Dark Moon, A Work In Progress, Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jim drove Jordan to the train in Solana Beach that afternoon. Despite her protests she didn’t need any help, he carried her overnight bag across the parking lot to the gunmetal gray, half-cylinder station, surrounded by red, white, and blue Amtrak kiosks and a single coffee vender under a green umbrella with gold fringe.
“Thanks for putting me up,” Jordan said. “You were right about the breakfast. Michelin would give you six stars if they knew about you.”
Jim grinned. “For that I have to buy you coffee. You’ve got time before the train, and Amtrak isn’t stellar in the coffee department.”
They stood by the chain link balcony overlooking the tracks below, basking in the mild afternoon sun and the cool salt breeze as they sipped lattes from paper cups with lids shaped like toddlers’ tippee cups.
“Sarah is taking this loss pretty hard,” Jordan observed.
“I haven’t worked with her long enough to know how she usually reacts.”
“She’s normally unphased. Actually, sometimes I think she’s too unphased. She doesn’t seem to show much emotion except when she’s in front of a jury.”
“Some people aren’t upset easily.”
Jordan shook her head. “This is more than that with Sarah. It’s as if feelings bounce off of her. Or as if they are embedded so deeply inside her, she can’t experience them.”
“Any idea why?”
“No. She never talks about her past. As far as I know, she grew up here, went to Yale, and spent all her days and nights at Craig, Lewis, and Weller until she came back to San Diego in January. I will say, she seems more tightly wound since she came back. She was more relaxed in New York. I’d say something was bothering her in this town even before she took Alexa Reed’s case.”
“Most likely the stress of starting her own law practice. I suppose she told you she signed up to take cases like Alexa’s to generate business here in San Diego. All her work was coming from Los Angeles.”
“Maybe business stress is the answer.”
“And then, too, I suppose you know about David Scott?”
“The millionaire married realty tycoon? Well, I will admit that has gone on longer than her usual very-short lived relationships.”
Jim tried not to show any emotion, but Jordan was too quick for him. “Look, we’ve already established you have an interest in her. You don’t have to pretend the David Scott business doesn’t make you unhappy.”
“Ok, busted. It makes me unhappy. Have you met him?”
“I have. Picture stereotypical west coast over-forty male trying to look late twenties. The wife is a plastic surgeon’s version of blonde Barbie, boob job, nose job, and Angelina Jolie lips. No kids. I’m sure she wouldn’t want to spoil her figure for nine months.”
Jordan downed the last of her coffee and tossed it into the trash can. “The train will be here soon. I’d better get down on the platform, so I can get a good seat in business class. Why don’t you stop by Sarah’s place tonight and check on her? I’ll text you the address.”
* * *
He waited until 7:30 to drive to the cottage in La Jolla Shores where Sarah lived. She was three streets from the beach in one of the small stucco houses that had been built in the forties and probably had all of fourteen hundred square feet. Hers was the same shade of beige stucco as its neighbors, but the windows had deep terra cotta shutters that gave it a personality of its own. Land values had made these tiny homes worth millions; and every one, including hers, was an expensively landscaped gem with strategically placed potted palms in clay pots, pink bougainvillaea vines trailing up the walls, and a jungle of feathery maiden hair ferns in the flower beds.
He was as nervous as a kid on his first prom date as he stood on her front stoop in his jeans, loafers, and yellow knit shirt after ringing the bell. No one answered. The butterflies in his gut began to swoop and soar. This had been a stupid idea. What if she was tucked up with that Scott character? He didn’t embarrass easily, but he’d not get over that one in a hurry, especially because they worked together.
But he wanted to see her, so he threw caution to the wind and rang again. This time, he heard someone shuffling toward the door and felt himself being scrutinized in the peep hole before he heard the click of the deadbolt’s release.
She was barefoot, wearing black yoga pants, a black camisole, and no makeup. Her pixie hair was tousled as if someone had run fingers through it. Jim thought of David Scott once more with foreboding.
He licked his dry lips and tried to sound nonchalant. “I thought I’d come by and offer to take you out for a drink. I was thinking you might want to unwind after the hearing today, and I’ve got some new information on Michael Reed.” He wished he could add, “Are you alone,” but, of course, he couldn’t.
“Thanks, but I’m pretty exhausted.” His hopes fell. But she went on, “Besides, we can’t talk about the case in public. Why don’t you come in though and have a drink here, and you can tell me about Michael. I’d like some good news after today.”
The butterflies had left his stomach and were flying around his heart. He was weak with gratitude and relief. She was alone.
He followed her down the hall, his loafers clattering slightly on the polished, golden hardwood floor. She led him through the living room, where no lights were on and where he had a quick glimpse of casual but sophisticated white slip-covered Pottery Barn furniture. She led him through mahogany French doors that were opened onto a miniature stone patio surrounded by palms and bougainville mixed with more ferns and bright blue morning glory vines and red hibiscus.
She had been sitting on one of the redwood lounge chairs covered in crisp white linen cushions, apparently killing a bottle of expensive California red zin by herself in the soft pink twilight. She motioned to the other lounge chair and said, “Sit down. I’ll go get another glass. And another bottle of wine.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I’m not hungry.”
She’d been thin when they met, but she’d lost weight in the last month. Another reason to worry about what this case was doing to her.
“If I cook, you’ll be hungry.”
“But there’s nothing here to cook. I – I haven’t had time to go to the market.”
He bet she kept little in the house to eat as a general rule. “I’m a food wizard. Let me take a look.”
She led him back through the living room to the miniature but very modern white tile and stainless steel kitchen. He opened her Sub Zero refrigerator to find butter, eggs, cheese and some port wine salami.
“One of my amazing omelettes will fix you right up.”
She opened the second bottle of wine and poured him a glass. She watched in silence as he transformed her scant variety of ingredients into two omelettes that they ate on the patio in the deepening, brine-scented twilight.
“I like it here,” Jim said, as he put his empty plate on the table between the two chaise lounges where the bottle of wine now also stood.
“I wanted to be close to the ocean. The previous owner remodeled just before I bought it. Everything’s new. I was lucky.”
“You never asked how I found your address.”
“You’re an ex-FBI agent turned private investigator. I didn’t need to ask.”
“I hope you don’t mind that I came by. I thought you might want company because today was a tough loss.”
She shrugged and sipped her wine. “But not unexpected. Although, I will admit Judge Tomlinson got my hopes up when he wanted time to think it over. Jordan did her usual brilliant job. She’s believable because she’s honest.”
“Unlike the opposition.”
“True. But we have one more crack at this at the next hearing in thirty days. Meds may not bring her back enough to stand trial. The judge didn’t count out that possibility.”
“True.” He could smell her gardenia perfume across the small space that separated them. Like a high school kid, he wished they were side by side on a sofa where he could casually drop his arm across the back, hoping for skin-to-skin contact.
“Great food, again, by the way.”
“I have the feeling you need a personal chef.”
“I can’t cook. I burn everything. No patience.”
“Patience to do complex legal work but not to follow a recipe.”
“Yeah, go figure.” For the first time, she let her eyes meet his, and she smiled. His heart was like a runaway freight train on the downhill.
“You had news about Michael Reed? Evidence he beat his wife, I hope.”
“No, I haven’t found that yet. But interesting evidence, nonetheless.”
Sarah polished off her wine and poured another. “So tell me.”
“Okay, Michael, like his father The Honorable Coleman Reed, was chronically unfaithful to his wife.”
“Ah, chip-off-the-old block syndrome.”
“Exactly.”
“So as you’d expect, Michael had tons of affairs.”
“Did Alexa know?”
“Well, we won’t know that, of course, until she talks to us. But there were so many she must have known. He thought everything in skirts was fair game. She may even have known he got a Warrick, Thompson paralegal pregnant during their first year at the firm.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. I have a copy of the payment to the abortion clinic from Warrick, Thompson.”
“Are you telling me, the law firm paid for her abortion?”
“Yep. I have a copy of the cashier’s check they used.”
“Who is your source?”
“Unfortunately, not someone we can call as a witness. A friend of mine is chummy with Warrick’s nonlegal personnel director. He managed to get me the names of all the women paralegals who were at the firm the year Alexa and Michael came to work there. When I was in D.C., I had heard rumors about Coleman’s infidelities. It was just a hunch that the apple wouldn’t fall far from the tree.
“Most of the women on the list don’t work for Warrick, Thompson anymore. But a Lisa Miller is still there, and she was willing to talk to me. She likes Alexa and thinks she was treated unfairly when they fired her. She’s a stunning redhead, about the same age as Alexa and Michel. And, of course, Michael had come on to her more than once.
“She said the woman Michael got pregnant was named Toni Anders. The firm paid for her abortion and gave her a big severance check. Toni gave Lisa a copy of the firm’s checks, one for the clinic, the other for the severance pay, in case something happened to her. If Lisa got word that Toni had been killed, she was to take them to the police to prove Warrick, Thompson’s involvement.”
“Any way to find Toni Anders now?”
“No luck so far.”
“Too bad. It would be interesting to know if Michael was violent with her. If I were a betting woman, I’d say yes.”
“Agreed. I’m going to keep looking, of course.”
“I don’t understand why the firm paid for an abortion. That’s not the kind of thing Alan Warrick would do. I know he and his wife have an arrangement like David and Tessa’s, but Alan would never use firm money for something as personal as that.”
Jim winced when she mentioned the real estate mogul. “I would bet Coleman Reed forced them to do it.”
“But he was on the Supreme Court by 2005.”
“Right, but he left his clients in the hands of Warrick, Thompson’s attorneys didn’t he? And he had a reputation as quite a rainmaker.”
“So you think he could somehow force Alan to pay for Michael’s mess up?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if Alan would admit to that.”
“I still think we need to pay him that visit in Paris.”
“No time now. There are people here we need to see more urgently than Alan. I was going to call you to let you know her family law attorney, Bob Metcalf, agreed to meet with me tomorrow at two.”
“Do you want me along?”
“Yes. He might, indeed, be a witness in this case.”
His heart raced with joy.