Claire
Even if I’d figured out how she’d snuck out of that apparel store.
She could still bring up the ransom, and that would turn the jury against me—if there was anyone left who still believed I hadn’t murdered Winston. The NDA she’d signed would only go so far; the court could compel her to disclose information if she hinted at something relevant.
I’d fueled myself with strong, bitter coffee and taken a cold shower to stay alert. I hadn’t been sleeping much, and last night’s drinking hadn’t helped. Billy Ray had been quick to tell me I stank of booze. He’d also made me an omelet, but I hadn’t eaten more than a mouthful.
I was a nervous wreck.
In the courtroom, rising for the judge, I felt a bit dizzy and steadied myself by holding on to the defense table. I took a drink of water from the bottle in front of me and smiled in response to Colton’s quizzical look. I was fine. Well, I wasn’t, but I had to be.
“Good morning, everyone,” the judge said. “Let’s get right to it. Mr. Blake? Any more witnesses?”
“Yes, Your Honor. The defense would like to call Claire Donovan.”
The courtroom whispered in unison, then fell deathly silent; you could’ve heard the proverbial pin drop.
The media had been quite vocal about Claire’s complete absence from the trial, so the leaked news of her subpoena had lit the masses on fire.
Everyone was dying to find out why she’d stayed away, to see the grieving cuckquean widow, and to sink their gossipy teeth into her and taste her pain.
The door creaked open, and the sound of steady high-heeled footfalls approached. It took some willpower for me to not turn my head and gawk at her. But when she came into my sight line, I gasped.
She didn’t look one bit like the woman I’d met.
Her long blond hair was now shorter and raven black, tied behind her back in a low, loose ponytail with a velvet ribbon.
Her curved, round eyebrows were arched and thin.
Every element of her appearance that I had copied, she had changed.
Even the shade of her lipstick was different—no longer the bright red I remembered seeing her wear, now more of a dark plum.
When her eyes found mine, a hint of a lopsided smirk fluttered across her lips.
Colton shot me a quick look, just as surprised as I was, and then walked over to the stand.
“First of all, Mrs. Donovan, please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss.”
She nodded, keeping her hands neatly folded in her lap. “Thank you.”
“I realize this can’t be easy for you, so I’ll try to keep things short.” Claire nodded again, her eyes keen. “Did you know your husband was cheating on you? Or was that revealed the day of his unfortunate demise?”
Claire looked at the judge as if confused. She wasn’t. As I’d learned the hard way, she was a perfect actress and a shrewd manipulator. Everything she did, she did for a reason.
“The witness will answer,” Justice Antunez said, encouraging her with a gesture.
She looked straight at Colton. “If, by that, you mean the day of his brutal murder, no. I knew he was having an affair before that day. And I knew this time it was serious.”
“How did you find out?”
She looked at me briefly, her dark eyes glinting eerily in the fluorescent lights.
That look gave me goose bumps. Then I remembered Evelyn’s cryptic words.
That cold-blooded wife of his, she’d said, speaking of Claire.
Then she’d added, I can think of quite a few people who belong where you sit, my dear.
You know some, too. What if Evelyn had been trying to tell me something?
Just because, in her own words, she knew a murderer when she saw one?
How many people were there who I knew, and who she also knew? Just the Donovans . . . no one else.
She’d given me a clue, a lead to follow. I’d been going there anyway, but her validation meant something.
“It wasn’t the first time Winston was cheating,” Claire said coldly. “It was, however, the first time lawyers were getting involved.”
“And how did you feel about his intention to get divorced?”
A slight hesitation. “I was fine with it. We’d stopped being happy together a while ago. We had very few things left in common. He was the forever-young outdoorsy adventurer, while I had taken to the finer things in life.”
“Were you aware your late husband kept a suite at the Cosmopolitan?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Did you have a key card to that suite?”
She stiffened her back slightly and narrowed her eyes. Two of the jurors leaned forward.
“Yes, I did,” she eventually said, her voice a few degrees colder, cutting. She must’ve figured out where Colton was going with his line of questioning.
I drilled my eyes into her. Oh, honey, you have no idea what’s coming.
“Please tell the court, Mrs. Donovan, do you use eye drops?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Which product do you normally use?”
Her jaw clenched for a moment. “I use Visine.”
“They have many formulations,” Colton insisted. “Which one do you normally use?”
“The one for dry eyes.”
“Does it look anything like this bottle?” Colton clicked the remote, and the two large screens on the wall lit up with a photo of the murder weapon. It was a bottle of Visine Dry Eye Relief.
The courtroom gasped in unison, and then whispers and low-key chatter rose like the tide.
“Order!” A loud strike of the gavel put an end to the noise. “The witness will answer,” Judge Antunez said. “Let the record show the image is that of the murder weapon.”
“Yes, that’s what the bottle looks like. There are millions sold each year,” she added quickly, and Colton didn’t interrupt.
“Yes, there are. In fact, anyone could get access to such a bottle, correct?”
“Exactly. They’re over the counter and widely available.”
Colton paced slowly, as if thinking what to ask next, and then stopped by the stand, facing the jury.
“Mrs. Donovan, please tell the jury how you met your husband, Winston.”
“Objection!” Mitchell countered. “Relevance?”
The judge turned to Colton. “Mr. Blake?”
“If you’ll allow us a few minutes, Your Honor, the defense believes the testimony will be quite relevant to this case.”
The judge considered it for a moment before he said, “Overruled. The witness will answer.”
Claire had turned ashen under the makeup, her chest covered in red blotches—a dead giveaway for high blood pressure. She must’ve been fuming, but I couldn’t tell whether she was afraid or just embarrassed.
“I was hired as a maid in his household,” she reluctantly admitted. Her words were met with subdued whispers from the gallery.
“And where was this, Mrs. Donovan?”
“In North Dakota. Winston was running an oil-fracking operation up there.”
“Who hired you, Mrs. Donovan?”
She glared at Colton for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together. “Winston’s first wife.”
Colton clicked the remote, and the bottle of Visine was replaced with the portrait of a charming, sophisticated blonde in her late thirties. “You mean Emelda Donovan?”
“Yes,” Claire replied, thrusting her chin forward as if to say she had nothing to be ashamed of.
“Then what happened?”
“Objection, Your Honor.” Mitchell rose from his seat, gesturing with both his hands. “Are we going anywhere with this?”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge replied. “Mr. Blake, get to the point.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” he replied, unfazed. “So, how did you get from housemaid to wife, Mrs. Donovan?”
More whispers came from the gallery, immediately silenced by the judge’s stare. The spectators shifted in their seats, visibly interested in Claire’s story.
“We fell in love,” Claire replied, with a shy smile perfectly tinged with sadness and a tentative shrug.
“Tell us, please, was Emelda older than Winston?”
“Yes. She was seven years older than him.”
“And did Winston divorce Emelda to marry you?”
Claire’s eyes narrowed again. “No.” She licked her lips nervously. “Emelda passed away. Winston was a widower when he proposed to me.”
“What did she die of, Mrs. Donovan? Do you remember?”
She shook her head apologetically. “I don’t know. It was fifteen years ago. No one really told me those things. I was just an employee at the time.”
Colton walked over to the defense table to extract three pieces of paper from his file. “Your Honor, people’s exhibit number seventeen. Coroner’s findings in the death of Emelda Donovan.”
“Objection!” Mitchell rose angrily. “We haven’t had a chance to review this new evidence, Your Honor.”
“It was received by your office this morning, at five,” Colton explained, handing one copy to the judge. “The time code is stamped in the footer.”
Justice Antunez gave it a cursory glance. “Please proceed.”
Mitchell took his seat, scoffing in anger. Colton dropped one copy of the autopsy report on his table, then returned to the stand.
“Mrs. Donovan, if you don’t mind, please read the highlighted section.”
Her dark pupils threw daggers at Colton. “Cause of death: a massive coronary event induced by a drug overdose.”
The gasps and comments erupted so loudly, they covered the loud crack of the gavel. Even the jury reacted, talking among themselves. “Order in the courtroom! Order!” Antunez shouted, striking again and again. “Order, or I will vacate the courtroom!”
The judge’s threat had everyone settled within seconds. Lowering my head for a moment and hiding my face in my hands, I allowed myself to breathe deeply. When I lifted my head and looked at Claire, my expression was neutral, composed.
“How old was Emelda Donovan when she died?” Colton asked.
Claire shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Colton’s finger tapped on the autopsy report she held. “It’s written there.”
“She was, um, thirty-nine years old.”
“Quite young for a massive coronary, wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Donovan?”
“Objection!” Mitchell was livid.
“Withdrawn,” Colton said, walking closer to the jury and taking a moment to make eye contact with them.
He clicked the remote, and Emelda’s photo disappeared, leaving room for the hotel surveillance photo showing a blonde dressed in a sleeveless white summer dress and wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, knocking on Winston’s suite door.
“Who’s the woman in that picture?” Colton asked.
“It was taken from the hotel’s security feed. Do you know who she is?”
Claire stared at Colton, not saying a word.
“Ma’am?” Colton prompted politely, after a moment of tense silence.
“Objection,” ADA Mitchell said. The judge stared at him curiously, probably because he didn’t offer a reason for the interruption. He sat back down without a word.
Colton held an appeasing hand in the air. “I’ll rephrase, Your Honor.” He turned to Claire and asked, “Is that you in that picture, Mrs. Donovan?”
The courtroom reeled at his question. Claire didn’t respond, just stared at the TV screen.
“Mrs. Donovan, so far, you haven’t perjured yourself. The question is simple: Is that you, knocking on your husband’s suite door, the day of the murder?”
“Yes,” she eventually answered, “that’s me.”
Her words unleashed a flood of commotion. Several people rushed out the door, probably eager to make calls and spread the word about what had happened. To publish it everywhere.
“Order!” The gavel struck loudly until the room was subdued.
“This is your final warning, people,” Judge Antunez said, holding his gavel in the air.
“If I have to use this one more time, you’re out.
You’re not three-year-olds; show some restraint.
” Everyone seemed to freeze in place, holding their breaths. “Please proceed, Mr. Blake.”
“No more questions, Your Honor.” Colton took his seat, breathing out relief, and then squeezed my hand warmly. “We’re in good shape,” he whispered to me.
Mitchell was grim when he approached the witness stand. “Mrs. Donovan, is it true the police cleared you in this case?”
“Yes,” she replied calmly. “I had a solid alibi they thoroughly checked. I was never a suspect.” She had nerves of steel, this woman. Evelyn was a great judge of character.
“Please tell the court what happened when you got to your husband’s suite.”
She pretended to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. “Winston was already dead. You might have noticed on the video that he didn’t open the door for me; I had to use my card. I left only a few minutes later.”
My jaw dropped. Colton stiffened by my side, visibly upset with how things were unfolding. Mitchell was calmly asking questions, as if he’d had time to prepare. She’d seen our strategy coming a mile away and had already enrolled his support. She was gutsy and brilliant; I had to give her that.
“Did you call the police?” Mitchell asked.
Seemingly ashamed, she lowered her head for a moment. “No. I was in shock. The scene was . . . quite gruesome. I was scared . . . I ran away. I know it was the wrong thing to do, and I am sorry.”
“No more questions, Your Honor.”
“Redirect?” Colton asked.
Antunez gestured. “Proceed.”
“Mrs. Donovan, are we supposed to believe that you snuck out of a carefully constructed alibi—”
“Objection!” Mitchell barked. “Facts not in evidence.”
“Your Honor, the witness testimony opened the door.”
“I’ll allow it,” Antunez said, leaning forward with his eyes sparkling with interest.
“So, Mrs. Donovan, you left the Miracle Mall dressed as my client, sneaking out of a carefully constructed alibi, only to find the victim already dead when you got there?”
“I—I don’t understand the question,” Claire replied, her eyes narrowed again. She was probably trying to buy herself time.
“I know it’s a bit complicated,” Colton replied, speaking more for the jury.
He clicked the remote, and the screens displayed Claire as a blonde, dressed in a red top and black skirt, entering the apparel store.
“If you follow the time stamps on these photos, you’ll see what happened.
First, you entered the store. Then, minutes later, you left the store dressed as my client, whose picture you’d seen earlier, when news of Winston’s proposal to her was brought to your attention.
From that store to the Cosmopolitan, it’s just a five-minute walk.
We have you here entering the hotel, then taking the elevator up,” he continued, clicking the remote and displaying images of her at each juncture.
“Later, you’re leaving the hotel, going back to the mall, changing, and emerging from the store in that red top and black skirt as if you’d been in there all that time.
So . . . you did all that, and you expect us to believe your husband was already dead? ”
“Yes!” she cried loudly, despair coloring her voice. “That’s exactly what happened.”
Colton chuckled sarcastically. “No more questions, Your Honor.”