The Cost of Betrayal

by Dee Henderson

  “That’s what I believe, yes. It’s not in her character.”

  “Then convince them—Ann and Paul. She’d like to come down and have a conversation with you.”

  He saw relief cross her face. “Tell her to come.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can convince her Tanya didn’t do it.”

  He nodded and said, “Sit back down, then, hand me that shake, and eat the soup instead. You’ll ignore that conference room until Ann gets here. What you want to tell her isn’t going to be found in there or you would have already shown it to me.”

  She blew her nose one last time, sat and picked up her spoon. She obediently spooned in more bites. “It is good chowder. What did you use?”

  For the first time in days, the knot in his back relaxed. “A secret family recipe.”

  “Some cream, real butter, fresh clams. You called one of your restaurants for a delivery.”

  “Guilty.”

  She ate some more. “I’d give your chef a raise.”

  twelve

  GREG WAS WATCHING A SLOW-MOTION COLLISION. The two women were cooperating with each other, working together. It wasn’t an antagonistic conversation. Ann had been patiently listening to Janelle’s point of view and asking questions for the better part of two days. Greg had sat in on most of it, pleased at how Janelle was handling it. But the most important impasse hadn’t budged.

  “Even if I set aside how the bloody shoes ended up in your apartment, a stranger robbery isn’t supported by what’s here,” Ann was saying gently to Janelle. “Your knife being the murder weapon is too compelling. The only other conclusion is that you yourself did the murder, Janelle. And since you didn’t, everything points to Tanya. She ceased to be your friend when she wanted something else more than she wanted the friendship. She wanted her freedom from her brother, the money that brought her, and she was willing to sacrifice you to get it.”

  Janelle paced. She’d paced so much in the last couple of days, Greg suspected her calf muscles were burning and her feet feeling bruised.

  She finally nodded and turned to Ann. “Okay. I’ll accept your conclusion that Tanya could be a danger to me. I don’t agree with it, but your logic is rational and I will agree that it may be true. I’ll live accordingly. Change my name, not get in touch with her, keep my distance from those who knew us both. When I leave here, I won’t let our paths cross. But you’re talking about accusing another innocent person of murder, possibly putting her on trial for that murder, and I can’t live with that.”

  Greg felt one of his strongest worries fade. This was going to find a way to end at a compromise. The two very self-assured women were trying to reach an acceptable conclusion.

  “Acknowledging Tanya as a possible danger is a big concession,” Ann replied, “one I’m relieved to hear, Janelle. You want me to be wrong because she was your friend. That’s the heart of a good friend. But I’m not wrong. And I know that if we don’t stop Tanya now, the next person who crosses her who has something Tanya desperately wants, that person could die too. That’s the part I can’t live with.”

  Janelle went back to pacing, then stopped again. “You need more proof to accept I’m right. I need more proof to accept you’re right. So let’s add more facts to the table. Let’s go have a conversation with her.”

  “You want to meet with Tanya?”

  “It’s time, don’t you think? You said she’s been aggressively looking for me, asking everyone from my trial lawyer to newspaper reporters of my whereabouts. You see that as a sign of guilt, that she’s worried what I’m telling the cops, worried about the new evidence. I see it as the logical step Andrew’s sister would take to the news I’ve been pardoned. She’ll agree to meet me.

  “You can record it, you can listen in. If you put what she says to me now alongside those past interviews, you’ll see her in a different light, that what I’m saying is true. I know her, Ann.”

  Janelle came back to the table. “And I need to meet with Tanya for my own sake. We never talked—not after the detective separated us that night at the beach to get our individual statements. I want to hear what she has to say—about the knife, about that night, all of it.”

  Ann glanced over at him, and Greg gave her a subtle nod. A conversation with Tanya would help Janelle on a lot of levels. Even if it went an unexpected direction, it was movement.

  Greg watched Ann assess Janelle, then choose her words with great care. “You could burn us badly, Janelle, by telling Tanya you did it or by confessing remorse to protect her. You could lie and face no immediate consequences for it. That audio could guarantee we can’t touch Tanya for whatever role she might have played that night. I’m asking you to play fair with us.”

  “You’ll have to trust me, Ann. I can’t help you convict another innocent person, but I do want justice for Andrew. You can trust that. One of us is right. I can accept, at least theoretically, that it might be you. I’ll do my best to cooperate and stay within the parameters we work out.”

  Greg didn’t need to hear Ann’s reply to know where this was heading, so he added a point of his own. “Promise me you’ll never tell Tanya you are staying somewhere in the South, and never mention this island.”

  “She’s going to notice the tan. I’ll just imply I’ve been vacationing in the Caribbean while staying away from the press.”

  “Ann?” he said.

  “We can fly to New York this afternoon if the weather along the Eastern Seaboard cooperates. A delay doesn’t help any of us.”

  Janelle visibly relaxed. “Thank you.”

  Ann reached over to lay a hand on her arm. “I want the answers too, Janelle.”

  thirteen

  “I’M SO GLAD YOU CALLED!” Tanya reached over for a hug, but Janelle didn’t move to reciprocate. Tanya then slid into the opposite bench, her hands covering Janelle’s on the booth’s table. “This is like a miracle squared, the news of the pardon!” Her tone bubbled over with excitement.

  “It’s nice to be free.” Janelle returned the smile, nodded to their server, and waited as Tanya’s coffee was poured. Tanya was a fashion statement—flowing sleeves, sleek dress fitted tight around a narrow waist. Not a model’s figure, but the expressive presence of one. “The dress shop must be doing well. You look quite fashionable.”

  “I try to set the trends rather than just follow them,” Tanya replied with a laugh. “Oh, I’ve so been wanting to know you were okay. No one could find you, but the tan looks recent, so I’m thinking you enjoyed Christmas somewhere nice?”

  “We always did talk about a Caribbean vacation. I’ve been avoiding the press.”

  “What happened? Please tell me they found the guy who killed Andrew. I’ve been pestering the cops, but I can’t get anything useful on the new evidence. I’m guessing they have at least a confession, given the speed the pardon happened.”

  “I wish I could say that was true.” Janelle switched the coffee mug to her other hand. “They found my pink pocketknife, Tanya. In a box of items from your dresser drawer.”

  Tanya froze, eyes wide. “Janelle . . . really? You got told that?”

  “How did it get there?”

  Tanya closed her eyes for a long moment, opened them, spread her hands. “Which is easier to accept, Janelle—I don’t know anything about that knife or I tossed it in a drawer to protect you?”

  “Try the truth.”

  “I was out at the beach,” she began slowly, “about a week after Andrew’s death. I found it under some sagebrush about halfway down those stairs and maybe eight feet past the railing. The rain had practically covered it in mud. I wouldn’t have seen it but for three sea gulls getting into a fight over some crime-scene tape that had blown loose and wrapped around the shrub.”

  Her words picked up speed. “We know the robber took Andrew’s phone and wallet. I figured he must have been on the beach earlier that evening, saw you two fighting, and robbed your purse first, had the knife in his hand when he confronted Andrew lat
er. I was in a quandary. The knife might have prints on it to show who had held it, or time and the rain had made that a useless quest and the cops would then blame you. It’s your knife, and the blade was out and stained. If I handed it to the cops, I risked you getting sent to prison for the rest of your life. So I tossed it in a drawer and prayed for what to do next. In the end I just left it there, but it was to protect you.”

  Tanya blew on her steaming-hot coffee. “I know I caused problems for you at the trial, blabbing about the ups and downs of your relationship with Andrew, but I also told the jury a robber did it because I know that’s the truth of what happened. I know you. You stabbing Andrew is ludicrous. I was devastated by his murder, and later your trial—living on pills and nerves, talking a mile a minute. You know how emotional I get. I was honestly trying to get across how much you loved Andrew, and the questions the cops and lawyers were hounding me with just tangled everything up in a knot. But you must know I was only trying to help, even if I was doing a poor job of it. That’s why I tossed the knife in that drawer, and that’s why I didn’t come to visit you after the verdict. Because it was partly my fault they didn’t believe your innocence, and I couldn’t fix it.”

  “The knife ended up in a box of your dresser things at an auction,” Janelle said.

  “I put everything about that awful summer into a mental off-limits and left Chicago. I hadn’t forgotten I had it, but it had been years, and I didn’t want to go there again. The house was getting sold, so I figured I’d just let the hired movers throw the knife away. It was the passive way to deal with it—just let it get thrown out by others.”

  She must have noticed Janelle’s expression, which said she was having a hard time believing Tanya.

  “Oh, please, you really think it was something more complicated than that? Finding the knife was one of the reasons I was so all over the map when I testified. I knew you hadn’t hurt Andrew, but I’ve got your pocketknife that says maybe you did. I was trying to reconcile what was going on, which turned out to be impossible. If they had just caught the robber, none of this nightmare would have ever happened.”

  Janelle sighed and pushed over the sugar. Tanya loaded up her cup and stirred it in vigorous swirls. “I want to believe you,” Janelle said quietly.

  “Do,” Tanya insisted. “I was an emotional mess, trying to help my friend. That’s what my awful summer was like. And I know yours was worse.”

  “Fall.”

  “What?”

  “Andrew died in August.”

  “See? It’s still this time-consuming chaos. The trial was in late summer, wasn’t it? I’m surprised I was even functional.”

  “You knew Andrew was going to break up with me that night. You two had breakfast together most mornings, dinner occasionally—you were living in the same house. His misgivings about college and dating me didn’t just abruptly appear. He would have told you he was changing his mind about me.”

  Tanya vehemently shook her head. “I thought Andrew was going to propose marriage that night. I even had champagne ready so we could celebrate together. I was waiting for either you or Andrew to call me with the happy news. You were thinking the same, that he was going to propose that night. You’d told me so that afternoon. Hearing he’d broken up with you, that was a massive shock. To both of us!”

  Tanya began rummaging through her bag. “I so wish I smoked at moments like this.” She took out a prescription bottle, opened it, and dumped a pill in her hand. “It’s been almost seven years and I’m still turning into a wreck just thinking about that Friday night.” She swallowed the pill, sipped more coffee. “I would have alerted you had I known my brother was even thinking about throwing you over. Come on, you know that, Janelle. It’s like girl-code 101.”

  “He never mentioned the possibility to you of breaking up with me, knowing you would be with me that afternoon, would maybe warn me?”

  Tanya promptly crossed her heart and kissed her fingers. “Not a word. I thought you were great with my brother. I wanted us to be sisters for real.”

  She reached across and rested her hand on Janelle’s again. “It was a nightmare for both of us, and I still feel guilty about walking away from you like I did . . . I just fled to New York. Please. This is all in the past. The new year is around the corner. Come stay with me—I’ve got plenty of room. We can do the city sights. Talk. I can grovel, give you the apology you deserve for my being such a lousy friend.”

  “It’s not possible, Tanya, not with the press situation. In fact, it’s probably best if we part ways now. You’ve been in the news a lot, talking about this. Someone will recognize you, and I want to avoid press questions for now.”

  “Reporters don’t let up, so it’s just easier to give them a quote than try to maneuver around them. I’ve been slipping in mentions of the dress shop so at least something about all their pressure has been useful.” Tanya pulled her phone out of her purse. “What’s your number?”

  “I’ll call you,” Janelle said.

  “Really?” Tanya pressed. “Not even your number?” At Janelle’s headshake, she put away her phone with a pout, slid out of the booth, and stood. “Then I want a weekend somewhere outside the city with you sometime soon. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Tanya came around to hug her, and this time Janelle tolerated it. “I’m so glad to see you free.”

  Greg watched as the women parted ways. He looked over at Ann. They had been observing it all via monitors in the coffee-shop office. Janelle should have been relieved now that the conversation was over, but clearly she wasn’t. “What do you want to do now, Ann?”

  Ann was still watching the monitor. “Go sit with her, Greg. Whomever Tanya may have arranged to have watch Janelle will assume she isn’t traveling alone, so seeing you join her isn’t going to be a surprise. When you leave here, take a taxi to the hotel as planned. We’ll debrief there. If I see someone following you, I’ll call and warn you to divert to the airport. Or if you think you’re being followed, do the same. They can’t follow a private flight. Her best chance at safety is for us to leave town.”

  He nodded and went to join Janelle. This coffee shop was one of many businesses owned by Paul’s father in New York, and it had been disconcertingly straightforward to get cameras and audio put in place during the hours they were in flight from the island. That Tanya had agreed to meet for coffee in twenty minutes at a location near her work hadn’t been a surprise.

  Greg took a seat on the bench across from Janelle and just waited.

  “She lied to me,” she said after a moment of silence. “Andrew would avoid a confrontation at all costs. He would have told Tanya he was going to break up with me. I thought he was going to propose that evening because she’d been hinting he was thinking that way. She set us up to have a bad breakup. Maybe it’s denial now, rewriting her own history to live with what she did, saying she too thought he was going to propose. I don’t know. I still don’t think Tanya killed her brother. I don’t think it’s in her. But she just lied to me, Greg.”

  “Okay.”

  Janelle drew in a deep breath and shuddered as she exhaled. “Where to now?”

  “A hotel, so we can talk it over with Ann, then back to the island tonight might be best, I think.”

  Greg handed Janelle a soft drink in the hotel suite, avoided the questions he would ask until Ann joined them, talked instead about New York.

  Ann stepped in twenty minutes later. “Thank you, Janelle. You did very well.”

  “Greg said the audio and video were fine.”

  “Like we were sitting beside you—which, given the bud vase on the table, was practically true.”

  Janelle rubbed the back of her neck. “She lied. I don’t know what involvement she could have had in his death, but she lied. Andrew avoided like the plague having a conversation that would distress someone. He always had someone else lay the groundwork before he would ever say it himself. Tanya set us up to have a brea
kup conversation that turned much more difficult than it should have been. She let me get severely hurt that night when she could have warned me with a simple caution: ‘He’s still thinking about getting college behind him before he makes firm plans for his future.’ That would have been enough to head off much of the trouble. She didn’t, and that was unkind, cruel even. And until today, I didn’t think she had it in her to be cruel. For whatever reason—maybe to get back at her brother for his decisions about the trust—she let us walk into that night primed to both get badly hurt. That night was devastating in so many ways. I thought nothing could hurt as badly as being dumped like what happened during our fight on the beach, but then the cop knocked on my door . . . and the grief of knowing Andrew was dead crushed everything in me. I’m ready to say part of that was Tanya’s doing. She knew Andrew was going to break up with me and didn’t warn me.”

  Ann nodded. “Okay.”

  “I want to stay the night in New York, talk to her again tomorrow.”

  “You sure, Janelle?”

  “I can push her. Nothing she said today particularly helps change what we know. But I can get her to say more than she intends to. We were friends since elementary school, and I know how to push her buttons. I just never thought I’d need to do so while cops were listening in. For Andrew’s sake, Ann, I need to know the truth. This is the only way I’m going to know.”

  “All right, we’ll arrange something. Maybe suggest breakfast before you leave town, something to get her to come on short notice.”

  fourteen

  THE RESTAURANT CHOSEN was sparsely occupied because it was expensive even by New York standards and the hour was early. The breakfast plates had been delivered, coffee poured, the conversation thus far limited to Janelle’s polite questions about living in New York and Tanya’s animated answers.