Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [37]
The second witness was Walter Robinson, the Broadway investor who had spoken to Gregg at Vinnie's-on-Broadway and remembered seeing Easton sitting next to him at the bar.
When Robinson left the witness stand, Emily turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the state rests.”
The courthouse is packed, she thought, as she took her seat at the prosecutor's table. She recognized some familiar faces in the audi?ence, people whose names popped up on Page Six of the New York Post. As usual the proceedings were being videotaped. Yesterday she had been stopped in the corridor by Michael Gordon, the host of Courtside, complimenting her on the job she was doing and asking her to be a guest on his program after the trial was over.
“I'm not sure,” she had answered, but later, Ted Wesley had told her that it would be a great boost for her reputation to make a guest appearance on a national program. “Emily, if there's any advice I hope you take from me, it's to get any good publicity that comes your way.”
We'll see, she thought, as she turned her head to look at the de?fense table. Today Gregg Aldrich was wearing a well-tailored pin?stripe dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a blue and white tie. He had more color in his face than yesterday and she wondered if he had been jogging earlier. He seemed more confident, too, than he had appeared to be yesterday. I don't know what you have to be con?fident about, she thought, with just a tinge of fear.
Today, his daughter, Katie, was sitting in the first row directly be?hind her father. Emily knew she was only fourteen but she seemed oddly mature as she sat there, her carriage erect, her expression grave, her blond hair soft on her shoulders. She was a very pretty girl, Emily thought, not for the first time. I wonder if she looks like her mother.
“Mr. Moore, call your first witness,” Judge Stevens directed.
For the next three hours, Moore called both character and fact witnesses. The first one, Loretta Lewis, had lived next door to Gregg when he was growing up. “You couldn't meet a nicer young man,” she said earnestly, her voice hoarse with emotion. “He did every?thing for his mother. She was never well. He was so responsible al?ways. I remember one winter when our building lost electricity, he went from one apartment to another, there were twenty in the build?ing, knocking on doors and carrying candles so that people could see. He even made sure that everyone was warm. The next day his mother told me that he took the blankets from his own bed and brought them down to Mrs. Shellhorn because the ones she had were so thin.”
One of Katie's retired nannies told the jury that she'd never known a more devoted father. “Most two-parent families don't give the time and the love Mr. Gregg gave to Katie,” she testified.
She had been there four of the five years that Natalie and Gregg had been married. “Natalie was more of a pal than a mother to Katie. When she was around, she'd let her stay up later than her usual bed?time, or if she helped her with her homework, she'd just give her the answers instead of making her work out a problem. Gregg would tell her not to do that, but he didn't get angry about it.”
The new agent Natalie had hired prior to her death, Leo Kearns, was a surprising witness for the defense. He was on the witness list but Emily had not expected that Richard would call him. Kearns explained that he and Gregg differed fundamentally about the course Natalie's career should take. “Natalie was thirty-seven years old,” he said. “She had received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress but that was three years earlier. Not enough people go to Tennessee Williams plays for Natalie to stay in the limelight. She needed a few well-publicized action movies. I was sure they would create a buzz