Chapter 29.
29.
Communal Property (n. phrase)
assets and possessions owned jointly
after last night, Damon’s lap
T uesday morning, we are introduced to Shane Windham, Joe’s longtime business manager and executor of his estate. Though the same age, Mr. Windham looks as though he could have had a good ten years on Joe. While Joe defined as he aged, Shane Windham has a worn, reddened face and hair receding severely at his temples. He reminds me of a melted candle, his skin folded and molded over, winding paths down his face, collecting at the center point of his neck.
As we await Shane Windham being sworn in, Damon scrawls a note on his pad and shifts it toward me on his right leg. HI , it reads. I look up at him, and the muscle in his jaw clenches. Hi, I write back, then promptly look away, pressing my eyes shut. Last night I dry-humped Damon Bradburn on the roof of the Singer Suites while high on smuggled gummies with Cam lying just a few feet away. There could be no greater indication that I am making questionable life choices.
Something about this environment makes me feel young and stupid. It’s as though the more parameters are placed around me, the more I regress to being incapable of rational thought and decision-making.
The cedar and nutmeg scent of Shane Windham’s cologne wafts toward us from the witness stand, and it makes me sneeze.
“Bless you,” Damon whispers beside me, and his hungry tone reminds me of his whisper to me last night. I want you so bad. I shift in my seat, suddenly feeling so exposed I might as well be naked from the waist down.
Damon tilts his notepad toward me once more. Under our exchange of hellos, he has written: I HAD A DREAM ABOUT YOU LAST NIGHT . Before I can react, someone clears their throat, and I look over to find it’s one of the courtroom bailiffs, Maurice, stationed just to the right of the jury box. He’s looking directly at me. Jurors eleven (the quiet young man) and twelve (the mom of four) also seem to take note of the exchange. I smile awkwardly and shove Damon’s notebook back to him.
Last night was a low point. Technically, it was a high point—a very high, best-make-out-of-my-life high point. But I’m acting impulsively, and my actions have real potential consequences that supersede my own wants. I sit up a little straighter. Today, I draw a line in the sand. I won’t tell Damon that not only did I dream about him, too, but that, once back in my room last night, I pleasured myself thinking about our rooftop encounter.
D.A. Stern dives in, and I am grateful. He asks Mr. Windham about his relationship with Joe, which we learn dates back an impressive thirty-five years. Mr. Windham describes their friendship, which extended far beyond their business relationship, including dozens of sails to Catalina Island on his catamaran and private viewings of Joe’s upcoming films in the Kitsches’ theater room. After this background information, D.A. Stern gets to it. “Mr. Windham, will you tell us the details of Joe Kitsch’s will?”
Shane Windham clears his throat and leans forward, bumping his top lip against the microphone. It’s become a slight amusement of the trial, seeing how few people can speak into the microphone with appropriate clarity and spacing. He leans back slightly. “It was actually quite basic, despite his complex income streams and wealth.”
“What do you mean by ‘basic’?”
Shane Windham clears his throat again and looks to us in the jury box as he says, “He left everything to his wife. To Margot.” He motions a hand toward the defense table where Margot sits, right ankle crossed behind left, legs at a forty-five-degree angle, just as she usually does. She looks on, rather stoic today. I think of the magazine article, the gallery member who described her as unapologetic and spiteful. Is she?
There’s something different about her today. She’s dressed sharply, as always, in a perfectly tailored black midi dress with a draped mock neckline and pointed nude heels. Her hair hangs straight and smooth, just as it has each day of the trial. Her makeup is neutral but present. Though perfectly groomed and styled, there’s a sunkenness to her eyes. Maybe the trial is getting to her. I wonder if she’s been sleeping. Is it trial fatigue or guilt?
Shane Windham clears his throat again and regains my attention.
D.A. Stern strolls to the jury box, rests a hand on the small wall ahead of me. “So Margot stands to inherit how much, exactly, as a result of her husband’s passing?”
Shane Windham’s response is immediate, eyes clearly full of contempt and on Margot as he answers, “Just under eighty-five million.”
A murmur breaks out across the courtroom.
“Eighty-five million dollars?” D.A. Stern asks.
“That’s right. All of his bank accounts, his investments, his production company. They all list Margot as the sole beneficiary.”
D.A. Stern quietly assesses the jury, ensuring the information Shane Windham has conveyed sinks in. “That seems... unheard of. That there wouldn’t have been a trust of some kind, with a portion of that money set aside to take care of his aging parents or for the children.”
Shane Windham leans forward, too close to the microphone again. “It was unconventional. And to be honest, I advised against it. But his parents don’t need the money, and Joe didn’t want a complicated financial structure. He trusted Margot. He wanted her to have it all.”
I glance quickly at the rest of the jury as most everyone scrawls feverish notes. Was it his way of buying her silence about his affairs? I think, looking at Durrant Hammerstead as I do, hoping he points to as much in his cross-examination.
“And what about GotMar, the undergarment line that Margot is the face of. Can you tell us more about the structure of that business?”
Shane Windham clears his throat yet again, a cacophony of loosening phlegm. “When it was founded, it was rolled under Joe’s umbrella corp.”
“What does that mean exactly, in terms of ownership?”
“It means Joe is... was the majority owner of GotMar. He funded it. And when Margot bought out her ex–business partner, Bess Waterford, it was legally Joe who did so. That move gave Joe one hundred percent ownership of GotMar Incorporated.”
There’s another grumble across the courtroom, a collective understanding of where this discussion leads.
“And did Joe and Margot have a prenup?” D.A. Stern asks, riding the wave of intrigue in the room.
I shift in my seat. With Damon by my side, Cam behind me knowing what happened last night, D.A. Stern leading perpetual-throat-clearer Shane Windham down an inevitably Margot-damning path right in front of me, I’m feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I tug at the neckline of my burgundy boatneck sweater and glance at Margot. If I feel the walls closing in around me from my vantage point, I can only imagine what it must feel like for her.
For her part, Margot looks on with no malice. She appears tired. Perhaps too tired to make the details of Shane Windham’s testimony matter.
“They did have a prenup, yes,” Shane Windham states.
“And what are the details of that prenup, regarding Joe’s business dealings, should they have gotten divorced?” D.A. Stern wanders back to the prosecution table, completing his triangulation between the stand, jury box, and his seat. His favorite black pen bounces between his fingers as he does. He has yet to stand at the podium at any point of this trial.
Shane Windham clears his throat and leans forward. “Margot would not be entitled to any of his businesses.”
“Margot would not be entitled to any of his businesses,” D.A. Stern echoes as he makes his way toward Shane Windham on the witness stand. He references an exhibit, Joe’s full will, a shockingly short document of only five pages. “Just so I’m perfectly clear, what you are telling us is that should Margot have decided she was... unhappy in her marriage, and opted to simply leave Joe—”
“She would have left with very little,” Shane Windham finishes. “And Joe would have retained full ownership of GotMar.”
I think of Margot in one of her last episodes of Authentic Moms be fore Joe died, which aired last fall. In an interview, she spoke directly to the camera, her words overlaying scenes of her rushing around the GotMar offices. She spoke with conviction, animatedly even. She said her hardworking grandfather always instilled in her that it doesn’t matter what you do, just be the best at it. There is money and opportunity in everything—anything. “I used to call it his ‘be the best garbageman’ speech,” she had said. “In response, he told me, ‘Find me the best garbageman. I’ll bet he’s the billionaire head of a garbage empire.’ Sure enough, he sat me down and we searched online and found a guy in Sydney who started with a shovel and sold his business for half a billion dollars.” The scene cut to Margot staring fiercely at the camera, that brief joviality replaced with her classic sternness. “It’s not the ‘what’ that matters, it’s the ‘how,’ ” she said.
D.A. Stern puts on a performative frown. “How is that possible, in the state of California where community property laws allocate fifty-fifty ownership of assets in divorces?”
“Because they had a prenup, and because she signed her business over, those things supersede property law.”
“Interesting,” D.A. Stern muses. “But if he dies—”
Shane Windham does not wait for D.A. Stern to complete the question. “She gets everything,” he says, staring again at Margot as he does.
“She gets everything,” D.A. Stern repeats. He wanders back to his seat. “No further questions, Your Honor,” he says before unbuttoning his jacket and plopping down.
It’s as though the air has been sucked out of the room. For all the murmuring over the last week, the gallery is now silent.
Durrant Hammerstead cross-examines, though I don’t hear much of it.
She would have lost it all if she left him. It’s a hard fact to argue.
Damon beside me presses his palm to the back of his neck.
I watch him, a swirl of emotion roiling in my gut. For the sake of the case—and the safety of my heart—I have to figure out how to avoid Damon when we break for lunch, knowing I want nothing more than to find out if this courthouse has an accessible roof.