Nick looked Yuki up and down and said, “Something’s different about you this morning.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re smiling,” he said.
“You’re saying I don’t smile?”
“You don’t smile on the way to court. Huh. I know what it is. You had sex, didn’t you? I’m staring at post–boom boom glow, right?”
Yuki laughed. “No. Shut up. I had a doughnut. I’m on a sugar high and you’re not the Mentalist. I hope Angela Walker shows up. What did you think? Did she sound solid to you?”
“She sounded eager. It would be crazy if she didn’t show.”
They were now walking the long green-floored corridor that was the feeder artery to the courtrooms. Panels of fluorescent buzzed overhead. Yuki tipped her chin up to signal Nicky as she passed the woman sitting on one of the backless benches along the wall, talking to a bailiff.
It was Angela Walker, their surprise witness.
Walker was forty, had spun-sugar, strawberry-blond hair piled on top of her head, and was wearing a V-necked French-blue sweater and a dark blazer and tailored pants. Yuki thought, If Angela Walker’s testimony is half as good as she looks, this witness will do fine.
Yuki and Nick entered 3B, walked to the prosecution table, and nodded to Hoffman and his second chair, Kara Battinelli, one of those brainy grads a couple of years out of Boalt Law.
Battinelli gave Yuki a cat-that-got-the-cream look — which Yuki returned in kind.
Nick set up his laptop and Yuki’s and got them both squared away before the proceedings began.
The bailiff, a bald and expressionless man in a green uniform, called court into session, and Judge LaVan entered the packed courtroom, wearing a scowl. The gallery rose and then sat, causing a rustle to bounce and boomerang off the oak paneling. When the room was quiet again, LaVan greeted the jury.
Then, he said, “Ms. Castellano. You’re up.”
Yuki stood and asked that Ms. Angela Walker be called.
All eyes swiveled toward the aisle as a woman who, even to Yuki’s eyes, looked edible made her languid way to the witness stand and was sworn in.
Chapter 50
“MS. WALKER,” YUKI said to her lovely looking witness, “do you know the defendant, Dr. Candace Martin?”
“I’ve never met her. But of course I know who she is.”
“Did you know her husband, Dennis Martin?”
“Yes. I was seeing Dennis for a couple of years. Until about a month before his death.”
Yuki tucked her hair behind her ears and said to Walker, “By ‘seeing’ Dennis Martin, do you mean you were having a sexual relationship with him?”
“Yes. I saw him two, three nights a week.”
“And you knew he was married?”
“Yes. Yes. I knew. But he told me his marriage was a sham. He was staying with his wife for the sake of the kids.”
Yuki liked what the witness was saying and the way she was saying it. She was calm and sounded credible and honest.
“Ms. Walker, can you tell the court why your relationship with Mr. Martin ended?”
“He told me he was seeing someone else and that it was serious. He said he just couldn’t contain the messiness of his social life anymore.”
“Did you believe him?”