Poppy Harmon and the Hung Jury

by Lee Hollis

  “We’ll have to get back to you on that,” Poppy said.

  Jay grimaced and then jumped into the driver’s seat, strapped himself in, and peeled away, circling around at the dead end of the industrial park and out the drive toward his next job.

  Matt turned to Poppy. “Do you think he’s telling us the truth?”

  Poppy barely heard him. She was rolling the name Tammy over and over in her mind before it suddenly dawned on her. “Tammy . . . Tammy . . .”

  Matt stared at her. “What is it?”

  “After Tony Molina’s trial, I was having dinner with Rod Harper at Cicci’s and Molina strolled in, and he was flanked by his two bodyguards. They were a married couple, which I found unusual. And I remember he called the woman Tammy and she was tall and blond.”

  “So Alden’s girlfriend was working security for Tony Molina? That’s one more awfully big coincidence,” Matt remarked. “Everything always seems to point back to Tony Molina.”

  “Yes, and I’m convinced Tammy and her husband were the same couple who first approached Glenda Felson at the jury service office even though she has refused to identify them out of her loyalty to Tony Molina.”

  “So if this bodyguard was seeing Alden Kenny on the sly, why would she kill him?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t seeing him on the sly. Maybe it was part of her job. To get close to him and find out if he was going to remain quiet about his role in the jury tampering at Tony Molina’s trial. I’m certain Alden was about to come clean to me about it. If that was the case, then perhaps Tammy found out what he was going to do, and maybe with her husband’s help killed Alden to prevent him from ever talking and incriminating Tony.”

  Poppy’s cell phone began buzzing inside her bag. She reached in and pulled it out, checking the caller ID. It was Heather. She turned to Matt. “I need to take this.” She answered the call. “Hi, honey, what’s up?”

  “Mother, I’ve been arrested.”

  Chapter 41

  Poppy and Matt raced to the Palm Desert Police Department, where Heather had been booked for assault and was biding her time in a jail cell until her mother could post bail. Once that was completed, a rotund female officer with a severe expression and no sense of humor led Heather down the hall to the waiting area, where she was released and allowed to leave until her arraignment the following morning. Poppy hugged her daughter, who appeared disheveled, scattered, and confused. Poppy had warned Matt on their way to the station not to immediately deluge Heather with questions about what had happened. They could get all the answers later after they managed to get Heather out of police custody.

  Heather turned to the female officer and in a scratchy, tired voice simply said, “Thank you.”

  The officer was surprised by the polite gesture and her stern expression melted just a bit, but she didn’t want to appear soft so she grunted a quick reply, turned on her heel, and marched off down the hall.

  Poppy and Matt wasted no time in spiriting Heather away before the cops could change their minds. Once they had bundled Heather into the backseat of Poppy’s car and taken their seats in the front, Poppy turned around to look at her daughter, whose cheeks were smeared with mascara from crying.

  “Honey, are you okay?” Poppy asked gently.

  Heather nodded, still a bit disoriented.

  Poppy reached over the seat and took her daughter’s hand. “It’s all right. You’re with us now. Can you tell us what happened?”

  Heather stared into space. “I honestly don’t know. . . . I got my first paycheck at the restaurant today and I thought I would splurge and buy a new dress so I went to that shop you told me about on El Paseo. . . .”

  Poppy nodded. “Lana May’s Boutique?”

  “Yes, they were having a sale. I was just trying a few things on and suddenly she was just there. . . .”

  Matt perked up. “Who?”

  “This girl . . . woman, I should say. She had to be in her early twenties. Anyway, I was standing in front of the mirror wondering if I needed to try the dress on in a smaller size since I had lost so much weight when I was in prison. . . .” Heather’s voice trailed off. Just the mention of her time behind bars depressed her. But after a brief pause, she steeled herself and continued. “And I felt this tap on my shoulder. When I turned around she was standing there, and she said that she had seen the dress I was wearing earlier and it belonged to her and I should take it off that instant. At first, I thought she was joking.”

  “Did you know her?” Matt asked.

  Heather shook her head. “No, I’d never seen her before. But she was wearing dark glasses and maybe some kind of wig. I’m not sure. She just appeared out of nowhere. I kind of laughed and turned back around to take one more look in the mirror, and the next thing I know, she’s grabbing the zipper in the back of my dress and yanking it down. She was going to tear it off me!”

  Poppy let go of her daughter’s hand and covered her mouth. “What on earth . . . ?”

  “It was awful, Mother. I let out this shocked scream and tried to push her away, but that just made her madder, and she came at me and started pounding me with her fists and pulling at my hair. She gave me a hard shove and I fell into a dress rack. The next thing I know she’s on top of me and we’re rolling around and I’m yelling for help and the security guard comes over and has to pull us apart! I tried to explain that she started it, and he’s looking at me, and behind him I see this girl take one hand and just scratch herself with these long nails up the arm so deep she draws blood, and then she’s waving it in the air and showing him and claiming I did it!”

  “The girl was obviously a nutcase!” Matt cried. “How did you wind up arrested?”

  “The boutique owner must have called the cops because two officers were on the scene within minutes, and the girl is screaming that I must be some kind of violent criminal, and they went to get a first aid kit for her arm, and that’s when one of the officers took my driver’s license and went out to his squad car. He must have run a check on me because when he came back he knew I was a recent parolee, and that was pretty much it. They suddenly believed her and not me and I was placed under arrest.”

  Poppy gasped. “Oh, Heather, no . . .”

  Heather couldn’t hold in her emotions any longer. She broke down and sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “What am I going to do? They’re going to send me back to prison for violating my parole.”

  Poppy whipped back around, started the car, and peeled out onto Highway 111 heading back to Palm Springs. “You are not going back there, not if I can help it.”

  Matt glanced warily at Poppy, fearful she might be making a promise she could not possibly keep. But Poppy was determined. She had a strong feeling she might know what happened, but she was going to need help proving it.

  She placed a call to Iris and Violet and dispatched them to Lana May’s Boutique to talk to the owner. Then, after dropping Matt off and arriving back at the apartment, she put Heather to bed for a nap and started a pot of her homemade gumbo, one of Heather’s favorites, for when she woke up. Poppy tried to keep busy, cleaning up, dusting, getting as many chores as she could think of out of the way, waiting for Iris or Violet to call. Just before seven, with Heather still resting, Poppy’s phone finally rang. It was Violet.

  Poppy quickly answered the call. “Yes, Violet?”

  “Today is Heather’s lucky day. There was a security camera in the store. The owner allowed Iris and me to take a look at it, and sure enough, it’s very clear who started the fight, and it wasn’t Heather! It was that awful girl.”

  Poppy breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank God. Any idea who she is?”

  “Not from the store camera. Her big sunglasses covered a lot of her face and her hair looked fake, like she was wearing a wig, and her clothes were bulky so it was hard to tell her body type, if she was on the thin side or chunky. . . .”

  She could hear Iris bellowing from a distance, “She gave a fake name to the police!”


  “Then I guess we will never know for sure. . . .”

  “Don’t despair, Poppy, because we didn’t stop there. The boutique owner remembered seeing the girl flee to the parking lot in the back after the police arrested Heather, and there was a camera from the law office next door that has a view of the whole lot. Apparently they get a bunch of sordid types showing up looking to hire an attorney. Anyway, Iris got him to show her the footage, and she saw the girl get in her car and take off her wig and sunglasses and you will never guess who it was—”

  “Lara Harper,” Poppy said flatly.

  “You guessed it!” Violet cried. “I wish we had some kind of prize we could give you!”

  Poppy felt a rage building within her. She knew what Lara’s game was. She had suspected it from the start. Rod’s daughter was obsessed with Matt. She saw Heather as some kind of threat in her sick, twisted mind. And so she had decided to get her out of the picture by sabotaging her parole and getting her tossed back into prison so she could have Matt all to herself.

  Poppy thanked Violet and hung up. The gumbo on the stove was now bubbling, but her stew wasn’t the only thing boiling. Poppy was incensed, and she was not about to let this disturbed, malevolent young woman, who was incapable of telling the truth about anything, cause any more harm.

  No, Poppy was on the warpath now, like a mother bear protecting her cub.

  She was not going to allow anyone to mess with her family.

  Chapter 42

  Poppy anticipated Rod’s reluctance to accept the fact that his daughter was unhinged. In fact, when she showed up unannounced at his Palm Springs house to confront him about Lara’s illicit behavior, she came armed with a copy of the surveillance footage on her phone from both the boutique and the parking lot so there would be no doubt as to the identity of the person who accosted Heather while she was innocently shopping at Lana May’s.

  When Poppy explained to Rod what had happened at the boutique, he at first refused to believe that his daughter was capable of anything like that, stammering that it had to be some kind of misunderstanding. But before he could go on any further, Poppy simply raised her phone up in front of his face and played the video. From the moment Lara got into her car and pulled off the sunglasses and the wig in plain view of the camera, Rod gave up trying. He knew Lara had been caught red-handed.

  He laughed bitterly. “So it’s come to this. I’m now that nervous, seedy character who lied through his teeth in dozens of Jack Colt episodes, who always buckled under pressure and finally gave up the truth when Jack confronted him with the hard evidence. How pathetic.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Rod. She’s your daughter. It’s natural for you to want to protect her.”

  Rod stared at the floor and mumbled, “Is Heather going to press charges?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “That’s very kind of her.”

  “Heather does not want to cause a scene. The poor girl’s just trying to keep her head down and not make waves while she’s on parole. But you need to have a talk with Lara. She has this idea in her head that Matt is her boyfriend and it’s gotten way out of control.”

  “I tried discussing it with her when I picked her up at Matt’s house. She wouldn’t tell me much, but she did mention that she recently lost her last boyfriend and she’s been feeling alone and vulnerable. When she met Matt, who, let’s face it, comes across as this charismatic, powerful, confident man, well, she was naturally drawn to him.”

  “But Matt is with Heather! Lara needs to understand that even if she somehow got rid of her, like she tried to do today, that does not mean Matt is going to somehow magically wind up with her.”

  “I know. I will try to make that clear when she gets home,” Rod said solemnly.

  “Do you have any idea where she is now?”

  Rod shook his head. “No, not a clue. I try not to pry too much because I don’t want her feeling trapped here and running off again. I want us to reach a place where we can trust each other again.”

  Poppy wanted to suggest to Rod that he take Lara to the nearest psychiatrist for an immediate mental evaluation, but she held her tongue, concluding that her advice might not be the most helpful at the moment.

  “I have a pot roast in the oven. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  Poppy chuckled. “Since when do you cook?”

  “I’ve become quite the Gordon Ramsay. Got into it in my early sixties after my last divorce. I was tired of eating out every night. I actually find it relaxing. Come on. Stay. I think you’ll find I’m not bad at it.”

  “I really should get home to Heather,” Poppy said.

  Rod appeared to be trying to read her mind. “Just dinner, I promise.”

  She hadn’t thought the invitation was a ploy to get her to stay so he could try to woo her into the bedroom, but she was grateful that he was taking that possibility off the table.

  “Lara will be home at some point, and I would also appreciate you being here to help me talk to her about what happened today. She can’t lie to me if she’s forced to watch the video evidence you have on your phone like I was,” Rod said.

  Poppy could tell he was apprehensive and scared to confront his daughter about her atrocious behavior on his own and was desperate for some backup. Poppy hesitated, not wanting any part of it, but Rod was a friend after all, someone she cared about, perhaps too much, so she nodded and finally said, “I’ll stay.”

  Rod was elated. He clapped his hands together. “Fantastic. I’ll go pour you a glass of wine.” He bounded into the kitchen, leaving Poppy to look around at some of the framed pictures Rod had around the house. One of him during the Jack Colt days, in the Oval Office with Ronald Reagan. Another one with Elizabeth Taylor at some charity gala. She even spotted one of Rod and herself, back in the day, looking so young and fresh and happy, on the set of Jack Colt. She could not tell what year it was, although she guessed it was sometime during the second season from her hairstyle. There was one of Rod bouncing Lara on his knee, some years later, probably around 1998, when Lara was a toddler. She looked so innocent and carefree, exuberantly happy to be with her father. Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off the picture. What had happened to that little girl to make her so erratic and disturbed now?

  Rod returned with Poppy’s wine and handed it to her. “I know you like a good Pinot Noir. This is Chilean. Has a nice ripeness, bold flavors, but mostly I like it because it’s a twist-off top.”

  Poppy laughed and took a sip. “Delicious.”

  “I have more work to do in the kitchen. Make yourself at home,” Rod said, heading off again.

  Poppy heard him clanging about and wandered around, looking at more photographs, until she found herself in a long hallway that led to the bedrooms. She hadn’t intended on snooping, but when she happened upon a room where Lara was obviously staying, she looked back to make sure Rod was still in the kitchen, and then slipped inside, closed the door most of the way, and turned on a light.

  Lara didn’t appear to have too many belongings. A few outfits in the closet. A couple of primitive sketches on a night table of possible cover art for her future album. On top of a desk in the corner was a laptop computer. Poppy walked over and sat down, then flipped the computer open. There was a box to type in a password. Poppy pondered whether or not this was a smart call, attempting to hack into someone’s personal computer, but she was too worried about what Lara might be capable of not to at least try to get a better understanding of this young woman’s troubled life. She wished Wyatt was with her at this moment because he would probably have no problem gaining access in a matter of seconds.

  On a whim, Poppy typed in four letters. M-a-t-t. Matt. As in Matt Flowers, Lara’s latest obsession. And lo and behold, it worked. Poppy was suddenly staring at Lara’s desktop with several rows of folders labeled by letters. Poppy took another sip of her wine, set the glass down, and clicked on a folder marked AI, which turned out to be photos and song sheets from her brief time on
American Idol. She clicked on another one labeled F. This one was full of photos of Lara with her ex-boyfriend, the loopy yoga instructor Falcon. They were on some kind of spiritual retreat on the Big Island of Hawaii. Poppy quickly clicked out when she happened upon a bunch of nude self-ies of the once happy couple among all the lush, brightly colored Hawaiian foliage. She had seen enough of that. Her next folder was labeled M, and this one sent a shiver up Poppy’s spine when she opened it. There were copied digital press clippings from their first big case that had put the Desert Flowers Detective Agency on the map. Most of the photos heavily featured Matt, who was the designated face of the agency. There was also a head shot of Matt from when he first moved out to LA to pursue acting and a photocopy of a theatre program from when Matt appeared in a play in Palm Springs. Lara had done some very thorough research on Matt since she had first set her sights on him, and it didn’t ease Poppy’s mind at all about her mental condition.

  There was another folder marked D, and Poppy clicked on that one next, assuming it might be yet another boyfriend since Lara clearly had a tendency to keep exhaustive records of her past relationships and current obsessions. Poppy sat back in the chair, stunned, as she took in all the photos of Lara with a more recent paramour, a strikingly good-looking, dark-haired, olive-skinned young man, who stared lovingly into Lara’s eyes in most of the photographs.

  He could have been of Middle Eastern descent, or Greek, judging from his complexion, but Poppy knew at first glance he was Italian.

  She knew because she had seen him before.

  She knew exactly who he was.

  The D stood for Dominick.

  Dominick Molina.

  Tony Molina’s son.

  The same Dominick Molina who had been a pillar of support in the courtroom for his father and who had just been arrested for the murder of his stepmother, Tofu, and whose handsome mug was all over the news.