Death Gets a Time-Out (15 page)

I couldn’t swear it, but I thought I caught Lilly giving Archer a meaningful look.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said, his voice neutral.

“The checks were drawn off an anonymous offshore account,” I said.

“Do they have any idea whose account it was?” Lilly asked.

“Not yet.” I paused. “Do you know anything about it?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly. “I’m sure it’s just some CCU thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have secret bank accounts all over the world. The whole thing is just a huge scam. I’m sure Polaris is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“To them a hundred thousand is nothing,” Archer agreed. “It’s probably just Chloe’s pin money.”

Why were the two of them working so hard to convince me not to be concerned about the money? What did they know? I looked at Lilly, trying to figure out what was going on behind those clear blue eyes. But the woman is a brilliant actress, and all I saw was bland unconcern. “I’m sure Wasserman will check back and see if the deposits were unique or if Chloe regularly got large sums from those accounts,” I said. Then I pressed her. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about it?”

“Of course not,” Lilly said firmly.

“How is the rest of the investigation going?” Archer asked. I had the distinct impression that he was trying to change the subject.

“It’s moving along. We’ve interviewed Jupiter and had an initial meeting with his father.”

“Have you guys found what you need to keep Jupiter off death row?” he asked.

“It’s not really a question of finding something in particular. It’s about amassing information so that we can present the jury with a sympathetic picture of a whole person, someone they can identify with in some way. We want them to get to know Jupiter, because if they do, it will be harder for them to kill him. We want every juror to think that but for the grace of circumstance, a difficult childhood, personal tragedy, Jupiter could be his son.” When I said the final word, my voice trailed off. I couldn’t help but think of that man whose son Jupiter was, who nonetheless seemed to want him dead.

“What?” Lilly said. I looked up quickly. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking about something . . . it’s nothing.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her shorn hair was beginning to grow in, and the blond caught the light of the fire and glowed. “Is it Polaris?”

“I can’t really talk about the specifics of the case with you. I’m bound by attorney-client privilege,” I said. “Because I work for Wasserman, the privilege extends to me, too.”

“It’s Polaris, isn’t it? He won’t help you.” Her voice was flat, and the muscles in her jaw twitched.

“Not exactly,” I said. “He talked to us, but he hasn’t decided what position to take on the imposition of the death penalty.”

She shook her head. “The man of God.” She bit the words off and spat them out.

“Does it matter?” Archer asked.

I nodded. “The victim statement matters. It matters to the prosecutor—sometimes they won’t go for the death penalty if the family is opposed. It definitely makes an impression on a jury. I don’t know how Polaris will come down on this. His aides at the CCU seem to be looking for some consistency with their public position of opposition to the death penalty. At least one of them is.”

Lilly buried her head in her hands, and Archer walked behind her chair and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. She leaned against his arm for a moment and then turned her face up to his.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice warm and low.

He squeezed her shoulders. I felt like I was eavesdropping on a moment too intimate to be shared, and I fixed my eyes on the dancing flames in the fireplace.

Just then, a young woman, dressed in khaki pants and a denim shirt, the casual livery worn by Lilly’s household staff in place of black polyester dresses with starched aprons, walked into the living room. “Lilly, can I tell Amber her time-out is up?” she said.

“Sure,” said Archer. “Tell her to come down and say goodbye to Daddy.” He squeezed Lilly’s shoulders one more time
and walked back to his seat. He picked up the soft suede jacket that was crumpled next to where he’d been sitting and shrugged it on over his shoulders.

“You’re going?” Lilly asked him.

“I promised my mother I’d take her to a movie tonight,” he said apologetically. “Do you want me to cancel and have dinner with you and the girls?”

“No, no. That’s okay. I’ll let Phoebe and Stephanie feed them and put them to sleep. I plan to have a bath and a massage, and be in bed by eight. I’ll see you when I bring them over on Saturday.”

“Let’s have brunch, all of us together.”

“I’d like that.” She lifted up her face to him and he kissed her on the lips. It was a quick kiss, but it certainly seemed like more than a friendly buss.

By the time Archer had said goodbye to his daughters and left, Ruby was awake. Her sleep-creased face crumpled when she found herself on a strange couch, but before she could begin to cry, Amber and Jade hustled her off to their playroom to play with their Habitrail full of gerbils. Lilly and I sat quietly for a moment after they’d left. I wanted to ask her more about the money. Her answers had made sense, but they’d felt too glib. First, though, I had to find out what the heck was going on with her ex-husband. “Are you planning on telling me what that was all about?” I said.

She smiled faintly and tucked her knees up under her chin. Her feet were crossed at the ankles and her long delicate toes dug into the fabric of her bench. Everything about Lilly was lovely, even her feet. I wriggled my own unmanicured toes in my shoes and sighed. “Well?” I said.

“What do you mean?” Lilly asked, coyly catching one edge of her pale lip in between her teeth.

I rolled my eyes. “Archer? You? Brunch?”

She smiled the same small, private smile. “I wish I knew.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She hugged her knees to her chest. “Things have been really great between us lately. I can’t explain it. We went for nearly a year almost without seeing each other at all. And
then one day, about four months ago, he dropped the kids off himself, instead of sending one of the nannies to do it. We ended up talking for hours. Since then we’ve been spending time together. We do stuff with the twins. Lately we’ve even started going out alone.”

“You’re dating Archer?”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

I bit back the words that leapt to my mouth. Words like, “Are you out of your mind?” Words like “Don’t forget this is the guy who tried to take all your money.” Words like “Archer’s a poisonous cretin who’s only nice to his own mother because he stands to inherit money from her.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Listen, Lilly, about the bank deposits . . .”

“Bank deposits?” she said, picking a piece of chipped polish off her baby toe.

“The deposits to Chloe’s bank account.”

“Hm. What about them?”

I leaned forward, pushing myself into the line of sight that seemed altogether too focused on her pedicure. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about them?”

“Of course not,” she said, sitting up and glaring at me. “What are you getting at, Juliet? Are you trying to imply that I had something to do with those deposits?”

Maybe. “No, no. Of course not,” I said.

“Good, because I’d hate to think you were suspicious of me. I mean, I hired you because you’re my friend. Because I knew I could trust you.” Her eyes were wide, and her gamine face looked hurt, but there was a hint of iron in her voice.

I decided to forgo reminding her once again how my ethical obligation was to her brother, not to her, no matter who paid my bills. Instead I broached another subject guaranteed to bother her. “You can trust me. Of course you can. Can you tell me a little more about your mother’s death? What else you remember?”

“I can’t talk about it, Juliet. It’s too painful for me to talk about.”

I sighed. “Are you sure? I mean, it would help me set this
all in context. It has to have been a pretty traumatic memory for Jupiter, too. It might be something we can use in our mitigation argument.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I just can’t.”

I gave up. We ended up having a desultory conversation about schools—how the twins liked their exclusive private school where members of the Hollywood elite mollified their liberal guilt by supporting a wonderfully generous scholarship program that resulted in a student body evenly divided between fabulously wealthy white children and black and Latino children from backgrounds of varying deprivation. Ruby went to a magnet public school not too far from where we lived. It was a sweet little school with nice teachers. It only went up to fifth grade, however, and I was pretty sure private school was in our future after that. She probably wouldn’t be able to get into the twins’ school, though. We were neither sufficiently famous, nor sufficiently bereft.

After a little while, one of the attractive, khaki-clad nannies brought the girls down for dinner. I refused Ruby’s entreaties to stay and eat with the twins—“but their cook made chocolate cake for dessert!”—and bundled her into the car for the twenty-minute trip home.

Ruby was still whining when I pulled into our block. I had already given her one time-out—hardly an effective tool in the car—and was ready to put her to bed for the rest of the night. As I was about to swing into our driveway, I briefly turned my head to tell her once and for all to be quiet. I turned back around, and gasped. I slammed on my brakes and just missed hitting the low black car that was right in front of me, parked at an angle in front of our house, blocking the driveway. The webbing of my seat belt bit into my neck and chest, and I exhaled with a loud grunt.

“Are you okay, honey?” I shouted, jerking the car into park. I unsnapped my seat belt, turned around, and reached into the backseat to touch Ruby to make sure with my own hands that she was okay.

“My seat belt squeezed me!” she said indignantly.

“What hurts?” I said, frantically groping her arms and shoulders. “Your neck? Your arm?”

“Nothing
hurts.
I just don’t like being squeezed.”

I patted her once more, reassuring myself that she was really okay, and then said, “You wait here.” I jumped out of my car and stormed over to the parked car to see just who it was who had blocked my driveway. Our block wasn’t one where you’d normally find a Jaguar, let alone an illegally parked one. As I was bending over to jot down the license plate number to report to the cops, one of the car’s windows glided down, surprising the hell out of me.

Lilly’s ex-husband leaned out of the window, resting an elbow on the frame. “Hi.” His voice was so soft it was almost a purr.

“Archer, are you crazy? Why are you parked across my driveway? I almost plowed into you!”

“I just wanted to talk.”

He smiled, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose just the slightest bit. Suddenly, he opened his door. I stepped back and bumped into the grill of my car.

“I’ve got Ruby in the backseat,” I said unnecessarily. He knew she was there.

“We need to talk.” Archer came up beside me and pressed his hand on my shoulder. I sat down on the hood of my car. He took his hand away and sat down next to me. I swallowed.

“Why don’t you come inside?” I said, making my voice bright and friendly. I glanced back at Ruby, willing her to sit quietly in her car seat.

“Let’s talk here.” His tone was even and bland, and for some reason that scared me more than if he’d been shouting. I didn’t know Archer well. Peter had gone to a couple of ball games with him, but I had always spent time with Lilly alone, or with Lilly and the girls. I couldn’t honestly think of a time I had socialized with Archer and Lilly as a couple, other than the few times he’d joined her at some party or other. Their marriage had been on the rocks almost from the first time we’d met Lilly, although it had taken them a while to call it quits. Still, he’d never been anything but perfectly
pleasant to me, and of all the complaints Lilly had about him, she’d never accused him of being violent. So why was he making me so nervous?

“It’s getting dark early nowadays,” Archer said, tilting his face up and leaning his body back on his elbows.

I looked at him. Was I supposed to sit on the hood of my car making small talk? “What do you want, Archer? Why are you here?”

He didn’t turn to me, just continued to look up at the night sky. “Your job is to keep Jupiter off death row, right?” he said.

“Right.”

“You find witnesses who can testify about what a hard childhood he had, what a nice guy he is, that kind of thing.”

“More or less. Why are you asking me this? We talked all about it at Lilly’s house no more than an hour ago.”

He smiled at me, and now there was just the barest hint of menace in his face. “I think you should just do your job.”

“Excuse me?” I said, leaning away and looking at him.

“Just do your job. Talk to people about Jupiter. About what a hard life he’s had. About how his mother abandoned him. That kind of thing.”

“That’s what I’m doing, Archer.” I began to get down off the car, but he reached out a hand to stop me.

“Yup. You should just do your job. Leave the rest of it alone.” His fingers pressed ever so gently into my arm. I shook him off and stood up.

“The rest of it?” I said as I opened the door of my car.

“Just leave Lilly out of it.”

That stopped me. I stood with the door half open and stared at him. “What?”

“You heard me. Just leave Lilly out of it. The bank accounts, all that stuff.”

“Lilly hired me to investigate. That’s what I’m doing—investigating.”

“Lilly’s your friend. You know she’s not involved in any of this. You don’t need to investigate her.”

“I’m not investigating her. I’m investigating the case.”

He smiled at me. “Well, great. Then we’re both on the same page. You’re not going to investigate her. Or bother her with this anymore.”

“Bother her?”

“Lilly and Jupiter were really close when they were kids, and this is all very difficult for her. Did you know that she’s been so freaked out that she got her doctor to prescribe antidepressants for her?” I shook my head. “She’s taking Zoloft, and sleeping pills, because she’s had a terrible time sleeping since this happened. I don’t want you to upset her more than she already is. You need to just back off, do your job, and leave her alone.”