After hanging up with Margot, Elle decided she’d pen Serena a thank-you note for the flowers rather than listen to more thirdhand scandals associated with Snuff and the record industry. She opened her Wills textbook to the emery board that served as a bookmark, beginning where she had left off last night in her pre-nailfiling ambition to read the book cover to cover.
Studying with the fervor of a practitioner, as an advocate for a real-life blonde, Elle didn’t notice just how interested she had become in at least this area of law. She was also intent on proving herself to Christopher Miles.
She even found herself getting to Wills class early, a move that didn’t result in added class time. Gory Professor Gilbreath had a habit of appalling the student audience with his tactless death humor, then frightening questions out of them so he could end class prematurely, as if weary of his own voice.
The next morning Professor Gilbreath finished his lecture gruffly, snarling the rhetorical “Any questions?” as he stomped to the door.
Expecting two packages from Christopher Miles, Elle rushed from class to her mailbox. Chutney Vandermark had been deposed by Christopher, and Christopher had sent copies of her deposition transcripts as well as the transcripts from Trent’s deposition by messenger to Stanford Law School for his interns to review.
Elle assumed the transcripts would be stuck with flyers in her mailbox. She was puzzled to find a note instead, directing her to the copy center.
Elle figured out soon enough that Chutney’s deposition was far lengthier than Brooke’s and far too thick to fit into her law school mailbox. It ran over three hundred pages, scuttling Elle’s prior plan to skim over the cumbersome deposition while sitting in her Property class. With an empty half hour thanks to Professor Gilbreath’s early break, she headed for the law lounge to read what Chutney had had to say to the lawyers. Within the first few pages of Chutney’s deposition, it was obvious to Elle the girl was ready for a knock-down-drag-out fight for her father’s fortune.
In the short recess between Wills and Property classes, Eugenia entered the law lounge and recognized Elle’s head bent over her reading. “Hey, Elle,” she yelled from the line where she waited for a coffee refill. Elle looked up and smiled.
“Coming to Property class today, Princess?” Eugenia kidded, beckoning with her bag of peanut M&M’s toward the hallway. “Maybe it’s changed rooms since you last showed your face.”
Elle felt a rush of anxiety, having missed days of classes to focus on a self-taught course in will probate practice, preparing for Brooke’s trial. “It’s still in the same place, isn’t it?” she asked, startled.
“Yeah, silly.” Eugenia smiled, shaking her head as if at a child. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Okay, only if you share your candy,” Elle joked, standing to join Eugenia in line. “Hope you brought enough for everybody.”
“Enough for everybody I like.”
“Thanks.” Elle accepted a handful of M&M’s before walking to Property class, where she and Eugenia sat together.
Elle poked her friend when she saw Sarah enter the room. “Check out the power suit,” she giggled, indicating Sarah’s severe figure approaching in her navy Brooks Brothers uniform with a paisley bow strangling her neck.
“Hey, is this dress-like-your-mother day?” Eugenia whispered.
“Certainly not my mother!” Elle laughed.
Sarah made a point of walking by Elle’s seat. “I was at Christopher Miles’s office this morning,” she said. She looked quizzically at Elle. “He’s already got me doing document review,” she said with an air of self-importance.
“Have you had a meeting at Miles & Slocum yet?” Nosy Claire said, having just joined Sarah. They were both quite unaware that Elle had been to one deposition in L.A. and out to dinner with Christopher twice. During both dinners they had discussed the case in detail, and Elle felt she was gaining an edge on Sarah and the other interns.
Elle smiled. She told them that Trent’s deposition had been a great way for her to dive right into the case, that she was convinced of Brooke’s innocence, and that today “her client” would be coming to stay with her.
By this point she had all but given up class reading and attendance, keeping abreast with Eugenia’s notes and her two Secret Angels, the poet and Emanuel. She was devoting all of her time and tremendous effort to the case, which genuinely interested and challenged her.
“There’s more to this case than document review,” she added.
Elle’s confidence came through in her voice, and Claire looked discouraged. Claire turned abruptly, and Sarah clomped behind her in heavy, thick heels to her seat.
Elle peered at the phrase “Fructus perceptos villae non esse constat,” Barrister Hightower’s lexicon lesson of the day. Another worldly wise word for the collection, Elle thought despondently, remembering torturous grade-school vocabulary books as she copied the phrase into her notes. Barrister Hightower was crouched invisibly behind the podium, preparing his lecture.
The enormous deposition could not be hidden even from wee Whitman Hightower, so Elle opened Interview magazine under the desk and began reading an article on Stella McCartney’s latest collection.
Elle’s reading was rudely interrupted when Witless Hightower called her name. She looked up, surprised, as he bounded from the chalkboard back to his notes.
“Well, Ms. Woods, we are waiting for an answer.” Hightower weaved back and forth, probably on his tiptoes, beady eyes peeking over the podium.
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t hear the question,” Elle mumbled.
Hightower persisted. “Ms. Woods, the query posed for your comment relates, as I have said, to this maxim.” He waved impatiently at the board behind him. “Fructus naturales, Ms. Woods. The products of nature alone,” Hightower muttered. Sarah turned around, disappointed.
“Gathered fruits do not make a part of the farm,” interjected Drew Drexler, the irrepressible Rhodes scholar. He was translating the bizarre phrase on the board, and the professor nodded with satisfaction.
“The question, Barrister,” Drew continued, “is whether they belong to the farmer. It is my judgment that they do.”
“Excellent, Counselor,” Hightower said.
Grateful to be spared further humiliation, Elle returned to reading her magazine.
Brooke’s one-day planned visit turned into six days, on the last of which Elle and Eugenia skipped their classes to spend the morning with Brooke at the Museum of Modern Art. Brooke was terribly homesick for her life and friends in Malibu, especially her support group. Elle and Brooke arrived that afternoon at the office of Miles & Slocum in a wave of breathless and cheerful chatter. The intern and the client had become fast friends. From the kitchen, Elle got a diet Coke and Brooke poured herself a cup of black coffee before they made their way to Elle’s tiny office.
“I still think Eugenia was right about Tied Tubes,” Brooke said, taking a seat. Her reference was to a sculpture in which the barrels of two handguns were twisted together. “It was a socially critical piece about birth control. She’s right, it’s a tool to limit our life force. If I had seen it a year ago, maybe I would have had Heyworth’s child. He wanted to, you know.” She began to cry softly.
“Well, you had his love,” Elle said gently. “Better to have loved and lost,” she added softly. So easy to tell somebody else. It never consoled her when she thought about Warner. “And anyway,” Elle changed the subject as much to dodge her own maudlin sentiment as to avoid upsetting Brooke, “what about Madonna and Twins in Jell-O? How could you want to have children after seeing that?” The painting portrayed a mother dressed in an apron that read “EAT JELL-O” gazing distantly at the television while stirring a bowl of green slime. A set of twins were hanging limply by fangs implanted in her bloody neck.
“I’m telling you, it had nothing to do with children,” Brooke said. “It was an exposé on the use of animal gelatin in Jell-O products. People think it’s a family food, but it gets its consistency from animal fat. Eating Jell-O is as cruel as eating veal!”
Brooke was a vegetarian. Elle doubted her critical analysis, but found herself increasingly confident that Brooke lacked the heart of a murderer.
“You’re like the calorie Rain Man, Brooke. Do me a favor and leave my lunch quotient a mystery today. Please?”
“Knowledge is power,” Brooke said.
“Then tell me who was at your Shopper Stoppers meeting, Brooke, so we can prove that you didn’t kill Heyworth.” Elle narrowed her eyes. “Please, Brooke, you don’t have a single alibi witness,” she said in a whisper.
Now it was Brooke who spoke gravely. “Shut the door,” she motioned.
Elle jumped from behind her desk and pulled the door closed. How proud Christopher would be if she got the name of an alibi witness out of Brooke! Brooke trusted her, she thought; Brooke knew Elle believed she was innocent. She returned to her desk as casually as she could manage, restraining an anticipatory quiver with great effort.
“Please, Brooke, who can testify for you?”
“Elle, you don’t understand,” Brooke said, her voice definite. “I won’t hurt the people who have helped me. I won’t embarrass them, and I won’t set their lives back. The only people who knew where I was when my husband was shot are in my support group in Los Angeles, and I won’t expose them. Even if nobody will testify for me.”
Elle’s heart plunged. She cursed herself for being too forceful. Brooke had been so close to telling her something.
“Elle, I have what they call an addictive personality. That’s why I had the discipline to lose all that weight. I committed all of my energy to that single goal. In that direction it was useful, but when I got hooked on the Home Shopping Network, I turned all of my commitment and energy to the power of spending. It’s immediate, but it’s transitory. I lost sight of the future,” she said, her eyes dimming from sharp turquoise gems to the pale, blank blue of a faded day.
Elle drooped in her chair, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Then suddenly, like a mood ring, Brooke’s face lit up again.
“That was before I met the life leaders,” Brooke said. “The group leaders at the Shopper Stoppers meetings…they gave my future back to me. I regained what Heyworth loved about me, and he was so happy.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Heyworth met me at the wellness center, he was trying to get in shape, and I made him my project. His whole attitude had to change. He was almost ready to die. He was so world-weary at first, and I couldn’t blame him. Everyone treated him like some old patriarch with all of his achievements behind him like ghosts.”
Elle reached for her diet Coke while she listened intently.
“It wasn’t his past that I cared about. His companies, equity shares, or vineyards weren’t my interests. We started working out together, and he was like a child, with all of the energy that made him his millions turned toward improving his health and getting stronger. That’s what I cared about. He clung to his life after that. He felt vigorous, and capable. Together, we had our eyes set on the future. On our future.”
“What does that have to do with your alibi, Brooke?” Elle said with exasperation. “What would Heyworth want you to do?” she said. “Just give up?”
“We understood loyalty and support, Elle. He’d want me to stand by my friends. He’d want me to do just what I’m doing, which is moving forward. I’ll face this trial and I’ll tell the judge and jury the truth. I won’t involve anyone who I’ll hurt. Come what may.”
Elle thought of Warner, and how hard she had tried to resurrect the love of their past days. Brooke was crazy. Loyalty was fleeting. Look what Warner had done to her, even if she had changed her entire life to match his like a newly fashionable tie. Sarah was his future, and what was hers? What was Brooke’s?
“Your future doesn’t look so bright, Brooke. You’re going to have your entire life, not just your alleged involvement in the murder, put on trial, I can promise you that.”
Brooke dropped her head into her hands. “Elle, I lost both of my parents when I dug up their business. They’re like strangers to me now. Without Heyworth, the only people who care about my future”—she paused, glancing at Elle—“besides you and Christopher, who I’m paying, are the Shopper Stoppers. So I won’t bring them down by exposing them, even to save myself. They still have families. And they’re my family.”
Brooke wouldn’t budge. She clung to the last family she had. She wouldn’t sacrifice her friends on the altar of self-preservation, and yet she had everything to lose.
Elle thought of Serena and Margot. They ridiculed her for taking this job, defending a Theta…an unpardonable crime, forgetting the primacy of her Greek letter label. Their paths were separating. But Elle also had the misgiving that she too had filled her college days with superficial judgments. Good fraternities, bad fraternities, whispers about sisters, china pattern dreams. Her old friends seemed so remote now.
Margot was a “we,” having ceased to refer to herself in the first person singular since she became a charm bracelet on Snuff’s arm. Serena, always the same, was a scattering of crystals, drugs, dates, and diets. They were the friends of habit and memory, to which she now clung like lint. She sensed that she had lost them, coming to law school, maybe for good, but then maybe inevitably. Either way, she was left with a sense of loss.
She had strayed from her old life and had found fulfillment where she least expected it, but she still hadn’t given up on getting Warner back. Law school had not changed her in Warner’s eyes, so she’d found a way to get him, with Brooke’s case as a front and the Elle he had loved as the bait.
She’d see Warner after class, and she’d be holding a Property textbook in one hand and a deposition in the other, but to him she might as well be holding a dog-eared copy of Cosmo. So Cosmo it would be. Elle had a plan to work out at the gym available to Miles & Slocum employees. Positive that she’d run into Warner there, she dutifully packed her gym clothes and the latest Cosmo to read while she was on the StairMaster.
The rest of her class looked upon her like an alien. Barbie paraphernalia still made its cowardly, anonymous assault on her school mailbox. She found herself bored in classes, which she attended with less and less frequency. She sighed, and Brooke’s obstinate expression caught her eye. It reminded her of Eugenia, and she smiled. Eugenia was as stubborn as a mule.
Eugenia was a miracle who strengthened her resolve to get through law school and, as hard as it was, helped her see Warner for what he really was. A happenstance of a seating chart. Another gift was her lovelorn Angel, sending her aid and comfort in ribbon-tied outlines. There were people who wanted to see her make it.
Elle set her jaw. Brooke believed in herself and Elle believed in Brooke. The underdog.
“Take me to a meeting,” Elle said all of a sudden. “I won’t say a word to Christopher or anyone. I want to meet your friends.”
“If you’ll take me to law school. I want to see what your prison is like.”