Page 11 of Trial Run

Leland rose to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Mr. Rigley is spending way too much time building up momentum fortestimony that is going nowhere fast. If the witness has something to say, can she simply say it without all the theatrics?”

Speaking of theatrics. Reggie resisted an eye roll.

“Ms. Gillespie, please simply answer Mr. Rigley’s question.”

She scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned into the microphone. “She said that if I didn’t like the way she got things done, I didn’t have to…” She paused and took a deep breath. “Fuckingwork for her, but to consider my decision carefully if I cared about the well-being of my family.”

Rigley had winced slightly at the profanity but seemed to recover quickly. “And you took that to a be a threat?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Rigley frowned, presumably at the way his own witness barked at him, but he quickly segued into another question. “Did anything happen to make you think there was a serious threat against your family?”

“Yes. A couple of days after her threat, my daughter came home from school and when she emptied her backpack, she found a note inside.”

Rigley nodded and walked back to the prosecution table. He lifted a plastic sleeve from the surface and carried it back over to Patricia. “Is this the note?”

Patricia stared at it for a moment and nodded.

“You have to answer out loud,” Rigley said.

“Yes, that’s the note.”

“Can you read it for the jury?”

She took a deep breath and there was a long pause before she launched in. “Tell your mother to do the right thing if she wants you to be able to finish school.” She pointed at the note. “I realize it doesn’t sound threatening out loud, but,” she held the note up toward the jury, “it’s written in letters cut from a magazine. I mean who does that other than a serial killer?”

Several members of the jury gasped, and Brooke’s face went ashen. Gloria Leland shot to her feet. “Objection.”

Judge Hunt sighed. “Strike that last part as unresponsive.”

Rigley turned to the jury and raised his shoulders as if to say, “you all know the truth, right?” He leaned in. “Did anything happen after you received the note?”

“Yes. I started getting phone calls late at night. The voice on the other end of the phone was fake, you know, like they were talking through one of those things that distorts your voice.”

Reggie heard a tiny squeak and looked down at Brooke who was covering her mouth with her hand. This testimony was provoking some very personal reactions from Brooke, and she was determined to find out why, but right now all she could do was sit tight and listen. Patricia was a compelling witness, but Reggie wasn’t quite convinced she wasn’t stretching it with the accusation that a high-profile developer like Shirley Mitchell would resort to threatening notes and phone calls. All she’d really have had to do to ruin Patricia was pick up the phone and blackball her to every other employer in town. But if the threats were real and Shirley wasn’t behind them, then who was?

* * *

Out of the corner of her eye, Brooke spotted Reggie walking toward her. She looked around and homed in on one of the younger male jurors who was standing by himself across the room. He’d worn a tie each day and he seemed a little dorky which made her think of Ben. She walked briskly toward him, certain Reggie was following her and determined not to look back.

“Hi,” she said, sticking her hands out. “I’m Brooke. What’s your name?”

“Mark.”

Not super talkative, apparently. She smiled big, hopefully not so big she’d scare him, and tried another tack. “I’m usually okay with names, but after hearing all the names yesterday, I got jumbled. How do you feel about being on the jury?”

He frowned like it was a weird question. Maybe it was, but it was open-ended enough to get more than a one-word answer.

“I guess it’s okay. Kind of boring.”

She nodded. “Not the most exciting case. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s good no one died or was injured, but rich people arguing about money—not exactly riveting.”

“We’re not supposed to be talking about the case.”

Brooke turned to find Reggie standing to her left. Close. Really close. “We’re not talking about the case,” she said, spotting Mark ease away out of the corner of her eye. Great. Now she was going to be known as the busybody, troublemaker. “We were talking about being bored.”

“And that’s different because?”

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