“I was nervous.”
“Could you also have mistaken the location?”
Sloane’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“So the date might be wrong, but the restaurant is right?”
“Yes.”
“A restaurant that was closed.”
Sloane looked at the judge.
“I know where she threatened me.”
Vivian’s voice stayed calm.
“Then explain how you were standing outside Le Jardin after dinner at nine o’clock when Le Jardin was not serving dinner.”
“I didn’t say we ate there.”
There it was.
Another shift.
On direct examination, she had described leaving the restaurant when I confronted her.
Now suddenly she had not claimed to have eaten there.
Vivian returned to the earlier testimony and walked her through her own words.
Sloane began talking faster.
“I might have explained it badly.”
“Did Mrs.
Caldwell threaten you there or not?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Sloane repeated the threat.
“Who heard it?”
“No one.”
“Who saw it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Did you make a report?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone that evening?”
“Grant.”
The courtroom shifted almost imperceptibly.
Vivian looked toward my husband.
“So the only person you immediately told was the man shown on video removing Mrs.
Caldwell’s jewelry box from her dressing room?”
Grant’s lawyer objected sharply.
The judge sustained it and instructed the court to disregard the phrasing.
But no one could unhear it.
Sloane looked furious now.
Not frightened.
Furious.
The soft witness Grant had presented was disappearing one answer at a time.
Vivian returned to the necklace.
“Did you know Mrs.
Caldwell’s mother was dead?”
Sloane hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Did you know the pearls had belonged to her?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Then when you touched them on the stand and said they belonged to Grant’s family, you were repeating something Grant told you?”
“Yes.”
