“Chloe Jones is dead,” Al said, his gruff voice making the doctor wince just the tiniest bit. “What possible reason could you have for protecting her confidences at this point?” I was surprised. Al wasn’t usually so ham-fisted in his approach to witnesses, and he never let them get to him. The good doctor must have really rubbed him the wrong way.
“There are many people here whose heirs would expect us to honor our commitment to secrecy even after they died, Mr. Hockey,” the doctor said.
“Of course, we understand that,” I said, trying to soothe him. Bad cop was one thing, but antagonizing a potential witness was never a good idea. “Anonymity is critical to the success of your program.”
“Exactly, and now, if you’ll excuse me,” Reese Blackmore said, and began to walk away.
“Dr. Blackmore,” I called, but he ignored me.
“We can get a court order,” Al said. The doctor stiffened and turned back to us. His mouth twitched slightly, and I could see that it was costing him something to retain his smooth demeanor. I nodded at Al and put my good cop hat firmly on my head.
“Al! We’re not going to need to do that,” I said. “Dr. Blackmore, my partner just means that we can get a subpoena for any and all records that might assist in preparing a defense. Of course we don’t want to do that any more than you want us to. I mean, the last thing I’m interested in doing is spending days or even weeks in Ojai, sifting through your patient files, billing records, even personal papers. Can you imagine what a huge task that would be?” Even the good cop can be scary, sometimes. The doctor blanched the color of his snowy hair. I smiled sweetly and continued. “It’s just that we have an ethical obligation to Jupiter Jones that’s every bit as legally binding as your doctor-patient privilege, as I’m sure you’re aware. If you could just tell us a little bit about his relationship with Chloe, we can avoid all that messy legal stuff.”
Looking at his watch, he lowered himself back into his chair. “I can give you two more minutes,” he said.
“That’s wonderful. Thanks so much, Dr. Blackmore. So we were talking about how Jupiter and Chloe met. They were here at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“What was Chloe in for?”
“She was also struggling with cocaine addiction, as I recall. I’d have to check the records to be sure. Cocaine, and maybe heroin as well.”
“You can call me with that information once you check your records,” I said. “Do you know how it was that Chloe could afford treatment? Who paid for it?”
He glanced at Molly. She said, “She was part of our special residency program. There are donors who provide sort of like scholarships for people who would benefit from our program but would not otherwise be able to afford it.”
How come none of my homeless, smack-addicted clients had ever heard of that program? “How was it that she got a special residency? Did she submit some kind of application?” I asked.
“One of our donors must have recommended her for the program. I can check her file, if you like,” Molly said, and winced under the frown that Dr. Blackmore shot her way. “Um, actually that information is confidential,” she said.
“We understand that Chloe and Jupiter were very close friends. Perhaps even more than friends,” I said.
The doctor shook his head vigorously. “If you are implying that they had a sexual relationship, then I can assure you that that is not possible. The work residents undertake at this center involves delving into their pasts, uncovering the trauma that led to their addiction. This exploration makes them fragile and vulnerable. It would be far too emotionally dangerous for them to enter into any kind of physical relationship. I expressly forbid that type of behavior.”
And my mother expressly forbade me from making out in the back of parked cars. “Perhaps they broke the rules,” I said.
He sputtered, “Impossible. Now, I think this conversation has gone on long enough. I am eager to help Jupiter, but not at the cost of divulging confidential information about other clients. I invite you to try to get your court order if you want any more information about Chloe Jones, or any resident other than Jupiter.” He spun on his heel and walked away across the terrace.
I raised my eyebrows at Al, who winked slowly at me. I turned back to Molly. She was nervously tucking her hair behind her jutting ears. “I guess I ticked him off,” I said.
She frowned. “I’m afraid Reese hasn’t taken this whole thing very well. I think he’s afraid that it will reflect badly on the center. Maybe even give people second thoughts about coming here.”
“Do you think it will?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure that what happened had nothing to do with the center. But I guess I think it’s troubling that they were both residents at one time, and had successfully completed the program. Especially since they were using again when this happened.”
Al looked up from his notes and I raised my eyebrows. “They were using again?” I asked.
Molly flushed and glanced quickly around as if to make sure that there was no one nearby who could report her indiscretion back to Dr. Blackmore. Then she leaned closer to me. In a low, rapid voice, she said, “I don’t actually know about Jupiter. Not firsthand, that is. Chloe had started doing cocaine again. Or maybe she never stopped. Anyway, she was here for some intensive therapy not that long before she was killed, and she was definitely wired when she showed up.”
“High on drugs?” Al asked.
Molly nodded. “Coked up.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Sure? No, but I’m usually pretty good at figuring out when someone’s high.”
“I imagine that’s a skill you develop around here.”
She smiled ruefully. “Yes.”
“When was it that Chloe checked back in?”
She leaned back in her chair, more relaxed now. “I’m not exactly sure. A couple of months before she died.”
“And what did you mean by intensive therapy?”
“Sometimes clients don’t have time for the ninety-day program, or even the twenty-eight. Reese is so generous with his time. He’ll occasionally do a few days of intensive therapy with individual clients, if they’ve slipped, or are in danger of slipping.”
“How long did Chloe check back in for?”
“Just a couple of days. She told me that she’d told everyone other than her husband that she was going to Big Sur on a yoga retreat. It would have been pretty awful if the CCU folks had found out she was using again. Their church is violently opposed to drugs, as I’m sure you know. One of their basic tenets is that the CCU cures its members of the need to do drugs. I guess it would have caused a public relations nightmare if it had gotten out. That’s what happened with poor Jupiter. Everyone at the CCU was freaking out when they found out about his cocaine addiction. You know, like if the Reverend can’t keep his own kid off drugs, how can he help anyone else.”
Was I imagining it, or did I detect a hint of a sneer in her voice when she talked about the CCU? “What do you make of the CCU’s claims? Can they really cure drug addiction?”
She snorted, and then covered her mouth with her hand. “They are very good clients of ours.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
She glanced around again, and then shook her head. “Look, if they could cure drug addiction with their astrological stuff, why would they need us? We have an arrangement with the CCU to provide care for their parishioners who need drug treatment. A full third of our patients at any given time are CCU members. Reese is the one curing them, not Polaris Jones.”
I nodded. “Reese, and the rest of you.” No harm in giving the woman a little stroking. “But Chloe didn’t want the CCU to know that she was back. So she checked in anonymously, right?”
“Everyone is here anonymously. But yeah, she asked us to keep it hush-hush.”
“And she finished her intensive therapy uneventfully?”
Molly shook her he
ad. “That time, she did.”
“What do you mean that time? As opposed to her first residency?’
Molly bit her lip. “Look, I’m only telling you this because she’s dead, and because I want to help Jupiter. I can’t believe he killed her. I mean, I know he did, I read about the DNA evidence. But I just know there must have been a really good reason.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Chloe was a nightmare. A complete bitch. And the most manipulative woman I’ve ever met in my life. She came to the center in the first place because she convinced some guy to give her a free ride. That’s what she does; she gets men to pay her way. And then as soon as she got here and met Jupiter, and figured out who he was, she decided she had to have him. He had really been progressing before she showed up, and she just destroyed all the work he was doing. He’d been processing his relationship with his dad, his mom’s legacy of drug use. When Chloe dug her little claws into him, it was all over. He’s never been the same since. Never. Poor Jupiter.”
Molly’s eyes had filled with tears, and she dashed them away.
“You were close to Jupiter, back when he was here?”
She nodded. “I was his counselor. Everyone here gets assigned a counselor, like a sponsor. Someone who’s been through the program, and through the staff training. I was Jupiter’s.”
“You’ve been through the program?” She seemed so sensible, so reasonable, so healthy. It was hard to believe she’d ever been a drug addict.
“Yeah. I first came here about seven years ago.” She looked around the terrace, her brow wrinkled. It was almost as if she were surprised to find herself still there, all those years later. Then she turned back to me and shrugged. “Heroin.”
“Heroin?” That shocked me. The heroin addicts I knew were emaciated and hollow-eyed. They didn’t have glossy blond hair and an athlete’s body. They also didn’t wear pink cashmere.
She flashed her rueful smile. “Yeah, I know. I don’t look like a junkie, do I? Neither did anyone else in my sorority. We were all using. We didn’t shoot up, though. That was too gross for us. We snorted it. We thought that was safe, but we were wrong. I ended up getting sick. Turns out you can pass Hepatitis C through a nasal tube. After I got out of the hospital, my parents checked me in here. I never left. I started out as a resident, then a counselor. I got my master’s, and now I’m Reese’s research assistant.” There was more than a hint of pride in her voice.
“You seem to be doing really well,” I said.
She smiled. “Reese has designed a brilliant program. It works, if you use it like you’re supposed to.” The warmth and affection in her voice when she said her boss’s name were unmistakable.
“You were telling us about Chloe?” Al said in a gentler voice than I would have expected, given his feelings about drug users, even recovered ones.
Molly inhaled deeply, and shook her head. “Chloe pretty much took Jupiter over. He spent all his time with her. They were sleeping together. Rules or no rules. I had hoped that once he left, that would be the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. He even came up to get her, on her last day. Did you know that?” I nodded my head. “He picked her up and took her home with him. And the next thing we knew, the L.A. Times was reporting Polaris Jones’s wedding to Chloe Pakulski at the Hollywood Bowl. Ten thousand CCU members were there, and the mayor officiated, along with two CCU ministers. I felt so bad for Jupiter. He loved her so much. She didn’t deserve it for a minute, but he loved her.”
I wondered if Molly might have felt for Jupiter the same emotion he had wasted on Chloe.
“Was Jupiter the only person Chloe was sleeping with?” I asked.
Molly looked shocked. “Of course he was. Wasn’t that bad enough?” Then she looked at her watch and frowned. “I think I’d better see you out. I’ve got to get back to work.”
I fished around in my purse and found a card for her. “Call me if you remember anything, okay?” I said, giving her a meaningful look.
She nodded briskly, shoved the card into her pocket, and strode away across the patio, leaving us to follow her out.
Eight
MUCH to our mutual disappointment, Al and I didn’t have time to make it all the way up to La Superica in Santa Barbara. We grabbed a couple of inferior turkey sandwiches from an organic deli in Ojai and sped down the highway in a doomed attempt to make it back to Isaac’s preschool in time to pick him up. I did my best to keep nausea at bay with an extra-large bag of blue corn tortilla chips.
“Are you all right?” Al said.
“Mmm?” I mumbled, my mouth full of food.
“You’re looking a little green around the gills.”
I blushed. “I’m okay. I just need to eat something.” I put another handful of chips in my mouth.
He tossed his unfinished sandwich on the dashboard. “Eat? I would have thought eating this crap would make you feel worse.”
I took a long gulp of milk to wash down the chips.
“And what’s with the milk?”
I blushed again. “Nothing. Calcium. Every woman needs calcium. I don’t want to end up hunchbacked.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. He slowed down as the traffic thickened, and I felt my stomach rebel at the change in speed. I gobbled up another handful of chips.
“You do not look good. Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Of course I’m okay. I’m fine,” I snapped.
He raised one hand in surrender. “Bite my head off, why don’t you.”
“Sorry. I’m fine. Really. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t ask me. You want me to pull over or something?”
“No, I do not want you to pull over. It’s just the traffic. All this stopping and starting is making me carsick. Your truck doesn’t have the smoothest ride in the world.”
“So it’s my fault?”
I laughed. “Yeah. It’s your fault, Al. Everything is your fault. Anyway, what did you make of all that back at the center?”
He shook his head. “That Molly had the hots for Jupiter, that’s for sure.”
I nodded. “Yup. Do you think she and Jupiter were sleeping together before Chloe showed up?”
Al wrinkled his brow and thought for a moment. Then he said slowly, “I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem like someone who would break the rules.”
“Maybe not. Except she broke the rule on confidentiality.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. But the girl’s dead.”
“True. So we don’t think Molly was sleeping with Jupiter. Can we agree that she was in love with him?”
He nodded. “Looks that way. And maybe a little in love with her boss.”
I wrinkled my brow. “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “Or maybe she just admires him. How much weight do we give to her opinion of Chloe?”
Al frowned. “I believe her. That Chloe seems like a bad apple. Marrying her boyfriend’s father? Maybe we should use Molly as a character witness? In favor of Jupiter, and maybe even against Chloe if Wasserman can figure out a way to get that in without an objection from the prosecution.”
“I don’t know. I mean, she’d probably make a good witness. Juries like blondes. But I’m not sure she wouldn’t do more damage than good.”
“Why?”
“She cares for Jupiter, and she hates Chloe, that’s obvious. So she might seem biased in his favor. But even worse, she knows just how messed up Chloe made Jupiter. She told us that Chloe had really interfered with his therapy, that he’d loved her, and that he’d been utterly devastated when she’d married his dad. That plays right into the prosecution’s theory of motive.”
“Good point. Well, what about the doctor?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know how he’ll play. He’d have to give testimony about Jupiter bailing out on the program. And a jury might have a problem with the clinic. It’s pretty posh.”
“Disgusting. They should be sweating it out in jail, not in a hot tub,” Al said.
“
Al, for God’s sake. Addiction is a disease.”
“Yeah, right. Show me a cancer ward that looks like that.”
We argued all the way back to Los Angeles and until Al dropped me off at the front gate of Isaac’s nursery school. I’d called when it became clear that we weren’t going to make it in time, and begged the school to allow Isaac to stay in the afterschool program until I showed up. I’d also called Peter, who had agreed to leave a meeting at the studio early to pick up Ruby. I found Isaac sitting at a table, gluing macaroni to a piece of construction paper and chatting with two other little boys.
“Mama!” He stood up, his hands on his hips. “You’re late! All the other one-ers went home and I had to stay with the three-ers. But I’m not a three-er.”
“I know, honey. I’m sorry.” I took him in my arms. “Did you mind being a three-er just for today?”
He kissed me on the cheek and rubbed his nose on mine. “It’s okay, Mommy. Except they only had apples for snack. And that’s not really a good enough snack. So I’ll need a cookie. Or some ice cream.”
“We’ll see, buddy.” I squeezed him tight. There was only the barest hint of baby left in him, around his soft full cheeks and tender-skinned neck. The rest of him was pure little boy—all pipestem legs, sharp elbows, and bony knees. The dimples were disappearing from his knuckles, and his sweet baby fragrance had been almost entirely replaced by a little-boy smell vaguely reminiscent of puppies, sand, and the contents of his pockets. In a few months this little boy would be my baby no more. He would stumble off into the world, pushed out of the way by another round, soft bundle. I wished I could keep him with me for just a little longer. As I clung to my son, and he clung to me, I rebelled against the end that I knew was coming. Someday, Isaac was going to stop wrapping his arms and legs around my body, stop hugging and kissing me. He was going to grow too big, too self-conscious to express his love with such utter abandon. I anticipated his abdication with dread. The tragedy of parenting is that if you do your job well, your love is doomed to become an unrequited passion. I would always remain as obsessed with Isaac as I was at that moment, but his job would be to find other objects for his adoration. I thought of my own mother, and how, while I loved her and my father, the real core of my life, the sun of my solar system, had become my own small family. Ruby, Isaac, and Peter. Someday, Isaac would feel the same. He would still love me and his father, but his focus would be his own partner and children. I held him closer, and tried to memorize the feel of his body in my arms. I inhaled the smell of his hair, buried my mouth in the silken skin of his neck, and willed myself to record the essence of Isaac for the day when it would no longer be mine in any way other than memory.
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