“That’s the agreement. You haven’t been to Denver for over a month.”
“One more week?”
I held my hands up to her. “That’s between you and your dad. But isn’t it easier to go now than later in the semester? When do you start weekend workshops?”
She crumpled to the floor beside me. “I hate going to Dad’s. Linda hates me. The kid’s a brat.”
“I thought you liked being a big sister.”
She gave me a withering glare.
I leaned my head against the wall. “All weekend we’re going to be house painting. Is Denver worse than house painting?”
“You know what I really want to do? I want to spend the weekend with Lyle in our own house.” From out of nowhere, she started to cry. “I want to see my friends.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her head down to my shoulder. “You’ve had a lot of changes to get used to all at once.”
“I hate this crappy condo,” she sniffed.
“Me, too,” I said.
She looked up at me, surprised. “You do?”
“Sure. What’s to love about it except the people in it?”
Casey wiped her face with the tail of her tee shirt. “Michael told me what a bitch his stepmother is.”
“Is she worse than Linda?” I asked, using her shirt to get a wet spot she missed.
“Actually.” A pause to think it over. “Linda’s okay. Ever since she had the baby, she hasn’t been as jealous of me and Dad. Sometimes she’s almost nice to me.”
“So, what about Denver this weekend?”
She took in a deep breath and exhaled it. “I guess.”
“Pack tonight. I’ll have your bag in the car when I pick you up at school tomorrow. We’ll go straight to the Burbank Airport. Plane leaves at four-thirty.”
She said she was hungry, so we got into the car and drove down to Ventura Boulevard for ice cream cones at Ben and Jerry’s. We window-shopped while we ate them. The Santa Ana winds had calmed down, letting in a little ocean breeze to take the edge off the heat wave. The sidewalk still radiated some warmth a couple of hours after sunset, but we didn’t have to hurry through our chocolate-cookie-crunch cones before they melted.
Linking my arm through hers, I said, “I miss our ocean view.”
“I miss walking down to the marina to hear the steel bands,” she countered.
“I hate the smog.”
“I won’t miss San Francisco fog, though,” she offered. “I like Mike.”
“Me, too.”
She smiled into my face, a smudge of ice cream at the corner of her mouth. “We’re going to be okay, Mom.” Out of the mouths of babes.
Chapter 22
All day Friday, I drove around with Casey’s suitcase in the back of my car. I found myself looking at it as if it were some kind of time bomb, set to go off at four-thirty.
Casey had been flying alone to Denver for regular, court-ordered visits for almost three years. I dreaded every trip. One time, the plane had had engine trouble and had to turn back after take-off. Twice, Scottie had misplaced her and she hadn’t arrived home on schedule. At that point I had quit worrying about not having a pension; I knew I wasn’t going to last long enough to collect one.
According to the custody agreement, Casey had to spend sixty days a year with her father until she reached her sixteenth year. At the end of October, Casey would be fifteen.
First thing in the morning, I had a long talk with the producers of L.A. Hot. They gave me a lot to think about, but I wasn’t ready to commit to them.
Around noon, when I got to my office, I found a series of messages on my machine from Ralph Faust at Satellite Network News. The tone increased in urgency as the morning progressed.
I called Guido first, found him at work in his trailer at UCLA. He said was feeling a hundred percent again, but would fake something if I needed him. I told him about the L.A. Hot conversation.
“Don’t give away the store,” he said. “Run your minute on the news, then let’s see what surfaces.”
I put his advice away with a lot of other unsolicited information I had been offered.
I called Ralph.
“Jungle drums are beating,” he said in his smarmy tone. “Word is, you have some dynamite shit relating to Conklin.” “Says who?” I asked him.
“What do you have?”
“The thing is, Ralph, you gave me a pretty good lesson on media ethics the other night.” I was speaking slowly, intentional counterpoint to his hyper state. “I may be, as you said, a baby in this industry, but I’m a quick learner. Besides, I may already have a buyer.”
“Be careful, Maggie. Conklin is a buzzer today, but by Monday he could be a dead story. I’m ready to talk time and money right now. Big time, big money.”
“I’ll put you in the line-up, Ralph. I have your number. We’ll talk later.” I hung up.
The phone began to ring immediately. Thinking it was probably Ralph, I let it go onto the machine, heard the hang-up.
I slipped the tape of James Shabazz into the player, then I dialed Guido.
“Sorry to hear about your relapse,” I said when he picked up. “Guess you went back to work too soon.”
“Oh yeah? How serious is it?”
“I need you,” I said. “Will you collect all the project tapes and stills you have at your house and bring everything to my office? We have a lot to do and no time to do it.”
“You must be right. I came back to work much too soon. There are a few things I really need to deal with, though, so give me a couple of hours. I’ll be there as soon as. Keep the faith.”
I paged Mike. While I waited for his return call, I listened to Shabazz and paced.
“What’s up?” Mike asked when I picked up. The connection, from his car phone, was fuzzy.
“This thing I’ve been working on?” I said. “Well, a piece of it’s going to be on the news today. Starting at four.”
“Congratulations. What is it, some kind of promotion for the documentary?”
“Don’t congratulate me. I should have told you right away, but I want to be able to say that you had no input and no prior knowledge.”
“What the hell?” He was worried then.
“I’ve made a short rebuttal to the assertions of the district attorney and the reverend private eye. I hope it offers enough to keep Conklin from becoming a media heart throb.”
Mike’s voice sounded overly controlled. “Am I mentioned?”
“Mentioned? No. But Jerry Kelsey is.”
“How’d he get so lucky?”
“I had a serious lapse in my professional detachment.”
“Oh?”
“It has to do with a serious personal attachment.”
“I love you, Maggie,” he said. “Have you gone and gotten me fired?”
“I hope not. There is a shot of your back for maybe two seconds. Half the women in the city will probably recognize it, even with clothes on it, but not to worry. I need you to warn Hector. And don’t forget to watch at four. I’ll be at the airport seeing Casey off, then I’ll be in my office maybe by five-depends on traffic.”
“Wouldn’t miss this one,” he said. “Hector’s here, working on the house with everybody. We’ll go find a TV at four. Be all of us together when we get our pensions yanked.”
I laughed. “You’re so dramatic.” One thing I have learned, though, is that short-timer policemen don’t joke about losing their pensions.
When he said good-bye, Mike sounded weary.
For maybe fifteen minutes, while I waited for Guido, I lay on the floor with my eyes closed and thought about how we were going to proceed. The general framework was clear to me. In my mind, I began fleshing out the framework, recreating a night fifteen years ago, putting meat on the major players. I had nearly everything that I needed on tape or in a still photograph. Everything except LaShonda DeBevis and a few background details.
I followed LaShonda’s telephone number trail again, starting at the Lennox Library, then Hacienda Heights, finally Valencia. No one had seen or heard from LaShonda, but all of them took a message to have her call me if they did hear anything. I didn’t know what else I could do.