Carole Ann recalled in vivid detail the two weeks she spent in bed healing from the aftermath of having solved Al’s murder: from the physical beating she’d taken from Leland Devereaux; from the mental and emotional anguish of losing her husband; from the spiritual devastation wrought by the entire experience. It was Tante Sadie who had made her body whole again, and offered as yet underutilized tools for healing her battered spirit.
Finally, when it was well past midnight, Grayce, who’d been bathed in a Tante Sadie potion, was drowsy enough to fall asleep, and the rest of them, Carole Ann included, were relaxed enough to think sleep possible. Roberta, who had the largest house, offered lodging to both Tommy and Warren, and only Carole Ann witnessed and read the look the two men exchanged before Tommy accepted the offer and Warren gracefully declined it.
“I’ll bunk here on the couch. Tante Sadie made me promise to give Aunt Grayce a cup of this tea every two hours, and she’ll have my head if I fail.” He grinned when he said it, and Carole Ann knew it to be the truth. She knew also that he remained because he needed to talk to her. Jake would have sent her information and instructions and Warren, because he was a lawyer, would be the conduit. Also, by remaining close to Grayce, he’d be close to Carole Ann and Angie. Tommy, the ex-cop and current security specialist and “muscle,” would be Roberta’s protector—and Luisa’s.
Carole Ann shivered. She hadn’t thought of Luisa in several hours and the sudden acknowledgment of the woman’s day-long absence inspired a chilling discomfort. Something about Luisa was very wrong, Carole Ann was certain. She considered the possibility that the grandson was holding her hostage, and had only partially convinced herself of the absurdity of such speculation when she realized that Tommy had been speaking to her and that she hadn’t heard him.
“I’m sorry, Fish. My mind was wandering.”
“Yeah, and what else is new?” he growled at her in a most uncharitable fashion.
“That’s not fair!” she exclaimed, truly wounded.
“Whatever,” he said, dismissively and defensively, and she understood that she had wounded him.
“Fish,” Carole Ann said, taking his arm and walking to the door with him, away from the crowd, “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Luisa. Worrying, really.”
He put an arm around her and his handsome features scrunched into a frown. “Me, too. Why isn’t she here? I thought you said your mom and her three pals were the glue sisters.”
Carole Ann giggled and squeezed his arm and gave him an abbreviated version of the grandson story, which creased his facial features even more deeply.
“I don’t like the sound of that worth a damn,” he said, and then quickly changed the subject. “Jake says we gotta get your computer and discs and files out of that car trunk ASAP. Where can we go at daybreak that won’t arouse suspicion?”
“Jogging, then to the gym for a workout,” Carole Ann answered without hesitation.
“Good. See you at seven,” he said, and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s from Valerie,” he said almost shyly. “She said she misses you and to hurry home.”
Carole Ann hugged him tightly, not trusting herself to speak. Jake was right. Damn him! Jake always was right. It didn’t matter where she was. What mattered were the people in her life.
By the time she’d been listening to him for the better part of an hour, Warren Forchette had frozen all her warm, fuzzy feelings. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, she was meeting Tommy at seven, and here was Warren explaining to her in crystal-clear legalese why her actions of the previous night were indefensible.
“I take one look at Aunt Grayce and know I would have done exactly what you did. I think of my own mother, of my sister, of Tante Sadie, and know that I would kill without hesitation to protect them. I look at the fact, however, that you deliberately, intentionally, and with forethought, determined not only to conceal your crime, but to tamper with the crime scene and the evidence.”
“Dammit, Warren, I explained to you—”
“I know what you said, C.A.! And I understand what you were thinking and feeling. What I’m trying to get you to see is that we’re capsized in the bayou and the gators are aroused.”
“So now I’m fish bait,” she snarled at him, and only just caught his suppressed grin and chuckle. That he could find humor in her situation worried her, frightened her, and upset her very delicate equilibrium. She began to shake, to shiver, suddenly freezing, and she could not stop. She wrapped her arms around herself and compressed her lips to quell their quivering.
Warren jumped up from his almost horizontal position on the floor and grabbed her into a tight, warming embrace. She resisted initially, tried to pull away. But he held on and after a few moments, she ceased her struggle. She released into him and lost sense of time and place, though she remained very aware of the thudding of her heart and the shaking of her body. He held her without speaking until her body calmed itself.
“I... I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he snorted, amazement full in his tone. “For not having taken the time to grieve?”
She backed out of his embrace and rapidly rubbed her hands together, aware that she really was cold. “What on earth are you talking about, Warren? Grieve?” She made no effort or attempt to disguise the contempt in her voice. “I’m exhausted and I’m cold.”
“You’re emotionally distraught, C.A., and you’re feeling the effects of not having grieved for your husband.”
“Oh, shut up, Warren! You don’t know what you’re talking about! All I’ve done for the last thirteen months is grieve!”
He took a deep breath and measured the weight and space of his words. “What you’ve done, C.A., is mourn, and you haven’t done that consistently. Two months after Al’s murder you were in New Orleans looking for his killer. In the process, you took the kind of beating some people don’t ever recover from. In fact, you almost didn’t.”
“Stop it! The truth is painful enough without embellishment.”
“The truth is, you almost died. Why do you think Tante Sadie sat by your bed for forty-eight consecutive hours?” He was standing looking out the window, his back to her, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “Then there was the media fallout after Leland and Larry were arrested. Then it was Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year, time you spent in airports, running from your mother’s house to your brother’s house to Dave’s house to Lil’s house. And now here you are, a year after Al’s death, in the middle of another traumatic situation—you saved your mother from being beaten to death—and you haven’t dealt with the first trauma yet. You’re on the verge of collapse, C.A.”
“And how do you know so much about it?” she asked him, feeling that he really did know something that she didn’t.
“I’ve been there,” he said.
“So,” she said with studied nonchalance, “tell me all about it and then I’ll be as cool as you, Mr. Cucumber.”
He raised an eyebrow at her—she’d never seen him do that and was quite impressed—and lowered his already basso profundo into even lower reaches. “Tell you for free what it cost me three years and enough in therapists’ fees to buy a new fishing boat? Not a chance, kiddo,” he said. Then he grinned at her. “Oh, all right. I’ll tell you one little thing. And it’s this: Grieving is a process. Doesn’t happen all at once. Sometimes, you don’t even know it’s happening. But it’s like negotiating a minefield. Some days you blow your ass to Kingdom Come, and some days you tiptoe through the tulips.” Strangely enough, his silliness lightened her mood.
“So, Counselor, what am I gonna do?”
“See a therapist,” he said, so surprised that she laughed at him.
“About my legal, criminal predicament, Warren, not my emotional one,” she said.
“Oh. That. We’re gonna throw ourselves on the mercy of the best criminal defense attorney on the West Coast,” he said, and stifled a yawn. “Do you
know Addie Allen?”
Carole Ann shook her head.
“Well, she’s the West Coast version of you, only meaner.”
“I’m not mean!”
“The hell you’re not,” Warren said matter-of-factly. “But she makes you look like the tooth fairy.” And he told her everything he knew about Adelaide Allen, his classmate at Howard University Law School, which was considerable. And formidable.
“I don’t think I want to meet this woman,” Carole Ann said almost meekly.
“You’re gonna do more than meet her,” Warren said, this time not bothering to stifle the yawn. “You’re gonna hire her.” And he kicked off his shoes, removed his shirt, lay down on the couch, pulled the blanket over him, and fell deeply asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Tommy was comfortably at ease behind the wheel of the silver Benz. He’d adjusted the seat and the mirrors; had inserted a compact disc into the player (he’d brought his CD carrying case because he just knew, he said, this car would have a CD player); had donned his designer sunglasses and studied himself in the mirror; and had studied the map so he wouldn’t need to rely on Carole Ann for directions. He drove quickly and surely out of the Jacaranda Estates front gate, showing only the slightest interest in the activity on the playground. He glanced frequently into the rearview and side-view mirrors but it wasn’t until he powered the car forward onto the freeway that he announced, nonchalantly, that they were being followed.
“Don’t turn around, C.A.!” he snapped, even as she caught herself just before making such a silly error.
“Who do you think it is?” she asked.
He raised his eyes to the rearview mirror again. “Cops,” he said, a little dryly, she thought, knowing that he still smarted at having been dismissed from the D.C. police department. “It’s a decent tail job. You probably wouldn’t have picked it up,” he said casually, then glanced sideways at her to receive the evil eye he knew would be directed at him. And he laughed when she obliged.
“What should we do?” Carole Ann asked, fighting off the urge to turn around and search out who was following them.
Tommy shrugged. “Nothing we can do. This isn’t TV, C.A., where you make one-hundred-eighty-degree turns on the expressway to lose a tail. We’d just get a ticket. Besides,” he said, slightly increasing the volume to the Marvin Gaye tune in the CD player, “I don’t care if they know where we’re going. But I sure as hell would like to know why they’re on us.”
They rode in silence briefly before discussing how they would transfer Carole Ann’s files and computer into the empty gym bags they’d tossed into the trunk for that purpose, then Tommy used the remainder of the crosstown drive to explain the inexplicable: Why he and Jake believed that the L.A. police department was working some kind of undercover operation at Jacaranda Estates.
“That’s the only plausible explanation for them ignoring serial homicides,” he said.
“There can be no plausible explanation for ignoring serial homicides, Tommy,” Carole Ann said, “and you can tell Jake Graham I said so.”
She felt him stiffen beside her. “You may not like it, C.A., but there can be lots of explanations, plausible or not. What’s not acceptable,” he said, raising a hand to halt the objection she was preparing, “what’s not acceptable is the failure to protect the people. That means, Jake says, that whoever is running the undercover op is doing it half-assed. Either it’s off the books or it’s so secret that nobody can be trusted to know about it.”
Carole Ann frowned. “What could be that secret?” she asked, her imagination failing to conjure up a top-secret or undercover operation with Jacaranda Estates as its location.
“Jake came up with a couple of possibilities, but they don’t really fit the scenery.” And after she listened to him talk about gun running and drug smuggling and fencing stolen property, and sounding so much like Jake she had to keep sneaking sideways glances at him to make sure it was Tommy, she was more wary than before.
“Jake really thinks something like that is going on here?”
Tommy nodded. “He says it’s the only explanation for the LAPD to look so shaky. You know Jake. The last thing he wants to hear is that the police department is corrupt.”
She nodded. She knew Jake didn’t miss the stress of being a cop, but she also knew that he’d forever be a cop in his heart. “Let’s play out one of his scenarios. How would it work?”
“The crime itself wouldn’t happen there, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Tommy said, looking in his mirrors and shifting lanes. “In the case of gun running, for instance, there’d be some upstanding resident of Jacaranda Estates who would go to work, go to church, go shopping—all as usual. Be pleasant to the neighbors. Walk his dog. Whatever. All the while stockpiling weapons stolen from military bases. Until it was time to deliver. Then he’d back a truck up to the door late one night, load all the guns under cover of darkness, and off he’d go.”
“And the undercover cops, who’d been watching and waiting for this night, would spring their trap,” C.A. reasoned.
“You got it,” Tommy agreed. “And those undercover cops who were waiting for this night would dare anybody or anything to get in their way. This location would be hands off. Do you know how much time and work go into setting up an operation like that?”
“But logistically, something like that could never work at Jacaranda Estates,” Carole Ann said.
“Right,” Tommy said with a terse nod. “Same thing with fencing: No way to get the merchandise in and out without notice. And a drug smuggler would be too noticeable.”
“Let’s suppose, though,” she said slowly, forcing her thoughts to slow their pace, “that there is some kind of an undercover operation under way. Wouldn’t a couple of murders make somebody nervous enough to shut it down—even for a short while—and at least pay lip service to an investigation of those crimes?”
“In Brentwood or Bel Air or Beverly Hills, yeah,” he said, with a coldness of tone that chilled her. “But not in Jacaranda Estates.”
Carole Ann rode the remainder of the way to Venice Beach in empty silence, unwilling still to confront the truth that she had been avoiding for weeks: That her mother and the other Jacaranda Estates residents were twice victims—of the violence that was destroying their community, and of a system that denigrated them for the color of their skin and their lack of material wealth.
While she ran beside the Pacific Ocean in the early-morning chill and fog, she assessed her agreement with Jake that the only possible explanation for the casual attitude of the LAPD was that a task force investigation would ruin an established undercover operation. She could even imagine that Jacaranda Estates would be a perfect location to conceal a crime of some kind, and for a secret police surveillance. The question was, what kind of crime? And how important could it be that the police would allow citizens to believe that their safety was being ignored?
Carole Ann was tense, edgy, and distant when she and Warren arrived at Addie Allen’s office later that afternoon, and it was only noticing that the two gym bags that she and Tommy had left with Robbie at the gym—the bags containing her computer and files—now resided on the floor in a corner of the lawyer’s cramped and cluttered office, helped her ease out of what she knew was an unnecessarily bad attitude. She, of all people, knew that meeting one’s attorney for the first time in a combative frame of mind could only be disastrous.
Because she thought she’d had no preconceived notions of what to expect, Carole Ann was shocked at how surprised she was to discover that Addie Allen was tiny when the lawyer came from behind her massive desk to greet her newest client. Barely five feet tall, no more than one hundred pounds, she was dressed exactly like a friend of Warren’s would be dressed—in baggy, faded jeans, a white tee shirt beneath a crisp, starched white oxford shirt, and white sneakers. Large, black-framed glasses dwarfed her tiny face, and Carole Ann expected that they were a prop, a shield, a defen
se. And a mechanism to make her appear older, for she wore her silver- streaked hair in a long ponytail that cascaded down her back, and without the props—the desk and the glasses—she’d look like a kid pretending to be grown up. There also was something vaguely familiar about her, Carole Ann felt. Nothing tangible. Just...familiar.
The two women shook hands and Addie Allen resumed her position in the chair behind her desk, opened a yellow legal pad, and looked expectantly at Carole Ann, who was annoyed to find herself nervous. She sank down onto the sofa next to Warren. He touched her arm gently, then pulled away. Carole Ann could feel him retreat, leaving her alone with the woman who was her attorney. With the woman who was meaner than herself. She began talking.
Addie wrote and listened for as long as Carole Ann talked, which was for almost an hour. She then asked three simple, blunt questions about the fatal fight and her responses, and Carole Ann thought, without the slightest rancor, She’s better than I am.
“I’m sure I don’t tell you anything you don’t already know when I say, Miss Gibson, that our challenge is to retain your license to practice law in California. I’m not worried, nor should you be, about any lasting criminal charges or penalties, though the short-term repercussions of your actions will be a pain in the ass to deal with. But the bar association here, like bar associations everywhere, prides itself on having and following its own lead.”
She paused and fixed Carole Ann in a penetrating stare, one as intimidating as her own, and Carole Ann almost blinked. “I’m honored to have you as a client, Miss Gibson. But let there be no misunderstanding: You are the client. If we’re going to work together, we do it my way. Understood and agreed?”
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