Tuesday’s Child

Chapter 25

PATTY MOLNAR WAS SO EXCITED SHE HAD TO TAKE DEEP CALMING breaths. Sophie’s plane was due to land in three hours. Patty had personally arranged the welcoming committee. She thought about Nick then, and the look on his face when he told her about his hour-long conversation with Sophie. He had been so happy until he got to the part where Sophie was only staying five days. She herself had been devastated at the short length of time Sophie planned to stay. Lord, how she missed her. How would they ever cram everything in to five short days with all the legal stuff Sophie had to attend to?

There had been so many questions about Jon that she and Nick had to deal with. They had agreed beforehand not to tell Sophie until they could do it in person. Since it was Patty’s week to have Jon’s urn, she had him in the car to hand over to Sophie. She hoped Sophie wouldn’t fall apart. From the conversation they’d had, she knew Sophie wasn’t the same person she was ten years ago. Sophie was tough, or at least Sophie said she was. Patty wondered if it was true. The conversation had been sisterly, full of a lot of do you remembers? and all of Sophie’s plans for the future. The main plan was relocating and putting down roots someplace where she would be at peace.

Hawaii was that place, Sophie said. But it was so far away. An ocean away, thousands of miles away. There was no way she’d be able to call Sophie and meet for some girl talk. Of course, she could use the Webcam, e-mail, and phone, but it wouldn’t be the same. They would still be thousands of miles and an ocean away from each other. A tear formed in the corner of Patty’s eye, then rolled down her cheek. She brushed at it. No time for tears. Today was a happy day. And it was Tuesday!

The last time she’d spoken to Sophie she’d said the charter flight she engaged had to be canceled because of a family crisis of some sort with the pilot’s son. Sophie said she thought the boy had to have an emergency appendectomy, and she was okay with the delay because the earliest the pilot could commit to was Tuesday, today. Everything happens for a reason, Sophie had said happily. “Remember, I’m Tuesday’s Child.” Like she or any of the others could ever forget that fact.

Patty looked down at her watch. Time for what she hoped was the last meeting of her six-man investigative group. She’d file her last report with Kala and move on. With Sophie’s return, Kala said they would be able to wrap it all up.

Already, the Sophie Lee v. Ryan Spenser articles were relegated to the back pages in the papers. There were too many disasters in the world to keep Spenser in the foreground.

Patty sighed as she picked up a pile of folders and headed to the conference room, which could accommodate twelve people easily at the one-of-a-kind teak table Kala had had specially made in Hawaii and shipped to Atlanta.

Patty poured a cup of coffee from the sideboard and settled herself to wait for the others as she was eight minutes early. In less than three hours, she was going to see Sophie, her best friend in the whole world.

Her thoughts were all over the map. She’d been offered a job with Fox News, and she was a hair away from signing on. Her old boss had sent one of his underlings to her house two days ago, asking her what she wanted, to avoid the lawsuit Jay had filed against the paper. She’d gotten such perverse pleasure flipping him the bird and reminding him that anything he or his boss had to say to her had to be transmitted through her lawyer, and she would certainly tell her lawyer about this improper communication.

What will be will be, she thought. The suit, a judge had ruled, had merit. Discrimination of any kind had to be taken seriously. In the past three days, she’d received numerous phone calls from other fired female employees asking to join her suit. She’d turned them all over to Jay, who was working diligently on the case. She knew that sooner or later, it would all be settled out of court; those things always were. She was okay with that because, for her, it wasn’t about the money, it was about accountability. She, along with all the kids at St. Gabe’s, had been taught that you own what you do, take responsibility. She lived by that rule.

The door opened, and Team Patty, as the group referred to themselves, trooped into the room, plopped down, and gave a collective sigh. All six of them looked weary, their eyes bloodshot, their hair mussed, their clothes wrinkled.

“We’ve been working around the clock to meet your deadline, Patty,” Rob said. “If you hold on a minute, I’ll give you everything we have. Bill, give me a hand, will you?”

Patty watched in awe as the two young men wheeled in two dollies with boxes lined to the top, ten in all.

“These are all the old cases that Ryan Spenser either prosecuted himself or oversaw for his ADAs. In the top box on the second dolly are the affidavits of the different defense lawyers who are out there spinning their wheels hoping to get some of their convictions overturned. It’s not going to happen. There are no irregularities, and we had six pairs of eyes going over these cases with a fine-tooth comb. Sorry for the cliché, but Spenser is as pure as the driven snow. We told you the same thing about the Sophie Lee trial, but you didn’t want to believe us,” Rob Pope said.

“Can we go now? We haven’t had a wink of sleep in three days, and no showers either, and we’re a bit gamey,” Bonnie said.

“You can turn all this over to your licensed investigators to handle now. We made it easy for them by writing a detailed summary of every single case,” Rob said.

Chairs were pushed back, and the six law students prepared to leave the room. “You just ruined a guy who gave his all to the system, you know that, right?” Beth snarled. “You and the goddamn media. You all think you’re God! Tell us all, because we want to know, how does Ryan Spenser get his life back? He did his job, and did it better than any prosecutor we came across, and he’s been vilified. This whole thing damn well stinks!”

The door closed with a bang behind the students. Patty sat for a long time, just staring at the stacked boxes. She felt sick to her stomach. She wondered what Kala was going to say. What could she say, when it came right down to it? She tried to drown out her thoughts by thinking of Sophie’s arrival, but Sophie was suddenly taking second place in her mind.

Patty reached for her cell phone and called Kala, who had elected to stay home to make Jay happy. She answered on the fifth ring. “You are interrupting my bubble bath, Patty,” Kala said before Patty could even identify herself. Caller ID, in her opinion, was a curse. She liked the element of surprise as to who was on the other end of the phone.

“No one I know takes a bubble bath at two o’clock in the afternoon. Please don’t tell me you have scented candles burning and are drinking wine,” Patty retorted.

“Well, since you guessed what I’m doing, then I don’t have to confirm or deny it, and I know at least one other person who takes bubble baths at this hour. Why are you calling me anyway?”

Patty told her why. Kala was silent for so long, Patty had to prod her to see if she was still on the line. “I heard you. I’m thinking. Do me a favor. Call Spenser’s house and ask him if I can stop by. Tell him I need to discuss something important. Forty-five minutes. He doesn’t live far from me. And no, he is not hiding out, although I wouldn’t blame him if he was. Don’t worry, I’ll be at the airport in plenty of time to meet Sophie with you all.”

“Kala, did you finish going through the journals?”

“I did last night. Why do you think I’m taking a bubble bath at two in the afternoon? I didn’t even go to sleep last night. There’s nothing there. We need the last and final journal, and it’s nowhere to be found.”

“Maybe we’ll never find it, Kala,” Patty said, sadness ringing in her voice. “Who is the other person who takes a bubble bath at two in the afternoon?”

“Jay, and he likes blue cypress and lavender bath salts because they calm the nerves,” Kala said as she broke the connection.

“Oh,” was all Patty could think of to say, but she made a mental note to buy some blue cypress and lavender bath salts.

Patty eyed the boxes in front of her before she swiveled her chair around to peck at the phone console. She pressed Jay’s extension and waited. “All the files are in the conference room. Your licensed investigators can have them all now. But be warned, there is nothing in them. Spenser did absolutely nothing wrong. I called Kala and told her. She asked me to call Spenser to tell him she’s on her way to his house, and I’ll do it as soon as I hang up. Then I’m going home to shower and change. I’ll see you all at the airport.”

Ryan Spenser opened the door and stared at Kala, who was wearing a red hibiscus over her left ear and a white one over her right ear. “Covering your bases, eh?” he said, grinning.

“Sort of, kind of. Damn, it’s hot out there. You got anything cold to drink, Spenser?”

“I do. Name your poison.” He grinned again.

“How come you’re so chipper?”

Spenser shrugged. “The weight of the world is off my shoulders. I’m a free agent for the first time in my life. I like the feeling.”

Kala eyed the man who had been her adversary for so many years. It still stunned her that she actually liked him. She smiled at his attire: cargo shorts that were frayed at the hem, a stretched-out T-shirt that said he was a member of some fraternity whose letters were all but washed out. He was barefoot and hadn’t shaved. She liked this new Spenser. Even though he was smiling, his teeth didn’t look so polished. They just looked like he had a good dentist.

“Sun tea. I make it myself.” Spenser reached into the freezer for two glasses that had frost all over them. Kala thought they looked like beer mugs.

“This is good!” Kala said, drinking deeply.

“I know. Take a load off,” he said, pointing to one of the wooden stools in the kitchen. “What brings you here at this time of day?”

“You sound just like Patty Molnar. Why does everything have to work around a certain time of day? Why can’t I take a bubble bath at two o’clock in the afternoon? Why can’t I come here to your home at three o’clock in the afternoon? Is there some book out there that says we have to conform to a time schedule?”

Kala didn’t realize how shrill her voice was until Spenser held up his hand and went, “Whoa there, Nellie!”

“Sit down, Spenser. I want you sitting when I tell you this, so when I offer my apology, you won’t fall over.” To make her point, Kala plucked the two flowers from her hair and placed them in the middle of the table. “Every one of your old cases came up whistle clean… Why are you looking at me like that, Spenser?”

“Because I told you I did nothing wrong. And this all surprised you. That’s why you’re surrendering with the flowers?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. How could you be so damn perfect? Everyone screws up at some point. You never did. How is that possible?”

“All those other people you’re referring to don’t have a father like mine. I don’t want to go there right now, Kala. I appreciate your coming here to tell me, though.”

“I want to hold a press conference and tell the world, you standing right there alongside of me, with Sophie Lee in the middle. Tomorrow I’ll arrange it. Sophie’s plane lands in a few hours. I called her on the way over, and she’s all for it. Believe it or not, Spenser, she holds no ill feelings toward you. She knows and understands you were just doing your job. That’s not to say that during her ten-year incarceration, she didn’t plot your death every night of her life when she was falling asleep.”

“So what you’re saying is, when I apologize in person, she isn’t going to kick me in the nuts.”

Kala smiled. “No, Sophie is not going to do that. That’s not who she is. All along I’ve tried to tell you what a remarkable young woman she is. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like Sophie Lee. I haven’t mentioned it to her yet, but I’m going to suggest she forfeit the second ten million.”

Spenser was off his chair in a flash. “Oh, no! No, no! That young woman deserves every penny you can milk out of this state. If it was up to me, I’d vote for fifty million. You could have gotten it, too, Kala, if you’d played ball a little harder. That’s what they were prepared to pay out. Over time, of course.”

“Now you tell me!” Kala drained the last of her sun tea.

Spenser laughed so hard his shoulders shook. “I did tell you, you just didn’t pick up on it. I told you not to go for fifty million. That was supposed to be your clue, but you let it fly right over your head.”

“Imagine that,” Kala drawled, as she mentally calculated what a third of $50 million would come to for Aulani coffers. She shrugged. Win some, lose some.

“Yeah, imagine that.”

“There was nothing in the journals. I brought one to show you. Audrey Star could barely write. I made myself crazy trying to decipher her daily recordings. It was all just your basic girly stuff, gushing and prattling on about nothing. We found where Adam hid all the jewelry that wasn’t kept in the safe-deposit box. Right there on the same bookshelf as the diaries. Take a look at this,” Kala said, reaching down into her briefcase to pull out one of the leather-bound journals.

Spenser leafed through the elegantly bound book and let loose with a soft whistle. “I had no idea. I had no clue the woman was mentally challenged. There was not even a hint from Adam Star. Not that it would have mattered in the end. It might have created more of a circus atmosphere, which would have really played hell with your client at trial. I’m glad we didn’t know it because I would have exploited it to the nth degree. It would have been my job to do that.”

“I know, and I’m also glad none of us knew it. Let that poor woman rest in peace. I wish I knew, though, why Adam married Audrey. For some reason I don’t think it was the money. He said it wasn’t. But then look what he did.”

“Yes, look what he did. I know he confessed to killing his wife, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t ring true to me. I’m very glad for Sophie Lee’s sake, but for some reason it just isn’t adding up for me. For the life of me I cannot figure out what it is. Do you have any ideas about it?”

Kala shrugged as she got to her feet. “I’ll have the office call you later today after they arrange for the press conference. I promise to be humble tomorrow.”

Spenser laughed. “Enjoy your meeting with Sophie.”

“I will. Thanks for the tea. You can keep that diary. We have a ton of them. All but the last one. Give it some thought, Spenser. You were there that day. Try to remember if you saw it, didn’t think it was important, whatever.”

“Kala, I can’t afford to lose any more sleep over this. When I can’t figure something out, I can’t sleep. I was hoping tonight for a good night’s sleep.”

“If I can’t sleep, why should you?” Kala quipped.