Just Take My Heart (10 page)

Step by step, Richard Moore led Gregg Aldrich through the story of his life, growing up in Jersey City, moving to Manhattan after his mother's death, success as a theatrical agent, his first marriage and the death of his first wife, then his marriage to Natalie.

"You were married four years?" Moore asked.

"Actually, for almost five years. We were separated, but not yet divorced, when Natalie died a year after she moved out of our apartment."

"How would you describe your relationship with your wife?" "Very happy."

"Then why did you separate?"

"That was Natalie's choice, not mine," Gregg explained, his voice even, his manner quiet, but seemingly confident. "She decided that our marriage wasn't working."

"Why did she decide that?"

"On three occasions during our marriage, she had accepted roles in a movie or play that required her to be on location or on tour. I will certainly admit that I was sad about those separations, but I flew out frequently to see her. Katie went with me on a couple of those occasions, if they occurred during a school break or summer vacation."

He looked directly at the jury as he continued, "I'm a theatrical agent. I certainly knew that a successful actress has to be away from home for extended periods of time. When I objected to Natalie insisting on going into a play that would take her on the road, it was because I thought the play was wrong for her, not because I wanted her home to cook dinner for me. That was her interpretation, not mine."

Oh, sure, Emily thought as she scribbled a question that she would ask Aldrich when it was her turn to crossexamine him: "Weren't her career decisions smart enough that she was already a star when she met you?"

"Did that cause tension in your home?" Moore asked.

"Yes, it did. But not for the reason Natalie believed. I will say it again. When I objected to the quality of a script, she thought I was using that as an excuse to keep her home. Would I have missed her? Of course. I was her husband and her agent and her biggest fan, but I knew I had married a successful actress. The fact that I would miss her was not why I objected to some of the contracts she insisted on signing."

"Couldn't you make her understand that?"

"That was the problem. She understood how much Katie and I missed her when she was away, and came to believe that it would be less painful if we separated and remained friends."

"In the beginning, isn't it true that after the separation, she planned to retain you as her agent?"

"Initially, yes. I truly believe Natalie loved me almost as much as I loved her, and that she wanted to remain close to Katie and me. I really think she was quite sad after we had separated but while I was still her agent, when we would meet for business, then leave at the end of the meeting to go our separate ways. It became painful for both of us."

How about the pain in your wallet when you lost her as a client? Emily scribbled on her pad.

"A number of Natalie's friends have testified that she was upset by your frequent phone calls to her after your separation," Moore stated. "Would you please tell us about that?"

"It's exactly what you heard from my secretary, Louise Powell, this morning," Aldrich replied. "Natalie may have acted as if she didn't want me pursuing her, but I really believe she had very mixed emotions about whether to go through with the divorce. While we were together, she loved the fact that I called her frequently."

Moore asked about the noisy drawer where Jimmy Easton had claimed Gregg kept the money that was a down payment on his contract to kill Natalie.

"That piece of furniture has been in my home since Kathleen and I bought it at an estate sale seventeen years ago. The squeak in it is something of a family joke. We called it a message from the departed spirits. How Jimmy Easton heard of it, I'll never know. He was never in my living room when I was there and as far as I know he was never there under any circumstances."

Moore asked Gregg about meeting Easton at the bar.

"I was sitting at the bar by myself having a couple of drinks. I completely acknowledge that I was pretty down in the dumps. Easton was sitting on the stool next to me and he just started talking to me."

"What did you talk about?" Moore inquired.

"We talked about the Yankees and the Mets. The baseball season was close to starting."

"Did you tell him that you were married to Natalie Raines?"

"No, I did not. It was none of his business."

"While you were there, did he find out that you were married to Natalie Raines?"

"Yes, he did. Walter Robinson, a Broadway investor, saw me and came over. He said that he just wanted to tell me how wonderful he thought Natalie was in Streetcar. Easton heard him and picked right up on the fact that I was Natalie's husband. He told me that he had read in People magazine that we were getting a divorce. I politely told him that I did not want to discuss it."

Moore asked about the calls from Gregg's cell phone to Natalie and then to Easton the night they were in the bar. "I called Natalie to say hello. She was resting in her dressing room. She had a head-ache and was very tired. She was annoyed at the interruption and did raise her voice, as Mr. Easton testified. But as I said, she had mixed emotions. The day before she had stayed on the phone for twenty minutes while she told me how tough the separation was for her."

Moore then asked about the call to Easton's phone.

Emily's stomach tightened because she didn't know how Aldrich would try to explain it away. His lawyer had supplied one alternate theory during crossexamination, but Gregg had given no further statements after Easton had come forward. She knew that this piece of testimony could make or break the case.

"A little while after he asked about Natalie, Easton said he was going to the men's room. I certainly didn't care what he did, particularly after he asked about Natalie. At that point, I felt hungry and decided to order a hamburger and eat right at the bar. About five minutes later, Easton came back and told me that he couldn't find his cell phone and thought he might have left it somewhere in the bar. He asked me to dial his number so that the phone would ring and hopefully he would find it."

Gregg paused and looked toward the jury. "He gave me his num-ber and I dialed it. I could hear it ring on my phone but there was no ringing sound in the bar area. I let it ring about fifteen times so that he could walk around and see if he could locate it. I remember that no voice mail message came on, it just kept ringing. About thirty seconds later, as it was still ringing, he answered it and thanked me. He said he had found it in the men's room. That was the last I saw or heard of him until he got arrested for the house burglary and then gave the police that ridiculous story."

"As far as you know, did anyone else hear him ask you to dial the phone?"

"I really don't think so. The bar was very noisy. I didn't know anybody else who was there. Easton came up with this outrageous lie two years later. I wouldn't even know who to call to ask if they remembered anything."

"By the way, did Mr. Easton ever tell you that he was a career-criminal and that he was having a hard time finding a job?"

"Absolutely not!" Gregg replied.

"On Friday, March 13th, two and a half years ago," Moore continued, "you went to see Natalie in her final performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. Witnesses have stated that you sat in the last row, stone faced, and did not join in the standing ovation. How do you explain that?"

"I had not intended to see the play, but I heard so much about her performance that I could not resist going there. I deliberately bought a ticket in the last row. I didn't want Natalie to see me because I was afraid it would upset her. I didn't jump up to applaud because I was emotionally spent. I think at that moment I realized once again what a magnificent actress she was."

"Did you receive a phone call from her the next morning?"

"I received a message from her on my cell phone, saying she had gone up to Cape Cod, that she would be at our scheduled meeting on Monday, and asking me not to call her over the weekend."

"How did you react to that call?"

"I certainly admit that I was upset. Natalie had previously hinted to me that she had met someone else. It was very important to me to know if that was true. So, I made the decision to drive to Cape Cod. I made up my mind that if I saw her with someone else, I would have to accept that our marriage was over."

Ask him why he didn't hire a private investigator to check this out, Emily wrote on her pad.

"Why did you rent a car, a green Toyota, to drive to the Cape when your own vehicle, a Mercedes-Benz, was in the garage of your apartment building?"

"Well, of course, Natalie would recognize my car. The license plates on it had both our initials on them. I didn't want her or any-one else to know that I was checking on her."

"What did you do when you got to the Cape, Gregg?"

"I checked into a little motel in Hyannis. We know a lot of people who live on the Cape and I didn't want to bump into any of them. I just wanted to see if Natalie was alone."

"You drove past her house several times?"

"Yes. Years ago, the garage was converted into a recreation room and no one ever got around to building a new one. There was no garage that another car could have been in. When I drove past the house, I saw only her car in the driveway, and I knew she was alone."

Suppose she had picked someone up along the way? Emily wrote on her pad. How could you assume she was alone just because there wasn't another car there?

"What did you do then, Gregg?" Moore asked.

"I drove past her house Saturday afternoon and late Saturday evening, and three times on Sunday. Her car was always the only one in the driveway. It was overcast both days and there were lights on in-side the house, so I assumed she was there. Then around eight o'clock Sunday evening I started back to Manhattan. There was a nasty storm predicted and I wanted to get home."

"At that point, had you made any decision about continuing your efforts to reconcile with Natalie Raines?"

"On the drive home, I remember that I thought about something I had read. I'm not sure if it was written about Thomas Jefferson, but I think it was. Anyhow, the quote was

'Never less alone than when alone.' "

" 'Never less alone than when alone.' Did you decide that was true of Natalie?" asked Moore.

"Yes. I believe that on the drive home that Sunday evening, I resigned myself to that reality."

"What time did you arrive home?"

"About one a.m. I was exhausted and I went right to bed." "Monday morning, what did you do?"

"I went for a jog in Central Park. Then I returned the rental car.

"What time did you go out to jog?"

"About 7:15 a.m. or so."

"And you returned the rental car at 10:05 a.m."

"Yes."

"Was that an unusually long amount of time for you to jog?"

"Usually, I jog for about an hour and sometimes after that I just keep walking. Sometimes, especially when I'm thinking things through, I lose track of the time."

Sure you do! Emily thought.

"How often does it happen, Mr. Aldrich, that you may lose track of time when you're jogging or walking?" Richard Moore asked, his voice sympathetic.

"There's no pattern. But when I have a lot on my mind, it can happen." Gregg remembered that it had happened just this morning. I left the apartment before five thirty and got back at seven thirty. I had to rush to shower and change to be here on time. I won't tell the jury that, he thought to himself. They'll think I'm nuts.

There's no pattern. But it happened the morning Natalie died, Emily thought. How convenient.

Richard Moore's next questions were about Gregg Aldrich's reaction when he received the call saying that Natalie was dead.

"I couldn't believe it. It seemed impossible. I was devastated."

"What did you do when you got that news?"

"I left my office immediately and went to see Natalie's mother." Gregg looked directly at Alice Mills who was seated in the third row. Although the witnesses were sequestered, she had been permitted, once her testimony was finished, to watch the rest of the trial.

"We were bewildered and shocked. We cried together. Alice's first thought was of Katie." His voice grew strained. She knew how much Katie and Natalie loved each other. She insisted that I go right away to break the news to Katie before she heard about it from someone else."

It was getting close to four o'clock. Moore's going to drag this out so that he can leave the jurors feeling sorry for Gregg over the weekend, Emily thought.

Intensely disappointed that she would not be able to start crossexamination until Monday, she was careful to maintain her impassive demeanor.

That evening, Michael Gordon's Courtside panel was in agreement that Gregg Aldrich had fared well during direct examination and that, if he could stand up to the prosecutor's crossexamination, he had a reasonable chance of a hung jury, and a fighting chance at an acquittal.

"The verdict in this case hinges on the testimony of a crook," retired judge Bernard Reilly reminded the panel. "Find some reasonable explanation as to how Jimmy Easton could have learned about that squeaky drawer and this jury will have reasonable doubt. All of the other evidence involving Easton comes down to his word against Aldrich's."

Judge Reilly smiled. "I've batted the breeze with a guy in a bar any number of times, and if one of them showed up saying that I told him I wanted to kill my wife, it would be his word against mine. And I have to tell all of you, I found Aldrich's explanation of the phone call to Easton quite possible and plausible."

Michael Gordon suddenly felt a welling of emotion, and he realized that a part of him still expected his friend to be vindicated.

"I'm putting something on the table," Gordon heard himself say-ing. "When Jimmy Easton came out of the woodwork, I honestly believed that he was probably telling the truth, that Gregg Aldrich had committed this crime. I was an eyewitness on many occasions to how crazy Gregg was about Natalie and how upset he was at their breakup. I really thought that he had just snapped and killed her."

Gordon looked around at the questioning faces of his panel. "I know this is a first for me. It's been my policy to be neutral during a trial, and, if anything, I've overdone it in this case. As I disclosed on day one, Gregg and Natalie were my close friends. I have intentionally stayed away from Gregg since he was indicted and, hearing him on the witness stand and looking at all of the rest of the evidence, I now intensely regret that I doubted him. I believe that Gregg is telling the truth. I believe he is innocent and that this accusation against him is a great tragedy."

"Then who do you think shot Natalie Raines?" Reilly asked. "She could have walked in on a burglary," Gordon suggested. "Even though nothing was taken, the intruder could have panicked and fled after killing her. Or it could have been a crazed fan. Any number of people have those fake rocks with hide-a-keys in their backyards. An experienced crook would know to look for one of them."

"Maybe they should ask Jimmy Easton if he ever looked for one," Brett Long, the criminal psychologist, suggested.

As they all laughed, Michael Gordon reminded the viewers that on Monday, Emily Wallace, the beautiful young prosecutor, would begin the crossexamination of Gregg Aldrich. "He is going to be the final defense witness. Then, after the attorneys present their summations and the judge instructs the jury on the law, the case will go to the jury. When they start deliberating, we will conduct another poll on our Web site. Be sure to weigh the evidence and cast your vote. Many thanks for watching Courtside. Good night."

It was ten o'clock. After a few words with the departing panelists, Michael went to his office and dialed the number that he had not dialed for seven months. When Gregg answered, he said, "By any chance were you watching?"

Gregg Aldrich's voice was husky. "Yes, I was. Thanks, Mike."

"Have you had dinner yet?"

"I wasn't hungry."

"Where's Katie?"

"At a movie with one of her girlfriends."

"Jimmy Neary doesn't close the kitchen until late. No one will bother you there. How about it?"

"Sounds good, Mike."

As Michael Gordon replaced the receiver, he realized his eyes were moist.

I should have been there for him all along, he thought. He sounds so alone.