by Blake Pierce
Karen glanced at the route on her phone.
“We should be there in less than five minutes. You okay?”
Jessie nodded.
“Yeah, sorry. It’s just that coming back to this town dredges up some bad memories. It’s got me in a foul mood. I’ll work it out before we get there.”
Karen didn’t respond, apparently not wanting to make things worse by asking questions. Jessie was happy for the silence. As she looked out the window, she saw familiar spots, most of which only poured salt in a wound she thought had healed.
There were restaurants she and Kyle had frequented back before she’d discovered her husband was a sociopathic murderer. She saw an oceanfront walking trail she frequented when she was trying to make sense of his odd behavior.
As they approached the harbor, she could see the outline of what had once been Club Deseo, the yacht club he’d pressured her to join, and which turned out to be a front for the male members to take advantage of on-site escort services. She’d heard that it had been closed and was now vacant and boarded up. But that didn’t give her as much satisfaction as she might have hoped.
Karen pulled into a gated community overlooking the water and flashed her credentials to the guard. He let them through and two minutes later they were parked in front of a McMansion exactly like the one Jessie had lived in and hoped to never see again.
“Wender is expecting us, right?” Jessie asked, though Karen had already said as much earlier.
“Yes,” Karen answered patiently, before adding. “I know you’re uncomfortable being here. But remember, even though Captain Decker manipulated you into this case, he wanted you on it for a good reason. You know how these people think. You can see through them better than most. Use that.”
Jessie knew she was right. It was time to set aside her reservations and put her past experience, however painful, to some good use. She stepped out of the car and took advantage of the long walk up to the Wenders’ door to clear her head and prepare for what was to come. She needed to be at full strength if she was going to get Claudia the justice she deserved.
They stopped at the front door. Karen rang the bell. The massive house looked so much like Jessie’s old one that she wondered if they’d had the same builder. They had the same faux-distressed wooden porch, the same oversized front doors. Some primal part of her feared that Kyle might open it.
Instead, it was opened by a tall man wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Jessie had seen him in family photos and immediately recognized him as Claudia’s husband, Joe Wender.
“Hi, Mr. Wender,” Karen said gently. “I’m Detective Karen Bray of the LAPD. This is Jessie Hunt, a profiler we work with. I believe you were expecting us. May we come in?”
For a second he looked like he might actually say no. But then he nodded and held the door open for them. Jessie was tempted to speak as she stepped past him but wasn’t sure what to say, so she held her tongue.
Once inside, he silently led them down the hall and through the expansive living room. The fireplace mantel was a chronological collection of photos showing the evolution of the Wender family, from a couple, to a family with one child, and then two children, who got bigger in each successive image.
Above those photos was one large one, a professional portrait of the Wenders on the beach with a wave crashing in the background. They were dressed casually, each outfitted in some shade of purple. Claudia and her daughter both wore summer dresses. Jessie noticed that they had the same eyes. Joe Wender was in jeans and a dress shirt. Their little boy wore shorts and a purple T-shirt with a Captain America shield on the chest. They were all smiling broadly and genuinely, as if the photographer had just told a good joke.
He continued into a smaller dining room with an ornate table that looked out on the large backyard. Jessie saw a play structure next to a gated pool. There was a baseball and an aluminum bat in the grass nearby. Wender sat down heavily at the dining room table.
“I know these chairs aren’t that comfortable,” he said, speaking for the first time. His voice was scratchy and rough. “But this is the only room where I think I can do this. We didn’t use it very much so the memories don’t hit me so hard in here.”
“This is fine, Mr. Wender,” Karen assured him. “We understand what a difficult time this is for you.”
As he took off the cap and looked up at her, Jessie got her first real chance to study him. His blue eyes were red and puffy. His blackish-gray hair was uncombed. He clearly hadn’t shaved and from his haggard expression, she doubted he’d slept much either.
Under normal circumstances he would have been very attractive. In his early forties, he had a square-jawed, all-American vibe and a fit, athletic frame that suggested he still played whatever sport he’d excelled at during high school.
“Where are your children?” she asked. “You have two, correct?”
She knew the answer but wanted to gauge how he responded.
Yes,” he replied. “Callie is nine and Joey Jr. is six. They’re at my sister’s in Laguna Beach. They’re spending the weekend there with their cousins. They still don’t know. I’m not sure how to tell them. I can hardly believe it myself. I didn’t sleep much last night, but when I did, I woke up and rolled over in bed to tell Claudia about the nightmare I’d had. She wasn’t there and I remembered that it was all real.”
He paused for a moment.
“How do you tell children that their mommy is dead?”
Neither woman had any suggestions for him. Jessie glanced over at Karen and could tell that even the thought of such news being shared with her own little boy was upsetting. She decided to change tacks.
“Mr. Wender, there’s no easy way to do this,” Jessie said. “What I can tell you is that the quicker we can get answers from you, the more likely we are to catch Claudia’s killer and the sooner this will all be over.”
He looked at her blankly, as if he didn’t understand where she was going with this. She continued.
“So with that in mind, are you okay with us just diving in with our questions?”
Now getting it, he sighed deeply and nodded.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Karen pulled out a small notebook and a pen. Jessie, who preferred to keep her eyes on Wender, leaned back in her chair as the detective began.
“You said the kids were spending the whole weekend at your sister’s house. Was that planned in advance?”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his closed eyes with his palms as he spoke. “I’d always planned for them to spend last night there. I was going to take Claudia out for her birthday. But then Lauren Kiplinger told me about their plan for Friday night, how they wanted her to think they were just taking her to dinner but would make it an overnight thing. So I decided to take advantage of the night without her and asked my sister if she’d keep the kids both nights. She said yes and I dropped them off a little while after Claudia left.”
“What did you do for the night?” Karen asked, impressively making it sound like mild curiosity rather than an attempt to discern his whereabouts.
“I did a marathon rewatch of the Raid movies.”
“What are those?” Jessie asked.
“They’re super violent martial arts crime movies from Asia. Watching them is weirdly cathartic for me.”
“Did you have anyone over?” Jessie wondered. “Maybe to share in the violent catharsis?”
“No. It’s more of a solitary experien—” he started to answer before suddenly stopping. “Wait, are you asking me for my alibi?”
“It’s standard procedure,” Karen jumped in. “Don’t take offense, Mr. Wender. We need to know where everyone was and verify it as best we can.”
“You think I could have done that to my wife?” he demanded, his hoarse voice cracking slightly as he got louder. “The officer who came to see me yesterday told me how she died. He said someone bashed her head in. You think I’m capable of that?”
&nb
sp; His fists clenched into balls as he pushed himself upright, towering over them.
Jessie suddenly feared everything was about to spiral out of control.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She was still debating what to do when Karen stood up too, with her hand prominently visible on her gun holster. Wender’s eyes went from her face to her hand and then back again. It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
Despite that, Jessie didn’t respond, instead letting Karen deal with him while she remained seated, studying his body language. He was agitated, whether out of genuine horror at the insinuation or anxiety about something darker. Unfortunately, his bleary-eyed exhaustion and general dishevelment made it hard to discern which.
“Mr. Wender,” Karen soothed. “I’m sorry the officer told you that. It was inappropriate. But this is our job. We have to ask these questions. Don’t draw any conclusions from it. We’re doing the same thing with all her friends from that night. But we do need a clear answer about your activities on Friday night.”
Wender looked wiped out from his objection and slumped forward, resting his forehead in his hands. After a few moments, still with his head down, he replied.
“I helped the kids pack up and dropped them at my sister’s a little after five. I picked up a bunch of pizzas for dinner for them on the way there as a thank-you to my sister. I stopped at the grocery store on the way back to get some beer and a steak. I got back around six I think. I grilled the steak, watched the movies, and crashed afterward. I’d guess it was sometime between eleven p.m. and midnight.”
“Did you try to check in with Claudia at any point?” Jessie asked.
He lifted his head from his hands to look her in the eye.
“Actually, she called me from the restaurant. She sounded buzzed and happy. She was acting pretend-angry that I’d been in on the scheme to surprise her. Then I texted her before I went to sleep to tell her I loved her. I didn’t hear back but I figured that she was too busy to notice.”
“And the next morning?” Jessie pressed.
He scrunched up his nose as he tried to recall.
“I woke up on Saturday around seven, went to the gym, and came back home. I was going to watch a college football game when the cops showed up at my door.”
“You hadn’t tried to reach her at all prior to that?” Karen asked.
“No,” he answered, doing his best not to take umbrage at the insinuation that he didn’t care. “I figured she probably had a really late night and was sleeping in. I remember thinking that if she didn’t text by noon, I’d check in, if only to get a sense of when she’d be back. I had dinner reservations for six that night and tickets to a comedy club after that.”
Jessie knew it was likely to cause furious blowback but she needed to return to the night before.
“To be clear, Mr. Wender, you spent all of Friday night home alone. You didn’t order any food on your phone and talk to the deliveryman or go out front to get your mail and wave to a neighbor? No one saw you after you got home from the grocery store?”
To her surprise, he didn’t look angry but resigned, as if he somehow sensed that this would be his life for days and perhaps weeks to come—people asking invasive questions, doubting his motives, suspecting him.
“Maybe someone saw me,” he finally said. “But I didn’t see them. Even if I did, I don’t remember it. It’s not like I had any reason to commit those kinds of interactions to memory. It was just a lazy night at home as far as I was concerned.”
“Do you have an alarm system?” she asked. “Security cameras?”
“We did,” he said forlornly. “But the company was sued recently for not responding to calls in a timely manner. So we dumped them a few months ago. We’ve been looking for a new one but kind of dropped the ball. It was on our to-do list.”
He said that last line with a self-flagellating edge.
“Are you willing to let us access your phone data?” Karen asked.
“Sure,” he muttered absently.
Jessie decided to switch subjects.
“What do you think of her friends, the ones from Friday night?” she asked. “How close were they?”
He stared into the distance, not seeming to fully register the question. Jessie was about to ask again when he replied.
“They’re okay, I guess. I didn’t spend a ton of time with them. We’d occasionally have the Rhetts over for dinner. Claudia and Veronica got friendly through our church. She was pretty nice, a little blah. The other two I knew less well. Kimberly Miner served on the PTA board with Cloudy but I never really saw her socially. She’s very high energy and being around her was exhausting. We’ve known Lauren Kiplinger since our daughters were in daycare together. The girls are still friends so we sort of have to be. But she’s a lot—kind of wild. She tends to get pretty toasted too. I think she’s probably an alcoholic.”
Jessie looked over at Karen to see if she wanted to follow up but the detective nodded that she should continue.
“So you said that they’re ‘okay,’” Jessie prompted, “but it doesn’t sound you’re a big fan of any of them.”
“I didn’t have to hang out with them so I never thought about it too much.”
“Do you remember Claudia ever having a serious falling-out with any of them?” Karen asked.
He shrugged.
“Claudia said they were always sniping and gossiping about each other and complaining about their marriages. She told me she got a kick out of it because it reminded her how good she had it,” he said, pausing for a moment to recover from the sudden catch in his throat. “That was nice to hear.”
Both women gave him a moment to regroup before proceeding.
“Nothing more than sniping among them though?” Karen double-checked.
“Detective,” Wender said, sounding twice his age, “to be honest, Cloudy didn’t tell me much about that stuff because she knew I wasn’t interested. I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s the truth. Are we almost done here?”
“Why?” Jessie asked.
“It’s just that I’m really tired and I was hoping to take a quick nap before getting the kids. After that, who knows when I’ll get to sleep again?”
Jessie looked at Karen, who seemed to be satisfied for now. She nodded that she was too.
“We’ll leave you be,” Karen said, standing up and starting for the front of the house. “But we’ll be reaching out for that phone data today.”
“That’s fine,” Wender said, oblivious as he walked them out.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Mr. Wender,” Karen assured him, making a promise that Jessie wouldn’t have spoken aloud, though she also intended to keep it.
Joe Wender looked at them. His expression was a mix of sorrow and ambivalence.
“Whether you do or not, the love of my life is gone. Nothing will change that.”
Though Jessie tried to hide it, the words hit her like a gut punch. As she and Karen walked back to the car, she tried not to let his anguish become her own. He could afford to give in to it. But she had to channel it into something productive. And she was about to get a chance to do just that. She hoped Lauren Kiplinger was ready for her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joe Wender’s words were still gnawing at Jessie as they pulled up to Kiplinger’s house one gated community over.
Assuming he was innocent, she could hardly blame him for considering solving his wife’s murder a secondary issue right now. And with only instinct to go on until they got his phone data, she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being.
It wasn’t impossible for him to drive up to Hollywood, sneak into the hotel suite to kill his wife, and then return home. But it wasn’t the most likely scenario. And while he could have been giving them an award-worthy performance, the man did seem truly bereft. That might be why knowing Claudia’s killer wasn’t his priority. He was suddenly a single dad with two young kids.
But moving on wasn’t Jessie job. Finding Claudia’s killer was. And while doing so might not change anything for the Wender family, they might feel differently down the line. Either way, two things were true: justice needed to be served, and a murderer, one who might kill again, needed to be taken off the streets.
They parked across the street from the Kiplinger home. It wasn’t quite as large as the Wenders’ but the family wasn’t in any danger of running out of living space. Jessie pointed to the unmarked car half a block down the street. Karen nodded and called the Westport Beach PD dispatcher and gave her name and authorization number.
“You can have your teams pull their surveillance,” she said. “We’ve arrived to conduct our interviews. Thanks for your assistance.”
After she hung up, they walked to the front door. The Westport PD vehicle passed by and the plainclothes officers inside waved a greeting, which the women returned. As they reached the porch, Jessie heard the loud yelling of children somewhere inside.
Karen rang the bell. When no one answered after a minute, she rang it again and gave several hard knocks. Soon after, the door was opened by a little boy about four years old wearing a jammie top but nothing down below. He was holding a cinnamon roll in one hand and white frosting covered his lips and nose.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“We’re here to see your mommy,” Karen said in the friendliest tone Jessie had ever heard from her. “Is she home?”
The kid turned his head and screamed, “Mommy, are you here? There are ladies asking!”
“What ladies?” came a familiar, frazzled voice from somewhere in the back of the house.
“Tell her police ladies,” Karen suggested.
“They say they’re cops!” he shouted.
“Hold on!” the even more frazzled voice shouted back.
The boy turned back to them and smiled broadly.
“I’m Miles,” he said.
“Hi, Miles,” Jessie said. “Where are your pants?”
He took another big bite of cinnamon roll before answering.