Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Present Day
Palm Springs, California
Mission Day Two
Emily wanted to take another pool day to finish reading her book, which was fine with Mick.
When was the last time he’d been on vacation and sat in the sun by a glistening, pristine blue pool next to the gorgeous woman he adored?
The answer to that was a hard, flat never.
So he ordered himself a virgin daiquiri and let himself relax.
Emily kept laughing at whatever was on the pages of her book and when she noticed him watching her, her smile widened. “It’s so good,” she said.
The story she’d told him last night—about her visit to his father and her gift of the photograph of the estate—had brought so much back.
Her vivid description of the office in that huge library, desk in the center of the regal and imposing room.
TV on. Always on and playing one of his father’s insipid shows, even long after he’d retired.
Like it was the only thing of value in his life—the only thing that mattered to him.
It certainly mattered more to him than his own flesh and blood—his only child. His son.
The day after Mick—still Milt back then—was released from prison, he’d gone into that office to speak with his father.
Four years of therapy and group counseling and rehab and twelve-steps had had their impact on Milt.
He had no memory—none at all—of the night he’d killed Marina Santana.
But getting full-scale, black-out drunk had been his pattern since his mother died.
And he felt remorse. God, did he feel remorse and a stomach-turning, heartfelt regret whenever he thought of the life that he’d ended.
He thought of Marina, and of her young daughter Emily, constantly. The head prosecutor had shown him pictures of Marina’s entire family—the people whose lives he’d changed, regardless of the fact that the drugs and alcohol in his bloodstream had erased his memory.
So, fresh out of prison, twenty-one years old, filled with remorse and shame, Milt went to talk to his father, knocking on his open office door.
The old man looked up from the papers on his desk and muted the TV with his remote control. “Settling back in okay?” he asked with far more interest and concern than he’d ever shown Milt before.
It gave Milt hope, which was his second mistake. Number one was thinking that the old man would care about Emily in the first place.
“Yeah, thanks. I was, um...” He was hoping to access his trust fund and get his own place, because living here made him miss his mother more than ever. But there’d be plenty of time to bring that up later. Today he wanted to focus their conversation on what he thought of as his big ask.
So Milt went in, right up to the old man’s desk. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
His father glanced at the TV, then down at the papers on his desk before looking back at Milt and attempting a smile.
“Sure.” His discomfort and the fact that he really wanted to say no was written all over him.
But he used his remote to pause the DVD that he was watching—an episode of a Friends knockoff called My Pal Petey that he’d produced.
It had survived three excruciatingly terrible seasons. God forbid he miss a minute of that.
Milt sat down in one of the green leather chairs that were parked there, in front of his father’s desk. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you...” He hesitated, and his father jumped in.
“About the civil case?” the old man asked. “Relax. It’s not happening. The family’s not going to file.”
His father had talked about little else during his rare visits to the prison. Whether or not the Santana family was going to sue Milt and his wealthy father—who owned the car in question—for Marina’s wrongful death.
“Oh,” Milt said. “Really?” It didn’t make sense. He’d pleaded guilty. “Do we know... why not?”
“Why should we care?” his father said. “I don’t, and you certainly shouldn’t.”
“I was thinking we should settle,” Milt said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to settle.”
“Well, we don’t have to now.”
“I killed someone’s mother,” Milt whispered.
“And you served your time.” His father was getting annoyed. “Your debt to society is repaid.”
Milt was getting upset, too. He could feel his heart pounding. That was not good. Pause, and reset. That was his favorite counselor Marcus’s battle-cry, and it had stuck.
Pause. Laughter was a good way not merely to take a moment but also to flip his internal switch from pissed to amused.
So Milt dug deep and laughed just a little because his father was impatient and if he’d just sat there breathing through his pause, the play button for that DVD would’ve been pushed back on.
As it was, his father misread his reaction for relief and said, “It’s over. We don’t need to worry about it anymore.”
And reset. Milt started over, his voice calm, composed. “I’m sorry, Dad, I wasn’t clear. I want to settle. I want us to approach them—the Santanas—and offer them a financial settlement.”
His father laughed. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Milt didn’t miss his abrupt change from we to you, singular. But okay, if that was how it was going to be... “I’m twenty-one. I know there’s money—” lots of it, nearly two million dollars “—in a trust—”
The old man cut him off. “The trust was dissolved when you went to prison.”
That took him aback. Was that even possible? Had his father really done that? Although Milt knew that even if his father hadn’t, he’d be on the phone to his smarmy lawyer the moment Milt left his office. Together they’d figure out a way to make that happen.
“I’m not going to let you throw my money away,” his father said.
His money. “I thought the money in the trust was mine.” Part of it, absolutely, was from his mother’s life insurance policy.
“You’ve proven yourself incapable of any type of responsibility,” his father said.
“What happened to I served my time?”
“That’s enough. This conversation is—”
Milt leaned in. “Dad. Please. I killed this girl’s mother.”
“Do you really think that if you offer them anything, they won’t try to take it all? This house? My cars? Every last penny I’ve ever worked to earn?” His father looked practically feral as he spat the words out.
Jesus Christ. “Well, maybe they should take it all,” Milt shot back. “It still wouldn’t be enough!”
His father was horrified—even more so than he’d been when he’d found out that his son had killed a woman with his car. “We’re done here,” he said.
“I don’t think we are,” Milt stood up. He’d gotten taller over the past four years. And he’d bulked up considerably from time spent in the prison yard.
There was a flicker of fear in his father’s eyes. And although Milt had learned a lot from years of therapy and counseling, he liked it—that feeling of power over this man who’d always been in control. He knew he shouldn’t, but he did.
So when his father ordered him, “Go to your room,” Milt laughed. Go to his room? He was twenty-fucking-one. Go to your room was no longer an order that he’d follow.
“Go to hell,” Milt said quietly, leaning over, his hands braced against the top of the desk. And yes, his father pulled back from him, the flicker turning into full apprehension. “And you better watch out, old man, after four years in prison, I just might help you get there.”
For the first time in his life, his father had nothing more to say.
As Milt walked out of the library, the gratification he’d felt from that ridiculous threat had already faded and he was annoyed that he’d lowered himself to his father’s level. But all right. He’d gotten an answer to his question, so he headed upstairs. To his room.
Where, in anticipation of his father’s awfulness, he’d already gathered boxes of files from his trial—a trial he’d never had because he’d taken that plea deal.
But the team of lawyers recommended by Ernest Harper had prepared for trial, extensively.
And their boxes of notes and audio tapes from discovery were all stored in the attic.
One of the boxes had included an old computer of his father’s—a giant, outdated laptop that he’d already coaxed back to life and gotten working again.
It would come in handy as he searched for the evidence he’d need to convince Frank Santana to file a civil case that he should’ve filed four years ago—to sue the hell out of both Milt and his father.
In hindsight, Mick knew that what he should’ve done in that moment was hire his own lawyer and pursue the money from the allegedly dissolved trust. But he was still just a naive kid at the time, and despite his pathetic attempt at intimidation, his father seemed invincible.
But maybe, just maybe, with young Milt’s help, the Santanas could bring him to his knees. ..
His pocket buzzed, and Mick opened his eyes to the near-blinding blueness of the Palm Springs sky. The pool. The hotel towering above it. Emily in the chair beside him, still smiling her way through the end of her book.
It was his burner phone, he realized, and he pulled it out to find a text message from Starrett, Sam. He was the taller of the two investigators—the not-gay one, although who could be sure, and really who cared, anyway?
Starrett’s message was concise: Please call ASAP.
It was entirely possible he was texting because they’d already found Emily—who put down her book with a contented sigh.
“So good,” she said, standing up and stretching. “Pool?”
“Absolutely,” Mick said, sticking both of his phones underneath his towel and his own book, which he’d barely started. Maybe now that she was finished, he’d read hers instead. He could use a good laugh.
He’d call Starrett later, while Em was in the shower.
He followed her now into the sparkling coolness of the pool.