Then No One Can Have Her (2 page)

 

 

 

 

My Life, Deleted
(By Scott and Joan Bolzan and Caitlin Rother)

 

 

Where Hope Begins/Deadly Devotion
(By Alysia Sofios with Caitlin Rother)

 

 

Twisted Triangle
(By Caitlin Rother with John Hess)

 

 

 

*Available from Kensington Publishing Corp.
and Pinnacle Books

THEN NO ONE CAN HAVE HER

CAITLIN ROTHER

PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

A thunderstorm hit the quiet town of Prescott that first Tuesday in July 2008, drenching the thirsty pines, manzanita and scrub oak in this rural enclave, nestled at the foot of Granite Mountain. Even at 5,400 feet, summertime is sweltering in Arizona, and monsoon season always provides a welcome reprieve.

But these particular showers brought an emotional cleansing as well, helping to wash away the tensions that had developed between Carol Kennedy and her daughter Charlotte during the divorce battle with the girl's father, Steve DeMocker.

Sixteen-year-old Charlotte, who had always been more of a daddy's girl than her older sister, Katie, accused her mother of unfairly prolonging the divorce by refusing to accept Steve's settlement offers. Carol, who saw it as quite the other way around, got so upset during an argument that she jumped out of the car in the middle of an intersection and walked away.

At one point relations between mother and daughter grew so strained that Charlotte moved into Steve's condo near the Hassayampa golf course. Still angry, though, Charlotte complained that if Carol continued to reject Steve's offers, there would be no money left for her to study premed at her out-of-state dream college and become a neurosurgeon.

Not only is the paying of your bills hurting and restricting my immediate life, but now, my future and the quality of my education and degree is in jeopardy,
Charlotte wrote her mother.
It's hard to realize that my Mom, someone who I unconditionally have loved all my life, may damage the rest of my life.

After Charlotte said she was unwilling to spend time with her mother until the divorce was resolved, Carol cried to her friends that Steve had turned their daughter against her.

But since the divorce had been finalized in late May, a new and more comfortable family dynamic had begun to emerge. Carol and Charlotte were making amends, and things also seemed better—and calmer—between Carol and Steve as well.

As a result, they were all able to gather at the Phoenix airport in late June, just days before the storm, to give Katie an intimate send-off to a study-abroad program in South Africa. Making an emotional scene near the security gate, they told each other tearfully that they still appreciated one another, even if they weren't the family they once were.

“There was nothing but expressions of love and gratitude and happiness,” Katie recalled later. “We spent about twenty minutes, all talking about that, and crying and giving big group family hugs.”

As Katie walked toward the gate, she turned to see Steve, with his arms around Carol and Charlotte, all of them waving good-bye.

A few nights later, on Wednesday, July 2, the recent rainstorm gave Carol and Charlotte a chance to bond even further by talking about such mundane topics as the weather.

Howd ya like that boomin storm yesterday?
Carol texted Charlotte that evening at seven-fourteen.

It was “awesome,” Charlotte responded, saying she loved the showers so much she only wished there had been more of them.

Carol texted back in capital letters that she LOVED her daughter, to which Charlotte responded at 7:39
P.M.
with the same high emotion.

Later, these last healing moments would seem so poignant and yet so bittersweet, exchanged just before a far more tumultuous storm—that no one saw coming—tore this family apart forever.

 

 

Carol was a gentle, loving and openhearted soul, a devoted mother, a gifted teacher, therapist and artist, a role model and a mentor. Often described as lighting up a room with her benevolent life force, she was a spiritual being who emanated compassion. Carol taught courses such as “Yoga Psychology,” “Painting From the Heart,” and “Dream Work” for eleven years at Prescott College, where many students saw her as a guru who not only changed their lives, but also became a faithful friend.

These days she was working as a therapist at Pia's Place, an extended-care treatment facility run by women for women in the outskirts of downtown Prescott. Pia's billed its services as “empowering” women in recovery, treating them also for depression, PTSD, sexual trauma, codependence, and love/sex addiction. The goal was to help them get in touch with the issues that had caused them to turn to drugs and booze.

Although Carol had no personal problems with drugs or alcohol, she did have extensive counseling and life experience with love and sex addiction from which to draw. She'd met Steve, her charming, intelligent and athletic husband-to-be, in her late twenties after a short-lived, failed first marriage. Deeming each other a soul mate, they were married in 1982. But after a promising start, their marriage devolved into a bumpy roller-coaster ride of Steve's multiplying affairs. In 2003, the couple separated and, reaching her limit, Carol finally filed for divorce in March 2007.

As the oldest of nine children, Steve was also a mentor and role model, especially among his siblings. In his educated and accomplished family, Steve stood out for his ability and willingness to perform death-defying rescues—scaling a steep cliff to save one injured woman and flipping his own kayak to pull another woman out of churning white-water rapids.

In 1995, he switched careers from academics to investment brokering, saying he wanted to continue to help people, just in a different way. The more money he made, however, the more friends he lost as he became more materialistic and manipulative, his personality, tastes and spending habits changing as his annual income shot up to $500,000.

After Carol and Steve separated, the couple fought over who could and should spend what, how to divide their assets and sizable credit card debt. Nonetheless, Steve continued to spend and take out loans, even borrowing tens of thousands of dollars from his elderly parents to pay bills. As the battle grew more contentious and stressful for Carol, some of her friends worried she might take her own life.

But now that the divorce papers had been signed and she had a new boyfriend—whom she was flying to Maine to visit in just a few days—Carol was doing much better. Finally feeling free of Steve's hold over her, she was optimistic, as if she could really move on with her life.

That relief was bolstered by the fact that she'd been tested recently and had managed to hang tough. Carol said as much in a call after work that Wednesday to her longtime friend Katherine Dean Warnett, who, coincidentally, was about to go through her own divorce the next morning.

Carol said she'd declined Steve's offer to drive together to see Katie off at the airport in Phoenix on Saturday, so they went separately, which made her feel even stronger. During a family dinner Steve and Carol took snapshots of each other with the girls. Then, as they were waving good-bye to Katie at the terminal, Steve put his hand on Carol's shoulder.

“For the first time in a really long time, I didn't get totally creeped out,” Carol told Katherine on the phone as she was driving home Wednesday evening. “It was okay. It was just okay.”

And then in the next sentence, Carol said, “Of course he had to ruin it. He asked if I wanted to meet him for coffee. We just got divorced. Why is he asking to have coffee?” But it wasn't just that, she said. “He had the audacity to come over.”

Carol said Steve came to the house to plead with her to get back together. Katherine could visualize Carol shaking her head as she said, “That he would have the audacity to even propose that we should start dating again and then get married—”

“Whaaat?”
Katherine asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes, yes,” Carol said insistently. “And for him to think that I would actually do that.”

In the past Carol had received some rather erratic push-pull e-mails from Steve, first accusing her of being a terrible mother and then expressing his love for her. More recently, Carol had told friends that Steve had broken into her house, that she was convinced he'd been hacking into her e-mails, and that she feared for her personal safety. And even though she still considered him the love of her life, she told a coworker at Pia's that she'd refused his most recent offer to “forget this whole thing” and get back together.

 

 

The sunshine returned that Wednesday, reaching a searing high of ninety-six degrees. A couple of hours before she left work, Carol and Steve exchanged texts about Katie's BMW, which was parked in Carol's garage:
I need to come pick up the X3
, he texted, asking when he could collect the keys.

You may come out to pick up katies car this evening if ud like
, Carol replied, adding that she assumed he had a spare key to get into the car, where Katie had left her set.

As Carol and a coworker closed the Pia's office around 4:30
P.M
., her financial struggles were nagging at her. Although she'd agreed to the final settlement with Steve, she'd come to realize that the agreement would likely cost her the dream home she and her now–ex-husband had custom built. The home where they'd raised their girls together, the four of them sleeping in the same bed or at least in the same room, back in the days when their future had seemed more hopeful.

Given the lopsided share of liabilities she'd inherited in the split, she realized she couldn't afford the mortgage payments on her own, especially after Steve had taken out a second mortgage and equity line without her knowledge. The annual $24,000 she earned from her counseling, odd jobs and selling her artwork, just wasn't enough. She still had to cover taxes on the chunk of money she'd gotten in the divorce, and pay off Steve's credit card debts. Soon she would be completely underwater.

While she was talking to Katherine on the drive home, Carol stopped at the animal hospital to buy special food for her two dogs. Ike, a Boston terrier, had urinary problems after being disemboweled by a wild boar, known as a javelina, and Daisy, a fluffy bichon frise that looked like a white teddy bear, kept throwing up. Carol also stopped at Safeway to buy some groceries for herself. A vegetarian for most of her life, she frequently ate salads for dinner.

After pulling up to her sage-green house, she went inside and checked her e-mails from her home office, forwarding one to her tenant and close friend, Jim Knapp, who was living in the guesthouse out back. The two of them had known each other for years—from when their kids had gone to school together. For the past several months, they'd been supporting each other through their respective divorces, often sharing wine and conversation in the evenings before they went to their separate bedrooms.

Next, Carol chatted briefly with her accountant about the horribly bad, upside-down deal she felt she'd gotten in the divorce. She'd been talking about reporting Steve to the IRS for tax fraud, and she was stressed from arguing with him over some loose ends, which she thought she might go back to court to tie up.

Perhaps inspired by that conversation, Carol e-mailed Steve to dispute his claim that she owed him $8,300, refusing to give him a check so he could cover his $6,000 overdue alimony payment to her. Steve had suggested they trade checks that night.

Your assertion and information here is inaccurate and incorrect,
she wrote to Steve at 6:30
P.M
.

Done with that unpleasant bit of business, she put on a lavender tank top, blue shorts and a pair of running shoes and went on her usual half-hour, three-mile stint on the trails through the ranch land behind her house. During her run Carol usually left the side door unlocked, which led out to the backyard and down some steps to the garage, where she parked her car.

As she was heading east on the trail, she bumped into two neighbors, Lila Farr and Marge Powell, on horseback. Carol stopped for five minutes to chat and pet Lila's horse before heading on. It was warm that evening, not as warm as some days, but the horses, just like Carol, preferred to exercise when it was cooler.

 

 

Back at the house, Carol texted Steve again, at 7:06
P.M.
, after seeing no response to her message about Katie's car.

You never replied to let me know if u were coming to get it
, she texted.

It was unlike Steve not to respond quickly. He always had his cell phone with him, and a spare battery or two as well.

Carol switched gears and texted Charlotte at 7:12
P.M
.
How was ur day darlin?
she wrote, asking Charlotte if she'd started her new job yet.

Charlotte replied that she still had to finish training, but was set to start work the next day.

At 7:36
P.M.
, Carol used her cordless landline to make her usual call to her eighty-three-year-old mother, Ruth Kennedy, in Nashville, Tennessee. Carol had checked in with her mother most every night since her father had died in March 2006. With the two-hour time difference, Carol always called before 8
P.M
., her time, before she ate dinner and her mother went to bed. As she chatted with Ruth, Carol also texted Charlotte about the rain.

“Mom, the dogs are fed and the doors are locked,” Carol told Ruth, proactively answering her mother's usual questions.

Ruth worried about her daughter, living in a relatively isolated area known as Williamson Valley, about half an hour's drive from downtown Prescott. Carol's mother found it odd that she never seemed concerned or scared about leaving her doors unlocked. To Ruth, locking doors always “seemed paramount to safety.” But when she questioned her daughter about it, Carol would say, “Oh, Mom.”

Still, it wasn't a complete nonissue. Carol did change the locks after filing for divorce; she also suspected that Steve had been climbing in through a back window. Steve's name was still on the title, and he'd been paying the mortgage during the separation, but she gave spare keys only to her daughters.