Janet Moodie--Next of Kin

by L. F. Robertson

  “I’m sure there are.” She opened a banana leaf and tipped the glossy lump of sticky rice inside it onto the saucer. Cutting it in two with a chopstick, she picked up half and put it on her plate. “Try it,” she said, and I took the other half, wiggled a piece from it with my chopsticks, and took a bite. It was delicious, just chewy enough and full of exotic flavors.

  “To begin with,” she said, “I’ve known Sunny since she was first married to Greg. Tom was part of an engineering firm in Harrison that Greg was involved with over the years. We knew him back when he was married to Pat. Pat and I were friendly, not that close; we lost touch after she left Greg and moved to Fresno. Try the shrimp and chive dumplings, they’re really good.” I took one and ate it; she was right. We kept eating and talking between bites.

  “Anyhow, to get back to Sunny, it was so clear she was a trophy wife for Greg. She was petite, beautiful—perfect figure, perfect little face. Like a beauty queen. A Disney princess. It was clear that that’s what her attraction was for Greg. But they didn’t really have anything in common. And Sunny didn’t have any of the social graces Greg wanted in a wife. She was just a girl from the country. I mean, she was as sweet as can be, but she couldn’t hold up her end of a conversation with Greg’s business buddies and their wives, she didn’t know how to dress or entertain. Greg was constantly criticizing her and trying to change her into what he wanted. It was like Henry Higgins and Eliza—except that Henry Higgins knew what he was doing. Greg didn’t; he just harped. And he kept having affairs with other women—his friends’ wives, cocktail waitresses, whatever.”

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “Right.” She grimaced in distaste. “I felt really sorry for poor Sunny.

  “I wasn’t happy, either, in Harrison. Tom grew up in the Central Valley, so he knows the culture, and he felt at home there. But I never did. I was so bored. Such limited people. I grew up in Whittier. That was bad enough, but we had LA nearby; I went to college at UCLA. But Harrison— ugh! I guess I ended up taking Sunny on as something like a project. Probably because I didn’t have enough to do; I decided to take a break from work while my son, Michael, was small. Tom says I’m a busybody, and he’s probably right. Michael was about Brittany’s age, and we used to have play dates. Sunny told me about her problems meeting Greg’s expectations, and I tried to help her get some polish— maybe just to get Greg off her back, I don’t know. Whatever it was, we became close friends. Maybe she saw me as sort of a mother figure, someone she needed because she never had a real mother. I met Linda a few times, and I didn’t think much of her.

  “Greg didn’t like it. He seemed to believe I was interfering, teaching Sunny to stand up for herself—which in a way I probably was, or at least trying to. But he couldn’t order Sunny to stop seeing me because he had an ongoing working relationship with Tom and his company. And I’m not easy to push around; you can ask Tom,” she said, with a laugh.

  “Jeez, would he really have tried to do that?”

  “Oh, yes. He often told Sunny who she could and couldn’t have as friends. He was kind of a social climber, and he wanted Sunny to learn to cultivate people, like the wives of men who could help him get ahead. She was no good at that. She was so over her head. He played her family against her, too. He did favors for Linda and Pete and Nana, tried to buy their loyalty, so they’d be on his side in case Sunny complained about how he was treating her. It worked on Linda and Pete, but I have to give Nana credit; she saw through him.”

  “Poor Sunny! She must have been unhappy a lot of the time.”

  “She was. She was like that old cliché, a bird in a gilded cage. Materially, she had a life she could never have had on her own. And that mattered to her. Not for herself, but for Brittany. She wanted Brittany to have the advantages of growing up well off. But it really was a bad choice. Greg didn’t have much use for Brittany. He just left her for Sunny to raise. He started to take notice of her when she was in junior high, but only to criticize, because he didn’t think she reflected well on him. She was too big, too heavy, not pretty enough. He said she dressed like a slob and hung out with white trash at the school. I thought when she started dating Todd, this kid that was just a farmhand on Greg’s family’s ranch, that it was like a rebellion—really, a slap in the face to her stepfather. But Sunny told me later Brittany was really in love with him; I know she was completely broken up when he died. And Sunny was caught in the middle, trying to keep Greg happy and heal what he was doing to Brittany’s self-esteem, all at the same time. I’m surprised Brittany didn’t hate Sunny as much as she did Greg.”

  “But she didn’t, did she?”

  “No. She’s a good kid, at heart, and she could see what Greg was doing to her mother. She tried to protect her. She got into arguments with Greg a few times about how he behaved toward them. Sunny told me she tried to calm Brittany down because she was afraid Greg would throw her out of the house.”

  “He couldn’t do that when she was underage.”

  “I told her that. But Sunny didn’t know that; she thought he could do anything. By then she was just so anxious all the time that she couldn’t think.”

  “So it sounds as though things were bad in the time leading up to the murder.”

  Carol nodded. “They were very bad.”

  “And Greg was having an affair with someone, right? This woman Carlene, who said he was going to divorce Sunny and marry her?”

  Carol rolled her eyes. “Oh, that. That was never going to happen. I told Sunny Greg was in no position to divorce her. She had a prenup—not that generous, she showed me the paper once—but still it meant Greg would have to give her a settlement if he left her. And he probably couldn’t even do that, at that point. He was in a cash flow crunch, Tom said, trying to borrow money wherever he could.”

  “So that would have been a bad time to kill him for his money?”

  She laughed again. “We are so cynical! But yes, for Sunny. There wasn’t that much there; as it turned out, his estate all went to pay debts, and his life insurance wouldn’t support them for long. If she wanted money, her best bet was to stay with Greg until he was on his feet again. But Brittany didn’t know that. Sunny told me she didn’t know Greg was in trouble until I told her.”

  I hesitated before asking the next question. “Are you suggesting Brittany might have been involved in Greg’s murder?”

  Carol shrugged. “Personally, I don’t know. But Sunny is convinced of it. She is Brittany’s mother, after all. They lived together; she saw her every day. Heard things between her and Todd. She told me she began to suspect something right away because of how Brittany found Greg’s body.”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, she said they came home from shopping with Nana that day, and Brittany went right upstairs to her room. Sunny was putting things away and could hear her talking on the phone—not what she was saying, just her voice. She figured she was talking to Todd, but didn’t make anything of it. But then Brittany came downstairs and went right out to the pool, to where Greg’s body was. Even at the time, it made no sense. There wasn’t any reason for her to go out there. She wasn’t going for a swim, she didn’t have her suit on. Sunny said she thought afterward that Todd must have told Britt where Greg’s body was. And then there were other things: Brittany’s worry about Todd, lots of whispered phone calls. The money for the truck. It seemed like a strange thing to ask for. But Sunny was feeling sorry for Brittany, with all the disruption around Greg’s death, and the full extent of Greg’s debts hadn’t really penetrated, so she said she didn’t see any harm in loaning Todd some money to fix his truck or get another one.”

  “Did she tell you about any of this before she was arrested?”

  “Yes. I was the only person she dared to confide in about her suspicions. She made me promise not to say anything to anyone else. She was really afraid for Brittany, but there wasn’t anything she could do. She wasn’t going to tell the police she suspected her own daughter of being involved in
the murder. She kept hoping it would somehow blow over. Actually, she was kind of surprised when she realized the police suspected her; she’d been so focused on protecting Britt that she didn’t see that coming. And then that guy turned up who said Todd told him Sunny hired him, and she was arrested. Even then, it seemed like such a weak case, we were all hoping she’d be acquitted. The conviction was a real shock, and the death sentence simply floored me. I wanted to say something, but Sunny swore me to silence. We had no way to talk when I visited her in jail; everything was over the telephone, and we knew they were monitored. But we managed to communicate a few things in a kind of code, and she made it clear that she could never do anything that might throw suspicion on Brittany.”

  “Did you talk with her about it afterward, when she was in prison?”

  “Yes. We could talk more there, because we were meeting face to face. She told me, oh, years ago, that Brittany had told her that story you told me, about Braden, during a visit to her in prison. Brittany wanted to go to the police and tell them, but Sunny told her not to. I had to agree with her. It was too late; no one would believe it, and Braden would just say it was all a lie. It would probably just backfire, make both her and Brittany look like liars.”

  “So now we’re back in court facing another trial,” I said, “and Sunny is afraid that Brittany is still in jeopardy.”

  “Definitely. And I’m sure Sunny’ll even go back to prison again before she lets anything happen to Britt.”

  “But she won’t have to. Nothing will happen to Brittany; we’re sure of it. But she isn’t convinced.”

  “How can you tell nothing will happen?”

  I swallowed a bite of a pork bun before answering. “Here’s how things stand now. The prosecution already tried the case on the theory that Sunny was behind the murder, and they won it. Now they’d have to go back and say, no, it was actually Brittany. But they have nothing on her, other than that she was Todd’s girlfriend, and she didn’t like her stepfather. Brittany herself has said that Braden was the person behind the murder. The only witness against her is Braden, who (a) is the other logical suspect and (b) is in prison for soliciting another murder. There’s just no case against her.”

  “What about Sunny?”

  “At this point, there’s a real lack of credible evidence connecting Sunny to the murder. Steve Eason, the guy who said Todd confessed to him, gave us a sworn declaration saying he was lying. If the prosecution puts him on, either he’ll testify, as he told us, that he lied about Todd’s confession, or if he doesn’t, the defense will impeach him with his sworn declaration, and they’ll get to introduce all the evidence about his other snitching that was kept out of his first trial. Eason is completely discredited as a witness. And his testimony and the loan to Todd were about the only solid evidence the prosecution had against Sunny. Everything else was just motive. Bring in Greg’s money troubles and the fact that Sunny knew about them, and a lot of that disappears. And now we have Brittany and Braden each saying the other one is responsible, and not Sunny. So I really doubt the DA will retry the case if we stand firm.”

  “But Sunny wants to take the plea bargain— manslaughter?—if they’ll promise not to prosecute Brittany?”

  “Right. Call it pride, or politics, or something, but prosecutors hate to dismiss cases after someone has been convicted. The DA wants her to plead guilty to something, and they’re offering manslaughter, which would mean she’d be released from prison immediately. We’re trying to convince Sunny that it’s safe to hold out for a complete dismissal. But we’re not having much luck. She wants us to insist that any deal includes a promise not to prosecute Brittany. She doesn’t seem to understand that this could make things worse, not better.”

  “You mean she’ll just draw their attention to the possibility that Brittany did it,” Carol said.

  “Right. I don’t think they’re taking that possibility seriously at this point, but if she insists, they might take another look.”

  “Poor Sunny! I’ll see what I can do. But it’s going to be hard, with those jail phones.”

  Another cart came by, this one with desserts. “Let’s have some custard tarts,” Carol said. “Take our mind off fixing Sunny’s problem.” She pointed to a plate of them and another of sesame balls. “I love these,” she said. “I never get them at home.” We both ate one of each, enjoying the contrasts between crumbly pie crust and eggy custard, chewy, sesame-crusted shell and the sweet bean paste inside it.

  Before we left, Carol paid the check and got boxes for the food we hadn’t eaten. She arranged the savories into one and the sweets into another, and gave them to me. “You can take them home,” she said. “I can’t; we’re in a hotel.” I thanked her for the wonderful lunch and for taking the time to talk with me.

  “It was my pleasure; I feel like we owe you all so much,” Carol said. “I’m looking forward to seeing Sunny free. I haven’t been so hopeful in years.”

  24

  Carol called me the day after she saw Sunny. “I don’t know if I convinced her,” she said, “but I think I got her to understand she can trust your judgment and Ms. Bergmann’s. Let me know if you need me to go there again. She’s still awfully anxious and uncertain—no wonder, really—and she needs a lot of TLC. Whatever happens, please definitely let me know when she’s going to be released. I want to be there to meet her.”

  After that, Sunny’s case crept slowly, as these cases so often do, toward some kind of resolution. A lot depended on keeping the case under the radar of the media and people who might use it for political gain. It got a little buzz initially, because it isn’t often that anyone on death row gets a new trial, but the case was old and not that sensational, as murders go, so many people no longer remembered it or had never heard of it, and it soon dropped off the local news cycle.

  Neither side wanted to try the case again, but the district attorney’s office needed a disposition that would save face, either a guilty plea to something or, if they were going to dismiss the charges and leave a murder unsolved, a credible reason why. And when and if that happened, the less visible the case was, the better. So the prosecutor and Carey moved in baby steps—or, rather, the prosecutor did, because Carey stood firm that her offer was dismissal or another trial. The judge was also hoping the case would be resolved without another expensive trial, so he kept moving the date back, on one pretext or another, as spring drifted into summer, and summer into fall.

  My life continued on its own set of cycles—records to read, briefs to write, clients to visit, summer pruning, tomato processing, jam making, and occasional treats like music festivals and fairs. The tomatoes were better than usual because the summer this year was hot—exceptionally, miserably hot. All of us around Corbin’s Landing, used to summer fog and sweater weather in the height of summer, found ourselves facing global climate change on a personal level.

  Santa Ana winds—the ones that had made the previous year’s fires east of us so hugely destructive—swept from the hot inland valleys over the mountains and over us, bringing heat waves with hundred-degree temperatures and desert-like humidity and more fires, whose smoke made us cough and tinted the air above the ocean with murky brownish smog. The smaller redwoods were stressed, the tips of their needles browning from lack of water, and our tanoaks were like matchsticks, with the grass and dried weeds underneath them nothing but tinder. Working early in the mornings, we cleared space around our homes to make firebreaks. We lived in constant fear of a stray spark from a power mower, a tourist’s forbidden campfire, or a downed power line.

  Looking back, though, I believe the end of my idyll in Corbin’s Landing began with the rats.

  I saw the first of them one morning on my deck. Charlie alerted me by whining at the kitchen door as I was padding around in robe and slippers, preparing to pour coffee beans into the grinder. Curious, I opened the door and saw a half-grown rat next to my compost bucket. It froze and stared at me through bright black eyes. I was touched rather than rep
ulsed by the sight; by its youngness, by the shine of its eyes and its inquisitive face. After a few seconds, it turned and scurried down the steps and out of sight.

  I mentioned it to Ed the next time I saw him. “You need to deal with it,” he warned. “There’s never just one rat. You probably have a family of them somewhere near your house, and if you leave them alone, they’ll start coming inside.”

  Ed was right. I left them alone, and one morning a couple of weeks later, when I lifted the bag of kibble to pour some into Charlie’s bowl, I saw that something had eaten a ragged hole in one corner of it.

  After that and a couple of evenings punctuated with mysterious scratchings and scrabblings in the wall between the kitchen and my bedroom, I made the drive to the hardware store in Gualala and asked the clerk to recommend some traps. Baits scared me because of the possibility of poisoning the dogs and because I had read that they caused horrible and painful death by internal bleeding. At that point, I wasn’t ready to wish such a fate even on a rat.

  So I reluctantly trapped a few, rushing to see when I heard the snap and rattle of a trap shutting and the victim’s final struggles, or checking them in the mornings and finding, every few days, another rat with its neck crushed. I dug holes in the orchard to bury them and hated picking up the traps, opening them, and dumping the stiff little bodies into their miniature graves.

  The scrabblings in the walls became less and less frequent, until I didn’t hear them anymore, but the traps still claimed an occasional unwary forager. Ed suggested I get a barn cat, since my house cats, Effie and Nameless, were completely uninterested in rodents large enough to stare them down.

  So, for a fee, I adopted a barn cat from a shelter in Santa Rosa which made a minor specialty of rescuing feral cats, spaying or neutering them, and offering them to farm and ranch owners who needed cats with experience in catching furry pests. My new cat was big, rangy, and orange-striped. The young women at the shelter told me he’d been found in Santa Rosa several months after the big fires, wandering the ruins of a burned-out neighborhood. They had named him Dodger because he was so hard to catch. I kept the name, thinking the reference to the Dickens character suited him.