Chapter 15 #2
Fine lines framed Amelia’s eyes and mouth, though she was aging gracefully.
Her skin had a smoothness that spoke to either good genetics or an expensive skincare routine, and Kinsley caught herself thinking she should ask for the brand name, given that she probably had more wrinkles than the woman standing in front of her, despite being over a decade younger.
Even the backs of Amelia’s hands were smooth, and on one of them, Kinsley noticed a modest engagement ring, its small diamond catching the overhead light.
Engaged three times, never married. The ring was either a souvenir from one of the previous attempts or evidence of a current fourth.
“I’m Detective Kinsley Aspen, and this is Officer Toby Drewett.” Kinsley gestured toward Toby, who nodded politely. “We’re hoping you might have a few minutes to talk about Iris Bell.”
“I heard the police reopened the investigation into her death.”
“News travels fast in Fallbrook,” Kinsley commented, keeping her tone neutral.
“Always has.” Amelia crossed her arms loosely over her chest. The posture wasn’t hostile, exactly, but it wasn’t welcoming, either.
It was the stance of someone who intended to cooperate just enough to avoid trouble and not a syllable more.
“I told the police everything I knew thirty years ago. I’m not sure what else I could possibly add now. ”
“Sometimes details that didn’t seem relevant at the time take on new significance with distance,” Kinsley said, leaning slightly against the counter. “Or with new evidence.”
“What kind of new evidence?”
Amelia’s gaze flicked between them, assessing their expressions and postures with the quick, evaluative intelligence of someone accustomed to reading people across a counter.
She genuinely didn’t seem to know what had been discovered at the old Bell mansion, which told Kinsley that whoever had been spreading the news through Fallbrook’s gossip network hadn’t shared the specifics, only the headline.
“Twenty-seven cassette tapes hidden in the attic,” Kinsley said, monitoring Amelia’s face carefully as the words landed. “And ten thousand dollars in cash behind a false wall in one of the bedrooms.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“We both know that isn’t true.” Kinsley’s tone hardened by a degree, just enough to signal that the conversational portion of this interview was over.
“You failed to mention to the detective in charge thirty years ago that Iris was blackmailing people, anyone she could find leverage on. You were her best friend, Amelia, and I have a taped conversation that proves you were aware of exactly what she was doing.”
Amelia’s cheeks flushed, a pale pink that spread across her face and down her neck.
She glanced toward the front door behind them, and Kinsley couldn’t tell if the look was a reflex toward escape or simply a search for support that wasn’t there.
When she turned back, her hand had drifted unconsciously to her engagement ring, twisting it in tight, nervous circles.
“Thirty years is a long time,” Amelia said, her voice barely above a whisper. “What difference does any of this make now? Grant Tatlock killed Iris, and he died in prison.”
“Look, Ms. Keery, I can only imagine how hard it was to lose your best friend,” Kinsley offered, and her tone was genuinely sympathetic.
She meant it. Losing someone at that age, when the future still felt infinite and untouchable, could reshape the entire trajectory of a life.
“Especially at that age, when your whole life was still ahead of you both. But there is a real possibility that—”
A dry laugh escaped Amelia’s lips, bitter and sharp. She rested both hands on the counter and met Kinsley’s gaze with an honesty that hadn’t been present a moment ago.
“I always thought that, too. That losing Iris was the worst thing that could happen to me.” Amelia shook her head slowly. “But as time went on, it was a relief. How sad is that?”
Toby’s pen paused over his notebook. Even he seemed caught off guard by the honesty of the admission.
“A relief?” Kinsley repeated, not out of judgment but because she wanted Amelia to hear her own word spoken back to her and decide whether to expand on it or retreat.
“I didn’t realize until my twenties just how much of a hold she had on me.
How much energy I spent trying to please her, to be worthy of her friendship, to stay on her good side so she wouldn’t turn on me the way she turned on everyone else.
” Amelia shifted her weight and rested her left arm on the counter, her posture loosening as the truth began to flow more easily.
“Iris wasn’t nice. She was cunning and manipulative.
She wanted out of Fallbrook, and she didn’t care how that happened or who got hurt along the way. ”
“Did she blackmail you, too?” Kinsley asked directly, maintaining her softer approach now that Amelia had begun to open up.
“Of course she did.” Amelia twisted her ring again, her apprehension evident in the repetitive motion.
“I had a shoplifting phase when I was fifteen. Nothing major, just some makeup from the drugstore, a pair of earrings from the mall in Bismarck. I know it sounds silly when my parents would have bought me anything I wanted, but the thrill of doing something without getting caught was a rush.”
The desk phone behind Amelia rang, its shrill tone cutting through the office. She didn’t move to pick up the receiver. Instead, she waved a hand in dismissal, and after several rings the call was redirected to voicemail.
“Iris was with me one time, and that was my mistake. She recorded the whole conversation afterward, me bragging about what I’d stolen, how I’d done it, how easy it was.
You get the picture.” Amelia’s jaw tightened briefly.
“My parents would have been devastated if they’d found out.
My father was so proud of his reputation in this town. Still is.”
“What did Iris want from you in return?” Kinsley asked, studying Amelia’s face for the micro expressions that often told a different story than the words.
“That’s the strangest part.” Amelia looked up, meeting Kinsley’s gaze directly. “She never wanted money or items from me. Not like with the others.”
“Others like Ginny Kusman?” Toby interjected, and Kinsley gave him a subtle nod of approval.
“Yes. Mrs. Kusman, Principal Winters, Mrs. Peterson.” Amelia waved her hand in a broader gesture this time, as though the list extended well beyond the names of people she was willing to recite.
“You say a name connected to the Bell family, and chances are, Iris had some type of incriminating conversation to leverage against them. Neighbors, teachers, her parents’ friends. But with me...”
Her voice trailed off as she searched for the right words, her gaze drifting to the window that looked out over the junkyard’s maze of crushed vehicles.
“I walked on eggshells all the time because I never knew when the day would come when Iris finally wanted something in return. It was like she was saving me for something special, something she hadn’t figured out yet.
And that was almost worse than having to hand over money or jewelry, because the anticipation never stopped.
It just hung over me, every day, waiting. ”
The air conditioning cycled on again, its gentle hum filling the brief silence that followed. Outside, the mechanical growl of a forklift provided a distant counterpoint to the stillness inside the office.
“I didn’t kill Iris, if that’s why you’re here,” Amelia said firmly, straightening her spine. “As far as I’m aware, Grant Tatlock killed her. And as I said, there was no reason to bring up Iris’s hobby to the police when they already had their man.”
“Hobby?” Kinsley repeated, and she couldn’t keep the edge from her voice.
“You mean her systematic blackmail of half the neighborhood? Her secret recordings of private conversations that she used to extort money, jewelry, and favors from adults twice her age? I’d say that goes well beyond a hobby, Ms. Keery. ”
“Call it what you want.” Amelia shrugged, aiming for a casual gesture but falling short.
“The police had their killer. Grant was found guilty. And it’s not as though the police didn’t find a recording of him threatening her that very night.
What good would it have done to tell everyone that the victim was essentially running an extortion ring?
It wouldn’t have brought Iris back, and it would have destroyed a lot of lives. ”
“Including yours,” Kinsley noted.
“Including mine,” Amelia agreed without hesitation. “I was going on eighteen, Detective. I had my whole life ahead of me. Why would I tarnish it over something that couldn’t be changed?”
Toby shifted his weight, drawing Amelia’s attention. Kinsley nodded toward him again, signaling he had room to jump in.
“Do you truly believe the police got it right?” Toby asked. “That Grant Tatlock killed Iris?”
Amelia’s expression softened slightly, taking on something that seemed almost like pity.
“Grant had a temper. Everyone knew that. The steroids made it worse. He’d fly into these rages over nothing, one minute laughing and the next punching a wall or throwing things across a room.
” Amelia shook her head with a remorse that appeared genuine.
“I saw him grab Iris once, hard enough to leave marks on her arm. She laughed it off afterward, said she’d pushed his buttons on purpose.
That was Iris, though. Always playing with fire, always convinced she could control the burn. ”
“And you never wondered if someone else might have had reason to push her down those stairs?” Kinsley pressed.
“Everyone had a reason,” Amelia replied flatly, and there was a finality in her tone that said she considered the interview close to over.
“But opportunity is different. Grant was there. He was caught at the scene. I was with our friends at the bonfire, and most everyone else was at the block party. The math isn’t that complicated, Detective. ”
“What about the money?” Kinsley gestured vaguely toward the junkyard beyond the windows. “Ten thousand dollars is a substantial sum even now. In the early nineties, for a teenager, it was a small fortune. Any idea where she was keeping it all?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Amelia replied with an emphasis that pushed a fraction too hard to be entirely natural. “Iris never breathed a word about money to me.”
The deflection was smooth, almost practiced, and Kinsley wasn’t convinced. But she recognized when a witness had dug into a position and a different angle was needed to dislodge them.
“Did anyone ever push back against Iris’s blackmail scheme?” Kinsley asked, shifting tactics. “Refuse to hand over whatever she was demanding?”
Something flickered across Amelia’s face. A brief hesitation, there and gone in less than a second, but Kinsley caught it. Amelia glanced toward Toby, then back to Kinsley, as though weighing whether the information she was about to share would cause more harm than good.
“One person,” Amelia admitted finally. “He told her to go ahead and play the tape for whoever she wanted. Said he didn’t care, and that the only people who would be hurt by the evidence were her own family.”
“Todd Kusman?” Kinsley guessed, thinking of his conveniently timed arrival home yesterday, which she was increasingly confident had been prompted by news that detectives were questioning the neighbors rather than any desire to surprise his wife.
“I wasn’t referring to Mr. Kusman.” Amelia frowned, as though the guess had been further off the mark than she’d expected. “I meant Paul Fisher.”
Paul Fisher.
Richard Bell’s business partner, then and now.
The man who had provided alibis for Richard’s affair on the tapes Kinsley had already listened to, the man who had testified at Tatlock’s trial about Grant’s erratic behavior at a Bell family gathering.
Fisher’s name had appeared in nearly every layer of this case so far, always on the periphery, always in service to Richard Bell.
But there hadn’t been a tape specifically featuring Paul Fisher himself, which raised an obvious question.
Either Iris hadn’t recorded him, or those recordings were somewhere the foreclosure crew hadn’t found them.
“Amelia, you wouldn’t happen to know if Iris hid any tapes somewhere other than her own house, would you?”