Tattooed

by Pamela Callow

  “You always let her walk all over you,” she had said, her voice bitter. Kenzie was a true Daddy’s girl, who basked in his attention. It was easy for him—he just gave in to her demands. Discipline was not a technique at which he excelled.

  And look where it got them. Their daughter abused drugs, ignored her curfew and threw wild parties. Frances was convinced that Kenzie had some blame for what had happened to Imogen Lange.

  And when Kenzie disappeared from home—the same night a girl went missing at Mardi Gras—Frances had a terrible feeling Kenzie was involved. But Gus became enraged when Frances broached the subject, accusing her of believing the worst of their beautiful, talented daughter.

  Kenzie called a week after she left home. Frances told her that she would send her an airplane ticket. Kenzie begged for cash.

  Frances refused. “You should have plenty of cash from my silver teapot that you stole.”

  “It wasn’t worth much,” Kenzie said. Frances hung up on her, furious and bitter. What had she done to deserve a child like that?

  “She’ll come home if she has no options,” she told Gus.

  “She said it herself—she has no place to sleep. She’s on the streets, Frances! She could be abused, or killed, even.”

  He sent her money.

  And she never came home.

  Her husband was heartbroken. Frances, however, was angry. Then she became scared. But not about Kenzie’s safety. As the search went on for Heather Rigby, and the grieving parents pled for the girl’s return, her certainty that Kenzie was involved in her disappearance intensified.

  Especially when the Japanese wisteria, which had been thriving, died. And Frances removed it. What she found, buried under the wisteria, horrified her. And convinced her that her daughter had committed a terrible crime.

  But Kenzie stayed away. Heather Rigby remained missing. And neither Gus nor Frances was forced to confront the terrible truth.

  They only had to face each other.

  They stayed together for Cameron’s sake. When he started university, Gus seized his opportunity and married his student.

  How pathetic, Frances had told herself.

  And then, one morning, she woke up on an escalator. Her left leg was weak. She could not lift it over the edge of the bathtub. Her supporting leg twitched violently.

  Four months later, after she was tested for many terrible diseases, she was diagnosed with ALS. The worst of them.

  After the initial shock, she slipped into depression. She toyed with the idea of suicide—never fully appreciating that the choice would eventually be taken from her without any warning—but Cameron’s wife had just given birth to twins.

  And, for a brief period of time, before her body stumbled farther down the escalator, she had something to live for. When Lily Frances was born—with the red hair of her grandmother and her never-discussed aunt—Frances realized that she deeply wished to see Kenzie again.

  She had followed Kenzie’s career, amazed at the success of her daughter. She lurked on Kenzie’s blog regularly, studying the designs her daughter created. She had never appreciated the art of tattooing until then. She had never appreciated the passion that drove her daughter to strike out on her own. She admired her daughter’s success and was relieved that she had made something of her life. Those terrible events of Kenzie’s seventeenth year were relegated to the secret crypt of family sins.

  Cameron caught her lurking on Kenzie’s KOI blog one day. Her son had never gotten over Kenzie’s abandonment of her family. As far as he was concerned, the older sister who had embarrassed him for so many years with her insolent and wild behavior was dead. Good riddance, he had told Frances.

  But he had seen the tears in his mother’s eyes.

  And Kenzie, summoned by her brother, had returned.

  It had been a moment that Frances would hold tight when her body no longer could hold anything at all.

  But then Heather Rigby’s body had been discovered. All the doubts, all the fears were excavated with her remains.

  Buried for so long in Frances’ psyche was the fear that it had been her inadequacy as a mother that had ultimately led to Kenzie’s involvement in Heather’s death. Had the tensions in their home life led Kenzie to act out, spiraling downward into drug abuse—and murder?

  Or had Kenzie’s delinquent behavior been a facet of a gene, preordained from when egg met sperm?

  Frances would never know if it was nature or nurture that led Kenzie to be involved in the crime against Heather Rigby—and she would never know the extent of Kenzie’s involvement, either—but she was in a position to offer closure to Heather’s parents. She wanted to offer penance before she died.

  And by so doing, she would also demonstrate to her estranged daughter, with the only means she had left at her disposal, that she loved her as deeply as a mother could love a child.

  She would protect her daughter until the day she died.

  But there weren’t too many steps left on the escalator. The machine ate them with progressive rapidity.

  She just hoped she had enough days left to get the job done.

  40

  Kate flipped through the completed affidavit, still warm from the laser printer. She had been at her office for the past eighty minutes, typing up the document. All the while, her brain rejected each and every word.

  The whole confession stank. Frances Sloane was taking the fall for her daughter. And if Kate had had even one smidgeon of doubt about Kenzie’s culpability, the fact her mother was willing to prolong the suffering of her final days of life was the most compelling evidence of all.

  The sun beat on her back. The air-conditioning had been turned off for the weekend and the stale, warm air in her office felt suffocating. Sweat trickled under her arms. She needed some guidance about this mess. Eddie was off-limits, since he now represented Kenzie.

  Kate dialed Randall’s cell phone number.

  Answer the phone, Randall. Please.

  On the fourth ring, he answered.

  She sagged against the chair. “Randall, it’s Kate.”

  “How are you? Is everything okay?” His concern was a balm to her horrible day. But guilt wormed its way through. She hadn’t told him about the break-in or the stalker. Nor had she told him about her coffee with Ethan—or that he had spent the night on Muriel’s sofa after the break-in.

  She pushed a wisp of hair from her now-sweaty forehead.

  “I need some advice. Do you have a minute?”

  “Give me a sec.” She heard a door close. He came back on the line. “The kids are in the other room. I will have to go shortly—we have an outing planned this afternoon. A new exhibit at MOMA.”

  “That’s nice.” It did sound nice. And very far away from where she was in her life right now.

  She shouldn’t have called him.

  “So what’s up?” Randall asked. “Is it Frances?”

  Kate exhaled. “Yes. And Finn. And Kenzie. Her daughter. Oh, and Eddie.”

  “I see. This sounds complicated. Start at the beginning.”

  She told him about Harry Owen refusing to help Frances, about the police questioning Frances and Kenzie, about Kenzie being arrested, how Finn revealed he was dating Kenzie and asked Eddie to represent her, and then, the final bombshell: Frances confessing to Heather’s murder.

  “This is crazy,” Randall murmured. “I can’t believe this all started with a simple legal opinion. I’m sorry I got you involved with Frances Sloane, Kate.”

  “It’s not your fault. I could have said no. But I wanted to help.” She stared at her law degree mounted on the wall. “What should I do?”

  “About what?”

  “Frances’ confession! She didn’t do it, Randall!”

  “You believe that she’s protecting her daughter.”

  “Yes!”

  “And you think Kenzie did it?”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “And are you a judge or a lawyer, Kate?”

  He let
his words sink in.

  What he said was true.

  But was he biased in favor of Kenzie based on his own experiences?

  “Kate, I know how destructive speculation can be.” His tone softened. “You have to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  Kate stared at the file folder holding Frances’ affidavit. Don’t do this to me, Randall. “I don’t have to give her the benefit of anything. I’m not her lawyer.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Kate. I thought you believed in the principle of innocent until proven guilty. If you hadn’t, I would still be in prison.”

  He didn’t say the words, but they hung in the air between them: You are being hypocritical.

  Kate exhaled. “I did believe in it. I do believe in it.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  She shook her head. “Not when it comes to Kenzie.”

  “I think you are blinded by your anger, Kate.”

  “Maybe you are, too, Randall.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Maybe you don’t want to consider the fact that she is guilty of murdering an innocent girl—and that her mother created a false confession to protect her—because you are still angry at how the police targeted you. Maybe they didn’t make a mistake this time.”

  Silence.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Things really are still a mess, aren’t they?”

  He wasn’t referring to the Frances Sloane case.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Tell him, Kate. Tell him everything.

  “I just don’t want you to make a mistake you’ll regret, Kate,” he said softly. “It took a long time for you to get over what happened to your sister.”

  “I know. And the person who caused all of it is now going to get away with murder.”

  “Not necessarily, Kate. The police might suspect Frances is lying. And they can test her with the holdback evidence.”

  “True.” The tension in her chest eased a little.

  “But, Kate…” He paused. “Has it occurred to you that Frances may, in fact, be guilty of the crime? You have some baggage—quite rightly—about Kenzie. But it does not mean she is a murderer.”

  “Frances is even less likely to be a murderer than Kenzie.”

  “How do you know, Kate? Not too many people walk around with ‘killer’ tattooed on their foreheads.”

  “So what you are telling me is that I have to give the police this confession, even though I believe my client is lying.”

  “You don’t have any proof that she is lying, do you?”

  “No.”

  The file folder looked so bland, so innocuous, lying on her desk.

  “Then your duty is to follow her instructions.”

  Kate exhaled. “Okay.”

  “You knew that anyway. You didn’t need me to tell you that.”

  “I suppose not. It’s just…you haven’t met them, Randall. It really kills me to turn in this confession. It seems so unfair.”

  “It was Frances’ choice,” Randall said. “She will now have to face the consequences.”

  Kate took a deep breath. She had to tell him. She couldn’t avoid this any longer. Like Frances, she had to face the consequences. “Something else has been going on.”

  “I can tell by the tone of your voice that it isn’t good news.”

  “No.” She swallowed. “Someone is stalking me.”

  “Jesus Christ, Kate! When did this happen?”

  “The day before yesterday,” she whispered.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” His voice was strained.

  He knew. He sensed the distance, too.

  “Because it happened so fast.”

  He exhaled a long, slow breath. “Start at the beginning.”

  She told him about the note and the break-in.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “My security firm called. They responded right away.”

  “And what are they doing to find the stalker?”

  “There is a detective who is following up leads on the sketch.” She fought to keep her voice steady, but the memory of the drawing made her stomach churn.

  “You aren’t staying in your house, are you?”

  “No, I’m at Muriel’s.”

  “Just you and her?”

  Kate closed her eyes. “Ethan slept on the couch.”

  “How did he get involved in this? He’s in Cold Case,” Randall asked, his voice terse.

  “I called him, Randall.” Kate closed her eyes. “He came right away.”

  There was silence.

  “I see.” She felt his hurt, his anger, pulsing over the phone connection. “What, exactly, are you trying to tell me?”

  “All I’m telling you is what happened. It was a factual recounting of the incident, Randall.”

  Oh, for God’s sake, she couldn’t believe she had lapsed into her lawyer persona.

  It was self-defense.

  “I see. Well, thank you for the factual recounting. Are you sure you did not miss any salient details?”

  “No,” Kate said. “That covers it all. I just thought you should know.”

  “I don’t know if I’m angrier that you didn’t tell me about the stalker or that Ethan slept on the sofa.” He cleared his throat. “Are you seeing him?”

  “No.” She paused. “I don’t think so.”

  “What the hell does that mean? You either are or you aren’t.”

  Her temper flared. “The same could be said about us, Randall. I have no idea what your feelings are or when your children will ever be ready to accept me into their lives! How long do you expect me to wait for you? I don’t want to spend my life waiting for something I may never have.”

  Silence.

  Kate counted the beats of her heart.

  “God.” Randall exhaled. “I’m sorry, Kate. This isn’t fair to you. I promise we’ll sort this out when I return in July.”

  July seemed a long time away.

  “Bye,” she said.

  41

  “I want you to give this to Lily for her seventeenth birthday.”

  This clearly was not what Cameron had expected when Frances called him at lunchtime and asked him to come right away—and without his family. She was sure he would have read about Kenzie’s arrest in the papers.

  Cameron waited patiently for her to finish her sentence. Speaking had become so laborious. Frustratingly, the harder it became, the more Frances had to say.