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Deirdre Solomon lived in a drab apartment building sorely in need of renovation. When Deirdre opened her door, Kat could hear the hinges creaking.
“Oh, hello.” Deirdre kept one hand on the doorknob, a look of uncertainty on her face. “Are you at the right place?”
“I am.” Kat inched her foot forward, just in case Deirdre tried to slam the door in her face. “I’d like to talk to you about Imogene’s party yesterday.”
Deirdre tucked her hands inside her long-sleeved shirt, like a turtle retreating into its shell. “What about it?”
“I have reason to believe you might know who killed Landon Tabernathy,” Kat said, watching Deirdre’s reaction carefully.
Deirdre scooted partway behind the door as if she might be able to hide there. “Why would I know anything?”
Kat shrugged, then took a step forward, treating Deirdre’s retreat as an invitation to enter. “Mind if we talk about this inside?”
Deirdre hesitated.
“Or I could ask Officer Leon to pay you an official visit,” Kat said.
The threat had the desired effect. Deirdre held the door open wider.
The living area was small and cramped, making Kat feel a little claustrophobic as she and Deirdre sat across from each other on mismatched armchairs.
“Did you know Landon?” Kat asked.
“No,” Deirdre said.
“Your mother did though, right?”
Deirdre stilled. When she spoke, her voice came out high and squeaky. “My mother?”
Kat nodded. “Your mother is Rita Solomon, right?”
Deirdre didn’t respond. She merely stared at Kat with those huge, brown eyes.
“I heard she and Landon both attended Cherry Hills High at the same time. That must have been around, oh . . .” Kat tapped her chin, pretending to do the mental math. “. . . around thirty-two years ago.”
“I—I guess that’s about right.”
Kat scrutinized Deirdre. “How old are you again?”
Deirdre squeezed her lips together until they turned white from the pressure.
“Deirdre,” Kat said softly, “was Landon your father?”
Deirdre looked down at her lap, picking imaginary lint off of her slacks. Then, finally, she offered up a tiny nod.
“Was your mother at the party yesterday?” Kat asked.
“Ma?” Deirdre looked surprised by the question. “No.”
Kat held her gaze. “Then it was you.”
Deirdre didn’t ask what she meant. It was clear she understood perfectly. The guilt was etched all over her face.
“I didn’t want anything from him,” she said, sounding like a lost little girl instead of a woman Kat’s age. “I just wanted to get to know him.”
“But he didn’t care to know you,” Kat guessed.
Deirdre’s face darkened. “Except for one time, he couldn’t even be bothered to write back when I sent him those letters.”
So Landon’s long-lost daughter had been his mystery pen pal rather than an illicit lover, Kat mused. Even so, she doubted Frieda would find any comfort in that fact.
“Ma said he was heartless, but I guess a part of me never truly believed her,” Deirdre continued. “She wouldn’t even tell me his name until I turned thirty. I guess she finally decided I had a right to know, even if she figured he would end up hurting me.”
“Your mother didn’t tell him when she found out she was pregnant with you?” Kat asked.
“She said she did.”
“What did he do when she told him?”
“Nothing.” Deirdre’s look was hard. “He turned his back and walked away from her.”
Kat hadn’t known Landon, nor did she condone how he’d died, but she couldn’t prevent the flash of anger that seared through her then on Rita Solomon’s behalf.
“Ma left Cherry Hills soon after that,” Deirdre said. “My grandparents, her parents, were old school, at least that’s how Ma described them. They whisked her away from here as soon as they found out she was pregnant and told her not to tell anyone. She said they urged her to give me up for adoption. When she told them she planned to keep me, they disowned her. I never did meet them.”
Kat’s throat tightened. “So she was on her own. A high school senior with a baby to support by herself.”
“She dropped out a month before graduation. She had to juggle two jobs just to pay the rent, and she told me she worked right up until she went into labor. She didn’t have time to keep up with her schoolwork. Heck, she barely had time for me. I hardly ever saw her when I was a kid. She was always leaving me with one of the neighbors. She had to. She couldn’t afford day care.”
“She didn’t ask Landon for child support?”
Deirdre shrugged. “I never asked, but knowing Ma she wouldn’t have pushed the issue. Despite her circumstances, she was proud. Too proud. She viewed asking for help as a weakness.”
Kat nodded. “She was independent.”
“To a fault. If Ma had made Landon step up back when she first found out she was going to have me, maybe he would have married her instead of that other woman. Ma never would have had to drop out of school. She’d be a surgeon earning millions instead of a sales clerk making peanuts.”
Deirdre had obviously convinced herself that all her problems would have been solved if only her father had been around. Kat didn’t deny her her delusions. After all, who was she to say how things would have worked out if Rita Solomon’s pregnancy had come to light before Landon had proposed to Frieda? It was impossible to know where the path not taken might have led.
Deirdre’s eyes filled with tears. “I was so sure he would want to get to know me. But when I started reaching out to him on social media, he blocked me. I figured maybe he thought I was a troll or something. So I tracked down his home address and sent him a letter asking if we could talk.”
“But he didn’t respond?” Kat asked.
“Oh, no, he responded that first time.” Deirdre’s nostrils flared. “That was the one and only time I got a reply back.”
“What did he say?”
“That he already had a family, that him and his wife were happy, that they’d never wanted children, and he had no use for one now.” She sniffled. “How could he not want to know his own flesh and blood?”
Kat could just imagine how small and inconsequential Deirdre must have felt when she’d read that letter from Landon. What kind of person could reject their own child? One who never wanted to be a parent in the first place, she supposed.
For that matter, how had Rita Solomon felt when her own parents tossed her aside just when she’d needed them the most? She must have been so lonely and terrified.
Deirdre swiped at her tears with one shirtsleeve. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to let him off that easily. Ma might have been okay with him ignoring me, but I wasn’t. So I kept writing him. He could block me online, but he couldn’t stop my letters from being delivered to his house. Even if he didn’t read them, just seeing my name on that envelope would be a reminder that I existed whether he liked it or not.”
“And he never replied after that first time?”
“Nope. Never.”
“Then how did you know he would be at that party yesterday?” Kat asked.
“Imogene called Sam in the morning to go over the details. I was in the kitchen prepping some of the food, and Sam had her on speakerphone in his office. She was excited about Chief Kenny’s sisters driving over here for his birthday. She mentioned Landon and his wife by name. It was like kismet. For the first time since I’d found out who he was, my father was returning to Cherry Hills.”
“So you asked Rich if you could work his shift,” Kat said.
Deirdre nodded. “I made up a story about being short on next month’s rent, and he was nice enough to agree to call in sick and let me fill in for him.”
“And what was your plan? What did you hope to accomplish by seeing Landon at the party? He had already made it clear he didn’t want to talk to you.”
“I thought maybe if he met me in person he would change his mind.” Deirdre’s face fell. “But when I went up to him and told him who I was, he got mad.”
Kat’s heart skipped a beat. “Did he try to hurt you?”
“No, but he shooed me away, like I was some kind of pest, a fly or a gnat.” Her jaw grew taut. “I told him I wasn’t going anywhere, that he owed me a conversation at the very least.”
Kat could see the pain in Deirdre’s eyes as she replayed Landon’s rejection in her head, and her heart ached for her. She couldn’t help it. Despite how the woman sitting across from her might technically be a murderer, it was clear she was also simply a lost girl who longed for her father. Kat could sympathize. She had also grown up without a father.
Deirdre drew in a deep breath. “He must have realized I wasn’t going anywhere because he said fine, that he’d talk to me, but not where anyone could hear us. He grabbed my arm and dragged me into Imogene’s office.”
“Then what happened?” Kat asked.
“Then he asked what I wanted, gruffly, like I was inconveniencing him. But I thought this might be the only chance I had, so I told him I wanted to get to know him, that I didn’t have much family, since Ma’s side had disowned her.”
“How did he respond to that?”
“He didn’t care. I don’t think he was even really listening to me. He kept glancing at the door, like he couldn’t wait to get back to the party.” Deirdre’s hands clenched into fists. “And then he had the nerve to turn his back on me.”
“And that made you angry,” Kat filled in.
“Of course it made me angry. Wouldn’t you be angry if your father wouldn’t even grant you the courtesy of a single conversation?”
Kat swallowed. “Is that why you killed him?”
“That’s when I threw the paperweight at him. I didn’t really think, I just saw it sitting there so I picked it up and hurled it in his direction.”
Deirdre stared off into space, her eyes unfocused. Watching her, Kat’s chest felt too tight.
“He made a sound when it hit him, like an oomph. Then he fell to the ground and didn’t move.” Deirdre rubbed her fists in her eye sockets. “There was blood. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t mean to kill him. I only wanted to get his attention, to get him to see me.”
Kat sagged against the chair. Deirdre might not have meant to kill Landon, but that didn’t change the fact that she had—or the fact that she’d left him for dead. And no matter how badly Landon had hurt her, it would be insufficient justification for taking his life in any court of law.
“Where is the paperweight now?” Kat asked.
Deirdre’s hands fell back into her lap. Then she pointed to the kitchen. “In the garbage pail under the sink. I didn’t want to leave it at the party, with my fingerprints on it. But now I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Her eyes searched Kat’s face. “I’m going to prison, aren’t I?”
Kat didn’t have the heart to answer. But she didn’t think Deirdre was really looking for an answer either. She already knew how this story ended, the same way it had begun, with one man forever altering the course of a young girl’s life when he chose to walk away without a single backward glance.
