by Diana X Dunn
“Less than ten percent of the population of the western world bothers with a formal marriage ceremony today. Legal partnerships are just as binding and provide much easier options for dissolution. Marriage is nothing but an ancient religious ceremony that has little relevance in today’s society. So why bother with marriage? Were either of you particularly religious?”
Alex stared at her for a moment, seemingly trying to gather his thoughts. “I suppose I know what you mean,” he said finally. “I suppose most people in our position would have just registered a legal partnership, but I can only tell you that we both felt that marriage was right for us.”
He shook his head again. “I can’t remember whether it was me or Cassie who first suggested marriage, but once the idea was out there, anything less, like legal partnership, just seemed second best, somehow.”
Julia nodded, still not really understanding. “Were your parents married or Cassie’s?” She knew that most people took their attitudes toward marriage from their own personal experience, which was probably why she herself thought it such a stupid idea.
“My parents weren’t married. They had a five-year legal partnership and then, after I was born, they extended it for a further five. After that they went their separate ways. My mother was registered with full legal custody before my birth, but she made sure that my father got to see me when he wanted. Neither ever went to any church that I knew of. Cassie’s parents weren’t married either. I’m trying to remember.”
“I can access the records, of course.”
Alex frowned. “I think they were together for only a short time and then her mother had full legal custody. She didn’t talk about her parents much, and I’m sure they both died before we got married.”
“But you knew her when she was five. Surely she talked about her parents when she was a child.”
“We were good friends at school, but I don’t ever remember being invited to her house to play. I don’t think it was anything strange, it was just that she had the girls around and I had the boys, I guess.”
Alex’s voice was low. Julia could tell that he was pushing the limits of his memory.
“I don’t think I ever, in the thirty years I knew her, met any of her family,” he said quietly, with disbelief in his voice. “I can’t believe I never thought about it, that it never felt strange.”
“So no one from her family came to the wedding? Didn’t that seem unusual?”
“We ran away and got married at a little church in upstate New York. Neither of us invited anyone to the ceremony. We had a party in the city after our honeymoon, but we only invited our friends to that, not family.” Alex shook his head again. “It sounds really strange, when I talk about it now. I never met anyone in her family. At the time, though, it didn’t feel strange at all. We spent all of the holidays together, just the two of us. I doubt we saw my mother more than once or twice in the years we were together.”
Julia nodded slowly. Families were far less important in a modern society where relationships were negotiated in law offices and child custody issues were decided before the children were actually born. It felt strange, however, that a couple who was old-fashioned enough to have a wedding didn’t regard family as important.
“I’m sorry Julia,” Alex continued. “I just don’t know if it matters or not. Of course the police can find out if there are any other relatives of hers out there somewhere. We were just so happy that we had found each other that it simply didn’t seem to matter.”
“So you got married.” Julia dropped the subject of family and moved on. “You made a lifetime commitment to each other. Tell me what happened next?”
Alex flushed and stared at the table in front of him. “I guess things started to go wrong when we got back from our honeymoon.” It was clear that he was admitting it to himself as much as to Julia. “We both had big dreams and big ambitions back then. I was going to be a best-selling author and Cassie was going to save the world,” he shook his head again. “I can’t believe how naïve we were.”
“But you are a best-selling author now, aren’t you?” Julia countered.
Alex looked up at her. “You’ve been checking up on me,” he said in a resigned voice.
“I think I had just cause to do a bit of checking, don’t you?” Julia’s answer was glib, but she didn’t feel glib about the matter.
“Whatever.” Alex shrugged.
“I don’t know much, only that you are a successful author. How was Cassie going to save the world?”
“She did pre-med at college. She was going to go to medical school after the wedding. Within weeks of starting the classes, she was starting to feel fed up with the system, though.”
“Fed up how?” Julia was eager to start building up a picture of Cassie Knight in her own mind. The more she could understand Cassie, the closer she felt she would be to finding the killer and clearing Alex’s name.
“She didn’t like the idea that people living in the big cities with jobs and insurance got treated in the best hospitals with the newest technology. People living on the fringes of society, however, had to rely on free clinics with substandard care. If she’d finished her training she would have been able to work for one of those shiny new hospitals with excellent care for the middle and upper class. She decided that she wanted to help out those who couldn’t afford that sort of treatment, instead.”
“Surely she could have done more if she’d finished medical school?”
“That was my argument, but she didn’t listen. She took classes in the basic medical care that would be most useful in the clinics. Finishing her degree would have tied her to one of the hospitals for three years. Instead of doing that, she quit school and volunteered at a clinic just outside the city limits.”
“Where there isn’t any police presence, no required employment, and no curfew,” Julia said.
“Just desperate people with no money or prospects. They have access to cheap public transportation into the city where they can pick pockets, deal drugs, or steal before they slip back outside the city before curfew. The police do their best, but, of course, but everything is different outside the city.”
Julia nodded. “And that was where Cassie wanted to work?”
“Within months the happy and fun-loving woman I’d married disappeared,” he said sadly. “She became withdrawn and moody. She used to rant every night about how unfair the world was, and she even began to blame me for the inequalities in lifestyles between the rich and poor.”
“That had to be difficult.”
“Everything was difficult. I struggled to pay the bills without any help from Cassie. I was teaching at an expensive private school on the city’s outskirts. Then Cassie decided that, if I really loved her, I would quit that job and go to work at a school outside the city instead.”
“I wasn’t aware that they had schools outside the city.”
“They do. I even went to visit one and watched in horror as classrooms swung between chaos and violence. I spent an entire day sitting in on classes and never once managed to see anyone actually teaching anything. The teachers were there to keep the children from killing one another, nothing more.”
“And that was what Cassie wanted for you?”
“I knew there was nothing I could do for those children. They wouldn’t listen to me or learn from me any more than they were from the teachers who were already there. I decided to work behind the scenes, lobbying the government and demanding better standards for every school in the country. I also started volunteering in the community, working with parents to help them help their children.”
“That should have made Cassie happy,” Julia suggested.
He shrugged. “It took two years for one of my books to actually start selling. As my third novel took off, I was able to quit teaching. My work in the community seemed to be making a difference, too, but that wasn’t enough for Cassie. She told me that I had to take another job, teaching at a school outside the city, or leave.”
“Le
ave? As in leave the house that you were paying for?”
“That’s right. She didn’t see how much I’d already done for the people she was trying to help. I’d worked so hard to get to a point where I could devote myself to my writing that I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to teaching.” He sighed. “Maybe I was being selfish, but I didn’t want to risk my life every day trying to do an impossible job. We fought about for days or maybe even weeks. I don’t really remember.”
“What happened next?” she asked after he fell silent.
“Cassie brought Peter home. He was everything that I wasn’t, really. He was the head of one of the schools outside the city, dedicated to saving the children who passed through his doors. Oh, he appreciated what I’d been doing in the community, but, like Cassie, he thought I could do a lot more. As he talked endlessly about the various ways I could help, I watched Cassie. She was completely enthralled by the man.” His hand combed roughly through his hair again.
“Did he persuade you to help, then?”
“As I said before, I suppose I’m simply too selfish. Whatever, by the time Peter was done talking, I’d realized that Cassie was falling in love with him. That probably made me less receptive to his ideas. A week later, I left.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Nearly ten years ago.”
“Cassie stayed in the house?”
“I was happy for her to stay there. I assume she and Peter became involved fairly quickly after that, but he didn’t move into the house until a few years later, so I could be wrong about that.”
“Did you keep helping out in the community?”
Alex shook his head. “Instead, I began to donate a portion of the profits from each of my books to Peter’s school and Cassie’s clinic. They’re both a good deal more successful now than they’d been before I started pouring money into their coffers. I believe that my financial support has done more good than either Cassie or Peter have, but I’m sure they would argue differently.”
“Was Cassie grateful for your financial help?”
“Cassie didn’t really do gratitude, at least not where I was concerned. She never stopped thinking that I’d sold out. I make a lot of money doing what I do and she hated that. She couldn’t see that my money was more of a benefit to a lot more people than if I had tried teaching in that school. She was stubborn and proud and she would never ever admit that she got it wrong”
Julia nodded. “So who hated her enough to kill her?”
Alex only stared at her. After a long moment he shrugged. “No one hated her. She was too much of a do-gooder for anyone to hate her.” He held up a hand. “I don’t mean that. She was a good person, and she tried to do a lot of good for people who needed help. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill her. She was just an ordinary woman, really.”
“But someone did kill her. We need to figure out why.” She studied Alex for a moment. “Tell me about Peter? Were he and Cassie still happily saving the world together?”
“After I left, I made a point of not seeing either of them unless I had to. My agent sends regular donations on my behalf to each of them, and that is usually the extent of our contact. Maybe once a year Cassie would call me, hysterical because something had gone wrong at the house, and I would make a few calls and get it fixed. That was about it.”
“Was there any increase in contact in the last few months?”
Alex looked away for a minute. “Actually, there was,” he admitted finally. “I called her not long ago and told her I wanted us to start thinking about getting a divorce.”
“Called? Not messaged?”
“Cassie hated messaging. She liked to see and hear the person she was talking to. I wanted her to agree, so I did things exactly the way she liked.”
“When was this?”
“February.”
“February?”
Alex nodded, staring hard at her. “I’d met someone. I dated a lot after Cassie and I split up, but it was always casual. In February I met this woman that I found, well, interesting, I guess. She was the first woman that I thought I might like to be more than casual with, if I ever got the chance.”
“This is the woman you told me about in Greenwoods?” Julia kept her voice neutral.
“Yeah, Sienna Madison. She was, well, I don’t know, we just clicked somehow. I thought she felt it too, but since she never returns my messages, I must be wrong.”
“So you told Cassie you wanted a divorce?”
“Yes, I decided that if I did ever see this woman again, I would like to be able to tell her that I was divorced or at least getting divorced, so I called Cassie and asked her to consider it.”
“What did she say?”
“She wasn’t happy. I don’t know why, because I told her that she could have the house and even a small income, more than I’m giving her now. But she didn’t want to get a divorce.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I simply don’t know. The conversation quickly descended into a shouting match and I finally hung up and decided to give her some time to calm down.”
“So that was your last contact before yesterday?”
“Um, no. I didn’t want to wait forever, so I called her again about once a week or so since, to see if she was coming around to the idea.”
“And was she?”
“No, no way. If anything, she was getting more fiercely against it. She never explained why, really, just insisted that we were married for life and that we couldn’t possibly get divorced.”
“You realize that you have just given yourself a powerful motive for her murder?” Julia asked him.
“I know,” Alex answered, frustration clearly evident in his voice. “But I’m not going to lie. I wanted a divorce and she didn’t. Peter will probably tell the police that, even if I don’t.”
“Do you know for sure that she talked about it with Peter?”
“I don’t know if she talked about it with Peter or not, but I talked about it with Peter.” Alex buried his head in his hands. “This is such an awful mess,” he sighed.
Julia couldn’t help but feel he was right. “When did you talk to Peter?”
“A couple of weeks ago.” Alex didn’t look up. “I called his office and made an appointment to see him. He was surprised, I think, when I said I was asking for a divorce. I don’t think Cassie had told him. He promised to talk to her. It wasn’t something that they’d ever discussed, apparently. I didn’t know what to think then, and I still don’t.”
“I’m a bit fuzzy on the rules for divorce. Did you need her consent?”
“Not at all,” Alex sighed again and finally met Julia’s eyes again. “I could have filed on the grounds of separation and even if she protested, it would have still gone through eventually. I was trying to be nice about it, trying to get the whole thing sorted on friendly terms. I didn’t want to be married to Cassie anymore, but I still love her. We’ve been through a lot together.”
Julia didn’t correct his use of the present tense. It would take him time to get used to the idea that Cassie was dead. “Would it have cost you more if she’d fought it?” she asked, wanting to be totally clear on any and all motives he might have had.
Alex shook his head dismissively. “Maybe a bit here or there, but if it went to court, the court would give her less than I was offering her. I made her a very generous offer, far more generous than what the court would award. Our pre-marriage legal documents are clear cut and totally enforceable. If she made me fight, I would have given her exactly what was in those documents and nothing more. She would have lost a great deal of money, the house, and the regular donations to her clinic. I can’t understand why she didn’t take the offer and run. She always had to make things difficult.”
“Maybe she thought you would sweeten the offer if she pushed you?”
“She knew me better than that. It was a more than fair offer and she knew it. No, there was something else, but I’ve no idea what it is, or rath
er what it was.” Alex corrected himself this time, shuddering as he did so.
“Did you talk to her after you talked to Peter?”
“Not until this morning. Peter asked me to give him some time to try to talk her around. He said he had some thoughts about ways to make her change her mind. I was going to ring him at the beginning of June if I hadn’t heard from her.”
“Do you know how he thought he could change her mind?”
“I’m only speculating here, but I suspected at the time that he was going to suggest they try for a baby. Cassie always wanted children, at least when I knew her. Peter said something about her always putting it off because of the importance of her work at the clinic. Maybe he thought he could get her to agree to the divorce if they were going to have a baby.”
Julia shrugged. She didn’t understand these complicated relationships. She didn’t have any family and had always kept her relationships light on commitment. She was pretty sure she had the right idea.
Alex was staring straight ahead again. “Cassie rang me this morning and said she needed to see me right away. I thought that either something had broken around the house or that Peter had talked to her about the divorce and she was furious that I talked to him behind her back. Either way, I wasn’t terribly interested in seeing her. She sounded furious when she called, but I headed straight to her door. I thought maybe I would have a better chance of convincing her in person than I did over an M-ped screen. Anyway, I think you probably know the rest.”
Julia nodded, taking her turn to stare at nothing. After a few moments, she met Alex’s eyes. “I don’t think you had anything to do with her death,” she told him, watching relief flicker into the brown eyes that were watching her intently. “But someone did, and then tried to frame you for the murder. We need to figure out who that was, before they get any more ideas.”
Alex sighed. “It all just seems like something out of a book, not real life, at least not my real life.”
Julia nodded. People she met often felt that way. For her, of course, this was real life. She needed to find out more from Blake and then talk to the neighbors and Peter if she could. After Alex was escorted from the room, she pulled out her M-ped and found the police file on the case.
