Chapter 1 Andrea Kendal
Andrea Kendal
“She’s a trophy wife. Think plastic Barbie with a head full of nothing.”
Andrea Kendal sat in a rocking chair on her wide front porch, a steaming cup of espresso in hand, and watched the parade of masked men swarm the tee box across the street.
They were all in blue jumpsuits, waders on, with sticks, cameras, and flashlights in hand, methodically combing the neatly cut golf course fairway and venturing into the neighboring woods.
It was, to put it lightly, out of the norm for Crestmore Estates, a neighborhood that prided itself on perfection without disturbance.
Andrea took a sip and pondered what they might be looking for.
Was this an environmental inspection? Was there a radiation leak?
She had a moment of concern for her own health, then noticed a group of three men, standing by one of the all-white vehicles, all mask-less.
One of them strode around the front of the car, and she saw the big block letters across the back of his jacket.
SFPD
San Francisco Police Department.
A chill ran down her spine, and she set her mug on the small adjacent table and stood.
She walked slowly and calmly, in case they were watching, down the row of rocking chairs and to the mansion’s double front doors.
She sneaked a glance over her shoulder, but the men were still focused on the course.
Pushing down on the door handle, she quickly stepped inside and closed the door.
“Eric!” she called out to her husband, who was in their formal dining room, with the newspapers and his breakfast. He subscribed to three—The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Dozens of trees killed every year just so he could flip through the stacks while eating three boiled eggs and extra-crispy turkey bacon.
In an attempt to manage their carbon footprint, Andrea had a section of the garage dedicated to recycling bins—one for glass, one for paper, and one for plastics.
The containers were beside the compost depository and emptied twice weekly.
But recycling didn’t make up for the waste, which was why a seed of irritation ran through her each morning she collected the newsprint stack from the front porch.
“What?” Eric called, his voice muffled by the thousand-square-foot stretch between them. She hurried to the entrance to the dining room so he could hear her better.
“Something’s happening on the golf course. They’re looking for something.”
“They lose balls all the time, honey.” He flipped a page and shook out the newspaper, getting it into place.
“No, this is the police. There’s dozens of them.”
This got Eric’s attention. He set down the paper and looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. “The police are out there?”
She jerked her chin in a stiff nod. “Come look.” She moved the curtains on one of the front windows aside and pointed. It was hard to see past the porch furniture, columns, and mature landscaping, but across the road, the men were visible.
Eric rose and journeyed down the long table to join her side.
He glanced through the part in the curtains, then continued on to the front stateroom, which was their interior designer’s term for the large sunlit area that overlooked the front gardens and tree-lined road.
It was one of Andrea’s favorite rooms, especially in the mornings.
Once Cameron and Ryder were happy and settled into their activities, she loved to open the windows and curl up in one of the big soft chairs by the built-in bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling.
During the winter, she liked to light a fire in the small hearth; if there was a more perfect combination of smells than smoky charred wood and the vanilla scent of the sweet box shrubs outside the windows, she didn’t know what it was.
It had been Roxanne who had designed the layout of the room and worked with the designer on the feel and utility of the space.
Eric’s first wife had had a degree in interior design, and there had been no need for Andrea to change anything when she moved in with Cameron on her hip.
Some women in the neighborhood had thought it strange, Andrea using another woman’s house as is, so over time she’d redone some of the social spaces, just for appearances’ sake—but it had never felt right, like the house was wearing clothes that didn’t fit.
It had been better before. Everything had seemed better before.
“I wonder if someone’s on the run. Those dogs are probably following a scent.” Eric pointed to a pair of German shepherds who were straining on their leashes, heading toward the woods.
Andrea thought of the news footage from five years ago—the packs of search dogs that had scoured the park for weeks, trying to find Roxanne’s body.
They hadn’t been successful in following her blood trail or scent, though they had unearthed a pile of bones that gave the public a burst of excitement, until it was revealed they were coyote remains.
One of the police turned in their direction, and Andrea immediately stepped back, away from the window. “Do you think they can see us here?”
“They aren’t looking. This isn’t about us. Don’t we have binoculars somewhere?” His nose was almost touching the glass, which fogged from his breath.
Andrea moved to the built-in cabinets underneath the bookshelves, opening the doors and uncovering board games, a few extra throw blankets, and .
. . There. She grabbed the binocular case and opened it up.
The manual and tags were still on the expensive pair, and she peeled off the protective sticker from the lenses before handing it to Eric.
“Maybe someone’s lost. A kid or someone with dementia.
There’s that older couple down at the end of the lane.
There was an ambulance in their driveway last week. ”
A lost individual was more likely than someone being on the run.
It wasn’t as if they lived near a prison or a bad area.
Just to get in the neighborhood, someone had to go through two gates and a security checkpoint.
There wasn’t a house in this neighborhood worth less than $4 million, which was probably why there was this level of response.
Wealthy areas rarely had to call the police, but when they did, law enforcement scrambled into action.
So different from the area she’d grown up in.
There, they had been taught, from the time they could talk, that a uniform was the one person you never ran to for help.
If a cop asked questions, you pinned your lips shut.
And the disdain had gone both ways. If anyone called the police for help, it might be an hour before one showed up, assuming they did at all.
Her husband adjusted the scope on the binoculars, his shoulders hunched forward, stance stiff.
Eric had attended Stanford, then med school at UCLA.
He was a stickler for rules, had been his whole life.
Prior to Roxanne, he had never had any interaction with law enforcement other than a pleasant exchange over a minor traffic infraction.
His breakfast wouldn’t get finished today. Not with this far more interesting distraction.
“Look.” Andrea tapped on the window, at a golf cart that was approaching from the left. “More cops.”
“I think those are the neighborhood security—but look over here.” He passed her the binoculars and pointed to the edge of the woods. “That’s the police chief. He wouldn’t be here unless it was something big.”
“Is this what it was like at the park? This many people?”
Treveley Park. Blood all over the scene. His first wife: gone.
“No.” Eric shook his head. “At least not when I was there. I saw a half dozen officers. But maybe there were more in the woods. They didn’t let me go there.”
Andrea thought of the woods around the parking lot.
The thick trees. The running path that went deep into the park.
The lot had been at the north end of the Treveley Park trail and rarely used at that time of day.
Not a good place for a woman, alone. The crime scene photos from Roxanne’s attack were all over the internet, mostly on sites run by her family, who still hadn’t given up the hunt.
The photos detailed in high resolution the blood smears on the Audi’s door handle and on the monogrammed leather steering wheel.
Too much blood. Overkill.
Andrea lowered the binoculars, suddenly nauseated at the thought. “You should go get changed for work. I’ll watch and tell you if anything happens.”
He gave one last look out the window and nodded. “Don’t worry,” he repeated. “This isn’t about us.”