Chapter Twenty-Five
Complex Litigation
Every muscle in Brooke’s body quivered, uncertainty had turning her into a bowl of Jell-O. Sitting here solo at the defendant’s table— this couldn’t be happening to her. Not even Quirt had been allowed to sit beside her, since she was self-representing.
Wait. Olivia was a Court TV addict. She could help, pass her notes of when to object and when to cross-examine. Cross-examine was a thing, right? Over her shoulder Brooke shot a help me glance to the gallery.
Facing forward, however, she took another look through the stack of things Dane had funneled to her via Quirt. This…this wasn’t bad stuff. This could be helpful. In fact, this was the full body of her case.
Dane hadn’t deserted her. Just the opposite, in fact. Even though he had his own neck to get out of a noose, he’d watched out for hers first.
Dane Rockwell was nothing like Ames Crosby.
The first thing in the stack was a list of questions for the first witness. As fast as she could, Brooke tried to digest their content so she’d sound coherent in questioning. Her stomach lurched. This was going to be hard. The hardest thing she’d ever done.
Even with Dane’s extensive preparation, Brooke didn’t know if she could do it.
The judge, though, granted Brooke a reprieve. “We’ll start with the plaintiff. Mr. LaBarge?”
Was that a twinkle in Vandalay’s eye when she said LaBarge’s name? Fear and confusion made Brooke’s heart stutter.
“Your honor, I’ll begin with the basics. This woman,” LaBarge pointed at Brooke, “pretends to be the rightful owner of something that belongs to me.”
He went on to describe the history of his connection to the ball— a deep and abiding friendship with Jarman; generations of shared experience; a verbal contract; even the previous version of the will.
Fiction, if Twyla Tyler’s account was to be believed. Hadn’t she told Brooke and Dane that Jarman never intended to give LaBarge the ball, that he’d been looking for a way out of the will he’d been pressured to sign?
“Enter: Brooke Chadwick, a gold-digger who preys on the elderly in her side occupation as a home health nurse. She finds her victims’ most valuable asset, coerces a change in their wills, or else— as in this case— forges a holographic addendum, naming herself as benefactor.” Sarge LaBarge’s tale spun on and on, but it had gone from harmless fiction to slanderous poison.
Gold-digger? Forger? Heartless predator? Brooke kept her face as calm as she could, but inside, a storm whipped up, and her leg bounced.
“There’s a pattern of behavior we can document.” He lifted a sheaf of papers and set it on a table. “As plaintiff I present names and addresses of her various victims, and dates of service. Eleven witnesses will testify that, as their relative’s caregiver, Miss Chadwick bilked the now-deceased patients out of a total of nearly a million dollars, beginning four years ago when she launched her side business of robbing the elderly.”
The words nearly electrocuted her, the shock so great her leg even stopped bouncing. This couldn’t be happening. She was being fed to the sharks.
Ames’s prediction had nailed it— this was a character assassination. She glanced back at Ames, but he was looking straight ahead, grim-faced. And tired.
“From the moment she started working as Mr. Jarman’s caregiver, she started scheming how to get his prized possession, the Called Shot Ball.”
Still the man went on, dragging Brooke through slander’s mud.
“Some might speculate she only wanted it to prop up her aunt’s failed business venture. Generous? Sure. But know too that Chadwick invested a tremendous amount of cash in the business herself and stood to gain or lose a fortune— a fortune she got when someone else died and she benefited.”
Uh, her parents had died and she’d received a portion of their life insurance. Which she’d used to help her aunt. What was he doing? Brooke’s breathing sped as her shock at LaBarge’s lies morphed into ire.
Ooh, as soon as she got her turn to speak she had rebuttals for all of this.
Except…she didn’t know procedure. Would she just call herself to the witness stand and tell her side? Was that how it worked? She felt hobbled by her ignorance. She could really botch this, embarrassing herself and messing up everything for Aunt Ruth in the process.
LaBarge had not yet glanced in Brooke’s direction. He’d addressed himself solely to the judge. Now, though, he turned on her. Fiery vengeance blazed from his face.
“Brooke Chadwick is a forger, a fraud, and with her conniving ways she stole property that rightfully belongs to me. I implore the court to dismiss this case and return my rightful property immediately.”
“Pah!” It came out high-pitched and unbidden from Brooke’s lips. Everyone in the courtroom turned to look at her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. LaBarge was the one who brought the case. Now he was asking for an immediate dismissal? Maybe he wasn’t the whiz lawyer by contrast, after all.
The judge turned a critical eye toward Brooke. “Do you have something to say, Miss Chadwick?”
LaBarge turned in Brooke’s direction and out of sight of Judge Vandalay, leveled a haughty look at her. He thought he’d already won.
Brooke shook her head in reply to the judge, irritated with herself for not having more control. Where was her pageant poise? They’d trained her to be better under pressure.
“Is that all, Mr. LaBarge?” the judge asked. LaBarge nodded and sat down, smug.
“The court will hear the defense now.”
Defense. Oh, wait. That was Brooke.
White hot fear flashed through her. She had nothing— no speech prepared. She’d been sure Dane would come.
“Miss Chadwick?” The judge looked at her and then at the clock.
“Right.” Brooke scooted her chair back from the table— the loudest chair feet on wood floors in the history of chair scooting— and winced. She approached the bench, but then backed up, not sure how close to stand. “Your honor, I received word of the will the same day I heard Mr. Jarman’s name for the first time.”
She was going to botch this. Heat crept up her neck that had nothing to do with how hot this courtroom had gotten. Or was that a result of her nerves as well?
“Uh, I have information to refute everything Mr. LaBarge has said about me. It’s no secret to those who know me, or anybody in my whole town of Maddox, that there’s no possible way I’d be out bilking old people out of their treasures beginning four years ago.”
LaBarge mumbled through his too-red lips from his table. “Oh, your morals are too high, beauty queen?”
The judge silenced him. “Reserve your comments for your own time, Mr. LaBarge.”
That reprimand— did it prove something? Was Judge Vandalay actually the close personal friend of LaBarge that he claimed to be? Or had that been a smoke screen? An intimidation tactic?
This judge might be fair, after all.
Brooke pressed on with her statement.
“Your honor, I have records to prove it— and I have the same person to thank for A, both having the foresight to gather the records, and B, for helping me walk again after months in a wheelchair. I don’t know what I’d ever do without him.”
“Objection. Irrelevant.”
“You can’t object during opening statements.” Judge Vandalay heaved a sigh of impatience at LaBarge and said to Brooke, “Please keep your comments relevant to the case at hand, Miss Chadwick.”
“Oh, it’s relevant. Because I have all this evidence,” she pointed at the stack of files, traitorous emotion catching in her throat, “plus witnesses who will show my connection to Harvey Jarman and other things. But to be honest, I don’t really know how. This person I was talking about was going to be my lawyer.” Her eyes stung with tears. Stupid, ridiculous tears. She should be able to hold up better under pressure.
But after LaBarge’s lies— how could she stand here? What must everyone think of her?
The judge looked up from some paperwork. “So you don’t have representation?”
__________
Dane slid in through the back doors of the courtroom, his breath so labored he might have been kicked out for indecency. But nobody noticed him. Their attention was glued on Sarge LaBarge and the blatant lies he was telling about Brooke.
Everybody on her side of the room was shaking with barely contained rage. Everybody on LaBarge’s side looked glazed over and evil as he poured gasoline on her good name and hovered over it with a lit match.
The rest of the crowd looked like cats with a lovely canary to eat. Everyone loved a good pageant-queen-gone-wrong story, fallen from grace. Yeah, if Sarge LaBarge had been right about Brooke, these events would have been perfect for polishing her Rockwell credentials, like she was a bad apple and would fit right in.
Too bad she’d never need them, now that she’d chosen Crosby.
Still, this went too far. Calling her a forger, a robber, and a fraud who preyed on old people? He quivered with rage. The punch he delivered to Ames Crosby last summer would look like a love tap compared to the beating he’d whale on Sarge LaBarge if Dane ever encountered him in a dark alley.
LaBarge sat down so smug and satisfied with himself.
Oh, if I could buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth, I could quit my job and live off the interest for a million years.
There his love sat at the defense table alone. He’d arrived too late to register. She hadn’t hired anyone else.
Dane had abandoned her in her hour of need. The guilt of that might never get washed away.
They didn’t appear to be too far into the proceedings. His delay tactic had worked. He’d have to take Uncle Vincent some new mud-flaps for his car.
Maybe there was a way he could get Brooke’s attention, let her know he’d come at last. But then she stood up to give opening statements. Bully for Brooke! She owned the moment. She declared her intentions, won the sympathy of the judge, didn’t back down. Well done. She then mentioned Dane’s role, the one he’d failed to complete; guilt resurged, turning him sour. Until he heard what she said next.
“I don’t know what I’d ever do without him.”
All sound in the room muffled into silence, as Brooke’s statement echoed in his mind. She didn’t just couch it in past tense. It was present. And it implied a future.
The judge was talking again, directing a question at Brooke. Dane’s attention riveted.
“So, you don’t have representation?”
He jumped to his feet. “Yes, she does, Your Honor. If The Court will allow it.”
Brooke whirled around, her eyes catching his, and a relief washed over her as visible as the dawn.
“Always err on the side of allowing counsel to a party in a lawsuit. That’s my motto.” Judge Vandalay called him forward and had him sign in. In no time, he was seated beside Brooke at the table, having been granted a moment to confer.
“You’re here!” she whispered. “Are you all right? Quirt said you were downstairs, that you might be—”
“Everything’s fine. Taken care of. They exonerated me, and they might prosecute the prosecutor, from what I overheard through the slamming door behind me. I’ll tell you all of it later— after I send this lying son of a gun LaBarge back to where he came from.”
At this, Brooke broke out her pageant-winning grin, the kind that could get her a commercial deal selling, well, anything. Oh, she was gorgeous. He ached to embrace her, to kiss that mouth, to make her his own—
Judge Vandalay interrupted that train. “Mr. Rockwell. Are you ready to proceed?”
He was— for anything with Brooke beside him. In fact, he could’ve flapped his arms and flown to the moon if someone had asked him to.
__________
Brooke could not believe Dane had arrived. Just in time. Her breathing slowed, and her heart rate returned to only twice its normal speed.
He’d come! She’d nearly jumped into his arms and thrown herself at him.
Later. That would come later.
“A moment to confer?” Dane asked the judge. It was granted. He turned to Brooke, their foreheads nearly touching.
“Here’s what we have to do, okay?”
He had it all organized. She relaxed even more. He had this. She just had to hang on and survive it— and pray that all the lies from LaBarge would shrivel to nothing. “We need first, character witnesses for you. Second, character witnesses against LaBarge. Third, proof that the addendum to the will is legitimate.”
Brooke heard all three tactics, and they were exactly like he’d outlined in his pile of manila files that he’d brought for her.
Point two meant he was calling Ames to the stand. Didn’t it? Her heart clenched. Something had shifted. Something big. And it moved her soul solidly, steadfastly, and everlastingly into Camp Dane Rockwell.
She was dying to ask him why, what had changed, but there was no time. So instead of dragging that in between them right now, she asked a question even more salient to their case. “But— I thought you said the handwriting expert had been compromised.”
“He had. And, frankly, we are totally sunk on that. But I’m holding out for a miracle.”
Her eyes blinked back tears. “You, Dane, are my miracle.”
Dane gave her a half-smile, and then he turned to the judge. “We’re ready to proceed, Your Honor.”