Nobody said one word to me after that first day’s session. Apparently Delia, Guido, and Sam had all been convinced by Officer Odom’s testimony that I was a homicidal jilted girlfriend.
Or at least they’d decided that offering me up as a scapegoat was preferable to jeopardizing the film.
Whatever had happened to Alistair—murder or suicide—everyone seemed to agree it was my fault.
I was grateful for Pandora, who was full of joyful tales of her new friends’ playroom, which was equipped with no less than four Barbie dream houses. But she was exhausted after all the excitement and ready for sleep right after we ate our burgers.
Our meal was delivered by a silent Hispanic maid, not Vernelle—who didn’t seem to be around. Just as well. I would have felt even worse if Vernelle thought I was guilty too.
Sleep did not come to me as easily as it did to Pandora, since unfortunately I’d taken the last of my Quaaludes in L.A. I tried to do a little mind-numbing with the TV, but tuned in to a picture of my own sweaty face, emerging from the auditorium, while some idiot talked about “the killer nanny.” I kept it on for a few minutes, with watching-a train-wreck-horror, as the reporter droned on about how “although she has not yet been charged, the nanny has emerged as the most likely suspect in what appears to have been a homicide on the set of Guido Malatesta’s The Vast Inland Sea…”
When I realized my whole body was shaking with rage, I turned the TV off. I felt like throwing it out the window.
I found some refuge in a Mary Stewart novel, but if it hadn’t been for dear Wogs, I don’t think I’d have made it. Somehow, she managed to convince Vernelle’s Dad, or whoever was at the front desk, that she was truly a relative, and not a media vulture—they were instructed to screen all our calls—and got the call put through to my room.
The sound of Wogs’ boisterous camp-counselor voice nearly brought me to tears.
“I can’t believe the idiotic things they’re saying on the news,” she said. “You had no motive to kill Alistair. You were completely over him. And he was bad in bed. Everybody says so. They also say he was chronically suicidal. What’s wrong with that man’s mother? Didn’t she know?”
“The Gorgon only knows what she wants to know. I don’t think she’s ever had a strong grip on reality.” I let out a hiccupy laugh. “Not that I know first-hand. Alistair never thought I was good enough to meet the materfamilias. And you would not believe what a pathetic frump that woman is. I’d feel sorry for her if I didn’t how horribly she treated poor Alistair.”
I sniffed to keep from dissolving into tears.
But Wogs hadn’t called to offer a crying-shoulder. She had a plan. Or rather her mother had a plan. Wogs said Aunt Livy had already called the Conway Industries lawyers, who were going to contact the studio lawyers to explain that funding for Guido’s film would be withdrawn if today’s “scapegoating of the nanny” were allowed to continue.
Aunt Livy knew enough people in the financial world through her charity work that she probably could have carried through with her threat. That calmed me enough to get me through the night.
But all the ickiness flooded back in the morning. I didn’t know how I was going to face another day of all that hostility. I also didn’t know how I could face another scorching day in panty hose. I looked at myself in my proper, dismal blue shirtwaist that had looked so pathetic on TV last night and decided if I was going down, I was not going to do it as a frump like the Gorgon. I peeled off the hose and changed into a little shift which I hate to admit was lime green, decorated with florescent pink piping—the nineteen-seventies was not a stellar decade for fashion—but I felt great in it.
When the mayor’s wife arrived, it was clear she did not approve of lime green, pink piping, or anything else about me. With a tight-lipped smile she informed me Delia had decided Pandora should stay at the mayoral home for the duration of the inquest.
So that’s how it was going to be.
I watched Pandora run off happily with her little friends. It was the last I ever saw of her, except on some rock album covers—she became a drummer, I think—and once on the TV news sometime in the eighties, when she was involved in some drug scandal with a Beastie Boy, or a Twisted Sister or whoever.
In spite of whatever efforts Aunt Livy had made, the morning did not go well. The crowd outside shouted unbearably nasty things at me. Then Mr. Bean went to work—bringing up witness after witness, whose fragmented stories could be distorted to show I had a volatile relationship with Alistair and was insanely jealous of Delia.
Things got worse when Delia herself got on the stand and told a cut-from-whole-cloth lie that was so outrageous, it felt like a physical attack. I could hardly breathe as I sat there hearing her claim I had stalked Alistair when he was living in London, and that he had been in fear for his life because I was “such a big girl” and often became “dangerously violent” when enraged.
It was so far from the truth of our chance meeting outside the Piccadilly Circus tube station—and so cruel about my few extra pounds—I had to fight the urge to scream.
Then Delia delivered the coup de grace. She pulled a familiar crumpled envelope from her purse and showed it to Mr. Krikorian.
I felt my flesh go cold under my hot skin. My letter. Why hadn’t I taken it from her and burned it? It had been sitting in that suite we shared for over a week.
I was almost as angry with myself as I was with her.
She continued her performance, softly weeping about how she never would have hired me if she’d seen that letter earlier—and known how cruel I’d been to poor Alistair.
Anger roared so loudly in my head I could hardly hear her testimony. Why was Delia doing this? Maybe she had killed Alistair after all. Maybe all her accusations that I’d enabled his suicide were just a clever way to cover up the fact she’d murdered him herself. She certainly could have. She could have been lying about having lost the key to her room. She could have gone in the room any time during the night and bonked Alistair over the head.
Mr. Krikorian was so wowed by this little drama, he actually allowed Delia to read a passage from my letter. Her Royal Shakespeare training worked its magic, and by reading my playful, ironic words as if they were a speech by Lady Macbeth, she had the whole audience believing I was the world’s most abusive girlfriend.
I managed to hold myself together until the lunch recess, which I spent in the bathroom with Mary Stewart and a cold English muffin I’d pocketed at breakfast.
If I’d been a religious person, I would have prayed. But when you were raised by a self-absorbed drunk who’s pretty sure that if there’s a god, it’s himself, you aren’t always aware of that option.
But I had The Crystal Cave, and I hid in it.
After the lunch break, things took off in an entirely different direction.
Questioning switched from the killer-nanny track back to the suicide track. One of the studio lawyers—one I’d lunched with the day before—called a maid who had witnessed one of Alistair and Delia’s fights. She said she’d distinctly heard Alistair talk of suicide.
Next, a room service waiter testified to hearing a similar threat.
The lawyer recalled Officer Odom, but this time asked him about the Gideon Bible. I couldn’t believe the lawyer—or Hank Odom—actually took such flimsy nonsense as serious evidence, but Hank dutifully said the handwriting looked similar to that in Alistair’s little black book, although the analysis was still pending.
The Gorgon obviously was not enjoying this turn of events and started huffing and puffing in her seat in the front row. She whispered something loudly to Mr. Bean, encouraging him to object to all the suicide testimony.
Mr. Bean rose to speak, but before any words came out, the doors in the back of the auditorium opened, and a dark, stunning woman sauntered in, chic in up to-the-minute Yves St. Laurent. She spoke to a bailiff. The bailiff summoned a studio lawyer, who, followed by his cohorts, joined the woman at the back of the room.
As she handed the lawyers some papers she took from her purse, I thought she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
One of the lawyers asked Mr. Krikorian if he might introduce another witness.
Mr. Krikorian looked resigned and allowed it.
The bailiff then called to the stand, “Mrs. Theodora Zavaras Milbourne.”
Lots of gasps from the crowd. Especially from the Gorgon.
Now I recognized her. I’d met Thea once—at Claridge’s in London the summer before. She was one of Alistair’s conquests. Her father built ships, as I remembered.
But could Alistair actually have married her—when he was dating me—and working in Delia’s household? And kept it a secret from us all?
It seemed he had. I saw a wedding ring glint on Thea’s well-manicured left hand as she strode down the aisle.
As she passed me, she gave me a broad smile and the hint of a wink—as if the two of us were in on some big joke.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what that joke might be.