I want to go home.
I feel like crying.
I want to go to sleep again.
I have to pee.
Something is starting in this room on this bright day in April.
It is called recovery.
It is called recuperation.
Section 905.17 of the statutes plainly states that “no person shall be present at the sessions of the grand jury except the witness under examination, the state attorney, designated assistants as provided for in Section 27.18, the court reporter or stenographer, and the interpreter.”
This means that a grand jury hearing is a nonconfrontational thing. No defense lawyers there. No cross-examination of the various witnesses. Just the state attorney munching on his own sweet ham sandwich. This further means that should an accused elect to testify, his or her lawyer cannot be present in the room. Which may explain why, in most cases, any good attorney will advise his client not to accept an invitation to go in there and face the music. I explained this to Lainie now, and she nodded gravely and said it seemed unfair. I told her that perhaps the word she was seeking was “Draconian.”
I had picked her up at the County Jail after she’d changed back into civilian clothing, the jeans, T-shirt and sandals she’d thrown on last night when the police came to arrest her. I was driving her home to North Apple because we needed to talk further and also because she’d promised to show me the new stuffed animal she’d been sketching when the call from Brett Toland came last night. I was eager to see her drawings because her frame of mind was important to the events that had subsequently transpired. The important thing was that she’d been working on something new, you see. She was planning to move on, planning for the future. Contrary to her gloomy outlook at lunch, by the time she’d got back to her house, she’d come around to believing that Judge Santos would find in our favor and order the preliminary injunction we were seeking. There was no reason for her to have wanted Brett Toland dead. She hadn’t even been thinking of Brett when his call came later that night.
Her house on North Apple looked exactly as she’d described it to the Court yesterday morning. I parked my car under a huge shade tree which I could not identify, and looked up to make sure there weren’t any birds in it. The car I drive is a slate-blue Acura Legend which Patricia ran into just before our first meeting. She claims I will never forgive her for that. Maybe I won’t. Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” I don’t smoke, but I love that car. Not as much as I love Patricia, he was quick to amend. But I still didn’t want birds shitting all over its hood and its roof.
I followed Lainie up the path to the low cinder-block structure, and then into the house itself. She showed me around briefly, asked if I wanted a cold drink — it was only three-thirty, so I guessed she meant a soft drink — and we each went into the studio carrying a beaded glass of lemonade afloat with ice cubes. I felt as if I’d been in this house before, this work space before. She threw a light switch. The fluorescents came on over the long drawing table she’d described at the hearing, illuminating her sketches for Kinky Turtle. She pointed out the date she’d penciled into the lower right-hand corner of each drawing, just below her signature. Unless she’d altered the notations, the drawings had, in fact, been made yesterday.
“Tell me everything that happened last night,” I said.
“From when to when?”
“From when Brett called to the last time you saw him alive.”
It occurs to me as she speaks that she would make a compelling witness if ever we decide to put her on the stand. Her eyeglasses do nothing to correct that wandering right eye. But the visual defect gives her a somewhat startled look that attracts unwavering attention. As beautiful as she is, it is the imperfect eye that lends to her otherwise flawless features a skewed look that is totally compelling.
Sitting on a stool in jeans, T-shirt and sandals, hands in her lap, she tells me she was in the studio working on the sketches when the telephone rang...
“What time was this?”
“Around nine o’clock.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when we were later talking about my going over there...”
Brett is calling to invite her to his boat.
“What for?” she asks him.
“I want to discuss a settlement,” he says.
“Then call my lawyer,” she says.
“I don’t want to drag the lawyers in just yet, Lainie.”
“Brett,” she says, “the lawyers are already in.”
“The lawyers are why we have this problem, Lainie. All lawyers should be shot, Lainie. I want to discuss this face-to-face, just you and me. “You’re familiar with the toy business, you’ll understand the significance of what I want to suggest.”
“Okay, try me,” she says.
“Not on the phone.”
“Why not?”
“Lainie, trust me, my proposal...”
“Trust you, Brett?”
“I know we’ve had our differences...”
“Differences? You stole my fucking bear!”
“I’m willing to grant there are similarities between your design and ours. But what I’m about to propose...”
“Propose it to Matthew Hope.”
“Lainie, I promise you this won’t compromise your case at all. This isn’t a trick. I know you’ve been made aware of the fact that if money alone could repair your injuries...”
“Forget money, Brett. If you’re about to...”
“No, I’m not offering a cash settlement.”
“What are you offering?”
“Come to the boat.”
“No. Call Hope. Make your offer to him.”
“Lainie, please. For old times’ sake. Please. I promise you this is a solution. You won’t be disappointed. Come here and let me talk to you.”
She hesitates.
“Where’s here?” she asks.
“The yacht club.”
“Which one?”
“Silver Creek. You’ve been here.”
“You’re there now?”
“On the boat.”
“Is Etta with you?”
“No, but she’s aware of what I’m about to propose. We’re absolutely in agreement on it. How long will it take you to get here?”
She looks at her watch.
“An hour? Depending on traffic?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Brett...?”
“Yes, Lainie?”
“This better be good.”
She looks at me over her lemonade glass. I think she can sense my disapproval because she says nothing for a moment, and when she does speak it is only to explain what she’d started to tell me earlier, about knowing the time of Brett’s call because she’d looked at her watch in order to estimate how long it would take for her to dress and...
“Yes, I realize. How long did it take you to get there?”
“You’re thinking I shouldn’t have gone, right?”
“Why did you go?”
“Old times’ sake,” she says, and shrugs. Brett’s exact words on the phone. “We did work together for a long time, there was a history there. And I thought he might actually be ready to offer something that would simplify matters. No one likes lawsuits, Matthew.”
Graciously, she did not add “No one likes lawyers, either.”
“What time did you get to the club?”
“Around ten o’clock.”
“Silver Creek? On the river and Polk?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get there?”
“I drove.”
“What kind of car?”
“A white Geo.”
“Anyone know the exact time you arrived?”