by Madyson Grey
“No, I’m OK.”
He stroked her back, trying to soothe her fears. It came to him that he was holding a half-naked woman in bed and wasn’t interested in sex. He realized that there is so much more to a real relationship than planning the next sexual conquest. The love he was feeling for this vulnerable woman surpassed any lust he had ever felt for any woman he had ever been with. It amazed him that he had grown so much in the short time he had known Victoria. He had changed from a mere skirt-chaser to a man. A man who was in love, and not only in love, but capable of feeling compassion and caring such as he had never felt before.
He rocked back and forth, holding Victoria close, and began humming softly. He could feel her relax in his arms. He continued rocking, rocking, and humming. When he was a very little boy, and needed to be rocked, his mama would always sing “Spanish Eyes” to him. That was the melody he found himself humming to Victoria. It must have soothed her just as it had him so long ago, for when he looked down at her face, her eyes were closed and her features were calm.
Rafael continued holding and rocking Victoria for a good five more minutes, until he was certain that she was asleep. Then he slowly and carefully laid her down and pulled the covers up over her. He sat there for another minute or two, just watching her sleep and thinking. Had it really only been four days since the two of them met? The way he felt right now, it was as though he had known her for five months … or five years. He felt more of a connection with her than he ever had with anyone except for his own mother, and David Thornton.
David, you were right, man. She is the perfect woman for me. I don’t know how you knew, but you were right. If what lies ahead doesn’t kill us, it will make us stronger. She’s got a hard row to hoe during the next several weeks. But I’ll be there every step of the way, if she’ll have me.
Noting her even breathing, Rafael stood up carefully so as not to jiggle the bed and disturb the sleeping woman. He debated on whether to leave the lamp on or not, but ultimately decided to turn it off. Then he tiptoed out of Victoria’s room and went back to his own. What he really wanted to do was spend the rest of the night holding her, but he didn’t trust his resolve to be chaste, so he removed himself from the scene of temptation.
Victoria slept peacefully the remainder of the night. Although her sleep was sprinkled with faint dreams, they were only of Rafael. When she first awakened, she had no memory of the nightmare at all. It took a few moments of becoming fully awake before she began recalling bits and pieces of what she assumed had been a dream. She had watched her mother shoot her dad and saw his body explode into a thousand tiny bits. She had screamed until Rafael came and carried her off to the beach where he sat in a rocking chair and rocked her and sang, “Spanish Eyes” to her.
The dream had started out horribly, but had ended so sweetly. She wished that Rafael were there right now to hold her and sing to her. She had felt so safe, so secure in her dreams. She was so thankful that Rafael had come into her life. She still didn’t know what her mother thought Rafael had done that could condemn him.
Marian! The previous day’s events all suddenly came crashing back into her consciousness. Lena lying unconscious on the floor, blood pooling around her head. Marian holding Rafael and his secretary hostage. Marian on a gurney looking more disheveled than Victoria had ever seen her. Oh, my! And to top it all off, a police man—what was his name?—was coming over this morning to examine the scene of her daddy’s death. And Rafael was in the guest room across the hall! She had nearly forgotten that sweet detail.
She looked at the bedside clock. Six-thirty. She’d better get up and get going. Lieutenant whatshisname could come anytime after eight o’clock. She got out of bed and padded into her bathroom. Turning on the shower, she stripped down and stepped into the warm water. It felt so good to just stand under the stream and let it run through her hair. She turned the head to pulsate and let the pressure beat on her back. Ooooh, that feels so good, she thought.
She stayed in the shower a little longer than she really should have because it felt so good. Like all the ugliness of the previous day was being washed down the drain. She washed her hair, massaging her scalp like the beautician did. Only she couldn’t make it feel quite as good as it does when someone else does it for you. It was good, though, and when she finally stepped out of the shower, she felt better than she had since she got the news about her daddy’s death. Not a lot better, but some.
She felt guilty that she actually felt relieved that her mother wasn’t in the house. She had always hated walking on eggshells when Marian was around. It was a huge relief to know that those days were past. She did feel pity for her mother, though. What was it that had made Marian Thornton who she was? A cold, exacting mother, a demanding wife, and then a raving maniac who had endangered people’s lives. And possibly murdered her husband, the one man who had done nothing but love the woman and give her everything his money could buy.
Victoria dressed in denim capris and a white tank top. She applied make-up and blow-dried her hair. She made her bed and tidied her room, what little it needed. Then she went out into the hall, wondering if Rafael was up yet. The door to his room was open, and the hall bathroom door was closed, so she assumed he was in the bathroom.
She went downstairs and started a pot of coffee. She flipped on the TV to see what the news was this morning. She caught the tail end of a repeat of last evening’s news about her mother. Well, she thought, all her rich, snooty friends will know all about her by now. It’ll give them something new to gossip about over their cocktails this week.
Victoria rooted around in the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer, just looking to see what was there. She found some muffins in the freezer, so took out a couple, put them on a plate, and popped them into the microwave. Just as the coffee was ready, Rafael came downstairs. Her breath caught in her throat as the thought flitted through her mind that here was her husband, coming downstairs to breakfast. It was such a painfully sweet thought that tears burned her eyes, but she willed them to dry.
She didn’t know that he was having similar thoughts. Only his were running more in the vein of, there’s my wife, fixing my breakfast in our kitchen. He walked up to her, took her in his arms and kissed her good morning.
“How did you sleep?” he asked casually.
He wondered if she remembered what had taken place in the night.
“Very well, thank you, except for a bad and good dream I had. How about you?”
“A bad and good dream? How does that work?” he wanted to know.
“Well, it started out bad and ended up good, that’s how,” she explained.
“What was it about?” he asked.
“Well, it started out with my mother shooting my dad into little bitty pieces, but then you were there and you carried me down to the beach. You sat in a rocking chair and rocked me, and sang “Spanish Eyes” to me,” she told him. “It started out bad and ended up good.”
He studied her face for a moment while she poured two cups of coffee. He debated whether or not to tell her that she awakened him screaming about her nightmare, but the part about him rocking her was not a dream. When she asked him how he wanted his coffee, he shelved the thought, deciding to hold off.
“A spoon of sugar and some creamer,” he said in reply to her question.
“We’ve got several flavors of creamer. What’s your pleasure? There’s hazelnut, chocolate mint, …”
“Hazelnut, please,” he interrupted.
No need to rattle off all of the flavors when the one he wanted was named first. She got it out of the fridge and poured a dab into both of their cups. She took the muffins out of the microwave.
“Do you like butter on your muffin?” she asked.
“What kind are they?” he asked.
“Poppyseed,” she said.
“Sure.”
Victoria got out the tub of margarine and spread it on both halves of each of the muffins. She set the plate on the eating counter, and
then walked around it to sit on one of the bar stools. They sat there sipping coffee and munching muffins while watching the news. Victoria was amazed that she had met this man a mere four days prior, and yet here they were, alone in her house, eating breakfast together like they were old married folk. It just felt so right. It was quick, but felt so right.
She hadn’t felt this way about a man ever. Not even her schoolgirl crush on Travis held a candle to her feelings for Rafael. She wondered if he felt what she was feeling. She also wondered if it would last. Would he ride the storm with her that she was about to sail in to?
Was there really something to her mother’s accusations that he somehow cheated her father out of his company? What if she found out that he had? How would that affect their relationship? Could she love a man who had apparently destroyed her father? There were so many unanswered questions about all the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. She needed answers. But would she like the ones she got? What if she just let everything alone? Just let David Thornton’s death remain a suicide? What if the truth were something so ugly, so hideous, so destructive that she couldn’t bear it?
But what if it wasn’t? What if the truth was that the company had been sold fair and square? That Rafael was a good, kind, decent man? What if her mother was truly mentally ill, and had finally gone off the deep end? What if? What if? What if?
Suddenly, Victoria realized that Rafael had said something.
“Huh?” she asked, turning to look at him.
“I said, what time is the lieutenant coming over this morning?” he repeated.
“Oh, I don’t know. He didn’t really say, did he? He just said he’d be over ‘in the morning.’ Whenever that is. I assume he could come any time after eight o’clock.”
“Yeah, probably,” Rafael agreed.
“Do you want something else for breakfast?” Victoria asked.
“Well, I could stand a little more,” Rafael said. “Do you have some eggs?”
“Sure. How do you want them fixed?”
“How about a couple of fried eggs, over easy, and bacon?”
“Let me look.”
Victoria checked the fridge for bacon. There was a part of a package of turkey bacon in one of the fridge drawers. She asked him if that was OK. He said it was fine. So she got out a skillet and fried up the bacon and eggs.
“Toast?” she inquired.
“One, please,” he said.
Victoria wasn’t in the mood for bacon and eggs that morning, so while Rafael’s breakfast was frying, she poured herself a bowl of cold cereal. When everything was done, she dished it all up on a plate, buttered his toast and asked if he wanted peanut butter and jam. He did. When his toast was fixed, she put the plate down in front of him, with a fork, and then got out the milk for her cereal.
She sat down beside him again and they ate their breakfast. They discussed what the day might bring. After the policemen had come and gone, Victoria wanted to go to the hospital to visit Lena. Rafael needed to go to work, but he told Victoria to call him anytime she wanted to. He was interested to know what the police would find, if anything. He also wanted to know how Lena was doing. So he told Victoria to call him with any news at all, and he’d check in with her periodically.
After he finished his breakfast, he got ready to go to his office. This just feels so right, he thought. She made me breakfast, and now I’m off to work. Just like a regular couple. If the circumstances weren’t so awful, he would have been in seventh heaven. Just before he walked out of the house, he came back into the kitchen where Victoria was tidying up to tell her goodbye.
“Keep in touch today, and maybe we can meet somewhere for lunch,” he told her.
“OK, sounds good,” Victoria said, smiling up at him.
He held her for a moment, then kissed her goodbye and left.
He hadn’t been gone but about ten minutes when Victoria’s cell phone rang. She answered it the call, and found Lieutenant Mobry on the other end.
“I’m free to come over now, if it’s convenient for you,” he said.
“Yes, now is good,” Victoria answered.
“Good. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You’ll have to buzz me from the gate,” Victoria told him. “Then I can let you in.”
“No problem,” he said. “See you soon.”
They disconnected, and Victoria looked around to make sure everything was tidy. Lena had always taken care of the kitchen, but she was lying in a hospital bed right now. After living on her own for seven years, however, Victoria had learned to take care of her own house. She was no longer the rich kid who could leave everything to the cook and the housekeeper. She could manage a house by herself.
She went into her father’s office to just look around before the police arrived. Maybe she could spot some other clue that would help to solve the mystery of his death. She randomly opened his desk drawers, looking at the contents of two or three of them. Just ordinary stuff that people keep in desk drawers—paper, pens, tape, staples, and so on.
In the fourth drawer that she opened, Victoria spotted a yellow legal pad. She remembered that the suicide note had been written on yellow legal paper, so she pulled the pad out of the drawer and looked at it. The top sheet had a bunch of numbers doodled all over it. The second sheet had names written on it. The name that caught her eye was written across the top in big, bold letters: MARIAN.
Under her name, randomly scattered around the sheet, not even necessarily on the lines, were several men’s names. Paul Johnson. Kevin Trapp. Dan Sheets. Rob Kensington. The names went on and on. A few she recognized. Most she did not. Then, near the bottom, in small print was written “Rafael Rivera?” Rafael! Rafael? Why were these names written on this page like this? Why was Rafael’s name the only one with a question mark after it? She was tempted to tear out this sheet and hide it, but then she decided that it may be part of the puzzle and she’d better leave it. Besides, the bottom portion of the sheet of paper had been torn away.
Wondering if this was where the suicide note had been torn from, Victoria hurried up to her room to grab the folder full of papers she had collected that pertained to her father and his death. She’d need it anyway when the officer arrived. Back in the office, she pulled out the police report that had the copy of the suicide note clipped to it. The photocopy was clear enough that it showed the ragged edges of the original scrap of paper. She was about to compare it to the torn sheet in the legal pad when the gate buzzer sounded.
She hurried to the gate panel, checked to see who was there, and the opened the gate for Lieutenant Mobry. She waited near the front door for him to ring the bell, which didn’t take him long.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Victoria said as she opened the door for him.
“Good morning, Miss Thornton,” he returned.
“Please, come in.”
She held the door open wide for him and another man to enter.
“Miss Thornton, this is Detective Nash,” Lieutenant Mobry said.
“Victoria, please,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, Detective.”
“Pleased to meet you, too,” Detective Nash replied.
Victoria shook hands with both men, and then invited them to follow her into her father’s office. She laid out the folder of the papers that she had collected that pertained to the sale of her father’s business and his death.
“I have attempted to fill in Detective Nash on what’s going on here, but we may need for you to go over your suspicions again,” Lieutenant Mobry said.
“Sure, no problem. I can start from the beginning if you need me to,” she said. “In fact, I have something new to show you that I discovered just before you got here.”
“What’s that?” the lieutenant asked.
“You’ll remember that the suicide note was written on yellow legal pad paper, right?” Victoria said.
“Right.”
“I started going through my dad’s desk a few minutes ago and
found a yellow legal pad in one of the drawers. Here it is. Now, see on the top sheet there are lots of numbers. It looks like he may have been toying with dollar figures, possibly trying to decide what to do about the company, or something like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, the second page has my mother’s name written at the top, then there are a bunch of men’s names written all over the rest of the page. And see here, the bottom of the page is torn off. I believe it will match the suicide note tear.”
She showed the two men the torn page, and then her copy of the suicide note. It didn’t take a detective to see that the suicide note had been torn from that very page.
“Now, I just found this, so I haven’t had time to think it through. But, what if these are the names of men that my mother was fooling around with? And what if what my dad wrote had to do with not wanting to deal with her infidelities any longer, and wanting out of their marriage, rather than wanting out of life itself. Does this make sense? When you read the note in this context, it becomes a desire to divorce my mother, not a suicide note.”
“Makes sense to me, does it to you?” Lieutenant Mobry asked Detective Nash.
“Perfect sense. Which ties up the only loose end you have to changing Mr. Thornton’s death from suicide to murder,” Detective Nash said.
“Exactly,” Victoria said.
“Do you know any of these men?” the lieutenant asked Victoria.
“Well, I know who a couple of them are. Can’t say I really know them, but I know who they are. I don’t know most of them. Except for Rafael Rivera. See, his name is the only one with a question mark after it. Which I don’t get.”
“There is another possibility here that we should consider,” the detective said.
“What’s that?” Victoria asked.
“Maybe these names are men who were interested in purchasing your father’s company. Maybe it was the company that he was tired of and wanted out of. Is that a possibility?”
“I guess anything is possible,” Victoria said slowly. “But he always seemed to love his business. And just yesterday I learned that my mother had a number of extramarital affairs over the years. If I could just ask Lena about these names, she might know some of them.”