by Pamela Crane
Candace touched my arm, sorrow in her gentleness. Sympathy.
‘Add in losing her husband and, well, would you be able to function after all that?’
She shook her head sadly, then wrapped her arms around my waist. ‘I feel terrible that she’s gone through so much. I’ll stop bugging you about it. I know it’s hard for everyone.’
With her head tilted up to me, I kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips. Then trailed down her neck as she pulled me against her.
‘I’ll show you hard,’ I murmured into her collarbone.
Sliding her fingers through my hair, she pulled my face to hers, her kisses eager and bossy. I picked her up, she straddled me, and I carried her to the bed. Dropping her on her back, I stood above her, ripping off her clothes, pulling her panties down to her knees, then paused to admire her perfect body. The swell of her belly, teeming with life. Love welled up inside me, in the eagerness of my hands as I unclasped her bra, and the force of her legs around my waist pulled me closer. I climbed on top of her, gazing down at the woman I adored, and pressed my fingertip to her lips when she tried to speak. I didn’t want words to intrude on this moment.
‘The door,’ she said as my finger muffled her speech.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Someone’s knocking on the front door.’
And now I understood how passion deflated when kids entered the picture. Kids – or strangers knocking on your door – were the needle to the balloon. Pop!
‘You have got to be kidding me.’ I climbed off of Candace, slid off the bed, and pulled my pants back up, wondering how I was going to hide my bulge.
Candace patted my groin and chuckled. ‘Better luck next time, babe.’ Then she threw on her clothes and trotted to the stairwell. She paused at the top of the stairs, then backtracked to the bathroom. ‘Actually, I’m going to grab a quick shower. I’ll be down when I’m done.’
I kissed her on the cheek in passing, and she squeezed my ass. By the time I headed downstairs, still pulling my hipster tank top on, I found Detective Meltzer in my entryway, Harper welcoming him inside.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘I’m here to speak with both of you,’ the detective answered. ‘Mind if we sit down?’
‘Not at all.’ Harper led the way to the living room, then, compelled by etiquette, offered, ‘Would you like some coffee or tea?’
‘No, thanks. I hope we can make this quick.’
Detective Meltzer sat and unzipped a black duffel that he had set at his feet. Pulling out a clear plastic bag, he handed it to Harper. It looked like a piece of jewelry inside.
‘Do you recognize this necklace?’
Harper examined the necklace through the plastic, then huffed as she passed it back to him. ‘Where did you get this? It’s my mother’s necklace, an heirloom.’
‘We found it at the crime scene of Michelle Hudson’s murder. We pulled prints off of it, and we lucked out and found a match. Your mother’s prints were in the system from when we took them after we questioned her about Ben’s murder. She’s currently down at the station, but I wanted to have a chat with both of you as well.’
‘Are you saying my mother had something to do with Michelle’s murder? I thought she was already cleared when you brought her in before,’ I interjected. My face heated with an urge to protect. ‘Because I know my mother. She could never kill anyone.’
‘That was before we found this.’ He lifted the bag with her necklace. ‘Money is a pretty big motivator for murder. Especially the person who stole her entire retirement fund and left her penniless, and the one witness who could identify her,’ the detective added.
Harper shook her head, waved her hands, her entire body a denial. ‘There is no possible way my mother could have overpowered Michelle Hudson, let alone Ben. My mother is frail. As for the necklace, I don’t know how it got in Michelle’s house.’
‘Let’s say your mother didn’t do it.’ The detective folded his hands, cocking his head. ‘Follow some logic with me. Michelle said she saw two people at your house the night of Ben’s murder. You claimed you were with your mother and kids at her house, and Lane was at work until around midnight, which, based on the time of death, was after Ben died. We confirmed Lane’s alibi, but your alibi, Harper, is awfully convenient now that we found your mother’s necklace at a murder scene. You do realize how that looks?’
He was right. Even I was beginning to question things.
‘What about Medea Kent? Have you looked into her as a suspect?’ Harper blurted.
‘Yes, and she checks out. But you and your mother … I still have a lot of questions.’
‘Detective, please understand I would never kill Ben. Never. Think about it – he was far more valuable to me alive. He had a great paying job. Why would I want to ruin that?’
‘You tell me. Did you know his business was failing?’
‘No, I had no idea until you told me. I’m telling you, Detective, as far as I knew, everything was fine with his job, and with us.’
‘So you’re saying your daughter’s drowning didn’t cause any problems at home? Because usually something so traumatic can break a family up. And I know you had some … anger issues that you were taken to court over.’
‘I was grieving. I was angry about losing a child, not angry with Ben. We still had two kids to stay together for. In fact, we were finally starting to heal as a family when … it happened.’
Detective Meltzer watched my sister crumble, his posture stiff and eyes calculating. Harper looked at me, her eyes wide and pleading. I could almost read her mind: Do we confess what we did? What do we do now? I subtly shook my head. Not yet. We needed to talk this through first.
‘Harper,’ Detective Meltzer shifted his body, ‘can you tell me what you were doing the afternoon of Ms. Hudson’s death? Because Mr. Radcliffe, your neighbor, claims he saw you in the neighborhood that day.’
Oh crap. I didn’t like where this was heading; it was somewhere I couldn’t navigate because I didn’t have a clue what my sister had been doing there beside ‘talking.’ I heard the fear in her answers. Could the detective tell that he’d rattled her nerves by the way her leg twitched?
‘Detective, I have been nothing but cooperative with you,’ Harper bristled, ‘but I did not kill anyone. I stopped by to grab my mail, that’s it. Then I picked up the kids from school and took them to the Dollar Store. Then, that night, Lane and I watched a movie with the kids. Feel free to ask them. We had stayed in because of the storm that came through.’
It was a relief that Harper remembered the details of the day, almost too many details, because I sure didn’t. But from the sound of it, we were safe. We weren’t murderers after all.
‘What about your mother? Do you know where she was that day?’ he pressed.
‘Working two jobs, I assume,’ Harper answered. ‘I’m sure her bosses could vouch for her—’
‘Mom’s working two jobs?’ I interrupted. ‘Since when?’
Harper shook her head to shush me. It clearly wasn’t the time, but we had some catching up to do.
‘Look, as you know, we’ve been working Ben’s case for two months now without a solid lead.’ The detective dropped the necklace in the black bag at his feet. ‘This is the first link we’ve gotten that connects both murders – and they lead back to you and your mother. I’d be remiss if I didn’t look into it. Benjamin Paris was responsible for losing a lot of people’s money, but the only ones without a solid alibi are your mother, who was taken for her life savings, and you. And now we find her necklace at the scene where the only witness we had was killed. I know it’s hard to imagine an elderly lady killer, but you’d be surprised what people can do when they’re put in a corner.’ Hefting the bag strap over his shoulder, Detective Meltzer rose from the sofa and moved toward the door. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but the evidence is enough to make an arrest.’
This was getting out of hand. My mother couldn’t go to jail for some
thing she hadn’t done. I wanted to tell the detective everything, that Ben hadn’t been murdered, that he had committed suicide. My mother didn’t know that Harper and I were there that night, so she had nothing to gain in killing Michelle Hudson. But then why was her necklace at Michelle’s house?
No, it was better not to say anything until I talked to Harper in private.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ the detective said as Harper led him out the door.
‘Should I call Mom to warn her?’ Harper asked me.
‘No, we can’t do anything that will piss off the cops. We need to cooperate for now.’
I considered all the knowns and unknowns. Ben had screwed over a lot more people than I had realized, including my mother, who vocally hated him. Could she have hated him enough to kill him? Then Michelle Hudson turns up dead, the only person who had seen anything, with my mother’s necklace at the scene. Add Ben’s mistress beneficiary to the mix, and it led me in circles. Medea Kent could have been connected, but apparently she ‘checked out,’ whatever that meant.
The steps creaked as Candace came downstairs. ‘Everything okay?’
‘No, not really. That was Detective Meltzer. My mom’s been arrested for Michelle Hudson’s murder. I’m going to have to hire an attorney and figure out how to get my mom out of this mess.’
‘Oh my God, Lane. I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help?’
‘Do you know how to get out of murder charges?’
‘No, but I know how to give a good hug.’ Candace pulled me into her arms, tucking her head under my chin. I kissed the top of her head, noticing that her hair was dry.
‘What happened to your shower?’ I asked.
‘I got sidetracked with checking my email.’ Leaning back, Candace gazed up at me. ‘Hey, everything will be fine. Okay?’
I nodded, while all kinds of thoughts swirled together as I mentally grabbed at scenarios and facts and conversations, until one thought in particular struck me from behind. I had never told Candace Kira’s name, and Harper was tight-lipped about it with anyone she didn’t trust. I couldn’t imagine Harper sharing something so painful and personal with a woman she loathed. If neither of us had told her Kira’s name, who did?
Chapter 32
Harper
After Detective Meltzer left, Lane headed to the police station to deal with my mother’s arrest while I waited at home until it was time to pick up the kids from school. As much as I wanted to support Mom, I couldn’t go down to the station again. It was the last place I wanted to be, facing my likely fate behind bars. I had dealt with enough police and attorneys in the past year; it was time for Lane to take the reins.
Instead, I hid in my bedroom to shove my face in my pillow and ugly cry. The stress was getting to me, and I was one bad moment away from a nervous breakdown. It was only a matter of time before they hauled me in, but for murder, not tampering with evidence. I had no way to prove my innocence, because my ‘alibi’ mother was now being arrested for murder also. I knew I hadn’t murdered Ben. And I knew my mother had no reason to kill Michelle Hudson. So who did?
With the tears exhausted – for the time being – I got up and straightened the bed. Cleaning helped clear out my thoughts. The detective didn’t seem to know much about Medea Kent, other than coming across her name when looking into Ben’s financials, but it was odd that he didn’t mention anything more about her. Like how she was a skank home-wrecking whore. During the investigation they had pulled our cell phone records, credit card statements, everything. How could he not know about the affair? Unless they knew but weren’t telling me. After all, as Lane put it, they had no desire to give information to me, only to pull information from me.
Hoisting a box from my closet, I rummaged through it until I found what I was looking for. Ben’s work cell phone. The police hadn’t taken it for some reason.
It made sense that he used it to hide his calls from me. I pressed the power button, but the battery had long ago died. My cell phone charger wouldn’t fit, and I didn’t remember finding a charger with it. It was probably at the office, which had shut down two months ago. There was nothing more I could do, so I returned the phone to the box and shoved it inside the closet. I didn’t know what I had hoped to find amid Ben’s old texts to Medea. Anything that would free me from suspicion, I guess.
I stood in my sparse bedroom, worried and confused and terrified. The scrap of paper Medea’s address was on teetered on the edge of my dresser. I’d spent the past two months running, which was getting me nowhere. It was time for a new approach. There was only one way to face a problem, and that was head-on.
***
3 Summer Lane led me to a rundown house in an even more rundown neighborhood. The two-story brick home could have been semi-decent, if not for the mountainous pile of trash next to it, or the tires with dogfennel weeds growing up through them scattered throughout the yard. A row of rusted propane canisters sat at the foot of their personal landfill mountain, where everything from clothes, to shoes, to car parts, to household garbage climbed a story high.
I knocked, wondering how anyone lived like this. As I raised my fist to knock again, the rusty squeal of the doorknob turning stopped me. When a brown-haired woman with a plain face, about my age, answered the door, I didn’t know who I was looking at. She didn’t look anything like the blond bombshell I had seen with Ben at the hotel.
‘Medea Kent?’ I asked, expecting a yes.
Instead I got, ‘What do you want with my daughter?’
Medea was this woman’s daughter? How perverted was Ben? If she was my age, her daughter couldn’t have been much older than eighteen or nineteen. A child!
‘I’m sorry, I don’t even know where to start.’ My brain was idling. I couldn’t bring myself to tell this woman her daughter had been sleeping with my husband. ‘Do you have a minute?’
‘What’s this about? Did Medea get into some kind of trouble?’
‘No, well, I don’t know. Can we talk?’
‘I suppose.’ She eyed me warily. ‘My husband is inside sleeping – he works nights,’ she added, as if I required an explanation, ‘so we should probably speak out here.’
She gestured to two green painted metal rocking chairs at the end of the porch, the kind my grandmother had spent many years sitting on watching the street like it was her post. These would have been considered vintage if they weren’t rusting through. Plastic pots lined the railing, full of dry, cracked dirt and crunchy brown leaves. A black cat hopped down from the chair as I approached. I sat, and – I realized I hadn’t gotten her name yet – the woman sat cattycorner to me.
‘I’m sorry to show up like this, but my name is Harper Paris, and I believe my husband Benjamin Paris knew your daughter.’
I didn’t know why I was here anymore. I didn’t know what I was here to find out.
‘Benjamin Paris? I never thought I’d hear that name again.’
‘You know Ben? Well, knew him. He passed away two months ago.’
Her hand flew to her heart as she gasped. ‘No! Benny died? He was so young – not even forty yet, right?’
Benny? I’d never known anyone to call him Benny. It sounded foreign to me. ‘How did you know Ben?’
‘Oh, gosh, that was a lifetime ago. Benny and I dated in college, right before you came along, actually. He broke up with me for you, you know. You were something special to him.’
‘Really?’ I realized then that I had no idea who this woman was. Certainly not the villain I came for. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Natalie. Natalie Simmons, but Benny knew me as Natalie Kent.’
The black cat jumped up on my lap, purring as it settled into a fat, fluffy ball. I ran my hands down its silky back.
‘Styx likes you.’ Natalie grinned. She was pretty in a classic way. ‘So apparently you found out about Medea. I’m her mother. I guess Benny told you everything?’
I had no idea what Ben should have told me. ‘No, actually, Mede
a is listed as a beneficiary in Ben’s life insurance policy. I have no idea who she is, or why her name is on there.’
‘Oh.’ Natalie shifted stiffly, and she glanced away. Her fingers tapped a metallic beat on the arm of the chair. ‘Well, I suppose you should know the whole truth. Medea is Benny’s daughter. He got me pregnant right before he met you, and when he wanted to break up, I told him about the baby. But I didn’t feel it was fair to either of us to yoke him to me and a child that he didn’t want. So I gave him an out and he took it.’
Ben had another child? My heart felt like it was ripping apart. Not only did he have an affair, but he had managed to hide a whole other family. He made a bastard out of an innocent child. This didn’t align with the man I knew, a father who so tenderly hugged his kids every night before bed, who propped them on his shoulders for chicken fights in the pool, who kissed their boo-boos.
My breath shook as I tried to speak. ‘I’m sorry he did that to you and Medea. I didn’t know—’
‘Don’t apologize. He’s financially supported Medea for the past seventeen years, sending her money every month without fail. When the last two payments didn’t arrive, I admit I was a little confused, but I never contacted him about it. I figured he had given enough. He always made sure Medea was provided for. It was his way of accepting responsibility, I guess.’
‘Does Medea know he was her father?’
‘Yeah, she’s aware. In fact, Benny was the one who named her when I found out it was a girl.’
How could he have not mentioned this to me when we were dating? The deceit had started from the very beginning. It was heartbreaking to discover my whole relationship was built on lies.
‘I wasn’t fond of the name Medea at first, until he told me the significance of it,’ Natalie continued.
‘Oh really? What was the meaning behind her name?’
Natalie smiled, taking years off her face. ‘Medea was a figure in Greek mythology. She was married to Jason, they even had kids together, until one day Jason renounced her. He said she was no longer his wife and instead he wanted to marry the king’s daughter.’
