A Dead And Stormy Night

by A. R. Winters

  “Jobs for someone with my degree and experience, no. But for a guy Hal Jepsen took a dump on? I don’t know many who would have a drink with Hal unless they wanted something from him, but everyone would take his word on a junior employee.”

  “Is that why you came on the trip?” I’d figured Kenneth came along so Tabitha could have someone close to her own age or maybe being set up on the longest blind date in history. But a tyrant of a boss who held your career in the palm of his hand would be just as good of a reason.

  Kenneth turned to me with his hands out, ready to take another bag. “Nah, Hal offered every year. But this is the first time he insisted I come along.”

  Granny looked at Kenneth like she had just had the misfortune of encountering the most foolish person in the world, but stayed quiet.

  I went back to scooping sand into the bag. “Seems awfully pushy for a boss. Even a CEO.”

  “Hal wasn’t big on boundaries unless he was the one setting them,” Kenneth said. “But if I’m being honest… I think he was hoping I would get sweet on Tabitha.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, just think of it! Hal finds a gem of an intern, teaches him everything he knows, and then brings him into the family all nice and official.” Kenneth took the next bag and set it down on the semi-circle pile.

  Was that resentment I heard in his voice?

  “It seemed like the two of you were hitting it off…” Me catching Tabitha sneaking out of his room, and her admitting she’d done the same the night before, suggested they were doing more than just hitting it off.

  But Kenneth’s expression softened when he turned back to me. His lips turned up in a slight smile. “I didn’t expect to. I was already seeing someone I’d met on a dating app, so I wasn’t looking to hook up with the boss’s daughter. But craziest thing… it turned out to be Tabby.”

  Granny furrowed her brow. “Huh? How did you work for the man for two years and not know?”

  Kenneth shrugged. “Hal didn’t keep pictures in his office. He wasn’t big on taking personal calls at work either. Aside from Jeremy and the wedding band, I’d have never known he had a family at all.”

  “When did you find out?” I asked.

  “Catherine had me over for dinner about a month ago to go over the final itinerary. Tabitha answered the door.” His smile widened. “I figured if nothing else, we could have a getaway. We’d both been stressed.”

  I don’t know why, but I felt a little relieved that Kenneth wasn’t faking his interest in Tabitha.

  “So this is a matchmaking trip.” Granny slapped her thigh. The sound barely registered over the rain. “I knew it!”

  “I dunno…” The smile faded from Kenneth’s face as suddenly as it had appeared. “The more I learn about Hal from Tabby, the more I don’t want anything to do with him. But… I guess that doesn’t matter now.”

  “No… I guess not,” I said.

  There was guilt in Kenneth’s voice, but I understood where he was coming from. A clearer picture of Harold Jepsen was forming in my mind based on the words of Kenneth and his family. It wasn’t pretty. If I had the choice, I’m not sure I would have wanted to be tied to him by love or marriage either.

  “Hal Jepsen, the great overseer.” Kenneth heaved a sigh and turned his face toward the sky, letting the rain fall on his face. “I’m surprised it took one of them this long to bump him off.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kenneth’s words hung in the air, swirling as thick and heavy as the Florida humidity. For a second, my brain couldn’t quite process them. Or maybe I couldn’t accept a stranger giving voice to the thought I’d be having for the last two days.

  Either way, it took me long enough to respond that a look of concern crossed Kenneth’s chiseled face.

  “Sorry. Guess I spoke a bit too freely.” He moved beneath the awning next to Granny.

  “You’re jokin’… right, honey?” she asked, scooting over just enough to make room for him.

  Kenneth swiped his forearm across his forehead to wipe the sweat away. “Afraid not, Mrs. Fisher. Hal was a hard man to be around. Turnover at FI is off the charts. I wasn’t the only employee who wanted to get away. Just the only one Hal wanted to stay bad enough to threaten.”

  “But this is his family we’re talking about,” I said. “Not employees. It’s different.”

  “From what I saw, he ran the family and FI the same way. But employees. get to walk away.” He shrugged. “Jeremy and Tabitha share his blood. They’d have never been rid of him unless it was on his terms. And Catherine? She’s the poor sucker who married him. No way he didn’t secure his position on that deal.”

  I furrowed my brow. “You spoke to Catherine?”

  “Didn’t have to. Men like Hal know they’ll get married and divorced more than once. Catherine’s an amazing woman, but Hal earned the money, and to him, that made it all his. He’d never let her walk away with anything more than crumbs.”

  “If he’s as awful as you say he was, maybe she was just waiting for her younger daughters to grow up more.” I went back to stuffing sandbags. “Crumbs is a lot when it comes with a side helping of self-respect.”

  “That’s a nice thought, but I doubt it,” he said. “Do you have any idea how expensive a divorce gets when you’re fighting a prenuptial agreement?”

  I shook my head. “Never been married.”

  “Never been divorced,” Granny said.

  “My sister is a divorce attorney out in the Bay Area,” he said. “When she gets a client who’s fighting a prenup, her billable hours go through the roof and I get a great Christmas present. Her clients don’t have near the kind of money the Jepsens do. Whatever the prenup gave Catherine, Hal would have made her burn through that and more if she tried to put up a fight.”

  My heart sank a little as I tied the bag off near the top then held it out to him with both hands. “So she was stuck.”

  For not having spoken to Catherine Jepsen, Kenneth had sure accurately called the state of their relationship when he died.

  “The only one well and truly stuck. Jeremy had his own house and now his own family. Eventually the girls would all have grown up, moved away, and had families of their own.” Kenneth added the bag to the pile.

  “How can you be so sure Melody and Alexis would have? Odds are one of them is a daddy’s girl.”

  “It sure as heck wasn’t Tabby. She was willing to blow up our relationship and move across the country to get away from him. The man was toxic. If Melody and Alexis didn’t know, it was only a matter of time ‘til they found out.”

  Granny and I exchanged a look, but neither of us said anything. I had totally forgotten about the Malibu beach house discussion. And when I heard that, I hadn’t realized it might mean the end of Tabitha and Kenneth’s relationship.

  If Harold Jepsen were out of the picture, Tabitha wouldn’t need to run halfway across the country with law school as her cover. She could go to a respectable East Coast school. Barely a plane ride away. And if Jeremy Jepsen was willing to keep Kenneth on as an employee without the threat of career destruction looming over him, so much the better.

  Kenneth seemed to catch on to my thinking. He held up his hands defensively and grinned sheepishly.

  “Hang on, ladies,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. Why put myself out like that?”

  “Tabitha Jepsen’s an amazing young woman, and her mother’s just as amazing? Like you said, they didn’t deserve what he was putting them through.”

  “I’m seeing Tabby, not marrying her,” he said.

  Granny bristled. “Watch how you talk about girls sneaking out of your room in the wee hours of the night, young man. Those loose lips of yours could ruin her reputation.”

  Kenneth’s face flushed. He looked down at the wet pavement beneath his feet, jaw working silently.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “Please don’t tell Tabby.”

  “Boy, we already knew,” Granny said. “Like yo
u two sneaking around locking lips in a house this size could stay quite!”

  Kenneth looked up at me, eyes wide with shock.

  I shrugged. “Tabitha and I bumped into one another last night when she was sneaking out of your room. She swore me to secrecy.”

  “Aww, man… now I feel like an even bigger jerk.”

  Granny raised her nose in the air. “You are one. And I have half a mind to tell that sweet girl about it too. It’d make the decision on whether to dump your sorry behind much easier for her.”

  He smirked sadly. “I don’t think she has any trouble making a decision at all.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Kenneth hesitated. “I guess it’s my turn to swear you to secrecy. The night Hal died, he and Catherine had a… tense discussion in the hallway. It got a little too tense for my comfort, and I was about to go break it up.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Tabitha insisted I stay out of it,” he said. “Threatened to break up with me if I didn’t stand down. To be honest, I wish I hadn’t listened to her. A man who lays hands on his wife deserves a fist in the face.”

  “Catherine told me it didn’t get physical,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Catherine says a lot of things to keep up appearances.”

  “What’s that mean?” Granny asked.

  “Just what it sounds like,” Kenneth said.

  There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Catherine Jepsen would lie to a stranger—the hired help to boot—about a physical altercation with her husband. Appearances were just as important to her as they had been to her husband. She just seemed to prefer genteel guidelines to Harold’s rigid enforcement.

  And I was equally sure Kenneth was hiding something.

  I turned back to the wheelbarrow of sand and started filling another bag. “Did you walk Tabitha back to her room that night?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’d have done it last night too, but she thought she’d sneak by easier alone.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to her father afterward? It’s not like she would have known.”

  Kenneth furrowed his brow in confusion. “You didn’t know Hal. Reading Tabby the Riot Act and reducing her to tears is the second thing he would have done. The first would have been canning me for insubordination.”

  “But you were going to break up the fight.”

  “Catching him in the middle of hurting his wife would have given me leverage. Ambushing him after the fact and admitting I was eavesdropping wouldn’t have.” Kenneth rushed to grab the next sandbag from my hands, but not before I saw his expression change.

  He’s definitely hiding something.

  “Someone saw him between then and when he died,” I said. “I found a wound on his body.”

  Kenneth froze for the briefest second. Then he turned and dropped the sandbag into place. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  I suspected that he did, but he wasn’t going to talk to me about it. His body language had been casual even when describing Harold Jepsen’s twisted attempts to control his life. Now his shoulders were tense and his voice tight. Something else had happened between Hal’s fight with Catherine and his death.

  Which meant one of the Jepsens—or maybe all of them—had lied to me. So had Kenneth, in a way. He said the Jepsens all had reasons to want him dead, but he had just as many.

  We worked in silence for the rest of the time, stacking a shin-high pile of bags around Granny’s door. I was pretty sure the water wouldn’t come any higher than that. In fact, as we walked back to the big house, the rain seemed to be lighting up.

  “Could be wrong, but I think the worst of the storm has passed,” I said.

  “Thank goodness for that.” Granny stopped and fanned herself with her hand, letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. “It’s indecent in this age to go so long without conditioned air.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Kenneth stopped beside my grandmother and used the end of his T-shirt sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. “That cold shower this morning was a waste of time.”

  “You got cool water to come out of the taps in this weather?” Granny asked.

  “Nah, I was exaggerating,” he said. “It was lukewarm at best.”

  Granny laughed. “You know, sweet boy, I like you. When we get back, I’m gonna rustle us up all big glasses of sweet tea. There won’t be any ice until the lights come back on, but I have a blend that’ll taste just as good hot as it does cold.”

  “That would be wonderful, Mrs. Fisher. Thank you.”

  Granny launched into a speech about tea blends and what made one good for drinking at warm temperatures. Kenneth either listened dutifully or pretended well.

  Years spent in Harold Jepsen’s inner circle seemed to turn everyone into a great liar.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We entered the big house through the back porch, stopping to take off our sopping wet shoes to protect the hardwood floors. Right when I stepped into the kitchen, the lights flickered back on.

  “Finally!” I marched into the hall, to the thermostat, and turned the air down to sixty-eight degrees. A gentle hush rushed from the vents, filling the hallway with the smell of fresh earth after rain.

  “This calls for a cold beer and a long shower,” Kenneth said. “Although not in that order. Magical as this place is, I doubt you can chill bottles at the speed of light.”

  Granny shrugged. “No, but if you make the shower long and take your time getting dressed, I’ll see there’s one waiting for you when you come back down.”

  “You’re too kind, Mrs. Fisher.” He bowed his head slightly.

  “Use the extra time to apologize to that young woman,” Granny sniffed. “Don’t burden her with why. Just get to the sucking up part.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kenneth disappeared upstairs with a grin on his face.

  How my grandmother always managed to charm the guests instead of insult them, I had no idea.

  “Laura? Granny?” Danielle peeked out from the kitchen, balancing Baby Ben on her hip. “Great, you’re back! Now that the power’s back on, I can do something nicer than sandwiches for dinner.”

  “Where’s everybody else?” Granny asked.

  “Andy and Ashley are checking the parking lot.” Danielle passed Ben to Granny and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Can you take Ben? Thanks, Granny.”

  My last glimpse of my grandmother was of her slipping her perfectly polished toes back into her shoes, mumbling about Dani working herself into an early grave.

  “Isn’t everything frozen?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Everything I trust to serve guests, yes. But with the power back, I don’t have to be as careful with supplies. A good old-fashioned fish fry is just the thing to lift their spirits. And did I hear Kenneth say he wanted a cold beer? That’ll do for him, but I’m sure Emily and Catherine will want champagne.”

  “Emily can’t.”

  Danielle breezed past me and to the deep freezer so quickly, I didn’t think she had heard me. Then she snapped and shook her index finger in the air.

  “Right! We can’t serve champagne right after someone died. There was a minor scandal about that in one of those streaming historical dramas that won all those awards.”

  “O… kay.” Granny’s right. She’s gonna work herself to death trying to impress them. “But I meant you shouldn’t serve Emily alcohol at all. She’s pregnant.”

  “Crap! I forgot about that.” Danielle screwed her lips to the side for a second. “All right then, beer for Kenneth, prosecco for Catherine, and sparkling lemon water for everyone else.”

  I padded to the fridge and grabbed the ever-present pitcher of sweet tea. It wasn’t cold anymore, but I was too thirsty to care. “Danielle… you don’t have to go all out. It’s not your fault the storm hit. You don’t have control over the weather.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” she said. “But there are things I can do to make their stay just a little
less awful. Serving the most memorable meal I can come up with under the circumstances. If we can’t manage to add a little sunshine even now, what’s the point of us having this place?”

  Instead of answering, I grabbed a glass from the shelf and filled it with lukewarm sweet tea.

  “I hate it when you’re smarter than me. How can I help?”

  “You can go call Detective Reid.” Danielle pulled away from the freezer with a stack of plastic bags in her hand, each holding a different fried and flash frozen treat.

  I almost choked on my tea. “Me? Why me?”

  “Because I don’t have enough fish fillets to make a new batch when you let the oil burn,” Danielle shrugged.

  “One time, and it wasn’t my fault! Granny’s stove is weird.”

  “Uh-huh.” Danielle dropped the bags on the table and went to the cupboard, turning her back to me. “Ask him to get here as soon as he can. It can’t be healthy for those girls to be in the house with their father’s body for so long.”

  Him disappearing wouldn’t have been any easier.

  Danielle and I were about Melody and Alexis Jepsen’s ages when our parents died. I couldn’t say how I would have felt at that age, but at thirty-three, I would have taken the discomfort of the weekend to spend another day with my parents. Even if they weren’t really there.

  I let the thought pass without giving voice to it. If it hadn’t occurred to Danielle yet, I sure didn’t want to be the one to bring it up.

  While Danielle busied herself gathering the necessary spices and accoutrements to turn a fish stick dinner into a gourmet fish fry, I went to the office.

  Coral was stretched out on my cot, her tiny front paws digging into the sheets. She looked up and blinked slowly at me.

  “Don’t worry Coco,” I said, stopping by to stroke her back. “The air conditioner will catch up soon.”

  I sat down at the desk and called the sheriff's department. When the front desk operator answered, I asked her to transfer me to Detective Reid.

  It only took a few seconds for the detective to pick up. “Conner Reid, Homicide.”