Intentional Acts

by Melissa F. Miller

  It became clear almost immediately, though, that her composure was a veneer.

  “Ms. Johnson? I’m Gella Pinkney. This is my … uh ... attorney, Sasha McCandless-Connelly. We’re so very sorry about Essiah’s death.”

  Tears poured from the woman’s eyes. She dabbed at them with a crumbled and twisted tissue that she had knotted around her right hand.

  “Please, call me Sheila Anne. And come on in.” Her tremulous voice hinted at a southern twang. She ushered them off the porch.

  Sasha followed Gella over the threshold and glanced around. The cabin-style house was considerably larger than it appeared from the outside. The entryway had a soaring, vaulted ceiling and exposed wooden beams and supports. The light-colored tile floor provided a contrast to all the dark woodwork. The entryway was casually decorated but devoid of personal touches. No framed pictures hung on the walls, no ceramic tchotchkes lined the shelves. The effect was homey, but not home.

  “Was it just the two of you?” Sasha asked as Sheila Anne led them into a cozy den dominated by a tall stacked stone fireplace and wide hearth.

  “Yes. We only met last fall.” She raised her chin as if to ward off any disapproval. “We got married during the Christmas holidays. It was love at first sight.”

  Sasha smiled. “I was supposed to get married on New Year’s Eve, myself.” She hoped the common ground might put the widow at ease. The last thing she and Gella needed was a would-be plaintiff who was on the defensive from the outset.

  “Supposed to? You didn’t?” Curiosity won out, and Sheila Anne relaxed her shoulders slightly but perceptibly as she took a seat in the chair nearest the fireplace.

  Sasha joined Gella on the leather couch. “We moved it up a day. It’s a long story.” Involving a thwarted attack by armed banditos at a Central American resort. It was the kind of tale that could derail a conversation.

  They lapsed into a long, oppressive silence.

  Gella broke through the tension. She leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees, and studied Sheila Anne’s tear-stained face. “I’m sure your husband’s death must’ve been quite a shock. Is someone staying with you?” Her voice was gentle but probing.

  “No. We don’t have any family nearby. We’ve only lived here since January.” She twisted her fraying tissues in her hands.

  “We met a waitress at the diner outside town—Dana. She seems to care about you. She wanted us to let you know she’s praying for you and she’ll come by to see you later,” Gella offered.

  “Dana’s sweet. We’re not really close, but her boyfriend and Essiah were tight. I guess … he made friends more easily than I do. He fell in with a group of guys right away. I keep to myself. Work in the yard or read. I’ve always been a homebody.”

  She reached behind her, pulled a soft afghan down from the back of the chair, and wrapped it around herself.

  Sasha glanced sidelong at Gella. This woman was in no shape to discuss any claims her dead husband might have against DoGiveThrive. She hoped Gella knew what to say next because this conversation veered much closer to a pastoral comfort situation than a discussion about liability.

  Gella seemed to know what she was thinking. She nodded.

  “I run a charity now, Sheila Anne, but I did attend divinity school. Would you like to pray together?”

  The woman nodded her head. “I appreciate that, Miss Gella, yes, let’s do that. My minister came by last night, and I know Essiah’s with the Lord. I just … I can’t believe he’s gone.” Fresh tears filled her eyes and her shoulders shook.

  Sasha, a lapsed Catholic, shifted in her seat awkwardly, feeling trapped. She popped to her feet.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  She hurried out of the room while Gella walked over and knelt beside Sheila Anne’s chair. The two women bowed their heads.

  She headed toward the back of the house. The kitchen was clean and cheerful with a white apron sink and a maple butcher block island. Pans hung from overhead. A red, orange, and yellow rag rug under a small, round table added a splash of cheerful color.

  She opened and closed cabinets until she found the glasses. She filled one with water from the pitcher in Sheila Anne’s refrigerator then leaned against the counter, listening. Gella’s voice rose and fell in a comforting cadence. The new widow sniffled.

  She wandered around the kitchen to give them another moment. The back windows looked out over a small deck and an expansive yard.

  Raised garden beds and a potting shed sat off to the left. The driveway curved around from the right and terminated at a weathered structure about fifty yards from the garden. Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the open bay door of the garage/barn.

  She stared out the window and imagined the horror of discovering your husband’s body in the backyard. A shiver shot up her spine.

  She fought the temptation to pull out her phone and check for messages. She’d turned off her notifications after leaving the voicemail for Angela Washington. There was no point in checking now. She didn’t care if the lawyer had gotten back to her yet. She was really interested in whether Connelly had tried to reach her.

  If he had, she couldn’t call him now, anyway, and that fact would drive her to distraction for the duration of this visit with Wheaton’s widow.

  And if he hadn’t?

  She pushed the thought from her mind.

  She returned to the living room and placed the glass on the table at Sheila Anne’s elbow.

  “Thanks.” She managed a wan smile.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Gella shifted her position to include Sasha in the conversation. “Sheila Anne was just telling me how she and Essiah met.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” She lifted the glass with a shaky hand and took a sip. “We ended up at the same shelter after Harvey.”

  Sasha cocked her head to the side. “Hurricane Harvey?”

  “Yeah, it was horrible. The storm destroyed both our towns. But, afterwards, we realized we never would’ve met if it hadn’t happened. Essiah lived in an itty-bitty town near the Gulf Coast, and I lived about forty miles west of Houston. It was pure happenstance that we both ended up at the same church shelter in the Panhandle at the same time.”

  She gave a bewildered shake of her head at the events that had brought her and Essiah together.

  The background explained Essiah’s giving pattern. He’d been displaced by a hurricane. Once he was back on his feet, he must’ve wanted to lend a hand to people who’d suffered the same fate.

  “What did Essiah do? I mean, where did he work?” Sasha asked.

  Sheila’s voice was high-pitched and fast when she answered. “I know this’ll sound crazy, but he didn’t. I mean, since we’ve been together. He said he worked in banking before. I guess he had some money saved up? After we relocated, he wanted to enjoy our time together for a while before we found jobs. We were living off his savings.”

  “Did he have life insurance, Sheila Anne?” Sasha kept her face blank.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gella looking around the spacious, well-kept home. She suspected they were sharing the same unhappy thought: An out-of-work widow who just lost her sole source of income could make for a motivated plaintiff.

  Sheila’s red-rimmed eyes went wide. “Oh, gosh. I don’t rightly know. I guess I’ll have to stop in at the bank in town and go through the papers in his safe deposit box.”

  “You should definitely do that. And we know you have a great deal to do to make arrangements for Essiah. I imagine you’re also working with the police?” Sasha said.

  “Um, yeah. Well, the FBI, actually,” she said in an offhand way, more focused on the unhappy tasks that lay ahead of her than on the specifics of the investigation into her husband’s death.

  But Sasha’s antenna went up. “The FBI? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody said. Or maybe they did? I don’t remember, I was … I guess, I was in shock.”

  Gella patted
her arm. “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  Sasha smoothed her expression. “Of course. It’s just a bit unusual for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to get involved, even in a homicide investigation.” Unless, of course, the homicide in question was related in some way to a federal operation, like, oh, say, an NCTC project.

  Sheila Anne raised her shoulders and gave Sasha a helpless look.

  Time to move on. “You and Essiah didn’t have any problems with anyone?”

  “Of course not. I mean, we’ve only lived here five months. We didn’t make enemies.”

  “Maybe someone from your past?”

  “The agents asked me all these questions. I was a preschool teacher back in Texas. I loved my students, my coworkers, my neighbors. My parents passed away years ago, and I’m an only child, so I don’t have a big family, but I loved my life. If that dang hurricane hadn’t hit, I’d still be in Blossom Creek teaching the days of the week song.”

  Gella and Sasha exchanged a glance.

  “What about Essiah? Did he feel the same way about Texas?”

  She drank some water and considered the question. “Not exactly. I mean, I don’t rightly know. He didn’t like to talk about … before. He lost everything in the flooding. And he was like me. No brothers or sisters, his parents had passed. Once we started dating seriously, we decided it was time to look for a place to live. I figured we’d end up near Houston. But he found this place in the back of some magazine selling farms and ranches and talked me into it.” She spread her arms wide and gestured around the room with a slightly dazed expression that suggested she wasn’t quite sure how she ended up there.

  “Sight unseen?”

  She laughed. “Crazy, right? But, yeah. He made it sound like such an adventure, a new beginning, something we could share that would be just ours. I joked about Mars, you know, it sounded so alien, so foreign. But Essiah was like that. He was so enthusiastic and I guess I got caught up in it. He was right, though. I like it here.” A half-smile played across her lips then died as quickly as it had bloomed.

  The whirlwind move and fresh start might have seemed like a romantic leap to Sheila Anne. But to Sasha, it smacked of a man who was running from his past. And now he was dead, which led her to believe his past had caught up with him. The only question she wanted to answer was whether Asher Morgan’s little stunt was why Essiah Wheaton’s old life had crashed into his new one with such disastrous results?

  Judging by the worry lines creasing Gella’s forehead and the anxious shadow in her eyes, her client had reached the same conclusion and was wondering the same thing.

  “Did you know Essiah made several generous donations to hurricane victims?” Sasha asked.

  Sheila Anne blinked. “I’m not surprised. He was very kind that way. But, we never talked about it. The hurricane … it affected us, you know? Even though it brought us together and something good came out of it, it caused such suffering. We didn’t like to talk about it.”

  “I can understand that. But, Sasha’s right. He gave quite a bit of money to projects devoted to helping hurricane victims. As I mentioned on the phone, my company works to connect donors like Essiah with folks who are in need—”

  “Yeah, I looked you up online after we talked. It seems like a good thing you do.” She hesitated. “But I … right now, I’m not in a position to give anything. I don’t even know how much money we have. I’ve got an appointment with Essiah’s guy at the bank after I meet with the funeral director.” She smiled sheepishly.

  “Oh, sweetie, no, we’re not here asking for a donation. Goodness. No, the reason we wanted to talk to you … well, Sasha, maybe you could explain it better?” Gella assured the woman then turned to Sasha.

  “Sure. The reason DoGiveThrive was trying to reach your husband was to let him know that there’d been a data breach and his account was affected.”

  “A breach? Like, a hack? Did they get his credit card number? Should I call the bank?”

  “No, nothing like that. So, part of DoGiveThrive’s promise to its users is to keep their identities secret. They guarantee anonymous donations, and the recipients remain anonymous, too.”

  Sheila Anne nodded slowly. “Okay? Then, what was leaked?”

  “Your husband’s name and your zip code.”

  She furrowed her forehead. “What else?”

  “Nothing else. That was the extent of the leak. A list of donor names and zip codes was posted to the internet for a period of time lasting between eight and twelve hours from Sunday night into Monday morning.”

  She blinked. “That’s it? His name was on the internet?”

  “Well, yes. But we wanted to assure him—and now, you—that the company takes the breach very seriously and is taking steps to ensure it never happens again.”

  “Okay. Listen, you both seem like nice women. And I might be missing something here, but I think y’all may be overreacting just a touch.”

  Sasha’s mind raced as she tried to balance her duty to DoGiveThrive with her duty of candor to a woman who may have been affected by the leak. She couldn’t blurt out the possibility that Essiah was dead because of the leak. And if that was true, didn’t it mean the NCTC was behind his death? And if that was true, this whole mess was a matter of national security. Which would explain the FBI’s involvement. Her head spun, and she really, really wished she could pick up the phone and ask Connelly for advice right now.

  Gella and Sheila Anne were staring at her.

  She smiled tightly, pulled herself together, and managed an answer, “DoGiveThrive would rather overreact than sweep this under the rug. In fact, we’ve filed a complaint against the man responsible for the leak and his employer.”

  Sheila Anne glanced at her watch. “I don’t mean to hustle you out of here, but I have an appointment at the funeral home. Thanks for coming up but—”

  “We got a request from the government,” Gella blurted. “They wanted to know whether a list of names appeared in our database. We refused to turn the names over, citing privacy concerns. But your husband’s name was on that list.”

  Sasha watched the woman’s face closely. Gella’s bombshell seemed to have little effect.

  “The government was asking about Essiah? That’s odd. But, you know, a lot of people got lost in the system after the hurricanes displaced them. It took me forever to get my mail sorted out. Maybe it was just something like that?”

  “Maybe,” Sasha said weakly.

  Gella caught her eye. She shrugged. She wasn’t going to force feed the woman a narrative that painted DoGiveThrive as responsible for her husband’s death.

  She stood. “We’ve taken up more than enough of your time. Thank you for talking to us. And, again, I’m so, so sorry about your loss.”

  At the mention of her husband’s death, Sheila Anne’s eyes overflowed again as the three of them made their way toward the front door. Her overworked tissue disintegrated in her hand.

  Gella plucked a fresh one from a packet in her purse and pressed it into the widow’s hand. “May I go with you to the funeral home, Sheila Anne? That’s not something you should do alone.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t. I offered.”

  Sheila Anne managed a wobbly smile. “If you mean that, I’d be grateful for your company.”

  “It’s settled then.”

  Sasha coughed. “What about your meeting in Ohio?” she asked in an undertone.

  “I’ll reschedule. Can you really put off that attorney?”

  “Consider it done.”

  They reached the front door. Sasha spotted a manila envelope lying face down on the floor in front of the threshold, as if someone had slipped it under the door. She bent and retrieved it.

  “Looks like you got some mail.”

  She handed the envelope to Sheila Anne, who flipped it over and gasped. Her face was white and her eyes were filled with a mixture of dread and fear.

  “What’s wro
ng?”

  She thrust the envelope at Sasha, her hand shaking wildly. Gella wrapped an arm around the widow’s shoulder.

  Sasha looked at the front of the envelope. The words “OPEN IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH” were written across the front.

  “That’s Essiah’s handwriting.”

  Sasha’s pulse fluttered. She tried to hand the envelope back to Sheila Anne. “You should open it.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. One of you do it.”

  Sasha’s eyes met Gella’s.

  “Here, let me.”

  She handed the envelope to her client.

  She and Sheila Anne both leaned in over Gella’s shoulders and watched her carefully open the envelope and remove several sheets of paper.

  A printed note lay on the top of the stack. It was brief and to the point:

  These are photographs of the man who killed me.

  Sheila Anne swayed on her feet. Gella dropped the papers and steadied her with both hands.

  Sasha crouched and gathered up the papers. She was about to tell Sheila Anne to call the FBI when she turned over the first picture. The words died in her throat.

  She was holding a picture of her husband. Connelly was peering through some bushes looking up at the house she was currently standing in. The photograph was grainy. It had been taken at night, in the rain, and from a distance. But it was unmistakably a picture of Connelly.

  A time and date were printed on the bottom of the page. The photograph was taken two nights ago—the last time she’d seen him. When he left abruptly after dinner.

  Her stomach lurched as she paged through the rest of the photos. Connelly in profile, standing under a tree. Then a close-up of his familiar face. His square jaw set in a determined line. His gray eyes fierce as he stared at someone—or something—off camera with a look she didn’t recognize. A hard, cold, deadly look.

  She willed herself not to sink to her knees. She breathed through her nose as slowly as she could to avoid hyperventilating. She had to keep it together. Had to. Her heart thudded, and the rushing blood in her ears sounded like the roar of the ocean.