You Bet Your Life (6 page)

“Would you mind terribly if I took a rain check?” I asked. “I think Martha could use some company right now.”

“A rain check? That’s a Yank expression,” Tony said. “While I’ll miss the opportunity for your company, I understand. You realize, of course, that I may have to spend your entire swag on myself.”

“I hope you enjoy spending it as much as I enjoyed winning it.”

I caught up with Martha as Oliver counted out a sheaf of bills into her palm. “Thank you, Oliver,” she said, closing her fist over the money. “Please keep an eye on Mr. Kildare. He’s not as young as he thinks he is. When he starts to flag, bring him upstairs. He’ll listen to you.”

Oliver nodded and walked away.

“On your way to the elevators?” I asked, linking my arm through hers. “I’ll walk with you.”

“Are you going up to bed, too, Jessica?” she asked.

“I’m not sleepy yet,” I said. “What about you?”

“I’m all keyed up. It’s been quite a day.”

“Would you prefer to stay down here? There’s plenty of entertainment even if you don’t want to gamble,” I said. “I heard a jazz band over on that side. And a rock group over there.” I gestured toward a nightclub. “You can also browse those fancy shops you were telling me about. They stay open late, I’m sure.”

“There’s loads to do here, I know,” she said, “but I guess I’m not in the mood for any of them. I’d rather go back to the room—or suite, I should say. Would you like to come up and see it, Jessica?”

“Are you sure you’re up for the company?” I asked as we reached the short hall leading to the penthouse elevators.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ve been dying to show off the suite. It’s really something. I’ve never stayed in a place like this before.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“Wait till you see the picture windows. We overlook the Bellagio fountains and have a fabulous view of the city. I’ll make some tea, if you like. There’s a kitchen.”

“Sounds perfect.”

In the elevator, Martha inserted her room key into a lock on the lighted panel and pressed the button for the twenty-first floor. “It’s a security feature, so they say,” she said, waving the key. “Frankly, I think they do it to make the people on these floors feel special. Can’t get up there without a key—and a lot of money. Of course, the penthouse suites aren’t even the best rooms. See this button here, for the villas ? They’re for the really high rollers. Whole houses, I guess. I haven’t seen them. Victor says he’s stayed there before but he prefers to be up high. Our suite is so beautiful. I can’t imagine what the villas must look like.”

The elevator doors opened and we walked down the carpeted hall to Martha and Victor’s room. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being this rich,” Martha said. She unlocked the door and held it open for me.

The suite was spacious and elegant, the size of a very large one-bedroom apartment. The chapel staff had delivered some of the flower arrangements from the wedding, and the delicate scent of roses perfumed the air.

Martha gleefully showed me the three bathrooms—his, hers, and the guests’. “I think our bedroom in Cabot Cove was almost this size,” she said. There were marble floors and counters throughout, along with gold fixtures for each sink, including one in a small kitchen and bar just off the vestibule. A silver tray holding wedding cake, covered by a glass dome, had been left in the kitchen. Plates, forks, and napkins were arranged next to it.

Taking me on what she called the “ten-cent tour,” Martha pointed out the custom-designed gold carpeting in the bedroom that was echoed in an area rug in the living room. “See how the colors are picked up in the cornices and the wall panels? Don’t you love it?” she asked, not expecting a reply. “Everything is luxurious without being fussy. I could live here forever. There’s even a dining room, sort of.” She indicated a round marble table and four chairs under a crystal chandelier. “And look at this,” she said, opening the doors to an armoire that held an array of entertainment and technological equipment, VCR, tape, and CD deck, fax machine, and large-screen television. “There’s another one just like it in the bedroom.”

Everything to satisfy the needs of vacationer and business traveler,
I thought,
but perhaps not a temporarily abandoned bride.

Martha had been winding down as she walked around the suite, pointing out its amenities. She was less ebullient now, more wistful. She pushed a button on the wall, and the drapes parted, revealing floor-to-ceiling picture windows with a panoramic view of the city and the mountains beyond it. Martha walked to a window and pressed her palm to the glass.

“Walt and I always dreamed of staying in a place like this, but we never found the time. He was too busy to travel, he said. First it was because he was building his practice, and we had no money anyway. Later it was because he was a popular surgeon, his time booked weeks in advance. Then he became sick, and our days were filled with running from one specialist to another, hoping for a miracle. Always too busy to take a trip. And now too late. All those dreams never came true.”

“I’m sure that’s the case with a lot of couples,” I said. “But you had a good life together. You were happy and loved each other.”

“Yes. We did have a good life together.” She stared out the window. I had the feeling that she didn’t even see the blaze of colorful neon lights and brilliant images advertising the attractions of the city. Her thoughts were with another time, another man. “Seth thinks I’m crazy to have married Victor,” she said, looking at me over her shoulder. “No, don’t deny it. I could see it in his face.” She pulled a chair out from the table and slumped into it. “Please sit down.”

“I think Seth misses Walt, as do you,” I said, joining her at the table.

“I know.”

“He would like things to be as they were, but he recognizes that that’s not possible any longer. He only wants you to be happy, Martha. How you find that happiness is your choice, as it should be.”

“I’m not sorry I married Victor. He may be crass from time to time, but he’s a good man, and he truly cares for me.”

“And you care for him.”

“I do. Really, I do. It’s funny, you know. He’s so different from Walt. But apparently I’m very different from the previous Mrs. Kildares. Or so I’m told. Victor is a businessman, but at heart he’s a gambler, a very successful one. He’s a self-made man, and every move that put his business ahead was a gamble. He says what he risks at the craps table is nothing to what he bet when he and Tony started the business.”

“What business are they in?”

“Venture capital, whatever that means. But I gather he and Tony invest in businesses or buy them out, fix them up, and sell them again. Victor says he doesn’t really like to work, but he likes to help other people work,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?”

“You admire him, too, I can see.”

“I do. I care for him and I admire him, but I’m also practical. I was a middle-class widow from Maine without a lot of money, but with a need to explore all the avenues I’d never ventured down before. It was more than a need, really. I was desperate not to reach the end of my life, as Walt had, with so many sights unseen and experiences untasted. I wanted to live.” She jumped up from her seat and began pacing in front of the window. “That rage to experience life—Victor understands that. And while I may have to hold certain of my desires in check—going to London tomorrow, for instance, or even having a honeymoon—I’ve already gotten much more than I ever thought I would.”

“You mean material things?”

She sighed. “Oh, Jessica, I can see I disappoint you. But yes, material things are part of it, too. Maybe they won’t be in a year or two, but right now I’m enjoying the novelty of beautiful clothes, jewelry, and gifts, lovingly presented to me by a handsome man who is now my husband.”

“No one can blame you for that, but you know as well as I do that a marriage requires a lot more than buying and receiving gifts. What would happen if Victor lost all his money tomorrow? Would you still want to be married to him?”

“Believe it or not, I actually thought about that when Victor asked me to many him.” She sat down again. “I asked myself if I was just marrying him for his money.”

“And what was your answer?”

“My answer was no, of course. But truthfully, deep down, I don’t believe he could lose all his money. I have confidence in him that he will take care of me, give me what I need emotionally as well as materially, and I will give him back whatever he wants from me.”

“Does that include being a mother to his daughter?”

“She already has a mother who lives nearby, even if they’re not very close. No, I’m the one who wants a relationship with Jane. When Victor let her move in with him after her divorce, it was probably guilt on his part. He was pretty much an absentee father when she was a child. I think he wanted to make it up to her. But for good or ill, she’s living in his house... our house ... and whether she likes it or not, whether she likes
me
or not, I’m her stepmother and I’ll be living there, too. I’m determined to make a friend of her.”

“You’ve got a job ahead of you.”

“She’s not usually as badly behaved as she was today.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You’ll see. Next time you come, you’ll meet another Jane. She can be very sweet.”

“If you say there’s a lovely woman under that crusty exterior,” I said, “it must be so. And if anyone can bring her out of her shell, it’s you, Martha.”

“Thanks, Jessica.” She leaned over and gave me a hug. “I can always count on you. Now let’s make some tea and eat some of my wedding cake. You can tell me all about the goings-on in Cabot Cove. Then we’ll watch the Bellagio’s dancing fountains together from here. Best seat in the house. It’s a fabulous spectacle. I love it.”

 

The hairdresser, Krista Scarborough, left the stand, and the judge instructed the prosecutor to call his next witness.

“Please state your name and spell your last name,” the prosecutor, Shelby Fordice, asked the attractive young woman now occupying the witness stand.

“Lydia Bellis. B-e-l-l-i-s.”

“How are you employed, Ms. Bellis?”

“I’m a manicurist at Opal Salon here in Las Vegas.”

“Have you had occasion to spend time with the defendant?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury under what circumstances this occurred.”

“She has a weekly appointment at our salon.”

“Manicurists and hairdressers become pretty friendly with their clients,” said the prosecutor. “Correct?”

Ms. Bellis smiled. “Oh, yes, we become
real
friendly. We talk about a lot of things.”

“Yes, I imagine you do. Did the defendant ever discuss her personal life with you and others in the salon?”

The defense attorney quickly stood. “Objection,” he said firmly. “What others heard in the salon is hearsay coming from this witness.”

“Objection sustained,” the judge, a heavyset man with a Brooklyn accent, said from the bench. To the witness: “Confine your answers only to what
you
heard.”

“Yes, sir.”

Under questioning from the prosecutor, the manicurist confirmed what the hairdresser had testified to minutes before.

The attorney for the defense, Vincent Nastasi, approached the witness stand.

“Ms. Bellis, have you ever been angry with anyone close to you?”

“I guess.”

“So angry that you wanted to kill them? Figuratively, of course.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Have you ever gotten so angry at someone you loved, your boyfriend or your mother or your sister, for instance, that you said, ‘I could just kill him—or her’? Lots of people feel that way from time to time. That’s not unusual, now, is it?”

Fordice called out, “Objection, leading the witness.”

“Rephrase your question, Mr. Nastasi,” said the judge.

“Let’s take your boss, Ms. Scarborough, as an example. Have you ever been angry with her?”

“We have disagreements.”

“Sure you do. Everyone does. Think you might ever have said of Ms. Scarborough, ‘I’m so mad, I could kill her’?”

“Maybe. But this was different.”

“Why was it different, Ms. Bellis?”

“Because she never talked that way. She always seemed like such a nice lady. When Mrs. Kildare said she wanted to kill her husband, I was in shock.”

Shock had been my response, too, when, seven months ago, I’d opened the Cabot Cove newspaper one morning to see the headline:
Former Resident Accused of Murder.
I’d heard about Victor’s death the month before. What I hadn’t known was that he was bludgeoned in the head and pushed into the pool, where his blood had run into the clear water, a rusty stain hovering over the turquoise tile. The police had arrested Martha, his wife, even though she’d denied being in the house when the crime occurred.

Accompanying the article was a photograph of Martha, a publicity shot that had been taken for the Cabot Cove Village Theatre Troupe’s production of
Witness for the Prosecution.
Martha had played the lead, the same role Marlene Dietrich made so memorable in the movie version.

The judge called a ten-minute recess after the manicurist had finished testifying, and I took the opportunity to step outside the courthouse for some air. I’d forgotten how hot Las Vegas can be in June; it was like breathing in fire.

 

I’d arrived in Las Vegas late the previous morning after a pleasant and uneventful America West flight from JFK Airport, in New York. Mr. Nastasi, Martha’s defense attorney, had dispatched an associate from his office to pick me up at the Bellagio that afternoon, and the young man had driven me to the law firm in downtown Las Vegas. Nastasi was a short, stocky man with a shaved head, a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, and a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact demeanor, not abrasive but not terribly warm either. After keeping me waiting in his reception area for a half hour, he burst through his office door, apologized for the wait—he’d been rehearsing a witness—and ushered me into his private office, a masculine room in dark woods and heavy burgundy leather furniture. Original Frederic Remington paintings of the Old West dominated the walls, except for one wall containing floor-to-ceiling bookcases with a movable library ladder to enable access to the top shelves.