Dark Justice

by Sinclair, Rachel

  That was my decision, goddammit.

  “Dear, sit down,” she said. “Take a deep breath. Relax.”

  “I won’t relax,” I screamed. “Don’t tell me to relax when you just screwed me over. Again.”

  “Relax,” she said. “Relax, or I won’t tell you what I learned at my seance.” She nodded her head meaningfully, and, in spite of myself, I sat down and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, trying to find my calm center. Mom had taught me how to meditate from the time I was a small child. It usually worked to relax me.

  After a few minutes, I could physically feel my blood pressure lower. “Okay,” I said. “Now, tell me what you need to tell me.”

  “Okay,” she said, putting her bony hands on my own. “Here’s what happened. I had Charlie over, you know, dear, Charlie Lasker. You’ve met him.”

  I nodded my head. Charlie Lasker was about a million years old and was one of the more well-known psychic mediums on the city. For those people who actually believed in that sort of thing, Charlie was the guy to call when you needed somebody to contact a dead person. I personally thought that he was a charlatan, but my mother, and thousands of people like my mother, thought that guy walked on water.

  “Yeah, I know who he is.”

  “Okay. Well, dear, I wanted to help you out on your case. You know, your Carter Dixon case. I know that you’ve been struggling with it. I know how much that case means to you. If you win it, you’ll be one of the most popular lawyers in this city. If you lose it…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if you lose it, you’ll probably struggle to get clients. I know how stressed you are, dear. I hear you screaming out in your sleep.”

  I had been sleeping on the living room couch, and mom’s bedroom was close to the living room, so she was in a good position to know about my night terrors.

  I was actually a bit surprised that I was having these night terrors, because I could never remember my dreams and nightmares. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I was screaming in my sleep. Mom was absolutely right - just below the surface, my knuckles were white, my heart was racing and I was suffering from extreme anxiety. I didn’t do well with change, and I really had no clue if I was going to be able to make enough money to afford my new place. Hell, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to afford this place, even though I owned it outright. That was because the annual taxes on it were astronomical - some $24,000 a year. That wasn’t a big deal, but if I didn’t bring money into my new practice, I wasn’t going to be able to swing it, along with all my other expenses.

  I sighed. “Okay, so tell me how to solve my case,” I said. “Tell me whodunnit. Then I’ll just have to find the information to prove it, whatever it is.”

  “Well, here’s the thing. I was trying to communicate with Addison. I figured that she would have the best information about who killed her. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Of course, that doesn’t always work so well. The dead often can’t remember the circumstances of their death. They block it out, you know.”

  I took a deep breath, wanting mom to just come out with it. I hated when she beat around the bush like this, and I was getting impatient.

  “Yeah, yeah, dead people don’t know how they died. So, what are you trying to say here?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “Charlie couldn’t get in touch with her. At all. He couldn’t communicate with her. Couldn’t find her.” She shook her head. “I mean, I thought that he could talk to Addison. I didn’t really think that he would find out much information from her, but I was hopeful. But he couldn’t even get in touch with her. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen that happen.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s it? That’s the big news you wanted to tell me? That crazy Charlie Lasker didn’t talk to dead Addison? Seriously, mom, that’s what was so important to tell me?”

  “Yes, that’s what was so important to tell you.” Mom evidently was offended by my outburst. “Now, go and get Arabella from the den. I think that I see my next move.”

  I closed my eyes. “Mom, did Arabella participate in this spook session?”

  “She did.” Mom nodded her head. “She loved it. Listen, that little girl has the gift herself. She might not know it just yet, but she does. I should train her, help her get in touch with her inner talents. At any rate, she’s very interested in the occult. I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise to you, because she appears to me to be a bit unconventional.”

  To say the very least. “Mom, I won’t have you poisoning her mind. Now, as soon as Angela calls me back, I’m getting her back over here to talk to her. I’m going to tell her that she is not to leave unless I dismiss her, not you.” I shook my head. “Involving my new charge in a spook session. What were you thinking?”

  Arabella came back out on the balcony. “Listen, Emerson,” she said. “Don’t go blaming Margot for having that seance. I was the one who suggested it.”

  I spun back around. “What do you mean, you suggested it?”

  She shrugged. “I suggested it. Margot told me that she had a psychic medium friend, and I thought it would be cool to see if we could help you out in your case. That’s it. Nothing happened, because Charlie couldn’t talk to Addison. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that you’re 14 years old. You’re too young to be getting involved in things that you don’t understand. In things that nobody really understands.”

  She sat back down at the chess board and studiously ignored me. “You getting yourself out of check yet, Margot?” she asked mom.

  At that, mom’s face brightened as she finally saw her move. With a flick of her wrist, her rook knocked out Arabella’s bishop and Arabella nodded her head in approval. “Nice move, Margot. You’re giving me a run for my money.”

  I didn’t even get a chance to tell either of them that Declan was coming over, so, when the doorbell rang, my heart started to pound. What was Declan going to think of my crazy mother and crazy charge? Well, considering his mother was a dominatrix, I figured that he was going to find my mother positively tame. But I doubted that he was going to understand mom’s apparent belief that she could see dead people when she wanted to.

  I opened the door and saw Declan looking more handsome than ever, if that was possible. In one of his arms was a large sack and I could smell the scent of the roasted chicken wafting. My mouth immediately started to water. In his other arm was a bouquet of wildflowers. “Hey,” he said with a smile. He walked into the condo and looked around. “Nice,” he said, nodding his head. “You have a nice view of the beach?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pointing to where mom and Arabella were back at their game. “But they’re out there playing chess, so maybe we can hang out here in the living room. After dinner, of course.”

  I took the large sack out of Declan’s arms and he walked out to the balcony. I saw mom look at him with a huge smile and a bat of her eyelashes and Arabella glanced at him and nodded. He pulled up a chair and Arabella started to chat with him for a few minutes, and then he stood back up and joined me in the kitchen. “Gary Kasparov and Bobby Fischer out there,” he said, pointing to mom and Arabella. “I wouldn’t want to play either of those sharks.”

  I chuckled as I got out some plates, the wine I just bought, some wine glasses and the mac and cheese I picked up at Ralph’s.

  “You and me both. Oh my God, that chicken smells divine.”

  “Pollo la Brasa,” he said. “Has the best roasted chicken in town. Bar none.”

  At that, Luna came into the kitchen. “Can I help?” she asked.

  I gave her some plates to put on the dining room table and she dutifully went into the dining room and set them down. She came back a few minutes later, and I handed her some wine glasses while I searched for a crystal vase for the beautiful wildflowers Declan had brought.

  Declan grinned as he watched Luna. “Let me guess, Luna is the sweetheart and Arabella is the wild child.”

  “You got it,” I said. “Although you wo
uld be surprised at how protective Arabella is with her little sister. They’re really very close. I guess it’s because they’ve both gone through so much in their young lives.”

  Declan nodded his head. “It has to be rough, having addicted parents and then having a mother die like that. I admire you for handling them both so well.”

  “Well, Luna’s my ace in the hole, really. If it weren’t for her, Arabella probably would be living on the streets right now. At least, that’s what she told me. She told me that she would prefer to live on the streets to living with supervision, but she would never leave her sister. So, I figure that Luna is the only reason why I haven’t yet lost Arabella to the streets.”

  Luna went out to the balcony, and Arabella and mom both stood up and headed into the dining room. “I got Margot on the run again,” Arabella announced. “And she won’t be getting out of it the next time I put her in check.” She shook her head. “But she pissed me off when she was able to get her pawn across the board and get her queen back. Man, I didn’t see that one coming. I’m getting rusty.”

  “Maybe you’re not getting rusty,” mom said. “Maybe you just finally found a worthy opponent.”

  “Whatever,” Arabella said. She sat down and picked up some chicken with her hands and immediately started chowing down.

  “Arabella,” I admonished. “You have to wait before you start eating.”

  “Why?” She shot a look at Declan. “Oh, you got this dude here you’re hot for. Alright, I’ll play.”

  She sat down and put her hands on her lap, and everybody else sat down as well. We passed around the food, and Arabella took extra helpings of the mac and cheese. “Oh my God, finally some real food in this joint,” she said, eyeing her mac and cheese greedily. “Dude, you don’t know what kind of rations this woman gives us,” she said to Declan. “I’m starving all the time. No bread. No cereal. No potato chips or even regular potatoes. No candy, cookies, cakes, nothing. I mean, my mom pretty much fed us Hungry Man meals, which is delish by the way, so the gruel we get here just ain’t cutting it.”

  While we were eating, Arabella calmly brought up something that threw me for a loop. “Emerson, I hacked Addison Wentworth’s email account today. Dude, somebody’s pretending to be her, because there’s been emails coming from her all month.”

  My heart skipped a beat when she said that. “Wait, what?”

  “Somebody must be spoofing her. Listen, there’s emails from her account to some dude by the name of Art Loffino. Guess he’s the head of some movie studio that was supposed to produce some film she’s working on. Who’s Greer Garson?”

  “Greer Garson. She’s an old movie actress from the 1930s. Addison was working on her biopic.” My mind was trying to process what Arabella was saying, but I was drawing a blank. Somebody was spoofing Addison’s account, writing emails to Art Loffino, the head of Janus Pictures, on her behalf? Janus Pictures was the production company that was producing Greer Garson’s biopic, the picture that Addison was working on when she died.

  Art Loffino was the father-in-law of the Los Angeles Chief of Police Jeff Pappas, and Art was the one who was responsible for pressuring Pappas to file murder charges so quickly. I figured that Art pressured his son-in-law to file the murder charges because he wanted out of Addison’s contract ASAP. The Greer Garson picture was one of the biggest and most prestigious picture in the Janus arsenal. It was getting early Oscar buzz, and Art didn’t want to have to wait around to replace Addison, because he didn’t want the picture delayed, so he wanted Addison declared dead quickly. He got his wish when Pappas filed murder charges almost the moment Addison went missing.

  “Uh, can you hack back into her account? I need to read those messages.” As much as I felt guilty in essentially encouraging Arabella to continue to break the law by her hacking, I figured that the damage was already done - Arabella had already hacked - so I might as well get the fruits of her illicit labor.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “No, I can’t right now. Her email account was easy to hack, but I think that somebody figured out that I was getting in there, because they apparently added a bunch of extra security protocols. When I tried to get back in there, I couldn’t. I mean, I can still get in there, but it’s gonna take me a couple of days now to try to get around all their firewalls and shit.” She rolled her eyes. “And, I’m starting school on Monday, so I’m guessing I’ll be busy with AP calculus problems and crap like that. I’m assuming you’re gonna force me into AP classes like my mom always did. So predictable.”

  I took a deep breath and looked over at Declan, who was grinning at me. He raised his eyebrows at me and kicked me under the table.

  I opened my mouth, but I realized that there was no good way that I could ask Arabella to spend her weekend trying to get back into Addison’s account. After all, the administrator of Addison’s email account, whoever that might be, apparently suspected that the account was being hacked, because additional security protocols were added. This probably meant that Arabella might get caught if she tried to hack again.

  What kind of a guardian was I to encourage my charge to commit a felony like that?

  Yet, I knew that Arabella was onto something. She might have stumbled onto the central key of this entire case. I didn’t know if that was true, of course. It might have been nothing. Somebody spoofing Addison’s account. But the emails from Addison’s account were apparently addressed to Art Loffino, the very man who was responsible for Addison being declared dead so quickly.

  Was that a coincidence?

  “You’re sure that these email messages were current?”

  “Yeah. Like I hacked it today and the last message was dated today.”

  “Arabella,” Declan said. “Were you able to ascertain the IP address for those e-mail messages?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, of course. But I didn’t write it down or nothing like that. Listen, Emerson, if you want me to get back on trying to get in there again, just give me the word. Otherwise, Margot, Luna and me are going to the beach tomorrow. Luna wants to go to the Santa Monica pier, too. Can you believe she’s never been?”

  I looked over at Declan, who was munching down on a chicken thigh and smiling. I was going to have to talk to him after dinner and pick his brain. Figure out what was on his mind, because something clearly was. “Uh, well, I hope you guys have fun.”

  “You mean, you’re actually going to trust your crazy mother with Arabella and Luna tomorrow?” Mom asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling out-of-sorts. I was obsessively thinking about what Arabella stumbled onto. That was literally the only thing that I could think about. “Maybe I should go with you.”

  Arabella grabbed a roasted breast and chomped down. “You want me to not go to the beach tomorrow and keep trying to hack Wentworth’s account, don’t you? Admit it. I’ll do it, for a small fee. $500.”

  I shook my head. “No. You might get into trouble. I can’t risk that.”

  “Listen, I’ve been hacking since I was 5. I ain’t never gotten caught. Never close to getting caught. I know what I’m doing.”

  I could feel my conscience warring with my extreme desire to find out what Arabella found. If she could get back into that account, and get the IP address, and pinpoint where that IP address was, I would be able to pay a visit to the account administrator. From there, I might be able to solve the case.

  “No,” I finally said. “Go to the beach tomorrow. Have fun. Mom, I’m going to trust you, against my better judgment. I mean it, you keep your eyes on those two girls. I-” I looked at mom. “I better come with you guys. I’m sorry, mom, I don’t trust you.”

  I thought about when I went to the beach with mom when I was ten years old. She just up and disappeared because some guy caught her eye and she ended up getting high with him in his beach house. She didn’t bother to tell me, though, where she was going, and I spent hours looking for her while bawling my eyes out. A lifeguard had to finally call the cops, who took me in
.

  My mom, to her credit, did show up to the police station when she was called, but a lot of crap ensued after that incident. I had a foster family for a couple of months, and my mom had to go through parenting classes, alcohol counseling sessions and several hearings before she could get me back.

  Not that I thought that she would pull a stunt like that with Arabella and Luna - she was, after all, almost 70 years old - but I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “Suit yourself,” mom said. “I guess you don’t trust me after all.”

  “Can you blame me?” I asked her.

  Mom shrugged. “Well, I’m full. Arabella, would you like to resume our game?”

  “Hells yeah,” Arabella said. “I’ve got you on the run.”

  “Maybe,” mom said. “But I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve.”

  Luna, Declan and I cleared the table, and put the dishes into the dishwasher. I handed Luna a wet rag, and she went to the dining room table and mopped it off while Declan and I busily cleaned up the rest of the kitchen. I usually tried to get my mother and Arabella into the kitchen-cleaning act as well, but, in this case, I just wanted to talk to Declan alone. Get his thoughts about what Arabella had so casually dropped on us.

  After Luna finished helping us, she asked to be excused, and I sent her to the den to watch some Netflix shows. I was finally alone with Declan, so I could finally pick his brain about Arabella’s bombshell.

  “So,” I said. “What did you think about what Arabella just told us?”

  “It’s a mystery, isn’t it?” Declan put a wine glass on a rack above our head, and then put his arm around my shoulder.

  “I can’t encourage her to continue to hack, though, can I? I mean, it’s a quandary. On the one hand, what Arabella found could be absolutely key here. On the other hand, if the FBI shows up here to arrest her, I’ll lose her. And if the administrator of Addison’s email account put in additional safety protocols right after Arabella hacked it, that’s pretty firm proof that the administrator suspected that the security of Addison’s email had been compromised. They’ll be able to catch Arabella if she gets back in there.” I shook my head. “There’s just no way I can expose her to that kind of risk.”