Free Missing Pieces by Joy Fielding Page A

done,” Jo Lynn said, and I was forced to agree. In less than a minute, Colin Friendly’s attorney had neatly skewered Angela Riegert’s testimony, introducing at least a modicum of reasonable doubt.
    “You may step down,” Judge Kellner instructed the witness. Angela Riegert took a deep breath, then stepped off the witness stand, Jo Lynn’s eyes glaring at her as she walked past us out of the room.
    “What a loser,” Jo Lynn pronounced as the next witness was called.
    “The state calls Marcia Layton.”
    I looked toward the center aisle at the same precise moment as Colin Friendly. For a fraction of a second, our eyes met. He winked boldly, then looked away.

Chapter 6
    I t was almost four-thirty by the time we reached our mother’s apartment, located on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, several miles west of 1-95.
    “What’s the big rush?” Jo Lynn asked, teetering on pencil-thin high heels behind me, as I ran across the parking lot toward the yellow structure that resembled nothing so much as a large lemon pound cake. “It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”
    “I told Mrs. Winchell we’d be here by four o’clock,” I reminded her. “She wasn’t happy. She has to be out of here by five.”
    “So, whose fault is it we’re late?”
    I said nothing. Jo Lynn was right. The fact that we were almost half an hour late was at least partly my fault. And Robert’s.
    He’d been waiting for me when we exited the courtroom at the end of the day. “I’m sorry I missed you at lunch-time,” he apologized immediately, while I tried not to notice how clear his hazel eyes were. “I had to rush off to a meeting.”
    “How are you? What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than usual. I was grateful that Jo Lynn wasn’t beside me to witness my regression to adolescence,that she was still poised at the side of the courtroom doors, waiting for her chance to accost one of Colin Friendly’s attorneys. She’d spent the better part of the lunch break composing a letter to the monster, having decided her phone number wasn’t support enough. Colin Friendly needed to know why she was so convinced of his innocence, she told me. I told her she needed to have her head examined.
    “What am I doing in Palm Beach or what am I doing in court?” The lines around Robert Crowe’s eyes crinkled in a way that told me he was well aware of his effect on me, as he’d always been, and that he was amused, possibly even touched, by it. “I might ask you the same thing.”
    “I live here. In Palm Beach. Well, actually in Palm Beach Gardens. We moved here about seven years ago.” Had he really asked for so much information? “And you?”
    “My family moved to Tampa right after I graduated high school,” he said easily. “I went off to Yale, then joined my folks in Florida after graduation, met a girl, got married, moved to Boca, got divorced, moved to Delray, got married again, moved to Palm Beach.”
    “So you’re married,” I said, and immediately wished the scales of justice would come crashing down on my head.
    He smiled. “Four kids. And you?”
    “Two girls.”
    “And a husband?”
    “Oh yes, of course. Larry Sinclair. I met him at college. I don’t think you know him,” I babbled, wishing someone would stick a gag in my mouth. All my life, I’ve wanted to be a lady of mystery, one of those women who smile enigmatically and say little, probably because they have little to say, but everyone always assumes it’s because they’re so deep. At any rate, mystery has never been mystrong suit. My mother always says you can see everything on my face.
    Robert Crowe shook his head, revealing a number of gray hairs around his temples. They made him look more distinguished, I thought. “Just the one husband?” he asked.
    “Pretty boring,” I said.
    “Pretty amazing,” he countered. “So, what brings you to court today?”
    I glanced toward my sister, still waiting anxiously by the courtroom doors.