East of Cricket Hill by Ron Fritsch

Author:Ron Fritsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Asymmetric Worlds
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Monday, March 4, 1968

Minelli continued to stand where he could see the witness, the jury, and Colin, but with his back to Judge Oakley. “Mr. Witkowski, you’ve described some aspects of the arrangement Oliver Bradford and Colin Doyle agreed upon when Doyle moved into the house Mr. Bradford owned in June 1965. Did the arrangement include their having sexual relations?”

“Yes, it did,” Witkowski replied.

“Would you describe for us that part of the arrangement?”

“Colin Doyle agreed to have sex with Oliver Bradford, but no more often than once every calendar week, and then only after Bradford gave Doyle notice at least 24 hours prior to the time they’d have sex.”

The jurors stared at Colin. I wondered where Witkowski had gotten that information. I hadn’t given it to him.

Minelli seemed to wish to prove Colin was a prostitute. Even if Colin was, it wasn’t proof he’d committed murder. Or so I assumed.

After a long pause, with Minelli shuffling through his papers, maybe to let the jurors fully consider what they’d just heard, he asked his next question. “Did the arrangement Oliver Bradford and Colin Doyle had entered into require Bradford to pay Doyle for sex?”

Witkowski’s technically honest answer surprised me. “Their arrangement didn’t require Mr. Bradford to pay Mr. Doyle for sex.”

Larry Minelli, on the other hand, made no attempt to conceal his unhappiness with that response from his own witness, the lead detective on the case. “Did their arrangement,” he asked, “require Bradford to pay any money to Doyle for anything Doyle did?”

“No, it didn’t.”

Minelli stared at Witkowski. “Did their arrangement result in Doyle receiving any money?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Where did that money come from?”

“Doyle received ten percent of the profit he made from investing their investable assets. Bradford’s previous financial adviser had received the same percentage of the profits.”

“You say their investable assets? Don’t you mean Bradford’s investable assets?”

“No. As I said before, at the beginning of their arrangement, when Colin Doyle moved into Oliver Bradford’s house, Mr. Bradford made Doyle a joint owner, with the right of survivorship, of everything Bradford had previously owned individually.”

Minelli decided to take another route to testimony possibly more favorable to the prosecution. “What did Doyle do with the ten percent of the profits he earned?”

“At the end of every quarter of the year, he put ten percent of the profits he’d made into a checking account, a savings account, and certificates of deposit. He and Bradford owned those accounts jointly, as they did everything they had. If Doyle needed to pay for anything for himself, he took the money out of those accounts. He treated those accounts as his personal accounts, but they were in fact joint accounts.”

Once again, Witkowski’s thorough and honest answer didn’t seem to be what Minelli had been looking for.

Minelli turned to Colin and asked his next question for Emil Witkowski over his shoulder. “At any time after Colin Doyle moved into Mr. Bradford’s house in June of 1965, did Doyle have an ongoing sexual relationship with anybody other than Mr.

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