LILLY lived in Benedict Canyon, the site of the most notorious of the Manson murders. Driving up the winding road through the lush trees and beautiful villas always sent a shiver up my spine, as though the evil that had momentarily ruined the peace of the bucolic canyon had left behind a trace that was almost, but not quite, palpable.
Like most movie stars famous enough to have their own corps of fans and stalkers, Lilly lived behind a massive, electronic gate. Because we weren’t expected, it took her people a while to let Ruby and me in. When the gates finally rolled silently open, I drove up the long driveway and up to the house, a Craftsman bungalow modeled on the Greene & Greene houses sprinkled throughout California. The house was massive, with huge, exposed oak rafters, wide eaves, and a low-pitched roof. It managed, despite its size, to look welcoming, probably because of the kids’ paraphernalia jumbled on the square-columned porch running the length of the front of the house. Ruby had fallen asleep in the car, so I hoisted her into my arms and carried her up the steps of the porch, picking my way carefully over the bicycles, roller blades, scooters, piles of sand toys, and miniature rakes and shovels. The door was flung open by one of Lilly’s twins.
“Hey, Amber,” I said.
“I’m Jade,” she replied. “Is Ruby sleeping?”
“No. She’s been put under a spell by a wicked witch.”
The eight-year-old rolled her eyes to let me know that she was much too mature for that kind of silliness. “Call me when she wakes up.” She hollered over her shoulder, “Mom! Juliet and Ruby are here. But Ruby’s sleeping. I’m going for a scooter ride.” She picked up a bicycle helmet, strapped it under her chin, and zipped off across the porch on her scooter.
“Where’s Amber?” I called after her.
“On a time-out,” she yelled, and humped the scooter down the steps.
The twins had their father’s thick black hair and dark eyes and their mother’s lanky body. They should have been beautiful; both Lilly and Archer were. But somehow when their parents’ features were put into the genetic slot machine, the girls had pulled the levers at all the wrong places. The pointed nose that contributed to Lilly’s gamine beauty looked ratlike when combined with Archer’s slightly weak chin. Worst of all, they’d missed out on both their father’s thickly lashed black eyes and their mother’s luminous blue. Theirs were a less spectacular hazel.
But they were sweet girls, lively and friendly like their mother. They had always been nice to Ruby, including her in their games even though she was a couple of years younger. They’d even invited her to join their club—they called themselves the Jewels, and Ruby fit right in.
I walked through the front door and found Lilly sitting in the inglenook by the fire blazing in the imposing fieldstone fireplace. My greeting froze in my throat when I saw Archer sitting on the seat across from her. Lilly and Archer had had an ugly divorce; one that had been played out more in the tabloids and on entertainment news television than in the courtroom. Lilly had spent hours raging to me about her incompetent lawyers who were unable to circumvent the community property laws that gave Archer half of the money she’d earned on her films. For a while she and Archer hadn’t even spoken, using assistants and drivers to transfer the girls from house to house.
“Hi, Juliet,” Archer said.
“Uh, hi,” I replied articulately.
“Nice to see you, Juliet,” Lilly said. “Do you want to put Ruby to bed in the girls’ room?”
“No, I’ll dump her on the couch. I’d just as soon she woke up. Otherwise she’ll be up all night.”
“Amber will be done with her time-out in about three minutes,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to wake Ruby up for you.”
I plopped Ruby down on the overstuffed, slip-covered couch, and she grumbled and buried her head in one of the many pillows.
“What’s going on?” Lilly asked, obviously surprised to see me. We were friends, and I’d been to her house countless times, but I’d never before dropped by unannounced. “Is everything okay? Did something happen to Jupiter?”
“No, no. He’s fine,” I said, looking over at Archer.
“I know what’s going on. Lilly’s told me everything,” Archer said.
I looked back at Lilly and she nodded. What was going on here? Why was Lilly’s ex-husband sitting so comfortably in her living room, and why had she confided in him the details of Jupiter’s case? I stifled my curiosity and said, “It’s not Jupiter. Although it does have to do with his case. Wasserman found some bank statements of Chloe’s. She deposited a hundred thousand dollars into her bank account over the course of the few months before she died.”
I couldn’t swear it, but I thought I caught Lilly giving Archer a meaningful look.
“That’s a lot of money,” he said, his voice neutral.
“The checks were drawn off an anonymous offshore account,” I said.
“Do they have any idea whose account it was?” Lilly asked.
“Not yet.” I paused. “Do you know anything about it?”
“Of course not,” she said quickly. “I’m sure it’s just some CCU thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have secret bank accounts all over the world. The whole thing is just a huge scam. I’m sure Polaris is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“To them a hundred thousand is nothing,” Archer agreed. “It’s probably just Chloe’s pin money.”
Why were the two of them working so hard to convince me not to be concerned about the money? What did they know? I looked at Lilly, trying to figure out what was going on behind those clear blue eyes. But the woman is a brilliant actress, and all I saw was bland unconcern. “I’m sure Wasserman will check back and see if the deposits were unique or if Chloe regularly got large sums from those accounts,” I said. Then I pressed her. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about it?”
“Of course not,” Lilly said firmly.
“How is the rest of the investigation going?” Archer asked. I had the distinct impression that he was trying to change the subject.
“It’s moving along. We’ve interviewed Jupiter and had an initial meeting with his father.”
“Have you guys found what you need to keep Jupiter off death row?” he asked.
“It’s not really a question of finding something in particular. It’s about amassing information so that we can present the jury with a sympathetic picture of a whole person, someone they can identify with in some way. We want them to get to know Jupiter, because if they do, it will be harder for them to kill him. We want every juror to think that but for the grace of circumstance, a difficult childhood, personal tragedy, Jupiter could be his son.” When I said the final word, my voice trailed off. I couldn’t help but think of that man whose son Jupiter was, who nonetheless seemed to want him dead.
“What?” Lilly said. I looked up quickly. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking about something . . . it’s nothing.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her shorn hair was beginning to grow in, and the blond caught the light of the fire and glowed. “Is it Polaris?”
“I can’t really talk about the specifics of the case with you. I’m bound by attorney-client privilege,” I said. “Because I work for Wasserman, the privilege extends to me, too.”
“It’s Polaris, isn’t it? He won’t help you.” Her voice was flat, and the muscles in her jaw twitched.
“Not exactly,” I said. “He talked to us, but he hasn’t decided what position to take on the imposition of the death penalty.”
She shook her head. “The man of God.” She bit the words off and spat them out.
“Does it matter?” Archer asked.
I nodded. “The victim statement matters. It matters to the prosecutor—sometimes they won’t go for the death penalty if the family is opposed. It definitely makes an impression on a jury. I don’t know how Polaris will come down on this. His aides at the CCU seem to be looking for some consistency with their public position of opposition to the death penalty. At least one of them is.”
Lilly buried her head in her hands, and Archer walked behind her chair and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. She leaned against his arm for a moment and then turned her face up to his.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice warm and low.
He squeezed her shoulders. I felt like I was eavesdropping on a moment too intimate to be shared, and I fixed my eyes on the dancing flames in the fireplace.
Just then, a young woman, dressed in khaki pants and a denim shirt, the casual livery worn by Lilly’s household staff in place of black polyester dresses with starched aprons, walked into the living room. “Lilly, can I tell Amber her time-out is up?” she said.
“Sure,” said Archer. “Tell her to come down and say goodbye to Daddy.” He squeezed Lilly’s shoulders one more time and walked back to his seat. He picked up the soft suede jacket that was crumpled next to where he’d been sitting and shrugged it on over his shoulders.
“You’re going?” Lilly asked him.
“I promised my mother I’d take her to a movie tonight,” he said apologetically. “Do you want me to cancel and have dinner with you and the girls?”
“No, no. That’s okay. I’ll let Phoebe and Stephanie feed them and put them to sleep. I plan to have a bath and a massage, and be in bed by eight. I’ll see you when I bring them over on Saturday.”
“Let’s have brunch, all of us together.”
“I’d like that.” She lifted up her face to him and he kissed her on the lips. It was a quick kiss, but it certainly seemed like more than a friendly buss.
By the time Archer had said goodbye to his daughters and left, Ruby was awake. Her sleep-creased face crumpled when she found herself on a strange couch, but before she could begin to cry, Amber and Jade hustled her off to their playroom to play with their Habitrail full of gerbils. Lilly and I sat quietly for a moment after they’d left. I wanted to ask her more about the money. Her answers had made sense, but they’d felt too glib. First, though, I had to find out what the heck was going on with her ex-husband. “Are you planning on telling me what that was all about?” I said.
She smiled faintly and tucked her knees up under her chin. Her feet were crossed at the ankles and her long delicate toes dug into the fabric of her bench. Everything about Lilly was lovely, even her feet. I wriggled my own unmanicured toes in my shoes and sighed. “Well?” I said.
“What do you mean?” Lilly asked, coyly catching one edge of her pale lip in between her teeth.
I rolled my eyes. “Archer? You? Brunch?”
She smiled the same small, private smile. “I wish I knew.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She hugged her knees to her chest. “Things have been really great between us lately. I can’t explain it. We went for nearly a year almost without seeing each other at all. And then one day, about four months ago, he dropped the kids off himself, instead of sending one of the nannies to do it. We ended up talking for hours. Since then we’ve been spending time together. We do stuff with the twins. Lately we’ve even started going out alone.”
“You’re dating Archer?”
She laughed. “I guess so.”
I bit back the words that leapt to my mouth. Words like, “Are you out of your mind?” Words like “Don’t forget this is the guy who tried to take all your money.” Words like “Archer’s a poisonous cretin who’s only nice to his own mother because he stands to inherit money from her.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “Listen, Lilly, about the bank deposits . . .”
“Bank deposits?” she said, picking a piece of chipped polish off her baby toe.
“The deposits to Chloe’s bank account.”
“Hm. What about them?”
I leaned forward, pushing myself into the line of sight that seemed altogether too focused on her pedicure. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about them?”
“Of course not,” she said, sitting up and glaring at me. “What are you getting at, Juliet? Are you trying to imply that I had something to do with those deposits?”
Maybe. “No, no. Of course not,” I said.
“Good, because I’d hate to think you were suspicious of me. I mean, I hired you because you’re my friend. Because I knew I could trust you.” Her eyes were wide, and her gamine face looked hurt, but there was a hint of iron in her voice.
I decided to forgo reminding her once again how my ethical obligation was to her brother, not to her, no matter who paid my bills. Instead I broached another subject guaranteed to bother her. “You can trust me. Of course you can. Can you tell me a little more about your mother’s death? What else you remember?”
“I can’t talk about it, Juliet. It’s too painful for me to talk about.”
I sighed. “Are you sure? I mean, it would help me set this all in context. It has to have been a pretty traumatic memory for Jupiter, too. It might be something we can use in our mitigation argument.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
I gave up. We ended up having a desultory conversation about schools—how the twins liked their exclusive private school where members of the Hollywood elite mollified their liberal guilt by supporting a wonderfully generous scholarship program that resulted in a student body evenly divided between fabulously wealthy white children and black and Latino children from backgrounds of varying deprivation. Ruby went to a magnet public school not too far from where we lived. It was a sweet little school with nice teachers. It only went up to fifth grade, however, and I was pretty sure private school was in our future after that. She probably wouldn’t be able to get into the twins’ school, though. We were neither sufficiently famous, nor sufficiently bereft.
After a little while, one of the attractive, khaki-clad nannies brought the girls down for dinner. I refused Ruby’s entreaties to stay and eat with the twins—“but their cook made chocolate cake for dessert!”—and bundled her into the car for the twenty-minute trip home.
Ruby was still whining when I pulled into our block. I had already given her one time-out—hardly an effective tool in the car—and was ready to put her to bed for the rest of the night. As I was about to swing into our driveway, I briefly turned my head to tell her once and for all to be quiet. I turned back around, and gasped. I slammed on my brakes and just missed hitting the low black car that was right in front of me, parked at an angle in front of our house, blocking the driveway. The webbing of my seat belt bit into my neck and chest, and I exhaled with a loud grunt.
“Are you okay, honey?” I shouted, jerking the car into park. I unsnapped my seat belt, turned around, and reached into the backseat to touch Ruby to make sure with my own hands that she was okay.
“My seat belt squeezed me!” she said indignantly.
“What hurts?” I said, frantically groping her arms and shoulders. “Your neck? Your arm?”
“Nothing hurts. I just don’t like being squeezed.”
I patted her once more, reassuring myself that she was really okay, and then said, “You wait here.” I jumped out of my car and stormed over to the parked car to see just who it was who had blocked my driveway. Our block wasn’t one where you’d normally find a Jaguar, let alone an illegally parked one. As I was bending over to jot down the license plate number to report to the cops, one of the car’s windows glided down, surprising the hell out of me.
Lilly’s ex-husband leaned out of the window, resting an elbow on the frame. “Hi.” His voice was so soft it was almost a purr.
“Archer, are you crazy? Why are you parked across my driveway? I almost plowed into you!”
“I just wanted to talk.”
He smiled, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose just the slightest bit. Suddenly, he opened his door. I stepped back and bumped into the grill of my car.
“I’ve got Ruby in the backseat,” I said unnecessarily. He knew she was there.
“We need to talk.” Archer came up beside me and pressed his hand on my shoulder. I sat down on the hood of my car. He took his hand away and sat down next to me. I swallowed.
“Why don’t you come inside?” I said, making my voice bright and friendly. I glanced back at Ruby, willing her to sit quietly in her car seat.
“Let’s talk here.” His tone was even and bland, and for some reason that scared me more than if he’d been shouting. I didn’t know Archer well. Peter had gone to a couple of ball games with him, but I had always spent time with Lilly alone, or with Lilly and the girls. I couldn’t honestly think of a time I had socialized with Archer and Lilly as a couple, other than the few times he’d joined her at some party or other. Their marriage had been on the rocks almost from the first time we’d met Lilly, although it had taken them a while to call it quits. Still, he’d never been anything but perfectly pleasant to me, and of all the complaints Lilly had about him, she’d never accused him of being violent. So why was he making me so nervous?
“It’s getting dark early nowadays,” Archer said, tilting his face up and leaning his body back on his elbows.
I looked at him. Was I supposed to sit on the hood of my car making small talk? “What do you want, Archer? Why are you here?”
He didn’t turn to me, just continued to look up at the night sky. “Your job is to keep Jupiter off death row, right?” he said.
“Right.”
“You find witnesses who can testify about what a hard childhood he had, what a nice guy he is, that kind of thing.”
“More or less. Why are you asking me this? We talked all about it at Lilly’s house no more than an hour ago.”
He smiled at me, and now there was just the barest hint of menace in his face. “I think you should just do your job.”
“Excuse me?” I said, leaning away and looking at him.
“Just do your job. Talk to people about Jupiter. About what a hard life he’s had. About how his mother abandoned him. That kind of thing.”
“That’s what I’m doing, Archer.” I began to get down off the car, but he reached out a hand to stop me.
“Yup. You should just do your job. Leave the rest of it alone.” His fingers pressed ever so gently into my arm. I shook him off and stood up.
“The rest of it?” I said as I opened the door of my car.
“Just leave Lilly out of it.”
That stopped me. I stood with the door half open and stared at him. “What?”
“You heard me. Just leave Lilly out of it. The bank accounts, all that stuff.”
“Lilly hired me to investigate. That’s what I’m doing—investigating.”
“Lilly’s your friend. You know she’s not involved in any of this. You don’t need to investigate her.”
“I’m not investigating her. I’m investigating the case.”
He smiled at me. “Well, great. Then we’re both on the same page. You’re not going to investigate her. Or bother her with this anymore.”
“Bother her?”
“Lilly and Jupiter were really close when they were kids, and this is all very difficult for her. Did you know that she’s been so freaked out that she got her doctor to prescribe antidepressants for her?” I shook my head. “She’s taking Zoloft, and sleeping pills, because she’s had a terrible time sleeping since this happened. I don’t want you to upset her more than she already is. You need to just back off, do your job, and leave her alone.”
I closed the door again, to keep Ruby from hearing any more of the conversation. “What exactly are you saying, Archer? It sounds like you’ve got something to hide. It sounds like you’re threatening me.”
He jumped down off the car. “Of course I’m not. Why would you say that? I’m not hiding anything, and I didn’t threaten you. I would never threaten you. I’m just letting you know how painful this is for your friend.” He opened his car door and got in. Then he leaned his head out the window again. “I know you’d never hurt Lilly. I trust you. Give Peter my regards.” With that, he took off down the street. I stood staring after him for a moment, then shivered and got into my car.
“Why was Amber and Jade’s daddy parked in front of our house?” Ruby asked.
“He just came by to say hi,” I said, and pulled my car into the driveway and around back to the garage. I got out of the car and unbuckled Ruby from her car seat. Then I grabbed her and hugged her, hard. She wriggled in my arms. “Don’t be afraid,” I said.
She tipped her head back and scowled at me. “I’m not afraid!” she said disgustedly. I hugged her again. She might not be, but I sure was.
I had a hard time explaining to Peter why Archer had unnerved me so much. While he agreed that it was weird for him to have shown up at the house, he told me that I was jumping to conclusions by assuming that Archer was trying to warn me off the case.
“He’s probably just worried about Lilly. She’s clearly taking this incredibly hard, and he doesn’t want her more upset,” Peter said. We were sitting on the couch, enjoying a few minutes together after we’d put the kids to bed and before he went to work.
“Lilly’s not some delicate creature who needs to be protected. Anyway, Archer certainly never bothered to take care of her in the past. More like the other way around. She was always the one worrying about him.”
Peter shrugged.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t know that she ever really worried about him. More like worried about what he was up to.”
I nodded. “I guess so. But still. How do we get from that to him lurking in front of our house like some extra from The Sopranos?”
Peter shook his head.
“What?” I said again, irritated now.
“Maybe he’s changed. You said yourself they seem to be having some kind of reconciliation. Maybe he’s trying to do more for her.”
“Like terrorize her friends?”
Peter poked me in the side with his toe. “You were hardly terrorized. Don’t be so melodramatic.”
I pushed his feet off my lap. “He was waiting in front of the house in the dark. He told me to back off my investigation. It sure seemed to me like he was trying to scare me. And guess what? It worked. I’m scared.”
Peter leaned over and hugged me. “Don’t be scared,” he murmured into my hair, except he said it in a Bugs Bunny accent, and then he giggled.
I shook him off and jerked to my feet. “I can’t believe you. What, are you and Archer in some kind of husband brotherhood? Why doesn’t this bother you?” I’m afraid my voice was a little shriller than I would have liked.
Peter sat back and shook his head. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s just that I know Archer a little better than you do. He’s just trying to impress Lilly by playing the macho husband.”
I stomped off into the kitchen to call Al, sure that he would find Archer’s behavior as suspicious as I did. I’d forgotten about his crippling sexism.
“What do my hormones have to do with anything?” I shouted.
“They’re all out of whack. It makes you overreact.”
“Overreact? Overreact? I don’t get this. You and Peter are always on me to be more careful, to take more precautions. Hell, you even want me to carry a gun! And now you’re saying I’m overreacting? I’ll give you overreacting!” I clapped the phone down in his ear.
It rang a moment later. “Sorry,” I said into the receiver.
“That’s okay,” Al said. “Like I said. Hormones.”
I gritted my teeth and didn’t reply.
“Tell you what, how about I get one of my buddies to put him through the computer, check on any priors. Would that make you feel better?”
“I guess so.” Was I overreacting? I didn’t usually scare easily. That was actually one of my problems—sometimes I didn’t scare easily enough.
“Why don’t you try a bath?” Al said.
“What?”
“That’s what Jeanelle always does when she’s upset.” The condescension in his voice was palpable, and it was all I could do to keep from hanging up on him again. “Anyway, if you’re really worried, you should call your friend Lilly and ask her what’s up with her ex.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. I decided to do that first thing in the morning. I did end up taking a bath, but not because Al told me to. The idea had been in the back of my mind ever since Lilly had announced her plans to have one. I only wished that I also had someone on staff to give me a massage. If I was substantially more serene when I got out of the tub, that certainly wasn’t something I was ever going to admit to Al.
My calm lasted through the next morning. I woke up early, feeling peculiar. I jumped out of bed, got dressed in the dark, and went out to enjoy a solitary cup of coffee before waking the kids. Then I had an inspiration that might have been motherly, but probably had more to do with my own cravings. It was while I was painstakingly pouring out the pancake batter into Mickey Mouse ears, and placing the chocolate chip eyes just so, that I identified the strange sensation that had come over me. It wasn’t anything I was feeling—it was what I wasn’t feeling. I wasn’t exhausted. For the first time in weeks, I actually felt rested. I smiled in surprise. I’d better enjoy it—it wasn’t going to last. Pretty soon I’d be spending my nights waddling off to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. Then, when the baby came, I’d be even worse off. If the new one was anything like the others, I was doomed to become a test case for a sleep deprivation study.
For once the kids didn’t give me a hard time about getting dressed and ready for school. They were like little hound dogs, with the scent of pancakes in their noses. They whipped on their clothes, snapped the Velcro on their sneakers, and were sitting at the kitchen table, faces covered in syrup, in no time.
Isaac gobbled his Mickey Mouse as fast as he could, and then came around the table to bury his face in my stomach. “Mama?” he said.
“What honey?”
“You look pretty in those pajamas.”
I looked down at my T-shirt and red Capri pants. “These aren’t pajamas, sweetie. These are clothes.”
He looked at me critically. “Well, you’re pretty, anyway.”
I kissed the top of his head. Ninety-nine mornings out of a hundred, the kids do nothing but bicker and drive one another and me crazy. And then, every so often, generally when I’m just about at the end of my rope, one of them fills my tank, recharges my batteries, and gives me the energy to keep driving through my days.
“You’re not bad yourself,” I said.
Once I had the kids fed and settled in front of morning television, I picked up the phone. It took a while for Lilly’s assistant to clear me, but I finally heard my friend’s voice. When I told her what had happened the night before with Archer, there was silence on the other end of the line. “Lilly,” I said. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Listen, I’m sorry. Archer’s just worried about me. I don’t need to tell you how freaked out this whole thing has made me. He was just overreacting. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize. It’s just . . .” My voice trailed off.
“What?” she said.
How did I go about telling her that I thought her ex-husband was a scary creep and that I wished she’d cut him loose once and for all? “He just doesn’t seem like the most stable guy in the world,” I said lamely.
She sighed. “I’ve got to go, Juliet. I’ve got In Style magazine showing up in fifteen minutes and I’ve got to go get made up.”
After I made the school rounds, I drove out to Pasadena, to the CCU campus. I didn’t know if I’d get in to see Polaris without an appointment, but even if I wasn’t admitted to the inner sanctum, it wouldn’t hurt to nose around a bit.
I got off the mobbed freeway as fast as I could and made my way on surface streets through the less attractive parts of Pasadena. There are vast stretches of Los Angeles that look the same—interchangeable districts of long, straight avenues with strip malls on either side. The stores are a hodgepodge of Vietnamese donut shops, Guatemalan mail centers, Mexican travel agencies. The telephone poles and streetlights are festooned with campaign posters: ERNESTO ACOSTA FOR SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE, RUTH TAGANES FOR CITY COUNSEL, VOTE NO ON 6, YES ON 113. I love these ugly parts of the city as much or more than the neighborhoods of ostentatious homes with Astroturf green lawns, or the winding canyons where the houses cling precariously to the hillsides, raising a defiant fist to the god of earthquakes and landslides. This schizophrenia of gracious elegance and decaying tackiness, of natural beauty and urban blight, is the essence of Los Angeles. It’s what makes those of us who love the city defend it against its many and vocal detractors. In all cities poverty exists side by side with wealth, but here we don’t pretend otherwise.
The CCU campus was set on a broad boulevard of palatial homes, behind a high iron fence. I pulled off to the side of the road so I could take a minute to figure out how I was going to weasel the guard in the gatehouse into just letting me onto the grounds. As I sat there, a black BMW SUV came tearing down the driveway from inside the compound. The driver paused only long enough for the guard to begin to lift the barrier arm that blocked the exit. I heard a squeal of metal as the car jerked forward, driving through the gate before the bar was fully raised. The bar smacked against the roof of the car, and the guard leapt out of his box, arms raised in astonishment and anger, shouting after the car as it sped away. The Beemer tore off down the block, and without thinking clearly about what I was doing, I set off in pursuit. I had managed to catch a glimpse of the driver, her face red and twisted in a tortured scowl. It was Lilly.
Lilly made it easy for me. She stopped at the first café we passed. I followed her into the parking lot and pulled into a spot at the far end. I slouched down in my seat and angled my rearview mirror so that I had a clear view of her. After a moment, the driver’s side door opened. Lilly got out, looking pale and wan, and walked into the café. I sat up and tapped my fingers on my steering wheel, trying to figure out what to do. I was horribly torn. I wanted to jump out of my car and comfort my friend, to help her with whatever it was that was causing her so much pain. At the same time, however, a worm of suspicion wriggled its way through my concern, and I couldn’t help but wonder why Lilly had gone to see Polaris, why she was so upset, and what any of this had to do with the murder of Chloe Jones. Finally, I followed her. When I entered the café, I saw her standing at the far end of the counter, waiting for her coffee. When she saw me, her face grew even paler.
“Hi,” I said, walking over.
“Let’s sit down and talk, okay?”
She nodded and walked across the room to a small table tucked behind a row of tall plants.
I placed my order and waited a few moments for my own latte.
“That’ll be seven seventy-five,” said the young woman behind the counter as she handed me two mugs.
I stared at her. “For a cup of coffee?”
She rolled her eyes. “Two decaf lattes. Yours and your friend’s.” Lilly had stuck me with the check. Again. I invariably ended up paying when Lilly and I went out. It’s not that she was cheap, exactly. The basket of muffins, cheeses, and wine she sent us every Christmas probably cost as much as a month of Isaac’s preschool. I think it’s that Lilly, like all movie stars, never had to deal with the minutiae of life, like paying the bills. There was always someone else around to take care of that kind of stuff—a studio executive, a talent manager, a personal assistant. A short, chubby friend.
Once I’d sugared up my latte and sprinkled on enough powdered chocolate to compensate for the lack of caffeine, I joined Lilly at the secluded table she’d chosen.
“How’d you find me?” she asked as I sat down and handed her her coffee. “Are you following me?” I didn’t think she sounded angry, merely resigned.
“Sort of. Not really. I was just pulling up to the CCU campus when I saw you tear out of there. Then I followed you.”
She nodded and sighed. Her shoulders shook slightly.
“What’s going on, Lilly? What were you doing there?”
“I went to see him.”
“What for?”
She took a trembling sip of her drink and darted her tongue out to lick the foam off her lips. “To convince him to help Jupiter.”
“What did he say?”
“He threw me out. Well, he didn’t, the coward. He had those bathrobe-wearing goons do it for him.” Her voice held just the barest hint of the girlish spunk that was her stock-in-trade.
“How did you even get in there in the first place? Didn’t the guard stop you?”
“He asked for my autograph.” She didn’t seem pleased with the ease of access her fame had bought her—on the contrary. She appeared disgusted—with the guard, but perhaps most of all with herself, for taking advantage of it.
“What did you think you could tell Polaris that would change his mind?”
“I could tell him why Jupiter killed his wife.”
I had just taken a sip of my drink and I froze, the coffee scalding the inside of my mouth. I swallowed, and carefully put the mug on the table. “What are you talking about?” I said.
Whatever spirit she had managed to muster dissolved, and her face collapsed. “I’m the reason Jupiter did it. It’s my fault. He’s going to die, and it’s all my fault.” She began to cry—dry soundless sobs that shook her whole body. I’d watched her blue eyes fill with tears time and time again on the screen and always envied her ability to weep so prettily. It turned out that in real life Lilly Green, like me and like everyone else, looked haggard, blotchy, and ugly when she cried. She put her head down in her arms. I reached across the table and laid my hand on her shorn head. I stroked her stubbly hair for a moment and then, when she didn’t move, brought my chair around the table and put my arm around her. She leaned heavily against me, and continued to cry. I was grateful for the plants that screened us from the view of the other people in the café. The last thing she needed was to see an item in Movieline detailing Lilly Green’s breakdown in a Pasadena coffee bar.
Finally, she raised her head, sniffed loudly, and wiped her nose on her hand. “I’m okay,” she said.
I nodded. “I think it’s time for you to tell me what’s going on.”
Lilly inhaled with a shudder. “Jupiter killed Chloe to protect me,” she said.
She nodded. “I’m the one who wrote Chloe those checks. She was blackmailing me.”
Even though somewhere in the back of my mind I’d feared this very thing, even expected it, it still took me by surprise. I sat back heavily in my chair and stared at my friend. “Why? Why was she blackmailing you?”
Lilly laughed bitterly. “Why? Because she was a vile little bitch, that’s why.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” she said.
“What was she blackmailing you with, Lilly?” I said, my voice no more than a whisper.
Lilly’s eyes filled with tears again, and she took a deep breath. “She told me that if I didn’t pay her, she would go to the newspapers and tell them that I killed my mother.”