April Fool (38 page)

As court adjourns, Arthur passes to his client a few bound transcripts, the testimony from last week. “Some light reading for you, Nick.”

“I will be glued to the pages. Also, I want to say I admire the way you got the judge in your pocket.”

Arthur isn't quite as dazzled by that accomplishment. He must find a way to turn Kroop against him. He joins glum Buddy and his sanctimonious helpmates, who advised against calling similar-fact evidence from Angella. He lays Munni Sidhoo's report before them.

“What's this?” Buddy flips through the pages, the charts, the DNA ladders.

“Profile Three is Adeline Angella. Enjoy your lunch, gentlemen.”

 

On his way to the El Beau Room he again fiddles with his phone, almost loses courage but dials Blunder Bay. No answer. Margaret is likely at Gwendolyn Beach, preparing for another celebration. The papers are done, the financing in place, and Selwyn Loo is to meet Todd Clearihue on site to sign the deal. This will be Selwyn's first trip to Stump-Town-on-the-Beach–he's been too depressed to go near it. There are to be champagne and handshakes at this media event, and Kurt Zoller will be rendering some popular ditties on the accordion.

He connects with Lotis, on location at the Wanderlust. “The lunch crowd doesn't know Adeline, so I'll hang here a while. Manager showed me a past events calendar, an amateur
barbershop quartet was gigging here March 31, regulars, they may know her. What's the score in 67?”

“It has the makings of a rout.” But why does he hear the whispering hobgoblins of pessimism?

Someone at Gwendolyn Beach will have a cellphone. He dials Selwyn, who has been boated there. “Garlic's threatening to reneg, Arthur. That Tucson cowboy just offered them a huge whack of dough.” A morose, end-of-the-earth tone.

Arthur tells him to relax. It's merely a ruse to sweeten the pot. Don't offer a cent more. Arthur shook hands with Clearihue, a deal is a deal.

The blind crepehanger is far less sanguine. “I have intimations of disaster.” Have the gods endowed him, like Cassandra, another depressive, with the cruel gift of prophecy?

Selwyn is standing on a high bank overlooking the twenty-acre clear-cut. “I can smell it,” he says. The smell of death and rot. It doesn't seem the right time to ask if Margaret is within hailing distance.

Brian meets him at the El Beau Room. Cranky, raw eyes, uneven shave. “Caroline has twice had affairs. Twice in the last five years! She
shared
this in front of ten strangers, eleven if you count the guru. She could have shared privately.” A groan. “How I've come to despise that word.”

“And how many such instances did you divulge during this ugly truth-telling?” Arthur has always assumed secrecy is part of the definition of an affair. Confessed openly, it loses its romantic lustre, it's merely adultery.

“I stopped at seven. The guru was goading Caroline with subversive shit like: ‘Share with us your thoughts about Brian right now.' ‘What do you want to say to him?' She started screaming at me. ‘You're a self-centred asshole!' I told her I'm prepared to deal with that. She got more profane, mistaking my sincerity for sarcasm. She became lyrical. I was a sick, suppurating, secretary-humping whore. Everyone else looked relieved–their own fucked-up relationships paled in comparison. I'm seeing Lila this
afternoon, I'm going to tie into her. Sending us off to do heavy encounter, it's like she
wants
the marriage to fail.”

Arthur has little patience left for Brian's self-inflicted marital wounds. He has his own marriage to worry about. He has Gwendolyn to worry about. Would Clearihue dare to reneg?

Sandwiches arrive. Brian takes a deep breath. “Where's your spooky junior?”

“At the Wanderlust. The Whalley Wanderers are entertaining there tonight.”

“
Entertaining
? I caught their act, bald heads, pot bellies, white shirts, and bow ties. The tenor has a squeak in the high range. So Angella's back in the running?”

“She leaped to the front.” Arthur brings him up to date.

“Who came up with the brilliant idea to do this second analysis?”

“The spooky junior.”

Brian shivers. “Omnipotent people freak me out.”

“She's a nymph, a dryad. She was sent by Zeus to avenge Doctor Eve's death. Since nymphs are famous for their jests, I may end up being the April Fool.”

The
Fourth Brandenburg.
“Hey, Frank,
como esta
?…No, Mommy and I had another little spat, that's all. No way, pal, we're defi-
notly
getting divorced.”

This maudlin scene concludes with Brian wiping an eye. “Isn't that a great word? Little Frank discovered it. I asked him once, ‘Who made that mess?' ‘Definotly me.' I'll definotly be in court to watch your grudge match, I'm seeing Ms. Chow-Martin. Ask Adeline if she's got another contract with
Real Women
. Do you think it's possible, maestro, that she engineered this whole thing–murder, suspicion, accusation, confrontation–so she'd have something to write about?”

“She just walked in.” Standing at the door, staring in. She followed them, Arthur assumes.

“Too late to get under the table?”

“Yes.”

Brian turns, waves at her, smiles his ravaged, helpless smile. She looks coldly at her betrayer and his handler, returns outside.

 

In court, Buddy is in intense dialogue with his DNA expert, who's frowning over Sidhoo's report. Ears stands by with his trademark ill-suited smile. Flynn is grim, muscles bunched in tension as he finger-combs his noble moustache. Faloon is sitting in the dock reading transcripts.

Arthur is no sooner seated than Buddy is upon him. “I don't get it. Goddamnit, what's the
point
?” He raises his voice. “What are you trying to
prove
?”

“That you've been barking up the wrong tree.”

Buddy blows. “Okay, Artie, no more mister nice guy! I'm going to have my guys review Dr. Sidhoo's results, and I want her on the stand, and she better freaking be able to back this up!”

Not only does the entire gallery hear this, but the jury too–they are taking their seats. Buddy shuts up when he sees them, scurries to his seat as Kroop shuffles in. Angella mounts the stand, head high, chest out, like a robin about to serenade the spring. “May I say something?” she asks the judge.

“Madam, this is a solemn inquiry with ancient and respected rules. One of which forbids witnesses from making speeches. Otherwise trials might extend into the gloom of eternity. Please just answer counsel's questions.”

Arthur doesn't want it thought he's afraid of what she'll say. “Ms. Angella, tell us what's on your mind.”

“I want to correct any insinuation that I profited from my misfortune by writing articles and making speeches. The fact is, for the last ten years I've barely made enough to pay the rent. I am in debt. I am clinging to the poverty line.”

Arthur nods. “Not much money in the writing game, I suppose.”

“The magazine market is very tight.”

“Maybe you'll profit better from your fiction.” From his briefcase, he pulls out yet another magazine. “
Tales of Passion
, April edition. Your first published story?”

“Yes, as I told your colleague, Mr. Pomeroy, when he came sneaking around for information.”

“This is the plot, as I apprehend it: Harry has locked himself out of his townhouse. He has to break in through a back window. In error, he enters a lookalike unit, and comes upon Tracy, a rookie policewoman, who is undressing for bed. Do I summarize fairly?”

“Thank you for reading it.” Her tone distrustful.

“What interested me, as an amateur critic of the genre, was the pervading subtext of rape.”

“I don't know what you saw in it, but most of my friends found it very comical and romantic.”

Arthur opens the magazine to her story. “‘Tracy felt her breath come quickly as he moved toward her, his shirt undone, revealing rippling muscles.' One would expect this cop to be running for her gun, not standing there panting in her undies.”

“Well, he was also getting undressed, he thought he was in his own place.”

An unresponsive answer, but Arthur merely says, “Let us see what the jury makes of it,” and files the magazine as an exhibit. “Where did you get the catchy title from? ‘You're Not Supposed to Ask.'”

“It came to me.”

“It came to you because you spoke those words ten years ago when Nick Faloon asked permission to kiss you.”

“That's not so.”

“He wasn't supposed to ask. He was supposed to perform. A parlour game was enacted that night–you the playful maiden, he the pretend intruder. Ultimately you took him to your bed…”

“I object,” Buddy says wearily.

“I uphold. This is not the time for windy speeches, Mr. Beauchamp.”

Arthur strolls to the witness stand, close enough that she is forced to look straight at him. “Let me put to you, briefly and bluntly, a fair and reasonable version of what happened.”

He does so in short sentences. She tried to wheedle the Kashmir Sapphire story from Faloon. Seduction was her final tactic. The condom failed its task. A fear of pregnancy, an unravelling, a call to 911. In panic she hid the condom where no one would think to look. It remained untouched, unseen, like a vice hiding in Pandora's box.

“That is absurd. That is so pathetic.” This is the voice of ten years ago, more confident. “There
was
no condom.”

“Yet you claim you begged him to use one.”

“I…yes. I hoped he had one.”

“You hoped he'd come prepared?”

“I don't know what I was hoping. Or thinking. I was hysterical! Afraid for my life!” She is persuasive in her passion. Forewoman Sueda is looking reprovingly at Arthur: he's compounding the assault.

This has sunk to being a replay of the first trial. How ill at ease he'd been with such intimate inquiries. The jury must have assumed his heart wasn't in it, that he was grasping at straws.

He must cut to the chase. He retrieves Exhibit 52. “Madam, in this zip-lock bag is the swab taken from the vagina of Eve Winters. I will be offering proof that it has your DNA. How might you account for that?”

“
Impossible
!” Spoken with a vehemence that shakes Arthur a little. “It's a mistake! Take my blood!” She thrusts her arm at him, pulls back her sleeve, an offering to the black-robed vampire. The room is silent, Kroop alert as a hawk, expecting the Crown to object. Buddy sits there looking petulant.

“Ms. Angella, you were reluctant to come before this court…”

“Because of having to face this…this inquisition.”

“Oh, there's a much more telling reason. You didn't want to risk exposing yourself as the killer of Eve Winters.”

“Order.” Kroop sends his lasers about the room, and the hubbub ceases. “Mr. Svabo, have you nothing to say?”

“I don't know what's going on here.” He doesn't even rise, the fight has gone out of him.

“Mr. Beauchamp, that is a very bold accusation.”

“Given a chance, I will back it up.” Arthur bites that out.

Kroop gives him a much-welcomed cold eye. “Then get on with it.”

Arthur opens his briefcase. “Three years ago, Ms. Angella, you engaged Dr. Winters's services.”

She looks at him with alarm, then beseechingly at the three Crown heads, as if in disbelief that no one is objecting. Buddy looks like a motorist stalled at a rail crossing as the noon express rounds the bend. Ears's grin has turned gargoylelike. Flynn is playing with his moustache with both sets of fingers.

“You had a problem maintaining relationships with men. You sought Doctor Eve's advice.”

Finally, she says, “This is irrelevant.”

“Who told you this was irrelevant?”

“It has nothing to do with anything that ever happened anywhere.”

A sweeping compendium of all that is under the sun. Arthur pulls the missing file from his briefcase, produces a patient consent form. “This is your signature?”

Angella goes white. “I only saw her a few times. I…I couldn't afford her, it turned out.” Arthur glances at the jury, makes eye contact, wins smiles.

“And you didn't inform the Crown of this?”

“Because it's…it's nobody's business. It's privileged.”

Kroop sighs. “Counsel, do you have copies of this material, so Her Majesty's envoys don't have to crowd around you?” Buddy is jostling Arthur's side, Ears breathing minty essences near his neck. “It is becoming apparent that Mr. Svabo is
in the dark about certain matters. You may enlighten him during the afternoon break.” He rises. “I suppose it's too much to expect you would give the Crown notice.”

“I assumed they'd done their homework.”

The room empties of all but counsel, staff, and Angella. She is at Buddy's ear, hectoring him. He disengages. “Can't talk, Adeline, you're under cross, can't talk.” The sheriff takes her aside. Her careful hairdo is coming apart.

As the Crowns pore over a photocopy of Gowan Cleaver's file, Arthur enjoys a moment with Faloon. “How are you holding out?”

“Real excellent, Mr. Beauchamp, and better by the minute the way I see this is going.”

“I've been ill mannered, I haven't asked about Claudette.”

“She phoned, she's relieved to know I'm innocent. We want to have the pleasure of you and your wife to join a small group of friends next month, God willing, for our wedding.”

“I shall definitely ask her.”
I'm sorry, Arthur, weddings only make me sad. But thanks for calling.

Outside the courtroom, Arthur toys with his cellphone. As soon as he turns it on, it rings. Reverend Al, frantic and panting, as if he's running. “It's chaos here. Selwyn has disappeared.”