by Annie Jocoby
“Okay. Well, listen, I have to face the music with your mother. I know that. As much as I dread it, I have to get going on that case again. Tomorrow.”
We headed to Slade’s home, and, because both of us were dead tired, we hit the pillow and fell fast asleep.
The next day, I gave Margot a call. The call went to voice mail, so I left a message. “Margot, this is Serena. Give me a call back as soon as you can. We need to prepare you for some upcoming depositions, and we have to talk about what’s going to happen next. Thanks.”
Slade came in the room. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just left a message for Margot to call me back. I called her earlier this morning as well. I’m really going to have to get rolling with this case if we’re going to get everything done on time. I need to schedule depositions, and gather some more evidence, and I need her to be there every step of the way.”
“Of course. Well, keep trying.”
“Yes. Well, then, since I can’t get a hold of her, let’s just go on over to her house. She should be there, right?”
“Right. Why she’s not picking up the phone, I have no clue. But she rarely leaves the house, so she should be around.”
Slade and I spent the rest of the morning packing up our stuff. I was tired of going back and forth, and, truth be told, I really was looking forward to relaxing in my own home. As much as I loved to stay with Slade, and felt protected with him, I also felt that I needed my own space. I missed my routine of running on the beach and coming home to a glass of wine and a book. I knew that if Slade and I got married, though, it would be different, because I would feel that any house that we bought together would be ours. Right now, I was staying at Slade’s, and I felt that way, too.
“Well, we need to go on over there,” Slade said. “We need to get moving on her case. I hate to surprise her, but she really needs to pick up the phone when you call her.” He looked annoyed and shook his head. “I hate it when people don’t answer their phones, when you know that they’re around.”
Slade and I headed to Margot’s house. It had been several hours since I first called her, and she still hadn’t called back. While I wondered about that, I wasn’t overly worried. I often didn’t pick up the phone when people called me, simply because I didn’t always feel like talking. That was probably the case with Margot, too.
We got to her house, which was in Solana Beach. It was a beautiful Tudor-style home with the traditional wood paneling on the front of the house and the traditional pitched roof. My favorite type of tree, a Date Palm, stood in the front yard. It was at least fifty feet tall, with a thick trunk and fronds that were thick and hanging down the side. There was a flower box with different kinds of flowers right by the front porch.
Slade used his key to get in. “Mom,” he called. “It’s Slade and Serena. I know that you’re here, because your car is here.”
We wandered through the house, looking for Margot. I was starting to feel slightly uneasy, but I tried to silence my inner voice. She was probably sleeping, although it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
“Does she nap?” I asked Slade.
“Not usually.” Slade had a look on his face that told me that he, too, was slightly worried, although he didn’t say anything. He bit his bottom lip. “Okay, I’ll go up and check her bedroom. I think that’s the only room that I haven’t looked in yet.”
We went to her room, and we found her. She was lying on the bed, perfectly still. I felt my pulse start to race as I realized that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Slade knew it, too. He was standing by the bed, looking at her, and then he calmly went over to her and lifted up her wrist. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. I attempted to slow down my racing heart, but I just couldn’t. I opened my eyes again, and Slade was now sitting on the bed, running his fingers through his thick dark hair.
“Slade,” I said, not wanting to finish the sentence. “What…”
He shook his head. “I thought she was getting better. I thought that she would make it.” A single tear ran down his cheek and he turned his face away. “I need my cell phone.”
I silently handed him his phone, and he called 911. “Yes,” he said. “I need somebody here right away. My mother has passed away in her home.” He nodded his head. “Thank you.” At that, he hung up.
I was feeling like I was in the middle of something surreal. Like I was on the one side of an enormous chasm, and Slade was on the other. He was sitting on the bed, next to his mother, shaking his head and speaking softly. “Mom, you’re finally at peace,” he said. “And thank god for that.” Then he turned to me. “This is why I don’t believe in a higher power, if you want to know the truth. What kind of justice is it when somebody like my mother has to live such a shitty, shitty life and never gets to the point where she can find a bit of happiness? I always thought that we would all get to the other side, and that, someday, when it’s all behind us, she would finally be happy. But she never got that chance.”
He got up abruptly from the side of the bed and started to pace the floor. I had no idea what to say. Anything I said probably wouldn’t make things better anyhow, so I just watched him in silence.
He was talking to himself as he paced. “Mom was okay. She was a little sick with the Hepatitis, but, other than that, she was doing okay. Did she commit suicide? Is there a note around here somewhere?” Then he shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t do that. She was looking forward to beating those charges against her in court. She wanted her day in court.”
“Slade,” I finally said, “sit down.”
He waved me off. “No. No.” Then he shook his head again. “No. Listen, I have a feeling I know what happened, and, if I’m right, this is just the beginning. It’s just the beginning, and goddammit Serena, I won’t let her get you. I won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Listen, I’m not thinking really clearly, but I think that we’re obviously going to have an autopsy.” He looked down at the ground and pulled his hands through his hair again. “We have to find out what happened. But goddammit, what if they find something in her system? Some poison or something like that? What the hell would that prove?”
I knew where his mind was. It was on Charlotte, and the possibility that she was behind it. “Charlotte?”
“Damned straight.” He sat down on one of the chairs and put his head in his hands. “Damned straight.” Then he abruptly stood up again. “Fuck!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Fuck that fucking psychotic bitch.”
“Slade, I…”
“She won’t get you. I swear to god, she won’t get you. She won’t.” He shook his head again, and started to pace the floor once more.
Just then, I saw the unmistakable flashing lights. It was the ambulance, and they were coming to take Margot to the hospital morgue. I looked out the window and saw two guys with a gurney preparing to mount the steps to Margot’s home. When I saw that, I went downstairs to greet them.
“Upstairs,” I said in a low voice as they came in the door.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” one of the guys said.
I said nothing, but just nodded my head.
They mounted the steps to the bedroom with me right behind them. Slade was sitting in the chair again, but he was perfectly still. He didn’t even react to the men who were entering the room. He was just staring off into space, not saying a single word. One of the guys was trying to ask him questions, but he didn’t respond.
I finally stepped in. “We came in the door and found her lying there just like that. I don’t think that there’s a suicide note around, so we’re not quite sure what happened. She was only 43 years old. She was sick with Hepatitis, but that was being treated and was under control.”
One of the guys just nodded his head and started talking into the receiver on his shoulder. “Forty-three year old woman,” he said. “Looks like the time of death was less than six hours ago.” He was ex
amining her. “No signs of trauma. She apparently was suffering from Hepatitis although that was under control.”
“So, what’s next?” I asked the man.
“We’ll take her to the hospital morgue and if her next of kin would like to request an autopsy, then they’re free to do so.” He motioned to Slade, who was still sitting in the chair, apparently in shock.
“I think that will be necessary,” I said. “When does Slade have to authorize that?”
“As soon as possible. It’s not necessary to do it within 24 hours, although it’s helpful to.”
I went over to Slade and sat down next to him. “Slade,” I said softly. “They’re going to take Margot now. We should follow along behind them, don’t you think? Then we can…”
Slade said nothing, but just nodded his head. “I know. I heard every word. I know.”
“Okay. So, let’s just get in the car and follow them over to the hospital.”
He shook his head. “No. I can’t do that right now. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. But, right now, there’s something that I have to do.”
“Slade, don’t do anything rash.”
“I will. Goddammit, this ends tonight. Tonight. I don’t care what I have to do, but it ends tonight. She won’t cause any more problems. I won’t let her.”
“Slade, you have no proof that Charlotte is behind this.”
“Oh, don’t I? Don’t I? I told you that I thought that she was on the edge of doing something and my hunch was right. I thought that she was going to attack you, and believe me, you’re next. Goddammit. How do I have such a fucking psycho in my life? How?”
“Slade, your mother was sick and under a great deal of stress. She’s lived a hard life. Maybe it all just caught up with her.”
“Goddammit, Serena, how can you be so fucking naïve? You think that this is all a coincidence? We go away for the weekend, and I’m feeling uneasy about the psycho bitch, and we come back and my mother is dead. You think that I’m crazy for having this feeling that Charlotte is behind all of this? Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me.”
I opened my mouth, but shut it again. I had to admit, Slade was making sense. Not that there was any solution to any of it. “Before you go and confront Charlotte, make sure that she did something. You don’t want to go up there and piss her off if the autopsy comes back with natural causes.”
He literally threw up his hands. “I don’t care if I piss her off. Can’t you see that? She’s done so many psychotic things that have done nothing but ruin my life. And I can already see what’s next. She’ll be emboldened if she gets away with this. She’ll be emboldened, and then suddenly, you’ll meet your end on some road because you won’t have brakes. Or there might be a car bomb. Those are just two of the ways that her family takes care of people who cross them.”
“Well, then, perhaps what happened to your mother was just a coincidence. Her brakes weren’t cut, and there wasn’t a car bomb.”
His eyes got wide, and, for just a second, I was a bit fearful. “You didn’t just say that. You can’t possibly have said that. As if the Garancinos just use two ways to kill people. I simply said that those are two of their main ways of taking care of their adversaries. I did not imply, in any way, shape or form, that those were the only means.”
I was the lawyer, and I was going to have to come up with some better arguments if I was going to keep Slade from going to Charlotte’s and raising hell. I didn’t know why, but I had a strong feeling that if Slade actually confronted Charlotte, that there would be hell to pay. I knew, I just knew, that he would do more harm than good.
“Slade, look at me. Look at me, and listen to me. I don’t want you to speak until I’ve said my piece.”
Slade was up and pacing the floor again and I was having a hard time making eye contact with him. At some point, though, he did finally look at me. He stared at me with blank eyes, and then they came into focus. For a brief second, though, it looked like he wanted to kill somebody. Somebody like Charlotte.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Say your piece.”
I took a deep breath and patted the side of the couch. Slade stood there in front of me, and then reluctantly sat down next to me. “You can’t go up to Charlotte’s,” I said. “Not now. You have no idea what happened to your mother, and, even if the autopsy comes back with some type of poison in her system, that still doesn’t prove anything. You have to remember that Margot was possibly suicidal as it was.”
“She wasn’t suicidal. She was never suicidal. No matter what she went through in life, she always chose life. So you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
His words stung, but I knew for a fact that he had been through some severe trauma, so I let it slide. “I might not know what I’m talking about, but I’m trying to slow you down here. The last thing that you want to do is make the whole situation worse.”
“I’m not going to make the situation worse. I’m going to carefully plan what's going to happen before I get there.”
“You might say that, but you were ready to go up there with guns blazing. That’s the last thing that you need to do.”
He shook his head and then put his head in his hands. “I can’t lose you,” he said softly. “But I have a feeling I’m going to. Something is going to happen to cause me to lose you. And it will be Charlotte’s doing.” He looked completely defeated and my heart went out to him. “Either you’ll end up dead or I’ll end up in prison for killing Charlotte. And killing her wouldn’t do any good, either, because then her family will come after both you and me. I’ve been trying to figure out this whole thing eight ways to Sunday, and, so far, I’ve come up with nothing.”
“Let’s both try to figure this out,” I said. “There has to be something that can be done to ensure everyone’s safety.”
“What? The blackmail thing was supposed to do the trick, but apparently it hasn’t. Her agent can tell you that Charlotte is ready to jump, and is preparing for the media fallout that will inevitably occur when those documents about her past are made public. That means that she’s about to become really dangerous.”
“We don’t know…”
“Serena, just stop. Stop. I’m in love with you. I can’t tell you how much I think about you, every single minute of every single day. But Charlotte has put me into another impossible position. I just wish that you didn’t find that goddamned video of Malcolm killing Jordan. I wish that I would have gone through with my original plan to take the fall for Jordan’s murder, in exchange for your safety and that of my mother. There’s not much that can be done now. The damage probably can’t be contained.”
“Slade, you can’t do what you’re going to do. I won’t allow it.” I was so afraid that Slade was going to end up giving Charlotte exactly what she wanted, and that would spell the end of his relationship with me.
“Tell me something better. Tell me something that will be fool-proof in ensuring your safety. Tell me that, and I’ll take giving Charlotte what she wants off the table.”
“I don’t know of anything fool-proof exactly. Nothing ever is, and that’s especially true in this case. But we could do something like speak to somebody who is high up in her family.”
“And say what?”
“Tell them what’s going on. Tell them that I’m a totally innocent party, and that I shouldn’t be in their line of fire. Mafia people are reasonable sometimes, aren’t they?”
Slade suddenly broke into a huge grin. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so I let him speak. “You really are that naïve, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you, being from New York and being a criminal defense attorney, working with mobsters, can even talk like that at all. Unless you’re not being serious.”
I wasn’t being all that serious, but I wanted to still throw it out there.
We sat next to one another on the couch for what seemed like hours. There was nothing left to say, really. I was trying to think of a solution to our problem with Charlotte,
but nothing was coming to me. Nothing was apparently coming to Slade, either, because he just stopped speaking.
“Well,” he finally said. “I’m a bit calmer now. I do want to go up and talk to Charlotte, but not until we get the results of the autopsy back. I suppose you’re right – talking to her right now isn’t going to do any good, and there are no good actions that I can take to make things go my way. Until I come up with a good plan, there’s not much that can really be done.”
“Okay,” I said. I was feeling better about things, just because it seemed like I was buying some time with Slade. It might have been only a matter of days, or even hours, but buying time was the best that I could do at that point. “So, we need to go to the hospital, so that you can sign papers to authorize an autopsy. And then, I guess, I should also look for a new job.”
“You can’t do that yet. Not until I get a handle on what Charlotte is going to do. Things are right on the edge, and I don’t want you to do anything that is going to push her over that edge.”
“Slade, I’m going to be living next to Derek. I should think that I’ll be sufficiently tormented.”
“Think again.” Then he shook his head. “Oh, what am I saying? I’m asking you to stay on a job that makes you uncomfortable, for good reason, just because I’m afraid of what the psycho is going to do. Goddammit, she shouldn’t be dictating our lives like this.”
“She shouldn’t be, but she is. She is, and she will be, until we can figure out a plan to contain her. And, thus far, we haven’t hit upon that plan.”
“You’re right.” His shoulders were slumped, and he looked like he wanted to crawl right into the floor. “Well, we better go to the hospital. I’ll authorize an autopsy, and then we’ll have to figure something out. I won’t leave you alone, though, with that Derek guy. I can understand that you want to return to your home, but I’d like to be there with you.”