Chapter 1
“Mr. Cicci, are you a fan of Tony Molina?” the prosecutor asked as she crossed from her desk in the small courtroom and strolled casually over to the witness box. She was pint sized, barely cracking five feet, and she sported a giant mass of curly red hair on top of her head that threatened to swallow her up whole. She wore a smart gray designer suit and black dress shoes that looked more like what a man would wear. She was a tiny thing, but her abundance of confidence and ferocious, almost predatory attitude gave her an unexpected stature.
“Tony Molina was my hero,” Carmine Cicci spoke into the microphone that had been set up in front of him. He was plump and bald, wearing a purple tie and pink dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoos of various New Agey phrases and dragons and other symbols that he had collected in his fifty-some-odd years.
“When did you first see him perform live?” the prosecutor asked.
“Nineteen eighty-one at Madison Square Garden. I’ll never forget it. I went with my high school sweetheart Antonette. She got the tickets for my eighteenth birthday, and we took the train in from Massapequa Park to see him. When Tony sang, ‘My Heart Beats in Manhattan,’ I wept. I felt as if I was in the presence of greatness. Tony’s God-given talent was just so inspiring and overwhelming.”
“And for how many years after that night when you first saw Tony Molina in concert did you consider yourself an unabashed fan?” the prosecutor asked, leaning forward and placing her small hands on the witness box.
“My whole life. I saw all his movies and collected all his music. When I opened my first restaurant in the East Village, I invented a dish called steak Molina, named after him. Even now, seeing him sitting over there, my heart is racing and I’m . . . uh . . . well . . . I’m tongue-tied.”
The prosecutor chuckled. “That’s very sweet. But you are famous in your own right, are you not?”
“I’m just a chef lucky enough to have a few successful restaurants around the country, and who also gets to judge a cable TV food competition show for three months out of the year. Tony Molina is a legend. He’ll be remembered for generations. . . .”
Poppy Harmon, who was juror number four, was perched in the front row of the jury box. She glanced over to where Tony Molina was seated next to his defense team—three high-powered, impeccably dressed sharks. They all stared at the prosecutor, pretending to be unimpressed with her talents as an attorney. Poppy couldn’t help but notice how handsome Tony Molina, now in his midsixties, still was. He didn’t appear to be nervous that he was on trial. In fact, he seemed almost relaxed.
Tony noticed Poppy looking at him. He gave her a sexy smile and a suggestive wink. She quickly averted her eyes back to Chef Cicci, who was still testifying.
“. . . Which is why it’s so heartbreaking what happened,” Chef Cicci said quietly, lowering his head and looking down at his feet in the witness box.
“Were you expecting Mr. Molina to come into your restaurant that night?” the prosecutor asked.
Chef Cicci nodded and slowly glanced back up. “Yes, his assistant had made a reservation earlier in the day. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I wasn’t even supposed to be at the restaurant that night. My parents were having a party celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. But I cancelled because there was no way I was going to miss preparing a dish for the Mr. Tony Molina!”
“You sacrificed your parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary party to cook for Mr. Molina?” the prosecutor asked, glancing wide eyed at the jury, as if she was surprised to hear this news and hadn’t worked it into her prepared questioning of the witness.
“Yes. Of course, my parents understood. They knew how much I loved Tony . . . I mean Mr. Molina.”
Poppy glanced back over to Tony, who sat up straight, a stoic look on his face.
The prosecutor also looked over at Molina and shook her head, disgusted, before returning her attention back to Chef Cicci. “Take us through what happened after Mr. Molina arrived with his party.”
“Well, I greeted them personally and offered them drinks on the house. He was there with his wife. . . .”
“Tofu.”
“Yes.”
Poppy thought Chef Cicci had suddenly shifted gears to talk about what everyone had ordered before remembering that Tony Molina was married to a woman named Tofu, a songstress best known for singing the theme song from a Timothy Dalton–era James Bond movie. Like Cher, Rihanna, and Beyoncé, Tofu had at one time been popular enough to go by just one name. Tofu was not in attendance for the trial. In fact, the only family member present was Tony’s handsome twenty-something son from his first marriage, Dominick. He sat in the gallery, dutifully loyal with a look of dismay on his face, as if he could not believe his poor father had to go through all this drama.
Chef Cicci continued his testimony. “There was also his business manager, Mr. Kurtzman; and the stand-up comedian who always opens for him whose name I forget. . . .”
“Robby Stone,” the prosecutor offered helpfully.
“Yes, right, Mr. Stone. Oh, and also Mr. Molina’s two bodyguards, a man and a woman. I remember thinking how cool it was that Tony invited two of his employees to have dinner with him. It struck me as very nice and—”
The prosecutor was not happy with Chef Cicci complimenting the accused, so she promptly cut him off. “Then what happened?”
“I had some calamari sent over and told one of my waitresses, Mary Grace, to go over and take their order. Mr. Molina ordered the steak, not the steak Molina that I had named after him that is on all my menus at all my restaurants. He ordered the steak bordelaise, which is a New York steak with sautéed mushrooms, garlic, and a red wine demi-glace sauce.”
“And how did he request his steak be prepared?”
Chef Cicci frowned. “Medium well.”
“And was the steak medium well when it was served to Mr. Molina?”
Chef Cicci shrugged. “I thought it was. It was slightly pink when I last checked it and so I prepared the plate and gave it to Mary Grace to take it out to him.”
The prosecutor folded her arms and shot Tony Molina a knowing look. “What happened next?”
“The next thing I knew Mr. Molina came storming into the kitchen. He was carrying the steak in his hand and started screaming at me that I had overcooked it. Then he threw it against the wall. I thought he was going to bean our busboy Raul in the head but luckily the steak missed him by a few inches.”
“But you were not so lucky as Raul, were you, Chef?”
Chef Cicci glanced around at all the people in the courtroom, embarrassed. “No. I tried to apologize to Mr. Molina and I started to tell him that I would cook him a new steak, but he wasn’t interested in listening to anything I had to say at that point. . . .”
“What did Mr. Molina do?”
“He . . . he picked up a frying pan that was on the stove top and he hit me on the head with it,” Chef Cicci muttered.
Poppy looked around at her fellow jurors, all of whom, by the luck of the draw during jury selection, were men. She was the lone woman on the entire jury. Most of them had appalled looks on their faces as they listened to Chef Cicci recount the assault at his restaurant on the night in question, aptly named Cicci’s, one of the more popular Italian eateries in Palm Springs.
“Did he hit you really hard or, as the defense maintains, just tap you with it to show his displeasure?” the prosecutor asked with a smirk on her face because she was already acutely aware of his answer.
“He hit me kind of hard.”
“How hard, Chef?”
“The blow knocked me out cold,” he said softly.
“In fact, when you awoke hours later, you were in a hospital room, is that correct?”
Chef Cicci nodded and sighed, “Yes, ma’am.”
“The doctors informed you that you had a concussion!”
“That’s right.”
“All because Mr. Molina was unhappy with his steak!”
Poppy saw Tony Molina shifting uncomfortably in his chair as he rested his elbow on the table and cupped his hand underneath his chin as he gazed with sad, regretful eyes at Chef Cicci, perched in the witness box.
Chef Cicci noticed and appeared to be devastated that he had just delivered such damning testimony against his favorite singer in the world.
Poppy also liked Tony Molina. She must have played one of his ballads, “Lovely Girl,” a million times when it first came out in the late seventies. But now, the bloom was definitely off the rose because she staunchly believed Chef Cicci’s version of events. And the fiery prosecutor had already informed them during her opening statement that she would call to the stand Raul the busboy and a few other kitchen staff who were in the kitchen at the time of the incident to back up his story.
“Nothing further, Your Honor,” the prosecutor bellowed as she whirled around, threw one more disgusted look at the defendant, and crossed back to her table.
Judge Linscott, a dapper, refined, friendly man, leaned forward and in a sweet, unassuming voice said to the jury, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s ten minutes to five so I am going to wrap this up for the day. We will resume tomorrow at nine o’clock. Please do not discuss any of the particulars of this case with anyone, not even with each other, until after closing arguments when you begin deliberations. Is that clear?”
Poppy nodded, as did the eleven men sitting with her in the jury box.
“Have a lovely evening,” the judge said before banging his gavel. “We’re adjourned.”
As she stood up to leave, Poppy couldn’t resist peeking one last time over at Tony Molina, who was now on his feet, conferring with his three high-priced lawyers. Almost as if on cue, his head turned and he focused right in on her and offered a dazzling smile. No doubt a bid to charm the lone female on the jury. Fearing the judge might notice her gawking star-struck at the incredibly handsome defendant, she quickly turned away and ran right into the back of juror number seven.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she filed out of the courtroom, determined to follow the judge’s instructions and not discuss the case with anyone, least of all her friend Iris Becker, who just happened to be the biggest Tony Molina fan on the planet. Iris had made no secret that she was supremely jealous that it was Poppy and not her who had received the fateful jury duty summons that had landed her on the high-profile criminal trial of her favorite celebrity.