Replies

Elle: Um, yes, your Honor. Um, Ms. Windham, when you arrived back at the house, was your father there?
Chutney: Not that I saw, but like I said, I went straight upstairs to take a shower.
Elle: And when you came downstairs what happened?
Chutney: I saw Brooke standing over his body drenched in his blood.
Elle: Um. But Mrs. Windham didn’t have a gun?
Chutney: No, she’d stashed it by then.
Emmett (Luke Wilson): Move to strike that from the record. It’s speculation.
Judge: So striken.
Elle: Um, Ms. Windham, did you hear a shot fired?
Chutney: No, I was in the shower.
Elle: Okay, sooo...sometime in the twenty minutes that you were in the shower, your father was shot.
Chutney: I guess.
Elle: Your father was shot while you were in the shower, but you didn’t hear the shot because, um...because you were in the shower?
Chutney: Yes, I was washing my hair.
Professor Callahan: Where is she going with this?
Emmett: Have a little faith George.
Elle: Um, Ms. Windham, what had you done earlier that day?
Chutney: I got up. Got a latte. Went to the gym. Got a perm and came home.
Elle: Where you got in the shower?
Judge: I believe the witness has made it clear that she was in the shower.
(Courtroom audience laughs)
Elle: Yes, your Honor.
(A sudden brainstorm comes over Elle)
Elle: Ms. Windham, had you ever gotten a perm before?
Chutney: Yes.
Elle: How many would you say?
Chutney: Two a year since I was 12. You do the math.
Elle: You know, a girl in my sorority, Tracy Marcinco got a perm once. We all tried to talk her out of it. Curls weren’t a good look for her. She didn’t have your bone structure, but thankfully that same day she entered the Theta Delta Phi wet t-shirt contest where she was completely hosed to down from head to toe—
Prosecutor: Objection, why is this revelant?
Elle: I have a point, I promise.
Judge: Then make it.
Elle: Chutney, why is it Tracy Marcinco’s curls were ruined when she got hosed down?
Chutney: Because they got wet.
Elle: Exactly. Because isn’t the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you’re forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the immonium thygocolate?
Chutney: Yes.
Elle: (on a roll, speaking quickly) And wouldn’t somebody who had, say, 30 perms before in their life be well aware of this rule, and if in fact you weren’t washing your hair as I suspect you weren’t because your curls are still intact, wouldn’t you have heard the gunshot, and if in fact you had heard the gunshot Brooke Windham wouldn’t have had time to hide the gun before you got downstairs. Which means you would have had to found Brooke Windham with a gun in her hand to make your story plausible, isn’t that right?
Chutney: She’s my age, did she tell you that? How would you feel if your father married someone who was your age?
Elle: You, however, Chutney had time to hide the gun after you shot your father.
Chutney: I didn’t mean to shoot him! (at Brooke) I thought it was you walking through the door!
Elle: Oh my God.
Judge: Oh my God.
Brooke: Oh my God.
(Courtroom audience gasps in surprise)
Judge: Bailiff put witness in custody for the murder of Joseph Windham. Case dismissed. Mrs. Brooke Windham: you’re free to go.