Closer Than Blood

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean? Not exactly?”

“What happened might be my fault.”

Kendall was making a coffee run at the Kitsap County Administration Building for herself and Josh—because he’d actually done the deed the day before—when Eddie Kaminski called to check in.

“Tori Connelly is a tough nut,” he said.

“All you women in Kitsap are that hard, are you?” Kendall laughed.

“We’re the daughters of lumberjacks, you know. Hang on a sec.” She put a tip in the coffee girl’s tip jar and moved to a table overlooking Sinclair Inlet and the Bremerton shipyard. She set down the cups, wishing she’d wrapped them in paper sleeves. Her fingers stung.

“How’s the case?” she asked.

“Case is fine,” Kaminski said.

“I’m wondering how things are going in Kitsap.” She opened the lid of Josh’s cup and added two packets of sugar.

“Exhumation on the Reed boy is scheduled.”

“Good,” he said.

“I don’t know what we’ll find. But Dr. Waterman says the films indicate an irregularity that could use a relook.”

“Court ordered?”

“Yes, but we didn’t do it without getting permission from the family.”

“Tough and nice.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was just thinking that it was good to ask the family what they thought. You know, you’re tough and nice.”

“Port Orchard women?”

“Yeah, those lumberjacks are good folks.” She smiled.

“I’ll let you know what we—find.”

“You almost said ‘dig up,’ didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You caught me on that. Tough and nice.”

“What are you reading, Kendall?” Kendall looked over at Steven from her side of the bed. It was late and their bungalow was still. A book called Women Who Kill was propped up on her lap. It was after midnight and he’d fallen to sleep only to be awakened by her bedside lamp.

“How to kill your husband and get away with it. Or something along those lines.” Her tone was deadpan.

“Should I be worried?” he asked, propping his head up with an extra pillow.

“Maybe,” she teased.

“Some of these women that I’ve been reading about went through more men than we go through Splenda around here.”

“That’s a lot,” he said, rolling a little closer to look at the pages of the book. Steven was a handsome man, but never more so than at night when the stubble of dark whiskers peppered his chin. She inched a little closer to him, but continued reading. The book was not a forensic journal, but one of those compendiums of crime that she picked up at the Port Orchard Walgreens. Most cops were loath to admit it, but those kinds of books were a guilty pleasure.

“Who’s that?” Steven indicated a picture of a frumpy, middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses and shoulder-length dark hair.

“Nannie Doss. She confessed to killing eleven people.”

“That’s more husbands than Larry King has had wives.” Kendall laughed.

“Not all husbands with that one. She killed sisters, children, her mother. A real wonderful gal.”

“So you think Tori is a Black Widow, do you?” Kendall looked above her frameless readers.

“I have no idea, really. But two dead husbands, quick disposal of their remains, and a big cash settlement from insurance companies. A nice racket, I guess.”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind bumping off those you supposedly love.”

“That’s just it,” she said.

“These women don’t mind at all.” She went back to her book, reading up about cases of women who did just that. Many did it for money. A more recent case that caught her eye took place in California, where two women in their seventies murdered men living in their boardinghouse. A cop working the case said, “It was like Arsenic and Old Lace, but it doesn’t have Cary Grant.” She read the line to Steven and he laughed.

“Isn’t it great that you have such fun bedtime reading, honey?” His words were said teasingly, but there was a little jab in the mix, too. Kendall had never been able to separate the workday from her home life. She and Steven had gone around and around about it. There was a need to build a wall around her husband and Cody, but it wasn’t so easy. Not when her responsibility was so great.

“How much did those old gals get?”

“Two-point-eight million,” Kendall said. Steven cocked a brow.

“Jesus. That’s big bucks, considering how a gangbanger will kill a guy for a pair of tennis shoes and a five- dollar bill.” Another case, even more recent, involved a woman from upstate New York named Stacey Castor. Castor, forty, was convicted of murdering her husband and the attempted murder of her daughter.

“Nothing like keeping it in the family,” Steven said.

“She used antifreeze.”

“A woman that cold should use it on herself,” he said. Kendall rolled her eyes and nudged him.

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t.

“Couldn’t resist.” Steven reached over and gave her a kiss. That would be the sum of any affection between the two of them that evening. He’d seen his wife like this on more than one occasion. He called it “fact-finding mode,” and once she was immersed, she didn’t come up for air until she knew everything she needed to know. Every once in a while, she’d turn to him and say something about what she was reading.

“Case from Oregon is interesting,” she said.

“Sami Watanabe was convicted of murdering her husband and trying to kill her little boys.”

“Another real sweetheart,” Steven said.

“That’s right. They see everyone as unnecessary. What is necessary is the money they’ll get when their victims are out of the way.”

“So that’s Tori O’Neal?”

“I don’t know, Steven. But look at it, two husbands, a high school classmate, and her own mother. That’s four dead people connected to one person.” Steven pushed the book down so Kendall would focus on him.

“Her mother? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. It just strikes me as odd that Tori was the last person to see her mother alive.”

“She died of an overdose, right?”

“Technically, yes. I mean, no doubt. But even so, sometimes an overdose is accidental, sometimes on purpose.”

“Jesus, Kendall, you really don’t like Tori, do you?” She ignored his invitation to argue.

“I hate not knowing what happened to all the people who died, all the people who trusted her. Steven, really, one after another?”

“You could say that about other people, Kendall. Misfortune has a way of visiting the same people over and over.” Kendall looked away from her husband and back at the book.

“I agree. It could be just that. I guess I wouldn’t have thought of the first two as potential victims if we hadn’t considered the circumstances of the last two—the moneymakers.”

“Moneymakers,” he said, reaching for the bedside lamp. His half of the bed fell into darkness.

“That’s a cold way to think of anyone.” Kendall knew he was right and she wondered if someone she’d gone to school with could really be that evil.