The Widow and the Will (19 page)

Chapter 31

Standing under the hot spray of the shower, Tess sighed with pleasure and relief. Her respite was short-lived because she knew she was at risk of spending the rest of her life in a real prison much uglier than the one of widowhood in which she found herself.

“Thanks a lot, Jack,” she muttered to the shower loofa in her hand. “If this is some cosmic joke, I’m gonna kick your ass when I see you again.”

Tess scrubbed her body until her skin was sore from the exertion. She gave her scalp and hair the same vigorous workout until she felt reasonably confident she was clean. All those nasty questions from that detective made her feel dirty. Polluted somehow. She got out and wrapped up in her oversized terrycloth robe and then threw her hair up into a fluffy towel. Padding along to her bedroom, the kitties followed and joined her when she flopped onto the bed. As she petted them, her mind whirled and swirled.

This was getting too crazy for her. Going back over the events of the day, she was stunned at how she’d been set up. Somehow, David had gotten a hold of the toxicology report and discovered that Jack had been poisoned. Because she was the only person to be alone with Jack the morning of the wedding until he went to his parents, all evidence pointed to her as having been the person to give him the poison.

Poisoned
! Jack had been
murdered
. Her stomach clenched and her heart ached. Not her Jack. Not the boy and then man who had been her very best friend for most of her life. Had he suffered? How could anyone think
she
could do such a thing? Visions of tabloid headlines flashed through her mind and Tess grabbed a pillow to hold over her head, trying to make them go away.

Obviously that was a load of crap. She had loved Jack and never would have killed him. No matter how many doubts she had about the wedding and marriage itself, she
never
would have killed him. It was ludicrous. Thankfully, Hudson and Ford believed her. Hudson had seen Jack in his nervous state, there was no way he thought Tess was capable of killing Jack. There was no motive, even if there had been plenty of opportunity. He had promised he would defend her and find a way out of the mess.

Anyone else in her situation would probably break down from the kind of pressure that had just been dumped on her. Not Tess. No, she was raging mad. Not only had her fairy tale ending been stolen from her, but now she was accused of causing it all as well. There was no way in hell she was going to go down for something the Kingstons had
obviously
orchestrated. And all in the name of money.

Tess believed to her core that it had to be Roger or David and the thought of it sickened her. They had more motive than she. They knew about the adoption and the money and the inheritance. And hadn’t their actions after his death shown they were trying to keep his money? All those lies in the probate documents. How could the police even
look
at her?

No, it was the Kingstons. Tess was sure of it. And she was going to prove it.

Chapter 32

“Well, at least we know for sure now. And your life won’t be in danger,” Lilly said, trying to sound glad but failing miserably. The worry in her eyes and the way her voice cracked gave it all away.

“Oh sure, there’s that.” Tess snorted and stared into her glass of lemonade. She sat on the couch in her parents’ living room with them and her sister, waiting for Hudson to arrive. “They sure wouldn’t want to kill me now, because then I wouldn’t go to jail, framed for the death of their son.” Tess was trying to find hope and stay positive, but it was pretty hard. She couldn’t have anticipated being suspected of Jack’s murder. It was just too far off her radar. She tried to remember all the promises she made to herself that day on the patio. Her confidence was dwindling fast.

“As morbid as it sounds, it’s true,” Harry Langford admitted. He sipped a beer and stared into the empty, cold fireplace. “I can’t believe this is happening to you, Padunkin.”

“Neither can I.” Tess put the glass on the table, not willing to take another sip. Everything upset her stomach since that horrible day at David’s office.

“I have to believe Hudson will find a way out of this,” Ruth said softly. She reached out to pat Tess’s hand. “He’s a very smart young man and he knows you didn’t do this.”

Tess smiled half-heartedly and accepted the soothing touch from her mother, though it didn’t comfort her at all. All she could think about was prison and guards and bars and vicious female inmates beating the shit out of her every single day. Oh, and her family, grieving for her every day she was gone. Tess would never have admitted it out loud to anyone, much less her family, but sometimes she wondered if running away or killing herself might not solve some of the more egregious problems. But then Jack’s voice would explode in her head, telling her what an idiot she was for even thinking of something like that.

“Hello everyone,” Hudson called out, as he knocked on the front screen door and walked right in, Ford trailing behind him, looking somber and sexy as always. Tess nodded, but did not wave or smile as they entered the living room. Even noticing how handsome Ford was didn’t perk her up. She might be determined not to let the Kingstons win, but that didn’t relieve the cloud of depression settling over her.

“Hello Hudson, Ford,” Ruth greeted. “Iced tea or lemonade?”

“Thanks, Ruth. I’ll take some tea,” Hudson replied as he sat down on the couch beside her.

“Nothing, thanks.” Ford smiled and nodded, then moved to the only chair that was left: her mother’s rocking chair in the corner beside the couch.

Hudson pulled a legal pad from his briefcase and a pen from the chest pocket of his short-sleeved button down shirt. Clicking it loudly, he was poised to begin writing. “Okay, Tess. I want you to try and remember everything you can from about three days before the wedding. Tell me everything you did, everywhere you went, anything at all.”

Tess sighed and rubbed her forehead with her hand.
We’ve already been over this a hundred times
, she thought. But she knew it was important. At some point she was going to remember something that would lead them in the right direction. At least that was her hope and prayer.

Lilly and Ruth interjected several times when they were with Tess to run some errand or make some preparation. Harry remained quiet because, as her dad, he’d had little to do with all the “wedding nonsense” as he’d called it, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile in his voice. Those twinkles and smiles were gone now and Tess wanted them back.

Over an hour later, Hudson stopped his barrage of questions and put down the pen, shaking his fingers back and forth. “The poison found by the ME was organic in nature. I’ve been doing research and it’s supposed to imitate a heart attack perfectly, which it did. No one would have thought to look for it, which is why the tox report took so long to come back. I think someone might have requested a deep screen.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Harry leaned into the conversation. “Deep screen?”

“A deep screen gets requested when a death is suspicious. Thing about it: Jack was a healthy young male. There was no reason for him to have a heart attack unless he had a previously undiscovered heart condition, which he didn’t. The poison being organic means it was most likely plant based and not a chemical. Unless Jack had a drug habit or someone gave him an injection the day of the wedding, he probably ate or drank something that had the poison in it.”

Tess shook her head vehemently, unable to believe what she was hearing. “But we were together the night before the wedding, and that morning. Neither one of us ate or drank. Or, if we did, we would have had the same things. Why wouldn’t I have died too?”

“Maybe that was the plan?” Ford said this quietly, like dropping a depth charge into the silent sea and waiting for the explosion to roil upward into the atmosphere.

“What?”

Tess couldn’t tell who else said the word other than herself because it seemed to come from all sides. Her mother, Lilly, her father. All of them stared at Ford in disbelief.

“If you two had died before the wedding could take place, then Jack’s inheritance would have reverted to his family. No fuss, no muss. My guess,
our
guess,” Hudson pointed at Ford, “is that whoever poisoned Jack was trying to poison you too. But you didn’t eat or drink something that Jack did.”

“Those rotten bastards!” Lilly shouted, jumping up from her seat on the couch. She pounded a fist into her palm. “And they managed to convince the cops to look at Tess? What a bunch of holy horseshit!”

“Lilly!” Ruth admonished.

“I don’t care, Mom! This is absolutely ridiculous! They have a million times more motive and opportunity, but Tess is the one being investigated. You
have
to do something Hudson. You
gotta
convince the police that Tess isn’t involved in this.”

“Calm down,” Hudson soothed. “I will do everything I can.” He picked up his pen and the legal pad, scanning through the notes again. “Again. Tell me everything you can remember,
again
.” His eyes burned with determination.

Tess wanted to cry, but refused to allow herself the luxury. Now was not the time to fall apart, especially not if Hudson was willing to fight so hard for her. She would go over the details as many times as he asked. Her entire life depended on it.

Chapter 33

It was long after midnight as Ford flipped through the paperwork in Tess’s files for the millionth time, searching for something he had missed. For a week, he and Hudson had been racking their brains, asking questions, gathering names of people to speak to, but they hadn’t yielded anything to assist in Tess’s defense. Yet.

Hudson had gone home a couple of hours ago, having been at it himself since the predawn hours. That was how they worked best together. Ford was the night owl and his baby brother was the early bird. Between the two of them, they were determined to find the missing pieces of the puzzle to exonerate Tess. The longer he looked, the more frustrated he got. Ford wasn’t used to not figuring shit out. It was his best asset. His weird and fucked up brain would often look at things in a way that Hudson didn’t. But this one had him stumped.

The toxicology report said that the poison had to be administered within six to eight hours of Jack’s death and Tess had been the only person with him in that timeframe, except his parents. She could have given him any type of poison she wanted at any point in time, but they didn’t believe that at all. Even though Ford loathed the idea, Hudson had arranged a private polygraph for Tess, which she passed with flying colors. When they’d provided the results to Detective Isham, he’d reminded them that it wasn’t proof of anything or admissible in court.

“The poison had to have been meant for both of them.”

All Ford’s private investigating up to that point had yielded nothing. The license plate search hadn’t shown David or Roger’s cars in the vicinity of Tess’s apartment at any time. The cell phone records didn’t show any pings for anyone’s phones. He’d combed through all the financial records again and the only thing they could find was Roger Kingston’s occasional poor choices for investing the money. But there wasn’t anything illegal about it. “He’s just a lucky sonofabitch,” Ford muttered.

Ford had spoken with everyone in the ME’s office to try and figure out if there had been any hanky panky there, but his uncanny sixth sense hadn’t picked anything up. The case seemed as airtight as any he’d ever seen, albeit circumstantial.

But still, in his gut, he knew he was missing something.

He got up to make a fresh pot of coffee and movement caught the corner of his eye. His hand went immediately to his gun. Whenever he was in the office late and alone, he carried a pistol even though St. Clair Shores wasn’t necessarily a mecca of crime. As he turned to face the glass front door of the office, Ford’s eyes went wide when he saw Tess standing there, her hand poised to knock.

Without a word, he withdrew his hand and strode to the door to let her in.

“Hey, I hope I’m not interrupting something,” she said as she walked in. She held a large manila envelope and looked scared and thin in her jeans and black hoodie.

She’s wasn’t sleeping before, but now she’s not eating
. “Nope.” He pulled the door closed behind her and turned the deadbolt. “I was just about to make coffee. Want some?”

“Sure,” she said softly as she took a seat at the table with all the paperwork. “Working hard or hardly working?”

Ford snorted. “That’s a silly question.” He grabbed the glass pot and took it into the bathroom to fill. He poured the water into the machine and slid the pot on the burner, flicking the brew button. Then he joined her at the table. Her hair was loose around her shoulders instead of the ponytail she favored. Her blue eyes looked bigger and wider in her face because of the weight she was losing. The hoodie seemed to swallow her up and she looked much younger than her twenty-five years.

The only noise in the room was the sound of coffee dripping into the pot. The strong smell wafted through the room, swirling around them. Finally, Ford spoke. “What are you doing here?”

Tess shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. Well, I don’t sleep anymore. I found some more wedding paperwork, so I thought I’d put it through the mail slot. When I drove by and saw the light on, I figured I would stop in.”

Ford said nothing. When the sound of falling liquid stopped, he went to get their coffee. He put cream into hers and left his black.

“Thanks,” Tess said, as she took the cup. She blew on the hot coffee before taking a tiny sip. Ford was a bit mesmerized by the sight of her pink lips on the rim of the cup. Other images floated into his head, catching him totally off guard.
Look away, Ford
.

“You know, today would have been my seven month anniversary,” Tess whispered.

Oh, holy hell
. “I’m sorry,” was all he could manage to say, as he drank from his own cup. He expected her to start crying any moment and then he would be stuck. After all the facts he’d learned about her over the last weeks, Ford wanted to comfort her, but he also didn’t want to be anywhere near her. She was pulling feelings out of him that he thought were buried too deep to reach.

Instead of crying, she laughed. It was a cynical, bitter sound. “I can’t even remember what Jack’s arms felt like around me anymore. He used to come up next to me and say, ‘Side hug!’ and squeeze me until I couldn’t breathe, but I can’t feel it anymore. Does that make me a bad person?”

Ford shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Most people get to grieve properly when they lose a loved one.”

“You’re right.” Tess pursed her lips. “But I
did
get to grieve. I got six months before the shit started hitting the fan.”

Ford was about to tell her that a few months weren’t nearly enough time, but she spoke again before he could.

“Want to know a secret?”

He tensed and sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Sure.”
Please God, don’t let her confess
.

“I was already starting to feel better after about a month,” Tess admitted. “I loved Jack with all my heart, but I couldn’t help thinking ‘shit, Tess, you’re only twenty-five.’ Like I knew the rest of my life was in front of me, and that maybe this all happened for a reason. Of course, the minute I started admitting that to myself, I fell right back into the whole grief pool and cried for days.”

Ford had to admit to himself it did shock him a little. All the stories he’d been hearing about the fairytale romance between Tess and Jack had him convinced they were more deeply in love than Snow White and Prince Charming. He sort of thought Tess would have been one of those women who held onto widowhood and grief for decades before moving on.

“Now
that
makes me a bad person, doesn’t it?”

Ford shook his head again, before he could think about it. “I don’t think so at all. I think you’re young and under a lot of pressure.”

“Know why Jack and I were together?” Tess turned the cup around in circles in her hands as if to warm her fingers against the ceramic. “We didn’t know anything different and we didn’t
want
to know anything different.” She took another sip before taking a deep breath. “It was easy. We got along. We liked each other. We fell in love with each other early on. But now that he’s gone, I can’t help but wonder if we were too young. We never dated anyone else. We never kissed anyone else. We just kept taking all the normal steps in life forward, together, but did we do it because we wanted to? Or because it was easier not to struggle?”

Ford didn’t know how to respond. He knew about taking the easy way out. He understood what it was like not to question a situation. He accepted things at face value without bothering to dig deeper. Everything she was saying made perfect sense to him.

Now she did begin to cry a little. Two big, fat tears squeezed out of each of her eyes and rolled lazily down her cheeks, but she did nothing to wipe them away. She took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to smile at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bothering you with all this.”

“It’s okay.” Ford reached for his cigarettes and stood up. “I need a smoke.”

“Okay.”

“Join me outside for some air?”

Tess smirked. “Fresh air or second-hand smoke?”

Ford rolled his eyes and shook his head, leading the way outside. They both leaned against the building. Ford smoked while Tess scanned the empty streets.

“Tell me about yourself.” She didn’t look at him directly at him.

Blowing smoke into the night sky, he chuckled. “There’s not much to tell.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.” She did look at him then. “I think there’s a lot going on there. Please, talk to me. I’m sick of being in my own head. I’m tired of all my own drama. I want to listen for a while, not talk and talk and talk.”

Ford should have seen it coming, probably did see it coming, but didn’t want to admit it. It always happened. Whenever someone normal came into his life, whether client or acquaintance, they always seemed to want to know his story. Why he was the black sheep to Hudson’s white knight, upstanding lawyer gig. He never told anyone much. Or if he said anything, it was a pack of lies. His history was his own business and no one else’s.

But Tess was different. She wanted comfort and friendship in a time of need. Her request was out of innocence, not some ulterior motive. She wasn’t trying to worm her way into his heart or life so she could use it later to her own benefit. She just wanted an escape from her problems.

Still, Ford stalled. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” He puffed furiously on the cigarette, surrounding himself in a cloud of smoke.

Tess rolled her eyes. “Start anywhere. Just talk to me.”

Ford took a last drag and then dropped his cigarette into the long-necked, plastic ashtray Hudson had installed outside the office door. “Hudson wants me to be a lawyer, but it’s not for me.”

“There you go. Why not?”

“That’s Hudson’s thing.”

Talking was tough. Telling the truth was tougher. Ford hadn’t done either in so long, he felt as though he didn’t know how.

“Go on,” Tess urged.

Sighing, Ford lit another cigarette. He didn’t usually chain smoke unless he was nervous or tense, and he found himself feeling both. “Hudson and I come from a pretty screwed-up family. Our dad left when I was five and Hudson was just about a year old. Our mom tried hard enough at first, but she wasn’t really cut out for parenthood. When we were young, I was always the good one, taking care of little brother, doing well in school in spite of all the hardship. Real Lifetime movie type of stuff.”

“Lifetime movies are stupid.” Tess rolled her eyes. “Your upbringing wasn’t. How bad was it?”

“Bad,” Ford admitted.
Really bad
.
So bad, I don’t know if I can even say it out loud
.

Tess shook her head and her bottom lip came out in a pout. He couldn’t explain it, but that simple show of sympathy let the words come tumbling out of his mouth.

“Mom was only fifteen when she had me. Then nineteen when Hudson came along. She was your textbook resentful teen mom who wanted to party and have fun, not be a parent. I barely remember my dad and, obviously, my brother doesn’t at all.”

“Have you ever tried to find him?”

“Nope. Not interested.” Tess said nothing, and Ford pulled another long drag from his smoke. “Frankly, if I saw the guy, I’d probably beat the shit out of him. I don’t know if our lives would have been any better or different if he’d stuck around, but just abandoning us earns him an ass-kicking in my book.”

“Deservedly so,” Tess agreed softly, her voice floating up to him on the late night breeze.

“I gotta tell ya, the time up until kindergarten is pretty much a blur for me. I don’t know where Dad was. Working, maybe. Then partying with Mom, I guess. There were always a lot of people hanging around wherever we were living, but I don’t remember it being all that bad. Wasn’t until I got to go to school that I began to realize our home life wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. Other kids had lunch boxes or bags with food in them. I didn’t. The adults took over and made sure I had lunch every day and eventually breakfast too. It still amazes me Hudson even lived long enough to go to school. God only knows what was going on at home while I was gone.”

Tess was now watching him with compassionate fascination that gave Ford the confidence to keep going.

“It was a good thing my little brother was smart. He was reading by the time he was three and it made it a lot easier to protect him and take care of him when I was around and when I wasn’t. He listened to me when I told him what to do. I couldn’t give you specific details, but Mom was seriously addicted to drugs and alcohol by the time we were both in school all day. The usual story, we’d get home and she’d be passed out on the couch or in bed.”

Tess shook her head ever so slightly and he caught the movement from the corner of his eye as he ditched another smoke.

“I guess all that isn’t so bad. But it got a lot worse as I got into high school.”

“Did you ever try to get help?” Tess kept her eyes focused on her black and white Chuck Taylors. “Did you have any other family?”

“Nah. What would have been the point? Foster care would have taken over, probably separated us, and I didn’t want that happen. Hud was the only good thing in my life. I didn’t want to lose him. I knew if I could keep shit together till I turned eighteen, then everything would be okay.” The sound of his Zippo smacking closed was like a firecracker to his ears.