Authors: Allan Topol
For the first time she looked rattled. "Why don't we talk here?"
"Because I don't want to do that," Ben said. "I'm running the show now, not you."
In one short call Theo arranged to have Fred Talbot from Bishop & Talbot meet her at the courthouse. Ben and Jennifer were impressed: Talbot was one of the best criminal lawyers in town. Either on her own or with Slater's help she had made contingency plans if everything went south on her. "We may be a while," Ben told Theo. "What about the kids?"
"A woman comes in" she said, worried. "She'll stay until I get back."
The same woman, Jennifer thought, who comes when you go off to sleep with Slater.
* * *
Gwen laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. It was good to be home in Westport. Paul had been marvelous, not asking any questions, and getting her to the nearby Stone Manor Private Clinic, which had an excellent plastic surgeon whose specialty was facial and body makeovers for aging dowagers.
He reset her nose and cleaned up her face.
"You're going to look as beautiful as ever," Dr. Fairview said. "All of the faces I do are works of art... worthy of being in a sculpture garden."
Gwen was less interested in being a work of art than knowing how long it would take to heal.
"Use lots of ice," the doctor said. "The bandages will come off in five days."
That meant Tuesday morning, Gwen thought as she lay in bed letting her ribs heal. She made plans in her mind for that day. From Dr. Fairview's office, she would go to the beauty parlor and have her long blond hair cut short, then dyed flaming red. After adding a large pair of black designer sunglasses to cover the bruises on her face and putting on a stunning Armani suit, she'd go to Washington to get revenge. No one would ever guess that she was the same woman who had escaped from G.W. Hospital.
* * *
It took an hour of legal jockeying in an interrogation room at the U.S. Courthouse to strike a deal. If Theo told the truth and implicated someone else as calling the shots, she'd get a lesser plea, but she had to do two years in jail. The jail time was the toughest part of the deal for Theo to take. Only after Talbot told her repeatedly that she'd be crazy to turn it down, did she swallow hard and sign the agreement.
Now Ben had center stage. Picking up his pen, he turned on the tape recorder. Theo was sitting across from him with Talbot next to her. Jennifer, Traynor, and Campbell were at the far end of the table.
"Please state your name and address."
"Theodora Fulton, Ninety-five-twenty Western Avenue, Washington, D.C."
"I'm here to ask you questions about the Winthrop affair. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, I do."
"On November tenth, did you call a woman in New York by the name of Alexandra Hart and ask her to send a prostitute to Robert Winthrop's house the day he was murdered?"
"I did."
"You want to tell me how you happened to do that?"
She took a deep breath. "I'm not good on dates. A couple of months before that, Eddie, my husband, invited Jim Slater, his boss, over for dinner. I had never met the man before. After the main course, I went into the kitchen to make zabaglione for dessert...."
Jesus, that's what she made for me, Ben thought. Not only is she the mother of the year, but now she's Martha Stewart.
"Kirstin had a nightmare, she started screaming. Eddie went upstairs to quiet her down. Jimmy came into the kitchen and watched me beating for a couple of minutes. I do it by hand, the old-fashioned way. He came over and rubbed my shoulder. 'That's tough work,' " he said.
"What did you say?"
" 'You're right. My shoulder's killing me. That feels so good.'"
"And then?"
She hesitated.
"And then?"
"You've got to realize that I'm not a loose woman. Sometimes you marry someone and they change. They become less likable than the person you married." She was looking at Ben for understanding because he had known her husband. "You know what I mean?"
Ben nodded.
"In contrast to Eddie," she continued, "here was Jim Slater, so suave and debonair, and he showed genuine caring. I know it's a small thing, but in all the years I've made zabaglione, Eddie never asked me if my shoulders got sore."
"And then?" Ben repeated.
"Jimmy moved in close to me from behind. He pressed his body against me and cupped my breasts in his hand. 'That feels so good,' he said."
At the end of the table, Jennifer was cringing.
"And then?" Ben asked.
"I stopped beating and turned around. He kissed me. His mouth felt good. His hands started unbuttoning my blouse with an urgency that Eddie hadn't shown in years. I knew this was crazy. That Eddie would be back any moment. So I pulled away and buttoned up. He pleaded with me to see him. So we began dating."
"Dating?"
"We'd get together at his house every couple of days for dinner or lunch and..."
"Sex?"
"That too," she said happily. "He swept me off my feet with his charm and charisma. Jimmy can be that way."
Ben shot a glance at Jennifer, who looked away.
"So you had an affair with him?"
"You make it sound so squalid. We love each other, and we have plans. His marriage was nothing. A formality. In a year he expected Brewster to pick him to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Then he planned to divorce his wife. I'd divorce Eddie, and we'd get married. After a couple of years as chairman of the Fed, he was planning to run for the presidency. I'd be the First Lady. That was the plan."
Jesus Christ, Ben thought, do I really need to know how Slater gets women in the sack? Trying to curb his impatience, he asked, "So how's this relate to Winthrop?"
Her brow darkened. "He found out about us and ruined everything."
"Who?"
"Winthrop," she said, as if it were a vile curse. "Jimmy told me that once Winthrop knew about the Chinese video, he blamed Jimmy for putting the Chinese up to it. He had become paranoid about Jimmy. He hated Jimmy because Jimmy was so much better and was gaining the President's respect. But it wasn't true."
"What wasn't true?"
Her tone remained venomous. "Jimmy had nothing to do with the video. The Chinese did that themselves. But Winthrop decided to get even by finding some dirt on Jimmy, knowing his wife was out of town and so forth. So he used private detectives. He had a picture of me going into Jimmy's house one night. He also had one of Jimmy kissing me good-night at his front door. Winthrop planned to tell the President about Jimmy and me at Camp David on Sundayâthe day after he was killed. He figured that way Jimmy's career in Washington would be over."
Puzzled, Ben looked over his notes. Something wasn't making sense. "But what about the compromising video the Chinese had on Winthrop? If Slater told Brewster about that, wouldn't Winthrop go down in flames as well?"
"According to Jimmy, Winthrop was convinced the Chinese would never go public with the video. That they were only bluffing. He was prepared to stare them down. 'To tough it out,' he told Jimmy. As for Brewster, Winthrop felt that when it came right down to it, Brewster would stick by him because of their friendship. You know how it is when somebody excuses a friend regardless of what he does." She stopped and fiddled with her wedding ring.
Ben was surprised to see she was still wearing it. "So how'd you get hooked up with Gwen?"
"Jimmy told me to call Chip Donovan from the CIA. I went to meet him at his house in Georgetown one night when Eddie was working. He gave me her name. I called her and had a couple of meetings with her at the Jefferson Memorial."
So Donovan had cleverly shaded the truth to them, substituting one Fulton for the other. Jennifer had it right: He had been lying all along.
"And Alexandra Hart?"
"Jimmy knew her from his investment banking days in New York. He used her to set up escorts for clients. He gave me her phone number, and I called her pretending to be Mrs. Winthrop, just as Jimmy told me to do."
"So he had you doing all the dirty work?"
She grimaced. "Jimmy said that he was too public a figure to have meetings with these women. He told me I was doing it all for our future."
Ben could only shake his head. She read his thoughts and looked away at Jennifer, who refused to meet her gaze.
"What about the gun and money? Did you plant those in the gardener's truck?"
She shook her head. "Once Eddie told Jimmy that the gardener had emerged as a suspect, Jimmy had someone put the gun and money in his truck."
"Who?"
"I don't know. He didn't tell me."
Ben glanced through his notes.
"Okay, now let's turn to your husband's death. When did that idea come about?"
"On Sunday evening when you and Jennifer returned from London. Jimmy said the situation was dicey. We had to do some contingency planning in case things went south on us. We had to fix it so Eddie took the fall."
"And the amitriptyline?"
"Jimmy told me what to buy and where. He gave me a doctor's name and ID number. He said he knew the pharmacist, who would never check."
"And you went along with all of this?"
She looked troubled. Clearly Slater had had to convince her. "Not at first. I argued with him that I didn't want to kill Eddie. He said that he didn't want to either. We should just have the stuff in the house as a last resort. Only if it was absolutely necessary, Jimmy said."
"And then?"
"Jimmy called."
"When?"
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. Ben saw she was on the verge of tears. "Christ, I don't know. A couple days ago, I guess. The day Eddie died. I can't remember exactly."
"And?"
"Jimmy said that he'd heard from Donovan, who had to give them Eddie's name. Now we'd have to be vigilant. Eddie would deny his involvement. As long as he did that, it could never get traced back to us. So I was supposed to keep my eye on Eddie. Then Jimmy asked me what phone I'd used to call Alexandra Hart and Gwen. I told him that I'd used the phone at my house and Eddie's cell phone. Jimmy didn't yell, but I could tell he was unhappy about that. He said that would come back and hurt us, which I guess was right. So I reluctantly agreed to give Eddie the large dose of amitriptyline and make it look like suicide. Jimmy said he was so sorry, but we didn't have a choice."
"Did he tell you to do it?"
She thought about the question. Ben was giving her a way to lessen her guilt. She hesitated, then rejected it. "We arrived at the decision together, I guess. Neither of us wanted to do it, but we didn't have a choice. I called Eddie to come home early. I had to really yell at him. Then you guys came the first time. I listened behind the door and called Jimmy to report. He told me that I had to do it. I agreed." She stopped, wiping away tears. "So I did it."
"You put the amitriptyline in the chocolate mousse you gave Ed?"
She nodded. "Uh huh. I also wiped the water glass on his mouth and his fingers against the glass and the bottle of pills. I was wearing gloves. My plan was to take away the chocolate mousse and run the dish through the dishwasher. Unfortunately, I didn't have time. I had just finished typing the note when you rang the bell."
"Have you seen Slater since your husband's death?"
Looking despondent, she turned her head down toward the table and fiddled with her wedding ring. "He hasn't called me since Eddie's death."
You were as big a fool as I was, Jennifer thought.
"Have you called him?"
"No, we haven't spoken."
"Let's take a break," Ben announced.
While a guard escorted Theo and her lawyer to the cafeteria in the courthouse, Ben remained behind with Jennifer, Campbell, and Traynor. The FBI agent stood up and wrote the name
Slater
in chalk on the blackboard. "What do we have on him?" he asked.
"Write 'not enough,' " Ben said.
"She's given you powerful testimony," Jennifer interjected.
"But it'll come down to a question of whom the jury believes. I don't like cases like that. Particularly with someone smooth and convincing like Slater on the other side. We need more."
While Ben looked over his notes, Jennifer's mind was racing on all cylinders trying to find a way to build an ironclad case against Slater. Suddenly, she had it. "Have her arrange a meeting with Slater and wear a wire."
Ben shook his head in disbelief. "After Slater finds out she's been arrested, he'll never talk to her."
"What if we don't book her, and we don't hold her?"
Ben gave her an outraged look. "How can we release a murderer just like that? Besides, if Slater calls, she'll warn him. She's still got the hots for him."
Jennifer was two steps ahead of Ben, though. "We station a couple of female undercover cops in Theo's house posing as nanniesâon revolving shifts. We tell Theo to act normal. The nannies stick with her at all times and listen in on all calls. If she does anything to tip Slater off, she loses her immunity and faces murder one. That's the arrangement."
Ben nodded. "I like it, I guess."
"So what's the script for her conversation with Slater?"
"Let me take a crack at a draft," Jennifer said sourly.
"He won't be easy to nail. He's smart and savvy. Somebody like that won't say, 'Oh, I'm so sorry that I told you to kill your husband.' "
"C'mon, Ben," she said in disgust. "I know that. But don't forget she did a good job of acting the night her husband died. She sure as hell fooled you."
Ben pulled back. "Ouch, that stung."
The old tension between them was coming back. "Well, it's true."
"And what if he starts messing around with her first? He'll see the wire andâ"
"Give me credit for some smarts. At this point, you know I want to nail him as much as you do."
That was a certainty, and he was relieved. Deep in thought, Ben cut across the room to the blackboard, where he picked up a piece of chalk and flipped it from hand to hand a couple of times.
Jennifer knew that something was bothering him. "What don't you like about my idea?"
Without responding, Ben turned toward the blackboard, wrote down
Gwen,
and put a circle around it. "Even if your plan works, it's not enough. At least not for me. Sure, I want to nail Slater, but it still leaves Gwen out there somewhere. That means I'll have to spend every minute of my life worrying about when she'll come to get revenge on Amy. I know she'll come. Make no mistake about it."