Deadly Southern Charm

Glen’s jaw clenched as he grabbed Albert’s arm and pulled it up behind the struggling man’s back. “Dean Richards thought you might know where the chloral hydrate was. We’ll head to his office right now.” Glen’s voice was low but intense enough to make it clear that Albert had no choice.

“Just a minute.” Burnell quick-marched up to Albert. “We’ve been looking for a man in illegal possession of chloral hydrate. Let’s all go down to the police station. We can call Dean Richards from there.”

Relief washed over Vera as she handed the bottle to Burnell. He stored it safely in a pocket, then took control of Albert.

Vera was exhausted by the time she set out for the YWCA an hour later but remembering Mrs. Florence’s words made her steps a little lighter. “That was very brave of you, Vera. Ellen told me what that awful man did to her friend, and I read that article you brought. Terrible! We women need to stick together!”

But the memory she hugged closest was of Glen when he was leaving the Tea Room behind Albert and Burnell. He stopped at the door and scanned the room, frowning, until he spotted Vera. Then he broke into a broad smile and tipped his hat to her before he turned and left. She took it as a promise.

THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE, by Barb Goffman

Guest Author

“The defense calls Emily Forester.”

My attorney squeezed my hand as I rose. If anyone noticed, they probably viewed it as a comforting gesture. I knew better. Bob was imploring me to follow his plan, not mine. Too bad, Bob. This was my murder trial, and we were doing things my way.

With my blond head held high and my lips pursed, I approached the witness stand. I had to look right. Innocent yet sad. It wasn’t difficult. I truly was both of those things. I never meant to kill my husband. Well, not until he forced me to.

After being sworn in, I sat down, gliding my fingers over the bar at the front of the witness box. Its smooth, shiny wood reminded me how nice the floors in our main house had been when they’d been installed a few years ago. Clearly, it was time to refinish them, once I got this business out of the way.

Bob leaned forward from the counsel table. I wished he could have stood and approached the jury so they could fully take him in. Tall, dark-haired, with a granite chin, intelligent blue eyes, and a sharp charcoal suit, Bob was the type of man women noticed and men admired. Unfortunately, as I’d learned this week, North Carolina keeps its attorneys on a tight leash. Bob had to sit while he questioned me.

He smiled. “Please state your name for the record.”

“Emily Forester.”

“You’re the wife of Aaron Forester?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Two.” Now I smiled. “Seth is seventeen, and Lucy’s sixteen.”

“Where do you reside?”

I answered Bob’s question about my home—both of my homes actually, the main house in Wake Forest and the beach house in nearby Sunset Beach, where Aaron had revealed his true colors.

Bob asked a few more preliminary questions before saying, “Can you please tell us what happened on August third of last year?”

I nodded. “I—”

“Objection!” The district attorney, Kirk Gerard, smacked the table before him. His copper toupee—who did he think he was fooling with that cheap thing?—flopped onto his brow. “Narrative.”

I sucked in a sigh while Bob and Gerard argued to the judge about whether I would be allowed to tell my story my way—the “narrative form of testimony,” Bob called it—instead of answering one tedious question after another. Bob had expected this. Prosecutors don’t like narrative testimony, he said, because they can’t anticipate what the witness will say next, impeding their ability to object. I think Bob liked this form of testimony for just that reason—anything to piss off Gerard and throw him off his game. I, of course, simply wanted to talk to the jury. I’d always been good at persuading people, and I knew I could do it here if I weren’t constantly interrupted. Finally, after a couple of minutes, the judge ruled in our favor. Maybe Bob was worth his exorbitant fee.

“You can continue, Mrs. Forester,” the judge said, a slight smile on his pale lips.

I nodded appreciatively, turned to the jury, and began telling my story. Quickly I got to the point.

“People keep saying I’m happy my husband is dead. The district attorney has called me a ‘wealthy widow’ because of the pending life insurance payment, claiming I planned all of this, instead of being the victim.”

I looked right into Gerard’s mean brown eyes. He had never believed my story, insisting I made it all up, that I killed Aaron for the money and staged the crime scene. But I knew the women on the jury would believe me once I explained everything. Women are very practical. I shifted my gaze back to them.

“Even my friends say I’m better off without Aaron. I’m sure they’re trying to cheer me up when they remind me how he drank too much and didn’t love me the way he was supposed to. That’s clearly true, considering he tried to kill me.” I paused for two full breaths to let the impact of those words sink in. “But when I lie awake late at night, I know some other truths, starting with this: I knew Aaron was the one, my future, from the moment we met—”

“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. “I object. Is this a murder trial or a romance novel? The defendant—”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “We’ve gone over this already. Mrs. Forester is allowed to testify in the narrative form.” He turned to me. “You may continue.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” I looked at the jurors. “But even though Aaron was the one for me, he wasn’t perfect. That’s where I came in. As his wife, it was my job to help Aaron succeed in all areas of life. To prod him on. That’s how we got the beach house. We bought it at my insistence. We were a successful family, with two straight-A kids, the gorgeous house in the right neighborhood. A beautiful beach house was the next step for us, even if Aaron didn’t want it.”

I flapped my hand. Aaron’s reluctance to take our rightful place in the world still baffled me.

“He liked staycations back in Wake Forest,” I said. “But we were supposed to be upwardly mobile. That’s the American Dream. Getting further than your parents did. So we bought the beach house here, and everything was great for a while, until our stock portfolio took a dip. So I encouraged Aaron to apply for a promotion at work. Higher in management. In prestige. In pay. And he got it. And I was happy that my husband was succeeding, like husbands are supposed to.”

I paused again, remembering our final day together, when Aaron surprised me. “Of course Aaron viewed success differently than I did. I didn’t realize that then. I just thought he was a little lazy, and I had to push him to reach his full potential.”

When I said the word lazy, I could swear I heard my mother-in-law hiss. She was sitting in the row behind the district attorney, glaring at me, her hazel eyes pinched in hatred. I had always wanted her to love me. That’s how it was supposed to be. How had things turned out so wrong? Oh, yes, I had thought I could push Aaron to be a better man.

“Instead I turned him into an unhappy man,” I told the jurors. “Early in our marriage, Aaron used to come home tired but invigorated by his day, eager to tell me of some new financial strategy he and his team had devised. Now I had an angry husband who came home late and spent the night drinking. He hated all the paperwork that came with being an executive. He hated the bureaucracy. And I guess he grew to hate me. Of course, I didn’t realize it, not until it was too late.” I shook my head. “In the end, our marriage failed because I kept trying to turn him into the man I thought he should be, instead of accepting him for who he was.”

I poured myself some water from the adjacent pitcher, giving the jurors time to think about my words. Bob had advised me not to say this, not to accept any blame for what had happened. It had been self-defense, he kept reminding me. Don’t give the jury an excuse to convict. But Bob was wrong. Most of the jurors were wom

en. They would understand that helping my family flourish required me to push Aaron to grab the brass ring. They’d get how it could all go wrong.

I drank some of the tepid water—you’d think they could provide ice—then shifted toward the jurors again.

“Anyway, last summer arrived and I packed up the kids and drove to the beach house. I attended charity events with the women in town. Bought fresh fruits and vegetables at the waterfront market on Thursday mornings, when everyone shops for their organics.” A couple of the jurors nodded. “I slathered on sunscreen and sat in the sand under a hat and a big umbrella, reading the latest hot novel. And I waited for the weekends for Aaron to come. I planned our days from sunrise on. The right events. The right people. The right parties. He wanted to sleep in, like the kids, but I insisted he get up early. How would it look if I went around town by myself on the weekends? So he accompanied me on my outings, and I encouraged him to be more enthusiastic about things. But I could tell he wasn’t happy.”

I was getting to the heart of the matter and took another good look at the jurors. They were much harder to read than I’d anticipated. At least a few seemed sympathetic—the head-tilting divorcée, the wrinkled lady with curly white hair, and the mom who was in her early forties, like me.

“In late July, I packed up the kids again and drove three hours south to my parents’ retirement home near Charleston. It was Mother’s birthday week. She must have sensed the strain in my marriage during that visit. She asked about the lines on my face. The faraway look in my eyes.”

I glanced at my mother. She’d been sitting bravely with Daddy directly behind Bob throughout the trial. She wore the perfect dress for court, tasteful and tailored. Her silver hair was expertly coifed. But Mother was sporting new frown lines, too.