THE next morning, Al and I met in the parking lot of Isaac’s preschool. We were heading almost two hours north of the city, to Ojai, and I was running late. When Al pulled up, I was still trying to wrestle my son’s shoes onto his feet.
“Problem?” Al asked, jumping down from his truck.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth and shoving a squirming foot into a Hot Wheels sneaker.
“Wrong foot, Juliet,” Al said.
I shook my head and scowled at him. “I know that.” I crammed the foot into the shoe and tugged the Velcro strap tight.
“It hurts!” bellowed my son.
“Well, of course it hurts,” Al said. “It’s the wrong foot.”
I grabbed Isaac’s Barbie lunchbox, a hand-me-down from his sister that he, for some reason, adored, and opened my arms to my son. “Jump up, buddy,” I said.
“The kid’s shoes are on the wrong feet, Juliet,” Al insisted again.
I held up Isaac’s legs and waggled them at Al. “No, only one of them is. He’s wearing two left shoes.”
Al laughed and shook his head in disgust. “You let your kid out of the house with two left shoes?”
I made a face. “No, of course not. I told him to go get sneakers. And he did. He got one Hot Wheels sneaker and one Thomas the Tank Engine sneaker. Left ones.”
“And you didn’t notice?” I knew what he was thinking. Jeanelle would never have made such a mistake. When his girls were small, Jeanelle always made sure that they had the right shoes, and the right clothes, and the right weaponry for any situation.
I shrugged. “Ruby was having a freak-out about her hair. I braided it wrong. Again. Because, apparently, I am the worst mother in the kindergarten. Or maybe in the history of kindergartens altogether. Anyway, by the time she stopped screaming, I was grateful just to get out the door. I didn’t notice his shoes until just this minute.”
“I don’t want to wear two left shoes,” Isaac wailed. I kissed his round cheek, the only part of him that still retained that baby softness.
“Stop crying, honey. We’ll check and see if the teachers have a pair of shoes you can borrow for the day.”
By the time I got back from signing Isaac in, putting his lunch in his cubby, and helping him put on a pair of chartreuse Chinese sandals embroidered with lotuses, Al was back in his car with the engine running.
“Let’s get a move on,” he said, “or we won’t have time to hit La Superica in Santa Barbara for tacos after we finish interviewing the docs.”
One of my favorite things about Al is his encyclopedic knowledge of every taco stand, noodle shop, mom-and-pop burger joint, and date shake shack in Southern California. The man lives and dies for junk food, but only of the most obscure kind. If there are absolutely no other options, he’ll make do with an In-n-Out Double Double, animal-style, but he’s only truly happy standing at the counter of a Vietnamese dive in a strip mall in East L.A., say, slurping Pho out of a plastic bowl. When we had worked together at the Federal Public Defenders Office, we had always planned our field investigations around lunch. We’d take pictures of the interior of the bank our client was accused of robbing, interview a teller or two, and then drive back to the office, our chins shiny with the grease of a Cuban medianoche. I should have known Al would have planned to hit the best taco stand in Southern California. Too bad it was a cool hour out of our way.
On our way we discussed Lilly’s reaction to my question about her mother’s death.
“Definitely strange,” he said. “But can it possibly be related to the murder?” Then he yelled an obscenity at a passing car. “Did you see that idiot?”
“Who? The eighty-year-old woman in the diesel Mercedes? Yeah, I saw her.”
“The old bat’s going to kill someone, creeping along like that in the fast line!”
“She was doing the speed limit, Al. Maybe Lilly’s mother’s death has nothing to do with anything, but you’re the one who always says there is no such thing as coincidences in criminal investigations. We’ve got a murder, and another suspicious death thirty years ago. It’s certainly possible that they’re related, don’t you think?”
He shook his fist at another car, and then said, “How did you go from an accident that Lilly doesn’t want to talk about to a suspicious death?”
“It’s suspicious that no one wants to talk about it. And will you please stop giving people the finger! Haven’t you ever heard of highway shootings? Are you trying to get me killed here?”
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s worry first about what we’re being paid to worry about, okay? We’ll work on gathering the mitigation evidence. Then, if we’ve got time, we’ll follow up on the Mexico thing.”
I acquiesced, albeit a bit unwillingly, and sank down in my seat so that I could not be visible to enraged drivers responding to Al’s vigorously expressive highway maneuvers.
The Ojai Rehabilitation and Self-Actualization Center was located in the hills above the town for which it was named, a farming community that had over the years become something of an artists’ colony. Al and I wound our way through the little streets, passing signs for open studios and gallery openings, and fresh farmer’s cheese. Much to Al’s chagrin, I broke the hermetic seal of his air-conditioned SUV and rolled down my window as we drove up a long road through rolling hills of brown grasses and scrub oaks. I took a deep breath, inhaling air redolent with dried brush, cow manure, and surprisingly, given how far inland we were, the faint tang of salt and sea.
A wooden sign so discreet that we almost missed it pointed us to an electronic gate that guarded the entrance to the center. Al pulled up to the gate and leaned precariously out of his window to reach the microphone.
“Lucky you’ve got that gut to provide ballast,” I told my partner. “Otherwise you’d fall head first out the window.”
He grunted and hauled himself back in the car. “Very funny. The director’s waiting for us in the main building.”
The gate slid silently open. We drove through and continued for another half a mile or so along a road of crushed gravel, bright white, shaded on either side with feathery cottonwood trees. Beyond the trees, paths wound through gardens planted with cacti and succulents. The grounds were dotted with people sitting on redwood benches, faces raised to the sun. One woman swung lazily on a wooden swing that dangled from the limb of a tall oak. The road ended in a circular driveway, before a ranch house, its thick stucco walls painted terracotta, with brilliant purple and red bougainvillea spilling down from its roof. Huge pots of brightly colored Mexican pottery bursting with geraniums and nasturtiums flanked the massive oak doors, which were propped open to catch the breeze. An orange cat lay in the doorway in a patch of sun.
“Nice place,” Al said as he pulled into a parking space next to the building.
“It’s a long way from the crack house,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking of all the drug rehab centers where I’d visited clients over the years, of the grimness of those facilities, made even more apparent by their pitiable attempts at cheerfulness—barred windows hidden behind bright polyester curtains, narrow cots covered with children’s bedspreads that might once have been cute but had long since grown pilly and faded from years of institutional laundries. Their grounds, if they had any, weren’t rolling meadows sprinkled with swings and benches, but cracked asphalt yards, with patches of garden tended by the patients themselves, one of the many chores they were required to do. Although all that gardening and cleaning was supposed to be therapeutic, I could never discount the suspicion that it had more to do with limited maintenance budgets. I jumped down from the truck and looked around, squinting against the glare of the sun reflected off the glistening white gravel.
“Why do I think it might be a lot easier to kick a drug habit here, than in one of the county-run dumps our clients always ended up in?” Al said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, what happens if you get clean and sober? They make you go home! I’d keep shooting up, just to stay here for as long as possible.”
Inside, the building was delightfully cool. The walls were decorated with imitation Gaughins and Diego Riveras. At least I hoped they were fakes. I peered at the lower corner of a portrait of a bare-breasted woman in a grass skirt. There was no signature that I could see, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That really would have been too much.
“May I help you?” a soft voice said, and I turned to find a young woman standing next to Al. She had long blond hair tucked behind ears that stood straight out from her head. She was standing with her back to the sun, and it shone through her ears, lighting them up like little pink lanterns—almost the same pink as her cashmere sweater. She smiled pleasantly.
“We have an appointment with Dr. Blackmore,” Al said.
“Of course. Mr. Hockey and Ms. Applebaum?” We nodded. “I’m Dr. Blackmore’s assistant, Molly Weston.” We shook hands. “He’s waiting for you out on the terrace.”
We followed her through the lobby, kind of a mock living room with overstuffed chairs, built-in bookshelves overflowing with fat paperbacks, and a massive stone fireplace. There was a teenage boy sprawled on the rug in front of the fireplace, his head pillowed on a book, and a number of other people sitting in small groups around the room, chatting or reading. They all looked vaguely disheveled, as if they had just woken from a nap, or hadn’t taken the time to look in the mirror when they got dressed. They seemed either too thin, gaunt and twitchy, or like they’d grown fat on a diet of donuts and French fries. A few glanced up as we passed, and I smiled a greeting. Only one person smiled back, a man of about thirty, with long tangled hair and a patchy beard. He looked familiar to me, and I wondered if we’d gone to college together. It was a moment before I remembered where I’d seen his face—on the cover of a CD Peter had played incessantly for a month or two a couple of years ago. My expression must have betrayed my dawning recognition, because he winked and shrugged ruefully before turning back to his book.
Reese Blackmore was sitting at a wrought iron table on a flagstone terrace that overlooked a swimming pool. He had the most beautiful hair that I’d ever seen, chalk-white, worn long, brushing his collar. It shone in the sunlight, and his skin glowed with the kind of even, honey-brown suntan acquired only under the blue lights of a tanning booth.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” the doctor asked once we’d joined him at the table. “Some tea? A soymilk chai latte?”
“I’ll have a coffee. Black,” Al said.
“Ms. Applebaum?” Molly invited.
“I’ll try the chai latte. But do you have milk milk? Cow milk?”
“Nonfat?”
Was that a comment on the baby fat I was already packing on?
“That would be fine. Dr. Blackmore,” I began.
“Please. Reese,” he said, his voice as smooth and even as his skin.
“Reese. Did you receive Jupiter Jones’s waiver of confidentiality that I faxed this morning?” We had asked Jupiter to sign a paper indicating that his doctors had permission to speak to us, as members of his defense team, about his medical history. Otherwise, doctor-patient confidentiality would have precluded any conversation.
“Yes. Yes I did. How is Jupiter? I’ve been sick at the thought of him in jail. He’s not the kind of person who can defend himself very well.”
I nodded. “He’s having a hard time. But his attorney is doing what he can to get him out.” I explained our role to the doctor, and asked him if he could begin by telling us a little bit about his facility, and how Jupiter had come to be a patient there.
“First of all, we don’t call them patients. They are residents, or clients. While the center is, of course, a medical facility in that its mission is to treat the disease of addiction, we like to view this as more of a retreat, a place for wounded individuals to come, rest, and do their work of healing surrounded by others engaged in the same endeavor. Our system is based on group therapy, group motivation. Every resident is both a patient working on his or her own disease and, in a very real sense, a therapist helping the other residents in their struggles.”
I delicately and gently stomped on Al’s foot to stifle the groan of disgust I knew the doctor’s speech would produce in my partner. Al doesn’t have a lot of patience with “wounded individuals” unless those wounds bleed and can be bandaged with actual gauze.
“The center is lovely,” I said.
“Being surrounded by natural beauty helps our residents. At first many of them don’t even notice the surroundings. And then, after a while, their work progresses, and they become able to focus on something other than their desperate need to alter their consciousnesses. That’s when they begin to take note of the environment, to allow its beauty to give them pleasure, even a kind of natural high of its own.”
“Swell,” Al said, and I hoped I could hear the disdain in his voice only because I knew him so well, not because it was so obvious. I didn’t share it. Sure, the doctor was slick enough to have spilled from the hold of the Exxon Valdez, but what he was saying made sense to me. When I was a public defender, almost all of my clients had been drug users. Their entire lives were structured around the next high—where they were going to get it, how they would come up with the money. They didn’t commit crimes under the influence of drugs; they committed crimes in order to get under the influence. I had often wondered what would have happened if we just gave all the junkies their drugs. They wouldn’t have to steal to support their habits, and if they knew where their next fix was coming from, they would suddenly have all this time to think about something else, like what had become of their lives. I bet at least some of them might have time to develop lives that would one day become reasons to get off drugs entirely.
Anyway, I certainly believed that when they first showed up at the Ojai center, the residents were not able even to see the gorgeousness of its setting. And it made sense to me that once they could no longer spend all their time and energy trying to get high, the beauty they hadn’t before noticed might begin to creep into their consciousness, and even give them a reason to be happy.
“How much does it cost to come here?” Al asked.
“Quite a bit, I’m afraid,” the doctor said, with a smile that had the tiniest hint of smugness. “Generally around seven thousand dollars a week.” Al whistled through his teeth. “Yes, I know,” Blackmore continued. “It sounds like a lot, but I promise you we don’t make much of a profit. The program costs a fortune to run, and the grounds”—he waved around him—“well, the upkeep is just astonishing. But we do our best not to be just a clinic for the very wealthy. In cases where we feel that the individual would benefit from our program, but can’t afford it, we try to make special arrangements. And because I believe all of us in the therapeutic community have a civic responsibility, we always take a certain number of state-sponsored individuals, primarily referred through the drug courts. By and large, however, our residents are very successful individuals, many of whom are in the public eye. We provide a supportive and anonymous environment that doesn’t force them to sacrifice the comforts they are accustomed to.”
I looked across the terrace and down at the pool. It was irregularly shaped and its water was dark, almost like a pond or small lake. A waterfall bubbled over rocks and plants at one end, and at the other, steam rose from a small area separated by a low wall of rocks. One or two people soaked in the hot tub, and a few others lay on wooden chaise lounges under striped umbrellas. A dark-skinned man in a white T-shirt and shorts distributed tall glasses of water and towels to the sunbathers. Nope. Nobody at the center was sacrificing any of the comforts of home.
“When was Jupiter Jones here?” I asked.
“Jupiter joined us almost exactly four years ago. He checked in for a ninety-day residency to help him end his dependence on cocaine. He completed the program and participated in our outpatient program in Santa Monica for another few months.”
“You have an outpatient program?”
“Yes. Most of our clients are from the Los Angeles area. We run a program of group and individual therapy to help our clients manage the transition back into their regular lives. That is a very dangerous time for a drug-dependent individual. It is significantly easier to stay sober surrounded by others doing the same thing, in a place where drugs are hard to find. Most find it much more of a challenge when they return home, to the same environment, family, and friends, where they acquired their self-destructive habits to begin with. We aid them in finding social and living situations that don’t encourage their return to drug use.”
“And Jupiter participated in that?”
“Yes, for a few months.”
“Is that a normal amount of time?”
“Is three months the amount of time you expect people to stay in the outpatient program?”
“We have no expectations. Different people use it for different amounts of time. It depends on the individual.”
“What’s the average?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Well, perhaps a little longer. More like six months or a year. But each client is different.”
Al grunted, and this time I agreed with what it was that he wasn’t saying. I was willing to bet that Jupiter Jones hadn’t quit the program because he was so well on the road to recovery that further treatment had become superfluous.
We had intended to ask Dr. Blackmore to testify on Jupiter’s behalf at the penalty phase of the trial. His job would be to describe for the jury Jupiter’s battles with drug addiction. But if Jupiter had dropped out early, then I wasn’t sure that the doctor’s testimony wouldn’t do more harm than good. Even if that weren’t the case, Dr. Blackmore was the kind of witness designed to grate on a jury. The slick suntan, the carefully tended hair, the New Age speak. All that was sure to turn the jury off in a big way. Worse, if the prosecutor decided that in order to prepare for his cross-examination of the doctor, he had to send a detective up to visit the center, we would be in serious trouble. I was sure that a jury would not be inclined to sympathize with someone whose rehab experience included being waited on by uniformed pool boys.
I made a notation to discuss the pros and cons of Blackmore’s testimony with Wasserman, and then said, “Jupiter told us that he met his stepmother here, and that in fact he was the one who introduced her to his father.”
The doctor looked at me sternly, as if I were a patient who had spoken out of turn. “Our rules of confidentiality don’t allow me to discuss anyone other than Jupiter with you.” He looked at his watch. “Oh, my goodness. I have a session with a patient that I absolutely must prepare for.” He rose to his feet. “Molly!” he called, “Please see Mr. Hockey and Ms. Applebaum out.” Molly rushed out to the terrace and stood awkwardly next to the table, as if awaiting instructions.
“Chloe Jones is dead,” Al said, his gruff voice making the doctor wince just the tiniest bit. “What possible reason could you have for protecting her confidences at this point?” I was surprised. Al wasn’t usually so ham-fisted in his approach to witnesses, and he never let them get to him. The good doctor must have really rubbed him the wrong way.
“There are many people here whose heirs would expect us to honor our commitment to secrecy even after they died, Mr. Hockey,” the doctor said.
“Of course, we understand that,” I said, trying to soothe him. Bad cop was one thing, but antagonizing a potential witness was never a good idea. “Anonymity is critical to the success of your program.”
“Exactly, and now, if you’ll excuse me,” Reese Blackmore said, and began to walk away.
“Dr. Blackmore,” I called, but he ignored me.
“We can get a court order,” Al said. The doctor stiffened and turned back to us. His mouth twitched slightly, and I could see that it was costing him something to retain his smooth demeanor. I nodded at Al and put my good cop hat firmly on my head.
“Al! We’re not going to need to do that,” I said. “Dr. Blackmore, my partner just means that we can get a subpoena for any and all records that might assist in preparing a defense. Of course we don’t want to do that any more than you want us to. I mean, the last thing I’m interested in doing is spending days or even weeks in Ojai, sifting through your patient files, billing records, even personal papers. Can you imagine what a huge task that would be?” Even the good cop can be scary, sometimes. The doctor blanched the color of his snowy hair. I smiled sweetly and continued. “It’s just that we have an ethical obligation to Jupiter Jones that’s every bit as legally binding as your doctor-patient privilege, as I’m sure you’re aware. If you could just tell us a little bit about his relationship with Chloe, we can avoid all that messy legal stuff.”
Looking at his watch, he lowered himself back into his chair. “I can give you two more minutes,” he said.
“That’s wonderful. Thanks so much, Dr. Blackmore. So we were talking about how Jupiter and Chloe met. They were here at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“What was Chloe in for?”
“She was also struggling with cocaine addiction, as I recall. I’d have to check the records to be sure. Cocaine, and maybe heroin as well.”
“You can call me with that information once you check your records,” I said. “Do you know how it was that Chloe could afford treatment? Who paid for it?”
He glanced at Molly. She said, “She was part of our special residency program. There are donors who provide sort of like scholarships for people who would benefit from our program but would not otherwise be able to afford it.”
How come none of my homeless, smack-addicted clients had ever heard of that program? “How was it that she got a special residency? Did she submit some kind of application?” I asked.
“One of our donors must have recommended her for the program. I can check her file, if you like,” Molly said, and winced under the frown that Dr. Blackmore shot her way. “Um, actually that information is confidential,” she said.
“We understand that Chloe and Jupiter were very close friends. Perhaps even more than friends,” I said.
The doctor shook his head vigorously. “If you are implying that they had a sexual relationship, then I can assure you that that is not possible. The work residents undertake at this center involves delving into their pasts, uncovering the trauma that led to their addiction. This exploration makes them fragile and vulnerable. It would be far too emotionally dangerous for them to enter into any kind of physical relationship. I expressly forbid that type of behavior.”
And my mother expressly forbade me from making out in the back of parked cars. “Perhaps they broke the rules,” I said.
He sputtered, “Impossible. Now, I think this conversation has gone on long enough. I am eager to help Jupiter, but not at the cost of divulging confidential information about other clients. I invite you to try to get your court order if you want any more information about Chloe Jones, or any resident other than Jupiter.” He spun on his heel and walked away across the terrace.
I raised my eyebrows at Al, who winked slowly at me. I turned back to Molly. She was nervously tucking her hair behind her jutting ears. “I guess I ticked him off,” I said.
She frowned. “I’m afraid Reese hasn’t taken this whole thing very well. I think he’s afraid that it will reflect badly on the center. Maybe even give people second thoughts about coming here.”
“Do you think it will?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure that what happened had nothing to do with the center. But I guess I think it’s troubling that they were both residents at one time, and had successfully completed the program. Especially since they were using again when this happened.”
Al looked up from his notes and I raised my eyebrows. “They were using again?” I asked.
Molly flushed and glanced quickly around as if to make sure that there was no one nearby who could report her indiscretion back to Dr. Blackmore. Then she leaned closer to me. In a low, rapid voice, she said, “I don’t actually know about Jupiter. Not firsthand, that is. Chloe had started doing cocaine again. Or maybe she never stopped. Anyway, she was here for some intensive therapy not that long before she was killed, and she was definitely wired when she showed up.”
“High on drugs?” Al asked.
Molly nodded. “Coked up.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Sure? No, but I’m usually pretty good at figuring out when someone’s high.”
“I imagine that’s a skill you develop around here.”
She smiled ruefully. “Yes.”
“When was it that Chloe checked back in?”
She leaned back in her chair, more relaxed now. “I’m not exactly sure. A couple of months before she died.”
“And what did you mean by intensive therapy?”
“Sometimes clients don’t have time for the ninety-day program, or even the twenty-eight. Reese is so generous with his time. He’ll occasionally do a few days of intensive therapy with individual clients, if they’ve slipped, or are in danger of slipping.”
“How long did Chloe check back in for?”
“Just a couple of days. She told me that she’d told everyone other than her husband that she was going to Big Sur on a yoga retreat. It would have been pretty awful if the CCU folks had found out she was using again. Their church is violently opposed to drugs, as I’m sure you know. One of their basic tenets is that the CCU cures its members of the need to do drugs. I guess it would have caused a public relations nightmare if it had gotten out. That’s what happened with poor Jupiter. Everyone at the CCU was freaking out when they found out about his cocaine addiction. You know, like if the Reverend can’t keep his own kid off drugs, how can he help anyone else.”
Was I imagining it, or did I detect a hint of a sneer in her voice when she talked about the CCU? “What do you make of the CCU’s claims? Can they really cure drug addiction?”
She snorted, and then covered her mouth with her hand. “They are very good clients of ours.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
She glanced around again, and then shook her head. “Look, if they could cure drug addiction with their astrological stuff, why would they need us? We have an arrangement with the CCU to provide care for their parishioners who need drug treatment. A full third of our patients at any given time are CCU members. Reese is the one curing them, not Polaris Jones.”
I nodded. “Reese, and the rest of you.” No harm in giving the woman a little stroking. “But Chloe didn’t want the CCU to know that she was back. So she checked in anonymously, right?”
“Everyone is here anonymously. But yeah, she asked us to keep it hush-hush.”
“And she finished her intensive therapy uneventfully?”
Molly shook her head. “That time, she did.”
“What do you mean that time? As opposed to her first residency?’
Molly bit her lip. “Look, I’m only telling you this because she’s dead, and because I want to help Jupiter. I can’t believe he killed her. I mean, I know he did, I read about the DNA evidence. But I just know there must have been a really good reason.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Chloe was a nightmare. A complete bitch. And the most manipulative woman I’ve ever met in my life. She came to the center in the first place because she convinced some guy to give her a free ride. That’s what she does; she gets men to pay her way. And then as soon as she got here and met Jupiter, and figured out who he was, she decided she had to have him. He had really been progressing before she showed up, and she just destroyed all the work he was doing. He’d been processing his relationship with his dad, his mom’s legacy of drug use. When Chloe dug her little claws into him, it was all over. He’s never been the same since. Never. Poor Jupiter.”
Molly’s eyes had filled with tears, and she dashed them away.
“You were close to Jupiter, back when he was here?”
She nodded. “I was his counselor. Everyone here gets assigned a counselor, like a sponsor. Someone who’s been through the program, and through the staff training. I was Jupiter’s.”
“You’ve been through the program?” She seemed so sensible, so reasonable, so healthy. It was hard to believe she’d ever been a drug addict.
“Yeah. I first came here about seven years ago.” She looked around the terrace, her brow wrinkled. It was almost as if she were surprised to find herself still there, all those years later. Then she turned back to me and shrugged. “Heroin.”
“Heroin?” That shocked me. The heroin addicts I knew were emaciated and hollow-eyed. They didn’t have glossy blond hair and an athlete’s body. They also didn’t wear pink cashmere.
She flashed her rueful smile. “Yeah, I know. I don’t look like a junkie, do I? Neither did anyone else in my sorority. We were all using. We didn’t shoot up, though. That was too gross for us. We snorted it. We thought that was safe, but we were wrong. I ended up getting sick. Turns out you can pass Hepatitis C through a nasal tube. After I got out of the hospital, my parents checked me in here. I never left. I started out as a resident, then a counselor. I got my master’s, and now I’m Reese’s research assistant.” There was more than a hint of pride in her voice.
“You seem to be doing really well,” I said.
She smiled. “Reese has designed a brilliant program. It works, if you use it like you’re supposed to.” The warmth and affection in her voice when she said her boss’s name were unmistakable.
“You were telling us about Chloe?” Al said in a gentler voice than I would have expected, given his feelings about drug users, even recovered ones.
Molly inhaled deeply, and shook her head. “Chloe pretty much took Jupiter over. He spent all his time with her. They were sleeping together. Rules or no rules. I had hoped that once he left, that would be the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. He even came up to get her, on her last day. Did you know that?” I nodded my head. “He picked her up and took her home with him. And the next thing we knew, the L.A. Times was reporting Polaris Jones’s wedding to Chloe Pakulski at the Hollywood Bowl. Ten thousand CCU members were there, and the mayor officiated, along with two CCU ministers. I felt so bad for Jupiter. He loved her so much. She didn’t deserve it for a minute, but he loved her.”
I wondered if Molly might have felt for Jupiter the same emotion he had wasted on Chloe.
“Was Jupiter the only person Chloe was sleeping with?” I asked.
Molly looked shocked. “Of course he was. Wasn’t that bad enough?” Then she looked at her watch and frowned. “I think I’d better see you out. I’ve got to get back to work.”
I fished around in my purse and found a card for her. “Call me if you remember anything, okay?” I said, giving her a meaningful look.
She nodded briskly, shoved the card into her pocket, and strode away across the patio, leaving us to follow her out.