Kane (28 page)

“You don't consider that as heinous conduct, a direct violation of your much vaunted ethics?”

“Can't say as I do,” Mr. Lewis said after earnest reflection. “I didn't take payment for it, you know. And since it wasn't public knowledge until this minute, I don't see that it hurt a soul.”

“You don't see it as a gross betrayal of the husband who paid for the interment, a man who had expected to sleep for all eternity beside his lawfully wedded wife?”

“Well,” Mr. Lewis said, lifting a finger to rub the side of his nose, “that's just it.”

The lawyer sighed. “What is?”

“She wasn't.”

“She wasn't what?”

“His wife.” Mr. Lewis's smile was patient, earnest.

“That is patently ridiculous. We have already established the fact the woman who died was married to the man in question.”

“Well, yes,” Kane's grandfather allowed, then turned to look up at the judge. “Perhaps I could tell a little story about that, Your Honor, so everybody will be sure to understand?”

“That won't be necessary,” Gervis's lawyer said with some stringency. “What we want to know is why you failed to bury the client in the correct plot.”

“I'm trying to tell you she wasn't just a client,” Mr. Lewis complained. Rearing back in his chair and turning toward the bench, he said in appeal, “Judge?”

“Proceed,” the judge answered with a casual wave of one hand.

The lawyer swung around in outrage. “This is highly irregular, Your Honor. I must insist the witness be instructed to answer the questions in the prescribed manner.”

The judge leveled a narrow look through his bifocals at the man before him. “The prescribed manner,” he drawled, “is whatever I decide it is at any given time. Right now, it's a story.” He turned away. “Mr. Crompton?”

Mr. Lewis nodded his appreciation, but refrained from any show of triumph. “Well, it all started back during the last year of the Great Depression. A local girl ran off with the town bad boy. Her folks chased after them and caught up with the pair in Arkansas. The girl's father and her two brothers were upset over the incident, and they took it out on the boy, left him lying half-alive on the side of the road while they brought the girl back home. After a while, a hobo came along—there was a lot of that kind back then. He found the boy, patched him up, took care of him, dragged him on a train when one came along. When the boy woke up and came to himself, it was weeks later and he was in California. The boy wrote to his girl right off, but she didn't answer.”

“If this touching tale is going somewhere,” the lawyer said through tight lips, “I would appreciate it if you'd get to that point.”

Mr. Lewis inclined his head. “Just hold your horses,
I'm getting there. So the boy and the hobo just kept going then, riding the rails, working a little here, a little there—until along came the big war, World War II. The boy joined up. He was trying to outrun his sorrow over losing the only girl he'd ever love, see, didn't care whether he lived or died, so he became a hero, decorated and everything. After the fighting was over, he went to work in the oil fields. He worked so hard, took such chances, he became a millionaire by the time he was forty. That was fine, but he couldn't forget the girl, so he came back to Turn-Coupe with all his money. But the girl had become a woman, had married another man, and had a beautiful daughter who was almost a teenager by that time. Turned out she'd been told our hero died in Arkansas. She had grieved for him, then gone on with her life.”

Mr. Lewis paused, glancing over the courtroom with a faraway look in his eyes. The crowd was quiet, waiting. After a moment, he went on again.

“Now this bad boy turned millionaire had himself a secret. He knew that he and the woman had been married, and this marriage had never been legally dissolved. That made the woman a bigamist and her child illegitimate. He could cause a stink and ruin the lives of the woman, her husband and her daughter, or he could keep quiet. He wrestled with himself over the decision, but finally decided to hold his peace. He never married, wound up dying of a heart attack after a few years. You don't hear much about men dying of broken hearts, but I can tell you that some do, some do.”

“Mr. Crompton,” the counselor for the defense said
wearily, “if you could just give us some idea of what this has to do with the burial?”

“I'm about to do that,” Mr. Lewis said, lifting an aristocratic hand. “Now this woman the millionaire loved knew, of course, how things were, how they'd been. She'd been tempted to run off with the man who came after her, but she was a fine, honorable woman. She kept the wedding vows she'd made in error, loved the man she married the second time around the best she was able. Still, there was always an emptiness in her life. When she found out she was dying of cancer, she came to me, asked me to bury her beside the man who was her real husband. Seemed like a good thing to me, so I did it. And if that's wrong, then I'm sorry, but I'd do the same again.”

“You're asking the court to believe you falsified official records and risked your business reputation out of mere sympathy?”

“You could put it that way.” Mr. Lewis's expression turned grim. “What's more, I don't take kindly to you bringing it up in public court so all the sacrifice those two people made while trying to do the right thing was for nothing.”

“A noble attitude,” the defense lawyer said with a jeer in his voice. “But if you expect us to believe this fantastic tale, I think you'll have to give us the name of this female paragon whose dying wish you're supposed to have granted.”

Lewis Crompton said nothing. Sitting like a statue with his lips pressed together, he only stared straight ahead. The spectators' voices rose to a loud hum.

“Come now, Mr. Crompton, we're waiting. What was the woman's name?”

The defense lawyer's tone was unbearably pompous. It was plain to see he thought he had won, either because he figured the man on the stand couldn't name the woman whose story he had told, or else because he would refuse to do it. Whichever it turned out made no difference, it seemed, as long as victory was in his grasp.

Then Lewis Crompton sighed. His lips moved in an apparent answer, but the words were little more than a whisper.

“Louder, please, so the court can hear. Who was this woman?”

Kane's grandfather looked up at the lawyer then, his gaze clear and direct. When he spoke, the words were precise and perfectly audible, though edged with pain.

“The lady,” he said, “was my wife.”

Pandemonium broke out. Much of it came from amazed conjecture, but the majority expressed anger with the defense for forcing Mr. Lewis to expose his family secrets. The people of Turn-Coupe who had driven to Baton Rouge to follow the trial were angered by the condescending attitude of the lawyer and callous trading in their private scandals.

Regina ached for the ignominy Mr. Lewis had been forced to endure, would have done anything to prevent it, even as she admired the way he had turned the tables on the defense by making a triumph out of what was supposed to be his breach of conduct. For this was obviously, allowing for the distortions of gossip, the same story Vivian Benedict had told her, the one Slater had come across and passed on.

Gervis, caught in the fallout from his muckraking
tactics, was whispering in vicious fury to his team of expensive lawyers. That his underhanded trick had backfired on him gave Regina a rich sense of rightness and jubilation. This was what justice felt like, then. She'd never have guessed.

Order was restored shortly. The defense, in temporary disarray or perhaps fear of further revelations, allowed that they were finished with Mr. Lewis. He stepped down and walked with dignity to resume his place at the plaintiff's table.

There was a brief consultation between Mr. Lewis, Kane and Melville. Then Kane rose to his feet. He glanced toward where Regina sat, then turned and faced the bench. Though the room had already begun to settle down, it grew quieter still. Kane waited until it was perfectly silent, then he spoke into it with grim and intimidating authority.

“At this time,” he said, “the plaintiff calls Miss Regina Dalton to the stand.”

T
his was not supposed to happen. Regina had not agreed to testify. She had told Melville everything she knew about Gervis's nefarious business operations and turned over the computer disk taken from his study, which held accounting information, private letters and memos to back up what she said. That was supposed to be the end of it. There were other witnesses who, under Melville's guidance, could tie up the loose ends of the case as well as she could.

Surprise for the abrupt change of plans held her in paralyzed stillness. It was only as Betsy poked her in the ribs and nodded toward the witness stand that she forced herself to move.

Her knees trembled as she walked to the front of the courtroom. Her heart pounded so hard against her breastbone that she thought her blouse front was fluttering because of it. As she passed the table where Gervis sat, she met his malevolent stare. Strangely, her nerves settled a fraction. His venomous resentment filled her with bitter certainty that what she was being asked to do was right.

At the witness stand, she mounted to the chair inside the railed box. She took the oath, then seated herself
and waited tensely for Melville to begin his questioning.

But it was Kane who rounded the end of the plaintiff's table and walked toward her. Kane who placed his hands on the railing of the witness stand, leaning toward her, regarding her with dispassionate consideration. Kane was the man who had deliberately called her today when her guard was down.

Kane was the lawyer for the plaintiff who faced her as if he'd never kissed her, never held her, never fitted his body into hers as if providing the key piece to an intricate, interlocking puzzle. It was Kane who glanced toward the jury, then looked back at her with the chill gaze of an executioner.

“You are Miss Regina Dalton, resident of New York?”

“Yes.” Her voice was almost nonexistent and she cleared her throat, reaching up at the same time to clasp the amber oval at her throat. It offered no comfort. She released it.

“Until recently, you resided with the defendant, Gervis Berry, at the following location?” He reeled off the address of the 72nd Street apartment.

“That's correct.”

“Did anyone else live there with you on a regular basis?”

She gave a stiff nod and supplied Michael's name and occupation as houseman before adding, “There was also my son, when he wasn't at school.”

“Your son. Is he in court with you today?”

“He is.”

“Point him out to us, if you will.”

Regina did as she was requested, though her hand
trembled. Stephan, she saw, didn't care for public notice any more than his mother. He slumped in his seat, staring white-faced at his feet while Betsy circled him with a plump and protective arm.

“You say that your son was in school when he was not with you. Can you tell us the name of this school?”

Regina gave it, though her head swam as she tried to figure out what Stephan had to do with the case at hand. Apparently, Gervis's lawyers felt the same doubt, for they demanded to know where the testimony was headed. After a brief consultation before the bench, however, the judge ruled that Kane could continue.

“You call this a school,” he said when he stood before her once more, “but I don't believe that's quite correct. In fact, it's an institution for problem children, isn't that so?”

“My son isn't a problem child. It was all a mistake.”

“I must ask you to confine your answers to the questions at hand. Was this, or was this not, an institution?”

She replied that it was, staring at him with active dislike. If he felt it, he seemed able to ignore it. Mr. Lewis was not quite so sanguine. He motioned for Kane to approach him at the table and the two of them exchanged brief comments accompanied by mirroring frowns.

That consultation made no difference. Seconds after it was over, Kane returned to the attack.

“Was it your idea, Miss Dalton, to have your son live apart from you?”

“No, never,” she answered, searching his face for some idea of what he was doing. The only thing she saw was that the small scar beside his mouth was white.

“Then the initiative for that came from someone else. Would you tell the court who arranged for your son to be institutionalized?”

She told him, then answered a number of questions intended to establish her exact relationship to Gervis.

“So this man is not now, nor has he ever been, a blood relative. More than that, he has no blood relationship to your son. Is that correct?” Kane paced in front of her as he formulated his questions.

“That's right.”

“Yet he took it upon himself to consign your son to what amounts to a permanent hospital.”

She agreed.

“Tell the court, if you will, how that was done.”

She complied as briefly as possible since her voice wasn't too reliable.

“Gervis Berry manipulated you into allowing your son to be removed from your care,” Kane said in summary. Swinging toward her, he added, “Is that the reason you decided to betray him?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. It seemed she was damned as a traitor no matter which way she answered.

“Remember, please,” Kane warned with exacting grimness, “that you're under oath to tell the exact truth.”

She looked at him and felt as if she were drowning in the intense sea blue of his gaze. He wanted something from her, she thought in momentary distraction,
but she couldn't tell what it might be, couldn't quite understand the significance of the caution he had given her. What did it matter anyway? It was all over—her stay in Turn-Coupe, her brief part in its affairs, her even more brief relationship with Sugar Kane. There was no point in holding anything back, no need to conceal a thing.

She moistened her lips before she said, “I don't consider what I did a betrayal. Gervis forfeited all right to loyalty when he sent my son away to suit his convenience. Or if not then, when he sent me here to spy for him.”

“You spied for him?” The question came with such promptness she was certain her answer was exactly what he expected.

“Yes,” she admitted with a twisted smile. “At least, I tried. I wasn't very good at it.”

“That's debatable, I believe. You arrived in Turn-Coupe with no advance preparation, nothing except an introduction, and wormed your way into a lot of places, a lot of…hearts.” With the briefest of pauses, he demanded, “Were you in any way responsible for the accident that injured Mr. Crompton?”

“No! I would never do such a thing!” She stared at him, aghast that he would even suggest it. Was this what he was after? Was she to be pilloried for everything that had happened, including the attempt to injure his grandfather?

“Then who was responsible?” The question rang like the crack of doom.

“That was Slater. Dudley Slater. He admitted—”

“Who is this Slater?”

“A man employed by Gervis.”

“Explain the exact nature of their working arrangement as you know it.”

She tried, though it wasn't easy. Kane was relentless in his pursuit of details, firing questions at her one after the other so quickly that she had little time to think, no room for doubts or half-truths. The opposing lawyers, in evident disarray over the introduction of this new line of questioning, talked with their heads together. They emerged from their councils on several occasions to object, particularly when it involved her knowledge of the business and accounting practices of Berry Association, Inc., but were overruled more often than not. Even when they were successful, Kane merely rephrased the question and continued.

Regina was required to spell out every single detail she knew, each incident and piece of information, to the letter. The interrogation went on and on until it seemed she had been in the stand for hours, a lifetime. Kane wanted, it seemed, exactly what the oath she had been given demanded: the truth, and nothing but the truth.

As that realization sank in, she caught a fleeting, prescient glimpse of where he was headed. Goose bumps prickled her skin and panic clutched at her throat. No, surely not. He couldn't. He wouldn't, not in here in a public courtroom. Not in front of so many witnesses and in the midst of such important proceedings. It was impossible.

Surely he wouldn't expose everything that they had been to each other, all the things that they had done? He didn't dare use the tender, wanton desire they had shared to prove the perfidy of the man who had tried
to ruin his grandfather. There was no way to bring it up without laying himself open to censure.

But if that wasn't it, she couldn't begin to guess what he required from her. There was nothing else. And why should she think he would hold that sacred? Just as there was nothing she wouldn't do for Stephan, there was also nothing Kane wouldn't do to help his Pops.

“You may be innocent of causing bodily harm, Miss Dalton, but isn't it a fact that you used your position as an appraiser of antique jewelry to gain the confidence of Lewis Crompton? That you did this in order to discover information that would blacken his character?”

“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth.

“You undertook this campaign on the instructions of Gervis Berry. Is that right?”

“That was what he said he wanted, yes.”

“And did it work?”

“No.”

He halted in midstride, lifting a brow as he turned slowly to face her. “No? Why not?”

“Mr. Crompton changed his mind about selling the jewelry.” She added with strong irony, “I believe it was on the advice of his lawyer.”

“So that avenue was cut off,” Kane said with a sardonic smile. “Then what did you do?”

“I told Gervis what had happened. Someone else, Slater apparently, informed him that Mr. Crompton's grandson might be interested in me. I was directed to concentrate on him instead.”

A wave of comment moved over the courtroom. Kane lifted his voice to be heard above it as he clar
ified, “You were told to concentrate on the grandson instead of Mr. Crompton?”

“Yes.” The word was husky.

“And did you?”

She searched his face, trying to see behind the stern lines of his features. It was impossible. She didn't deserve this. Or did she? Here in this public place, the whole charade seemed far more sordid and contemptible than when it was taking place, and it had been bad enough then.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I did.”

“With what result?”

Did he really want her to spell it out in plain words? “We became—close.”

“You pumped him for information, is that it?”

She made a small, helpless gesture. “I tried.”

“You weren't successful?”

“I think he was suspicious. I've come to believe that…” She stopped, not quite sure she should go on.

“What did you believe?”

She looked away. “That he had reasons of his own for spending time with me.”

“Even so, you continued this relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The word was bald and carried hostility behind it. Stung, she answered in kind. “Because I had no choice!”

“You had no choice? I find that hard to believe, Miss Dalton. Everyone has a choice of whether they will do right or wrong.”

“No, they don't! Not when a child's well-being is at stake.”

He swung to face her. “A child's well-being? Your child?”

“My son,” she answered. “The only person I—” She stopped as her throat closed, choking off the words.

“Your son, Stephan Berry, who was with Gervis Berry in New York while you were occupied in Turn-Coupe?”

“Yes.” She managed to force out the answer though salt tears burned in her throat.

“In what way was the child involved in this situation?”

“Please,” she said as moisture gathered in her eyes. “I can't—”

Kane did not relent. “Just answer the question.”

She looked toward Stephan, seeing through a blur of unshed tears the scowl on his small face. She thought that he was upset over the way she was being treated, rather than what was being said, though she couldn't be sure. In desperation, she sought for words to explain that might mean nothing to him, yet would be intelligible to the court.

Haltingly, she said, “Gervis told me that he would outline to my son, in detail, the—the criminal attack that occurred nine months before his birth and that was its cause. That is—”

“He was threatening you, holding the mental well-being of your child over your head.”

“Objection!” the head of the defense team shouted.

“Yes,” she said on a rush of relief at not being forced to put the humiliation of her date rape into plain terms, though she thought, from the muttering in the courtroom, that it was understood well enough. For a
single instant, she even felt wild gratitude toward Kane for the reprieve he had given her in spite of all that had gone before.

He swung from her to look at the head of the defense team who, suddenly detecting the lethal nature the interrogation had taken with respect to his client, was yelling about character assassination, precedents, and a half-dozen other legalities. In even tones, Kane said, “I withdraw the question.”

The judge signaled for quiet, delivered a short homily on procedure, then indicated that Kane could continue.

He approached the witness stand once more and braced his hands on the railing in front of Regina, staring down at the floor for a long moment. When he looked up, his clear blue gaze held trenchant contemplation. “According to your testimony, then,” he said evenly, “you were actively seeking information to be used by Gervis Berry to counter the suit that had been filed against him. Then you suddenly stopped and left Turn-Coupe to return to New York. Why was that?”

“He sent for me.” Her voice, Regina discovered, was firmer. At least the distraction had given her the chance to regain a little control.