Spoliation (n.)
when someone intentionally alters, destroys, conceals, or otherwise tampers with evidence that may be relevant to a legal proceeding, investigation, or potential litigation
not applicable here
Durrant Hammerstead continues, “Your father said you returned home after those seven days and didn’t remember what had happened. Is that true?”
“Not entirely, no.”
The room buzzes. It seems this bit of unanswered history has captivated the gallery, too.
“Can you tell us what happened back then?”
Margot is thoughtful before she speaks, a rarity from the woman I’ve seen on the show. She is typically quick-witted, sharply intelligent, and can often devise a scathing retort so fast the other women on the show can’t hold their own against her. She looks to the ground and then sort of rolls upright in a wave, as if working up the courage to say whatever comes next. “I was... bullied quite a bit in school. I never told my parents. It all became too much. Right before the week in question, this group of girls—the worst of the lot—cut a chunk of my hair off while I sat in class. Abigchunk, right out of the back.” She touches the back of her head for emphasis. “I never reported it. That next week, fed up, I decided to meet up with a friend in Minneapolis. We holed up in thischeap motel, watching TV, sleeping in, and living off of pinto beans and Fruit Roll-Ups just... taking a break from it all.”
The whisper of the room swells, and I see the confusion in each individual face. They don’t know whether to be sympathetic or distrustful. Is Margot lying? I used to view her as abrasively honest. Itwouldexplain a lot. Why she left home and moved so far away. How distrustful Margot is of the other women on the show. How hard she has worked to make a name for herself. Something gnaws at me, though, a thought inching to the tip of clarity but not quite there. It tells me there’s some connection I should be making but am not. I work to ignore the prodding notion, knowing if I reach too forcefully for it, I’ll push it further away.
“Margot,” Durrant Hammerstead says, his voice cradling. “Why didn’t you tell your parents, or anyone, that you were taking off for a week?”
Margot looks to the jury. “I didn’t think. I just needed to get away. I regret that. In hindsight, I know it was foolish.”
Durrant Hammerstead allows us to stew on this new information before he clears his throat and refocuses. “Let’s talk about GotMar, your lingerie business. Why did you embark on this particular endeavor?”
“I wanted to build something, have a legacy.”
“But you were married to a successful Hollywood executive, had two beautiful children, were doing good in the community through your charitable activities. Why more?”
I work to ignore the misogyny in his question.
Margot pauses. “I can’t imagine a world where we don’t try to be more than we currently are. I had a vision, and Joe helped me achieve my goal of launching this business. I never dreamed it would see the success it has.” Her smile is humble but proud.
I ponder on this as Durrant Hammerstead goes over many of the details of the day Joe died, Margot reiterating much of what we already know. That she was at Alizay’s house, with witnesses, when it happened. She didn’t have a smoothie that morning, nor had Ms. Pembrooke even begun preparing one by the time she left. She verifies the just-under-thirteen-minute call from Ms. Pembrooke was about returning mismatched shoes.
Soon, it’s D.A. Stern’s turn, and on cross-examination, he is authoritarian. Harsh, even. His intention is clear. He is irritated by Margot and her crocodile tears, and we should be, too. To ensure no room for empathy, his time with her is surprisingly short. But there is one point he insists we focus upon.
“Your husband of twenty-four years dies unexpectedly, and you somehow manage to have him cremated in three days.” D.A. Stern pauses. Margot’s eyebrows press together. “I just can’t imagine having the wherewithal to do that, to make all those arrangements so quickly. When my father died, my mother lay in a heap in their bed for nearly a week and was barely capable of eating, let alone working out the particulars of what to do with his body.”
Durrant Hammerstead objects, and there’s no hesitation in Judge Gillespy’s warning to D.A. Stern to stay on track. I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs, immediately drooling at the wordobjectionbecause I know it will mean body contact from Damon. He delivers, marking the tally, eyes on mine as he does, his arm pressing into my left side. He’s testing me, and I don’t particularly mind.
Margot answers the question he has not asked. “I was fortunate enough to have Gloria on hand to sort it all. She had been with Joe and me long enough to know what our preferences would be when it comes to such matters.” There’s a murmur across the courtroom, and I huff in annoyance.There’sa headline that will feed the “housekeeper helps murder husband” stories. She continues. “The kids were devastated. I wanted to let them have the opportunity to say goodbye as soon as possible.”
“Why cremation?”
“Joe and I had talked about it.” She looks down at her lap and smiles. “We were in the Maldives, seven years ago now, in one of those over-the-water bungalows. We were lying in bed, staring out at the water, and out of nowhere he said, ‘Bring me here when I die.’ I laughed, made a joke about how logistically that would be challenging, and he said, ‘Cremate me.’ So simply, so... assuredly. And then he said, ‘I mean it.’ ” There’s a waver in her voice as she recounts his words. “I’m just agirl who grew up in Minnesota in the nineties. I had never thought of the Maldives or Hollywood or cremation. So many of these things were foreign to me until I met Joe.”
Something clicks into place. That buzzing fly I’ve been trying to swat away finally lands.
The nineties. Minnesota.
That movie of Joe’s that Mel and I watched, one of his obscure first films that nobody saw except for us and maybe a few hundred others.Hustle and Grace. For most of that movie, the main character was in her hometown, a small port city on Lake Superior, in Minnesota near the northern Wisconsin border. I remember this because Mel and I kept commenting on how charming the town was, one of the few highlights of the film.
Pinto beans and Fruit Roll-Ups. Just like in Joe’s movie. Details so random they are specific.
Doing the quick math in my head, that movie would have been filmed around the same time Margot went missing, in the same year at least. Meaning Joe was likely in Minnesota when Margot disappeared for a week when she was sixteen.
Is this confirmation that she was with Joe when she disappeared at sixteen? Or perhaps they met innocently, only to reconnect again years later in L.A.? Or is she making a game of it, taking one of the plots from Joe’s early films and trying it on for size?
Joe has filmed movies all over the country, all over the world. But the idea Joe and Margot could have met back then, that there could have been more to their story... that he was a grown man and she wassixteen...
