Bad Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

head so that the jury could see how pleased he looked. “You did say yes to that, didn’t you?”
    “I did.”
    “And, let me see, God’s Love We Deliver,” he said, referring to a well-regarded New York City organization that delivers meals to terminally ill people in their homes. Lem was holding out one of his well-manicured hands as he counted fingers to mark Brendan’s good works.
    “No, no.”
    “No, ma’am? You’re saying Brendan wasn’t involved in that very noble cause?” Howell said, pressing his arm across his chest in a false sign of distress.
    “No, Mr. Howell, you’re mistaken about
me
. I’ve never served on that board.” Kate Meade was becoming flustered. She held out a hand with the crumpled handkerchief in the defendant’s direction. “Brendan did.”
    “So, I am also correct that my client found time for even more community involvement than someone such as yourself, Mrs. Meade?” Howell asked, ticking off the names of four other charitable groups that Brendan helped.
    “The Quillians were both very generous. It was Amanda’s way.”
    Howell had made his point and moved on. “Your eldest daughter, Mrs. Meade, that would be Sara?”
    Kate stiffened again, peeved that her child’s name was being brought into the proceedings. She pursed her lips and stared at the defendant. “Yes.”
    “And you told us, in answer to Ms. Cooper’s question, that the Quillians are her godparents, isn’t that right?”
    Her answer was another clipped “Yes.”
    Howell took the witness through another list of personal duties that established the close relationship between the nine-year-old girl and her parents’ best friends — shared holidays, overnights when the Meades had other engagements, vacations together on ski trips and to beach resorts.
    “In fact, with whom did Sara attend her first Yankee game last spring?”
    “Brendan.”
    “With or without Amanda?”
    “Without.”
    “And whom did you call to take Sara ice-skating in Central Park when your husband had the flu a few months before that?”
    “Brendan.”
    Howell was getting nothing from Kate Meade. One-word answers seemed barely able to escape from her lips before she clamped them shut again.
    “With or without Amanda.”
    “Without.”
    “So, I take it you never said to your daughter as you sent her out the door — and we all assume you love her dearly — ‘Now you watch out, Sara, ’cause your uncle Brendan, well, he’s a murderer, did—’”
    “Objection, Your Honor. Amanda Quillian was very much alive then.”
    Some of the jurors were chuckling along with Howell — and with the defendant himself — always a bad thing to hear at a murder trial. The hammer in my brain had resumed its dull thud, reminding me that Lem had something in store for Kate Meade.
    “I’ll allow it.”
    “No.” Kate Meade was looking to me to rescue her, but there was nothing I could do.
    “And by the way, you never took stock around the boardroom at the Museum of Modern Art — or when he was raising millions of dollars for Mount Sinai Hospital — you never said to any of your colleagues at either institution that your dear friend Brendan Quillian wasn’t to be trusted with your money — or your life, did you?”
    “Objection.”
    “Sustained,” Judge Gertz said. “Let’s move on.”
    “Now, Alexandra — sorry, Ms. Cooper,” Howell said, winking at me as though to apologize for slipping into the familiar, so that the jurors would know we had a friendship outside this arena. “Ms. Cooper asked you about the night that Amanda Quillian first appeared at your door, at one a.m. You told us that you didn’t see any injuries on her face, isn’t that right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, did you call a doctor — that night or any day thereafter during the week?”
    “No, no, I did not.”
    “Did you take Mrs. Quillian to an emergency room?”
    “No.”
    “Did you call the police?”
    “No.”
    “Was your husband at home with you