His testimony was that he had met the defendant for the first time on December 29, the day before Ms. Barnett died, when Mr. Latch stopped by to say hello and check on her burial policy. He showed Mr. Gregg her advance directive, with instructions that she was to be cremated at once and buried in the Eternal Springs Cemetery next to her late husband. The following day he called to say she had passed.
Cora Cook handed the witness a copy of his office phone records. On December 30, at 10:49 A.M., Mr. Gregg received a phone call from the defendant and was told that Ms. Barnett had just died and he should send the hearse to pick her up at the hospital as soon as she was released. In his business, this was quite routine. After the body was brought to Cupit & Moke, the detective showed up and put a stop to the plans for cremation.
About a month later, Ms. Barnett was finally put to rest, intact, next to her late husband.
Only forty-seven minutes from the official time of death to the call to the funeral home. The Commonwealth would repeat that timeline over and over for the rest of the trial to prove that the defendant was in a hurry to get the body cremated, thus destroying evidence of his poisoning.
On cross-examination, Raymond attempted to coax Mr. Gregg into saying that forty-seven minutes was not unusual, but he wouldn’t budge. Several hours usually passed before he was called in by either the hospital or the family.
“He did seem to be in quite a hurry,” Mr. Gregg said.
Juror number four on the front row was a hard-ass. Nigel Adcock, forty-eight, district sales rep for a steel company, married, three children, Catholic, probably the best dressed of the seven men. Simon didn’t like him at first sight and wanted to cut him during jury selection, but Raymond needed his cuts elsewhere. Adcock had tried to get himself excused from jury duty by claiming he had too many deals in the works, traveled a lot, and was a busy man whose boss would not understand if he lost a week in court. Judge Shyam was not sympathetic and refused to excuse him.
By Tuesday afternoon, Simon had stolen enough glances at his jury to read them, or at least he thought so. And he knew Adcock had already made up his mind and was not going to help. Simon had passed notes to Raymond and Casey and they were watching too.
The last witness of the day was a roll of the dice for the prosecution. By calling Matilda Clark to the stand, Ms. Cook hoped to prove that the defendant typed Eleanor’s will himself and tried his best to hide it from his secretary. His behavior was highly suspicious. The only reasonable explanation was that he wanted to bury the will until it was time for probate.
Matilda looked great — tanned and toned with a smart new haircut and designer frames Simon had never seen before. But, from the moment she swore to tell the truth she appeared reluctant, as if testifying against her old boss was the last thing she wanted.
Ms. Cook led her through the preliminaries — twelve years with Simon, routine legal work with emphasis on bankruptcies, hundreds of wills, the usual work in a small-town law office. Her voice cracked and her eyes were moist, confirming that she hated being there helping the prosecutors.
She remembered Eleanor Barnett very well and recalled their initial phone conversations. A lovely lady with no family. Matilda pried some of the basic client info from her, and later verified that she had a nice pension and no debts. However, Ms. Barnett refused to discuss financial matters with the secretary.
The deceit began immediately, as soon as the client left the office. As a routine matter, Matilda would take the questionnaire, fill in the blanks, crank out a three-page will, and wait a week or so for the client to return and sign it with Mr. Latch. The fee had been $250 for years. With Ms. Barnett, though, Simon kept his notes and said she might be trouble. They would have to wait a few weeks. And so on.
On March 27, Matilda took the day off because it was her birthday. Simon met with Ms. Barnett to sign the will and had it witnessed by two people who worked in the office next door. Matilda found out about the signing and asked Simon, point blank, if he had drafted a will for the client.
He lied and said he had not. Matilda wiped her eyes again, obviously upset by the betrayal of trust. No, in all her years with Simon she could not remember a single will he had ever typed himself. The forms were in her computer and she could spit one out in seconds, nice and customized.
In the weeks that followed, she quizzed him about Ms. Barnett on several occasions. Her file was still open and Matilda ran a tight ship with the files. Simon was always evasive. More betrayal, more tears.
Simon was under a lot of pressure. His marriage was breaking up and he was practically living at the office. He tried to keep this away from Matilda, but secretaries have a way of knowing everything. As a lawyer, he was barely staying afloat. He worked hard and put in the hours, but it was a tough grind in a small town. Through the spring and summer, at least seven other clients hired Simon to prepare their simple wills, which were done in their routine manner. The fee was still $250.
When Eleanor was injured in the auto accident and hospitalized, Matilda visited her at least three times, twice taking her homemade brownies along with ginger cookies from Tan Lu’s. Simon explained that he had taken her to lunch there and she loved the cookies. Matilda was certain that neither the brownies nor the cookies were tampered with in any way before she delivered them to the hospital room. Her visits were friendly, but short. Eleanor had never shown much interest in Matilda.
Cora handed the witness a document marked Exhibit #8 and asked if she had seen it before. It was the will prepared by Simon, signed by Eleanor Barnett, and witnessed by Tony and Mary Beth Larson on March 27 of the previous year. Matilda said yes, she had been shown a copy a few weeks earlier.
Cora asked, “In your twelve years as the defendant’s secretary, did you ever prepare a will like this one?”
“Oh no. We never tried anything like this. It’s pretty complicated, with all the trusts and such. Simon was not a tax and estate lawyer, never pretended to be. We just did simple wills.”
“What was Mr. Latch’s hourly rate for legal work?”
She sort of shrugged and chuckled and said, “I’m not sure we had one. He didn’t really work by the hour. He charged flat fees for bankruptcies, real estate closings, small criminal matters in city court, our typical cases. Occasionally he tried to charge three hundred an hour, but the client usually balked at that and they negotiated down.”
“This will provides for five hundred dollars an hour. Is that the going rate in a town like Braxton?”
“Oh, I don’t know what the other firms charge. But Simon never got paid that much.”
“Does it seem excessive to you?”
“I can’t say.”
“You handled the billing, right?”
“Yes, and the bookkeeping.”
“How often did the defendant charge five hundred dollars an hour and get paid for it?”
She thought for a second, but the answer was obvious. “I don’t recall a case like that.”
Chapter 47
After four days of sobriety, Raymond needed a drink. The lawyers retired to one of Marshall Graff’s favorite watering holes and ordered cocktails and oysters. They huddled in a corner with their backs to the world and began replaying the day’s testimony.
Raymond thought Matilda’s performance was a wash. It raised suspicions and portrayed Simon as a sneaky type up to something, but what exactly? Preparing a perfectly legitimate last will and testament for a client? Where was the crime in that? He was on trial for murder, not lying to his secretary. Nothing Matilda said on the stand proved he had poisoned Eleanor Barnett. Sure, he bought the damned cookies, but they were harmless when delivered to the hospital. And he was dreaming of getting paid a bigger hourly fee for his work, not exactly a crime either. If that was illegal, every lawyer in the country would be indicted. Casey usually disagreed with Raymond out of habit, and he thought her testimony was damaging because she seemed sincerely betrayed by her boss. Two of the female jurors appeared to be very sympathetic.