ten
GREG SWATTED AT A PERSISTENT FLY, mildly regretting not using bug spray before they left the house. Janelle nudged her Appaloosa alongside his mount as they approached the barn. “I’m thinking fish chowder and stuffed mushrooms. There are steaks thawed out, but maybe we grill those tomorrow evening, go hot spice and Southern sweet on the glaze, and serve them alongside twice-baked potatoes.”
Greg resettled his cowboy hat, his leather gloves workman worn. “If you’re asking my opinion, I like the sound of all of it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—it’s nice having a real-life chef in residence.”
“It’s hard to beat the variety I’ve got to work with. The fish are so fresh they’re often still flopping around on delivery.”
Greg was grateful they had found her primary stress-relief outlet on the first day—Janelle loved to cook—because she was now a bundle of nerves, her body reacting as he had predicted it would. She jumped at everything that startled her, and occasionally even her own shadow. She was mostly handling the overreactions with good humor, taking his word that the jitters would one day fade just as rapidly as they had appeared. The fact she was decompressing so quickly told him she fundamentally felt safe again. It was progress . . . good progress.
She’d been hanging out in his kitchen, flipping through cookbooks, enjoying herself and, in her words, finding it useful to have someone around who liked to eat. He’d been introducing her to employees who stopped by to talk ferry business or restaurant matters. She liked small talk and enjoyed having a game of checkers going on the counter.
She was looking and feeling alive again. Greg could see and hear the transformation happening. He was content to give her more room than she knew what to do with, to decide if and when she wanted to talk about what happened. So far she wasn’t going there, and that was fine with him. She’d commented a few times about prison life, but he wasn’t yet asking the follow-up questions that would take her there in detail.
Janelle’s arrival hadn’t really changed his own plans. For all practical purposes, he was still on vacation for the holidays. Today had started with an early swim, a bike ride, and moved into the afternoon with a two-hour wander on horseback. Janelle had chosen to come along for the afternoon ride.
Greg swung off his horse and held out a hand for her reins. She liked being around the horses and his dog—they were providing another good stress-relief outlet for her. She dismounted and followed him into the barn to help brush the horses.
Back at the main house, he picked up a book to read while Janelle retreated to the kitchen. They were in the habit of eating leisurely meals on the patio, not on any particular schedule. An hour later, he was enjoying fish chowder and stuffed mushrooms. Both were incredibly good. “Thanks. I love these.”
“My pleasure.”
Janelle neatly crossed her fork and knife on her plate after she finished her last mushroom. “Tomorrow I want to talk about the pardon and what happened to Andrew.”
When the topic hadn’t come up by day three, he’d figured it would be into the month of January before she asked. Greg reached for his glass of iced tea, leaned back in his chair. “Okay. Interesting timing. Any particular reason?”
She tried to make it a casual shrug, but he could tell her nerves were rippling. “I hear the details, I think about them. Then Christmas gives me a day to think about something else. The calendar steps on any impulse to brood.”
He thoughtfully nodded. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, then.”
She picked up her spoon and turned her attention to the custard she’d made for dessert. “I’m not going to like what I hear,” she said, testing for his reaction.
He was careful with his words, but truthful, knowing with the question she was beginning to sort out what working with him would be like. “You’ve handled worse things than the truth that set you free,” he remarked. “They found your pink pocketknife, Janelle. Ann happened upon it at an auction in a box of miscellaneous dresser-drawer items.”
Surprise stilled her hand. “Finding my knife set me free?”
“Yes, and the dominoes that fell from locating it.” That one fact was enough for now. He nodded to the paper beside her plate. “Have you narrowed down the movie for tonight?” Which one in his DVD collection would fit her mood on a given evening was always an open question.
She let him change the subject and scanned her list. “Would you mind a sci-fi movie?”
“I only keep movies I like. Which one strikes your fancy tonight?”
“The Martian.”
“Both long and good. I’ll have an excuse to open the caramel-corn tin.”
She rose to gather the plates, then stopped. “Can I ask you something?”
“All this—the last several days—how much of it is normal you, and how much of it is you being nice?”
He didn’t answer her for a long moment, then half smiled. “You’re constantly surprising me, Janelle. I’m simply enjoying your company for the most part. I do accommodate myself to people—it’s a necessary piece of hosting ever-changing clients, all of whom arrive in traumatic seasons of their lives. You haven’t needed much accommodation on my part, which is really weird in a way. You don’t smoke, swear, criticize, or even show a down mood very often. If anything, the prison stay didn’t touch your character as it should have, and when basic predictions are upended, it’s a highly interesting mystery to my professional side.”
She flushed faintly. “I was God-conscious, I think. I was aware that Jesus was with me, literally. So what I said was always circumspect; I mostly kept my mouth shut. What were you expecting?”
“Moody, withdrawn, not sleeping, flashes of temper, frustration—the darker side of the color palette as your emotions are finally free to deal with the fact you endured prison for something you didn’t do.”
“I think I’m still in the relief side of the picture. The anger over the injustice hasn’t had space to rise up yet. I imagine it will.”
“It would be a normal reaction. But you can skip entire pages of what is normal and still be processing things just fine. I’m going to get concerned only if I see you getting stuck on some step.”
“Like I mentally start spinning my wheels?”
Greg smiled. “Once I figure out how you brood, most of my work is actually done. I see you brooding, that’s my cue to step in and help you shift the way you’re thinking about something.” He rose to help her clear the table. “Let’s start that movie, then later go watch the sunset from the beach. Marco loves to end his day playing in the sand.”
She looked down with amusement at the dog, still hoping for table scraps to fall his way. “He’ll try to steal and bury my tennis shoe again.”
“His version of hide-and-seek. My guess, he’s playing the game in your honor.”
She laughed and headed into the kitchen. Greg ruffled the dog’s fur. It helped to get her to laugh, and Marco had been doing an impressive job assisting him with that.
Food had become a theme of Janelle’s stay. She had the fixings for BLTs laid out for breakfast. Greg decided it suited him fine. He stacked bacon on a piece of toast, piled on lettuce and a tomato slice, then picked up a knife and the peanut butter jar to liberally coat the other piece of toast.
He found her on the patio, tossing a bite of bacon to Marco, who had obligingly backed up to the other side for a long toss. Greg smiled, watching them. He’d never known Marco to miss, no matter how long the toss.
He pulled out a chair and settled in across from her. Adapting to her wasn’t a particular hardship thus far. Janelle didn’t eat inside if she could be outside. And she was showing a not-unexpected skittishness about being completely alone. He was thinking he’d buy her a good pair of cowboy boots for Christmas. She’d already picked up a cowboy hat at an island shop and was wearing it now. Her nose had sunburned and peeled, her shoulders and arms had tanned, spared the burn by ample sunscreen. She was adapting to life on the island. It was overcast, but the threat of rain had passed. It would be a nice day for a horseback ride.
“I take it you know the pardon and case details well enough to tell me what all happened.”
Greg nodded, not surprised that she would immediately bring up the topic. Having gathered the courage to ask this morning, waiting until later would only increase her tension. “I do.” He’d played out variations of how the next minutes would go and wondered which way Janelle would take them. He was as prepared as he knew how to be for this conversation.
“Then let me just ask: Who killed Andrew? Do they know?”
“Tanya.”
She blinked, then erupted. “That’s crazy!” Her chair landed on its side behind her, startling Marco.
Being well trained, rather than bolt, the dog immediately dropped down and stayed low. Greg used a hand gesture to command comfort, and the dog was instantly up again and into Janelle’s space, under her hand, leaning into her knee. Her hand curled into Marco’s fur. “Sorry, Marco. I’m sorry.”
Greg leaned over to set right her chair.
Her instantaneous reaction he’d expected, but the surging, adrenaline-driven anger that followed, flushing her face, was stronger than he’d anticipated. Okay, one question answered. Janelle’s instinct was to both mentally and emotionally defend her friend. Loyalty ran to the core of her personality. Greg didn’t follow up with another comment, as he needed to see how she’d process something she intensely rejected. He let his dog be the distraction and comfort she needed right now.
“Ann found my pink pocketknife.”
He nodded at her restatement of the fact from last night. Her tone was confused, softer now. She was desperately trying to rein in the anger. Janelle carefully sat back down. He gave her as much of a verbatim quote from Ann as he could recall. “She was at an auction with Paul. There were silk scarves and half-filled perfume bottles in a box of miscellaneous dresser-drawer items she thought might make a nice painting arrangement. She bought the box. When she unpacked everything, she found your knife in the bottom.”
“Tanya’s fingerprints were on the knife, Andrew’s blood? They concluded Tanya did the murder off that new evidence? Because Tanya handled that knife all the time for innocent reasons—it had a corkscrew and nail file, any number of other gadgets she used.”
“Your fingerprints were found on the knife, Andrew’s blood,” Greg corrected.
Janelle began to run her fingertips back and forth on the tabletop in an unconscious gesture. “Then how . . . ? That doesn’t end up at a pardon. It proves the jury verdict against me,” she added, still confused.
“Ann traced the box. They were Tanya’s things. There was a sewing kit, a jewelry box with the initials T.C. on it, the scarves and perfume. It turns out your knife was in Tanya’s dresser drawer.”
That stopped her hand motion. “Her dresser drawer . . . Tanya’s dead?” Janelle whispered, a horrified look on her face.
He’d miscalculated, not anticipating that question, and so quickly shifted gears. “Tanya’s alive and well and living in New York. She owns a high-end dress boutique, holds a partnership interest in a fashion magazine.”
Janelle shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Were you aware that Tanya moved to New York after the trial?”
“Yes. That was always her dream,” Janelle replied, her voice softening again. “It was good that she went, that she got away from the tragedy of Andrew’s death.”
Greg offered a piece of his bacon to Marco as a reward for the dog faithfully staying at Janelle’s side. “Tanya recently sold the Chadwick family’s Chicago home. She sent a few things to New York, but the rest of the contents went to auction. The house manager boxed up Tanya’s bedroom dresser—the box of items Ann purchased.” He waited.
“Tanya killed Andrew.” Janelle wasn’t processing the fact so much as repeating it.
“Yes.” He gave her another long moment. “Someone put those bloody shoes in your closet, Janelle. Tanya had a key to your apartment, right?”
Her gaze lifted to meet his. “She had a key,” she whispered.
She wasn’t seeing him. She was thinking, thinking hard. He’d just blown her understanding of the world into confetti pieces. The growing pallor of her face worried him, yet her hand on the table was still opened, not fisted, nor had she stiffened in the chair. Her original denial was so strong a response, he wasn’t sure she could absorb the facts the first time she heard the news. She wasn’t processing the facts yet, for none of it was real to her; they were just words.
“She set you up, Janelle,” he said gently.
She swallowed so hard, she looked sick. When the denial broke, she would desperately need to see what was real. He gave her the truth he needed her to stand on so her mind would process this through rather than get stuck.
“There are a few different theories as to why Tanya did it. The most kind is that she found Andrew at the bottom of those stairs, knew his medical bills would eat through the family trust, and made a terrible decision. She used your knife to stab him and let him bleed to death. She tried to make it look like a robbery. But if the cops didn’t buy that, you would be her fallback. Tanya used the fact you had fought that night with Andrew. She put the bloody shoes in your closet for the cops to find so they would start with you rather than her.”
Janelle held up her hand to halt his words. “Can we . . . stop this conversation now?” She was already more calmly pushing back her chair.
“Of course.”
Confusion, shock, bewilderment . . . all the emotions painting her face were easy to read, but he wasn’t seeing even a trace of reluctant acceptance as her mind fought it out with her heart. “I’m sorry, Janelle, that this was a betrayal by a lifelong friend.”
She put her paper plate on the stone pavers as a thank-you to Marco, who pushed aside the tomatoes with his nose but gladly snapped up the bacon. She wiped at tears with the palms of her hands. “I’ll be at the beach.”
He nodded and let her go. Marco looked up as she broke into a jog. Greg nudged him with his foot. “Comfort,” he said. Marco considered matters, devoured the last piece of peanut-butter-covered bread, then ran after her.
Greg rubbed his hands down his face. There were times this job was simply miserable. He pulled out his phone and made a call. “She just asked the question, Ann. She may not be able to accept it.” Twenty minutes later, he ended the call, sighed, reached down for the plate, and wadded it up with his.
He couldn’t help Janelle, not yet. She’d hopefully storm that beach, kick up sand, do some yelling, then crying, and when the emotional storm ran out, she’d sit down on a log, her emotions numb, and replay their conversation.
She would either be able to quote his words verbatim or wouldn’t remember much of anything beyond the statement that Tanya did it. Her mind would deal with the news however it had to, either shutting down or going to the opposite extreme of examining each word in an endless loop. He’d adjust what came next based on which coping mechanism had been triggered. He hoped she would smile again in the next week. It wasn’t likely, but he could hope for it.
One small blessing—Janelle had left her phone on the table. She wasn’t calling someone from her past right now, wasn’t calling Tanya. She was alone, thinking, denial and truth locked in a fierce battle, her heart and mind at war with each other. If denial won, the next conversation was going to be particularly difficult. He looked at her phone and left it on the table. Marco would come bounding back here to get him if Janelle needed help. He went to fetch a book, settled back at the table, and waited for her to return.