Fern Michaels - Tuesday’s Child

Patty reached for her cell phone and called Kala, who had elected to stay home to make Jay happy. She answered on the fifth ring. “You are interrupting my bubble bath, Patty,” Kala said before Patty could even identify herself. Caller ID, in her opinion, was a curse. She liked the element of surprise as to who was on the other end of the phone.

“No one I know takes a bubble bath at two o’clock in the afternoon. Please don’t tell me you have scented candles burning and are drinking wine,” Patty retorted.

“Well, since you guessed what I’m doing, then I don’t have to confirm or deny it, and I know at least one other person who takes bubble baths at this hour. Why are you calling me anyway?”

Patty told her why. Kala was silent for so long, Patty had to prod her to see if she was still on the line. “I heard you. I’m thinking. Do me a favor. Call Spenser’s house and ask him if I can stop by. Tell him I need to discuss something important. Forty-five minutes. He doesn’t live far from me. And no, he is not hiding out, although I wouldn’t blame him if he was. Don’t worry, I’ll be at the airport in plenty of time to meet Sophie with you all.”

“Kala, did you finish going through the journals?”

“I did last night. Why do you think I’m taking a bubble bath at two in the afternoon? I didn’t even go to sleep last night. There’s nothing there. We need the last and final journal, and it’s nowhere to be found.”

“Maybe we’ll never find it, Kala,” Patty said, sadness ringing in her voice. “Who is the other person who takes a bubble bath at two in the afternoon?”

“Jay, and he likes blue cypress and lavender bath salts because they calm the nerves,” Kala said as she broke the connection.

“Oh,” was all Patty could think of to say, but she made a mental note to buy some blue cypress and lavender bath salts.

Patty eyed the boxes in front of her before she swiveled her chair around to peck at the phone console. She pressed Jay’s extension and waited. “All the files are in the conference room. Your licensed investigators can have them all now. But be warned, there is nothing in them. Spenser did absolutely nothing wrong. I called Kala and told her. She asked me to call Spenser to tell him she’s on her way to his house, and I’ll do it as soon as I hang up. Then I’m going home to shower and change. I’ll see you all at the airport.”

Ryan Spenser opened the door and stared at Kala, who was wearing a red hibiscus over her left ear and a white one over her right ear. “Covering your bases, eh?” he said, grinning.

“Sort of, kind of. Damn, it’s hot out there. You got anything cold to drink, Spenser?”

“I do. Name your poison.” He grinned again.

“How come you’re so chipper?”

Spenser shrugged. “The weight of the world is off my shoulders. I’m a free agent for the first time in my life. I like the feeling.”

Kala eyed the man who had been her adversary for so many years. It still stunned her that she actually liked him. She smiled at his attire: cargo shorts that were frayed at the hem, a stretched-out T-shirt that said he was a member of some fraternity whose letters were all but washed out. He was barefoot and hadn’t shaved. She liked this new Spenser. Even though he was smiling, his teeth didn’t look so polished. They just looked like he had a good dentist.

“Sun tea. I make it myself.” Spenser reached into the freezer for two glasses that had frost all over them. Kala thought they looked like beer mugs.

“This is good!” Kala said, drinking deeply.

“I know. Take a load off,” he said, pointing to one of the wooden stools in the kitchen. “What brings you here at this time of day?”

“You sound just like Patty Molnar. Why does everything have to work around a certain time of day? Why can’t I take a bubble bath at two o’clock in the afternoon? Why can’t I come here to your home at three o’clock in the afternoon? Is there some book out there that says we have to conform to a time schedule?”

Kala didn’t realize how shrill her voice was until Spenser held up his hand and went, “Whoa there, Nellie!”

“Sit down, Spenser. I want you sitting when I tell you this, so when I offer my apology, you won’t fall over.” To make her point, Kala plucked the two flowers from her hair and placed them in the middle of the table. “Every one of your old cases came up whistle clean… Why are you looking at me like that, Spenser?”

“Because I told you I did nothing wrong. And this all surprised you. That’s why you’re surrendering with the flowers?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. How could you be so damn perfect? Everyone screws up at some point. You never did. How is that possible?”

“All those other people you’re referring to don’t have a father like mine. I don’t want to go there right now, Kala. I appreciate your coming here to tell me, though.”

“I want to hold a press conference and tell the world, you standing right there alongside of me, with Sophie Lee in the middle. Tomorrow I’ll arrange it. Sophie’s plane lands in a few hours. I called her on the way over, and she’s all for it. Believe it or not, Spenser, she holds no ill feelings toward you. She knows and understands you were just doing your job. That’s not to say that during her ten-year incarceration, she didn’t plot your death every night of her life when she was falling asleep.”

“So what you’re saying is, when I apologize in person, she isn’t going to kick me in the nuts.”

Kala smiled. “No, Sophie is not going to do that. That’s not who she is. All along I’ve tried to tell you what a remarkable young woman she is. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like Sophie Lee. I haven’t mentioned it to her yet, but I’m going to suggest she forfeit the second ten million.”

Spenser was off his chair in a flash. “Oh, no! No, no! That young woman deserves every penny you can milk out of this state. If it was up to me, I’d vote for fifty million. You could have gotten it, too, Kala, if you’d played ball a little harder. That’s what they were prepared to pay out. Over time, of course.”

“Now you tell me!” Kala drained the last of her sun tea.

Spenser laughed so hard his shoulders shook. “I did tell you, you just didn’t pick up on it. I told you not to go for fifty million. That was supposed to be your clue, but you let it fly right over your head.”

“Imagine that,” Kala drawled, as she mentally calculated what a third of $50 million would come to for Aulani coffers. She shrugged. Win some, lose some.

“Yeah, imagine that.”

“There was nothing in the journals. I brought one to show you. Audrey Star could barely write. I made myself crazy trying to decipher her daily recordings. It was all just your basic girly stuff, gushing and prattling on about nothing. We found where Adam hid all the jewelry that wasn’t kept in the safe-deposit box. Right there on the same bookshelf as the diaries. Take a look at this,” Kala said, reaching down into her briefcase to pull out one of the leather-bound journals.

Spenser leafed through the elegantly bound book and let loose with a soft whistle. “I had no idea. I had no clue the woman was mentally challenged. There was not even a hint from Adam Star. Not that it would have mattered in the end. It might have created more of a circus atmosphere, which would have really played hell with your client at trial. I’m glad we didn’t know it because I would have exploited it to the nth degree. It would have been my job to do that.”

“I know, and I’m also glad none of us knew it. Let that poor woman rest in peace. I wish I knew, though, why Adam married Audrey. For some reason I don’t think it was the money. He said it wasn’t. But then look what he did.”