After Her (36 page)

“If I were some random lunatic, I could have killed you and left your corpse splayed in the parking lot.”

“Why are you here?” I snarl. “She’s dead! This should be over. Did she order to kill me or something?”

“Whoa, whoa, calm your shit,” he says. “I’m not in the business of hurting people.”

“You don’t think this is harmful? You’ve been stalking me for weeks and sitting outside my apartment! Who…the
fuck
are you?!”

He chuckles, rolling his eyes and dismissing my response as if it’s nothing, but trite riff raff.

“Hey, no one hired me to physically assault you. I'm fonder of mental torture,” he jokes. I don’t laugh.

“What do you want?” I ask, suddenly fed up.

He pops the lens onto his camera, fiddling with the buttons and knobs.

“Foster McAllister,” he announces. “Nice to formally meet you instead of having to watch you from afar.”

“Are you another reporter?” I ask. “Because I’m not in the mood.”

He chuckles. “If
I
worked for CNN, I sure as hell wouldn’t be stalking you for chump change.”

I don’t shake his hand when he offers it. Noting my reaction, he withdraws the gesture then attempts to console me with some halfhearted grin.

“Look, this wasn’t personal,” he says. “It was just a paycheck to me.”

“You mean you’ve
stopped
stalking me?”

“You see, unfortunately for me, my employer died in that fire you survived. And that sucks so…I guess I'm here to close the case. It’s standard procedure. You know, one last hurrah.”

I scoff at his reply, rendered speechless and yet still somehow able to chuckle at the absurdity of all of this.

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “Someone paid you to stalk me?”

“When you say it like that it, you almost make me feel like a loser.”

“You
are
a loser,” I retort. “And a psychopathic weirdo with a seriously fucked up profession!”

“Geez, you really are a hostile little thing, aren’t you?”

“Who hired you?” I ask.

He rubs the back of his head in a sheepish sort of way.

“That kind of information is confidential,” he says.

“If you really gave a damn about breeching that so-called confidentiality agreement, you wouldn’t even be talking to me,” I say.

“Well, it was good money and I'm not interested in fucking that up. People hire me because they expect confidentiality. If I go breaking that rule for you, it can discourage others from hiring me.”

“Okay, then let me narrow down the list of suspects. Did Vivian Lynch hire you?”

His expression grows cold, both eyes wary.

“Wait a second. I may have needed money, but I'm not interested in that mafia shit. I’ve heard rumors about the things that woman’s done to her past employees. I’m not selling my soul to
that
vendor.”

“Yeah? Well, that makes one of us,” I mutter, taking a brief potshot at myself. Foster gives me a purposeful look, probably seeking something discernabl
e
on my face to figure out how to respond appropriately.

“I'm not an evil guy, okay?” he says. “This paparazzi shit isn’t exactly what I would call a dream job, but it’s better than busting my ass for $7.50 an hour at some crappy fast-food gig. You can sympathize with me, can’t you?”

I glare at him, but I'm too exhausted to argue anymore. My spar with the Lynchs has won me nothing, but small, meaningless victories that never seem worth the effort of trying. I'm done with this mental combat.

“You know what?” I say. “I don’t care anymore. Since you won’t tell me, I'm not gonna force it. I'm through with this crap.”

I stalk away, leaving him to languish. Foster catches up, stopping me midstride by grasping my forearm.

“Don’t touch me!” I jerk away, swatting his hand off. He steps back, lifting his hands to defuse my hostility.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm not trying to cause any trouble. Like I said, I have to make a living, but I get where you’re coming from. So I can’t tell you outright who hired me, but I’ll be fair and give you a hint.”

“You want me to play a game of charades to figure out who hired you to terrorize me?”

“Hey, I'm trying to help. If you don’t want my cooperation then—”

“Okay,” I say. “Fine. I’ll play.”

“As a disclaimer, you should know that I'm not good with this kind of stuff, so I’ll need you to bear with me.”

“Just get to the point.”

“You remember the board game
Clue
?” he asks abruptly. I shake my head, trying to figure out where this conversation is going.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, it was a murder mystery game set up to help kids develop a sense of deductive reasoning. You only had a set number of clues and suspects to uncover the murderer and despite how annoyingly patronizing and simpleminded the game was, it was still pretty good entertainment.”

Once more, I stare at him, waiting for him to make a point.

“And…what’s your point?”

“The clichéd answer to most murder mysteries is that the butler did it,” he says. “In this case, it
wasn’t
the butler.” He leans closer, gripping my arm to steady me so he can whisper in my ear, “It was the maid.”

He pulls back and I stand frozen, breath heavy in my chest. Foster waits, his expression wary, teeming with curiosity.

“Amelia,” I say. “Vivian’s maid hired you to stalk me? Why?”

“That’s all I'm inclined to reveal, but as a heads-up, I advise you to
Google
the name Jeanette Conway.”

He turns away without saying another word, en route to his car.

“Who is Jeanette Conway?” I ask while trailing behind him.

“Sorry, but I'm not at liberty to discuss that. Just
Google
the name and you’ll have everything you need to proceed,” he replies.

“That’s all you’re gonna give me?” I ask. “Some cryptic string of words with no real context?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a mystery if I gave you
all
the answers,” he teases. “Think of me as your Cheshire Cat. I’ll drop the bread crumbs; you just need to follow the trail down the rabbit hole. “Once at his car, he hesitates before entering. He faces me with something new in his eyes, something intent and focused, as if there’s more to say that he hasn’t said already.

“Oh and I'm sorry for what happened to your little friend,” he blurts. “She was an unnecessary casualty. Things weren’t supposed to go down like that. I just thought that you should know.”

The words hit me head-on in a whiplash of emotions.

“What’d you say?” I speed up my walk, trying to catch up to him, but he’s already inside his car, cranking the engine. “Wait, you know what happened to Sasha?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats while strapping on his seatbelt. “I didn’t think things were gonna get this intense.”

As he begins to drive away, I grip his car door handle in some nonsensical attempt to prevent him from leaving. His window is cracked halfway, allowing me to poke my head inside his car.

“What happened?” I ask. “Sasha’s parents deserve to know. I have to tell them
something
about why their daughter’s dead.”

He shakes his head, appearing rueful. Finally, he reaches into his glove compartment and removes a small envelope.

“I didn’t want to give this to you even though Amelia wanted me to,” he says. “I figured that things were bad enough and I didn’t want to make things shitter than I already have.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Amelia was one of my best clients. Her checks always came on time. And she was a genuinely sweet girl,” he says.

“She paid you to terrorize me,” I say. “What kind of ‘sweet’ person does that?”

“Reserve your judgments about her until after you’ve read this letter.” He shoves the envelope in my direction until I hesitantly take it. “You’re not the only one Vivian corrupted. If Amelia hadn’t done what she did, you wouldn’t have been the last. So, have a nice life. At this point, you fucking deserve it.”

I release his door handle and watch him swerve away, peeling out of the parking lot so fast that clouds of exhaust smoke explode from the Buick’s back pipes. I gag on the pungent toxins, clearing my throat to cleanse my senses.

Foster’s reveal leaves me reeling, squirming like a fish deprived of water. That might be the last time I see him. A guy like that is most likely very good at disappearing. There’s no way I’ll risk chasing his car to demand more answers. All I have now is some good old-fashioned internet sleuthing. And a name. Jeanette Conway.

Epilogue

I sit in my car with my laptop propped across my lap, scouring the internet.

I move the cursor to the
Google
search box and type in a name:
Jeanette Conway
. After weeding out several similar names and women with the same name, I finally discover a website article that draws my eye. I click on the link and wait as the page loads. The webpage pops up, partially at first, then fully with a screen width picture of Jeanette headlining the page. The article beneath her picture is what lures my attention:

News item from the OC Weekly, May 19, 2004:
Local Woman Found Dead.

Police answered frantic calls at the address of Orange County socialites, Adrian and Vivian Lynch in the early morning hours on Saturday with news of a body present at the house.
The body in question is one of Jeanette Conway, a 27-year old Accounting Executive at Hawkins Pharmaceuticals.
Witnesses say that Miss Conway met with Mr. Lynch at an after-hours adult nightclub, The Carnal Chapel and was never seen again after leaving with him around midnight. Calls to 911 revealed that Conway had indeed died in the Lynch household sometime after 3:30 am. Police have released no specific details, only that Conway’s death was suspected of foulplay and that the Lynchs have been named the only suspects in the case that looks to be possible murder. The Lynchs however could not be reached for comment. Jeanette is survived by her parents and a younger sister, Eliza Conway. (pictured below.)

Until now, I never knew her name. Karen insisted that every detail about the case had been redacted, scrubbed clean from all of the police records. Even with all his money, Adrian can’t censor the internet.

I scroll down toward the end of the article to see the picture. Jeanette looks to be Adrian’s type. Pretty. Young. Naïve. Just like me. Poor girl. Her only mistake was getting involved with him. Adrian hardly mentioned the girl he destroyed. He often refused to talk about the case.

As I see her now in the family photo, she looks happy, innocent and so unlike the kind of girl who’d be a member of a sex club like the
Carnal Chapel
. She mirrors her parents—all of them blonde, blue-eyed beauties with wholesome smiles. They’re normal, good-looking people. There is a face in this photo that I recognize. A brunette woman who sticks out next to her blonde family members.

The captions below it say that this is candid shot of Jeanette with her family at some ski resort in the Swiss Alps. Jeanette, her parents…and her sister, Eliza.

The woman staring back at me from this photo isn’t simply Jeanette’s younger sister. Until now, I have never known her by the name Eliza Conway. I have only met her as Amelia Jacobs—Vivian’s dutiful housemaid.

“Oh my god,” I say. “The woman Adrian killed was Amelia’s sister?”

It makes sense. All along, it’s made sense. I just never saw it. Until now.

“After my sister died, life wasn’t so good for me,”
she’d said.

“She was the only family I had …”

“You don’t know what you think you know…”

Everything she said. None of was coincidence. It was intentionally said to warn me. I never caught the words, never read between the lines. Amelia has been in the background, pulling strings to avenge the sister she lost because of the Lynchs.

I immediately think about the letter Foster had given me written by Amelia. I quickly fish through my purse and find it crumpled up at the bottom. I tear the thing open, frantic to read Amelia’s last written words—words she’d intended for me to read.

“To Cassandra:

If you got this letter than I hope it means that Vivian is dead. Yeah, that’s right. Vivian. Contrary to popular belief, that woman was much more evil than anyone ever knew. Well, almost anyone. You see, I decided years ago after Jeanette died that my future at med school was a joke. It would have never worked. Because when she died, I guess I did too.

But I won’t bore you with my
self
-
deprecation
. Too little time, and yet not enough time in the world. Let’s see where to start?  Number one: I'm sorry for what happened to Sasha. It was never my intention for her to take the drink that was meant for Vivian.

As you recall that night (and I'm sure you do), I was at the gala. I spent it watching Vivian while serving her phony friends. I got sick just looking at the woman. The one thing I distinctly remember thinking was: what kind of a god would allow Vivian Lynch to live and force beautiful people like Jeanette to die? Is that fair? I think not!

Then again, I gave up on the notion of “god” the day Jeanette died. Why have any faith in some invisible man who lets the wrong people die? Jeanette didn’t deserve it. And for Vivian to mock death by faking cancer…I couldn’t take it any longer! I’d initially planned to work my way into her life under an assumed name. So yeah, in case you were wondering, Amelia Jacobs was a pseudonym.

After earning a job as Vivian’s closest maid, I wanted to dose her food with a teaspoon of arsenic for several years over time. This was how I was to honor Jeanette’s memory, by punishing the woman that stole her away.

You might be asking, “Why arsenic?” Well, it’s simple. Arsenic is the slowest, most painful way I can think of for anyone to die. But even Vivian was too good for that method.

Then I met you, Cassandra. I realized that you had no idea what you were getting yourself into. You poor thing. I’d wanted to outright tell you to run the first day I met you…”

I remember that day, the day I’d realized something was different about Amelia. She barely looked me in the eye at least not with Vivian in the room. Maybe that’s what kept her at bay. Anytime we ever had a second alone, something always came along to intervene. Who knows how many times she tried to warn me?

“…but then I realize that my warnings would probably have fallen on deaf ear. After all, you didn’t know me. I feared you’d think me crazy. So I kept my warnings to myself and prayed you’d eventually figure it out. If you’re reading this letter now, then I'm glad to say that you’ve managed to figure it out. Congrats! You worried me for a second…”

Congrats
? I can’t decide if I should feel offended by that word. Congratulating me now that I'm a second too late, is almost insulting. If this letter had been delivered earlier, Amelia would still be alive. So would Sasha.

“
Okay, so here’s the real business side of things. I’d wanted this letter to be short, but hell, this is my dying declaration…a deathbed confession so to speak! I’m not going out without telling you all I know because I genuinely think you deserve the truth, Cassandra. Believe it or not, I actually liked you. Everything I did, I did it not only to avenge Jeanette but also to look out for you. So I hired Foster to keep an eye on you.

He was supposed to be a decoy, to ward you away from the Lynchs. When that backfired, I told Foster to intensify his ‘stalking efforts’ to really scare you. I know it’s drastic, Cassandra. I know, but I had to convince you to stay away. Someone had to warn you. Oh man, I wish you’d listened. Perhaps Sasha would be alive. Maybe even I’d be alive. But who am I kidding? I knew I’d die which is part of the reason I wrote this letter.

So that you can take it to the police, urge them to reopen Jeanette’s murder case. Because what they’d find is the truth. Adrian didn’t murder my sister. Vivian did. I’d heard them late one night, arguing over the usual. Money and the pre-nup. I heard Adrian say ‘if you’d managed to control yourself that night, then none of this would even be happening!’

It’s vague, I know. But I knew what it meant because Vivian replied, ‘Oh, so because you couldn’t keep your hands off that Conway bitch, it’s my fault our marriage has gone to shit?! She needed to die. Because it was either her or you!’

I knew from then on, Vivian had to pay.”

I should be surprised, but I can’t say I completely am. Adrian protected the truth about the murder to in actuality, protect Vivian.
Of course.
The man allowed himself to be skewered by the media and publically judged by everyone he knew to protect the truth about Vivian? A woman who despised him? Guess love really
is
blind.

Maybe he never knew. Perhaps he thought that taking the blame for Vivian’s crime was the only way to redeem himself. He was wrong. Vivian was rubber. Nothing anyone did would have changed her mind about something once it was set. Carrick was convinced she was incapable of love. Amelia believed Vivian was a sadist. I believe she had a talent of becoming whomever anyone needed her to be.

Sadist. Wife. Friend. Lover. Enemy.

Carrick was right. Vivian was Vivian. The only problem with that was that no one knew
who
she was. I’d like think that some of the things she’d told me were true. Guess I’d be a damn idiot. The phrase “
Shame on me once
…” comes to mind.

I knew Adrian was keeping the secret close to his heart to keep Vivian out of prison. Amelia knew too. Since Adrian wasn’t willing to fess up, Amelia clearly took matters into her own hands. Amelia set the fire. Amelia went after Vivian, but accidentally killed Sasha in the process, then herself. My stomach clenches at the thought of it. I think about Sasha and imagine her crippled in pain, lying on that garden floor.

Sasha was a casualty who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. She took the drink meant for Vivian—the drink that disoriented and ultimately killed her.
Oh, my stomach.
I slump forward against the steering wheel of my car, unable to breathe through the hurt.

“Dammit,” I mutter. “Dammit, Amelia.” I pound my fist against the dashboard, wishing I could hurt something. Enough people have been hurt. None of us won. Vivian, Amelia and Sasha are dead. I feel like I might as well be dead. I flip to the final page of Amelia’s letter, holding my breath.

“So what I wanted you to know from all of this, Cassandra is that you weren’t alone. Vivian dug her claws into everyone and everything she believed would benefit her. The woman was a sadist. I had to stop her. As I write this letter, it’s approximately 10:30 pm. Tuesday. This time tomorrow, I’ll likely be dead. Because I’ve learnt that to slay a dragon, one must be willing to fall on his own sword. So that’s what I’m doing. Vivian must die. If I die in the process, then so be it. At least then, I can die knowing that I rid the world of her. Take care of yourself Cassandra. Please, that’s all I ask of you.

--Sincerely

Amelia (aka: Eliza Conway)”

I fold Amelia’s letter and tuck it into my pocket. I don’t know how I'm supposed to feel or how she wants me to feel. I will say that hearing the truth was nice for once.
For once.
It’s such a rare commodity. I’ve been forced to juggle the secret somethings of Vivian and Adrian Lynch for too long.

For once, I can let go, but I’ll never fully be rid of
her
. I glance into the rearview mirror after delving through my purse. Inside, I find a tube of lipstick that Vivian must have snuck in with my things when I wasn’t looking. The color is coral, her favorite.

As I press the applicator to my lips, I think to myself:
Do I dare?
This question leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it incites no debate.

“Hell no,” I mutter before tossing the lipstick out the window. “Rest in hell Vivian Lynch.” Then I drive. Away from the apartment en route to the airport.