Chapter Five
Reggie stood up from the workout bench and flexed her arm. “Thanks for meeting me so early.”
“No worries. I’m an early bird anyway. It’s when I get my best workout in.”
She shook her trainer’s hand and walked to the locker room. The ortho had cautioned her against pushing her recovery, but she was determined to get back to full strength as soon as possible so she could complete her firearm qualification. She likely wouldn’t need a gun for the types of cases she was going to handle, and she’d never really cared for them. The shooting had only reinforced her ambivalence, but now that she’d been on the receiving end of one, she was determined to have the skills to defend herself because if it came down to her and a gunman again, she wasn’t going to be the one who wound up in the hospital.
After a quick shower, she made the drive to the courthouse. The parking garage was already almost full and she had to circle several times before she found some empty spots toward the roof of the building. She pulled in at the same time as an older Subaru wagon and she glanced over to see Brooke behind the wheel—a bright spot in what promised to be a long, boring day of testimony. She took her time getting out of the car, stalling so she could walk with Brooke to the courthouse, but after a few minutes of waiting, she walked over to the driver’s side window and rapped gently on the glass. When Brooke lowered the window, she leaned in. “Everything okay?”
Brooke looked flustered. “My son forgot his calculus textbook. He’s going to freak out.”
“Can you call him?”
“I tried and it went straight to voice mail.”
“I bet he’ll text you when he figures out.”
“I guess so.”
Reggie shrugged. “I bet someone at school has one he can use.”
“It’s important.”
The emphatic tone in Brooke’s voice signaled the forgotten text was about more than math. “I know I keep asking you this, but is everything okay?”
Brooke stared at her for a moment before her expression settled into what Reggie was certain was a fake smile. “Sure. It’s all good. I’m sure I’m overreacting.”
“Maybe you’re not.” Reggie looked at her phone. “But there’s not a lot you can do about it right now. Judge Hunt is a stickler for punctuality, so we better get going.” She stood back to allow Brooke space to get out of the car. “I like your ride. These babies never wear out, do they?”
“No, thank God. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to add getting a new car to my to-do list.”
Reggie took the opening and ran. “I guess you have a lot on your plate.”
Brooke shot her a cautious look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Uh-oh. “Well, yesterday, in court, you said you work full time and carry a full load at school. And you have a teenager.” She gave a low whistle. “Sounds like a lot to me.” She stopped in front of the elevator on the other side of security. “This one is tucked away from public view so it’s an exception to the elevator rule.”
“Twelve.”
“What?” Reggie was confused at the non sequitur.
“My son is twelve. Not a teenager.”
Reggie nodded, taking note of the forceful tone. “Got it. You have a twelve-year-old son who’s taking Calculus. I’m thinking that sounds like even more of a handful than I originally thought.”
Brooke stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “You know, you’re exactly right about that.”
The elevator doors opened to reveal several passengers already on board. They stepped in, but didn’t continue their conversation and Reggie instantly felt the loss and wished she’d chosen the stairs instead. When they stepped out onto their floor, they walked to the courtroom in silence, as if neither one of them knew how to rethread the strings of their discussion.
Leroy was standing at the door of the jury room and when they passed by, he whispered to her, “You know better than to be late. Judge is already on the bench.”
“Sorry,” she whispered back. She wasn’t really, considering the delay had allowed her to find out more about Brooke. She told herself her curiosity about this woman was professional practice, but she knew it was more than that. Brooke was more than a study of human behavior, she was a troubled woman.
It’s none of your business.
It wasn’t, but she wanted to know more and, if telling herself it was practice for being a good PI made it easier to justify poking around, then she was good with that.
She filed into the courtroom with the other jurors, disappointed that Brooke was sandwiched between Jenny and Lisa while she was stuck on the back row. Resigned to the fact she’d have to wait until lunch to talk to Brooke again, she settled in to hear more boring testimony from Patricia Gillespie. Two minutes in, her expectations were shattered.
“Tell the jury why you went to the police about your boss, Shirley Mitchell.” Johnny Rigley fired off the command and leaned back in his chair.
“Because she threatened to harm my family.”
Johnny abruptly stood up and started walking toward the witness stand. He cupped a hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
“Shirley Mitchell said she would harm my family if I didn’t do what she asked or if I reported her business practices.”
Johnny turned toward the jury and slowly surveyed their faces. Reggie had seen this maneuver before from just about every lawyer at the courthouse and recognized the theater for what it was. The silent emphasis on the witness’s words was definitely effective. Every juror in the box was riveted on Patricia, and eager to hear more.
Except for Brooke. It was almost imperceptible, but she was squirming in her chair and her gaze was not on Johnny or Patricia. For a brief second, their eyes locked and Reggie raised her eyebrows in question, but Brooke’s only response was to look away. Reggie filed the event away for further inspection, but in the meantime, she turned her attention back to the front of the room, waiting for Patricia’s next words.
“What exactly did Ms. Mitchell say to you?”
“I’m not sure you want me to repeat the exact words.” Patricia looked up at Judge Hunt.
“Actually, I do,” Rigley said. “I’m sure the judge has heard just about everything in this room. The most important thing is for you to be as accurate as you can about what you remember.”
Leland rose to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Mr. Rigley is spending way too much time building up momentum for testimony that is going nowhere fast. If the witness has something to say, can she simply say it without all the theatrics?”
Speaking of theatrics. Reggie resisted an eye roll.
“Ms. Gillespie, please simply answer Mr. Rigley’s question.”
She scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned into the microphone. “She said that if I didn’t like the way she got things done, I didn’t have to…” She paused and took a deep breath. “ Fucking work for her, but to consider my decision carefully if I cared about the well-being of my family.”
Rigley had winced slightly at the profanity but seemed to recover quickly. “And you took that to a be a threat?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Rigley frowned, presumably at the way his own witness barked at him, but he quickly segued into another question. “Did anything happen to make you think there was a serious threat against your family?”
“Yes. A couple of days after her threat, my daughter came home from school and when she emptied her backpack, she found a note inside.”
Rigley nodded and walked back to the prosecution table. He lifted a plastic sleeve from the surface and carried it back over to Patricia. “Is this the note?”
Patricia stared at it for a moment and nodded.
“You have to answer out loud,” Rigley said.
“Yes, that’s the note.”
“Can you read it for the jury?”
She took a deep breath and there was a long pause before she launched in. “Tell your mother to do the right thing if she wants you to be able to finish school.” She pointed at the note. “I realize it doesn’t sound threatening out loud, but,” she held the note up toward the jury, “it’s written in letters cut from a magazine. I mean who does that other than a serial killer?”
Several members of the jury gasped, and Brooke’s face went ashen. Gloria Leland shot to her feet. “Objection.”
Judge Hunt sighed. “Strike that last part as unresponsive.”
Rigley turned to the jury and raised his shoulders as if to say, “you all know the truth, right?” He leaned in. “Did anything happen after you received the note?”
“Yes. I started getting phone calls late at night. The voice on the other end of the phone was fake, you know, like they were talking through one of those things that distorts your voice.”
Reggie heard a tiny squeak and looked down at Brooke who was covering her mouth with her hand. This testimony was provoking some very personal reactions from Brooke, and she was determined to find out why, but right now all she could do was sit tight and listen. Patricia was a compelling witness, but Reggie wasn’t quite convinced she wasn’t stretching it with the accusation that a high-profile developer like Shirley Mitchell would resort to threatening notes and phone calls. All she’d really have had to do to ruin Patricia was pick up the phone and blackball her to every other employer in town. But if the threats were real and Shirley wasn’t behind them, then who was?
* * *
Out of the corner of her eye, Brooke spotted Reggie walking toward her. She looked around and homed in on one of the younger male jurors who was standing by himself across the room. He’d worn a tie each day and he seemed a little dorky which made her think of Ben. She walked briskly toward him, certain Reggie was following her and determined not to look back.
“Hi,” she said, sticking her hands out. “I’m Brooke. What’s your name?”
“Mark.”
Not super talkative, apparently. She smiled big, hopefully not so big she’d scare him, and tried another tack. “I’m usually okay with names, but after hearing all the names yesterday, I got jumbled. How do you feel about being on the jury?”
He frowned like it was a weird question. Maybe it was, but it was open-ended enough to get more than a one-word answer.
“I guess it’s okay. Kind of boring.”
She nodded. “Not the most exciting case. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s good no one died or was injured, but rich people arguing about money—not exactly riveting.”
“We’re not supposed to be talking about the case.”
Brooke turned to find Reggie standing to her left. Close. Really close. “We’re not talking about the case,” she said, spotting Mark ease away out of the corner of her eye. Great. Now she was going to be known as the busybody, troublemaker. “We were talking about being bored.”
“And that’s different because?”
“Because we weren’t discussing the evidence, only the presentation.”
“Again, I don’t see the difference.”
She couldn’t tell if Reggie was being obtuse or just enjoyed messing with her. Either way, she wanted out of this conversation. “That’s cool. You do you.” She started to back away and bumped into Lisa and noticed the other jurors had started to crowd around them.
“Are you talking about the case?” Lisa asked.
“No!” Brooke said, perhaps a little too emphatically. Suddenly she’d become the center of attention and she needed to escape.
“I think it’s okay for us to talk about what we’ve seen so far as long as we don’t make any decisions,” Jenny said.
“It’s not, actually,” Reggie said. “The instructions were pretty clear.”
“They must not have been that clear or we wouldn’t all have different opinions about it,” Jenny said in a snarky tone. “Right, Brooke?”
Shit. She held up her hands in surrender. “I could be wrong. I mean, I’m not the one who works here.”
“That’s right,” one of the other men, Jack something, said, pointing at Reggie. “You work at the courthouse. What did you do here?”
Reggie frowned. “I don’t work here. I used to.”
“That’s right, you were shot when that crazy guy opened fire in the courtroom. Didn’t you work for one of the judges?”
The frown twisted deeper, and Reggie backed up. “I don’t work here anymore, but I do know Judge Hunt said not to discuss the case and I know for a fact he meant any aspect of it.”
Brooke wanted to argue the point. It was obvious Reggie was taking the judge’s instructions too literally and she didn’t appreciate being schooled in front of the rest of the jury. She’d said cases about money were boring and more so than cases about people getting physically hurt and she stood by that. And arguing with Reggie would only draw attention to herself—one of the things she wasn’t supposed to do, so instead of trying to get the last word, she ducked out the door and went to the restroom, taking a few extra minutes to clear her head. It worked until she walked out the door to find Reggie standing a foot away.
“You have to stop doing that.”
“What?” Reggie asked.
“Following me everywhere. I’m beginning to think you’re spying on me.” She floated the words and watched closely for Reggie’s reaction.
“I’m not.”
“So, you’re out here waiting to go into the bathroom?”
Reggie kicked a toe at the carpet. “Uh, well, not really.”
Brooke stared at her for a moment. She detected no signs of deception. Either Reggie was really good at spying on her or she was completely innocent. Either way she wanted to know and impulse pushed her to say, “Next time you want to give me a note, don’t leave it in my bag. That’s creepy.” She watched for Reggie’s reaction, but at first there was nothing but a blank stare. No flicker of recognition, no nod, nothing. Several more seconds passed, and Reggie finally spoke.
“Okay.”
She turned and walked back into the jury room, and Brooke watched her go wondering what had just happened and whether she’d made a horrible mistake.
She waited until Reggie was completely out of sight, and pulled out her phone. She fired off a text.
Asserting mom privilege. Ping me back to say you’re okay.
She hit send and waited. One minute. Two. If he was in class, he couldn’t text. Other kids would do it anyway, but not Ben. She needed to introduce a mom exception to the no texting in school rule.
She stared at the screen. She stared at the wall. She stared back at the screen. She could hear the rest of the jury stirring behind the wall of the juror room. It was almost time to go back into the courtroom and after being late this morning, she didn’t want to be the one who held things up this afternoon. Especially not after the scene just now. Dammit, Ben. Answer your damn phone.
All good.
The two words brought huge relief and she breathed deep. Whatever had happened in calculus, Ben had survived it, but she’d been worried about way more than that. All was well. For now. She vowed to keep her mouth shut and head down for the rest of this trial. Let know-it-alls like Reggie Knoll be the center of attention.
When they all walked back into the courtroom, Jenny and Lisa flanked her and shot Reggie disdainful looks in a show of solidarity. She barely knew these women and she wasn’t sure she liked them, but the weird dynamics of being trapped in a small group and sequestered from information bound them together. Rule number two played through her head: don’t mingle or talk to the other jurors. Well, that ship had sailed through no fault of her own. Nothing she could do now but embrace the fact she wasn’t entirely alone.
Rigley passed the witness shortly after the break and Gloria Leland leaned way back in her seat with her arms crossed in front of her chest for an uncomfortably long time without asking any questions.
“Do you have any cross-examination for this witness?” Judge Hunt finally asked.
Gloria sighed and pushed off from the table. “My apologies, Judge. I’m not entirely sure where to begin.” She took a moment to sift through the papers in front of her, ultimately setting them to the side with a small huff. She stared at Patricia long enough to have her squirming in her chair before she asked her first question and when she did, it caught her totally off guard.
“How’s your family?”
A puzzled expression crossed Patricia’s face before she schooled her features back into the somber look she’d worn throughout her testimony. “I’m sorry, what?”
Gloria turned toward the jury and raised her eyebrows like she was inviting them into her mental space. “You testified that my client threatened your family, right?”
“True.”
“She threatened to hurt them.”
“Yes.”
“If you reported her.” Gloria flicked another glance at the jury before boring her eyes into Patricia’s until she was certain Patricia knew exactly where she was going with her questions. “Right?”
“Yes, but once I reported her to the police she knew she’d get in trouble if she tried anything.”
“That’s interesting. So, what you’re saying is Ms. Mitchell wouldn’t do anything if she thought law enforcement might take action against her?”
“Exactly.”
Gloria smiled brightly. “Isn’t that how laws work? I mean, I like to drive ninety miles an hour on the tollway, but fear of getting pulled over keeps me in the seventy range.” She waited a beat, but Patricia was still scrambling for a response. “Never mind, let’s pretend that was a rhetorical question. But I have another one for you.”
Patricia looked like she wanted to crawl under the seat while she waited for the next round. Gloria slowly walked back to counsel table and opened a folder. She skimmed the contents, closed it, and stuck it in the crook of her arm. “How much was your bonus for last year?”
Patricia looked confused at the complete change of subject. “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Fine, let’s try this another way. Was it more or less than the year before?”
“I’m not sure I recall.”
“Are you sure about that?” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the folder.
“It might have been lower than the previous year.”
“It was thirty percent lower.” She held up the folder. “Would you like to see the paperwork?” Patricia shook her head. “Do you think that was because you went tattling to law enforcement?”
Patricia stared at Gloria for a moment like she was trying to assess if she was laying a trap. “No, because the bonus structure was set up before I talked to her about my concerns.”
Again with the smile. “That’s right,” Gloria said. “I appreciate you pointing that out.” She walked back to the table and tossed the folder down. She pulled out her chair and started to sit down but before her butt was in the seat, she stood back up and held up a finger. “I thought of one more thing.”
The entire courtroom went silent, and the air was thick with tension before she finally spoke. “Is it possible you threatened to turn in your employer because you were unhappy with your bonus?”
Patricia’s face reddened, whether it was from anger or guilt was hard to tell, and when she opened her mouth to answer, Brooke was sure a tirade was coming, but Gloria beat her to the punch. “Never mind. That was another one of those rhetorical questions. Everyone wants to hear the answer, but no one believes it.”
“How dare you imply I would tell a lie because I was unhappy about money.”
“No further questions, Your Honor.” Gloria sat down and stared at Patricia, her calm expression serving as an agitating force threatening to send Patricia spiraling out of control. Rigley asked a few follow-up questions to try to blunt the edge of Gloria’s remarks, but the damage had been done. When Brooke walked out of the courtroom at the end of the day, she couldn’t help but think she knew a little bit of how Patricia was feeling.