The Girl Next Door

by Lisa Aurello

  The press enjoyed it immensely, headlines screaming about the case all day long. Yet another unexpected twist in the case of the killer stalker. What would surely make Rhett Harmon’s heart glad was the fact that Kendra made a much less sympathetic defendant than Jane Jensen.

  Over the next few days, Kendra sat captive in her apartment—the press camped out just outside the front entrance of her building—and plotted her revenge. She knew there was no evidence against her and didn’t even know how the cops had traced it back to her unless it was merely because of her lifelong friendship with Mason. How would they build the case against her, though?

  First off, there was no way she’d have that kind of money to pay off a contract killer. There was no money trail at all—Mason had left the cash in a manila envelope and slipped it under her apartment door, ten stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, lined up side by side so they’d fit under the metal door.

  Plus, she had nothing to gain from Cate Caldwell’s death—nothing that they would know about. She and Mason had been nothing more than friends, and they hadn’t been in contact in years before he called her about this plan.

  By the end of the week, Kendra had convinced herself there was nothing to worry about. The charges couldn’t possibly stick.

  Chapter 40

  Rhett Harmon leaned back in her leather chair, tapping a pen against her lips, and looked in her colleague’s eyes for a protracted moment… and then smiled. “Here’s the way I see it going. Then you can tell me your scenario.”

  “You’re on,” Jackson Altamont said. “Shoot.”

  “Poor choice of words, Jackson. All right.” She stood up in her black Manolos and began to pace as she spun her tale, her version of how it all went down.

  “In high school they got together. Spent a lot of time with one another; they’d go to her house—both parents worked—smoke pot, screw their brains out, and when they were too tired to do any more, they’d settle on the sofa with an oversized bowl of popcorn and watch old movies.”

  She leaned back against the front of her desk, grasping the edge with her hands. “Hitchcock was a favorite of both. Especially Strangers on a Train.

  “Looking back, neither could remember whose idea it was, couldn’t remember the conversation that spawned the idea and started them on the path. Both knew that great reward only comes attached with great risk. Both of them accepted it.

  “They didn’t start planning it right away. After all, Mason hadn’t even met his wife yet. But both Kendra and Mace knew that eventually they’d meet the right person and when they did, they’d know it. Mason met Cate in his junior year at Tufts. She’d graduated three years earlier and—”

  “Actually she took a few years off so she graduated the same year as Caldwell,” Jackson interrupted.

  Harmon waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever. She was in town for a dog show, decided to attend the alumni-student mixer or whatever was going on. Cate was dressed all in tight black. Kickass, in other words.

  “Caldwell took one look and…” her hand sliced through the air. “… was instantly smitten: lean, long-legged, and golden, and the fact that she was older and more sophisticated than he added to her allure. So smitten, in fact, that they were married for over a year before it occurred to him that Cate was the target that he and Kendra had been waiting for. She was perfect. He already had the life insurance policy—each of them had taken one out on the other. She was already starting to massively annoy him with the stupid fucking dog and all the pretentious dog shows she put her in.

  “Not to mention that Cate didn’t give a flying fuck that he wanted kids—all she cared about was her preening canine. When she began making noise about adding an Afghan puppy to their household, he called Kendra.”

  “How do you know she wanted a puppy and not kids?”

  “Her mother told me.” Rhett placed her hands on Jack’s chair arms and leaned in close. “Kendra was ready, waiting, and absolutely willing.”

  She straightened and again started pacing. “Kendra had been patient, waiting all these years for that phone call to come from Mason. In the interim, she’d quit her education after high school, done some catalog modeling, and then some lean days forced her to do a little prostitution and porn on the side. Ultimately, she found a sugar daddy, and the creepy old bastard paid her bills, but she wasn’t living large by any measure. As far as sugar daddies go, hers must have been relatively cheap, considering her apartment and clothes,” she added. “No high-end life for Kendra. So despite having a pretty nice setup, she wanted out, away from his wrinkled old body and imperious I-own-you attitude, and Mason’s insurance policy would help—well, her half of it. She was starting to age—and badly at that—and was looking a little dog-eared. Two million bucks split two ways? She could live on it nicely for her lifetime if she was smart.

  “And Kendra believed she was smart.”

  Now Rhett sidled back around her desk and sat down, her eyes on Jackson with a laser focus as only Rhett could do so well.

  “They needed a fall guy. Or girl, as it were.

  “‘Who would kill a wife if not the husband?’ Kendra asked him over lunch one day.

  “‘A lover?’

  “She considered the situation. ‘Maybe. Who else? Maybe someone a little less obvious?’

  “Now he shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Got someone in mind?’

  “Her eyes gleamed with joyful malevolence. ‘As a matter of fact I do. How about…’ and Kendra leaned across the table to get closer to him, ‘…a stalker?’

  “‘Stalker? There’s a slight problem, Ken. I don’t have anyone stalking me.’

  “‘Not yet you don’t. But if we make it irresistible, you will. We just have to think on it for a while,’ she said, and took a bite of her burrito. When her mouth was full she made a noise at the back of her throat and Mason looked up from his meal. ‘Do you remember back in high school… there were like… those scary girls who used to just swoon over you?’”

  Jackson smirked. “How do you know they were eating burritos?”

  Rhett shrugged. “Everyone eats burritos. Don’t interrupt me; I’m on a roll.”

  “You’re on a burrito,” he grumbled. “Go ahead.”

  “OK,” she smiled. “Now, where was I? Oh, right. So… Mason smirked and said, ‘Vaguely. What’d they look like?’

  “‘One was fat and wore brown clothes all the time. The UPS girl,’ Kendra laughed at her own joke. ‘She had a friend who was real tall and thin, and had really bad eyesight. Her glasses were the thickest I’d ever seen. Those are our best candidates.’

  “‘All right,’ Mason said and leaned back in his chair so Kendra could notice that chest of his with all those tight abs. He was all in now.”

  Jackson shook his head slowly as his eyes rolled up.

  “The next week when they met again for lunch, Kendra had a copy of their yearbook. They selected the three potential candidates but before too much time, they both realized that one out of the three was more than perfect. She had been obsessed with Mason, and they knew she’d be perfect. Her name was Jane Jensen, the girl in brown.

  “The plan was to have it look like she was stalking him… or even entice her to actually stalk him. They would place him on her train several times, talking loudly in her presence about buying a home in Riverdale. They did their homework and knew Jane had become unexpectedly successful since she graduated college. Knowing she’d have the money to afford it, Mason talked up the house. They hit pay dirt when Kendra’s realtor friend informed them there was a buyer for the adjacent townhome to Mason’s—a buyer named Jane Jensen.

  “Finding the two houses for sale had been nothing short of serendipitous. Both had been for sale concurrently because the contiguous homes were owned by the same estate. It was another crucial part of the plan, and this was one that had required Cate’s approval. But Mason knew his wife would love the Riverdale home, so it wasn’t too hard to talk her into it. Jane, true to her past behavior, fel
l in line and purchased the house.

  “From there they needed to set up a hit, and Kendra would pretend to be Jane. But they also needed to draw Jane out that way. Kendra pretends to be a professional headhunter with a company who wants to steal Jane from MT. Jane turns her down, time and time again, but through mettle and sheer determination, Kendra convinces Jane to at least make the trip to speak with her. Now they have Jane where they want her—in Dutchess County.

  Jane gets there and the headhunter is a no-show. She cannot believe the audacity of the woman. She decides to have lunch and then go home. That takes about an hour. Meanwhile, Kendra is meeting up with Pernod disguised as Jane Jensen.

  “The hit is paid for in the minutes before Jane gets back on the highway. Kendra plans to run Jane off the road and hopefully she’ll be killed. The highway Jane uses is known for fatal accidents because of its winding, narrow lanes, which is a gift from the universe for Kendra. The plan works perfectly. At the right moment, she cuts Jane off on the left and Jane has no choice but to veer toward the oncoming traffic, thus having a head-on with a vehicle on that side. Kendra drives away.

  “Setting up the few clues was a breeze. Mason saw Ms. Bartholomew taking the photos of the house. He searched for them on the Internet and found one on Ms. Bartholomew’s social media account where she tends to display her photographic talent. Copied it, put it in his drawer.

  “Prior to that, he’d tailed Jane for a few weeks, saw her buying the furniture… went in after her. The owner, flush with all that cash, mentions to him that he loves customers who pay cash. Mason turns on the charm and learns Jane withdrew seven grand in cash to pay the store. He arranges to pay the hitman as soon as possible after the withdrawal so it seems to implicate Jane. It’s all going so well.

  “But someone saw the whole thing—the active parts of the plan. Benny didn’t go to the police because he was drunk and high, and he knew he’d be arrested. But a few months and full sobriety later, he’s part of a 12-step program. He has to go to the authorities to tell them what he knows as part of his pledge to make amends and right wrongs.”

  There was silence in the room when Rhett finished her version of the story. After a minute or so, Jackson got up and poured himself a whiskey from the bottle that Rhett kept in the back of a filing cabinet. At nearly four o’clock it was almost after hours so it was sort of acceptable.

  “Want to hear my version? It’s a lot shorter, and Mason isn’t a leading character in it.”

  Now Rhett rolled her eyes. “He’s as guilty as sin. Why can’t you see that?”

  “Because I don’t think he was involved. You have him planning it in high school, even before he met his wife.”

  “My gut says he’s involved—don’t let his slimy charm fool you, Jackson. I think my scenario is close to what happened… with some dramatic embellishment. Maybe it didn’t start in high school but it did at some point. You have to see that Kendra Ortalano is too stupid to plan and carry it out by herself. She had to have help. She claimed that she contacted her co-conspirator at a number that turned out to be a dead end, but that could easily have been a prepaid phone.”

  “Agree on all points, but it wasn’t Caldwell. Maybe we should cast around for someone else?”

  “Like who?”

  “I thought I had the one with Mason’s cousin Jake Emerson. After all, he dated Cate in college.”

  “And?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t pan out. No real motive. I had Detective Kelvin interview him, and then I myself met with him. According to both Mason and Cate’s mother, Jake and Cate dated casually, and Jake wasn’t at all upset when Cate preferred his cousin. Mrs. Cobb called Jake a delightful young man with a lot going for him—it was clear that she preferred him for her daughter over Mason. Plus, Cate was a silent partner in his firm, and though when she died her shares reverted to him, he turned around and immediately gave them to his cousin, making them fifty-fifty partners. That sort of dissolved any financial motive. Nothing stuck.”

  Rhett pursed her lips. “Hmm, that’s a shame. It would’ve made for a sensational trial.”

  “Yeah, well… c’est la vie. Take Caldwell out and I’m all in; we’ll go after Kendra Ortalano with all our guns.”

  “We already are. She was taken into custody this morning. We are fast-tracking the case against her too. I want that killer behind bars fast.” She paused. “Tell me one thing, Jackson: why do you insist that Mason’s innocent?”

  “Why do you have such a hard-on for him?”

  She pressed her lips together, refusing to rise to his bait. “I have a close friend who’s an FBI profiler. I’m wondering if he could shed any light on Caldwell for us. I can set up a meeting under some guise so they could talk. It would help to figure out what makes him tick.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Call him. It can’t hurt, but my money says he’s not involved.”

  Rhett crossed her legs, admiring how they looked in her high heels. When she was walking in them, the heels made her calves flex and they looked seriously good. But even when sitting the shoes did wonders for her legs. There’s no denying that shoes make the woman as well as the man. “Tell me why you’re so sure.”

  “For one thing, Cate Caldwell was much hotter than Kendra Ortalano. And she came from money. Why kill her for a paltry two mil that he has to split down the center? Put himself at a disadvantage with a used-up shrew like Kendra? Someone like that is so easily prone to resort to blackmail if she runs out of funds.

  “Also, he seems like a genuinely nice guy. I don’t get any sociopath vibes from him. Your scenario, while fascinating, seems farfetched to me, Rhett. And way too complicated with too many things that could have gone wrong. Simple is best, and that’s how we’ll convince the jury. Honestly.”

  She stood up, snapping defensively, “I don’t think it’s at all farfetched, and if I find enough to prove it, I will do it.” Rhett Harmon had a very low threshold of tolerance for any kind of criticism, constructive or otherwise. She had a plan for her life, and there would be no deviation from it if she had anything to say about it. She reached over and picked up the receiver of the desk phone. “Yes, Bennett, get me Luca Derricks at the FBI. Quantico, Virginia. Let me know when you have him on the line. Thanks.”

  Chapter 41

  It happened fast.

  Kendra Ortalano was tried and convicted on three counts: first-degree murder, felony murder, and attempted murder. Although she’d had a decent attorney, he wasn’t able to counter the overwhelming evidence, and the prosecution was so confident of a conviction that they offered his client no plea deals. Zero. She was given two sentences of twenty-five years-to-life to be served concurrently and one of five-to-seven years to be served consecutively. Until they dragged her from the courtroom, she was loudly insisting she’d been set up by Mason Caldwell. Some of the jurors may have believed her—especially the middle-aged brunette at the far right who seemed way too sympathetic for Rhett’s taste—but since Mason Caldwell wasn’t on trial, it was a moot point.

  On the first day, Rhett Harmon strolled into court wearing a cloak of confidence and what her colleagues called—behind her back—her court-cunt clothes. It was an identity she’d carefully crafted over the first months of her ADA career. Every accessory was elegant and expensive, creating the serious yet stylish persona of winning assistant district attorney. High heels that wavered between sensible and sexy, matching two-piece suit, the skirt hemline just teasing the top of her knees as she walked, and a pale silk shirt. Her straight black hair worn either pulled back or up, subtle makeup, one strand of either freshwater or sterling silver pearls, and her Omega De Ville wristwatch. From the first words of her opening argument she owned the room, and she sensed it, never letting the momentum go sluggish. There was no way she was leaving this courtroom without a conviction.

  The jury was conflicted initially and took three days to finish deliberating. On the first day, the count was seven-five and on the next, nine-three. The three hol
douts—which definitely had to include fiftyish brunette—caved on the third day of deliberations. Of course, the defense had the jury polled—Rhett held her breath for those interminable moments. Already-won cases had fallen to mistrial many a time over jury polling by sore-losing attorneys on both sides. Although Rhett and Jackson were confident in their win, the three-day wait still didn’t make for good sport, and the polling prolonged the agony for a few more elastic minutes. Ortalano’s attorney, Ian Waterhouse, endured worse than they did—and he wasn’t accustomed to losing. Rhett had eyeballed the extremely fit attorney with appreciation throughout the trial. Maybe she should console him for his loss?

  The prosecution had proved its case with a believable narrative: Kendra had been rejected by Mason all throughout high school. She’d been jealous of his girlfriends and was always hanging onto his coattails. She also hated Jane Jensen, bullying her so much in high school that she once chased Jane into traffic where the latter got hit by a car. That incident had caused Kendra to lose friends and status, and apparently, she had nursed a grudge all these years. Resentment heated into violence recently when she’d run into a high school friend who caught her up on how well Jane Jensen was doing lately. Kendra wasn’t doing well at all, the opposite of well, in fact, and the old jealousy and insecurities alchemized into toxic venom.

  Though Kendra denied having any money—actively using the lack of it as part of her defense—the detectives had managed to locate a PayPal account under the name of Kendra Olson but with her tax and address information, into which funds were direct-deposited on a monthly basis by a phone-sex company operating out of a Newark, New Jersey warehouse that had her—or Kendra Olson—on its payroll during the time frame in question. For six months, varying amounts of money came through her PayPal account until just over ten thousand dollars was accrued. That entire amount was withdrawn the week before the hit man was paid and a check was cut to K. Olson. It was cashed a week later at a check-cashing store in the Bronx, and its surveillance footage showed a woman very closely resembling Kendra Ortalano cashing the check. The woman wore a distinctive red coat, and the cops found the same coat in the defendant’s closet.