The Perfect Beginning

by Madyson Grey

  “We’ve got several flavors of creamer. What’s your pleasure? There’s hazelnut, chocolate mint, …”

  “Hazelnut, please,” he interrupted.

  No need to rattle off all of the flavors when the one he wanted was named first. She got it out of the fridge and poured a dab into both of their cups. She took the muffins out of the microwave.

  “Do you like butter on your muffin?” she asked.

  “What kind are they?” he asked.

  “Poppyseed,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  Victoria got out the tub of margarine and spread it on both halves of each of the muffins. She set the plate on the eating counter, and then walked around it to sit on one of the bar stools. They sat there sipping coffee and munching muffins while watching the news. Victoria was amazed that she had met this man a mere four days prior, and yet here they were, alone in her house, eating breakfast together like they were old married folk. It just felt so right. It was quick, but felt so right.

  She hadn’t felt this way about a man ever. Not even her schoolgirl crush on Travis held a candle to her feelings for Rafael. She wondered if he felt what she was feeling. She also wondered if it would last. Would he ride the storm with her that she was about to sail in to?

  Was there really something to her mother’s accusations that he somehow cheated her father out of his company? What if she found out that he had? How would that affect their relationship? Could she love a man who had apparently destroyed her father? There were so many unanswered questions about all the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. She needed answers. But would she like the ones she got? What if she just let everything alone? Just let David Thornton’s death remain a suicide? What if the truth were something so ugly, so hideous, so destructive that she couldn’t bear it?

  But what if it wasn’t? What if the truth was that the company had been sold fair and square? That Rafael was a good, kind, decent man? What if her mother was truly mentally ill, and had finally gone off the deep end? What if? What if? What if?

  Suddenly, Victoria realized that Rafael had said something.

  “Huh?” she asked, turning to look at him.

  “I said, what time is the lieutenant coming over this morning?” he repeated.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He didn’t really say, did he? He just said he’d be over ‘in the morning.’ Whenever that is. I assume he could come any time after eight o’clock.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Rafael agreed.

  “Do you want something else for breakfast?” Victoria asked.

  “Well, I could stand a little more,” Rafael said. “Do you have some eggs?”

  “Sure. How do you want them fixed?”

  “How about a couple of fried eggs, over easy, and bacon?”

  “Let me look.”

  Victoria checked the fridge for bacon. There was a part of a package of turkey bacon in one of the fridge drawers. She asked him if that was OK. He said it was fine. So she got out a skillet and fried up the bacon and eggs.

  “Toast?” she inquired.

  “One, please,” he said.

  Victoria wasn’t in the mood for bacon and eggs that morning, so while Rafael’s breakfast was frying, she poured herself a bowl of cold cereal. When everything was done, she dished it all up on a plate, buttered his toast and asked if he wanted peanut butter and jam. He did. When his toast was fixed, she put the plate down in front of him, with a fork, and then got out the milk for her cereal.

  She sat down beside him again and they ate their breakfast. They discussed what the day might bring. After the policemen had come and gone, Victoria wanted to go to the hospital to visit Lena. Rafael needed to go to work, but he told Victoria to call him anytime she wanted to. He was interested to know what the police would find, if anything. He also wanted to know how Lena was doing. So he told Victoria to call him with any news at all, and he’d check in with her periodically.

  After he finished his breakfast, he got ready to go to his office. This just feels so right, he thought. She made me breakfast, and now I’m off to work. Just like a regular couple. If the circumstances weren’t so awful, he would have been in seventh heaven. Just before he walked out of the house, he came back into the kitchen where Victoria was tidying up to tell her goodbye.

  “Keep in touch today, and maybe we can meet somewhere for lunch,” he told her.

  “OK, sounds good,” Victoria said, smiling up at him.

  He held her for a moment, then kissed her goodbye and left.

  He hadn’t been gone but about ten minutes when Victoria’s cell phone rang. She answered it the call, and found Lieutenant Mobry on the other end.

  “I’m free to come over now, if it’s convenient for you,” he said.

  “Yes, now is good,” Victoria answered.

  “Good. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’ll have to buzz me from the gate,” Victoria told him. “Then I can let you in.”

  “No problem,” he said. “See you soon.”

  They disconnected, and Victoria looked around to make sure everything was tidy. Lena had always taken care of the kitchen, but she was lying in a hospital bed right now. After living on her own for seven years, however, Victoria had learned to take care of her own house. She was no longer the rich kid who could leave everything to the cook and the housekeeper. She could manage a house by herself.

  She went into her father’s office to just look around before the police arrived. Maybe she could spot some other clue that would help to solve the mystery of his death. She randomly opened his desk drawers, looking at the contents of two or three of them. Just ordinary stuff that people keep in desk drawers—paper, pens, tape, staples, and so on.

  In the fourth drawer that she opened, Victoria spotted a yellow legal pad. She remembered that the suicide note had been written on yellow legal paper, so she pulled the pad out of the drawer and looked at it. The top sheet had a bunch of numbers doodled all over it. The second sheet had names written on it. The name that caught her eye was written across the top in big, bold letters: MARIAN.

  Under her name, randomly scattered around the sheet, not even necessarily on the lines, were several men’s names. Paul Johnson. Kevin Trapp. Dan Sheets. Rob Kensington. The names went on and on. A few she recognized. Most she did not. Then, near the bottom, in small print was written “Rafael Rivera?” Rafael! Rafael? Why were these names written on this page like this? Why was Rafael’s name the only one with a question mark after it? She was tempted to tear out this sheet and hide it, but then she decided that it may be part of the puzzle and she’d better leave it. Besides, the bottom portion of the sheet of paper had been torn away.

  Wondering if this was where the suicide note had been torn from, Victoria hurried up to her room to grab the folder full of papers she had collected that pertained to her father and his death. She’d need it anyway when the officer arrived. Back in the office, she pulled out the police report that had the copy of the suicide note clipped to it. The photocopy was clear enough that it showed the ragged edges of the original scrap of paper. She was about to compare it to the torn sheet in the legal pad when the gate buzzer sounded.

  She hurried to the gate panel, checked to see who was there, and the opened the gate for Lieutenant Mobry. She waited near the front door for him to ring the bell, which didn’t take him long.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” Victoria said as she opened the door for him.

  “Good morning, Miss Thornton,” he returned.

  “Please, come in.”

  She held the door open wide for him and another man to enter.

  “Miss Thornton, this is Detective Nash,” Lieutenant Mobry said.

  “Victoria, please,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, Detective.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too,” Detective Nash replied.

  Victoria shook hands with both men, and then invited them to follow her into her father’s office. She laid out the folder of the papers that s
he had collected that pertained to the sale of her father’s business and his death.

  “I have attempted to fill in Detective Nash on what’s going on here, but we may need for you to go over your suspicions again,” Lieutenant Mobry said.

  “Sure, no problem. I can start from the beginning if you need me to,” she said. “In fact, I have something new to show you that I discovered just before you got here.”

  “What’s that?” the lieutenant asked.

  “You’ll remember that the suicide note was written on yellow legal pad paper, right?” Victoria said.

  “Right.”

  “I started going through my dad’s desk a few minutes ago and found a yellow legal pad in one of the drawers. Here it is. Now, see on the top sheet there are lots of numbers. It looks like he may have been toying with dollar figures, possibly trying to decide what to do about the company, or something like that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now, the second page has my mother’s name written at the top, then there are a bunch of men’s names written all over the rest of the page. And see here, the bottom of the page is torn off. I believe it will match the suicide note tear.”

  She showed the two men the torn page, and then her copy of the suicide note. It didn’t take a detective to see that the suicide note had been torn from that very page.

  “Now, I just found this, so I haven’t had time to think it through. But, what if these are the names of men that my mother was fooling around with? And what if what my dad wrote had to do with not wanting to deal with her infidelities any longer, and wanting out of their marriage, rather than wanting out of life itself. Does this make sense? When you read the note in this context, it becomes a desire to divorce my mother, not a suicide note.”

  “Makes sense to me, does it to you?” Lieutenant Mobry asked Detective Nash.

  “Perfect sense. Which ties up the only loose end you have to changing Mr. Thornton’s death from suicide to murder,” Detective Nash said.

  “Exactly,” Victoria said.

  “Do you know any of these men?” the lieutenant asked Victoria.

  “Well, I know who a couple of them are. Can’t say I really know them, but I know who they are. I don’t know most of them. Except for Rafael Rivera. See, his name is the only one with a question mark after it. Which I don’t get.”

  “There is another possibility here that we should consider,” the detective said.

  “What’s that?” Victoria asked.

  “Maybe these names are men who were interested in purchasing your father’s company. Maybe it was the company that he was tired of and wanted out of. Is that a possibility?”

  “I guess anything is possible,” Victoria said slowly. “But he always seemed to love his business. And just yesterday I learned that my mother had a number of extramarital affairs over the years. If I could just ask Lena about these names, she might know some of them.”

  “Lena?” the detective asked.

  “Sorry, my parents’ cook and now housekeeper. She’s lived with us all my life. She was my babysitter and our cook. Until just before Daddy died, they also had a housekeeper. Now it’s just Lena, and she’s in the hospital because Mother attacked her yesterday morning with a small statue and cracked her skull. But maybe I can call her and talk to her. Want me to?”

  “If you think she’s able to talk, it would be helpful,” the lieutenant said.

  “I’ll try,” Victoria said.

  She dialed the number of Lena’s hospital room and let the phone ring until Lena picked it up.

  “Hi Lena, it’s Victoria,” she said. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Hi, honey,” Lena answered. “I feel much better today. My head still hurts, but I don’t feel so messed up.”

  “I’m so glad. Listen, I need to ask you something. I have a couple of police officers here and we need to know if you know some people. I found a sheet of paper with several names on it. I know a couple of them, but I want to know if you know them.”

  “OK, shoot.”

  “Well, there’s Paul Johnson.”

  “Yes, I know who he is.”

  “Kevin Trapp.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dan Sheets.”

  “Yes.”

  “Rob Kensington.”

  “Yes.”

  Victoria read off several more names, to which Lena replied in the affirmative that she knew who they were.

  “Now, Lena, tell me if any of these men are ones that Mother had affairs with.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment.

  “It’s OK, Lena, you can tell me,” she said gently.

  “Is your mother there? I’m afraid if I say anything she’ll really flip out on me,” Lena said.

  “No, Lena, she’s not here. And I don’t think she’ll ever hurt anyone again. You probably don’t know this yet, but Marian was arrested yesterday and is in a psych ward for mental evaluation. She confronted Rafael with a gun yesterday and demanded he give her back the company, and she used his secretary as a hostage.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry for you,” Lena said.

  “It’s OK. I’m actually relieved,” Victoria admitted. “Anyway, these men. Did Marian have an affair with any of them?”

  “Yes,” Lena said slowly. “All of them.”

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  About the Author

  Born near the shores of Southern California, Madyson Grey currently spends her days writing suspense-filled romances, reading steamy novels, and complaining about the rain in her new Portland home that she shares with one loving husband, two adorable Bassett Hounds, and three rather snotty cats. When not cowering away from the rain, Maddy likes to walk the dogs down near the beach and sample all the amazing coffee that Portland has to offer.

  Be sure to visit her Amazon page and hit ‘Follow’ to be notified of her new releases.

  Also by Madyson Grey

  THE PERFECT REVENGE:

  The Perfect Beginning

  The Perfect Little Lie

  The Perfect Storm

  The Perfect Burn

  There Perfect Revenge

  The Perfect Revenge: Complete 5 Book Boxed Set