Tuesday’s Child

Chapter 4

CLAYTON HUGHES’S RUDDY ROUND FACE SEEMED TO CLOSE IN on itself. “I think I should give you both a little background as to how I came to be in the position I’m in at present. This firm represented Audrey Star’s parents and, at their demise, Audrey herself as the heir to their fortune. There were no other siblings, in case you didn’t know that. Actually, there were no distant cousins or aunts or uncles either.

“Abner Star, Audrey’s father, made his original fortune in, of all things, storage lockers. He then deployed that fortune in many other ventures that generated staggering revenues. You’ll receive all of that information when the final accounting is turned over to you.

“When Audrey came to me and said she was getting married, I wanted her to have a prenuptial agreement drawn up. She adamantly refused. She said she was in love with a fine young man, and she wasn’t starting off her marriage with distrust. I argued with that young woman until I was blue in the face, but she simply would not budge.

“When she and Adam returned from their monthlong honeymoon, Audrey came back to my office and wanted all of her holdings, the whole ball of wax, transferred to her husband. She told me at the time Adam did not know what she was doing. She planned to tell him once it was a done deal. A giant surprise of sorts. ‘An over-the-top wedding present,’ was how she put it. Once again I argued, but when she threatened to take her business somewhere else, I had to agree to her demands. The young woman simply would not listen to anything I or our other lawyers had to say. So in the end, we did what she wanted. As far as I know, they had a wonderful marriage. They went from vacation to vacation, seeing the world, and always coming back to the Dunwoody residence to fall back and regroup until their next adventure.

“There was one other thing Audrey was adamant about, and that was not taking her husband’s name. None of us here at the firm could figure that out. Everyone refers to Adam as Adam Star, but his legal name was Adam William Clements. Not that that matters, but it is something that you need to know. For some cockamamie reason, Audrey wanted Adam legally to change his last name to Star. At first he refused, and he kept refusing, but he finally gave in and had his name changed. All Audrey would say, once the name was changed, was that now they, as a couple, were Star and Star. I guess she thought it was romantic.

“As far as I or anyone else here at the firm knows, their marriage was quite blissful. From time to time I would see something in the society pages, but for the most part they were just two very private people. They donated to every charitable organization in town. They lent their names to whatever would help those less fortunate. The socialites in town referred to them as a truly golden couple. In a sense they were. Audrey was a very kind woman with a true patrician beauty. Adam was handsome, always tanned, kind, and outgoing. Audrey called him her Adonis.”

Jay leaned closer to the desk. “I’m sensing we are about to hear the ‘aha’ moment about now.”

The shrewd blue eyes focused on Jay. Hughes nodded.

“Audrey went off on safari to Africa. Alone.”

“Aha!” Jay said, throwing his arms in the air.

Hughes grimaced. “It’s not what you think, Mr. Brighton. Adam had a ruptured appendix and couldn’t travel, so Audrey went alone. Things returned to normal or what was considered normal for the Two Stars. That’s what Audrey and Adam were called around here. They continued to live in what we all assumed was marital bliss for another six, maybe it was seven years.

“And then the unbelievable happened two months after the couple returned from Africa. They went as a couple that time. Audrey loved Africa for some reason. A few days after their return, Audrey had her accident. She was on her way home from the dentist and had a head-on collision. She was not at fault; the other driver was a young boy who had just gotten his license and was speeding. Normally, she had a chauffeur drive her wherever she wanted to go, but that particular day Adam was being chauffeured somewhere and left the house not knowing-or perhaps he did know, I was never sure-that Audrey had a dentist appointment. I vaguely recall someone saying a patient had canceled, and the dentist called Audrey and asked if she wanted to take that appointment time, and she said yes. I don’t know if that means anything or not. I never thought it was a ‘planned’ accident, if that’s where your thoughts are taking you. Everything was just coincidental”.

Jay rolled his eyes. Kala looked skeptical.

The elderly receptionist poked her head in the door and asked if anyone wanted coffee. “Raise your hands if you do,” she said cheerfully. They all raised their hands.

“Harriet makes the best coffee in the state of Georgia,” Hughes said. “And she’s probably going to serve us brownies that she makes herself. She puts nuts and raisins in them. I told her she should market them, but she has no interest in doing that. We would have gladly represented her. The thing about brownies and coffee… I digress here.”

Kala had the feeling she was Alice and had just fallen through the rabbit hole. She tried to focus on the attorney across from her, but her thoughts were all over the map as she struggled with what she was hearing. For sure she was glad Jay was with her because she’d never be able to put it all in order the way she was hearing it. Two Stars. Now if that didn’t take the cake, or in this case, the brownies, she didn’t know what did.

“Harriet will be upset if we don’t eat the brownies and coffee. She thrives on compliments, and the rest of the story can wait. While we partake of these goodies, tell me about yourselves.”

“We’re lawyers,” Jay said as he stuffed a brownie in his mouth. He thought it tasted like sawdust. He managed to choke it down, then gulped the coffee. McDonald’s on their worst day couldn’t have made anything taste as bad.

“As Jay said, we’re lawyers and represent Sophie Lee,” Kala said. She was in the rabbit hole and trying to climb out.

“Young man,” Hughes said, addressing Jay, “I know if you ask nicely, Harriet will make you a plate of brownies to take with you. She does love a compliment.”

Kala looked at Jay, daring him to refuse before he joined her in the rabbit hole. She wanted to laugh. Hysterically. But somehow she managed not to. She wondered if perhaps she was destined to be an actress in her next life.

Hughes licked at one chubby finger. “Back to the accident,” he said, changing course. “Audrey was hit head-on by a speeding SUV. They needed the Jaws of Life to get her out of the car. At first they didn’t think she’d survive. She had the best doctors, the best surgeons in the world. As we know, she did survive but was left totally paralyzed from the waist down with intractable pain that could only be controlled through the use of an IV drip. She spent well over a year in and out of hospitals, rehab, you name it. It was hers for the asking until she put her foot down and said no more. She wanted to go home. She had the best nursing care there was out there. But she was a very demanding patient, and they weren’t able to keep a nurse for more than ten days at a time. Until Miss Lee arrived. At first, Audrey took to that young lady like a duck to water. Audrey herself told me how wonderful she was when I would visit. She came to love her like a sister. I sensed… I sensed that Adam was jealous of that relationship. He admitted it to me later on. Audrey started making demands on Sophie, then on Adam. She was abusive, often bringing Sophie to tears. Then she’d cry and apologize to Sophie. You see, once Sophie was hired, the other two shift nurses were discharged. Sophie was on call twenty-four/seven.

“My perspective on all of that was it allowed Audrey and Sophie to bond even more. And Audrey got something else, her husband’s undivided attention. She put him on call twenty-four /seven, too. If she wanted to know what the day’s news headlines were at three in the morning, she would have Adam read them to her. If she wanted pickles and ice cream at five in the morning, Adam was expected to get them for her. Adam, not Sophie. She became a tyrant was how Adam put it when he came to me to make the confession.

“Audrey got perverse pleasure out of waking Adam at all hours of the night to change her diaper. She told me Adam never complained, did it all cheerfully. And he agreed with her that there was just so much Sophie could do in twenty-four hours, and the nurse did need her rest.”

Clayton Hughes startled them with his next statement when he said it, and with it, they were both out of the rabbit hole and on their feet. “Did Audrey blame Adam for her accident? You bet your ass she did, although she never said the words out loud, according to Adam. If Adam hadn’t had the chauffeur drive him to the shooting range where he was taking lessons, that chauffeur would have been available to take Audrey to the dentist. You’ll find out sooner or later that Audrey had a deplorable driving record, so bad that her driver’s license had been revoked.

“That’s the background for what comes next. The way Adam explained it, it was quite simple. On Sophie’s days off, Adam would hold back one or two of Audrey’s medications until he had a lethal dosage available. He dissolved the pills in a bottle of water, and on the day in question, when Sophie took her bathroom break, which he had her timed at eight minutes, all he needed to do was go into Sophie’s room, pour the water from the bottle into a glass, and give Audrey her next dose of medicine. Audrey could never keep up with when she was supposed to take her pills and always relied on Sophie and Adam to keep track for her. And as you know, the autopsy and tox screen determined that she died of a massive overdose.”

“How soon after he poisoned her did she die? And where was he when she did? I seem to recall from the trial that he was not at home,” Kala said.

“I don’t know exactly. The day he said he actually did it, he left the house to go to the shooting range. For some reason he thought that was what he should do, so he did it. When he got home, Audrey was dead. You know the rest. It’s all in his written statement. Harriet will give you a copy. It’s all in order. I don’t know why Adam didn’t give it to you when he gave you his death-confession video. That’s what he called the damn thing, his death-confession video.

“If there’s nothing else, I have an appointment shortly I have to get ready for. I did not then nor do I now believe that that was the way it happened-despite the fact that all the evidence showed that Audrey died from an overdose of precisely what Adam said he used to kill her. I think he lied when he made that confession and was telling the truth at the time of the murder, but I don’t know why. As difficult as it must have been to live with Audrey after the accident, as demanding as she was, Adam was devoted to her. I simply do not believe that he could have killed her. That is my opinion, and nothing he says now is going to change it.”

Kala looked at Jay, who shrugged. Both of them got up and shook Hughes’s hand.

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Mr. Hughes,” Kala said.

“It was a terrible thing if Adam did what he said he did, and his wife died at his hands. I hope that young woman is able to get on with her life. She’ll certainly have enough money to do whatever she wants, even though it’s blood money in my eyes.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that comment, so Kala and Jay made their way out and down the hall, the receptionist hot on their heels with a tinfoil-wrapped paper plate full of brownies that she extended to Jay, who took it like it was dog poop on a silver platter. On top of the plate was a manila envelope with what they both assumed was Adam Star’s written account of how he had killed his wife. Kala thanked her profusely as they scurried to the elevator and the nearest trash receptacle.

Outside, Kala looked upward, then bent to massage her knee. “Told you it was going to rain. Look at those clouds, black as the ace of spades. We should have placed a bet. So, what did you think?”

“Not much. Hughes looked like a straight shooter to me. If he says Adam lied, then I think he lied. I don’t know the why of it, however. I’ll let you know when I read that damn thing. Right now, I just want to get rid of these… these… this plate.”

Kala laughed all the way back to the office. She was still laughing when they arrived, just before the heavens opened, and a good old-fashioned Georgia summer rainstorm commenced.