STIRRED 24 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 502.

"Okay," he agreed excitedly. Now he would have something really fun to look forward to.

* * *

The next morning was thankfully uneventful. Andy got to pre-school on time; Anna got to work on time; and neither had to change clothes again.

True to her word, the car dealer took the child for a swim when they got home, showing him the lever under the bush that made bubbles in the hot tub.

"It's like a bubble bath!" he exclaimed with excitement.

"Not quite, because it doesn't have…”

"Soap!"

"That's right. And speaking of soap, it's time for your real bath now. Are you ready to get out of this tub and get into the other one?"

Anna agreed to one more trip across the deep end, her hands holding his as he kicked frantically. Lily would be proud of both of them if she could see them now.

As soon as they got inside, the phone rang and both had a chance to talk with the weary woman, worn out already from two days of the trial, followed by two long evenings in her hotel room preparing her cases for Thursday.

Andy got his bath and was ready for his story when the phone rang again. Anna guided him toward the bed, telling him she'd be right back. It was her lover again, calling back to finalize her arrangements for coming home the next night.

"I'm booked on the six o'clock flight. We've been getting out about 4:30, so that should be plenty of time to get my bag from the hotel and get to the airport. Should I get a taxi?"

"Are you kidding? You're going to get a welcoming party." Both Anna and Andy would be very glad to herald her return.

"I can't wait. I've missed you."

"I've missed you too." Anna sat on her bed, smiling as they exchanged sweet words. It was nearly 15 minutes before she remembered her charge in the other room.

"Oh, no. I have to go, sweetheart. Andy's waiting for his story."

The boy was just getting into bed when Anna returned and picked up the book he had selected. Like last night, he was asleep only a few minutes into the story. The hour-long swim had worn him out. Anna stored that information for future reference. She was envisioning already a Sunday afternoon nap for the lad while she and her lover got reacquainted.

* * *

"I got some of that cereal you like," Anna told the smiling boy. "Do you want orange juice or apple juice?"

"Apple!" he sang with glee.

"Boy, somebody's in a good mood this morning. What are you so…” Anna froze in her tracks, looking past the bay window to the stunning sight in the backyard. A pile–no, it was a mountain–of white filled her view. "What the…”

Anna released the deadbolt at the top of the French door and walked onto the patio, the grinning four-year-old in tow. She could hear the pump of the hot tub. She was certain she had turned that off last night. Where on earth did all of these… bubbles… come from?

"Stay right here, Andy. Don't move." Gingerly, Anna navigated the wet mass in the direction of the hot tub, careful not to slip and fall into the pool. Finally, she reached the area where she knew the hot tub must be, stooping down on all fours to grope for the on-off lever. There! Turning off the churning pump would halt the production of these bubbles, but how did they get here?

Standing slowly, the confused woman turned to make her way back toward the house when her foot struck something… plastic. Grasping the blue object at her feet, Anna suddenly had the whole picture.

"Andy? Did you pour the Bubble Big into the hot tub?"

The still smiling lad nodded excitedly, rubbing his palms together. He was very proud of himself indeed. "Now we can take a bath in the swimming pool!"

Count to 10, she told herself as she marched sternly toward the clever child. 1...2… 3… 4… That was as far as she got before her foot slipped off the edge, where her ankle viciously scraped the side of the pool as she fell headlong into the deep end. Her last thought before she hit the water was that they would all surely laugh about this someday.

"Uh-oh," the child uttered softly. The tall woman didn't look very happy as she headed toward the steps, the bubbles covering her head and body. She didn't seem to like his surprise at all. Andy spun around and dashed inside, suddenly terrified of what was going to happen next.

"Andy!" The angry woman stormed into the house. "Andy!" she called again. The child had vanished.

Sure that he had gone upstairs, Anna started in pursuit, not knowing at all what she would do when she finally found the boy. And she would find the boy!

The best news for Andy was that the tall, fully-dressed, dripping wet, bubble-covered bleeding woman passed the hallway mirror on her way up the stairs. In spite of her criminal intent, she laughed at the sight, wishing for all the world that Lily were here to see it.

"Andy? Where are you?" When she reached the top of the stairs, Anna continued into her bathroom, noticing now for the first time that she had left a trail of blood from her ankle through the house. First, she shed her sopping wet clothes and wrapped up in her robe, using a towel to push away the bubbles on her head. Next, she grabbed a washcloth to stop the bleeding, but that worked only as long as she held it in place, and she needed to find Andy.

Entering his room, it was hard not to notice the foot sticking out from under the bed. Chester lay on the floor beside him, his tail thumping wildly at this new game. Anna crossed over and sat on the opposite bed, holding the washcloth to her ankle again.

"Andy, I can see you under the bed. Will you come out?" She could hear the sniffles from his crying.

Inch by inch, the protruding foot disappeared. Now, he was hidden a little better. His young mind didn't process that Anna still knew where he was.

"Come on, Andy. We need to have a talk. I promise I won't hurt you, sweetheart. Come on out."

Whatever he said was incomprehensible as he crawled out from under the bed crying, but Anna was sure that she had heard the words "beat my butt."

"Andy, I'm not going to beat your butt. No one is, and you can forget all about that for as long as you live here. Now sit on your bed. We have to talk." We're going to laugh so hard about this someday.

Andy climbed up on his bed and turned to face the tall wet woman in the bathrobe with the bleeding ankle. She didn't look happy at all.

"Andy, putting Bubble Big in the swimming pool was wrong. Bubbles are only for bathtubs inside the house, never for outside. Do you understand that?"

The boy nodded solemnly, looking at his shoes.

"When did you do that?"

"At night," he spoke so softly she could barely hear.

"When I was asleep?"

He shook his head. "When you were talking on the phone."

Good lord, that must have been when she left him after his bath to talk to Lily. It's a wonder the pile wasn't higher than the house.

"Andy, how did you get outside? The door was locked up high. Did you climb up there and unlock it?" She knew he liked to climb on things.

Again, he shook his head. "Through Chester's hole."

Anna raised her hand to her face immediately to hide the smile she was powerless to stop. Even that was in his genes. But this was more serious. No child should be out by the pool alone, ever.

"Andy, I'm not angry with you, but I want you know that I'm a little disappointed." She needed to make her point, but not at the expense of breaking his little heart. "Do you know why?"

"Because I put bubbles in the outside tub?" She had said that was wrong.

"That was wrong, and you should have asked first. But the reason I'm disappointed is because Lily and I told you that you were never to go out to the pool by yourself. Do you remember that?"

"But I didn't get in the water," he argued.

"That doesn't matter in this case. We didn't say don't get in the water. We said don't go out to the pool. Isn't that right?"

"I guess so." He had misunderstood.

"And the reason for that is because you're too little right now to be out there by yourself. What if you had an accident and fell in and there was nobody there to help you? Anybody can have an accident, Andy. I even had one today."

Andy felt awful about that, especially all that blood on her leg.

"We don't want anything to happen to you because we care about you very much. We'd miss you if you weren't here."

"Are you going to tell Lily?"

"I think I have to tell her about this, Andy. It's pretty serious. But don't worry, Lily won't be mad either. She'll just be worried that something could have happened to you."

Andy really wished Lily didn't have to know. She still liked him.

"Now let's go get breakfast. We might be a little late for school today because I have to get dressed again."

Was that all? She wasn't going to make him stand in the corner or stay in his room? This was different, and Andy couldn't figure it out, but he liked it a lot.

* * *

Lily leaned over the rail and caught the public defender's arm as he prepared to leave for the day. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm headed back to LA today. I have to be in court tomorrow. Will you let Kristy know?"

Causwell grimaced. "You'll be back on Friday, though, won't you?"

"I'm not planning on it. I really need to get back to my office. I've missed a lot of work, and I think we've established that Kristy has family." She intentionally left off "that care about her." Lisa had vanished after the first day, realizing there was nothing in it for her to come down here every day.

The public defender steered her into one of the conference rooms off the main hallway. "Lily, you can't do that to us. Don't you see how that will look?"

"Look, I came up here like she asked, and I only promised her one day. I stayed three."

"But the jury's going to think you're giving up on her. If all of a sudden you don't come back, they're going to think you heard something to make you think she's guilty."

"Look, I have a life of my own. I haven't committed a crime, and I shouldn't have to be in court answering for somebody else."

"Do you have any idea what's at stake here," the lawyer's brown eyes were blazing. "Your sister could get the death penalty."

"That's right. And since you brought that topic up, I'd like to know why you think it's a good strategy to gamble both of their lives on this when you and I both know that probably only one of them is guilty."

"Because I don't know that either one of them is guilty," he retorted. "I didn't ask. I'm doing what I think is the best thing to win both an acquittal. I'm not going to sacrifice one for the other. That's not my job."

"And if both of them get convicted, counselor… how are you going to feel about knowing that one of them was just a spectator?"

"And how do you know that spectator was Kristy?" he asked defiantly. "For all you know, she could have been the killer."

"Why don't you ask…?" Lily stopped herself. Suddenly, she didn't trust this man at all.

"You're just here for support, Lily. You need to stay out of this case."

"I intend to. Goodbye, and good luck."

CHAPTER 15

"SHHH," ANNA PUT her finger over her lips as Andy made the car noises on the floor. The exhausted attorney had fallen asleep on the couch with her head in Anna's lap. Lily had gotten in after nine last night, grabbing a cab after all since that was after Andy's bedtime. The attorney worked on her case files until after midnight, the tall beauty curled naked at her side in their bed.

"She's sleepy?"

Anna nodded and smiled. "It's almost time for your bath, Andy," she whispered. "Will you start putting your toys away, please?"

"Okay," he whispered loudly. Volume was a difficult concept for an almost four-year-old, an almost four-year-old who would be four tomorrow. He had no idea that the entire family was coming over after work for a cookout with ice cream and birthday cake. And presents.

Andy had been very excited to see Lily this morning when he woke up. He wondered if she knew about the bubble thing. If she did, she never said.

In fact, Lily had heard all about the bubble incident; and the shower incident; and Monday morning's debacle. She had also heard about how easily he had accepted Anna as his caretaker; and how Martine had reported no trouble at all with his behavior or his picky eating. And she saw how Chester, the faithless basset hound, had taken to following him everywhere, even sleeping on the little bed each night by the boy's feet.

As Andy was putting the last of the street segments in the box, Lily's sleep was jarred by the phone.

"We should have taken it off the hook," Anna groused. It was her partner's line.

"Hello," the blonde mumbled as she stretched across Anna's lap. "Oh, Jesus Christ!" She was fully awake now, stumbling into the office where she closed the door.

"Andy, go on upstairs and pick out your pajamas and a book. I'll be right there." Anna pushed the box to the end of the couch, and cracked the office door.

"Fuck her, John! Fuck them both! Hell, fuck them all!"

This was why she'd closed the door.

"Do I have a choice?" Lily stomped about the small room, wishing all of a sudden that she smoked. "What happens if I don't come?"

Kristy was calling her back.

"How soon?" Her eyes told Anna that the woman had revoked her custody.

"So even if we try to fight this, he has to go back to San Francisco into another foster home until it's resolved. Hold on a second." Lily covered up the phone. "That bitch has asked that Andy be placed with Lisa, all because I left the trial. Her goddamn lawyer put her up to this."

"You should go back, then."

I know I should, but…”What? You think I should go back?"

"Lily, it's only for a couple more weeks at the most. Can't you get somebody to cover for you at work?"

"Anna, that means you'll be here with Andy all by yourself again. I can't ask that."

"You didn't. We'll get by, just like we did this week."

Lily couldn't believe her partner was saying this. Just last Sunday, she'd been ready to throw herself under the airplane's wheels to keep her from leaving.

Anna couldn't believe she was saying this either. Just yesterday morning, she had walked out of the house into a mountain of soap suds, wondering how she would survive the day.

"Okay, John. Tell the bastard I'll be there. And you can tell him that I called him a bastard."

* * *

Lily boarded United's five o'clock flight back to LA. It had been a long day. Once again, she'd caught the 7:05 to San Francisco so that she'd have a pretty good chance of getting to the courthouse by nine. She had told the son of a bitch public defender at the first break that she was leaving at four o'clock to catch a plane, and if he didn't like it, he could shove it up his ass.

Squeezing into the window seat of the last row, she closed her eyes. A nap on the way home would be really nice. Cleared for takeoff, the 737 barreled down the runway. At that moment, someone in close proximity… er… passed gas. A vision of Tony Bennett burst into Lily's head: "I left my fart…" she crooned to herself. Anna would probably tell her that was disgusting.

* * *

Martine had agreed to bring Andy home once she got a call that everything was ready. Anna and Hal were hanging brightly colored streamers across the patio when Lily pulled up.

"Hi baby," Anna met her lover at the back gate, delivering a short welcoming kiss. "We're almost ready."

"Did you get his present?"

"It's in the garage."

Lily placed a quick call to Martine and went to visit her niece and nephew. "Kim, this stuff is great. Thank you for doing all of this." Her sister-in-law had volunteered at the last minute when there was a possibility that the party would be postponed.

"It's no problem. You guys are easy. Jonah's been to some of the most elaborate parties for two-year-olds you've ever seen. They all have clowns, or pony rides, and face painting. An artist comes and draws their pictures. They rent those big air slides. I don't know what I'm going to do next month when he turns two."

"I'm sure you'll find a way to put them all to shame."

"Don't bet on it. I'm thinking we'll just buy a house in Riverside and invite all his friends to Chuck E. Cheese."

"Works for me."

The next car in the driveway was Sandy and Suzanne, the latter of whom had brought a change of clothing in case she got wet exacting her revenge on that Hal guy.

Finally, the guest of honor arrived. George opened the gate and led the way. "Come on, Andy. I think Anna and Lily are in the back yard. Don't forget your car."

Andy stretched across the back seat to get his Z8, and pushed hard to close the door on George's brand new imported 750Li. He was the last one through the gate, greeted by a jubilant chorus of "Surprise!" This Birthday Boy had never seen so many happy people cheering for him, and he got so excited that he wet his pants.

* * *

"Bless his heart, we scared him. Anna, he's probably never been to a birthday party in his life, let alone had one." Andy was finally asleep, and the women were readying for bed.

"Wasn't he adorable?" Andy had gotten so excited by the presents that Lily had to take him in the other room to calm him down so his asthma wouldn't kick up. She and Anna had gotten him a toy jeep that he could really drive. The battery was good for two hours, and would recharge overnight. It was perfect for their driveway and sidewalks, and he loved it.

Lily snaked her arms around the slender waist, touching her lips to the top of Anna's smooth back. "I closed the door all the way."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. So that means we might have a little… private time tonight."

"Is that an invitation, Ms. Stuart?"

"Perhaps. Would you rather it were a demand, Ms. Kaklis?"

"No need for demands." Anna turned and found her lover's lips. There hadn't been many opportunities for this recently, and the dark-haired woman intended to make the most of it. Gently, she raised her hands to Lily's face and trailed her fingertips along the jaw, slipping them tenderly through the short blonde hair to cup the precious head. Breaking the kiss, she murmured, "I really want you tonight."

"I'm here, Anna."

The dark-haired woman took her time, savoring her lover's trembling excitement as she tenderly stroked the bare skin. "Look at me, Lily." The blonde had closed her eyes to concentrate on the feel of Anna's fingernails gently scraping her nipples.

Green eyes were lost in blue as they watched one another react to each sensation. "I love you."

Anna repeated that emotion, but with her eyes, which bore into Lily's as she slipped her long fingers into the wetness below. "You're so wet."

"You do that to me."

Anna was torn, wanting badly to taste her lover, but not wanting to leave the intimate connection their eyes had forged. She would have both, but first one, then the other. Slipping inside, her eyes widened with Lily's; both knew the blonde woman was close.

"Deeper," Lily moaned as she opened herself wide, reaching low to push the searching hand inside.

Anna's long fingers stretched, curling deep to fill her lover. A thumb gently teased the bundle of nerves in a rhythm that matched the rolling hips.

"Yes… oh yes… that's it." The green eyes struggled to stay focused as she felt the first ripples of her release. Anna was looking into her soul.

"Tell me."

"Oh… Anna… you're making me come." Her neck and chest turned crimson as the climax took her.

Anna watched her as she gasped for breath. "God, I love you so much." Finally, the green eyes succumbed, and the dark-haired woman lowered herself to claim her second prize.

* * *

The guaranteed two-hour battery on Andy's new jeep expired fifteen minutes early, about a quarter mile from the Brentwood home. Anna and Lily took turns bending down to push the little car along the sidewalk, the taller woman suffering a scraped knee when the youthful driver steered them unexpectedly into a neighbor's driveway.

"Uh-oh. I thought this was our house." It was an honest mistake. Both houses had driveways, but they were not otherwise similar.

"Can we go swimming?" the boy asked as the tired pair wheeled the little vehicle into their own driveway.

"Maybe later, Andy. My watch says it's your naptime," Lily answered.

"Then can we go?" He was certainly persistent.

"Yes," Anna jumped in. "After your nap, we'll go swimming." Andy got out of his car and waited on the porch while the women returned it to its power source in the garage.

"You're easy," Lily chided her partner.

"You and I both know we'll eventually say yes. So why not say it now? That way, he won't work us over when we say no."

The blonde's face took on a puzzled look. "Do you do that to me?"

"Ha! When do I ever tell you no?"

That drew a smile. It was probably true, Lily thought. She had asked Anna to take the day off so they could spend it together, agreeing that it made more sense for Lily to return to San Francisco on Sunday afternoon so she wouldn't be so tired. "I'll put him to bed. Why don't you wait for me in our room?"

Fifteen minutes later, Lily found her lover resting on their bed, the scraped knee sporting a new band-aid.

"How's the war wound?"

"It's fine. You know, I didn't get this many scrapes when I was a kid. All of a sudden, I'm accident prone."

"Poor baby." Lily joined Anna on the bed, snuggling into her side.

"So what happens in the trial this week?" They had barely talked about how things had been going in San Francisco.

The attorney filled Anna in on the prosecutor's case. First, they had taken testimony from the officer who received the call that a body had been found; then from the cleaning lady who had discovered Graves dead on his floor. The coroner testified to the approximate time of death, and to the cause–21 separate stab wounds, any one of six that might have been fatal. In his expert opinion, all but one of the wounds had been inflicted from the same angle and all with the same approximate force, making it likely that only one person had done the deed.

Three detectives from the crime scene unit described the disarray of an apartment that had been plundered. A technician talked about how DNA tests were used to determine that several long red hairs found at the scene belonged to the defendant, Kristy Parker. Fingerprint experts definitively identified Parker as the owner of prints found in the apartment.

Next up was the pawn shop owner, who had called police when he took in an item from the list they had circulated of things the housekeeper had identified as missing. He pointed to the defendants as the people who had brought the piece in.

Detectives described how they tracked the pair from the pawn shop to their one-room apartment in the Tenderloin District, arguably the seediest neighborhood in the city. Several of the items missing from the murdered man's home were found in their possession. In addition, police recovered a pair of women's jeans that contained drops of blood.

"The prosecutor's still up. So I guess next they'll do the blood analysis and the murder weapon. If they have anything else, I don't know what it is, but they're going to have to find a way to poke holes in the story the PD's been floating."

"Do you think it's possible that their story is true? That they found those things in the dumpster?"

Lily had hoped to avoid this type of question from her partner–or from anyone–now that Kristy had told her the story about the murder. She knew she shouldn't talk about it, but Anna was the only person in the world she could truly trust.

"I… Anna, you can't ever repeat what I'm going to tell you, okay?"

The tall woman pulled herself up against the pillows so that she was almost sitting. "Of course I won't. What is it?"

Lily spun around to sit cross-legged on the bed. "Kristy told me that she was there. She told me that McGinnis lost it when Graves wouldn't tell him where the money was."

"What does that mean? Is Kristy innocent?"

"Yes. Well, no. In the eyes of the law, she's guilty if she took part in the act. But she says she tried to stop him. And if that's true, it would mitigate her involvement, which means she could escape the death penalty."

"How do you know she's telling the truth?"

"I don't," Lily sighed. "I just… hope she is."

"So why doesn't she just tell her side of the story and let the jury decide?"

"Her lawyer has them going for broke. I tell you, I think he's taking a big chance, Anna. But if he can tie up all the loose ends with this story about the dumpster, that's the reasonable doubt the jury needs to find them not guilty."

"What are the chances of that?"

"It's… I don't know, fifty-fifty. They can tell the jury the dumpster story from the police reports, because they've been telling it all along. But the jury will want to hear it from Kristy or McGinnis, and I doubt their PD will put either one of them on the stand."

"Why not?"

"Well, if they testify, the prosecutor might expose them on cross-examination. The jury would probably be skeptical of anything they said anyway, so a cross could make them look really bad. But if they don't take the stand, the jury's going to wonder why, even though they're not supposed to consider that."

"So there's a fifty-fifty chance that they're going to get away with murdering that man. That's not right."

"No, it isn't. But our justice system favors the defendant. If a person's life is at stake, we need to be able to prove they deserve it beyond a reasonable doubt."

"What do you want to happen, sweetheart?"

Lily had had misgivings about the case ever since Kristy had shared her version of events. She had tremendous faith in the justice system and in the wisdom of the jury, but if they didn't have all the information, the outcome was anybody's guess. "I just want justice. Whatever that is."

CHAPTER 16

"COME AND SIT with me, Andy. It'll be alright." Anna picked up the wheezing boy from his bed and moved to the rocker near the window.

She was almost asleep when she heard the first sounds of coughing from the room down the hall. Lily had suggested that she first try to calm him down this way, before giving him the medicine that would surely keep him up most of the night.

Anna sat down in the chair, letting Andy settle into a position facing forward, nestled into the crook of her arm. Slowly, she began to rock, softly brushing the curly hair back from his forehead.

"That's it. It'll be okay soon. Just take it easy."

Andy leaned forward to cough, but relaxed again as he fell back into the warm arms.

"Are you upset about Lily leaving again, sweetheart?"

Andy didn't answer, but both of his attacks since he'd lived there had coincided with her trips to San Francisco.

"You don't have to worry about that, you know. She'll be coming back soon; and besides, you and I have fun by ourselves, don't we?"

The small head nodded. He liked Anna, but he sensed that she didn't like him as much as Lily did. Besides, he caused her to be hurt twice, and she might still be mad at him about what he did with the Bubble Big. What if he accidentally did something else? Then she'd really be mad.