“Describe your rug before Mr. Kurkland cleaned it,” said her attorney.
“It was beautiful,” she mourned. “Vibrant and glowing with jewel-like colors.”
The rug had been entered as Exhibit A and her attorney now asked for permission to show it. I agreed and it was unrolled on the floor in front of my bench. I must say that while I know almost nothing about Oriental rugs, they do appeal to me and I’d been into several of the showrooms devoted to them here at Market, wondering if I could afford a decent reproduction of my own. This one had a dark red background woven in an all-over geometric design. Mrs. Westermann’s authentic article might have been vibrant and jewel-toned at one time. Now it seemed to have faded unevenly in places, so that four or five areas were almost gray, as if someone had sprinkled a light dusting of ashes over those places.
Mr. Kurkland’s attorney seemed curiously non-combative.
“Mrs. Westennann, did you comparison shop for a carpet-cleaner?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Was Mr. Kurkland’s the lowest price you got?”
“Well, yes. I saw no point in spending extra—”
“Thank you. Did Mr. Kurkland advise you that it was best to have the rug cleaned at his establishment where he had a proper drying table?”
“Well, yes, but I was planning a dinner party and I was afraid it might not be returned in time.”
“And you are convinced it was his ineptitude that caused these spots instead of your Lhasa Apsos?”
“Absolutely. They know they aren’t allowed in there. Mr. Kurkland got my rug too wet. That’s all there is to it.”
“I see. No further questions.”
Her attorney now called a carpet expert, a small tidy man who described how a fine Oriental should be cleaned: by hand, on a drying table, one tiny section at a time.
“If a rug has been frequently vacuumed and properly cared for, what soil there is should lie mostly on top of the pile. You only want to dampen the upper surface, using the mildest soap possible. Then you immediately sponge it with clear water and blot up all the excess dampness with clean white rags or white paper towels. No patterns or colors,” he warned the jury earnestly. “Only white.”
“So there should have been no need for that sheet of plastic between the rug and Mrs. Westermann’s wall-to-wall carpeting?”
“Technically, no. But if he was in the habit of using too much water, then it was certainly a necessity to prevent soaking the undercarpet. On the other hand, plastic would hold the excess water next to the rug and prevent the rug from drying more rapidly.”
In his expert opinion, Mrs. Westermann’s fine Turkoman had indeed been damaged by improper cleaning.
Since Mr. Kurkland’s attorney had not challenged the man’s credentials, I wondered what sort of defense he planned. On cross-examination, his only questions pertained to how one cleans away dog urine.
“Unfortunately, there is no way,” said the expert. “The ammonia and uric acids soak right into the wool and attach themselves so that they’re impossible to get out in any way that wouldn’t do more harm to the rag itself.”
He was asked if the faded splotches on the rug might not be due to dog urine. He hedged. When finally pinned down, he grudgingly agreed that they were not entirely inconsistent, but it remained his firm conviction that the rag had been damaged by too much water.
His was the longest testimony and when Mr. Kurkland’s attorney finished with him, Mrs. Westermann’s attorney announced that the plaintiff rested.
Mr. Kurkland’s attorney rose and made a pro forma request for dismissal, citing a lack of conclusive evidence to prove his client’s negligence.
I refused and broke for lunch at that point, after warning the jurors not to discuss the case among themselves.
Detective Underwood was waiting out in the hallway when I exited the courtroom. He said he was there to testify in a case being held in the next courtroom and thought that as long as he was so close, he’d put my mind at rest about Savannah’s black sports car.
“I ran a check on all vehicular incidents in a fifty-mile radius for that week. Not one single hit-and-run reported.”
I was deflated. I’d almost talked myself into a scenario of teenage carelessness and delusional mother-love and sacrifice.
Beyond a casual “poor dears” shrug when they were mentioned, Drew had seemed indifferent both to the Colliers’ cut in income and to the loss of business Kay Adams and Poppy Jackson would experience if Fitch and Patterson withdrew from their stores. I was almost convinced that such indifference signified a deeper callousness that would allow her to shrug off a hit-and-run, especially if Savannah had urged her to; and now Underwood was telling me that the hit-and-run never happened?
What did that do to my theory that Savannah had killed Chan in a misguided attempt to protect Drew from the heartache of his many affairs?
“Shoots it all to hell, don’t it?” the pragmatist said sourly.
“What about Heather McKenzie?” I asked.
“Well, yesterday being Sunday, she was a little harder. But not much. Turns out her father was a personal friend of someone at the parent company of Furniture/Today.”
“Was?”
“He was CEO of a large freight-forwarding company in Boston. Had a massive stroke and died last summer. Nice guy, according to our source. Devoted to his wife and daughter. She’s their only child. Still lives at home, but that may be because the mother’s not well. Has her own desktop publishing business there in Boston where she puts out newsletters for various organizations all over New England. Occasionally sells small feature articles to the Boston Globe, but not really considered a reporter.”
“So why is she researching Savannah?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?”
For lunch, I drove away from the center of town and found a relatively uncrowded neighborhood lunch counter. It was no J. Basul Noble’s, but I had a slice of meatloaf with a dab of mashed potatoes and string beans and still got back in time for court to reconvene at one o’clock.
Mr. Kurkland took the stand first and his testimony echoed Mrs. Westermann’s except that he was sure her Lhasa Apsos were not nearly so well trained as she insisted.
“And how can you speak with such certainty, Mr. Kurkland?”
“Number one, on account of I could smell it. Number two, on account of when I lifted up the rug to put my plastic tarp under it, I could see the stains where they wet through to the carpet.”
Mr. Kurkland was tubby and clearly perspiring. He also spoke with a distinct Bronx accent and I had a feeling he wasn’t winning many friends in the jury box. Especially during cross-examination when Mrs. Westermann’s attorney, sensing victory, made him admit that plastic tarps did imply the possibility of too much wetting of the rug. Nor did it help when he was forced to admit that those stains on the Berber carpet could have been caused by wine or juice spills that had soaked through.
It seemed to me that the acids in wine or juice would be pretty damaging, too, but no one asked my opinion.
Like the plaintiff, defense called but one witness, another expert on rug cleaning, and I sat back expecting to hear claims that Mr. Kurkland’s methods were entirely acceptable. It would probably come down to which expert the jury chose to believe.
He began with a mini-lecture on the nature of fine wool rugs, how the yarn is colored with natural vegetable dyes, and how damaging the acids in dog urine could be. Thus far, he sounded like the Westermann expert.
“Now, sir,” said Mr. Kurkland’s attorney. “There has been much talk back and forth about dog urine. Is there any way to say decisively whether or not the dogs did indeed use this sixty-thousand-dollar rug as a fire hydrant?”
“There is. While I did inherit the rug-cleaning business established by my father, my degree is actually in textile chemistry. Over the years I have discovered that certain stains manifest themselves in different colors when exposed to black light.”