Love's Insanity

Meredith hardly slept.

Not that that is in any way, shape, or form, surprising. She did fight the urge to sit on the computer, hitting 'refresh' on the email every ten seconds, but her brave step into her husband's territory was not nearly as liberating as she'd hoped. Instead, Meredith's worry increased ten-fold -- she couldn't turn back, now... A frightening thought.

But, somehow, she found the strength to shower and dress, knock back a cup of coffee, and greet the day -- her son, in particular -- with a bright, if tired, smile. "Please try not to speak poorly of your father at school, today... He's innocent, you know."

"Whatever, ma. I love Dad, but... nobody's perfect."

As Travis slipped his homework into his backpack and half-hugged his mom while running to the honking bus, Meredith felt the overwhelming urge to cry... but for once, no tears came.

Instead, she turned to the computer, still lying on the dining table, and propped it open.



Just what she'd dreaded... A response. "Meet you there."

The rest of the day was nothing but a blur. She tried to play with Bradley, but all he did was cry, or ask for his dad... She tried to paint, but everything she started turned out fuzzy, brightly colored and distorted. Finally, giving up on everything else, she collapsed on the couch, and fell into a deep sleep.

---

"Mom... Mom?"

"Wh--Oh Travis, when did you get home?"

"Over an hour ago... You looked tired so I let you sleep. But now Brad's crying. I think he's hungry."

Meredith rushed into the nursery to take care of her younger son, frustrated that not only did she fall asleep, but that she slept through Travis's whole baseball practice, as well. Just as he'd guessed, Bradley was hungry... It wasn't until Brad was playing with the dollhouse that Meredith realized it was almost 7:30.

"Holy Plumbob!" she cried. At the sound of his mother, Travis peeked in from the other room. She always had weird outbursts, but never quite like that.



"Travis, honey... Come here."

He looked wary as he approached, but before he could stop it, Meredith sweeped her son into a tight hug. "Travis, I have to go out. I... I don't know when I'll be home. The sitter will be here any minute, I want you to be good and watch out for your little brother for me, alright?"

"Is something wrong, mommy? Does it have to do with dad?"

"I... No. It's nothing sweetie, just need to go see a friend. Just remember what I asked, kay? I love you..."

"Kay." Travis reciprocated the hug... But it wasn't enough to squeeze away the nervous growl in his mother's troubled stomach.



Meredith had never driven so fast in her entire life. Finally, the sports car her husband had bought her was being put to good use... If that's what you want to call it. The winding roads of Riverview never seemed to end, and Meredith began to worry that she'd be there late -- or, worse, arrive at the same moment as her husband's framer. No, she wanted ample time to wait, if only to mentally prepare for whatever she may meet at the end of this journey.

But as she pulled up and looked around the small, quiet fishing area, she breathed a sigh of relief. No one was there... yet. Lost Willow Park was beautiful in the afternoon, but even Riverview's most dedicated fishermen didn't enjoy the creepy atmosphere it had once the crickets came out to play.



She found a bush near the road, and curled up inside it. Her car was out of the way, where no one could see... It was just her, the crickets, and the stars.

And now... She waited.

---

"But you always find a way to keep me right here waiting
You always find the words to say to keep me right here waiting
And if you chose to walk away I'd still be right here waiting
Searching for the things to say to keep you right here waiting"
-- Right Here, Staind

Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.

Meredith became impatient. She turned her gaze towards her wristwatch... 8:15. 8:20. "Well, at least I tried,"  she thought to herself, getting ready to get up and leave. There was nothing else she could do.

... But then she heard a crunch of leaves behind her.

Her heart stopped. Meredith could feel the eyes of Carl's murderer on her neck, and hear their quiet breathing only feet behind her. How could she have been so stupid?! Of course they weren't going to walk right up the road...!

With as much courage as she could muster, she turned around.



"Didn't your husband tell you not to play with his toys?"

The voice was one that Meredith had heard many times before... But never so condescending as this. She couldn't understand... She couldn't believe! All this time, it was... "Chandra... Chandra Hawkins?!"

"What, you're surprised to see me? I suppose I should say the same, about you... Clever, but you always were stupid."


As Chandra walked down the hill, Meredith couldn't wrap her head around it. "It was you! You killed Carl Strummer!"

"I'd like to see what proof you have of that, Meredith."

"But... But, you're here! There's no other explanation!"

"No... I suppose not. Ha! You've caught me... Of all people, Meredith Jones is the one to finally see the truth. Still... I'd love to see you prove it."




"I... I... But..." Meredith had no idea what to do. She was caught in the corner -- figuratively -- and now Chandra looked as if she was about to laugh at her... And Mere couldn't have that. "But Chandra -- you were Jebidiah's friend! His best friend! Why would you do this to him?! Why would you murder an innocent man just to hurt him?!"

"Jebidiah was no friend of mine! Not after what he's put me through, for all these years!"

Meredith was, no doubt, incredibly confused. Some of her fury was completely lost in simply not knowing what was going on -- but Chandra seemed to have enough rage for the both of them. "What... I... He what?"



"For years, everything I did, was for him... He was everything to me, everything! But no one ever notices poor, loser little Chandra. No one ever cares about Chandra, pays attention to Chandra... Well guess who's not going to lose this game!"

"I don't get what you're saying, Chandra," Meredith said with her fists curled. "You framed my husband for murder because... You... love him?" There was no room in Meredith's mind for jealousy, anymore -- but certainly enough for hatred of this woman.



"You don't understand, Meredith! You never could! Not when from the moment he laid eyes on you, everything was about you, you, you... Always feeling so sorry for yourself, yet you never thought to think how lucky you were, or how miserable I was! There's no way you could know!"

"Try me," the redhead growled, her eyes and lips thinning in growing, pent up fury.

"Well," Chandra almost laughed. "Let's see..."




"From the day you were born, Meredith, you were born into wealth. Sure, your parents hadn't earned a cent of it, but you never knew hunger, living in a room the size of a closet, or what it was like to sleep in anything but a cozy mansion... My life was different. I was born into a three-room house, with parents who could barely rub two Simoleans together. My mother was old and sickly, and my father was trying to build a criminal empire the likes of Riverview had never seen -- but he was struggling, then...'


"And being poor did nothing for me at school. Second hand clothes, beat up books, and a father that spent most of his time in jail those days, it was inevitable Ithat kids decide I was a loser. Nothing in my life went right... Until I met Jebidiah Kane.'



"For the first time, I had a friend -- out of anyone else in the world, he sought out me. Why? Because I was the only one that understood his goals for the future... Who understood his diabolical humor... Who laughed at his innane jokes, like tying his Grandmother's shoelaces together. Man, that was brilliant.'

"When I learned he wanted to be a criminal someday, instead of abandoning him, I fostered his talents and his goals... I introduced him to my father, who gave him all the tools and knowledge he'd ever need to become a successful thief. And, with my father's confidence in his abilities, he finally began to get us out of debt... Although Jebidiah was the only person who never seemed to care that I never had any money. He was always so generous to me.'



"For years, he was the closest person to me in my life. My friend, my companion... I spent every second of every day with him, helping him plan his next prank on the teacher, or make sure no one was around when he beat up his favorite target... I was the best sidekick an evil mastermind could ever hope for.'



"I never thought there could be anyone closer than us.'


"And when he asked me to be his best friend -- forever -- there was no way I could refuse... But I wanted more. I thought, inevitably, he would realize how much I cared for him, how much I loved him -- the lengths I would go to to make sure he was happy.'


"But then you came along. You, with your long red hair, your shy little seductions -- for whatever reason he liked you, despite how much you despised almost everything about him. What he saw in you, why he wanted you, I have never been able to understand... After everything him and I had done together, I thought for sure that he wanted me to be his. But I was wrong. That day I ran into you having a picnic, he told me to go away. I didn't know why, I was such a loyal friend I went anyways...'


"It was the day he asked you to be his. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't -- I loved him more than he'd ever know. I knew, someday, he'd come around...'


"But he never did. He started to spend less time with me... I almost never saw him. I thought by dating other guys, he'd get jealous and realized what he was missing... But every relationship ended the same. When I came to him for comfort, you were always there, and he refused to see me -- he left me, more alone than I had ever been.'


"I didn't even hear from him when you two decided to get married -- no, my father was the first person he told of the engagement, I had to hear about it second-hand. It was like he had forgotten all about me! All the break-ups in the world couldn't compare to how much that hurt me...'


"But I went to the wedding nonetheless. And I found out why he had seemed so far away -- he knew how I felt. He had been trying to distance himself, so I would forget about him... But now he was getting married. He asked me not to ruin it for him, because he was happy. Well... I knew I couldn't. I loved him too much to tell him no.'


"Things never got better for me. Break-up after break-up... Eventually, I got pregnant, and married my son's father to try to make my life easier. Not a day went by I didn't cry, but I was doing what Jebidiah asked -- letting him live his happy life, even if it meant that every time I saw him...'


"... that every time I looked into his eyes, I'd see what could've been, and the knife through my heart would be plunged even deeper than before."


"I tried to escape him every chance I got, but it was impossible -- every room of your house, every object you'd bought together, every child you'd born... They all should have been mine.'



"I needed something to comfort me, even if it wasn't real... I sent someone still loyal to my father to take back some momentos of the children that were supposed to be mine -- but I never did get those pictures, did I? All I wanted was something to help me live inside a dream for a little longer, so I could make it through each day without pushing myself back into Jebidiah's life and invading the privacy he'd asked for.'


"But he betrayed me. He knew I'd do anything for him, but no -- when you finally weren't enough for him anymore, he went to his bimbo colleagues for affairs instead of the woman who actually loved him. My friend Holly saw everything, how he stuck his tongue down other women's throats -- when it was supposed to be me he turned to! I had had enough. I decided, if he wasn't going to give me what I waited so long and patiently for, he'd pay the price for the torture I suffered since the moment you walked into his life... And make you suffer for it, too.'

"Holly heard he was having a party, so I sent her in to pick up the date of his 'big heist'. I knew it was happening -- my father had given him the tipoff, after all -- and all I needed was a date. A date to slip a poison into the meals my restaurant prepared for the Strummer's dinner, and a date to call back the favor that my friend Tameka owed for abandoning my father's gang for the Company -- I made sure she didn't follow through with her job, and so Carl Strummer ate the fatal bite of food that would put Jebidiah behind bars forever."

...

There was a long moment of silence after Chandra finished her story. Meredith simply stared, mouth agape, at a woman she had spoken to cheerfully on many occasions... Who she had let handle her children...

"You're insane!" Meredith slowly began to back away. "Jebidiah won't spent another minute behind bars... Not once I tell the police. You'll be the one rotting behind bars, Chandra... After what you've done... All over one man..."

"Well, you obviously don't love him enough if you can't understand how desperate I was!" But Chandra began to laugh, before she continued.

"How dim you are never ceases to surprise me. Of course the police will never find out, Meredith... You don't seem to understand -- if I can't have Jebidiah Kane..."



As Meredith stumbled backwards, now suddenly very afraid, Chandra raised her fist. "No one can."

Read more...

Who Killed Carl Strummer?

"Go, Meredith, go!"

There was a sense of urgency pushing Meredith Kane into her car as she walked home from her sister's house. She called the babysitter, kissed her youngest son goodbye, and found herself watching the scenery roll by as she drove into the far reaches of Riverview's countryside. Although her husband had been in jail for less than 24 hours, she felt like she had no time to waste -- the detectives were only becoming more and more convinced that Jebidiah had murdered Carl Strummer... And if Tana was right, he was being framed.

As she turned a corner, Meredith pulled out a small scrap of paper her sister had slipped her before she'd left to go home: Mimi Brown's address. To be perfectly honest to herself, Meredith wasn't sure what to expect. Tana had mentioned that Mimi was a family-loving person, and would understand the pleadings of a wife, but if she was really so stubborn turning in the complete evidence to her fellow cops, what good would she be to Meredith? "I guess I'm just going to have to find out," she thought to herself, as she pulled up to the small farmstead where the Brown's lived.

To Meredith's luck, the dark-skinned woman she'd met at Jebidiah's work party was out working in her garden, and no other family members were in sight -- good, no one around to overhear. With a deep breath, she shut off the engine of her car, walked across the lawn, and cleared her throat as she neared the woman who had betrayed her husband.

"Mimi Brown?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Yes, what is-- Oh. Hello, Mrs. Kane."



The way that Mimi recognized her, and smirked to herself, only made the butterflies in Meredith's stomach jump faster. But, she had to do this... For her family. For her husband. "Look... Mimi, I need your help. Can you spare a minute to talk?"

"I suppose I can, but lady... You gotta realize, I'm not really supposed to be talking to you off-duty. Wouldn't look too great at the depar--"

"It'll only take a minute. I just... Mimi, I know my husband didn't murder that man." As Meredith gulped back her fear, Mimi simply stared, and blinked. She said nothing.



Frustrated, Meredith continued. "My husband was arrested for someone else's crime... And I know that you have evidence that could help Jeb. Why are you hiding it?"

"For plumbbob's sake, has Tana been filling your ears with nonsense?" Mimi shook her head, clearly annoyed. "Look, lady, I found something that might get Jebidiah off the hook, but you don't understand -- I've spent the last few years of my life trying to nail the Company. Years of my life that would be wasted if I let Jebidiah walk out of prison when there are crimes he did commit. I know that it's all hitting you hard right now, and that it's hard to believe how your husband was a criminal, but of the entire Company, he's the only one I was able to get... If I turn in this evidence, they'll start to question everything else, and then everything I've done to try to rid this town of crime will be for naught."



Meredith looked at Mimi with a confused look, which inspired her to explain. "Everything about this job was pinned on connecting Dallas to the crime. Get the crime lord, get the whole operation. But outta sheer dumb luck, I underestimated him, and he skipped town the moment he heard there was trouble. Cody got herself near completely off the hook by agreeing to help me nail everyone else, and Tameka... Well, she was the one who was supposed to keep the Strummers gone that night. Obviously, she chickened out, or somethin'... Because the Strummers were obviously home."

"So... So do you think Tameka framed Jebidiah?"

"Of course Tameka didn't do it, she a crook and a thief, but only 'cause her mind's too young to understand it's wrong. She's always been a little... off her rocker. She still deserves a year or two in the slammer, if you ask me, but... Honestly? The girl don't have the attention span to plan something like that. Maybe a murder of passion or something, but clearly, that ain't what this was."



"So you know it wasn't Jebidiah, and yet you still won't help him? When you know he'll spend the rest of his life in prison, when his wife is left alone with two kids to raise on her own? Don't you understand what you're doing, by letting this happen?!"

"Calm down, Meredith!"  Mimi said, backing away from the outraged redhead. "You gotta understand, even if I did tell the Department, they'd probably laugh! No one even seems to care if Jebidiah didn't do it... He's the perfect scapegoat. Everyone's wanted to get Blackjack behind bars since the moment he stepped into the scene of Crime, they're happy knowing he's going to be behind bars forever... Even if I don't think he should."




"Please, Mimi..." Meredith was running out of options. The undercover cop had only given hints on who it couldn'tve been.. Which didn't really help much. "If the cops won't look for the evidence, then it's gotta be brought to them... Just give me the chance to find out who did this, then they can be locked up for killing Mr. Strummer... Jebidiah can serve out the sentence he deserves, I just want to know I'll get him back someday... Please..."

Mimi sighed, but Meredith had obviously gotten through to her. Looking around briefly to make sure that they weren't being watched, she began to speak in a low voice.



"A couple of days before the job, I got an e-mail from an anonymous address. Got it on my work account, and pry only sheer luck that I got that email outta anyone else in the department. Don't make a lotta sense to me, which is why it kinda caught my eye." Meredith gave Mimi a look as if to say, 'Go on'. "It was a tip. Somebody wrote to tell me that they knew there was gonna be a murder, at the Strummers' exact address... But since I was inside and knew what was happening, I knew there weren't gonna be a murder. So whoever sent the email..."

"Was the killer," wheezed Meredith. "But how does that help?"

"Whoever sent the email didn't cover their tracks real well. They obviously didn't know I got Jebidiah's hacking software installed on my computer... All I had to do is hit a button to see what computer sent it."

"And?"

"And, it was sent from the library, which is no good."

She paused, before ripping a piece of paper from a notebook in her pocket, and handing it to Meredith.

"But I did get the address."

---

Meredith slammed the door when she arrived back at her house. There was a small crack in the glass as a result, but she didn't care... It didn't matter in the slightest, right now.

She'd gone to Mimi for help, and this is what she got: an email address. She didn't have a copy of the email, any proof that her husband was framed, nothing but a scrap of paper and the pleading of a wife. At this rate, she'd only be locked up too, since the cops would have the think she was aiding him in some way on this whole crime.

Come to think of it... She was.

"Aaaagh!" she yelled, kicking a chair -- which was even dumber than it seemed, because she was wearing sandals.

"Are you alright Mrs. Kane?" asked the babysitter as he came running from the other room.

"I'm fine... Fine..." she winced as she limped away from the scene of her stubbing... But as she walked, her eyes turned to the table.



She carefully began to think. "I don't have any proof, but the killer does. And I can contact the killer. Maybe... Maybe if I..."

But the idea almost made her laugh. What, and ask them to give themselves up? What a laugh. If anything, all she'd do is set herself up to get killed, too...

No. She'd hit a dead end. Tana had sent her on a wild goose chase, and she'd gotten excited for nothing. "I have no one to blame but myself."



Trying to get back to normal was harder than Meredith had imagined. It was no use lying to Travis -- he knew what was going on, even if his mother had refused to tell him. He was already talking to his friends from school about how his father was going to be convicted for murder. She tried to ignore it, but it stung more than anything in the world... Seeing her children suffering the same burden of knowledge that she was. At least Bradley was still young... At least Bradley did not have to know that he would likely never see his father again. For now.



In fact, Meredith was so absorbed with what was going on, she didn't realize it was her birthday -- she was now fully adult... And she felt it. So childish, she never thought she'd feel old, even when grays hairs spouted from her head -- but all it took was a few hours of agonizing defeat to feel broken down. She didn't bother telling Travis, either -- this wasn't how she wanted to celebrate her birthday, so... She'd just wait another day. There were more important things to think about.



Yes, more important things. Seems that we're always back here, watching as Meredith fights to fall asleep.

As she stared at the cieling, thoughts kept going through her head... The tortures of being alone while raising her children. The torture Jebidiah was surely going through, trying to convince the cops he was innocent. The torture her son was going through to know his father was a criminal. And, of course... The torture of her heart. "I just want him here. I need him here."

Closing her eyes, she took another deep breath. It was time to do the wrong thing... But it was the best idea she had.




Opening the laptop, she carefully spent hours trying to figure out her husband's hacking program... But he'd already done all that for her. What the cops couldn't find, she'd seen him open hundred's of times -- and there, there was everything she needed. A cop's email address to write from -- fake, most likely, but obviously used on several occasions before. ("Dear Plumbob, my husband was brilliant.") In her hand, the email address to send to.

"Need a follow up interview on the murder of Carl Strummer. Please go to Lost Willow Park at 8pm tomorrow evening, bring all information you have to help solidify the case against Jebidiah Kane. There is some discrepancy at the department over the details of the murder, and since you seem to have a good idea what happened, I need your help to nail this guy. You're all I've got.

Come alone."

And now... To wait.

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Read more...

The Search for Truth

 When something happens in such a small town like Riverview, it isn't long before every neighbor has told their neighbor about a bit of juicy news that was shared along the grape vine; it had become an exceptionally difficult place to even think about keeping a secret. It isn't that people in Riverview are naturally prone to gossip, but that the town seems so deceptively boring at times that the slightest shred of interesting information turns into an adult version of "telephone" only minutes after the news is sprung.

In the driest of times, sometimes even the least interesting news floats between the ears of Riverview's residents. When Wayne Dow accidentally dropped his keys down a storm drain, Riverview's finest found a way to turn public knowledge of the Dow's declining marriage into an event of epic proportion: Trista, having enough with her husband's scandalous cheatings and beatings, broke out into a fight on their driveway, where she ceremoniously tossed her husband's keys down the drain. Naturally, nothing of the kind actually happened, but... Bored residents will do anything to make themselves feel justified living in such a remote, podunk town.


It was the same for the time the Self's mansion caught on fire because of a suddenly outbreak of violent, arsonist teens in the neighboorhood... an incident which was really just Taryn forgetting to turn the stove off before she went shopping. Greg Newbie's scandalous exploits in the bedroom, the Remington ghost causing havoc at the Riverside Swim Club, and the Shallow's locking their children in the basement with only food and homework -- examples of hyperboles spread by Riverview's citizens in order to try, for a little while, to act as if life could be a little bit more interesting.

But Riverview's hungry rumormongers didn't have to wait long for their gullets to be full once again -- and this time, with a story that didn't need an ounce of twisting to become a storybook standard for their homely, boring, small farm town.

---

The phone calls were sweeping in by the minute. All Meredith had to do was hang up the phone, and once again it was ringing off the hook. The house phone, the cell phone -- eventually, she unplugged and turned off them both, desperate to find a sliver of silence to actually reflect on the pain that was closing her in.

The night before, things had been too quiet. In some matter of sick chance, she knew something was wrong before she picked up the phone, and heard the dark words from the police department: your husband was caught at the scene of both a robbery and murder. "We need you down at the station for a quick statement, Mrs. Kane," she heard over the line. "But I'm afraid we can't let you in to see your husband, yet."



"Travis, I need to go out. Something important's come up -- no, I can't explain right now, I'm sorry -- so please, just go to bed. I'll be home as soon as I can."

"What about Bradley?" Travis whined. "He's gonna start crying the second you're gone, and thenni won't be able to get any sleep at aaall."

"I'm calling the babysitter on my way out, he'll take care of Bradley -- you're just going to have to manage until he shows up. Now go to bed!"

Meredith was considerably unhappy, but nothing could compare to the sinking feeling in her stomach as she pulled up to the police department. She went inside, and as they'd said they'd be, they were quick -- just a few questions to make sure she had been unaware of the situation, a brief explanation of what happened, and a boot out the door without a goody bag... Unless you counted the invisible knife splitting her gut -- and heart -- in two.



"How could this happen," she wailed as soon as she left the building, burying her face in her hands. Her worst fears had come to pass -- Jebidiah had finally been caught for his crimes... With the addition of one she had never believed him capable of.

When she got home, everyone was sound asleep -- thank goodness. But even in the dead silence of the night, she found it hard to sleep herself... A growing trend in the Kane household. With a sigh, she flicked on the light, taking a moment for her eyes to adjust to the time on the clock.



"3 o'clock," she murmured to herself. But, after looking at the time, her eyes turned to the other nightstand... The photograph of their wedding, a painful reminder of how happy and simple things used to be... Pulling her knees into her chest, she began to cry once again. She had never imagined this, not even in her darkest nightmare scenarios.

But no one ever seems to let the Kanes have any rest. As Meredith finally felt the first shred of sleepiness tug on her eyelids, a sharp sound began to resound from downstairs:




The Burglar Alarm.

The cops, having mostly been out at the Strummer Crime Scene and trying to track down any of Jebidiah's accomplices, were mobile enough to get there in the nick of time -- nothing was stolen, but that didn't mean that Meredith wasn't left exceedingly unsettled.

"Go back to bed, ma'am," the police officer said, resting his hand on her shoulder. "There's nothing else you can do right now. We'll keep a car close by for the rest of the night, but we're going to need to send someone by in the morning to ask a few more questions."

As she settled into bed for the second time, Meredith almost wanted to laugh at her predicament -- could it get any worse? Her husband was in jail for robbery and murder, and now a burglar had tried to break into her house for the third time in only a couple of weeks. The same thing that the cops were wondering was haunting her mind, as well: what did they want?!



The first thing in the morning, Meredith sent Travis off to school with heavy circles under her eyes, fighting to answer her son's questions without breaking into tears. "Where's Dad? I didn't hear him come home last night. Does it have anything to do with why you were gone all night? How come people keep trying to steal stuff from us? When's Dad coming home?" Meredith was awful at coming up with excuses... She mumbled her way out of most of them and sent him off to the bus stop -- but she couldn't handle being alone anymore. Without even changing Bradley from his pajamas, she settled him onto her hip and walked across the street to Tana's.

But as she approached, she realized her sister wasn't alone. Peeking through the window,  Meredith hugged Bradley tighter when she saw that there were cops in her sister's house, one of which having a rather heated discussion with her in the living room. "Martin, as much as I am really enjoying this conversation, there's someone at the door. Why don't you go join the rest of the department in sacking my home while I go see who it is?" Tana's voice resounded through the door in such a way that Meredith could've sworn she saw it shiver -- she'd never seen her sister so angry before.



As soon as Tana opened the door to greet her sister, Meredith set Bradley down to go find the toys inside to play with. "What the heck is going on?" she asked her sister, almost pleading. "Could you please explain to me what's happened?"

"Listen... Meredith," Tana started in a low voice, peeking carefully over her shoulder. "I'm only going to say this once, so I need you to listen very carefully. Jebidiah was working for one of the largest crime syndicates in the State, based here in Riverview... The heist last night was supposed to be it's biggest job yet, but a mole in the Company completely blew the operation. Jeb got caught, and now the mole's forking out information that will bring the whole Company down."

"But what does that have to do with you?"

"I've... Meredith," Tana groaned, her voice slipping down to a whisper. "I've been working as an insider for the Company for almost 6 months."



"You what?!" Meredith had a hard time keeping quiet. She'd known about Jebidiah's job in crime, but her sister's involvement had only been a sneaking suspicion... One she had always hoped to keep that way.

"I know, I know, I get that you're angry, and I'm really sorry Mere," Tana sighed, looking away from her little sister's gaze. "I wish I could've told you, but the Company... They've got rules..."

"Scratch their rules, how about everyone's rules? You know, the law?!" She groaned. "Isn't anyone in this family anything but evil?!"



"It's just who we are, and we don't need your approval to be that way, Mere, you can't change anything," Tana said. "But you can yell at me about it all you want, later. Right now... Sis, I really need your help."

"My help? Why should I help you, after everything you've kept from me all this time? After everything you've done?"

"Because otherwise, your husband is going to rot in jail for the remainder of his life, and I know you don't want that."



"Jebidiah..." Meredith sighed. All she needed was a painful reminder of what her husband had done. "There's nothing I can do to help him. He's killed someone, Tana..."

"No. He didn't." Meredith looked at Tana with her eyes thinned, suspicious... but Tana continued. "Look, I know it's all really hard to take in right now, but even though Jeb's a thief and a dirty rotten liar, he isn't a murderer. Something went tragically wrong last night, and as far as what I've picked up down at the department, even the mole doesn't have an explanation for why the Strummers were home, or how Carl just dropped dead. Until the autopsy comes out, no one will know for sure, but even then... No one even wants to begin to think anyone but Jebidiah committed the crime."



"I don't want to be a bloody criminal, Tana," Meredith said, exasperated. "And I certainly don't want to help you, now that--"

"Mere, this isn't just for me. I've got my own butt covered, no one at the department, even the mole, has any way of tracing anything back to me, yet, and as long as I'm careful, it'll stay that way. But if you really love your husband..."

"But what the hell is so important you need me to do it?

"I need you to talk to the mole. She's concealing something about what happened, and no one else at the department gives a damn but me... And she hates my guts. But, I know she's a sucker for family, and I've got a feeling she'll open up to you if you hit the right chords. You just need to find out what she's hiding... It might be the key to figuring out who the real culprit is."

Meredith hung her head, but as angry as she was at her husband... Deep down, she knew there was no other answer she could give. "Alright. Who do I need to talk to?"

"Mimi Brown."

---

As they'd already been outside longer than was safely non-suspect, Tana went in and Meredith followed -- she'd need to pick up Bradley before heading home. However, as soon as Tana went off chasing a cop into her bedroom ("Hey, could you please try not to break anything?!") Meredith was pulled aside by an officer -- the same one that had arrested her husband the night before.

"Mrs. Kane, I'd like to ask you a few more questions about last night."



She didn't have much of a choice but to go through yet another interrogation... "Do you have any idea what the burglar may have been after, last night?" "Did your husband ever bring home anything from work that seemed suspicious?" "After we're through here, we're going to need to come across the street of your house and do an inspection, do you have any problems with that?" ... Things of that kind.




As Meredith tried to answer his questions as loosely as possible -- judging by what Tana had just asked her to do, the last thing she wanted was to give  these cops any ideas -- but she agreed to the house inspection.

"So long as I don't have to be home," was her only request.

She had somewhere else to go, today.

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