Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [43]
Leo Kearns, the other agent? Should I have dug into him more? Maybe. Nobody's all that altruistic when he loses a client. Being a theatrical agent has to be a tough business. Kearns made it sound like a tennis match —Love all.
Gregg Aldrich. The pain on his face when he talked about his first wife . . . I'm getting mushy, Emily thought. I was feeling with him the kind of pain I felt when I learned that Mark was dead.
“Way up on the mountain, there's a new chalet. . . and Jean so brave and true . . . has built it all anew.” A folk song from her child?hood ran through Emily's mind. Gregg Aldrich tried to rebuild his life, she thought. He remarried. He obviously was very much in love with Natalie. Then, when she was murdered, he was not only griev?ing, but had to defend himself against the cops who thought he killed her.
She gulped the rest of the wine. God, what's the matter with me? she asked herself, angrily. My job is to prosecute this guy.
Then, toward the end of Courtside, Michael Gordon came out in support of Aldrich. Knowing that Gordon was considered to be a fair analyst, Emily was shocked.
But then she felt her resolve harden. If he's typical of the people watching this show, and if he's typical of the way the jury may be thinking, I've got my work cut out for me, she thought.
Just Take My Heart
28
Well, isn't that a surprise?" Isabella Garcia asked her husband, Sal, as they sat in their small living room on East Twelfth Street in Manhattan. She had been engrossed in watching Courtside and could hardly believe her ears when Michael Gordon told the rest of the panel that he now believed that Gregg Aldrich was innocent of the murder of Natalie Raines. But although she was absolutely-shocked, she remarked to Sal that when you really thought about it, what Gordon was saying made a lot of sense.
Sal was sipping a beer and reading the sports page. Except for the news, and baseball or football games, he couldn't care less about watching television and had the gift of tuning both the picture and the sound out when he was reading.
He hadn't really paid attention yesterday when Belle told him to take a look at the clips that they were showing of the crook, Jimmy, on the witness stand. But from his one quick glance, Sal felt as if the guy seemed vaguely familiar for some reason. But he couldn't remember where he might have met him, and anyhow he didn't care.
Knowing that now, with the program over, Belle wanted to talk, Sal dutifully lowered his newspaper. After watching Courtside, she liked to air her opinion of the day's events at the trial. Unfortunately, her elderly mother was on a cruise in the Caribbean with several of her friends who were also widows, and so was not available for their customary lengthy telephone chat.
“I have to say that Gregg came off beautifully,” Belle began. “You know, he has a nice way about him. Why Natalie would have left him in the first place is hard to fathom. If she were our daughter I would have sat her down and told her that a very wise man wrote, 'At the end of his life, no one ever said I wish I'd spent more time in the office.' ”
“She was on the stage, not in an office,” Sal pointed out. You'd think this case depended on Belle's opinion, he thought, half amused, half irritated, as he looked across the room at his wife of thirty-five years. She'd been dyeing her hair for decades, so it was, at age sixty, the same coal black shade it had been when he first met her. Her body was thicker, but not very. The corners of her mouth turned up because she smiled so easily. He always tried to remember to thank God that Belle had such a good disposition. His brother was married to a battle-axe.
“Stage, office, you know what I mean.” Belle dismissed Sal's com?ment. “And Katie is such a pretty girl. I like to see the clips of her that Michael shows on the program.”
Belle had a way of referring to people