J is for Judgement

At least I understood now what had happened to Wendell and what would happen to her. I had to stop. I trod water, conserving energy. I simply couldn't go on. I couldn't even think of anything pithy or profound to say to her. Not that she was paying attention. She had her own destination, just as I had mine. I heard her briefly, but it didn't take long before the splashing sounds were swallowed up by the night. I rested for a while and then turned and started back to shore.
    EPILOGUE WENDELL JAFFE'S BODY emerged from the Pacific nine days later, washing up on Perdido Beach, trailing kelp like a net. Some peculiar combination of tides and storm surf had freed him from the ocean bottom and brought him ashore. Of the family survivors, I think Michael took it hardest. Brian had issues of his own to deal with, but he could at least take comfort in the fact that his father hadn't willfully abandoned him. Dana's financial problems were resolved by the hard proof of Wendell's death. It was Michael who was left with all the unfinished business.
    As for me, having cost California Fidelity half a million dollars, I thought it was safe to assume I wouldn't be doing business with them anytime soon. That should have been the end of it, but a few facts began to filter in as the months went by. Renata's body never surfaced. I heard, inadvertently, that when her estate was probated, both her house and her boat were mortgaged to the hilt and all her bank accounts had been stripped.
    That bothered me. I found myself picking at the past, like a little knot in a piece of thread. Here's what I think about when I wake in the dead of night. I'm not sure anybody really knows what happened to Dean DeWitt Huff. She claims he died of a heart attack in Spain, but did anyone ever check it out?
    And the husband before that? Whatever happened to him? I'd been viewing this as Wendell Jaffe's story, but suppose it was hers? The missing millions never showed. Suppose she knew about the money and persuaded him to come back? Suppose she had a boat anchored out there somewhere in the dark? She could have dived off her own dock if she wanted to drown. You really want to kill yourself, why drive thirty miles to do it? Unless you need a reliable witness -- like me. Once I made my report to the police, the case was considered closed. But is it?
    I've never believed the perfect crime was possible. Now I'm not so sure. She told me Wendell taught her a lot, but she never really said what it was. Please under- stand: I don't have the answers. I'm simply posing the questions. God knows I have questions about my own life to answer yet.
    Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Millhone