Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark

Author:Mary Higgins Clark
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781416570868
Published: 2011-08-07T09:45:01+00:00

Just Take My Heart

39

On Monday afternoon, after the disastrous day in court, Cole Moore walked with his father to their cars in the courthouse parking lot. “Why don't you and Robin come over around six thirty and have dinner with your mother and me?” Richard suggested quietly. “And we'll have a couple of drinks. We can both use them.”

“Good idea,” Cole replied. As he opened the car door for his fa?ther, he said, “Dad, you did everything you could. And don't give up yet. I still think we've got a decent shot at a hung jury.”

“We had a decent shot until he admitted to being a Peeping Tom,” Richard said, angrily. “I can't believe he never told me about that. At least we could have gone over it so that he could have ex?plained it somewhat better. And if we'd had a chance to prepare him, he wouldn't have gotten so flustered over it. It makes me won?der what else he didn't tell me.”

“Me, too,” Cole said. “See you later, Dad.”

At seven p.m. Richard and his wife, Ellen, and Cole and his wife. Robin, were at the dinner table, somberly discussing the trial.

Throughout their forty years of marriage, Ellen had always been an invaluable sounding board for Richard about his cases. A sixty-one-year-old woman with silver hair and the trim body of a disci?plined athlete, her hazel eyes were filled with concern. She knew the toll this case was taking on her husband.

It's a blessing that Cole has been working with him, she thought.

Robin Moore, a twenty-eight-year-old real estate lawyer with au?burn hair, had been married to Cole for two years. Now she shook her head in frustration. “Dad,” she said, “I absolutely believe that somewhere along the line Easton had access to that apartment. In my mind that's the difference between a conviction and an acquit?tal. It's that miserable drawer that is going to be the sticking point during the deliberations.”

“I completely agree,” Richard replied. “As you know, we had our investigator, Ben Smith, go through Easton's background with a fine-tooth comb. When he wasn't in prison, he never had a regular job. So when he wasn't stealing enough to keep him going, he has to have been working off the books.”

“Robin, we have a list of every store that regularly delivered to that apartment,” Cole said, his tone frustrated. “You know, the laun?dry, the dry cleaner, the supermarket, the drugstore, you name it. No one admits ever having hired him, either on or off the books.”

He picked up his glass of pinot noir and took another sip. “I really don't think Easton ever worked for one of those local stores. If he ever set foot in that apartment, I think he might have been making an isolated deliver)' for a vendor who paid him off the books. And remember, we couldn't even show Easton's picture to the Aldrich housekeeper after he was arrested seven months ago and came up with this whole scenario. She had already retired and then passed away about a year after Natalie died.

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