you happen to notice that men visited her during that time?”
“Well, yes.”
“Would you say that many men visited her or just a few?”
She paused. “I would have to say more than a few.”
“You would have to say ‘many,’ am I right?”
“Yes.”
The reporters started yapping, as I knew they would. I wondered how Fiske would take this. Or Paul. “Mrs. Mateer, did you meet any of these men?”
“What?”
“Let’s back up. You work in the garden out back, and you’re a gardener, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a member of the Wayne Garden Club, by the way?”
“I was for many years, but no longer.”
Hmmm. Kate’s club. Did it matter? “When you were out working in your garden, did Patricia Sullivan ever introduce you to any of her visitors?”
“No… well, only one. I forget his name.”
“Is he in the courtroom today?”
She scanned the crowd slowly. I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t point at Paul. I’d normally never ask such an open question on cross, but I needed this answer. After a long time, Mrs. Mateer said: “Well, I see a man I recognize, but Patricia never introduced us.”
My mouth went dry. “Who would that be?”
She pointed a bony finger at the gallery. Heads swiveled frantically among the pews. I looked at Paul, who sat bolt upright, seemingly unafraid of her identification.
“In the back,” Mrs. Mateer said. She aimed her finger at Stan Julicher, who raised his hand and smiled at the press.
“Besides him, is there anyone else?”
“No.”
My mind flipped through the drawings I’d seen in the other sketchbooks in the garage, then the sketch I stepped on. “Mrs. Mateer, wasn’t there one man who visited more frequently than others?”
“I have to object, Your Honor,” Ryerson said. “This line of questioning casts aspersions on the character of the victim. This is the worst kind of-”
“Overruled. Get to the point, Ms. Morrone,” Justice Millan interrupted. “I’m not interested in watching while you fish.”
“Yes, Your Honor. Mrs. Mateer, there was one man who visited more than the others, wasn’t there?”
“I don’t know his name.”
I thought of the front door, unlocked. “Did he live with Miss Sullivan?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He was tall, wasn’t he, about six feet?”
She nodded. “I suppose.”
Ready, set, go. “And he was black, was he not?”
Mrs. Mateer cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”
The gallery burst into excited chatter and Justice Millan pounded the gavel. “Now, children,” she said.
“And he rode a BMW motorcycle, didn’t he?”
“Why, yes.”
And he left the seat up, too, but we won’t go into that. I glanced at Fiske, who looked puzzled. Paul didn’t. “Mrs. Mateer, I have one final question. You never saw Judge Hamilton visit the carriage house, did you?”
“No.”
Thank God, Fiske had kept his trysts nocturnal. “I have no further questions of this witness.”
I sat down and half listened to a repetitious redirect by Ryerson, then put myself on autopilot as Lieutenant Dunstan described in mind-numbing detail the police procedures for license-plate and fingerprint identification. He testified that they’d found Fiske’s prints in the living room, which squared with what Fiske had told me. He’d confined his close encounters to the sofa. Why do you think they call it a love seat?
On cross-examination, I established that the police had dusted the carriage house and found no other fingerprints from Fiske, and had examined Fiske’s Jaguar and had not yet found any evidence of the victim’s blood, hair, or fibers from her clothes. But I couldn’t resist a final line of questions, just to get the press salivating.
“Lieutenant Dunstan, did the police consider that one of the male visitors to the carriage house could have committed the crime?”
He nodded. “We investigated thoroughly, including the gentleman you referred to.”
A shake, rattle, and roll emanated from the back of the courtroom. I looked back. It was Tobin, shaking his box of Jujyfruits, presumably warning me not to press further. Still, I couldn’t resist a parting shot:
“Lieutenant Dunstan, how easy do you think it is to make a fake Pennsylvania license plate, one that would look real at a hundred yards, in the middle of a dark rainstorm?”
“I have no idea.”
“What if I told you I made one this morning in only ten minutes, out of cardboard and indelible markers?”
“Objection!” Ryerson said, but the reporters responded predictably, salivating and scribbling, scribbling and salivating. Justice Millan banged her gavel again and again, to no avail. All the news that’s fit to spin was being spun, like straw into gold.
“Never mind, I withdraw the question,” I said. “I have no further questions.”
I sat down and promised myself that someday I’d try to make a license plate out of cardboard and indelible markers. When I got a spare ten minutes.
18
After the preliminary hearing, we regrouped in Fiske’s study. It was large, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a rolling library ladder for reaching that emergency copy of Milton. Fiske kept the air-conditioning high so the first editions wouldn’t molder and grow mushrooms in the dim room. The only light came from two narrow, arched windows, crisscrossed with leaded glass. It was a nice effect if you liked Early Medieval, but since I came from the serfing class I’d always felt uncomfortable here. Especially today, since I was wondering if I was sitting in this drafty castle with a killer.
Despite my link to these players, I felt suspicious of them. Fiske, who’d been framed for murder-maybe. Kate, who drove an identical black Jaguar with an almost identical license plate, and who was furious at Patricia for suing her husband. And my own beloved, who had slept with Patricia and taken with him the only thing that would prove he knew her. Had Paul killed her? Could he? Could any of them?
It was almost impossible to believe. I had known them for years and never would have dreamed any of them capable of such brutality. And Paul, never. Still, I had lots of questions and no answers, and any lawyer would have been thinking the same way. So I set aside my personal feelings, put on a poker face,
