Mr. Kendrick was struck and killed by a speeding car outside their home on Calvert Street in Van Nuys. I paused to look up the address. Holly had said they’d lived in Van Nuys. This detail checked out.
While by all accounts an accident, the budding reporter wrote, the driver fled the scene and at this writing is still at large.
I pondered the words “fled the scene.” If the student reporter got the story right, it was not just an accident, it was a hit-and-run—which is both an accident and a crime. The wheels in my head started turning. Could Jack Kimball have been the driver? If his identity was unknown to Holly, why had he bought her a house? I couldn’t make sense of it. I was going to need some professional help.
“Andy!” I called out. He was probably in the garage fixing something. He didn’t answer, so I unplugged my laptop and headed that way. If anyone could quash this crazy hypothesis, it would be Andy. He’d figure out what really happened, and then we’d laugh at how my imagination had once again gone completely off the rails.
I opened the garage door to see Andy sanding one of Margaux’s desk drawers. He stopped when he saw me. “She said it was sticky,” he began, and I cut him off.
“You need to help me with something,” I said, flipping the computer screen to face him. At the end of the obituary was a headshot of Gabriel Monroe Kendrick in military blues. Andy looked at it, then up at me. “What is that?”
“Holly’s husband’s obituary,” I said. “It says he was killed in a hit-and-run.”
I read him the short passage about the driver being at large, then announced, “You’re going to think this is crazy, but I think Jack Kimball might have been the driver.”
To my great surprise, my husband didn’t laugh at me. “Because he owns her house?” he asked.
I nodded, then dropped the bomb. “Holly told me the person who owns her house killed her husband.”
“When did she tell you that?” he asked.
“Just now, when I went to visit her.”
“That would be a hell of a coincidence,” he said. Then he asked, “She really said that?”
I nodded. “She said she lives there for free. Compliments of the man who killed her husband.”
He frowned. “But she doesn’t know who it is?”
I shook my head no. “Evan is some kind of middleman,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is, why would Jack Kimball anonymously be taking care of them?” Could it be for karma’s sake? Or is there a more diabolical reason?
“Let me see that,” Andy said, reaching for my computer. His eyes scanned the obituary. “Says he died on May 17,” he said, not really to me. His hands started tapping on my keyboard. And then they suddenly stopped.
“What?” I asked. I was eager for him to find the hole in my theory that would debunk the whole thing.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, looking up at me, “but I saw Jack Kimball on May 17.”
He had opened up his calendar of appointments. Sure enough, on that very day, he’d had a meeting with the one and only Jack Kimball.
“So he couldn’t have done it!” I said, feeling a surge of relief. “Because he was meeting with you!” It would have put a serious damper on things if my husband’s new boss was a killer. I once again felt foolish for even imagining it.
“No, he canceled on me,” Andy reminded me, “because something suddenly came up. But he was there on the lot. His office is all glass, I saw him through the window.”
I was getting confused now. Does that mean it could have been him? Or couldn’t have been him? My husband was already googling again. I looked over to see he’d typed “Jack AND Kimball AND family” into the search bar.
“He’s married with one son,” Andy said, clicking on a photo of a younger Jack Kimball with his wife and a boy who looked about ten.
My hand flew over my mouth as I audibly gasped.
“What?” Andy asked. “You recognize them?”
“The son,” I said. “What’s his name?”
It was an old photo, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
“Logan,” my husband said, reading the caption. “Why?”
My heart plunged into my stomach. Because it all made sense now.
“Logan,” I stuttered, pointing to his photo. “Logan is Savannah’s boyfriend’s name.”
Andy’s brow contracted. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “This photo is from eight years ago,” he said. “Which would make him well into his teens by now.” I remembered thinking what a good conversationalist he was for such a young man, how polite and composed—like someone who grew up in the limelight would be.