The overweight, oversized cat climbed up on her lap and settled himself. He purred contentedly, his own morning symphony. Stroking his thick fur, Kala smiled as she wondered how he would like living in Hawaii.
Even though it was almost time to head for the office, Kala remained fully relaxed. As long as she was there for her ten o’clock appointment with Ryan Spenser, she still had time to sit right where she was. It wasn’t too hot yet, but the heat would be unbearable in a few hours. Earlier, she’d heard on the news that it would be in the mid-nineties, with 100 percent humidity. She didn’t mind the heat, but she hated the humidity, mainly because her hair frizzed up. Maybe she should think about cutting her tresses, but long hair was a Hawaiian tradition.
Last night, before she’d gone to bed, she called Sophie for their daily check-in, and Sophie had been getting a haircut, courtesy of a cousin, out in the lanai. Sophie had gone on and on about the cousin saving the twelve inches of hair she cut off to donate to cancer patients for wigs. She said she now had golden highlights in her hair, a fashionable cut, which the cousin called a skullcap haircut, meaning Sophie’s hair was clipped short so it could curl naturally. “I look smashing, Kala,” Sophie had said, giggling. “And you know what else, Kala? I think I could enter a swim contest and have a good showing. I took it as a real compliment when Kiki said I could swim almost as well as he could. His arms are longer than mine, and so are his legs. And when I gave him a lei I made, he said it was as good as the ones Mally made.”
“I’m so happy to hear that, Sophie. You’ve come a long way in a few short weeks. I’m very proud of you. Just a few more days, kiddo, and you can do whatever you want to do. Just be patient, okay?”
“I am. I am.” Sophie’s voice had turned serious at that point. “I’m not sure I want to leave here. I love it here. Do you think maybe I was meant to come here and stay?”
“Only if you stay for the right reasons. If you’re planning on staying to hide out, to feel safe and secure, then, no, that’s not a good reason. You have to make your way back into the world you left behind. Slow and easy, honey.”
Kala stirred then; the cat hissed and climbed down off her lap. “What? You thought I was going to sit here all day and listen to you purr so I fall asleep? I have things to do and places to go, Shakespeare.” And she did have things to do and places to go.
“Now I have cat hair all over me,” Kala grumbled as she carried her breakfast dishes into the kitchen, the huge cat behind her. She quickly ran what she called her cat roller over her clothes to remove the cat hair. “I’m good to go, Shaky. You be a good boy till I get back, and do not, I repeat, do not, shred those new curtains. If you do, you are only getting dry cat food from here on in. You need to go on a diet anyway.”
The monster cat, not liking his mistress’s tone, hissed, his favorite thing to do, and sashayed his way into the living room and his favorite chair, where he would sleep until Kala returned home—unless, of course, the new curtains became irresistible.
Kala looked at the clock. She had plenty of time but only if she hit all the green lights. Well, if she was late, she was sure that Spenser would wait for her. Purse on her shoulder, briefcase in one hand, car keys in the other, Kala entered the garage through the kitchen door. “Oh, crap!” she said, as she saw the sacks of mail and the evidence box waiting for her. She’d have to drive the SUV, which was sitting in the driveway, instead of her little convertible. She gathered up the evidence box Patty had left along with the sacks of mail and dumped the box on the passenger side of the SUV. She closed the door, wincing at the sight of the mail bags. Maybe she’d get to them over the weekend. If not, oh, well. Life wouldn’t come to a standstill if she didn’t, that was for sure.
Thirty minutes later, hitting the traffic lights just right, Kala parked her SUV and made her way to her offices without seeing even one reporter. As always, the firm was a beehive of activity. She waved to everyone and headed down the hall to her office. She passed Patty, two of her temporary investigators in tow.
“She does look like a powerhouse,” one of the two said.
“It’s true, then, that she does wear a white hibiscus in her hair,” his female counterpart said in awe. “White is for victory, and red means she’s going to war. Right, Patty?”
“You got it! Today is a victory day for her and this firm, and especially for Sophie Lee.”
Patty wished she’d made that particular meeting for a little later so she could witness Ryan Spenser’s arrival. Oh, well, she’d hear about it, she was sure, in glorious detail, from Linda. She closed the door, sat down, looked at her two novice investigators, and said, “Talk to me.”
The blonde, whose name was Beth, said, “You aren’t going to like what we have to tell you, but here goes. Bill and I,” she said, indicating her partner, “picked Ryan Spenser to investigate. We did Webcam interviews, Skype, and some personal interviews, plus what we were able to pluck off the Internet. We drew up a report, but we can brief you now. Ryan Spenser is as clean and white as the driven snow. That’s the bottom line. Now, we’ll go backward in time to when he was born.”
Bill looked down at his notes. Mother’s name Adelina Avery. She was a debutante, never worked a day in her life. Family money came from tobacco. She inherited, along with her brother, a fortune. She married Ryan Spenser Senior at the age of eighteen. Ryan senior’s money came from cotton and tea. An excellent merger. Ryan Junior is an only child. Nurses and nannies until he was six. At age six and one half, he was sent to an all boys’ school. You know the kind, with a headmaster, et cetera. He came home holidays and summers, and in summers was sent to camp until it was time to go back to school. Holidays were whatever the nurses and nannies could conjure up for him. Parents were usually off somewhere during holidays. Ryan was left to himself. He had no friends at his home base, the Spenser plantation. No cousins to play with. The nanny and staff were all he had in the way of affection and nurturing. His very first nanny is in an assisted-living facility, and while she might be old and frail, her memory is very sharp. The way she summed it up was, the little tyke had a boatload of love and affection and no one to give it to. She said he was an obedient and kind little boy. She said to this day Ryan Spenser sends her birthday and Christmas cards and gifts. And he goes to see her at least twice a year, usually around Mother’s Day. And, of course, he always brings a gift. He takes her out to lunch in her wheelchair and they spend a pleasant day. She says she thinks he pays for part of her care at the facility but isn’t sure. She said she made sure that, when Ryan was home from boarding school, the staff always put Ryan first on their agenda. And, of course, she did the same. As he grew older, nothing changed except that the parents wanted to terminate her employment, but young Ryan would not allow it.
“She also said he called her in the dayroom—that’s where the residents can receive phone calls—last week, and told her not to believe anything they were saying about him on television. She said she assured him that she already knew he did none of the things he was being accused of. That’s pretty much all she had to say. Her name is Margaret Tynedale, and she allowed young Ryan to call her Mama Margie while he was in her care. He still calls her that to this day. Oh, one other thing. She said she stayed on at the Spenser mansion until young Ryan turned eighteen and went off to college. Then the Spensers retired her with a very nice pension.”
Patty digested what she’d just heard. “Doesn’t sound like our boy had a very nice childhood.”
“She said something else, too,” Beth interjected, looking at her notes. “Miss Tynedale said from the time she started working for the Spensers until Ryan turned eighteen, the boy’s parents never spent more than twenty-four hours with him during any given year. That’s in a year, Ms. Molnar.”
Bill picked up. “We did a Webcam with a few of his friends, who turned out to be more acquaintances than friends. And all three said Ryan had no close friends—you know, the kind that hang out getting a beer or going to ball games. Always
a gentleman, dated but nothing serious. Helped tutor a few students who needed outside help. For free. No one had a bad thing to say about him.”
It was Beth’s turn again. “The same thing at law school. Graduated second in his class, summa cum laude. No family members attended any of his graduations. I verified that with Miss Tynedale, and she said it was absolutely true, but she said that she and the staff always made sure to send cards and a gift.”
Bill shuffled his papers, and said, “When he passed the bar, he applied for a job at the District Attorney’s Office, and they snapped him up. His father was already in Washington by then, and his mother was more distant than ever. The father wanted him to set up a white-shoe firm in the District of Columbia and become a force for politicians. Ryan would have none of it; he wanted to live and work in Georgia. His trust fund kicked in when he was twenty-five. He bought himself a penthouse apartment and a sports car, and sent Miss Tynedale on a two-week Caribbean cruise.”
It was Beth’s turn. “There was never a hint of scandal with Ryan. As far as we could tell, he never made a trip to Washington to see his father. Never. He also, as far as we could tell, never returned to the Spenser mansion, even on holidays. One of his staff said he was a workaholic. He had a few short-lived relationships, nothing serious.”
Bill closed one notebook and opened another. “Though most of his staff do not like the guy, they had to admit that he was a hard-ass but fair. Getting praise or a compliment from him was like pulling teeth. He liked to win, and when he lost, he pored over the transcripts for days, trying to figure out what had gone wrong and whether he could correct it in the future. He was vain as hell, liked publicity, and as everyone knows, was good before the camera. Outside the office, he was a very charismatic guy, and the media loved him.”
Beth leaned back in her chair. “This is the part you really are not going to like. No one knows it but Miss Tynedale and a few board members of a club he started up. He started a camp for underprivileged children. We checked this out six ways to Sunday, and it’s all on the up and up. The camp runs from May till the middle of September. He goes to the camp every weekend unless he’s in the middle of a trial. He does his share, helps cook, gives swimming lessons, is a big brother to all the boys. This is the best part, though. The counselors are all older women, motherly and grandmotherly types who tuck the kids in at night, read stories to them, and generally act as mothers and grandmothers away from home. The kids, I was told, eat it up like they are starved for love and affection. One of the groundskeepers said they’re going to expand the facility, starting in September, when the camp closes.
“Needless to say, no one had a bad word to say about Ryan Spenser. The thing is, this camp is a secret. We both went back to talk to Miss Tynedale and asked her if she knew about it, and she said yes, but Ryan had sworn her to secrecy. She cried when she said she wished she could have been a grandmother to all those lost little children. She also said Ryan took her out there last year, on Memorial Day, so she could see the first batch of kids. She said she loved every minute of that all-day visit and didn’t want to leave. She said Ryan was so good with the kids, had the patience of Job.”
“And that’s all you guys got, just all that smothery good stuff?” Patty asked, outraged that nothing bad was in the report.
There was a definite chill in both investigators’ voices when they said maybe it was because there wasn’t anything bad to find, and Ryan Spenser wasn’t the devil he was being made out to be.
They said the words with such conviction, Patty winced, setting her back on her heels. She had to wonder if maybe the investigators were right. She forced a smile on her face, thanked them, and dismissed both of them. “See if the others need any extra help and pitch in if they do. Leave your reports.”
The chill stayed behind as the two law students left the office. Patty felt lower than a skunk’s belly for a few minutes. She read through the reports, speed-reading natural for her. Then she looked at the clock and realized she had a few minutes until Ryan Spenser was due.
Patty ran down the hall to Kala’s office. She slammed through the doors, and said, “Read all of this before you meet with Spenser, okay? Stall him if you have to but, Kala, you need to read this.”
Kala reared back in the chair with its cracked leather. Her eyes narrowed as her fingers went automatically to the white hibiscus in her hair. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“No, Kala, you are not going to like it.”
Chapter 21
LIKE PATTY, KALA WAS USED TO SPEED-READING. SHE WENT through the investigative report quickly, digesting the gist of it all, then went back and reread what she’d breezed through. If all this was true, and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t, Spenser certainly kept his real persona under wraps. She thought about the picture of the two of them in the ornate frame he’d given her for her retirement party. She wished now that she hadn’t thrown it away. Maybe it was still in the trash basket. She made a mental note to check on it since she wasn’t big on emptying wastepaper baskets.
What to make of this? Spenser had two lives. His personal one and his professional one. Well, most people did. So what? He’d still put Sophie Lee in prison for life without the possibility of parole. That was what So what? meant. The wind taken out of her sails for the moment, Kala got up and walked over to the window. There was no stellar view, just the street and a portion of the small parking lot that carried through to the entrance of the underground parking garage.
Kala turned around and looked at the white hibiscus bloom she’d tossed on her desk. She walked over, picked it up, touched the petals, then dropped it in the wastebasket.
Rarely was Kala unsure about anything, but at that moment she didn’t quite know what to think, or even feel, for that matter. She looked at her watch and walked back to the window. Spenser was late by five minutes. Maybe he was going to be a no-show. Unlikely, but a possibility. She wondered if she’d missed him until Linda poked her head in the door to say that Mr. Spenser was in the waiting room.
With an edge to her voice, Kala said, “Show him in, Linda.”
“He looks different today, Kala. Can’t put my finger on it, but he doesn’t look ... I don’t know, maybe cocky is the word I’m looking for. Hey, what happened to your flower?”
The edge was still in Kala’s voice. “Just show him in, okay? Bring us some coffee and sweet rolls if you don’t mind. Make the plate look pretty.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Linda said smartly, not understanding what was going on. Sounded like a party, and everyone was going to make nice.
Kala was still standing by the window and remained there until Linda opened the door to usher Ryan Spenser into the room.
The two attorneys smiled at one another and shook hands. Kala motioned to a cozy seating corner. “I guess we both know why you’re here today, Ryan. This might be the mother I’m not in me, but are you okay?”
“No, actually, I’m not okay. Listen, how do you feel about going somewhere with me for a half hour or so? I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee. I want to talk to you about something, but not here.” Before Kala could respond, Spenser withdrew a white envelope from inside his jacket pocket. He laid it on the coffee table that separated the two chairs.
Like she was going to go anywhere with Ryan Spenser. “Sure, what do you have in mind?”
“Well, the breakfast rush is over just about everywhere, so how do you feel about two doors down at Logan’s? If you don’t mind, let’s take the back exit.”
“Sure, no problem,” Kala said as she reached for her purse. “Is this going to be inside or outside?”
“Whatever we can make work for us. I don’t want to be swamped with reporters.”
“We have a little eating area outside behind the building. Tenants go there to eat their bag lunches or smoke a cigarette. Do you think that would work? The reporters won’t know we’re there, and before you came, I asked for coffee and pastries to be brought to my office.”
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br /> “That’s fine. Actually, that’s the best solution of all.”
The EXIT sign was just a short distance from Kala’s office. The office boy held the door for Kala and Spenser. “Tell Linda to bring the coffee and pastries outside to the eating area, okay, Bobby?”
“Sure thing, Ms. Aulani.”
On the way down the five flights of steps, Kala called comments over her shoulder. “I was never very good at cloak-and-dagger stuff, Ryan. Do you mind telling me what this is all about? I sure hope you aren’t going to tell me that check vaporized or something. Or that it’s short of what we agreed on.”
“I’m not going to tell you that, Kala.”
At the bottom of the steps, Spenser looked around at the profusion of colorful flowers and pruned shrubs and the brightly colored picnic tables that were empty at this hour. “It’s pretty here. I had no idea this area was even here.”
“The tenants are responsible for maintaining it. We take turns on a monthly basis. I like to come out here late in the afternoon and just sit with a cold glass of ice tea.”
Bobby, the office boy, was right on their heels with a heavy tray. He placed it in the center of the bright yellow picnic table. Kala blanched when she saw the small bud vase with a white hibiscus. Quicker than lightning, she plucked it from the bud vase and tossed it into the shrubbery. She tilted her head to the side as much as to say your turn. Damn, she wished she hadn’t read that investigative report, wished it more than anything in the world just then.
Ryan Spenser took the initiative and poured the coffee. Kala noticed the slight tremor in his hand. He looked at Kala, and said, “I had an epiphany last night.”
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