Chapter 1Monday Sept 9 2002 7am
The smell of coffee, accompanied by the gurgling of the coffee pot as it dribbled out a carafe of dark roast in Todd and Kaylee Meyer’s kitchen that morning in early September 2002, was… almost intoxicating.
Kaylee came downstairs first and huffed when she saw the dishes in the sink left from her daughter Alexandra’s get-together the night before. She was also dismayed to see the fingerprints on her sub-zero refrigerator and the circle of dried salsa on the counter. With another indignant sigh, she pinched her lips together, went to the sink, barely looking out of the window at the backyard, grabbed a sponge, ran it under the hot water, added a dab of soap and then squeezed out the excess with a tight and aggravated grip.
She really must learn to clean up after herself, Kaylee thought, as she set about cleaning the countertop.
It took her more than thirteen seconds to scrub the splash of salsa off her marble counter using her manicured nails to scratch off the dried spots. And as if ruining her acrylic nails wasn’t enough of a bad situation to wake up to, there was also a trail of the dried red stuff down the front of her white lower cabinet.
“Good morning,” Todd said as he literally bounded into the kitchen wearing Nike shorts, a matching shirt and white tennis shoes. He carried a tennis racket in one hand and a duffle bag in the other. He dumped them on the beveled glass kitchen table.
“Morning,” Kaylee huffed as she stood up, flipped her black hair, picked up the offending sports equipment, took it to the hall and placed it on a bench beside the garage door.
“Uh-oh. What’s wrong? What’s she done now?” Todd asked when she returned to the kitchen, knowing all too well when his wife was annoyed and sensing it was because of their teenage daughter.
“I had to clean up a mess of dried salsa she left all over the counter and cabinets and just look at that pile of dishes she left in the sink. Alexandra is going to have to learn that when we allow her a privilege, she’s to take it seriously,” Kaylee said as she stepped over to the sink and stared out of the window.
“I’ll have a talk with her,” Todd said as he pulled two coffee cups from the top cabinet over the coffeepot.
“We’ll both have a talk with her,” she snapped.
“All right, but remember she’s under a lot of pressure,” Todd replied as he poured coffee into one cup and then the other.
“Pressure?” Kaylee griped as she turned and took the cup from her husband. “She doesn’t know what pressure is. Pressure is having to listen to Velma Huff brag about her new Lexus and how it broke her heart to give her daughter her old Mercedes to take to Notre Dame. Do you know how much energy I had to exert trying not to tell her to stuff it?”
“Oh come on. It wasn’t all bad. You looked like you were having a good time. Especially after your third champagne cocktail.” Todd stepped closer to her and tried to pinch her backside, but she slapped his hand away and frowned.
“That’s what I have to do to get through a night with your coworkers. I don’t think Eleanor Mitchem said two words all night. She just sat at that big table waiting for her subjects to come and kiss the ring.” Kaylee took a seat at the kitchen table. “Next time I’ll stay home and make sure that Alexandra and her friends leave my house in some kind of order.”
“She’d been looking forward to having her little get-together with her friends for more than a month,” Todd said before taking a sip of his coffee. “The house is still standing. And they were all gone, and she was in bed by the time we got home.”
“Well it’s time she was up. She has to get ready for school,” Kaylee huffed. “I guess I have to go get her. Pour me another cup, will you please, Todd?”
He nodded absently as he picked up Sunday’s newspaper and began to scan through it. Kaylee heaved an impatient sigh and hurried out into the hallway and up the stairs.
“Alexandra. It’s time to get…” Kaylee Meyer said as she burst into her daughter’s room without knocking, stepped inside and froze. Alexandra wasn’t there, and the bed hadn’t been slept in. It was still made up, though somewhat rumpled. She looked around. There were a couple of red plastic cups on the dresser. She walked quickly across the room, picked one of them up and sniffed it. It smelled of dried beer. She replaced it and picked up the other one. It smelled of whiskey.
If Alexandra’s cracked open that new bottle of Gentleman Jack I bought specifically for Todd’s uncle, I’m going to string her up by her hair.
Todd’s Uncle Roger owned a chain of car dealerships, and he and Aunt Beatrice were just two more visits away from including them in their will. In fact, the party Kaylee was throwing in three weeks was for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Kaylee stomped out of Alexandra’s room and hurried downstairs to find her husband pouring himself another cup of coffee.
“Todd! She’s not in her room,” Kaylee said. “I’ll bet she went to that Missy Worthington’s house and stayed the night with her. I told you that girl was going to be trouble. Her family is from Chicago. You know what that means.”
“Kaylee, calm down.” Todd shook his head and pointed toward the window. “She’s is out by the pool, and I don’t see any sign of Missy Worthington.”
Kaylee stood on tiptoes and looked out the kitchen window. With her lips pursed she took a deep breath in through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. “You’d better check the Gentleman Jack. Someone had whiskey in her room last night.”
“Oh, she better not have opened that. That was for Uncle Roger,” Todd said as he watched his wife walk out through the sliding door and onto the patio.
The air outside was already warm. Kaylee could hear the birds chirping and smell the honeysuckle. It was intoxicating.
The specially-ordered slate stones Kaylee had picked out for the border around the pool and hot tub were cool beneath her bare feet as she walked toward her daughter lying on one of the loungers. It was no wonder, then, that she hadn’t seen her when she looked out the kitchen window. The furniture around the pool had thick, plush cushions. Three people could have been sitting in the cabana chair that faced the pool and she wouldn’t have seen them.
The bar on the other side of the pool, she noted with annoyance, was covered with plastic cups, bowls that probably had dried salsa and guacamole in them, and more than two dozen beer bottles. Three empty pizza boxes, as well as empty potato chip bags, were scattered around the pool. Kaylee also spotted not one but two condom wrappers in the grass verge.
Oh how gross, she thought, disgusted. Then again, at least Alexandra and her friends are practicing safe sex.
Thankfully, she didn’t see a bottle of Gentleman Jack anywhere. It was probably still in its hiding place where she’d put it.
“All right, Alexandra. It’s time to get up,” Kaylee called before she reached the chair. “I hope you’re sober. It’s time you got ready for school.”
Alexandra didn’t move.
“You are in big trouble. Do you hear me? The house is a mess. I told you that if you were going to have friends over, there’d better not be any extra work for Connie or me to do. Connie is my cleaning lady and not your personal servant. There was salsa all over the kitchen counter and—"
Kaylee froze as she looked down at her daughter stretched out on the lounger. It was as if she’d left her mind behind her somewhere and no thoughts could form until it somehow managed to catch up. What was she looking at? It couldn’t be real.
Her daughter’s skin was the color of day old oatmeal. Her lips, a sickly blue color, were slightly parted. The gash across her throat smiled redly up at her. The blood had long ago congealed, turned from red to a horrid, flat brown as it lay through the night drying in the creases of her skin, on her bikini and the chaise lounge. Her hands, also pale, lay limply at her sides as if she didn’t even realize that she was losing blood and made no attempt to stop the flow. Only her toenails painted a cotton candy pink looked alive. Everything else was a single frame from a sick, flat, black and white movie.
“Alexandra?” Her daughter’s name felt like dry wooden blocks tumbling from her mouth. Why didn’t she turn to face her? Why didn’t she open her eyes wide instead of the white, milky slits that looked into a world of darkness only she could see? Any second now Kaylee was going to scream at her for playing such a cruel joke.
Alexandra wouldn’t be able to hide her grin. She’d chuckle as her mother went to the edge of insanity only to have Alexandra pull her back by the hand.
The image of her tiny hand in hers when she was just a little girl flashed through her mind and made her stomach fold over on itself.
“Alex… This isn’t funny, sweetheart,” she said, then whimpered. But Alexandra didn’t move.
She reached down to shake Alexandra and felt the hard cold surface that was her arm. Kaylee remembered screaming, then falling. She was sure she screamed even as the darkness overtook her.
The pinpoint of light that beckoned her back was like a looming nightmare. She tried to turn away from it and stay in the darkness. She wanted to find Alexandra there. She was in the dark, alone, and Kaylee knew it. Alexandra needed her. She needed her mother, but someone was trying to bring her back into the light without her baby. Todd.
With tears in his eyes, he shook Kaylee and held her in his arms as the pinpoint widened, and suddenly she was back in the bright light of day with her daughter’s dead body just a few feet away from her. She didn’t remember how she got inside the house or how she remained sitting upright at the kitchen table. But as the police and paramedics came running through the house, she couldn’t help but wonder if the bottle of Gentleman Jack was still in its hiding place.
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