Chapter 33.
33.
Exculpatory Evidence (n., phrase)
evidence the defendant did not commit the crime
when jurors should take notes
“ T ell us about that final day,” Durrant Hammerstead says, and I shift in my seat. “What do you remember?”
Ms. Pembrooke swallows hard and leans forward. “Joe came down for breakfast around seven forty-five, just as the kids were wrapping up their toast and eggs. Margot was trying to gather the kids’ backpacks and shoes to get them out the door.”
I try to picture Margot in a bathrobe and slippers, hair pulled back in a banana clip, ushering her kids out the door to get to school on time. The vision doesn’t come easily. I rarely saw my own mother in the mornings. She left for her job at the collection agency at six forty-five every weekday to try to beat the relatively minor Bakersfield traffic. If I was up early enough, I might catch her on her way out the door, carrying her travel mug full of too-strong black coffee and a strawberry Nutri-Grain bar.
“The kids had been gone three hours by the time...” She looks down. “They hugged him goodbye, pressed quick kisses on his cheek, then rushed out the door as they always did.”
I picture Dover and Emblem, adorned in their navy school uniforms, kissing their father goodbye. I’ve seen this exact scene play out on an episode before. Margot has kept them shielded since Joe’s death. The only pictures in the press have been quick exits from a car with sweatshirts covering their faces. Our view of Emblem’s court interview is far more than the world has seen of her in the last year.
Gloria Pembrooke continues. “I offered to make him his morning smoothie.”
“Did he have a morning smoothie often?”
“Oh yes. Pretty much every day.”
“And did Margot typically partake in these morning smoothies?”
She nods. “Yes. I usually filled the blender and they both would have one.”
“And what was in these smoothies?”
“I use a variety of things. Spinach, bananas, honey, chia seeds, protein powder, juices. Whatever they might be needing. That morning was most all those things.”
“And the police questioned you, didn’t they? About the ingredients of that smoothie, of those in the days leading up to Mr. Kitsch’s death?” Durrant Hammerstead looks to the jury, indicating this as an important point.
“Yes, they did.”
“What did they find?”
“They found no evidence of anything wrong with that smoothie. Or any of the others.”
But she had fully cleaned up any remnants, I think, the devil’s advocate in me piping up.
“Was this the last thing Joe consumed before he died?”
Ms. Pembrooke shifts in her seat. “I believe so, but I can’t be certain. I wasn’t with him every minute after. Or before, for that matter.”
“So, Joe came downstairs at approximately seven forty-five, kissed Margot and the kids goodbye. They left shortly after, and then it was just you and Joe.”
She nods. “Yes.”
“Did Margot have a smoothie that morning?”
“No. She was rushed. She was dropping the kids off and heading straight to Alizay DuPont’s home to prepare for her event.”
There’s an uptick of pens to paper at the mention of another Authentic Moms cast member.
“And you made his smoothie after Margot had left the home?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So, just to be clear, Margot was gone from the home about seven forty-five a.m. and did not return until alerted of Joe’s death over three hours later.”
“Yes, that is correct.” Ms. Pembrooke looks to Margot again, and again they exchange a charged look.
Durrant Hammerstead verifies, per the garage cameras at the Kitsch home, that Margot did indeed leave the house with the kids at 7:48 a.m. He then walks to the defense table, reviews a sheet of paper, and gives Ms. Pembrooke his attention again. “There’s a record of a call from you to Margot at eight thirty-two that morning of Joe’s death. It lasted twelve minutes. What was that call about?”
The details of the smoothie. The call. I can’t help but feel like Durrant Hammerstead is making the prosecution’s case for them. I have to believe he knows what he’s doing. Maybe it’s a tactic—address straight on the questionable parts of Ms. Pembrooke’s testimony to show there’s nothing to hide. It’s risky, I concede.
“I had an errand to run for Margot. Saks packed two different-sized shoes into her bag a few days before, and she wanted me to go back that week to collect the correct pair. I called to ask where the shoes were because I couldn’t find them in her closet. I meant to go that day.”
“Simple enough,” Durrant Hammerstead says, addressing the jury. “Ms. Pembrooke, who in the Kitsch home uses eye drops?”
Ms. Pembrooke glances at the defense table so quickly it could be taken as an eye spasm rather than a peek in Margot’s direction.
“Both Mr. and Mrs. Kitsch on occasion. Margot tends to use them before public events or photo shoots, which she attends fairly often. It was always an item on our ‘in stock’ list—things I ensured we had extras of on hand, that we never ran out of.”
Durrant Hammerstead nods. “Joe’s mother, Jackie Kitsch, testified to finding three eye-drop bottles hidden in the back of a teddy bear nanny-cam in Emblem’s room. What can you tell us about this?”
Ms. Pembrooke flips a flimsy wrist in the air in the most dismissive manner I’ve seen from her. “Emblem is always collecting and hiding random household items in her room. I once found one of Margot’s Louboutin shoeboxes under Emblem’s bed. When I opened it, thinking it might be holding a pair of Margot’s shoes, I found it crammed full of restaurant condiments: salt and pepper packets, raw sugar, even individual jam pouches and mini ketchup and sriracha bottles. She’s a bit of a hoarder, that one.”
Juror number eleven behind me huffs, amused.
Satisfied, Durrant Hammerstead ends his time with the witness.
D.A. Stern cross-examines, having been tapping his pen wildly against his knee as he awaited his turn. He leads with asking Ms. Pembrooke why a call about the location of a pair of shoes might take twelve whole minutes. “Seems a long call to simply ask where a shoebox is?” D.A. Stern presses. They go back and forth on it to no clear outcome.
Twelve minutes is a long call. I strain to picture a call to ask about shoes taking twelve minutes. Instead, my mind redirects to a panicked Ms. Pembrooke calling Margot. Margot having to calm her down to see their murderous plan through. I attempt to swallow the growing mound that feels like compacted sawdust in my throat.
Eventually, the D.A. moves on. “Ms. Pembrooke, how long would you say one eye-drop bottle might last, before it be thrown out?”
She juts her shoulders into the air. “I don’t know, a month or two.”
D.A. Stern hmm s in what I can only describe as accusatory condescension. “Those little bottles last me forever. I usually end up throwing out half-used bottles after they’ve expired.” Ms. Pembrooke stares at D.A. Stern, awaiting a formal question. Finally, he adds, “Do you happen to know the expiration date of those bottles found in Emblem’s teddy bear?”
“No,” she answers flatly.
“Well, it’s interesting.” He walks over to the prosecution table and picks up a manila folder, opens it. “All three of those bottles held the same expiration date, almost two years out from the day Joe Kitsch died”—he closes the folder—“meaning they were all retailed and purchased within a short period.”
“I don’t know how that works,” she says, closing her eyes in seeming exasperation.
D.A. Stern belabors the point, referencing research his team has done on the manufacturing and distribution of the product in question, outlining the extreme likeliness that the three eye-drop bottles were purchased in close date proximity, if not all at once, though this doesn’t dispel Ms. Pembrooke’s statement that she buys them in bulk.
Finally, he moves on. “Ms. Pembrooke, would you consider your relationship with Margot a close one?”
“Yes, I suppose I would.”
“As someone close to her, as you’ve just described, did Margot ever share with you the details of where she was during those seven days she went missing when she was sixteen?”
Durrant Hammerstead objects. I mark the tally and look to Damon, who winks in approval.
D.A. Stern nods before Judge Gillespy can make her determination and quickly pivots, his goal of getting the room to think again about Margot’s teenage disappearance, her corresponding estrangement from her parents, achieved—though clumsily, in my opinion. “Did you actually witness Mr. Kitsch consuming his smoothie?”
She shakes her head. “No. I cleaned up the kitchen, then went upstairs for some chores. I couldn’t say if he had started drinking it when I headed up. I came back down after about an hour, and the glass I had filled for him was empty in the sink. So I washed it out. Then I went back upstairs.”
“Where was Mr. Kitsch?”
She closes her eyes, a seemingly unwilling owner of this last memory of him. “He was at his usual seat at the kitchen table, looking at something on his phone.”
“And then what?” D.A. Stern demands.
“Then I headed back upstairs.”
D.A. Stern riffles through the papers at the prosecution table, the silence long enough that a few jury members begin growing restless. “Ms. Pembrooke,” he says finally, stepping toward the witness stand, then halting. “Do you know anything about the tarantulas that suddenly appeared in Tenley Storms’s backyard roughly two years ago, the day after Margot confronted her about her affair with Joe?”
The callback to Tenley Storms’s day one testimony is unexpected. Many brows in the room furrow in unison at the line of questioning.
“No,” Ms. Pembrooke says, though she doesn’t seem as surprised by the question as the rest of us.
“Tell us, what did you go to school for, before going into this current line of work.”
Faces in the gallery twist in confusion, wondering D.A. Stern’s angle. I expect the defense team to interject, but they don’t. Durrant Hammerstead seems too curious about where the conversation might be headed to intervene.
“Arthropodology,” she says, switching the cross of her legs.
I catch Durrant Hammerstead whispering into his co-counsel’s ear. Wherever this is going, it appears the defense is not well-versed.
“Explain what that means?” D.A. Stern urges.
“It’s the study of arthropods. So, insects, crustaceans—”
“Spiders?” D.A. Stern interjects.
Damon’s hand is across my lap before Durrant Hammerstead officially objects, and I have to hold back a smile as he ticks a tally mark to the top right corner of my notebook page.
After some thought, Judge Gillespy asks Ms. Pembrooke to continue.
“Yes,” she says. “Technically, spiders fall into this field of study.”
“So, just to ensure this is all clear,” he says, “you have an incredibly close relationship with Mrs. Kitsch, and then the day after Margot confronted Ms. Storms about her affair with her husband, her backyard is overrun with tarantulas, and we’ve come to find out you studied arthropodology, the study of, among other things, spiders ?”
Gray Man scoffs from behind Damon, and I can practically hear his thoughts. This is unreasonably ridiculous. I’m inclined to agree. Still, it’s on par with the outrageous storylines on the show. I can practically guarantee that this specific detail from the trial will be a topic in the next season, one that garners ample screen time.
Durrant Hammerstead objects again, and Damon and I both rush to be the first to draw the tally mark. I beat him by a hair, grabbing his arm with my free hand to slow him down. I look up at him, and he glares so defiantly that I have to hold back a laugh. I can see him bite at the inside of his cheek to hold back his. I realize our actions are juvenile, but to be fair, the D.A. and witness are discussing backyard tarantulas that the prosecution seems to think are some kind of nefarious revenge plot.
Judge Gillespy once again cautiously allows D.A. Stern to proceed, and Ms. Pembrooke, for her part, holds her poise. “Tarantulas can be common in southern California, especially during mating season. Haven’t you ever seen The Kardashians ? Kourtney had an infestation in her yard once.”
“I don’t watch The Kardashians ,”D.A. Stern says flatly. He presses his lips together tightly in contemplation. “That’s quite the career shift,” he muses, “from studying arthropods to becoming a house manager.”
“Not a lot of money in entomology,” she concedes.
“No? What about in house management? How much does Mrs. Kitsch pay you?”
D.A. Stern is all over the place. I wonder if this is some ploy of his, to disarm her with a bunch of curveballs.
“Objection,” Durrant Hammerstead proclaims, just as I catch Margot pressing her fingertips to her right temple. “Relevance.”
“Your Honor, I’m merely trying to understand the specifics of Ms. Pembrooke’s working arrangement with the Kitsch family.”
“I’ll allow it,” Judge Gillespy says, then squeezes her eyes shut in a long blink of frustration.
Durrant Hammerstead tugs at the sides of his suit jacket aggressively and sits.
D.A. Stern approaches the witness. “I’ll ask again. What is the compensation for your work as house manager for the Kitsch family?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars per year.”
There’s a rumble across the courtroom, and Cam mutters, “No shit,” under his breath behind me.
“I can only imagine the lengths one might go to keep a job like that,” D.A. Stern says, his back turned to the witness.
This time, neither Damon nor I dare to draw a tally mark.
The D.A. holds his hands up in concession. “No further questions.” He returns to the prosecution table, sits, and crosses his left ankle over his right knee as if kicking back at a neighborhood barbecue.