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  Marla pulled all her savings, cashed in her 401k, and begged her friends and family for loans in order to fund Claude’s very first project, which then led to many bigger projects. Had she not taught him what she knew, he would still be sweeping floors at the French bistro.

  Marla was determined to divorce Claude, and she was determined to teach him a lesson for all the pain she had endured.

  She was searching for a private investigator when she stumbled upon Callaway’s website. She hired him to follow her cheating husband as he went about his many rendezvous. Callaway caught Claude with multiple women. Some were models who had not caught their big break yet, some were students looking to pay their way through school, and some were even high-priced escorts who enjoyed the lifestyle the profession afforded them.

  None of them gave Marla enough leverage on Claude. If she confronted him, he would not deny the affairs. He would rub them in her face to show he was still virile after all these years. He would then goad her to divorce him, knowing she would be left with nothing.

  Callaway was persistent. He never gave up on finding something on Claude. He hit the jackpot one night when he caught Claude with an attractive blonde woman. He later found out this woman was married to a Russian oligarch who was rumored to be linked to the KGB.

  With this information in hand, Marla confronted Claude. He tried to deny this affair, but the photos were irrefutable. They caught him in various compromising positions. Claude was smart enough to know what would happen to him if these photos were to reach the oligarch. He tried to buy the photographs off Callaway. The sum was far more than what Marla had paid him. Callaway refused. He always completed his contract, and he never betrayed a client.

  Marla took Claude to the cleaners. She got the real estate business and the investment properties. She left Claude with enough money to start another business, but this time, he could do so without her encouragement and support.

  As a thank-you, she let Callaway stay at her beach house however long he wanted. She was in Switzerland at the time, enjoying the life of a single woman.

  Callaway got up and off the bed. He was tall, tanned, and had strands of silver around his temples. He yawned and stretched his body. He glanced out the window and saw the waves crashing onto the beach.

  He grinned.

  Maybe after I make my coffee, I’ll go down and relax on the sand, he thought.

  FIVE

  Fisher said, “How do you suppose Paul Gardener got blood on his shirt?”

  Holt was wondering the exact same thing, but the man’s emotion was genuine. Gardener was in anguish when he saw his daughter. Holt had investigated many murders, and he knew enough by now to know who was suffering and who was faking it. Even then, there was no denying the fact that Gardener might have evidence on his clothing.

  Holt never liked to jump to conclusions, especially this early in the case. He knew it could derail the entire investigation. Instead of focusing on multiple suspects, the search would become myopic, diverting the police from catching the real killer.

  But Holt knew what he saw. It was blood. There was no doubt about it.

  “Let’s search the house,” he said. “We still need to find the murder weapon.”

  “I’ll check downstairs,” she said.

  He nodded and moved to the master bedroom. It was spacious with bay windows and a fireplace. Holt never understood the point of having a fireplace in the bedroom. Fireplaces used to serve a purpose; they were a place where families would gather around to stay warm. Now with HVAC systems, the entire house could be heated with the switch of a button. A king-size bed was in the middle of the room, and across from it was a dresser and a mirror. Nightstands flanked the bed. Holt walked over to one and grabbed a small prescription bottle. They were sleeping pills, and the prescription was made out to Sharon Gardener.

  He did a quick walk-through of the other rooms before he made his way downstairs. There he found the medical examiner and her team entering the premises.

  “It’s the bedroom on the right,” he said, pointing up.

  The medical examiner gave Holt a nod. “You’re not joining me, Detective Holt?” she asked.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  He watched her go up the stairs. He moved to the kitchen, and through the glass sliding doors, he saw Fisher in the backyard.

  He stepped out, walked around a patio set and a small garden, and made his way to her.

  “It’s the guesthouse,” she said, pointing to a structure the size of a two-car garage. It had a brick exterior, a window, and front door.

  “Apparently, Paul Gardener was sleeping here last night,” she said.

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “The wife.”

  He nodded and went inside. The space was open but cozy. A futon was in the corner. Gardener must have slept there, Holt thought. Next to the futon was a recliner, which faced a flat-screen TV.

  There was another window and door on the other side of the guesthouse.

  “It’s the bathroom,” Fisher said, catching him staring at the door. “I’m surprised it doesn’t have a kitchen. Most guesthouses I’ve seen do.”

  “How many guesthouses have you seen?” Holt asked.

  She shrugged. “Okay, fine. I’ve never been in a guesthouse, but I’ve seen enough on TV.”

  Holt knew Fisher lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. She had talked about buying a house or a condo, but with the sudden rise in home prices, she was always finding herself priced out of the market. At the rate housing prices were escalating, she would be lucky to find a fixer-upper. That was another reason she wanted to move up in the force. The extra pay would go a long way in helping her become a homeowner.

  There was a coffee table in the middle of the room. Sitting on the table was a bottle of scotch and a half-empty glass. Holt walked over to the table, and with gloved hands, he picked up the bottle and glass.

  “It might be better if we bagged these,” he said.

  SIX

  The medical examiner’s name was Andrea Wakefield. She was petite with short, cropped hair and round prescription glasses. Her eyes darted inquisitively over the victim’s body, as if she was recording and storing all pertinent information in the back of her mind.

  “I can confirm the victim suffered external as well as internal wounds. The punctures in the upper chest are indicative that she was stabbed. The amount of blood loss further supports this conclusion. I counted four puncture wounds, but after an autopsy, I can give you a more definitive number. However, I don’t think she died from these wounds.”

  Holt blinked. “Then how did she die?”

  “The victim was choked.”

  Holt’s eyelids rapidly twitched. “What?”

  Wakefield pointed to the neck. “The bruising around the victim’s throat and neck leads me to believe that she was strangled, possibly by bare hands. The marks aren’t straight or aligned. The pressure applied by the hand is never consistent. This tells me that a rope or cord was not used. I will further confirm this during the autopsy, of course.”

  “But how do you know she died from strangulation?”

  Wakefield looked at Holt like he had asked a stupid question. Maybe he had, but he would have to wait for her answer to find out. She paused to better articulate her response. “It doesn’t make sense for someone to stab her and then choke her. It would serve no purpose. It makes more sense if the opposite occurred. The perpetrator choked her, and then, just to be safe, he stabbed her.”

  “Who could do such a thing?” Holt asked. An image of a suspect was forming in his head, but he wanted her opinion on it. Wakefield came across as introverted, shy, and even aloof. But she was fiercely intelligent and took her job seriously. Over the years, Holt had come to rely on her expertise. It was born out of necessity. A medical examiner’s professional opinion mattered greatly in a court of law. If the ME’s findings were flawed or without merit, the entire case could be thrown out. Right then,
if Wakefield said the victim died of natural causes regardless of the condition of her body, Holt would have to give her conclusion serious consideration. If they did not work in unity, they had no chance of getting a conviction.

  Wakefield paused again, considering all scenarios. “This could be a crime of passion. The person responsible may have become enraged, at which time he or she—more likely he, as men exert more brute force—decided to lash out at the victim. Once he realized what he had done, he then stabbed her to ‘finish the job,’ as they say.”

  Holt pondered Wakefield’s words. They made sense.

  “What happened there?” Holt asked, pointing to the victim’s mouth. There was swelling on the right side of her upper lip.

  “The victim suffered a cut. Most likely during the altercation that led to her death.” Wakefield pulled back the upper lip, exposing a deep red gash. “When the victim was struck, the lip split open when it came in contact with one of the front teeth.”

  Holt nodded.

  He moved away from the body as if to distance himself from the crime itself. He wanted to let the information sink in before he made any further conclusions.

  He did a quick scan of the room. The bed was in the middle, and it had a dresser across from it. Next to the bed was the closet, and on the other side of the wall was a bookshelf. Holt moved his fingers across the books’ spines. They were mostly romance novels, with a few erotica mixed in. The only reason Holt knew the genres was because his wife was an avid reader. She could read a book a day. He had even seen her go through ten books in a single week. He never understood her fascination with the written word. The last time he read a book cover to cover was when he was in high school, and that was only for his English class. His life was already filled with so much excitement that he did not need stories to keep him entertained.

  But the books did tell him something about the victim: she could have been a romantic at heart.

  Could her murder be the result of a relationship gone wrong? he thought.

  “Are you done?”

  The medical examiner’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.

  He turned to her and blinked.

  “Do you want to take another look, or can I take it away?” she asked.

  He stared at Kyla Gardener’s lifeless body. She looked almost peaceful in her current state.

  “No, I’m done,” he replied.

  SEVEN

  Holt went back downstairs. He found Fisher in the home office. She was seated in front of a laptop.

  “The property is surrounded by security cameras,” she said, her eyes transfixed on the screen.

  “Did any of them capture anything useful?” he asked.

  “All the images are stored on the laptop’s hard drive. Hopefully, it has what we are looking for.”

  He positioned himself behind her so as to get a better view of the monitor. The images were separated into four squares that took up the entire screen. They were black and white, but they were in high-resolution. The top left image showed the driveway. Holt could see the family’s cars parked there. The top right camera was aimed at the front door. Members of the crime scene unit were going in and out of the house. The camera on the bottom left showed the back of the house. Holt could see the sliding doors that led from the kitchen to the backyard. The bottom right camera faced the guesthouse. There was no movement there at the moment.

  “Let’s see how this works,” Fisher said, fiddling with the keys and the mouse. She pressed a button and the images began to move in reverse. She pressed the button again. People and cars zoomed in and out of the frames at higher speeds. She pressed the button once more, and the images slowed to their regular pace. “We should start from when the family got home,” she said.

  Holt watched as a Lexus pulled into the driveway. The time on the clock read 8:42 PM. A woman got out of the Lexus. She was carrying shopping bags. Holt could only assume it was Mrs. Gardener. He still had not spoken to her.

  In the video, she walked up to front door and disappeared from view.

  They watched as the time ticked by on the screen. Close to an hour later, an Audi pulled up next to the Lexus. Paul Gardener emerged from the driver’s side door. He was wearing the same golf shirt that later got a red stain. Holt squinted and leaned closer to the monitor.

  Gardener looked casual as he removed a briefcase from the back seat, closed the door, and pressed a button on his car key. The Audi’s headlights blinked as the doors automatically locked. He then flipped through his key ring, found the right one, and made his way up to the front door. He then disappeared from view.

  Holt’s eyes focused. Gardener did not look like someone who would be responsible for a horrific crime later that night. But then again, the medical examiner believed it was a crime of passion, so anything was possible.

  A couple of minutes later, Gardener appeared at the back of the house. He was still carrying the briefcase in one hand, but he was holding a bottle in the other. Most likely the same bottle of scotch found on the coffee table in the guesthouse.

  Could alcohol have played a factor in what happened? Holt wondered. Alcohol had the power to change people, often for the worse. The quiet became loud. The meek became bold. The peaceful became violent.

  Gardener walked up to the guesthouse and went inside.

  Holt and Fisher waited for something to happen. When nothing did, Fisher clicked on the button to speed up the images. They watched as the clock ticked at the bottom of the screen.

  Suddenly, all four screens went blank, and just as suddenly, they came back up.

  “Stop,” Holt said. “Go back.”

  The screen went blank and then the images reappeared. “Let it play,” Holt said.

  They watched as the seconds ticked by.

  At precisely 11:34 PM, the screen went blank. When it reappeared, the clock read 2:38 AM.

  “What happened to the three hours in between?” Holt asked, confused.

  “I have no idea,” Fisher replied. “It looks like someone turned off the cameras.”

  Holt’s face darkened.

  EIGHT

  Sharon Gardener tightly hugged herself. Even though she had a shawl over her shoulders, she still shivered. Her eyes were red and raw, and every so often, she would break down in tears.

  Holt and Fisher sat across from her on the living room sofa. Holt let her grieve. Nothing compared to the loss of a child. He believed in the old saying Time heals all wounds, but only up to a point. Time would not heal Sharon’s wounds over losing Kyla when she was so young. Each year, she would be reminded of what could have been had Kyla been alive. She would carry this weight for the rest of her life.

  Fisher took the lead, and Holt was grateful she did. Talking with grieving people was never easy. She said, “Mrs. Gardener, can you tell us what happened last night?”

  “Call me Sharon.”

  Fisher gave her a smile. “Okay.”

  Sharon grabbed a tissue, wiped her nose, and said, “I came home from shopping last night. I had a headache, so I took my sleeping medication, and I went straight to bed.”

  That explains the glass of water and the pills, Holt thought.

  “What about your daughter?” Fisher asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Was she home when you got back from shopping?”

  Sharon looked away, thinking. “I’m not sure. I never went to her room to check. Maybe I should have.” She bit her bottom lip to control her emotions. “Kyla’s an adult, so I’ve stopped monitoring where she goes and when she comes back. I wanted her to have as much independence as possible. My husband, on the other hand, thought we should pay more attention to who she hung around with. He was worried something bad could happen to her.”

  Fisher jumped right in. “Speaking of your husband, are you and him going through a separation? We noticed his belongings in the guesthouse.”

  Holt understood why Fisher asked such a question. Sometimes during a nasty divorce or separ
ation, one parent may lash out at the children out of spite to hurt the other parent. This resulted in many cases of murder-suicide.

  “We didn’t want our family and friends to know just yet, but Paul and I are separated. We just haven’t filed the divorce paperwork yet.”

  “And how was your daughter dealing with this situation?”

  “I thought she was handling it better than we were. Paul and I have been married from the time Kyla was born. There have been many good years in the marriage, but also many bad years. Kyla saw how unhappy we were, and she encouraged us to split. We never did it before because Paul and I are both children of divorced parents. We know how it impacted us growing up, and we didn’t want Kyla to go through that.”

  “And how was your husband handling the separation?” Fisher asked.

  “Paul’s a quiet and reserved person. He doesn’t let out his emotions easily. I’m the opposite. I can be loud and erratic when I’m worked up. Maybe that’s why our marriage didn’t last. But to answer your question, I don’t know how Paul’s dealing with the situation. Maybe you can ask him yourself. Do you know where he is? I haven’t seen him since I woke him up this morning.”

  So, she doesn’t know her husband is at the police station, Holt thought.

  Holt said, “Did you notice anything unusual about your husband when you woke him up?”

  “Like what?” Sharon asked, confused.

  “Was he acting… suspiciously?”

  She looked away again. “I don’t know… I don’t know anything…”

  She put her hands over her face.