JESSICA'S SECRET JOURNAL

The phone rang and woke her.  She rubbed her eyes.  Jessica surmised that she had slept for hours.  A sunset of amethyst and crimson streaked across the western skyline.  She jumped up and reached for the phone, but it stopped ringing. She picked it up and carried it to the door. She heard a click as a door shut, and then she heard footsteps on the balcony.  With her ear to the door, she heard footsteps going down the stairs. Jessica dialed 911, and opened the door. She ran to the stairs and was half way down to the second level when she heard the click of the kitchen door as it closed.  She shook as she sat on the top step of the staircase.

“Hello, did you call 911?” she heard a voice, and raised the phone to her ear.

“Yes,” Jessica replied.  “There was someone in my house, but whoever it was is gone now.”  Jessica hung up.  She took the elevator to the first floor, walked to the kitchen, and checked the door.  It was locked.  She sat on a stool by the counter, she squeezed the telephone tightly to her chest before the tears started.  “Someone had a key to her house, but who?  How?  And more importantly why?”

Jessica jumped when the phone rang again.  “Hi sweetheart, guess who?” a very familiar voice crooned across the line.

“Ken, where are you?”  she cried.

“I’m in town doll, and I can be at your side in fifteen minutes.  Better yet make it twenty five minutes and be dressed to dine with an old friend.  You can tell me all about it then.” Ken hung up the phone before she could refuse.

Where had Ken been just minutes before?  Jessica asked herself.  She would find out what he was up to tonight.  There were other things she needed to talk to him about, such as, did he know Donna Mavis?  And who was the woman he had met in Chicago?

Jessica heard the door chime, and she let Ken in.  She let him give her a hug and then excused herself and went to get a wrap. She remembered a silk scarf of her mothers that would go with her dress.

She opened the door to her mother’s room. She turned on the light and stood transfixed.  Someone had been there. The room was a mess with strewn possessions. Jo Anna’s drawers had been dumped and scattered. A portrait of Jo Anna had been pulled from where it hung on the wall.  It had been slashed with a sharp object and thrown to the floor.  This was deliberate.  There was ugly purpose here. Jessica screamed, and then fell to the floor.

***

Jessica moved on toward The Old North Cemetery.  The large metal gate was open.  A sign said ‘Closes At Eight’.  Her watch read seven thirty, so she pulled the car to a stop and walked through the gate.  She found The Hatley grave markers. She knelt by her mothers new gravesite. Someone had placed a red rose by her mother’s stone marker.