Chapter 73 Andrea Kendal
Andrea Kendal
Andrea laced up her running shoes and double-knotted them. Rising to her feet, she smoothed over the top of her ponytail and grabbed her house keys, tucking them into the hidden zipper pocket of her leggings.
The first night at the new apartment, she’d stripped off her leggings and thrown them into the fireplace, along with the bloody shirt and blood bag.
In a baggy tee and pajama pants, she’d started the fire and closed the grate, then moved into the small kitchen and put a bag of popcorn in the microwave.
As the kernels popped, San Francisco police had swept into her Crestmore home, questioning Eric in the dining room as detectives searched every nook and cranny of the seven-thousand-square-foot home.
She’d watched the evening news and gotten a glimpse of Tony, his face stiff and angry, marching across their front lawn.
Later, Eric had told her that Tony came to the house every day for the first couple of weeks, always with a new excuse or different question to ask.
They’d sent dogs into the state park to try to follow her scent.
They’d pulled camera footage from intersections and security cameras in an attempt to see if her car was followed.
They’d done a deep dive on her cell phone and cataloged every text and voicemail, call patterns, and location pings.
They’d done the same with Eric’s, certain that it would show an affair or a hit, something that implicated him in Roxanne’s attack.
Now Andrea closed the back slider behind her and walked out the rear patio and down the stepping stones between the pool and the hot tub. At the far end of the yard, she re-latched the iron gate behind her and walked out onto the golf course.
For her first six weeks in the apartment, she and Eric never spoke.
She’d gone to her obstetrician appointments alone and saved the ultrasound photos in a folder in a drawer in the kitchen.
She’d done yoga each day, counted her calories, and switched to an all-organic and high-protein diet.
She’d shopped online and listened to audiobooks and never left her apartment unless she had to.
She’d watched the news coverage of Roxanne’s disappearance and read online speculations and theories, and obsessed over how her family and father were handling the event.
She had expected, and was unsurprised, when he went nuclear.
His first suspicion had been a competitor, and Kisi reported a lockdown of the entire family, which was followed by a spike in retaliatory actions.
Unsatisfied by the bloodshed, her father had shoved his way into the investigation and the possibility of Eric’s involvement in the crime.
He’d sent goons to intimidate her husband and roughed up anyone thought to have a lead.
Tony had questioned Kisi, but never as an accomplice, only a potential source of information that might help them find the culprit.
Dusk had fallen over the course by the time she made it to the sixth hole. She crossed the green and approached the woods, studying the pond, which glittered with the moonlight.
It was hard to imagine someone dumping a body there. She thought of David Batcher, whom she had met only once, at a charity event for multiple sclerosis. He had been friendly and funny, and told Roxanne a joke about two doctors at a boxing match.
David had never met Andrea. By the time she’d arrived, his flesh was likely already eaten off the bones by the lake’s bacteria.
Andrea glanced up and down the hole. It was quiet and still.
In the next ten minutes, a security cart would come by, double-checking that everyone was off the course for the evening.
After that, no one until morning. Andrea had jogged the course on very rare occasions, but the course’s dramatic rises and falls were too treacherous for a runner in the dark.
It had been smart, dumping the body here.
In plain sight, but hidden. She stood on the edge of the water and imagined putting a body into it.
You’d have to weigh down the body to keep it from floating up.
And while you might be able to do it solo, two people would make the job a lot easier and quicker.
She looked over her shoulder, gauging the distance to their home. The police were right: It was a hundred yards, maybe less. It would have been easy for them to move David’s body from their garage to the water, especially if they used their golf cart.
She and Eric had done away with Roxanne to protect her from her father, and then she’d brought Cameron, and now Ryder, to a home with a new killer, albeit one five years silent. She stood in the encroaching dark and lifted her head to the breeze, trying to sense if there was any evil in the air.
Instead, she felt only a sense of calm. David Batcher’s death was a bump on their road, that was it. A moment of elevated scrutiny, which so far they had passed.
She turned and headed back to their home, breaking into a jog. Ahead, the three-story house gleamed in the dark, a jeweled box of warm perfection.
It had been worth it. Even if she was a cartoon character of beauty, one that her husband didn’t love as much as his first wife.
Her children were safe. Her life was her own. Her marriage, intact.
She ran faster, suddenly desperate to get inside. To her left, the headlights of the security cart swept over the woods as it turned onto the hole.