Jacqui’s Nemesis

CHAPTER 2

Hours turned into days and days into weeks. Weeks during which Jacqui was questioned by the police, during which she had to deal with funeral arrangements and solicitors. Jacqui felt like the living dead, going through the motions of living. People came and went with Jacqui hardly giving any a second thought once they left.  The house filled up with flowers, Anna did her best to accommodate guests with food and drinks, yet Jacqui hardly noticed. The police wanted Jacqui to stay elsewhere until they concluded their investigation, but not only could she not think of anywhere to go, she just did not have the energy to pack her things. Finally, the police posted guards and Jackson took a room in the house.

Two weeks after the double homicide of her parents, their bodies were finally released and a date for the funeral could be set. Regardless of the horrible weather people turned out in their hundreds for the funeral. Funeral goers consisted out of colleagues, friends, clients, ex-clients, and a handful of distant relatives. Both her parents, like herself, were only children and the only family known to Jacqui were her grandparents and cousins of her father. Her mother’s parents both died in an airplane accident while on their way to visit them when Jacqui was still a toddler and she had only a feint and distant memory of them. Her paternal grandparents were regular visitors until her grandfather died of a sudden heart attack when she was twenty and her grandmother passed soon after from cancer. Her father’s cousin, Uncle Barry and his family, a wife and two sons, usually called on them just before or during Christmas.  That was until a blazing row between her father and Barry caused Barry to pack up his wife and children and leave, never to return to their home again.

Jackson escorted Jacqui into the church, followed closely by Detectives Lowe and Blair. Jacqui’s found herself seated next to Uncle Barry, while Lowe, Blair and Jackson took seats directly behind her.

Jacqui barely heard a word of the service and as she declined to speak it was Bill Faure, her father’s office manager, who took to the podium and spoke at length about her parents.  Bill was her father’s office manager and his closest friend.  They went to college together, played football together and got married in the same year. Bill ran his own financial consulting firm until an accident claimed his wife and daughter. Bill was a broken man who struggled to keep his business going while taking care of his home and young son. When Jon Bruckner invited him to join his firm as manager, affording him regular hours and more time to spend with his son William, Bill Faure accepted gratefully. Over the years Jon awarded Bill with shares in the company and they became partners in life and in business.  Jacqui often considered Bill and William to be her relatives rather than friends. Listening to Bill as he spoke of her parents, Jacqui knew that the friendship between her father and Bill was indeed a rare thing and something she was blessed with.

The trio, consisting out of Lowe, Blair and Jackson, drove her to the graveyard, but it was Uncle Barry who escorted her to the open graves. His hand behind her back gave her the shivers, it was warm and clammy, and she tried to shrug it away, but he moved his hand from her back, put his arm around her waist and marched her firmly towards the gravesite.

Bill and William were already standing next to her father’s grave. Jacqui squirmed out of Barry’s grip and wormed herself in between the two men.  Bill put his arm around her while William took her hand in his.

The proceedings felt like a nightmare from which she was unable to wake up. Jacqui clung to Bill’s arm while her parent’s coffins were lowered into the ground. Whether for a minute or a few seconds, Jacqui sunk into oblivion and when she opened her eyes, she was back in the car with William hovering over her and calling her name.