Good as Dead(54)

“Oh, Evan doesn’t care about me,” Holly replied. “I know what it probably looks like, but it’s not like that,” she said. “We barely know each other.”

I didn’t want to contradict her, but I saw the look in Evan’s eyes when he was carrying her out of the house. It was not the look of a man who didn’t care. I wondered if her dead husband had seen that look, too, and if it had something to do with his untimely death. I still didn’t have any idea how her husband had died. What if he’d found out about his wife’s admirer and driven off a cliff? I knew it was dangerous to ask, but my curiosity got the best of me. “So, how do you know Evan?”

Her answer was as surprising as if her head turned into a bird and flew out the window.

“He works for the man who owns this house,” she said. And of course I knew who that was. Because my husband worked for him, too.

“Oh! So you’re renting!” I said, seizing on the opportunity to change the subject to something less emotionally charged. The fact that Jack Kimball owned her house and employed my husband was a crazy coincidence, but hardly scandalous. Jack Kimball probably owned many houses. He was a mogul, and moguls own properties—that’s why they’re moguls.

“Do you know who owns your house?” I asked, eager to share the coincidence. If she didn’t already know, surely she’d get a kick out of learning the Jack Kimball was her landlord. And that my husband also had a connection to him.

“No,” she said. “Evan found it, we only deal with him.”

I thought about the house being owned by an LLC, and how it was entirely possible she didn’t know who owned it, just as I hadn’t until a few days ago—and probably never would have, if it weren’t for Andy’s contract.

“And you never asked him?” I said, setting up my big reveal. I couldn’t wait to tell her she had a celebrity landlord. If I sensed she was uncomfortable that I was snooping around, I would just explain that I looked up the public record to see how much it sold for to know what my house was worth. People do that all the time.

“I’m not allowed to know,” she said, and my excitement mounted. It made perfect sense that Jack Kimball would want to preserve his privacy. But I figured we could keep it our little secret.

“Because the man who owns this house . . . ,” she began, then looked down into her cup.

“What about the man who owns this house?” I asked, thinking maybe she did know after all, and was just baiting me.

She put down her coffee and looked me square in the eye. “The man who owns this house killed my husband.”

I nearly fell out of my chair. I must have looked incredulous because she explained, “He lets us live here for free. So we don’t try to find out who he is and press charges.”

I was too flabbergasted to speak. If what she was saying was true, Jack Kimball—the man who single-handedly was about to pull us out of poverty—was a killer.

And nobody knew it but me.





JACK


Three months ago

I wish I had been the one behind the wheel. I would have turned myself in right then and there. I would have faced the consequences, apologized, endured my punishment.

Yes, it would have been the end of my career, but I’ve had a good run. I’ve had success beyond my wildest dreams, provided well for my family, and lived my fifty years on earth to the fullest.

I thought about saying that I did it, but it was too risky. Not because I feared going to jail—I wasn’t worried about that, not really. I was worried they’d figure out it wasn’t really me. I was at work that day, my employees all saw me. Even if I could get them to lie for me—which I couldn’t, and wouldn’t—I worked on a studio lot. There are cameras everywhere, clocking who comes in, who goes out. There was no way to say I wasn’t at work when it happened. I had been there all morning.

And then there were the phone records. That devastating incoming call that made my breakfast rise up in my throat. I didn’t know what I was hearing at first. Slow down, I can’t understand you, I told him, until I realized something horrific had happened. Then in a stern voice I said, Hang up the phone and meet me at the house.

The entire ride home I prayed that I had misunderstood. The words were garbled, mangled by emotion. Maybe I didn’t really hear “I think I killed him.” But then why was he sobbing like that?

The twenty-minute ride to the house was a blur. I was not in my body. My car drove on autopilot, stopping at red, cruising through green. This isn’t real. Things like this don’t happen to people like me. Tragedies befall damaged people. I am healthy, hardworking, good. This can’t be happening. Not to me.

A man will go to extreme lengths to protect himself from pain. He will lie, cheat, steal, or even resort to violence in order to save himself. It’s how, as human beings, we are wired. It’s in our DNA.

Until we have children. Then our focus shifts from protecting ourselves to protecting them. It makes perfect sense. We are today, but they are tomorrow. Our kids are our future, our legacy, a chronological extension of ourselves.

I pulled into the driveway and opened the garage. He was already there, sitting inside the SUV. I could see the outline of his shoulders hunched over the wheel.

I parked and got out of my Porsche.

Then walked into the garage and hugged my son.