Practice to Deceive

the promise of a Christmas gift for his wife, Brenna Douglas.
    Jim did, however, make a number of disparaging comments about Bill Hill’s character flaws as he met with Montoya and Platt.
    No one could force Huden to testify against Peggy.
    When he took the stand, Jim Huden invoked the Fifth Amendment many times, refusing to answer any questions about Peggy. As he repeated the same phrase, Peggy stared at him with hard eyes from across the courtroom. If she was anxious or frightened by what he might say, she didn’t show it.
    Would he or wouldn’t he testify against her in her actual trial?
    Not likely.
    Greg Banks won a single victory during that hearing. He asked Judge Allen Hancock to add a second charge against Peggy—that she be charged with “conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.”
    The conspiracy charge would be much more likely for Banks to prove than the first-degree murder case.
    The one person who could bring Peggy Sue down—the one person who would undoubtedly convince a jury of her guilt—was Jim Huden. And he had dug his heels in.
    Jim Huden had filed an appeal, but he seemed adamant that he would continue to leave the woman he once loved—or perhaps still loved—out of any appeal.
    Mark Plumberg had focused on Huden as he answered questions on the witness stand. Huden wore a bright orange prison-issue jumpsuit. Plumberg had detected no acknowledgment on Jim’s part that Peggy Sue was even in the room.
    “But as he stepped down,” Plumberg said, “I saw him wink at Peggy. I don’t know if anyone else in the room saw it.”
    What did it mean? That Jim and Peggy Sue were still partners—silent partners? Was it Jim’s way of reassuring her that her dark secrets were safe with him? Or was it a sardonic wink meant to tell her he knew she had betrayed him?
    * * *
    W ITH A TRIAL DATE set for January 29, it seemed as though Peggy Sue Thomas was finally going to face a jury of her peers. Embarrassed to make and possibly have to cancel a reservation for the fourth time with a motel in Island County, I contacted another hotel. Still, it looked as if this time the trial was a solid go.
    And then, three days before Peggy’s trial was to begin, I got a phone call from Prosecutor Greg Banks. He and his staff had been very considerate over the prior two years about letting interested parties know when circumstances and trial dates changed suddenly.
    This time, the news was truly shocking, and I must admit, disappointing.
    “Peggy Sue Thomas is not going to trial,” Banks said. “She is going to plead guilty to the lesser charge—first-degree criminal assistance involving first-degree murder.”
    How could this be?
    She had been facing a forty-five-year prison sentence if she was convicted on the murder charge, and she was forty-seven. If she didn’t die in prison, Peggy would be ninety-two when she was released. She would be far from “Drop-Dead Gorgeous” by then, her auburn mane gray, her smooth face a mass of wrinkles. And her beloved daughters would probably be grandmothers themselves.
    Peggy and her attorney were well aware of Jim’s eighty-year sentence. That was twice as much as he had expected in the worst possible scenario. She could not imagine being locked behind bars for the rest of her life.
    Was Peggy so afraid of getting as long a sentence as Jim had that she chose to plead guilty? It seemed so.
    Shocked, I asked Greg Banks what sentence she might be facing now—with her guilty plea.
    “Four years.”
    “You mean that’s the shortest amount?” I asked with a slight sense of confidence. “Surely she will get at least twenty years?”
    “No, that’s the most she can get under Washington State statutes.”
    “Four years? And with an automatic deadly weapon charge adding on five more years?” I persisted.
    “No. Just four years.”
    Banks and Peggy Sue’s attorney, Craig Platt, had been in intense meetings. A trial was risky, and would not have had a foregone conclusion—for either the state or the defense.
    Jim Huden had been convicted, yes, but there was solid physical evidence that linked Jim to the deadly ambush murder—the gun, casings, bullets, his fingerprints on many pages of the gun manual. Indeed, he himself had confessed to his wife and his best friend, Bill Hill.
    But Peggy was another story. There were no “damned spots” soiling her pretty hands. There was that single fingerprint on the .380 Bersa manual. A good attorney—and Platt was a very