Everts now?”

Janey smiled.

“She is a” healthy, normal little girl.”

“Everyone wants to take her home with them,” Frank said during the recess.

“I want her to be a witness every time I’m in court,” Barbara said.

“Have you looked around the audience this morning?”

“Nope. Why?”

“Do. You have groupies. And they’re using a metal detector on everyone coming in. Good old Lewis.” He handed her an envelope.

“For both of us.”

“Not again,” she groaned, but this note was from Sam Bixby. The firm was behind her one hundred percent;

anything she needed, just say the word.

“Seems someone let him in on the fact that the barbarians aren’t just at the gate but actually broke through,” Frank said with a grin.

“Now it’s a family matter.”

When they returned to court, she looked out over the people; the room held no more than forty spectators, and it appeared that half of them were from her neighborhood.

Martin and his wife; Juanita Lopez, her next-door neighbor; most of the Delgado family; Mrs.

Searles; even Roberta’s mother. Paula’s sister, Lucille, with her husband; the three students, who had been there every day. In the back row she spotted Bill Spassero. He grinned, and she nodded at him, at her friends. The others were still there, but they no longer made up a formidable wall of hostility.

She called Carol Burnside, a slender dark-haired woman in her thirties. She testified that she had gone onto the Dodgson property in order to get photographs of the elk one morning back in February. She indicated on the aerial map where she had stood, where she had photographed.

“But you didn’t print them. Why not?”

“Too dark. And when there was just beginning to be enough light and I saw them, something scared them off. They turned back into the woods.”

She identified the photographs as hers, and Barbara had them admitted, all without any objections from Fierst. He didn’t care, she understood, how bad a picture she painted of the Dodgsons because he would agree that they were not nice people, but that it didn’t matter.

Reggie Melrose was her last witness before lunch.

She told again how she had gone to work at eleven;

about Angela’s phone call to the fire department; the smell of chlorine in die house. Barbara questioned her closely about the note to clean the refrigerator, about the usual procedure with the poolroom door. Mrs.

Melrose talked freely, but her dislike for the Dodgsons was perhaps too apparent to make her a good witness.

“You say Mrs. Dodgson told you to go on home as soon as you finished in the kitchen. But you looked for laundry first? Why did you do that?”

“Well, it didn’t mean much for her to say take the rest of the day off. And I knew he Mr. Dodgson, I mean would have a fit when he saw all those tracks in the living room, and a double fit if he saw dirty towels or dirty clothes around. So I looked, and then I went home.”

“You didn’t find any clothes or towels to wash?”

“No, ma’am. Not a thing, and then I thought. Well, I could always tell him she told me to leave, if he got on me about it.”

“What kind of tracks were in the living room?”

“I guess Angela tracked in mud when she came in, and then Craig left wet tracks to his room. It was a mess, all right. That was the kind of thing they usually went on about, tracks on the rugs and such.”

“Who hired you, Mrs. Melrose?”

“He did. Mr. Dodgson.”

Barbara had her tell about the day she was fired.

When she finished, Barbara asked, “Where was the floor stripper usually kept?”

“In the pantry, off the kitchen. I used up the last of it in March and he ordered a new gallon. That’s where it was last time I saw it, in the pantry.”

“Had you been using it for anything on Saturday?”

“No, ma’am. Back in March I did the floors.”

“Was the container open?”

“I don’t know. It must have been or it would have sunk, wouldn’t it?”

Barbara nodded.

“Mrs. Melrose, who usually gave you orders?”

“She did sometimes, like clean the refrigerator that day. He did mostly.”

When Barbara sat down, she scribbled a note to her father. Did they drain the pool? Who did the work? She turned her attention to Fierst then. He had very few questions, and they emphasized the fact that this witness did not like any of the Dodgsons.

When he was done, Barbara asked, “Mrs. Melrose, did you see Mrs. Dodgson or Craig before Angela Everts arrived that morning?”

“No, ma’am.”

Barbara thanked her and she was excused. Barbara could feel her toes tingle all the way up to her knees.

“Don’t talk,” she said when she and Frank were escorted to their room, this time out the jury door through the twisting halls with jury deliberation rooms on each side, up a back elevator. She hardly noticed. After a glance at her, Frank kept silent. He inspected their lunch while she stood at the window, and a minute later, when she opened the door and went out to the corridor to walk, he said nothing.

She started and looked at him without awareness later when he touched her arm in the hallway.

“It’s one-thirty,” he said.

Her eyes focused again; she looked at her watch, and said, “Shit!”

“Yep. Come on.”

Inside the room she picked up a sandwich, took a bite, and put it down again. Cardboard.

“Dad, who do you know in the FBI?”

“A lot of them. Why?”

“You have to tell someone you trust that they have to keep an eye on the Dodgsons, Gallead, and Bossert tonight.”

He snorted.

“Tell Carter Heilbronner they’re smuggling diamonds, is that enough?” | She eyed him curiously.

“I don’t know. Would it be enough?” Then she said with a touch of impatience, “I don’t care what you tell him. They just have to keep all of them under surveillance tonight. Not the district attorney’s office or the local police; the FBI.” She put her coffee down and went to the door again.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“You think they’re going to skip, all of them?”

Again she studied him with a curious intensity.

“I

think someone might try to kill Kay Dodgson.”

today kay dodgson was wearing another of her designer outfits, coordinated down to her nail polish. A soft rose-colored cashmere suit, silk blouse, hose; she could have posed for a fashion magazine. Her jewelry was lustrous pearls—dangling earrings, a strand of pearls gleaming against the pink blouse, a pearl and diamond ring.

“Mrs. Dodgson,” Barbara began, pointing to the aerial map, “was this gravel driveway there when you bought your property?”

“Yes, of course. It went from the private road out to Spring Bay Road.”

“And you took out that end and put in your own driveway when you built, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you continue to use the remaining section of driveway?”

“Now and then, but mostly just for a way to get to the private road and take walks there.”

“Later, after the Canby Ranch became a haven for women, you felt compelled to add the gate. Is that right?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“Did you put on a padlock?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Do you keep the gate locked at all times?”

“Yes, of course. We don’t want anyone taking a shortcut through our yard to Spring Bay Road.”

“Where do you usually keep the key to the padlock?”

Barbara asked.

“It’s on a rubber bracelet that we hang on a hook near the back door. When I go out, I slip it on my wrist.”

“Mrs. Dodgson, was the gate locked the morning of Saturday, April nineteenth?”

“Yes. I told you, we keep it locked.”

“And you locked it when you returned from your walk?”

“Yes.”

“How did Angela Everts get past it that morning?

Did someone go out and unlock it for her?”

Kay Dodgson hesitated, and then said, “I don’t know.”

“Do you customarily give your housekeepers a key to the gate?”

“No,” she said. Her clipped manner had changed, a new wariness had appeared.

“So if she simply opened the gate and drove through, you must not have locked it that morning. Is that right?”

“I don’t remember,” she said, almost defiantly.

Barbara nodded. That was the best possible response for a witness who didn’t want to answer questions.

“Is it possible that someone came after you, from the private road, along your gravel driveway, and that person forgot to lock the gate again?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said.

“No one came until Angela.”

“Did something happen that upset you, made you forget to lock it?”

“Objection,” Fierst said.

“The witness has already said she doesn’t remember. How many times must she repeat that?”

His objection was sustained, and Barbara asked her about her walk that morning. Did she go to her gate and open it? Did she go back to her house as soon as Angela was in the Canby driveway? Did she return to the pond after that? Was she still there at eleven? Did she remember unlocking the gate? Did she remember tying her shoe? It took a long time; Kay Dodgson stuck to her original story.

She had been well coached, Barbara thought; it would have been surprising only if she had not been after all this time.

“Mrs. Dodgson,” she asked, “you have stated you are the bookkeeper-business manager of the Dodgson Publishing Company. Is that correct?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Where did you go to school to learn bookkeeping?”

She moistened her lips.

“I just picked it up.”

“For a million-dollar business? You handle the insurance, the withholding taxes, pension plans, orders, all of it with no training?”

“Yes. We started small and as the business grew I kept learning more.”

“Mrs. Voight testified that Mr. Dodgson paid her monthly by check. Did you ever see those check stubs or the check register with her name?”

“No. Yes.” She had nearly worn her lipstick down to nothing.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, consider it this way. When you balanced the checkbooks, where did you account for that sum? Was it a business expense?”

“Objection,” Fierst said.

“The witness has said she doesn’t remember.”

“The witness said she doesn’t remember Mrs. Vaight’s name on check stubs or in the register. I am asking her about the sum, two hundred fifty dollars a month.”

“Overruled,” Judge Paltz said in his firm quiet way.

Kay Dodgson didn’t remember.

“Who made out the payroll checks at the printing press?”

“I did.”

“Did you sign them?”

“No.”

“Who signed them?”

“My husband.”

“Who made out the checks for household help?”

“I did. He signed them.”

“Do you have a joint checking account?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you use it often for your own purchases, your own personal items?”

“Yes.”

“Do you sign those checks?”

Her cheeks flared, and the color washed out again rapidly.

“Yes,” she said in a near whisper.

“When was the last time you wrote a check for more than a hundred dollars that you signed?”

Fierst objected and was sustained.

“Who buys your clothes?” Barbara demanded.

Fierst objected and was sustained.

“Do you drive your own car?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is it registered in your name?”

She didn’t remember.

“Who bought your car?”

Fierst objected and was sustained.

“Who hires the employees at the printing company?”

Her husband.

“Who hires household help?”

“He does. He likes to deal with people himself and I don’t.”

“Do you have any voice in the people he hires or fires?”

“Yes, of course. We talk it over first.”

“Are you present when he interviews people he hires?”

“Usually.”

“Were you there when he interviewed Mrs. Everts?”

“No. I mean, I don’t remember.”

“Were you present when he interviewed and hired Mrs. Melrose?”

“I … I don’t remember.”

“Did you discuss firing Mrs. Melrose?”

“Yes, of course. We had been thinking of it for some time.”

“Where were you when he fired Mrs. Melrose?”

“In my room; I didn’t feel well.”

“Did you see the floor stripper container in the pool before your husband fired Mrs. Melrose?”

“Yes. We all saw it. He said leave it alone to show her why we were firing her.”

“When did you see it, Mrs. Dodgson?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Barbara pressed her about it until Fierst objected.

“Mrs. Dodgson, did you ever question your husband about any items in his check register that you had to enter in the books?”

“No,” she said faintly.

“So, if he is paying other informants two hundred dollars a month, three hundred, whatever the amount, you would not know about it. Is that right?”

“No!” she cried.

“He wasn’t.”

“But how can you be certain if you never ask him to explain his checks?”

“He … he looks over it with me.”

“Ah,” Barbara said, nodding.

“When he looks over the books with you, does he say this is for business, this is personal?”

She moistened her lips and hesitated. Barbara waited.