by Jaden Skye
“I’m working the case anyway,” said Cindy. “I’m not done.”
“I’m not paying you anything.”
“There’s more at stake than money,” said Cindy. “I never give up on anybody.”
Kendra was taken aback.
“I want to find the killer,” said Cindy.
Kendra looked surprised. “You don’t mean you don’t actually believe I killed Paul?”
“I have my doubts,” said Cindy.
“Only doubts?”
“I still have questions.”
“Okay, shoot, what are they?” Kendra seemed ready to answer anything now.
“Tell me about Nell and Graham,” Cindy said immediately.
Kendra seemed momentarily confused. “You mean Graham Kowan? Paul’s son?”
“Yes – his relationship with Nell?”
Kendra’s brow furrowed. “Nell and Graham?” she sounded stunned.
“I saw a photo of them together,” said Cindy. You’ve never seen it?” Cindy focused in on her for all she was worth.
“Never,” Kendra was shocked. “Where did you see it? Why was it taken?”
“Listen, Kendra,” Cindy was annoyed, “if you’re not honest with me now, I can’t help you.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Kendra said. “I never saw any photos. I had no idea they knew each other. Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? How did you even see those pictures?”
“I went to your house last night,” said Cindy. “Nell was there. I went into her room to talk. I saw them on her Facebook page.”
Kendra’s mouth hung open as she listened. “Believe me, I had no idea she ever met Graham at all.”
“How is that possible?” said Cindy.
“Nell and I aren’t close. She doesn’t tell me anything. She hasn’t even been here to visit me once,” said Kendra.
“I can understand why,” said Cindy, bitterly.
“Why?” Kendra’s eyes flared.
“She’s going through hell.”
“Nell’s always going through one hell or another,” Kendra voice grew harsh. “The truth is she can’t stand me, never could, not even when she was a little girl. I told you before, she preferred her father. For some reason I never understood, he adored her. Whenever he was home, she was the one he’d spend his time with.”
“You couldn’t have liked that very much,” said Cindy.
“In the beginning I didn’t,” said Kendra, the muscles in her face trembling. “But I got used to it. You get used to all kinds of things as time passes.”
“Like your husband having a second family?” Cindy had to dig at her. Kendra was ready now to talk. She had no reason not to. There was no way out of here for her if she didn’t.
“Not that,” said Kendra. “I got used to him having a relationship with Heather,” Kendra said. “That only went on for a few years. Heather was different from me. A side dish. I could deal with it.”
“But a second family?” Cindy wasn’t letting go. “He must have been gone so much. You deserved better.”
“I had what I needed,” Kendra said flippantly.
“That’s not how it looks to others,” said Cindy.
“What difference does it make how it looks? Everyone’s made up their mind. They decided I did it the first day Paul was found. Book closed. Case completed.”
Kendra got up from the bench and walked to the small windows that lined the room. It was dark out and the winds were starting. “Storm is coming soon,” she said.
“You’ll be safe here,” said Cindy.
“I’m not safe anywhere, anymore,” Kendra said.
Cindy came up beside her. “How long did you know about his other family?” she asked. She needed more and more details, couldn’t help feeling that somewhere, buried, in the center of this morass, one unexpected memory would untie the entire web.
“What makes you say I knew them?” asked Kendra trembling.
“Don’t play games with me!” Cindy was on edge. “This is your last chance to get free.”
“If I knew that Paul had two families,” Wendy cringed, “that would only make it look worse for me.”
“Not necessarily,” said Cindy. “Tell me the entire truth. One fact leads to another. You’ll set me on the right trail.”
“I knew about them for the past seven years,” Kendra finally whispered.
Cindy stopped breathing. “How did you find out?”
“It happened strangely. One day I saw a snapshot on the floor of Paul and a boy of about eleven, Graham. The boy was clinging onto his father. I looked and looked at it for a long time, thought the photo must have fallen out of Paul’s pocket.”
Cindy took a long, slow breath. “Awful!”
“Not really,” said Kendra. “It was actually fascinating. This child looked exactly like Paul’s brother, who had died when he was young. The minute I saw the photo, I knew this child was Paul’s son. So, I thought it was a love child. I had no idea that he’d actually married the mother. But it was fantastic to find the photograph. Proof of something you knew all along deep down, but couldn’t put your finger on. It makes you feel like you’re crazy.”
That was exactly the way Cindy felt about this case.
“I showed Paul the photo a few days later, before he was about to leave on his usual trip. He stared at it horrified. Then he stared at me. At first he tried to lie, said it was some kid from a charity he was working with. That didn’t go over with me for a minute. I slapped him hard, in the face.” Kendra smiled now, thinking of it. “He needed that slap, he deserved it.”
Cindy felt chilled. What else had she done to Paul over the years to make him pay for this?
“Paul got scared. For a minute he was going to slap me back, but then he looked in my eyes. What did he see? I often wonder. Maybe he saw that I didn’t care.”
“I just need the truth,” I told him.
“The kid’s my son,” he said, terrified.
“You know, Paul was a tremendously weak man. Despite his grand life and big cover, underneath he lived like a crazy person and was terrified of being found out. And he was also very rich. Whatever he touched brought him big money. It made him think he could rule the world, do whatever he liked.”
“You stayed with him because of the money?” Cindy zeroed in.
“No,” said Kendra, “definitely not. I had an income of my own. I could have built my tour business any time I wanted. Look, at first I just thought he had a kid with someone else, I had no idea he was married. I’m not saying that wasn’t rotten -.”
“Why did you stay?”
Kendra turned and walked away from the window and began slowly pacing back and forth.
“I’m as weak as he was,” she said, looking down at the floor.
Cindy walked beside her. “He had something on you?”
Kendra laughed out loud. “Of course not. What could he have? I’m weak because I was also frightened.”
“Afraid of who?”
“Of Nell,” she said. “Afraid of raising her alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. It would have been far too much for me. So I stayed. But it haunted me. I searched further and found out about Margot, the wife.
When I told him about it, Paul didn’t deny any of it. He just said Margot had no idea about me or Nell -and that he had no intention of telling her. He felt indebted to the bitch for everything. She gave him all the money he needed to get going in life - paid for law school, set up his office, paid for their home, and ours too. Who knew? He said he married her out of obligation and then a year later, met me - and really fell in love. He didn’t want to lose me ever, so, he decided to marry me, too. He actually started crying when he said that. I told him to stop his blubbering. He looked at me with sick, fish eyes. He said that Margot and I were pregnant at the same time. Graham was born a few months before I had Nell. He couldn’t get out of either marriage.”
“You lived with this for seven years?” said Cindy.
“You get used to all kinds of things,” said Kendra. “In the meantime I did my thing and he did his. There were other people I was with. I figured I’d get out when the girls grew up. I knew where I stood. I had the truth. That’s a lot more than most women have.”
“Go on,” said Cindy intensely.
“I didn’t ask him anything more about his son, Graham. I knew that he came to high school on the mainland, but I didn’t care. That’s where he and Nell must have met.”
Cindy and Kendra then stared at each other and a chill went through both of them at the same time.
“I never knew Nell and Graham were friends,” Kendra said in a plaintive tone. “There was no way Nell could have known who he was either.”
Kendra wove a fantastic web and Cindy was fascinated. She wondered, though, as Kendra spoke whether she could believe any of it. Her moments of hatred towards Paul were laser sharp. It made sense that Kendra would finally get fed up with him and put an end to all of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Cindy breathed.
“What difference does it make if I knew about his other marriage or not?” asked Kendra. “It’s just sordid family history. It has nothing to do with who killed him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Cindy. “Everything has something to do with who might have killed him. How did you know that Margot didn’t find out and do it?”
Kendra smirked. “I heard about her for so many years. She couldn’t live without Paul, wrapped her life around him. She was a spineless creature, living in a dream world. There would have been no way for her to do it. If she did find out, she’d simply fall apart. That was her main tactic with him when things didn’t go well, or when he spent too much time away.”
“Can you see why people think you did it?” Cindy asked pointedly.
“I see,” said Kendra tartly. “But I didn’t do it. And that’s the truth.”
The time had fled much more quickly than Cindy realized. When she looked up she suddenly saw the female police officer coming to get Kendra.
“It can’t be that twenty minutes have passed,” said Cindy.
“Find out who did it,” she called out desperately, as the police officer grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the door.
CHAPTER 25
Cindy stood outside alone waiting for the taxi to come get her and take her back to the hotel. It was hard not to have Mattheus nearby, to call him and tell him what she’d found out. And it was hard to believe he was on a plane, returning without her. She didn’t have to believe it, though. In a few seconds her phone rang.
“You there?” it was Mattheus’ voice, sounding urgent.
“Mattheus? I thought you’d checked out, were on your way back to Grenada.”
“I checked out and now I’ve checked back in again,” said Mattheus in a gruff tone.
“Cindy’s heart lifted. “Why?”
“Forget the why’s. Where are you?” he asked, irritated.
“At the jailhouse,” she said.
“Good God,” he said, “you didn’t tell me you were going there.”
“How could I tell you? You weren’t here.”
“Well, I’m here now, and thank God I am. I checked back in with the police as soon as I returned and I have news for you.”
Cindy’s heart started pounding. “I’ll be back at the hotel in half an hour,” said Cindy.
“Before you go anywhere, listen to me,” Mattheus said. “There’s a break in the case! Get ready.”
“What?” asked Cindy shaken.
“Graham has been found dead!”
CHAPTER 26
When Cindy’s taxi pulled up, Margot’s house was roped off as a crime scene, with rows of police cars lined up in front. Photographers, on the edges of the property, were snapping pictures for the paper, as heavy rain fell on all of them.
Cindy got out of the taxi and saw Mattheus a few feet away, looking down the road, waiting for her. He immediately ran over with a big, black opened umbrella. Cindy got under the umbrella with him and they wound their way through the crowd of cops. Fortunately, Mattheus had clearance for them to get in.
“Unbelievable,” Cindy breathed, as they approached the front door.
“Worse than that,” said Mattheus, his arm now tight around her.
“What?” asked Cindy, horrified. “Margot?”
“Can you imagine?” said Mattheus. “Right now she’s on heavy sedation. They were afraid she’d have a heart attack when she found out.”
“Was she the one who found Graham?”
“Yeah,” said Mattheus. “A complete nightmare.”
Cindy shivered and moved closer to him in the pouring rain.
They got to the door, and Mattheus opened it, shook out the umbrella, and the two of them walked in. Everything in the house seemed the same, perfectly organized, not a paper out of place. Only the wind whipping at the shuttered windows gave any indication that something was wrong.
“He’s still upstairs in his room,” Mattheus said. “I’ve seen the body.”
Cindy hadn’t yet seen a dead body -- and didn’t want to.
“You don’t have to actually go up and look at it,” said Mattheus. “We have clearance to go, and it can be helpful. You could notice something.”
“I’ll go,” said Cindy.
Trembling, she walked up the stairs with Mattheus to Graham’s room, stood at the edge of it and looked in. He was still there, lying silently on the floor, trickles of blood around his neck. He looked fantastically still, oddly at peace.
Cindy wanted to take him in her arms and hug him, tell him it was all a bad dream, and that he should come back to life. He was so young, had so many years before him. She thought of the beautiful pictures of him and Nell. He’d seemed so happy in them. There were a few cops inside, dusting for prints, walking around the body gingerly.
“Another stabbing,” a cop, came up from behind them.
“Why?” asked Cindy, not noticing who he was.
“Same way the father was killed,” said Mattheus.
“Could be.” The cop came and stood beside them. It was Nojo. He seemed sad, quieter. This had sobered him up. It stunned and sobered everybody.
“We only got maybes at this point,” Nojo said.
“Kendra was in jail when this happened,” Cindy remarked slowly.
“Yes, she was,” said Nojo, shaking his head.
“Who was here in the house?” Cindy turned and looked at him directly.
“Only the mother,” he said, quietly. Clearly, this had taken them all off guard. Suddenly Kendra might not be the main suspect any longer - and Cindy wasn’t the enemy, who’d flown into town to help someone they all hated.
“Where exactly is Margot now?” asked Cindy.
“Off limits. In her room with doctors,” Nojo said. “She’s hysterical. But, as far as we can tell, she was the only one within miles of this kid today. And with the storms like they are, nobody was travelling.”
Mattheus let out a long, breath. “Sweet Jesus,” he said.
“Ain’t always so sweet,” Nojo jostled him, “you know that.”
Cindy just stared at Graham, who looked defenseless, lying there alone. She couldn’t put it together, see the point in his death.
“Let’s hope he’s with his father now,” Nojo said quietly.
Cindy suddenly felt agitated. They should have seen something like this coming - been prepared. How could it have hit them from behind? They’d all missed something important and it led to a senseless death.
“Who called this in?” she asked.
“The mother,” said Nojo. “We couldn’t make out what she was saying for a long, long time. She just kept yelling, come over, come over. Then we came and found this.”
“No one’s talked to her yet?” asked Cindy.
Both Mattheus and Nojo looked at her strangely.
“It’s way too soon,” said Mattheus.
“She can’t talk,” said Nojo said. �
��That doesn’t mean she’s not a suspect. What else in the hell can we make of it? She could have gone crazy after finding out about the second wife? Could be the lunch was too much for her. Could be she snapped. Maybe the son suddenly reminded her of the husband. Then, she forgot herself for a few seconds. That’s all it takes. A few seconds of rage, revenge, and before you know it, someone is dead. Sometimes the one who did it doesn’t even realize they did. It’s like a flash fire that burns out of nowhere and then goes out. Are they guilty then? It’s a big question.”
Cindy turned to walk away.
“Hey, don’t take it so hard,” Nojo said to her, reaching out to bring her back. “We’ll find the killer, they got lots of prints here.”
Cindy nodded sadly. “Well, at least it isn’t Kendra,” she said.
“Nope,” Nojo agreed, “she definitely didn’t do this. But we have no idea if the two killings are tied to each other, yet.”
“Oh come on now,” said Cindy.
“Looks like it,” Nojo had to agree, “but for now, no one’s sure.”
CHAPTER 27
There was no reason to stay here much longer. Margot was out of commission and the place was crawling with police and detectives searching for evidence. But Cindy had a clue no one else ever dreamt of - the photo she’d seen of Graham and Nell. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. Their faces shone out at her, pressuring her to dig deeper. She had to get out of here immediately and go speak with Nell.
“I’ve got something no one knows about yet,” Cindy finally said urgently to Mattheus. “There’s someone I’ve got to talk to immediately.”
Mattheus was taken aback. “Who?” he asked.
“Come with me to the mainland and I’ll tell you on in the car.
Mattheus hesitated. The action was here.
Cindy knew it seemed crazy to leave the scene of a crime. “If you’d rather stay here, it’s fine,” said Cindy. “I’ll call for a taxi and go back myself. Then we’ll talk later when you return.”
Once again, Mattheus hesitated. “Are you in any danger doing this alone?”
Cindy appreciated that.
