Tuesday's Child

by Fern Michaels

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The shrewd blue eyes focused on Jay. Hughes nodded.

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

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

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

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

  Jay rolled his eyes. Kala looked skeptical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 5

  KALA ADJUSTED HER SUNGLASSES, THEN REALIZED IT WAS THE sun umbrella on her terrace that needed adjusting. She loved the sun, the warmth it generated. She always felt like she could do anything, accomplish anything when the sun was out. Her Hawaiian heritage, she supposed. She craned her neck to look through the sliding doors to the giant hand-carved teak clock over her mantel, a gift from a grateful client years ago. A clock that had never lost a second of accuracy in all the time it had been hanging over her mantel. Twelve minutes past noon.

  The ham-and-cheese sandwich on the plate that she’d fixed earlier didn’t tempt her. She wasn’t hungry, but no matter; if she suddenly got hungry, it was there for her. Maybe if Ben were there, she would have eaten it, but Ben said he was going nuts sitting around waiting for news. By news he meant Adam Star, and he also refused to refer to the waiting game as a death watch. Golf was his answer. Her answer was just to sit and wait. It was three weeks to the day that Adam Star had walked into her office and turned her world upside down.

  So, there she was, alone, waiting for word. She eyed the pitcher of ice tea. The ice had almost completely melted. Well, what could you expect with the temperature in the low nineties?

  Soft music wafted through the French doors, which she had left ajar. She did love the golden oldies, and so did Ben. Oftentimes they danced out here in the cool evenings after the sun went down. Ben was a romantic. So was she. At times. Soft music and balmy breezes always made her think of back home. Her game plan after the six-month vacation with Ben was to head that way and reclaim her roots. She wished now she had told Ben of her plans, but something inside her warned her that the timing wasn’t quite right. She would, of course, extend the invitation for him to join her, but he had so many friends here, she seriously doubted he would give up his present life even for her. She needed to go home, that was the bottom line. Her family had made it possible for her to go to the mainland at an early age, to attend college, then law school. It was time to take her place in the family clan.

  Perhaps out of guilt, perhaps not. She thought of it as guilt because while her family had been wealthy, the inheritance always went to the sons. The females were provided for, and her brothers had certainly seen to that by shipping her off to the mainland for an education. Back then, she’d thought of it as being banished from the clan, which was far from the truth.

  The Aulani coffee plantation was the largest on the island and managed by her brothers and their children. It was beyond profitable. The brothers, forward thinkers, had dropped the old ways, the old customs, after a typhoon wiped out the plantation, but not before a fungus attacked the coffee-bean plants. The insurance they carried was a mere drop in the bucket for the amount of money they needed to go on. With nowhere to turn but to their sister, Kala handed over all her savings, then borrowed money to get the plantation up and running again. Today, the Aulani plantation was a major source of coffee in the US. She never regretted even for a moment the hardships she’d had to endure to make sure the plantation survived. For many, many years now, she received a full share of the profits because her brothers were fair. A house in Lahaina had been turned over to her, her grandmother’s house, right on the ocean. Her brothers, their sons, the neighbors, and the workers from the plantation had refurbished the large five-bedroom house and added on to it after they bought up the two adjoining properties and made it into one. While it wasn’t palatial, it was darn close to it. They said it was an act of love for her, and she believed them because, when it came right down to it, family was all that mattered in their world—her world as well. She loved going back home, loved waking up to the sound of the surf, seeing the palms swaying, hearing the rustle of the wind, staring for hours at her banyan tree, the biggest and the oldest on the island, and it was all hers. She loved the way the Hawaiian sun kissed her entire body and made her feel at peace. She hungered for that feeling.

  If there was a way to get out of the six-month trip that she and Ben had planned for four years, she’d do it in a heartbeat. She knew she wouldn’t really do it because she had promised Ben she would take the trip, and she never broke a promise. That wasn’t exactly true, she fretted. She’d broken one promise, and that was the promise to Sophie Lee that she would successfully defend her so that she would be free. She never knew to this d
ay if Sophie held that broken promise against her or not.

  Kala didn’t know how it happened or when it happened, but slowly, over the year she’d spent preparing Sophie’s defense, the young woman had come to be like a daughter to her. She still, to this day, thought of her that way. Jay had told her once that Sophie, who was an orphan, said that knowing Kala was like having a mother. She’d cried when Jay told her that. She still teared up when she thought of Sophie locked up for the rest of her life.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Soon, she’d be free. Free! God, how wonderful that was going to be for Sophie.

  Kala looked down at the dried-out sandwich, at the pitcher of almost lukewarm ice tea. She sighed as she got up and carried it all into the kitchen. She might as well go to the office and pester Jay and Linda. She grimaced at the thought. Jay had threatened to kick her fanny out the door if she showed up again. Well, let him try.

  Kala did a quick check of her makeup, her linen pantsuit that was so wrinkled it looked like she’d slept in it, her hair, and her sandals. She shrugged. Linen was supposed to look wrinkled. She headed out to her SUV, a Porsche Cayenne, and headed for the office. She only drove her little convertible when she wanted to show off. She much preferred the safety of the big SUV with all the crazy drivers on the road. Her cell phone rang just as she shifted gears to back out of her driveway. She had many rules when it came to driving. First and foremost, no drinking and driving. Nor would she use her cell phone or text while driving. Nothing was more important than keeping her eyes on the road, and the person could and would call back at some point. And last, never speed, always obey the law. Kala lived her life by rules, always had and always would. Besides, it was probably Ben just calling to check in. Something he did without fail when they were apart. She only wished she was half as diligent as he was.