Chapter 22 #2
“Jesus. They’re taking pictures of Brian.” Al sounded disgusted. But she doubted it matched the alarm she felt. She didn’t want him to leave. But she didn’t want him to be put through this either. She didn’t dare turn around or it would only make the situation worse.
“Okay. Let’s get this show rolling. Mr. Assistant District Attorney?” The magistrate banged his gavel and nodded to the ADA to continue.
“We will establish that Roxanne Monet had the motive. She was desperate to get out of her marriage. Here are the depositions from many witnesses to her public fights with her late husband. There’s no doubt she wanted to retain her fortune and knew about the updated conditions of the will.
I would like to submit this material for review.
” The ADA handed over a stack of documents and files that looked intimidating to Roxanne by virtue of the mere volume.
She wondered if they’d gotten Don’s lawyer to lie about her knowledge of the will.
Of course they were conveniently leaving out the fact that he’d changed it back and that she hadn’t taken a dime of any of it, making everything to do with the will a moot point for motive.
“Opportunity: Roxanne Monet was witnessed leaving the party she claimed to have been attending all night the night of the murder. I have affidavits here from witnesses who say she left alone and was gone for at least an hour and a half before she was seen returning in a disheveled state.
“Further, Roxanne Monet knew her husband would be at her home. We have affidavits from neighbors who say he had been witnessed at her house frequently since their separation. He’d been harassing her for weeks.
“Means: Roxanne Monet met Donald Boswell III, took him for a walk along the rocky shore, and most likely pushed him from behind on the slippery rocks, causing him to fall, his feet coming out from under him, fatally bashing his skull on those rocks. She left him, either for dead, or assumed if he was unconscious he would soon drown in the incoming tide. Then she carefully climbed back up to her back deck and returned to the party.” He handed over the last stack of documents to the clerk magistrate.
Brian felt the eyes of the people and media surrounding him as he stared at the back of her head.
Wishing he could light up a cigarette, he raked his fingers through his hair.
The ADA finished his opening and it had sounded too real coming from a pro.
He found it difficult to concentrate on anything but Roxanne anymore.
She hadn’t moved. He tried again to pay attention to what Al was saying now.
He wished to God he could see her face, wished he could touch her.
The jolt of seeing her embrace Mark Baines had forced him to realize exactly how much he wanted her.
For himself. If Al didn’t punch the guy out later, maybe he would.
Why the hell had Mark Baines waited so long to show up?
Al began his argument. “I would like to enter into evidence the testimony of one last, but very important witness, Mark Baines. But due to the timing of this matter, I request that Mr. Baines be allowed to take the stand and speak for himself,” Al said.
“Keep it short and to the point.”
Mark took the stand. Brian watched, his attention drawn now to the man. He couldn’t help noticing the difference in Mark’s appearance since the last time they’d met. He listened to Mark tell his story.
“On the evening in question, the evening of Donald Boswell’s death, I was with Roxanne Monet at a party—as I stated previously in an interview with the police.
I know there have been some questions as to Roxanne’s whereabouts during the middle of the party at about eleven p.m. She told people she was going home.
“But instead she took a ride with me.” Mark paused and sighed before continuing. “She ran into me on her way out. I’m afraid I coerced her into going for a drive. We drove along the coast and parked the car at a beach and talked.”
“What was your relationship with Roxanne Monet at that time?” Al prompted.
“I was in love with Roxanne …still am in love with Roxanne.” He paused again, this time to wait for the murmurs throughout the courtroom to die down.
Brian couldn’t help the sudden jump of his pulse at hearing this.
It wasn’t a surprise, yet he didn’t want to hear about it.
He watched Roxanne’s head lower, but she raised it again when Mark continued.
“I told her how I felt that night. I gave her a gift. She said she couldn’t accept it and she gave it back.
I still have it.” He removed a slim jewelry box from his coat pocket and held it up for Al to take.
Al opened and held up a brilliant diamond bracelet for the magistrate and everyone in the court to see.
The room erupted. The magistrate pounded his gavel.
This time Brian looked away. The reporters watched him.
There was nowhere for him to turn. He rubbed his eyes and turned back to the witness stand.
Brian wondered what Mark’s point was in revealing all of this.
He wondered how much more he could stand.
He hoped to hell Al knew what he was doing, besides torturing him.
“Was Roxanne in love with you?” Al asked Mark bluntly.
“Is all this necessary?” The clerk magistrate spoke up, voicing Brian’s own feelings.
“Yes, it will become clear shortly.”
“I hope so.” The magistrate glanced at Mark.
“It’s all right,” Mark said to the magistrate, and then faced the room before zeroing in on Roxanne. “No, she was not at any time in love with me.” Mark finished.
“This goes to motive,” Al said. “Or lack thereof. It seems Ms. Monet did not have a reason to murder her husband on Mark Baines’s account.”
Brian wanted to disappear. He noticed Roxanne’s head was lowered again, until Al approached the stand where Mark sat to ask yet another torturous question. Brian felt himself hold his breath.
“Did you make love with her that night at the beach?” Al asked, unrelenting.
This time Brian watched Roxanne almost cry out and shake her head no. He continued to hold his breath.
“Yes,” Mark answered.
Roxanne dropped her head to her hands on the table in front of her.
Brian slowly forced himself to breathe again.
All he could hear was the pounding of the pulse in his temple, but he knew she was crying.
What was wrong with Al? Why was he doing this?
The magistrate asked the same question again as to relevance.
“To establish the character of Roxanne Monet,” Al said.
She shifted her head at that and looked at Al. Brian narrowed his eyes, anger beginning to simmer. What about her character?
“Roxanne Monet was a woman who never loved a single man, Your Honor, but rather all men. She was a heartbreaker, and still is.” Al turned to her. She met his stare. Brian’s mouth hung open as every head in the room turned from Roxanne to him. Mark was finally prompted to finish his testimony.
“After…we made love and she turned down my gift, I offered to drive her home, but she said no. Her car was at the party. So we returned. That was at about one a.m. I stayed there with her, watching her flirt with other men the rest of the night. I felt sorry for Don. I’d met him at a benefit earlier that year, and they were clearly having problems. She was flirting, not just with me, but also with every man at the party.
Don was watching her then, the same way I was watching her that night.
I can’t even imagine the pain he must have felt.
For me, it was like a burning, searing pain in my chest that wouldn’t subside.
I know it was worse for him. He had a haunted look in his eyes.
She’d turned me down. He’d had more of her.
He’d married her. He had so much more to lose.
“Don Boswell didn’t die of a crushed skull.
He died of a broken heart.” He paused while the crowd in the room gasped and murmured before the magistrate once again banged his gavel.
Then he finished. “In a way, since she broke his heart, she did murder Donald Boswell. I know for a fact that he was desperate enough to commit suicide, that he did take his own life and …I would do the same if I were in his shoes.” He stopped and stared at Roxanne.
She stared back, mouthing the word no, over and over again.
Brian could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end. No is right.
He stood. Heads turned toward him, but he remained rooted until she turned, hearing the murmurs and gasps from the crowd.
It seemed to him as if she turned her head in slow motion toward him.
His head pounded with the pulse of his blood.
He felt as if it would explode in another instant.
He watched as her lovely chin came around and he met her eyes in the next moment.
The sudden gasping pain he saw in her eyes almost made him sit back down.
But a quick flicker of his gaze toward Mark, still on the stand, compelled him to move.
With the slightest nod of his head toward her, he moved from the bench, turned and walked through the doors at the back of the courtroom without looking back.
Roxanne’s vision blurred as the door shut behind Brian.
The magistrate kept banging his gavel and she felt the pounding in her head.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until Al wiped the tears from her cheek with the hanky from his chest pocket.
It was just like her dream. Donald killed Brian so she couldn’t have him. He was gone.
“Are we ready to wrap this up now?” The clerk magistrate asked the ADA and Al. Al was nodding his head, when a man sitting behind the ADA’s table stood, slid from the bench and stepped forward. Penelope stood too.