The Aquittal

by Anne Laughlin

  “I only tried because Tim dared me to. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Oh, please. That’s a little far-fetched, even for Tim. Can’t you come up with something better than that?”

  “I’m afraid it’s the truth.” Lauren looked ashamed.

  Kelly very slowly relaxed. She rubbed Lauren’s arms, as if trying to warm her up. “Why do you keep doing this? Tim’s never made a dare you could win.”

  Lauren looked miserable, and she came by it naturally. “You know what’s behind it all. I do better than Tim at everything that matters, and he gets back at me by trying to get me to do things we both know I’m terrible at. I’d rather keep him amused than have him be dangerous.”

  “I don’t understand his hold on you, Lauren. He must have traumatized you as an kid. Maybe you have PTSD.”

  Lauren smiled. “Maybe, but most of his challenges don’t mean anything. I can handle him.”

  “Not tonight you couldn’t. It was a humiliation for me. How would you feel if I tried to pick up a woman in the same room as you?”

  Lauren tried to look distressed at the thought, as if she hadn’t witnessed exactly that thing happen on numerous occasions. “Yes, I can see how bad this is for you. But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, in a seduction contest between you and me, you’re the hands-down winner. You’d have had no problem with what’s her name.”

  “You’re limiting the contestants to you and me? That’s like saying in a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Woody Allen, Ali would be the clear winner.” Kelly sounded a little peeved.

  “You’re right. How about the world-record-setting National Champion of Flirtation and Seduction?”

  Kelly looked thoughtful. “I like the sound of that.” More hard thinking. “I bet I could make a fortune teaching people how to flirt. It’s amazing how many people are like you.”

  “I’m sure you could, sweetheart. Now let’s go home. You can brainstorm the idea in the car.”

  Kelly had practically skipped to the parking lot, while Lauren walked sullenly behind. She was so whipped.

  Lauren cleared her mind of that memory of Kelly, realizing again how high-maintenance she’d been. She walked into her offices and paused at Eva’s desk.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Wade?” Lauren had told Eva a thousand times to call her Lauren, but she wouldn’t shift her ingrained Southern manners. “You know that woman—the PI who keeps calling here?” Eva nodded. “Get her on the phone and make an appointment for me to see her here at the first opportunity.”

  Eva looked dumbfounded.

  “You do have her number, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Miss Wade. I’ll make the call now.”

  Lauren went into her office and closed the door. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. Who would spend the money to hire a detective to find an alternate killer? Who cared about her that much?

  Eva knocked and entered in one motion, making the knock a mere formality. This was another thing Eva never seemed to grasp—that Lauren wanted a little warning before someone entered her office.

  “That private investigator, Josie Harper, can be here at eight tomorrow if that’s not too early for you. You’re booked solid the rest of the day.”

  “That’s fine. You can go on home, Eva.”

  Lauren slumped in her chair. She had no enthusiasm for her work, which used to be her passion. Now she was consumed with how to get her parents safely released and her own freedom restored. This mission of Josie Harper’s was yet another distraction.

  Chapter Twenty

  Greta rose to greet Josie when she arrived, on time, for her appointment. For a moment she thought Greta was going to hug her and was relieved when she waved Josie to her usual chair. Her office felt as normal as home. At least what she imagined a normal home would feel like.

  “I’m wondering,” Josie opened, “if we still need to meet twice a week. Isn’t it time we cut back?” Josie leaned back in her chair and sipped from her Starbucks cup. “Every child needs to fly from home at some point.”

  “That’s how you’re starting our conversation this afternoon?” Greta said. “You know that makes me immediately suspicious.” She was wearing an autumn-colored dress and her still-shapely legs were crossed. A high heel dangled from one foot.

  “Why would you be suspicious? I’ve been out of the hospital for a year, I’ve been a good girl the entire time, and it seems like we go over the same things again and again.” Josie also had her legs crossed, but the crossed leg was moving up and down rapidly, restlessly. She grabbed on to her knee.

  “Let’s back up a bit and you can fill me in on what’s been happening since I saw you Friday,” Greta said. She picked up a pen and notepad.

  What’s not been happening? But what to tell Greta?

  “I met a nice girl,” Josie said, feeling that was innocent enough. “She remembered me from Tillie’s, when I was pretty fucked up, and she still hasn’t run away screaming. In fact, she seems to like me a lot.”

  Greta smiled. “That’s wonderful, Josie. Tell me about her.”

  “We’ve only seen each other a couple of times, but she’s supportive and honest and doesn’t seem afraid I’m bipolar. She’s a social worker, you’ll be pleased to know. Despite that, I like her a lot.”

  Greta seemed to contemplate that for a moment. “Have you slept with her yet?”

  Josie feigned shock. “Isn’t that a little personal?”

  “When I first got to know you, you seemed rather proud to talk about your conquests,” Greta said with a smile. “Are you not proud of this one?”

  “So you assume we’ve slept together, though we’ve only been on two dates.”

  “Josie, the fact that you’ve even been on something you call a date is reason enough to assume something is very different, either in you or because of this woman.”

  “Her name’s Lucy. And no, we haven’t slept together. We’ve fooled around; she said that was enough for now.”

  “Hmm. I think I like her.” She jotted something down on her pad.

  “I knew you would.” Josie looked pleased, as if she’d brought the shiniest apple to the teacher.

  “You intend to see her again?” Greta asked.

  “Of course,” Josie said, “I told you I liked her a lot.”

  “Yes, but more than two dates might give her the idea you’re interested in some form of relationship. Are you ready for that?”

  “Why not? Is there some kind of time frame in place before I can start living a normal life? You’ve said yourself I’m doing much better.”

  Now Josie was leaning forward as if she were pleading her case. Greta took a slow drink of her tea.

  “Let me hear what else has been going on. When we last met, when you walked out of the appointment early, you’d gotten some kind of murder case. How have you been handling that?”

  “I haven’t been losing sleep over it, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m interviewing witnesses. Plodding along. That’s what this work is, you know. Lots of plodding. Nothing I can’t handle.” Josie leaned back, but kept hold of her knee.

  “Are you any closer to finding what you were hired to find?”

  “Not a bit,” Josie said. She had no intention of telling Greta about the incident with the black-belt wife beater or that she’d been sleeping very little or frequently forgetting to eat. She was taking her medications mostly every day, though. There was that.

  Greta put down her cup and placed her hands on her knees. “This is what I see. In four days’ time you’ve gone from someone stabilized with bipolar I disorder to someone who’s feeling pressure to solve a perhaps unsolvable case, who’s starting a relationship with a woman unlike any she’s been with before, and probably two or three other things you’re not telling me. Your speech is rapid and sounds well rehearsed, as if you’re trying to keep me from seeing something. You’re restless. Your leg is swinging faster and faster, despite all you’re doing to contain it. These are signs of a
hypomanic state, and that’s what we want to avoid.”

  Damn. There was no getting around this woman. She was the all-knowing Oz, and Josie a humble subject before her.

  “What’s hypomanic? I know what manic feels like and I’m definitely not that.”

  “I’d agree. Hypomania is something we see more commonly in bipolar II patients. It’s a lesser form of mania—not as dramatic or dangerous. But it can escalate in a bipolar I patient quite easily. You might be distractible, sleeping poorly, shopping or gambling, talking too much. Overworking’s a big one. That sort of thing.”

  “It sounds like when I was manic last year.” Josie looked a little worried.

  “It is, but in a much milder form. It can feel great—like there’s nothing you can’t do. And most people won’t even notice it in you, including yourself. But right now I see your behavior as not quite the same as when we’d finally found the right medication mix for you.”

  “When things were boring, you mean.”

  “That’s another sign of hypomania. When you were stabilized, things weren’t boring. They were more of a relief.”

  Josie stayed silent as Greta went over her notes on Josie’s medications. “Are you taking the Klonopin?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “More than once a day? Only taking it to fall asleep isn’t going to help any hypomania symptoms. I’m going to write a new script for the Klonopin and I want you to take it three times a day, with a meal. It’s important you eat regularly. I’m also going to up your Depakote a bit.”

  “I don’t understand this. I feel fine,” Josie said.

  “You’re going to have to trust me again. You’re not where you should be and it could lead to real trouble. And you’re not the best judge of how you’re doing. Has Lucy said anything to you about your disease acting up?”

  “No!” Josie said adamantly. “And I don’t think it is either.”

  “Do as I say and it won’t.”

  Josie slumped in her chair, looking grumpy. She didn’t look at Greta.

  “We have a few minutes left. Are you up to talking about what this new world of dating might look like for you?”

  “I guess,” Josie mumbled. But the only thing on her mind was how much she hated her disease. Hated it. She’d rather be alcoholic like her parents.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Josie returned to her office and started spinning in her desk chair, faster and faster, coming to an abrupt halt by grabbing the edge of her desk. That felt good. She’d stopped thinking about her disease for a few moments. She would do anything to not think of herself as uncontrollable. She was controlled and she was making progress on her case. She was enthusiastic, not manic. She thought of the list Greta recited of the symptoms of hypomania. She owned up to three of them, but only to herself—working a lot, racing thoughts, and skimping on sleep. She found it impossible to understand how increasing the amount you worked could be harmful. Wasn’t that what being a contributing member of society was about? And if you were lucky enough to not need as much sleep as other people did, you had more time to work. Greta worried entirely too much.

  She spun the chair around and focused on the board on the wall behind her desk. It was nearly filled with her meticulous handwriting. The facts as she knew them were written out in black, including her impressions from each of the people she’d interviewed. The possible scenarios for someone other than Lauren killing Kelly were written out in different colors—green for Gabby, blue for Tim Wade, and red for Nikki Moore, Kelly’s sister. Josie thought Nikki might have offed her sister out of sheer spite. She seemed truly jealous of how easily things came to Kelly—the lucrative relationship, the great job. Murder had been committed over lesser motives than that.

  Tim seemed to have a motive also. There was the long-standing competitive nature of their relationship, with Lauren clearly coming out on top again and again when it came to their parents’ approval. When they made her CEO, she’d won the ultimate sign of their regard. Tim got vice president of operations, a far less prestigious title. That was humiliating enough, but when Lauren fired him six months later, the embarrassment might have put him over the edge. She must have known that was a risk.

  But why would Tim kill Lauren’s lover and not Lauren herself? With Lauren dead he would have taken over her spot in the company. Perhaps there was a smidgen of brotherly love left and he couldn’t bring himself to kill his sister. Killing her lover and framing Lauren for the murder might have seemed like a good alternative.

  These were the kinds of thoughts Josie would’ve bounced off a partner, if she had one. She thought of giving Bev a call, maybe even Stan Waterman. Perhaps hashing it out with them would point her to something more solid. She pinned her hopes on her interview with Lauren. Maybe that would produce something resembling a lead.

  She’d started spinning her chair again when her cell phone rang. It was Sarah DeAngeles asking for a progress report. Since she had little in the way of progress to report, she inflated the number of interviews she’d done and told her about receiving the case file from her police source. She made sure to mention her interview with Lauren in the morning.

  “You got through to meet with Lauren?” Sarah sounded truly impressed. “When I said you could try to interview her, I didn’t think you’d actually be able to.”

  Josie felt a bloom of pride at Sarah’s praise. It didn’t take much praise for her to puff up a little. “I’m sure she wants to know what’s going on.”

  “Yes, probably.”

  “How about I call you right after the interview,” Josie said. “I’ll give you my impressions.”

  They hung up with Sarah sounding mollified and Josie feeling a little more secure her job wasn’t about to end. She leaned back in her chair. The bright September light flooded the office, but she took little notice. Her brain was galloping along a single groove. Her cell phone rang again.

  “Am I speaking to Josie Harper?” a familiar, gravelly voice said.

  “Sergeant Lundy?” Josie gripped her cell phone in one hand, while a feeling of dread came over her. “It’s been a long time.”

  “That it has. We all miss you down here,” he said. The stationhouse had felt much more like home than did the one she once shared with her parents, like Greta’s office did now. That was largely due to people like Sergeant Lundy. Good police. If she weren’t so resentful about being taken off the streets because of her diagnosis, she might have had a job like Lundy’s, still in the stationhouse, around people she loved. But then she remembered Lundy carried a gun. The reality was she’d probably be shuttled down to the evidence cage.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

  “It’s about your mother, actually. See, your dad’s on his annual fishing trip or we’d have called him. The thing is, your mother got picked up for a DUI and she’s here in a cell. It looks like she’s still pretty sloshed, if you ask me.”

  Josie wondered if there’d be no end to the embarrassment she had to endure in front of her former colleagues. There was the unstoppable flow from her father, and there was her own fuckuppery to add to the account. Now even her mother was getting in on it. All three of them were a mess.

  “Josie, are you there?” Lundy sounded sympathetic.

  “Yeah, I’m here. A little shocked, I guess. It’s only four thirty.”

  “Are you coming down? I don’t know who else we can release her to.”

  “On my way.” She hung up and threw her Sharpie across the room, leaving a nice black spot on the opposite white wall. She’d rather do anything other than bail her mother out of jail. Shooting herself in the head seemed an attractive option. Instead, she put her sweatshirt on and headed out the door.

  She made a stop at her bank for some bail money before arriving at her old stationhouse. There was Sergeant Lundy, sitting behind the tall counter, guarding his fortress. She pulled up her hoodie and made a beeline to him.

  “Sergeant,” she whispered. “What’s the fastest
and least public way I can get my mother out of here?”

  The sergeant looked out at the line of people Josie had cut in front of and held up his hand as they started grumbling. He turned to Josie. “She’s in the system now, I’m sorry to say. We’ve got to get bail money or a bond card from you. Then I’ll give you your mother and her court date.” The sergeant slipped off his high stool and went back into the heart of the station, which Josie knew would be teeming with activity. Uniforms coming and going, detectives at their desks making calls or immersed in the Internet, brass walking from one meeting to the next. She missed it desperately.

  Five minutes later, Lundy returned with the paperwork and she forked over the $500 bail. Another five minutes went by before a uniform brought her mother out. It was super fast because she was an ex-cop and her father a detective. She still had a few perks of the job.

  Her mom looked like she’d dressed for a ladies’ lunch and taken a wrong turn into a grease pit. She must have rolled around on the floor somewhere, because her red suit was smeared with grime. One of her stockings sagged around her ankle, and the heel was off her other shoe, giving her walk a rolling motion that pointed her in only the most general of directions. She clung to the young officer escorting her, who couldn’t look more eager to hand her over to Josie.

  Josie stepped forward and took her mother’s other arm as the officer let go on his side. The transfer caused her mother to sway a good deal, like a willow tree in a stiff wind. Josie was concerned. How could she be this drunk so early in the day? Apparently her special orange juice wasn’t simply a jump-starter. Josie knew her mother was an alcoholic, but she’d always been an at-home alcoholic. Life wasn’t safe for her beyond those walls. Josie knew all about being in bad or dangerous situations when she was drunk, but she’d always been able to extricate herself from them. Her mother had no such ability.

  She took the keys to Elaine’s Buick from the baggie of possessions the officer handed her and guided her mom toward the parking lot, using shoulder and hip to stuff her in the passenger seat. Elaine was singing “Bye Bye Blackbird” in a sassy, but thankfully muted voice. Josie gunned the car for the northwest side.