Mourning Malice: Malice, #7

By K'Anne Meinel

Dealing with the death of her wife, Alice finds raising a teenage daughter and two other children to be a challenge.  She hadn’t planned to ever be a parent, but for the love of her wife, now deceased, she will do what is necessary.

A threat to her teenage daughter leads to other revelations that bring out the “old” Alice we all know and love…Her predator instincts are aroused…What will she do next?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadoe Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781497353077

K'Anne Meinel

K’Anne Meinel è una narratrice prolifica, autrice di best seller e vincitrice di premi. Al suo attivo ha più di un centinaio di libri pubblicati che spaziano dai racconti ai romanzi brevi e di lungo respiro. La scrittrice statunitense K’Anne è nata a Milwaukee in Wisonsin ed è cresciuta nei pressi di Oconomowoc. Diplomatasi in anticipo, ha frequentato un'università privata di Milwaukee e poi si è trasferita in California. Molti dei racconti di K’Anne sono stati elogiati per la loro autenticità, le ambientazioni dettagliate in modo esemplare e per le trame avvincenti. È stata paragonata a Danielle Steel e continua a scrivere storie affascinanti in svariati generi letterari. Per saperne di più visita il sito: www.kannemeinel.com. Continua a seguirla… non si sa mai cosa K’Anne potrebbe inventarsi!

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Table of Contents

MOURNING MALICE

MOURNING MALICE | Book 7

REPRESENTED

K’Anne Meinel

MOURNING MALICE

A Novel by K’Anne Meinel

E-Book Edition

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Published by:

K’Anne Meinel on E-Book

Copyright © K’Anne Meinel July 2012

Copyright 2nd Edition © K’Anne Meinel December 2017

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MOURNING MALICE

Book 7

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E-Book Edition License Notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

K’Anne Meinel is available for comments at [e-mail] as well as on Facebook, her blog @ http://kannemeinel.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @ kannemeinelaim.com, or on her website @ www.kannemeinel.com if you would like to follow her to find out about stories and book’s releases or check with

www. ShadoePublishing.com or http://ShadoePublishing.wordpress.com/.

MOURNING MALICE

Book 7

Never in her life could Alice remember feeling like this, this...helpless.  It was an unfamiliar feeling for her, but she was certain she didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.  Seeing Kathy lying there had been one shock, dealing with the authorities another.  She didn’t remember dialing 911 but then remembered the odd little chirping noise of her house alarm.  She sat there stunned, barely able to answer their questions but in monosyllables.  They got the information out of her as to who she was, who Kathy was, and what she had found, but barely.  Normally she had contempt for authorities, but the shock, the vulnerability she was now feeling had suspended her normal feelings, her usually cool and cold demeanor that kept them at bay and allowed her to lie if necessary.  Unknowingly, her very vulnerability and honesty was her saving grace here.  They had honest answers from her, and she was in enough shock that they believed her.

What do you think?  Is she our suspect? one of the detectives asked the other soto-voice in speculation as they watched Alice watch the crime scene investigators.  She had barely moved but from the floor where she had been discovered, holding the corpse to the couch, where the detectives had extensively questioned her.

The other detective shook his head and said, Well, her information checks out.  She’s some investment guru from Palos Verdes, and the victim is her wife.  It’s obvious they were planning some type of picnic from the basket but the note that chick, he indicated the blonde Alice, mentioned, I’d like to see.

They both were silent as they watched other team members gather evidence, and then the coroner came in with a body bag.  As Alice watched, they unzipped it and lifted Kathy’s lifeless body into the bag and zipped it shut.  She closed her eyes in pain at the sight.  Both detectives noted her reaction.  She hadn’t cried, but then victims reacted differently at every scene.  Both detectives had already made up their mind that Alice was innocent of any wrongdoing and merely the wife of the deceased.  She was too petite and too much in shock to be the perpetrator of the crime.  Little did they know that looks were deceiving, but in this case, they were right.  Further evidence was being gathered, and they watched the team as the coroner brought in a gurney.  They lifted the body onto it.  Alice watched dully as they took her wife, her life, out on the gurney.

She sat there for a long time, answering any and all questions the detectives had for her until they said she could go.

In a little girl’s voice, her blonde petite prettiness noted, she asked, Could you call me a cab?  I don’t think I can drive.

Both detectives immediately agreed, and one of them pulled out his cell to make the call for her.  They had already decided in their own minds that she was innocent of any wrongdoing.  She would have to be cold and heartless to of pulled off this crime.  Little did they know that Alice was pulling into cold and heartless.  She was reverting back to the woman she had been before meeting Kathy, the woman who could have pulled off such a murder and met the police on their own terms, never arousing suspicions, never involved in such a crime.  At the moment though, she was just what they thought: a victim of a violent crime, an innocent bystander in the ruin of what had become an ideal life.

As the cab drove her home from the condo, she thought about what she had seen, but it registered differently than what she normally would have noted.  She realized her heart was breaking at the thought of going on without Kathy, of telling their children, of facing Kit with the news that their mother was dead.  And why was Kathy dead?  Who had killed her?  Was it just some random murder, or had she surprised burglars in their empty condo?  She didn’t have a lot of faith in the police, having avoided their suspicions on several occasions in the past, but now she wished she had had more time to investigate the scene, to compile her own evidence and to check out the condo.  The alarm had triggered a response that had brought the police to the condo right behind her.  Was that contrived?  Had the murderer wanted to point the finger at Alice, or had she surprised the murderer by entering the condo when she had?  They didn’t use it much except for as a tax write-off and a place to store the boat.  Having a picnic there with her wife had sounded romantic and wonderful to Alice.  She sank back in the seat, turned off her mind, and let the cab drive her home.

* * * * *

"I don’t care what you say!  My mom is coming home!" the thirteen-year-old Kit shouted at Alice.

Alice sighed in annoyance, trying to quell the need to smack the rebellious teen into reality, to keep from losing her cool over her refusal to face the facts.  The younger children didn’t understand that Kathy wouldn’t be coming home, but the nanny and the housekeeper had both dissolved into tears, causing the little boy and girl to cry along with them.  Only Alice had remained strangely calm, strangely unable to cry.  Dealing with a teenager was bad enough, but Alice knew that Kit was hurting, she was angry, she was incredulous at the news, and she was rebelling in the only way she knew how.  I’m sorry, Kit.  She shook her head.  She isn’t, she lowered her voice.  I wish she were, and a small sob escaped her normal cool façade, much to Alice’s surprise.

You’re just saying that, she shouted once more in rebelliousness and ran up to her room to slam the door to her bedroom in equal defiance.

Nan made a move to go follow her, but Alice silently shook her head.  She knelt down in the living room where they were having this conversation before her two younger children and gathered them close.  They didn’t really understand their Mommy wasn’t coming home, but they could sense and see the upset of all the adults and their older adored sister and were responding to it.  Alice held onto the small bodies as they cried themselves to sleep, and one by one Nan took them to the nursery.

Is there something I can get you, Ms. Weaver? the housekeeper, Mrs. Fernandez, asked kindly.  Seeing Alice in shock was kind of unnerving, and while she was normally cold, it was her very coldness to which they had become accustomed.  This behavior, what they were now seeing, was odd and not normal at all.

Alice looked at her sadly.  I need to make some phone calls, she said.  It was still early enough in the evening that she could call Kathy’s friends, and especially Portia and Andie, to give them the horrible news.  Alice had never made such calls.  Even the death of her sister Connie hadn’t generated this much feeling, these many emotions.  Alice made the calls dry-eyed and professionally but was unprepared for the questions asking about a funeral.  She had to tell them it hadn’t been decided yet, and she would let them know.

It was late at night, and both Emily and Sean were sleeping in the master bedroom with Alice.  Strangely, she didn’t mind.  Kathy had allowed it occasionally when the children seemed to need it.  Now though, Alice felt she needed it.  She wasn’t surprised that the children hadn’t remained asleep and wasn’t surprised to see Kit open the door to the master suite.  She stopped immediately upon seeing that Alice was awake and sitting up in bed.  Her side of the bed was on the right, and the left was wide open.  Both children were plastered against her left side but still left a lot of room on the left for where Kathy had slept in the king-sized bed.  Alice was gently petting the children as she had seen Kathy do countless times to comfort them.  Their hair was brushed back from their, faces and their breathing indicated they were asleep.

Can I come in? she asked quietly, unsure of her welcome after her defiance.

Alice looked at her sadly and nodded.  She held out her right arm, and Kit came without hesitation into it.  As brave and defiant as she had been earlier, she wanted the comfort of her mother, and Alice was the next best thing.  Alice gathered her close, her left arm encircling her into a bear hug, her eyes still dry as she closed them to feel the young body against her own.  Kit looked heartbreakingly like Kathy, and Alice had seen it long ago.  The older she got, the more she looked like Kathy.  Seeing a younger version of the woman who had changed her life had left Alice with a tightness in her throat.  She held the teen in her arms as she sobbed and petted her just like the younger children.  The four of them, grief stricken in the bed that had known so much love, held each other for comfort until unconsciousness claimed them in the form of sleep.  For Alice it was a long time in coming. 

Alice got up at 4am and looked at the three mounds in her bed; she tucked the blanket in around them for warmth against the absence of her body heat