Chapter 50 Andrea Kendal
Andrea Kendal
“The fact that the body wasn’t Roxanne’s doesn’t matter.
Eric Kendal thinks he’s going to get away with killing my niece, and he’s not.
I’ll find out the truth, and if he killed her, there’s nothing to say that he didn’t kill David Batcher as well.
Maybe Roxanne and David were having an affair.
I mean, my niece was a good woman, but she was a woman.
They don’t always make the best decisions in life. ”
Andrea woke on Saturday morning with a new mission in life, which was to move on with their lives and ignore the fact that a dead body had been unearthed a hundred yards south of their home.
Cameron’s room was quiet, the door still closed, and Andrea passed it without knocking, content to let the four-year-old sleep late.
She took the stairs down to the main level, unsurprised to hear Ryder’s babbles coming from the playroom.
Sticking her head in, she smiled at the nanny who was kneeling beside the toddler, entertaining him with a large block puzzle. “Morning, Anna.”
“Good morning,” she chirped. “Oh, you got a couple of phone calls. I left the messages in the kitchen.”
That was probably the pharmacy. Cameron’s inhaler needed a refill.
Eric had called it in last week, and they still hadn’t had a chance to go by and pick it up.
That was okay, she could do that today. “Cam has a birthday party this afternoon . . . I was thinking I’d take Ryder along, if you want to do a deep clean of the toys and their rooms while we’re gone? A sanitizing sweep.”
“You got it.” The older woman smiled. They had hit the jackpot with the retired teacher. She’d been an overnight nanny for both Cameron and Ryder and, God willing, would be for their next one. “Is he still asleep?”
“Yeah. If you haven’t heard from him in the next hour, wake him up.”
The woman nodded, her attention returning to Ryder. Andrea left the door open and walked through the entry hall and down to the butler’s kitchen. By the phone board, there was a note in Anna’s neat handwriting.
Call from Detective Palentick. Says to call him back.
Call from Tony. Update on autopsy. Call him back.
Two calls, both from law enforcement. Not a good sign. So much for a zen-filled Saturday. She stared at the small blue Post-it note and felt her anxiety close in on her, a small whine of concern ramping up into a piercing scream.
This will be okay.
This will be okay.
This will be okay.
Andrea felt the same way she had five years ago, when things had gone from bad to worse, every day bringing a new concern, and she had started to spiral down, reaching the point where suicide seemed like the only way out.
She couldn’t take that path now. Not with Roxanne already in Eric’s past. The cops wouldn’t be okay with a second dead wife—and unlike with Roxanne, Andrea’s death wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t make any of these things go away; it would just leave Eric to shoulder it all.
Ryder’s happy warble came from the playroom, and Andrea twisted toward the sound.
And there it was, one of the lines that stood between her and running away from her problems. Escape was not a consideration with Cameron and Ryder, which meant that Andrea had to face these problems, even if doing so meant jail time.
She needed the detective to stop looking into them.
And just as importantly, she needed Roxanne’s uncle to go back to his hole and leave them alone.
Call me back. No, they definitely would not call Tony back. The dead body belonged to David Batcher, whom Tony didn’t care about, so there was no need for further discussion on the matter—especially not with her.
Detective Palentick’s call was another matter. That one would have to be returned, and she had to assume the worst—that they had found no trace of Andrea in New Jersey and, possibly, no trace of her at all. Another problem, added to the top of the stack.
“Hey.”
She jumped at the sound and whirled around to find Eric in the entrance to the secondary kitchen. He had on a faded red Stanford tee and running shorts, his hair damp from his morning shower. “Shit, you scared me.”
“Sorry.” He stepped forward and pressed a kiss on the side of her head. “What are you doing in here?”
She moved her palm over the note, hiding it. “Just thinking about that party Cameron has this afternoon. I’ve got to get a gift, wrap it.”
“Okay.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to run an errand, and there’s a golf tournament on in a couple of hours that I want to watch.”
“I’ll make a juice for you,” she promised. “It’ll be in the fridge when you get back.”
“You’re the best.” He moved past her, heading toward the back door, then stopped right before it and turned back. “Oh, the detective called me just now.”
Her fingers curled around the paper, crushing it. “Yeah?”
“He asked about Brody Pitt.”
Andrea closed her eyes, half grateful that the call hadn’t been about her, half alarmed that they were focusing on this point of connection. “So they made that connection. What’d you say?”
He shrugged. “I told them the gist of the case. I’m sure they have the court transcripts.”
“Are you worried about it?”
“No.” He shook his head and opened the back door. “I told you, there’s nothing there for us to worry about.”
There’s nothing there for us to worry about.
He had said that. He’d also said something very similar to that on the night of Roxanne’s attack.
Andrea hadn’t believed him, had been certain that they had forgotten some detail, overlooked some piece of evidence—but he had been right.
A surgeon’s attention to detail superseded that of a normal human.
Even Tony, in his dogged pursuit of his niece’s killer, hadn’t turned up a thing.
So she should trust Eric now. If he said there was nothing there for them to find, then there was nothing there.