First Born(33)

Turbach.

That word is written in a note I wrote while researching late last night.

The Turbach Foundation.

I Google the place and discover it’s a small settlement close to the exclusive ski resort of Gstaad. I Google the Turbach Foundation and the website is more like an abandoned webpage. There’s a ‘Contact Us’ page and a general ‘About Us’ page. The foundation was established back in 2014 to make the world a better place. I Google James Kandee and find his Wikipedia page. It’s brief. Born in 1989 in Nairobi, Kenya, James is the current owner of a polo team in Argentina, a green energy company based out of London, and a real estate company in Hong Kong. He serves on the board of seven non-profits and charities. He is the only surviving child of Jemima and Freddy Kandee, owners and founders of the largest private cargo air fleet in continental Africa. They were tragically killed in a car crash in 2013. Google images offer a different side to James: hundreds of photos of him with young beautiful women. Where he is twenty, the women look about twenty. Now he’s well over thirty the women still look about twenty. I scroll down the search results. A mix of philanthropic escapades and wild parties in the Caribbean. There’s one photo, taken on the back of a yacht, on a semi-circular bench. The women are all looking out to sea; their faces aren’t shown, just the backs of their bikini clad bodies. There is only one man in the picture, James Kandee, and he’s looking straight at the camera. A small, delicate man.

I focus on the woman two places over from James. The back of her head. It’s my head. My hair. A tan version of my neck.

I finish my tea.

All of the places, dates, names and pertinent information go down on the waitress pad. All of it. And then I photograph the pad.

There’s an old blogpost on page eight of the Google search results, an interview with Kandee. He interned for two hedge funds, two non-profits, and a charity out of Moscow. It says he studied for one semester at NYU film school but I can’t find any other mention of that. It says he took a suite at the Carlyle while he studied in New York. It says it was his family’s suite.

I search KT’s secret email account for specific words: St Kitts, Monaco, Grand Prix, Aspen, Gstaad, Turbach, Carlyle, Malibu.

I get several hits. All of them irrelevant.

Except one.

No pleasantries or salutations. The subject line of the email is Monaco. The email says: Teterb 9am.

That’s all it says.

Mum and Dad walk into the diner and Mum looks more like Grandma now; her posture is shrinking. She is ageing a year each day. Dad still looks like Dad. He looks like he’s holding it together for her sake. Like he isn’t quite so affected.

I stand up and hug them both.

The waitress arrives and Mum mouths to me, You OK?

I nod.

They both order tea and muffins, and then they take off their coats.

‘We went to talk to Detective Martinez again today,’ says Mum. ‘He asked about you. About how you’re holding up.’

‘I just want them to find out who hurt KT. And then I can spend the rest of my life figuring out how to live without her. That’s how I’m holding up.’

‘We have some news, Moll.’

‘What is it?’

Mum puts her hand on the table and Dad places his hand on top of hers.

‘First of all, the medical examiner is releasing Katie back to us as of nine a.m. tomorrow morning.’

I smile. ‘That’s good. That’s good, right?’

‘We’ll talk to the crematorium tomorrow. They seem open to fitting us in as an emergency case. You can talk to them with us if you like.’

‘OK.’

Dad squeezes his eyelids tight together and then he says, ‘And the police told us what happened on the night Katie died. Information from the autopsy.’

I gesture for him to tell me. He bends closer to me and lowers his voice.

‘They say it was homicidal asphyxiation, Molly. That’s what happened – they know that for sure now.’

I put my hands up to my neck. ‘Oh, no.’

Mum reaches over and takes my hand.

‘She was strangled?’ I say.

Mum shakes her head. ‘The police say it was very quick, sweetie. They think it was a . . .’ She looks to Dad then back to me. ‘A pillow.’

‘A pillow?’

‘A pillow or a cushion. They found fibres,’ says Dad. ‘In her eyelid and inside her mouth.’

I think back to the baby pillow in London. How you can actually breathe through it.

The soups arrive and we pause our conversation.

‘But how? KT was strong. A pillow on her face?’

‘She had bruising on her cheeks but also on her torso and upper arms. We never saw those marks. She was pinned down in the bed, my love,’ says Dad, and Mum is crying now. He puts his arm around her. Holds her tight. ‘The police say it would have happened very fast. A few minutes from start to finish. Or less, even. Katie would have lost consciousness well before she died.’

I take a deep breath and focus on Mum.

‘Her blood work came back clear,’ says Mum. ‘No drugs or poison. Your father was right – she didn’t hurt herself. That might have been much slower, so that’s something to be grateful for.’

I feel sick.

‘At least we know now,’ says Dad, looking tired. ‘It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me, to any of us, but at least we know now.’