Chapter 24
Kinsley Aspen
July
Rain misted across the windshield, not quite committed to a full downpour but persistent enough to require the intermittent setting on the wipers.
Kinsley finished what was left of the coffee she’d purchased at Carol’s, the cup gone lukewarm during the drive, and ignored the leather portfolio resting on the passenger seat of her Jeep.
Toby had given it to her yesterday, believing it might help keep her organized.
While she appreciated the gesture, she just didn’t work that way.
She was a whiteboard person, a sticky-note-on-the-dashboard person, a scribble-on-the-back-of-a-napkin person.
The portfolio would end up in her desk drawer within the week.
She set the empty cup into the holder, collected her keys, and stepped out into the damp morning air.
The Bells’ current home had no porch, no overhang, nothing to shield a visitor from the weather.
Kinsley jogged up the short pathway and pressed the lighted doorbell button, rain beading on the shoulders of her blazer.
Eden Bell had personally reached out to Kinsley earlier that morning, a development that had pulled her out of bed before her alarm.
Joey had evidently called his parents after their conversation at Carol’s Café the previous day and shared enough detail to concern his mother.
Oddly enough, Eden had requested that she and Kinsley speak without Richard present.
The front door opened before Kinsley could step back.
Eden stood in the threshold, backlit by the home’s interior lighting, and she appeared like a different woman from the one Kinsley had spoken to before.
The defensive, guarded wife who had let Richard steer the conversation was gone.
In her place was someone who had clearly spent the night making a decision and was now prepared to act on it.
She was dressed in cream linen pants and a silk blouse the color of champagne, her blonde hair pulled back in a low chignon that emphasized the sharp angles of her face.
No jewelry except for small diamond studs and a wedding band that caught the light when she moved her hand to gesture Kinsley inside.
The overall effect was deliberate, composed, a woman who had dressed for an occasion she was taking seriously.
“Detective.” Eden’s greeting was cordial but distant. “Please, come in.”
Kinsley stepped inside and was immediately struck by the temperature. The house was cool to the point of being cold, the air conditioning waging an aggressive campaign against the humidity.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Eden asked, already moving toward the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of a woman who found purpose in hosting. “Coffee? Water?”
“Water would be great. Thank you.”
The request was strategic as much as it was genuine. It gave Kinsley time to study Eden as she moved through the kitchen, gave her a window to observe the woman in her own environment before the conversation turned to places neither of them would enjoy.
As Eden retrieved a glass from a cabinet and filled it from a filtered tap, Kinsley noticed the slight tremor in her hands. The woman who had answered the door with such composure was working to maintain it, and the effort was visible in the small details.
“You mentioned on the phone that Joey reached out to you,” Kinsley began, making no move to touch the glass that was set in front of her. “We’re aware that his alibi for that night doesn’t hold up. He was near the residence when Iris was killed, and we—”
“Joey did not kill his sister.”
The words were immediate, forceful, and delivered without hesitation.
Kinsley had encountered this kind of certainty before, and it usually came in one of two forms. The desperate denial of a parent who couldn’t accept the possibility, or the absolute knowledge of a parent who knew the truth because they knew exactly who had been responsible.
She couldn’t yet determine which category Eden occupied.
Kinsley hadn’t taken a seat at the island.
She stood facing Eden, who seemed to decide that standing was no longer tenable.
Eden walked across the kitchen until she reached the small dining table that overlooked a meticulously landscaped backyard.
She pulled out a metal chair with a black cushion and lowered herself into it, though her attention went immediately to the window, where the drizzle traced patterns down the glass.
Kinsley decided to abandon the topic of Joey entirely and approach from a direction Eden wouldn’t anticipate.
“What made you want to downsize, Mrs. Bell?”
“Eden, please.” Her attention flickered toward Kinsley as she took a seat at the table, then drifted back to the rain.
“The house had become too much. Too many rooms we never used. Too much space for just the two of us. After Joey moved out, it felt like living in a museum. Beautiful on the outside, empty on the inside.”
“I take it that’s when you discovered the mini-recorders that Iris had hidden around the house?”
“Yes.” Eden inhaled slowly, as if she’d finally come to terms with whatever had compelled her to make this phone call.
“We were packing up the foyer. I found one behind a picture frame in the hallway. More in the living room, the dining room. They were everywhere, Detective. In places I never would have thought to look.”
“How many total?”
“I didn’t count.” Eden shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “Once I realized what she’d done, the scope of it, I stopped looking. I just wanted them gone.”
“After so many decades, I imagine the batteries had corroded?”
“Years of neglect. Some of them were rusted completely through, the casings cracked open.” Eden’s voice took on a harder edge, and Kinsley could detect the controlled anger beneath it.
“My daughter had been dead for so long, Detective Aspen, that finding her little spy devices hidden throughout our home wasn’t exactly a comforting discovery.
It felt like an invasion. Like she was still watching us from beyond the grave. ”
“I can imagine.” Kinsley softened her tone deliberately. “What did you do with them?”
“Threw them away.”
“Without listening to them first?”
“Without listening to them first,” Eden confirmed, her gaze steady. “Richard wanted to. He thought they might provide some closure, or insight, or I don’t even know what he was hoping for. But I refused.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t we already covered this?” Eden’s jaw tightened visibly.
“Because my daughter was dead. Whatever she’d recorded, whatever petty teenage drama or family arguments were captured on those tapes, none of it could change that fact.
Listening to them would have been like picking at a wound that had finally started to scar over. ”
The words were delivered with conviction, but Kinsley caught something beneath them. Not quite a lie, but not the whole truth either. The answer had the polished quality of something rehearsed, a response Eden had practiced in anticipation of exactly this question.
She was protecting something.
Or someone.
“Mrs. Bell, I need to ask you some difficult questions.” Kinsley kept her voice gentle but firm. “About Iris. About your family.”
“And I’ve answered these questions before,” Eden said wearily. “Thirty years ago, I told the detective everything I knew.”
“Did you, though?” Kinsley let the question settle before continuing. “Why did you call and want to meet with me, Eden? And why arrange it for a time when your husband isn’t here?”
Eden was silent for a long moment, her gaze distant. The rain continued its quiet assault on the window. When Eden finally spoke, her voice carried a mixture of bitterness and something that might have been grief, or might have been relief at finally being asked the right question.
“Iris was seventeen going on thirty,” Eden said quietly. “An old soul, everyone used to say. But that wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t mature. She was calculating. There’s a difference.”
Kinsley waited, letting the silence do its work.
“It pains me to say it now, but my daughter was exhausting to parent.” The admission seemed to cost Eden something, a visible effort to push the words past whatever barrier she’d built around them.
“From the time she was young, she was always testing boundaries. Always pushing to see how far she could go before someone pushed back. Other mothers would tell me it was just a phase, that all children challenged authority.”
Eden shook her head in dismay.
“But Iris didn’t just challenge. She manipulated.”
“In what way?”
“She’d play her father and me against each other.
Tell Richard I’d said yes to something when I’d said no, then act confused when we compared notes.
She’d volunteer information about Joey’s mistakes to deflect attention from her own.
She was clever about it, too. Made it seem innocent, like she was just being helpful.
Just being honest.” Eden began to twist her wedding ring as she spoke, rotating it around her finger in a slow, unconscious rhythm.
“When Iris got older, it got worse. She started this obsession with journalism. Investigative journalism, specifically. She wanted to expose corruption, shine a light on truth, all these noble-sounding goals. But I think the nobility was the costume, not the person wearing it. I think she just enjoyed having power over people.”
“The recordings,” Kinsley said, guiding the conversation forward.