“Oh, look,” Geraldine says, her downturned mouth doing a flip. “You can break the news to her now.”

The noise in the gallery escalates dramatically as the side door opens and Louisa Rawlings appears. The matron had the common decency to remove Louisa’s cuffs before she entered the camera-packed courtroom, a courtesy not often afforded to high-profile prisoners. It seems Louisa has added at least one member of the prison staff to the long list of mortals she’s charmed.

She holds her head high as she walks to our table, not looking directly at the cameras, but not shying away from them either. She’s wearing the standard prison-issue orange jumpsuit, a far cry from her usual sartorial elegance. Her auburn hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail and her face looks scrubbed; no makeup. When she reaches our table I realize her eyes are bloodshot; she probably didn’t sleep much last night. And still, Louisa Rawlings is stunning.

“You!”

The Kydd and I twist in our seats. Geraldine and Clarence do too. It’s a voice from the gallery, a deep one, and I recognize it from just that syllable.

“You murdered my father!” Anastasia is on her feet and all cameras in the room turn in her direction now.

“Murdered him!” She thrusts her fists at Louisa amid a hailstorm of flashbulbs.

The crowd’s moderate roar rises a few decibels. Still, Anastasia is louder. “Murdered him!”

Two court officers rush down the center aisle, direct Steven Collier out of his seat, and then yank Anastasia from hers. Each of them takes one of her arms and together they drag her toward the exit. She shouts nonstop but she’s sobbing now too. “Jesus,” the Kydd mutters, “if those are real tears, there’s going to be a hell of a huge black puddle on the floor.”

Steven Collier and Lance Phillips hustle down the center aisle behind Anastasia and her escorts. So does half the press corps. “Murdered him!” Anastasia shrieks again, the loudest one yet, just as the heavy double doors slam shut behind the entourage.

The Kydd and I face front again but Louisa’s gaze remains on the back doors a moment longer. “Some college students major in history,” she says calmly. “Anastasia chose histrionics.”

“We have a problem,” I whisper as she sits.

“Tell me about it,” she replies.

“A big one.”

She laughs a little and leans toward me. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed, darlin’?”

“A new big one,” I add.

She turns to face me. She’s not laughing anymore.

Joey Kelsey has been the bailiff in this courtroom for the better part of a year now. He races through his morning Oyez! Oyez! litany and the crowd quiets. We get to our feet along with everyone else in the room, Louisa’s worried eyes glued to mine. I can’t explain anything to her now, though. Judge Long is already halfway to the bench and I need to address him at once, before he signals for Wanda Morgan to call the case. And before Geraldine Schilling starts talking.

“Your Honor.” I’m on my feet before he has any chance to sit. “We need a sidebar.” I leave our table and head toward the bench before he says a word. I don’t intend to take no for an answer on this one.

A murmur swells in the gallery and Judge Long bangs his gavel. He’s still standing.

“That won’t be necessary, Judge.” Geraldine is on my heels. “Everything we have to say this morning can be said on the record.”

What she really means, of course, is that she’d like to begin trying this case today—to the public and the press. This crowd will devour what she has to say. And the reporters will distribute it to the masses in vivid detail. Such a pity to waste it all on a sidebar.

Judge Long apparently has abandoned all hope of taking his seat. He hesitates for a moment, gavel still in hand, his eyes darting from me to Geraldine and back again. He moves to the side of his bench and faces away from the spectators. “Counsel,” he says, “approach.”

We’re already there.

“More surprise evidence,” I tell him.

“For Christ’s sake,” Geraldine snaps, “we got it an hour ago.”

“I’m not disputing that, Your Honor. I’m just asking for a little time to deal with it—the morning. We’re entitled to that much.” I point back at the noisy gallery and the judge’s eyes follow. “Especially with the feeding frenzy going on out there,” I add.

And frenzy it is. Sidebars almost always escalate the noise in the courtroom and this one is no exception. The crowd doesn’t like being left out. The judge bangs his gavel yet again.

“Give us the morning, Your Honor,” I repeat. “We’ll be ready by noon.”

“Nothing’s going to change between now and noon,” Geraldine insists.

The gavel worked. The room falls quiet all at once; the onlookers still. The glass-encased pendulum clock behind the jury box says it’s eight thirty-five. It’s been a hell of a long day and it’s barely begun. The judge looks out at the spectators again, then back at me. “It’s important,” I whisper.

He removes his half-glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. Judge Leon Long is the ultimate reasonable man, but he likes to get things done. Delays, he always reminds us, are not what the citizens pay him for. “Counsel,” he says quietly to both of us, “in my chambers. Now.”

“What can the pampered princess possibly tell us?” As usual, Geraldine is on her feet, pacing around the room. “Is she going to say some homicidal maniac sauntered into the palace, undetected even by the security system, clobbered the prince, and then suddenly remembered Miss Marple’s Rules of Manners and cleaned up the mess?”

Judge Long swivels his chair around and stares at me across the expanse of his mahogany desk. He glances up at Geraldine and then raises his graying eyebrows. The basic question buried in her dark little fairy tale is valid, he’s telling me. And he’s right. It is.

“I don’t know, Your Honor. I don’t know what Mrs. Rawlings can tell us. But we deserve an opportunity to talk with her, to think it through, to try and make sense of it.”

“Make sense of it?” Geraldine stops pacing, tosses her head back, and lets out a half-laugh. “I’ll make sense of it for you.”

I ignore her. “Look, Your Honor, the brass swan didn’t add up at first either.”

Geraldine throws her hands in the air. She’s going to say something about apples and oranges, I think, but Judge Long speaks first.

“Ms. Schilling, I did read the Medical Examiner’s report, but refresh my aging memory, please. How large a man was the deceased?”

Geraldine resumes pacing. “Large,” she says. “Six-one, twoten.”

The judge rests his elbows on his orderly desk, cradles his chin in one hand. “Now I’ll grant you, the accused isn’t a frail little thing…”

So Judge Long has noticed Louisa’s physique. What a surprise.

“…but do you really think she’s capable of dragging two hundred and ten pounds of unconscious weight from her house, loading it onto a vessel, and then lifting it again to dump it overboard?”

The judge’s words are the sanest ones I’ve heard so far today. For a split second, I breathe a little easier. But Geraldine laughs again, a real one this time, and I brace. Real laughter from Geraldine rarely means anything good.

“No,” she says to him, standing still now. “I don’t.”

The judge stares up at her, still cradling his chin, and I stare at him. We’re both silent.

“I think she had help,” Geraldine adds.

Judge Long studies his hands while we both absorb this information, then he sighs and looks up at Geraldine again. “And your theory is?”

Geraldine walks over and half sits on the edge of his desk, arms folded across her dark gray suit jacket, the pointed toe of one high heel pressing into the plush carpeting. “That the accused incapacitated her husband—and frankly, I don’t give a damn whether she meant to or not—and then panicked,” she tells the judge. “Decided she had to finish the job and get rid of him. Realized she couldn’t do that without help. And then got some.”