veiled threat by bringing up the fact that John Fuisz, another one of
Fuisz’s sons from his first marriage, worked for his best friend. John
Fuisz was indeed an attorney at the law firm McDermott Will &
Emery, where Chris Holmes’s closest friend, Chuck Work, was a senior
partner.
Afterward, Noel and Lorraine’s friendship began to fray. It had
always been an odd pairing. Lorraine was originally from working-
class Queens, a background betrayed by her coarse New York City
accent. Noel, by contrast, was the epitome of the worldly Washington
establishment woman. She’d spent part of her youth in Paris, when her
father was assigned to the headquarters of the European Command.
In the following months, the two women got together for coffee
several more times. But Chris Holmes, perhaps because he suspected
that Richard Fuisz was up to something, always insisted on joining
them, making their interactions awkward and tense. During one
encounter, at Dean & DeLuca in Georgetown, the conversation became
strained as they discussed the recent death of Lorraine’s brother and
the cat he’d left behind. Lorraine agonized about what to do with the
cat, which seemed to exasperate Chris. He told her to just get rid of it
and mimicked grabbing it and putting it in a bag. “The cat is not
important,” he said impatiently.
Since the Holmeses’ move back to Washington, Noel had been going
to the same hair salon as Lorraine in Tysons Corner, Virginia. They
shared a hairdresser there named Claudia. As she was cutting
Lorraine’s hair one day, Claudia asked whether she and Noel were
having problems. Noel had apparently been venting to Claudia.
Embarrassed, Lorraine said she didn’t want to talk about it and
changed the subject.
Lorraine Fuisz and Noel Holmes saw each other one more time
when Lorraine paid a visit to the Holmeses’ apartment bearing cakes
around Christmas 2007. Elizabeth, who was in town for the holidays,
must have known that her parents and the Fuiszes were on the outs.
She didn’t say much and stole sidelong glances at her mother’s friend.
Fuisz’s patent application became available about a week later, on
January 3, 2008, to anyone who performed a search in the USPTO’s