We enter the front door of the Florida House the way they did for the solstice party last year—en masse.
Wren Melody, Brooke Wakefield, Henrique Arango, Scott Haskew, Clarence and Sarah Samuelson, Jodi North, Vic Frankford, Rake Sabin, Hal Raphael, Roderick Brandt, Dad, Jake, Reggie, and me.
Making our way into the parlor, we join Keith, Derinda, Charis, and Christopher, who are all sitting on the same couch beside each other dozing.
They stir awake and sit up as we enter.
I had asked Roderick if we could gather together everyone who was in the house the night of the solstice and he had said he was willing to try anything.
Everyone is obviously exhausted—disheveled and drowsy.
“Could we have everyone who was at the party the night Magdalene was taken sit down in the parlor?” Roderick says.
Keith and Christopher remain where they are, as Scott and Vic replace Derinda and Charis on the couch with them.
Wren and Brooke sit on the loveseat.
Henrique takes the chair by the fireplace.
Rake sits in a high-back chair near another couch where Clarence and Sarah Samuelson are seated with Jodi North.
Everyone else is either in the doorway of the foyer area or dining room—Dad, Derinda, Charis and Reggie on the dining room side and Roderick, Jake, and Raphael in the opening to the foyer.
“Not just at the party that night,” I say, looking at Raphael, “but in the house. Would you join the others in here?”
He shakes his head, frowns, stomps into the parlor, and takes the last remaining empty chair—an uncomfortable-looking upright wooden one.
“We’ll bring around some coffee,” Derinda says, and she and Charis busy themselves doing just that.
“Thank you,” I say.
Roderick takes a step forward and says, “John has some things to say and some questions to ask. I want everyone to give him your undivided attention and unreserved cooperation.”
Merrill is the only one not present, and that’s because I have him checking on something for me that might verify and validate the theory I’ve formulated.
Because I have to buy some time while waiting to find out what he uncovers, and because it will help me further solidify and bolster or discredit and abandon my theory, I have decided to talk through what I’m thinking with the suspects.
I feel more like Hercule Poirot than I ever imagined I could and I have the urge to say Madame and Monsieur.
I resist the urge.
“Until last night,” I say, “we didn’t know who took Magdalene, how it was done, or if she was still alive or not. Until a few minutes ago we didn’t know how she was killed, how her body was put back in her bed, and who took Taylor from our bedroom.”
“You saying you know now?” Keith says.
I nod.
“How Magdalene was killed or all of it?” he says.
“Why is what I want to know,” Christopher says. “Why would anyone steal our little angel?”
“Let’s talk through all of it,” I say, pulling out my phone to make sure I haven’t missed a message from Merrill. “We can start with the security system here. No one can enter without having a current key card or being let in. And anyone who does enter or exit is recorded by the security cameras. It’s because of them that we know no one entered the house after you guys arrived for the party. And no one left until Hal Raphael left for the airport the following morning. But he appeared to be alone.”
“I didn’t appear to be alone,” he says. “I was alone.”
“There was no sign of Magdalene when the rest of you came out of the house to look for her later that morning,” I say. “So if no one breaks into the house after the party starts, then it has to be one of you already in the house. But even as we’re able to narrow it down to you all, that doesn’t tell us how you did what you did with all the other people in the house or how you were able to remove Magdalene from the house without being seen.”
“Does it have something to do with the key card that was stolen that day?” Christopher asks.
“The truth is . . . I’m not sure.”
“What?” Vic says. “You either know or you don’t. I thought you corralled us all in here like cattle because you knew.”
“I do believe the killer stole the key card,” I say. “I just don’t know if it was used in the commission of the crime. What I mean is . . . the killer could’ve used it but didn’t necessarily have to in order to get in or out of the house. I’m still left with some questions about the key cards—including my own. When I was trying to get back into our room to see if the secret passageway was used to take Taylor mine didn’t work, but instead of it having something to do with the crime, I may have just been rushing too much and didn’t give it enough time to work. I don’t know for sure. What I am sure of is that the key card that was stolen wouldn’t have to have been used for the crime to have been committed.”
“It seems like you’re dragging this out just to torture us,” Brooke says.
“Yeah,” Clarence says. “Why don’t you tell us what you know instead of what you don’t know?”
I glance at my phone again as Derinda and Charis begin passing out the coffee.
“What we now know for sure,” I say, “is that Magdalene died of a sleeping aid overdose. The drug screening the lab ran this morning reveals that.”
“Just like the media reported,” Vic says. “So . . . it was an accidental death.”
Everyone looks over at Keith and Christopher.
“Look over here all you want,” Keith says. “We didn’t give her any goddamn sleeping medication that night.”
“We certainly didn’t,” Christopher says.
“Yes, you did,” I say. “You both did.”
“I swear to God we didn’t,” Keith says. “Swear on . . . on . . . my life. What there is left of it.”
“You did,” I say again. “You both did. And Magdalene wasn’t the only one drugged that night. You all were. Everyone but the killer was. That’s how this was done. Recall how everyone of you told me what an off year it was, how exhausted everyone was, how normally everyone stays up late and some of you stay up all night, but this year most of you didn’t even make it up to your room, you slept in here—on the couch, the chair, the floor, propped up on the dining room table. It’s because you were all drugged.”
“How?” Wren Melody asks. “Tell us how, dear boy?”
“The solstice punch,” I say. “Both versions—the virgin and the alcoholic so that everyone would be. And before putting Magdalene to bed . . .”
“We let her have some of the virgin punch,” Keith says.
“Oh, my God,” Christopher says. “We killed her.”
Derinda quickly hands Charis the coffee she’s holding and rushes over to comfort her boys.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I don’t think it was enough to kill her. I think the killer gave her sleeping medication later not knowing she already had some in her system from the punch. They just thought she was groggy from having been asleep, so they gave her the meds they had intended to all along—and together it was too much.”
“So,” Henrique says, “that means her death was accidental.”
I nod. “I believe so. I believe this was an abduction gone wrong.”
I pause for a moment and check my phone again as everyone digests what has been said so far.
“So,” I say. “Who did it? Why did they do it? And how did they get Magdalene’s body out of the house and then back in it nearly a year later—or did they? Was it in here all along? Let’s start with motive. Why would someone abduct a child?” I look at Brooke. “Perhaps because she wants her for her own. Or,” I add, looking at Raphael, “perhaps for far more sinister reasons. Or maybe,” I say, glancing back at Henrique, “it was so she could be traded on a black market barter system in an attempt to get experimental medical treatment.”
Vic looks at me and shakes his head, then over to Roderick, “If y’all drag this out any longer I’m gonna confess just to get it over with.”
“We’ll come back to motive in a minute,” I say. “Let’s talk about how Magdalene’s body could’ve been removed from the house without being noticed. If we go just by the security footage, then the most obvious way is in Hal Raphael’s suitcase that he left with the following morning. It was big enough.”
“I didn’t kill that little girl,” Raphael says. “Accidentally or otherwise, and I didn’t put her body in my suitcase and carry it out of here.”
My phone vibrates and I pull it out. It’s a text from Merrill.
You were right. Her body was definitely in the freezer here.
“Okay,” I say, “let’s say you didn’t. If that’s not how Magdalene was removed from the house, then how was she? Because the security footage doesn’t show another way it could’ve been done. But . . . what the security footage does show is how the abductor become killer entered the house. And it was right through the front door.”
“You’ve already said that,” Sarah Samuelson says.
“It just wasn’t when it appeared to be,” I say. “It wasn’t when you all came back for the party but earlier in the day—a good deal earlier. The security footage shows everyone entering the house and later leaving except for one person. One person entered the house and didn’t leave—never left again according to the footage.” I turn to Charis Tremblay. “The video shows you coming in like so many others that day, carrying Christmas presents, which are still unopened in Magdalene’s room. But it doesn’t show you leave. It has been right there all along but must have been overlooked during the first investigation.”
She freezes in the doorway between the dining room and parlor, a pitcher of coffee dangling from her hand.
Everyone turns toward her.
“You snatched the key card at some point—though I’m not sure you ever used it—and when no one noticed, you found a place to hide. You hid until everyone left for the candlelight service, and while they were there, you made your preparations and put the sleep meds in the punch and then went and hid in Magdalene’s room. You were her mother and you just couldn’t abide the thought of two men—two gay men—raising your little girl. So you were just going to put everyone to sleep, including her, and take her back. Only when you gave her a dose of sleep aid there was already a good bit in her little body, which meant you killed the very little girl you were, in your mind, trying to protect.”
“Oh God,” Christopher says. “Is it true? Did you pretend to accept us just so you could steal our—”
“My,” she says. “She was my daughter, not yours. A little girl needs a mother, not two sodomites.”
“I will kill you with my bare hands,” Keith says, rising from the couch.
Jake steps between him and Charis as Roderick walks over and puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and gently pushes him back down on the couch.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” she says. “It was an accident. I would gladly trade places with her. I would never do anything to harm her. I loved that child. Loved her in a way only a godly mother can. I’ve grieved for her every single day since y’all took her from me—doubly since she died.”
“Not since she died—since you killed her,” Christopher says.
“You evil bitch,” Keith says. “What the fuck was organizing the searches in the woods about? Pretending to care about us and help us?”
“It was all to deflect suspicion,” I say, “and to bide her time until she could frame you two for Magdalene’s death. I think she figured out what happened and froze the body so she could eventually use it to set you guys up. My guess is she was the source close to the investigation who started the rumor about you two accidentally overdosing her. She figured if she froze the body, spread that rumor, then eventually put her back in your house it’d look like you really did it.”
“It wasn’t enough to take her from us, you had to set us up for killing her?”
“You took her from me,” she says, her voice rising. “She’d still be alive if you hadn’t taken her away from me. God is punishing you for your abominations.”
“The whole time you’re out there searching for her in those woods with the rest of us,” Derinda says, “you knew she was dead, knew we wouldn’t find anything.”
“As recently as last night, even after she had snuck Magdalene’s dead body back into her bed,” I say, “she was telling me how if we found Magdalene alive she was going to try to get custody back.”
“A liar until the very end,” Keith says. “A thief, a murderer, a liar. How can you break like every one of the commandments and still believe you’re the good guy and we’re the bad guys?”
“Because she’s certifiable,” Christopher says. “Fuckin’ nuts.”
“But,” Henrique says, “how did she leave the house with Magdalene without being seen that night?”
“While you were all passed out,” I say. “And the security cameras didn’t capture her because she went through the pet door on the side of the house—she and Magdalene were about the only ones small enough to fit through it.”
“How did she get the body back in the house?” Rake asks.
“And what was that business with the pajamas?” Vic asks.
“The pajamas were a distraction,” I say. “And while everyone was over at the search site trying to see what was going on, she came back here, supposedly to make tea and coffee for everyone, but it was really to return Magdalene to her bed. My guess is that she brought the body back into the house inside of a box or suitcase—just walked right in the front door with her while everyone else was over at the search site. We’ll have to check the security camera footage to be sure, but she got her body back into the house without being observed. And I knew when I saw the care with which Magdalene had been treated—the bathing and cleaning—that it had to be done by someone who not only knew her but loved her. And the white gown and headband and candles was so ritualistic that I thought it was likely to have been done by a religious person.”
“I loved that little girl more than any of you can imagine,” she says. “I’m not a—I just did what any good mother would do.”
“How much was your husband involved?” I ask.
She lets out a harsh laugh. “Brent’s as clueless as the rest of y’all. Always traveling. This past year do you know how many days a month he’s been home on average? Three. Three days a month. And when he is . . . he never pays any mind to me or my kids. That’s what he calls my foster children. My kids. I knew he would never even come into my little craft shed let alone look in the freezer, but I kept a lock on it anyway. Buying that lock was a waste of money. He’s the most incurious man you ever met—especially about his wife and what she gets up to. He helped with the grid for the search and showed up a time or two, but Magdalene was never his and his heart was never in it.”
My phone vibrates again. I pull it out and see I have another text from Merrill.
She’s not here. I’ve searched the entire house and property.
“Where is she?” I ask Charis.
She looks confused. “Who?”
“Taylor,” I say. “Where is Taylor?”
She shakes her head and shrugs. “I have no idea. I’m not a kidnapper, not some sort of monster who steals children. I was a desperate mother trying to get her daughter back from these filthy faggots. I didn’t take your child. I had no reason to. And think about it—I was with you when it happened.”
She’s right and I know it. I can tell she’s telling the truth.
“I’ll take a lie detector test,” she says. “But I’m telling you I didn’t take your daughter. I wouldn’t. And I’m telling you for two reasons . . . I want you to keep looking for her because I don’t have her. And because of the way all y’all are looking at me. I feel all your judgement and disdain, but think about this . . . if I didn’t take her that means one of y’all did.”