The Cost of Betrayal

by Dee Henderson

  Greg watched with Ann from the restaurant’s office. Just like before, the video was good, the audio clear. Janelle pretty much ignored the food. There were a lot of clues that this meeting was going to be very different from yesterday’s, but that one observation was enough to tell Greg how stressed Janelle was.

  She interrupted Tanya’s description of her apartment and abruptly turned the conversation to the Friday night of Andrew’s death. “Tanya, there’s no way you didn’t know Andrew was going to break up with me that night. He avoided conflicts of any kind. He would have told you, so you could ease me toward already knowing what he was going to say. You might relish confrontations, but not Andrew.”

  “I was in the dark,” Tanya insisted. “He knew I was elated that you two were dating. If he tells me he’s thinking of breaking up with you, he would have had a confrontation on the spot. He’d avoid a confrontation at all costs, that was Andrew. But with us—hello, sisters bonding here—what’s he going to do? He probably figured breaking up with you cold was easier than a battle with me, followed by a second one with you. You don’t believe me?” Tanya shook sugar packets and ripped four open. “Whyever not? I would have felt awful giving you the news, but I would have warned you if I knew something like that was coming.”

  Janelle leaned back in her chair. “I was your friend, dating your brother, but I saw what was going on, Tanya. I watched you pick fights with him just to get him riled up. You would stay out until all hours, not answer your phone, go to parties with guys you knew would give him concern. You would leave him wondering if you were hurt somewhere, if he should start calling the hospitals. You were angry at your parents dying, and he was a convenient target. You often caused Andrew grief simply because you could.”

  Tanya flushed angrily. “We fought at times, not a surprise given he was a few years older and acting like my father. I thought you were on my side. I loved him, but he was my brother, not my keeper.”

  Janelle’s voice turned icy. “I know you were there that night, Tanya. Your car was in the lot when I left Andrew—last parking place on the far side. I saw your vanity license plate. You came to see the fireworks when we broke up, to watch what you’d set in motion. I knew as soon as I spotted your car that you’d set your brother up for a doozy of a breakup, and you wanted to get it on video. You wanted to embarrass Andrew to his friends, post it on social media. That would suit how you wanted to get back at him for telling you how to live. I was just your unwitting actress in the drama you’d staged.”

  In the office, both Greg and Ann stiffened.

  “‘May we live in interesting times,’” Greg breathed out, quoting the song lyric. He was listening not only to Janelle’s words but also to the change in her tone of voice. She’d had the ability to point the finger at Tanya all along, but feeling jammed up by cops herself, the last thing Janelle would have done was to point a finger at a friend she thought was innocent too. “She should have told this to her lawyer, used it in her own defense.”

  Ann shook her head. “If she’s right about the reason Tanya was there, saying this at the time just puts potential video of the fight in the hands of law enforcement. If the tape shows Janelle storming off, it doesn’t mean she didn’t come back for round two of the fight and Andrew got stabbed then. Video of it all just makes it easier for the jury to believe motive.”

  On the monitor, Janelle was leaning forward to make a similar point. “That video shows I walked away, proof I hadn’t lied about how the fight ended. But you didn’t want to admit you were there, did you, Tanya? You didn’t want to chance the cops asking if you and Andrew had a conversation after I left.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Tanya insisted. “I didn’t admit I was at the beach because I was protecting you. If I said I was there, they’d want to know whether or not I’d seen you two fighting. And I’m a bad liar; it would have come out that there was video. I was protecting you by not saying I was there. For the same reason I tossed that knife in a drawer after I found it, I shoved the camera in a closet after I got home and left it there. The jury would have used both the knife and the fight video to bolster their conclusion you were guilty.”

  “You were helping me, protecting me?” Janelle pushed her breakfast plate away. “Tanya, you and I both know you were the last one to have that pocketknife. You used the nail file to smooth off a chipped nail. You said you put it back in my purse and I believed you. Then I went to get it and give it to the cops and it wasn’t there. But you knew that, didn’t you? You knew because you still had the knife. And as it was Andrew’s blood on the knife, you used it that night, didn’t you?”

  Tanya had flushed red and now went sheet white. “You’re crazy. I had nothing to do with my brother’s death.”

  “You’re impulsive, you’ve got a flash temper, you could justify ‘stab him once, let fate decide. He dies, I’m free. He lives, he’s already facing a long recovery from his injuries, and one more doesn’t make much of a difference.’ I know how you think, Tanya. You could hurt Andrew and live with it. You didn’t like your brother running your life, controlling your money, being the authority in your life. Whatever you did that night, causing our breakup to be an ultra-disaster, being involved in his death—Andrew didn’t deserve it, Tanya.”

  “That’s nuts. That is just wildly crazy nuts.” Tanya pushed away from the table. “I did not harm my brother. We fought occasionally, but he was my brother! I would never do what you’re suggesting, ever! How could you ever even think that, Janelle?” She got up and stormed away.

  Greg watched as Janelle folded, covering her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking. The information she’d revealed was still reverberating. He forced himself to look away, to give her a few moments of privacy, and turned to Ann. “So, what did you take from that?”

  Ann, absorbing the deluge of new information, was already shifting through the implications. “Video exists,” she said simply. “We’ve got to find it.”

  “I heard Janelle speculating in several different directions. I didn’t hear Tanya agree.”

  “Listen to it again. Tanya didn’t deny her car was in the parking lot that night, that she was there. Nor did she deny the videotape. Tanya was so paranoid the cops might look at her concerning Andrew’s death that she overdid the frame. She set up the two of them to have a blowout breakup, she got the fight on tape, she used Janelle’s knife, and she planted the bloody shoes in the closet.

  “The shoes and missing knife turned out to be enough at trial to get a conviction, but Tanya couldn’t throw away her insurance policy—the knife and videotape—in case of an appeal. They’re her security blanket against detectives ever looking at her as the one responsible for her brother’s death. ‘You need more proof they were fighting that night—how about a tape of them fighting?’ If she held on to the knife, she held on to a video.”

  The call Ann made was answered. “Paul, I need a very good researcher. We have to track down all fifty-eight boxes from the Chadwick house that went to auction. There may be video still in existence. We’ve got to find it.”

  fifteen

  WHEN SHE WAS HAVING A BAD DAY, Janelle switched from baking to fussing with more involved meals, and she chose background music that would make stones weep. Greg considered both to be healthy coping, so he left her to the kitchen’s comfort and headed out for a solo afternoon ride. He set a vase of wildflowers on the counter when he returned. It got him a smile, and she stopped to finger a petal. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” They were having breaded pork chops and some kind of honey-glazed dessert from what he could identify on the counters. “Smells good.”

  “Appetizers are heating.”

  He settled at the counter to scan mail he’d brought in, not sure if she would want to talk but giving her the opportunity. That she was hanging out at his place and using his kitchen to avoid being alone was as readable as a first-grade storybook, but it saved him having to track her down to see how she was coping.
He liked having her in his line of sight, cooking in his kitchen, and pacing. She was coping, and coping was good.

  “I accused the woman who used to be my best friend of murdering her brother. I still feel sick about it. It’s in Tanya, the dramatics, the self-interest, but not the premeditated violence to actually kill him. Six years in prison to mull over what happened and I never went this way, never considered it possible.”

  “People do what you could never imagine, what they themselves might never imagine, if given enough pressure.”

  She pulled the tray out of the oven, set the pan on a trivet, and pushed it his way—a stacked cracker, bacon, horseradish, olive, and cheese combination based on the tray not yet heating. He gingerly tasted one, not sure of the horseradish, and got a pleasant surprise. “This is delicious.”

  “Thanks.” She slid the second pan into the oven.

  Janelle leaned against the counter and moodily ate one of the appetizers. “Tanya would take and post video of a breakup fight to embarrass Andrew, conveniently ignoring the fact she would also hurt me in the process. I can accept the idea Tanya did arrange for it to be a nasty breakup. But I can’t live with where Ann then takes this. She doesn’t believe it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that Friday night, does she? She thinks Tanya planned it months in advance, all the way back to giving me that pink knife as a gag gift for my birthday.”

  Greg knew Ann thought Tanya was precisely that cold. It wouldn’t help Janelle to deal further with that, so he simply took them a different direction. “Accept what you can, leave as possibly true what you can’t. Denial is the danger, Janelle, not the disagreement itself on what the known facts suggest.”

  She nodded. “Ann’s looking for that videotape, I’ll bet. After nearly seven years.”

  “I’ve seen her pull off miracles. If Tanya kept the knife, then she kept the video too.” He ate another appetizer. “We’ll know something when Ann does. Have a movie in mind for tonight?”

  Janelle let him change the subject. He hoped Ann could find answers, for Janelle’s sake. Though he was only an indirect party, he felt the weight of this.

  Ann and Paul arrived on the island late in the afternoon on December 29. Greg set the chocks on the plane’s wheels and then waited as the stairs opened and Paul stepped out, Ann behind him. “You found the video.”

  “We did,” Ann confirmed. “The twenty-third box from the Chadwick house was still packed in the back of a trailer. The purchaser bought a number of old electronics, cameras, video players. The box yielded an older-model video camera with a tape still inside it. The first minutes confirm it’s what Tanya recorded that night. We haven’t watched it yet, Greg. I felt it was important for Janelle to be offered a chance to see it with us the first time it’s played . . . or not.”

  “Watch her last fight with Andrew? That’s got some serious don’t-go-there implications, Ann.”

  “I need her to trust me. If we’re ever to make a case against Tanya, it will need to go through Janelle. I want to at least give her the choice.”

  Greg understood the gesture. He nodded to his SUV. “Let’s go see what she wants to do.”

  He drove them from the airfield to his home.

  Janelle was waiting in the living room. She put down the magazine she had been idly thumbing through. “You wouldn’t both be here unless it was serious news.”

  Ann walked her through how they had found the tape. “We are strongly recommending that you let us, or Greg if you prefer, watch the video first, provide a caution for what is on it, and let you make an informed decision before you view it.”

  Greg nodded his agreement. “It’s one thing to remember, Janelle, that you fought, to remember a few sentences which were said. It’s quite another to watch the whole episode play out. Reliving it after all these years, seeing Andrew from that evening, will make your grief that much more vivid.”

  “I understand the concern,” Janelle replied. “But I was there. I’ve replayed that fight a thousand times over the years. I owe this to him. I want to see it along with you.”

  “Okay then.” Ann set the camera on the coffee table, angled it so all three could see the small screen, and tapped the play button.

  Sand. The scene wobbled around, but it was mostly sand. And then the image focused properly and they were looking down the Chicago beach. A breathless voice said, “There’s my brother, Andrew, and his girlfriend, Janelle, coming down the stairs now. Andrew said he would bring her to the beach tonight—it’s a favorite destination. I’m told there’s a proposal coming. I want to get it on tape for Janelle. She’ll love having it in her permanent record.”

  Janelle sighed, and Ann hit pause.

  “She slipped down to the beach that night,” Janelle said, “thinking to record a marriage proposal. That’s why Tanya tried to hide her car. She was there because I told her I thought Andrew was going to propose.”

  Ann resumed the video. As the conversation on the beach turned into a fight, the emotions Janelle was feeling then rippling through her words, she showed every bit of that pain over again now as she watched. Greg squeezed her shoulder in sympathy. He had imagined a bad breakup, endured such a thing with his wife, but this one was particularly cruel. Janelle stormed away down the beach back toward the stairs.

  The camera bounced around as Tanya ran across the beach. “What are you doing?” she shouted at her brother. “Are you nuts? You’re dumping her? You yellow-bellied wimp! She loves you! And you dump her?” The confrontation went on in a similar vein as Tanya raged at Andrew, but then the image shifted again as Tanya pushed past him to find Janelle, showing mostly sand until Tanya realized she still had the camera in her hand, still recording. The image then went blank and stayed that way.

  Ann stopped the playback. “We’ll watch the rest to the end to confirm that’s all there is. One minor point I noticed, Janelle. You were carrying your purse that night, not a clutch that matched your dress. And your purse wasn’t robbed that night. You dropped it on a towel on the sand, and that general area is in and out of the video frames. The purse—from when you set it down to when you grab it up and leave—is lying the same way, with the same twist in the strap. It wasn’t moved.”

  “Okay.” Janelle took a deep breath and dashed a hand across her eyes. “Thanks for commenting on my purse rather than that awful fight. I need a minute.” She walked outside.

  Greg watched her go with concern. Her seeing the video had been a mistake, possibly a major one.

  “Did you notice how Tanya was setting up the video to be another insurance policy?” Ann asked Paul. “It’s terrifying how good she is at arranging her frame.” She took the video back to the beginning to watch it again.

  Greg’s gaze snapped back to Ann, startled. “Wait a minute. You think this video implicates Tanya further?”

  “It’s too perfectly scripted not to be a frame,” Ann said patiently. “It explains everything. Why she’s secretly on the beach, recording—it’s to record a marriage proposal. After the fight and Janelle storms off, Tanya makes sure her own fight with Andrew is on tape. ‘She’s loved you since the fifth grade and you dump her! Don’t you dare be bringing another girlfriend home with you and be rubbing her nose in the fact you moved on!’ She’s waving the camera around like she’s forgotten she’s holding it. And she’s making sure Andrew can’t get more than a word in. Then she stomps away with the camera bouncing around, showing sand, and you hear her muttering to herself, ‘Where did Janelle go? He drove. She’s going to need a lift home. She’ll key that car before she ever rides in it again, or stick a tire.’ And the camera clicks off. Tanya layered together the evidence like a pro. The video of the fight preserves in dramatic fashion Janelle’s motive. The knife with Janelle’s name on it is blunt proof of the act. The blood on Janelle’s tennis shoes is even more proof she was there. It’s so well packaged it’s terrifying.”

  Greg could feel some of Janelle’s confusion. “You honestly think the video confirms your theory t
hat Tanya did it?”

  Paul moved over to the couch. “You can’t see it, Greg? All the way to the muttered last four words—‘or stick a tire.’ Tanya was laying another predicate for the jury, dropping an inference to Janelle’s pocketknife. This frame was months in the planning. Tanya likely already had Janelle’s knife in her possession when she was filming this.” He turned to his wife. “She’s incredibly dangerous, Ann,” he remarked, “and I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

  Ann nodded. “Tanya Chadwick got a taste of manipulation and murder, and her reward was a handsome amount of money. Odds are good she’s still a liar and manipulator—money being a strong motivator—and a murderer when necessary.”

  She looked at Greg. “The New York FBI office owes Paul—they can keep an eye on what she’s doing, take a long look at her history, maybe spot the next frame as it’s being set up.”

  Greg held up his hand. “You both know Janelle is going to see all of this through a different lens. She thinks Tanya was helping her.”

  Janelle came back in to join them and heard the last of his remark. “She was helping me, or attempting to do so. I pushed her hard in New York, trying to fit her to what you’ve been thinking. Tanya said she didn’t have anything to do with Andrew’s death and I believe her.” She dropped into a chair across from Ann. “So talking with Tanya, finding the video, it hasn’t changed our basic impasse. I don’t think my friend could do this. You think she could.”

  “I think Tanya framed you, Janelle, and didn’t miss a note,” Ann replied calmly.

  Janelle nodded. “I can live with us disagreeing, but I know one thing after today. That knife and that video would convince a new jury I was the guilty party. If you arrest Tanya now, she plays the video and says, ‘I didn’t do it, Janelle did,’ and the jury’s going to believe her. And since you can’t make the case against Tanya, you won’t arrest her. That’s good enough for me. Further, I’m going to guess that even if you could find my ‘stranger robber’ with Andrew’s wallet and phone, you’d hesitate to charge him with murder because you can’t explain how he acquired my pocketknife, given my purse wasn’t robbed during the fight on the beach. Bottom line, no one will be charged in Andrew’s death.”