Deadly Little Secrets Part 13

Once Vanessa and Matt left, Jenny looked around the living room. All the photos of Kari were gone. She looked through the rest of the house and saw none. She peeked in Kari's closet and saw it had already been emptied. Then, on the refrigerator, she saw a photo of Vanessa with her daughter, Lilly, Kensi, and Grace. Jenny dialed her brother's number. Todd was coming over later to help with the party, but on the phone, Jenny filled him in, and said, "Something isn't right here."

"Well, maybe it's too hard on Matt to see them all the time," Todd said.

Jenny thought about that. "Well, maybe."

At the elementary school, the teachers had heard that a limo was arriving to whisk Kensi and the partygoers away. Many stood outside after school, waiting when it pulled up. The first one out of the limo was Matt; then a woman's leg emerged, followed by a beautiful young blonde wearing a long brown skirt with a tight white T-s.h.i.+rt, capped by a hot pink shrug that tied just under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Excited, Kensi and Grace ran to their father, followed by three of Kensi's friends invited to the sleepover. With a flourish, Matt pulled out a birthday tiara and placed it on Kensi, then handed out vinyl leis to all the girls. Someone snapped photos as they bunched together in front of the sparkling white limo. In the pictures, Kensi smiled broadly, showing where she was still missing two of her front teeth.

After they left, the teachers at Spring Valley looked at each other, wondering. Kari had been dead for not quite two weeks, and Matt had shown up with a woman to pick up the girls, a young, beautiful woman, one he put his arm around when they took the photos. "What the heck?" one of the teachers said. "This is just inappropriate."

"Oh, my gosh," Linda thought when Vanessa got out of the limo at the house. Matt had mentioned that the music minister's daughter had offered to help with the party, but as soon as she saw the young blonde with Matt, Linda sensed that the relations.h.i.+p wasn't platonic. Grace ran to her grandmother, and Linda turned to Jim, and said, "Matt's going to marry that girl."

That evening, Linda again wondered what it all meant but then chastised herself. Matt, after all, was still alive. He had to go on. Despite the pain it caused her, she was determined to keep that in mind and accept whatever happened. To Jim she said, "As long as that girl loves Kensi and Grace, if she's a good mother, it's okay." Yet she feared, what if Matt cut them out of Kensi's and Grace's lives?

That evening at the Crested b.u.t.te house, the girls played, and Matt took more photos, including of Vanessa clowning with Kensi and her friends in their pajamas, batting a balloon, and playing a spirited game of keep-away. Strewn with crepe paper and banners, pillows scattered around the floor, it didn't look like a house in mourning.

Todd arrived, and Matt introduced Vanessa as someone from church. "I wondered why he didn't ask Linda to help," Todd would say later. Like his sister, Todd then looked around the house and noticed that every trace of Kari had been wiped away and that Vanessa's photo was on the refrigerator. It was as if Matt had excised Kari from their lives and replaced her.

"Where are Kari's things?" Todd asked.

"I thought it was best for the girls if we put them away," Matt answered.

Later, it would turn out that Matt kept a few items of Kari's that he had a purpose for. That night, the girls dressed Matt and Todd in Kari's dresses and made them up with her cosmetics. "I don't remember whose idea it was," Todd said later. The girls decided they wanted to bake cookies, so a trip to the store was planned. "And then they said we had to go to Walmart."

A first-year teacher, Todd worried about being seen in the store wearing women's clothing but decided he had no options. "Kensi had just lost her mom. I figured that it was the least I could do for her." Matt, despite his position as a pastor of a church, didn't seem at all concerned. They were at the store for only minutes when a woman from church saw them. Todd felt embarra.s.sed, but Matt just smiled.

Back at the house, confused by all that was happening, Todd put his own clothes back on. He'd planned to spend the night but instead left about midnight. Jenny stayed, playing with the girls and watching Matt and Vanessa. At one point, she saw them go into the bedroom. Jenny called Todd, asking what to do. "If you don't feel comfortable, leave," he said.

But Jenny wanted the party to be special for Kensi, so she stayed. Then, about 2:00 A.M., Jenny walked out of the kitchen into the living room. The girls were watching a movie, and Matt was seated on the couch. She felt ill when she saw Vanessa's head on his lap.

That was enough. "I'm leaving," she said.

"Who'll take care of the girls when I take Vanessa to pick up breakfast?" Matt asked.

"One of you can stay here while the other one goes," she answered.

At ten the following morning, mothers began arriving at the Baker house to pick up their daughters and found the girls at the house with Matt and Vanessa. Combined with Vanessa's appearance in the limo at the school the day before, rumors spread through Hewitt in concentric circles, like ripples from a stone thrown in the nearby Brazos River.

Chapter 29.

After the slumber party, Matt began showing up at Spring Valley Elementary to pick up the girls with Vanessa Bulls and Lilly in the car. Many of the teachers noticed. "It looked suspicious," says one. "At the very least, it was in bad taste."

It was about that time that Heather Sigler, who worked behind the counter at the Kay Jewelers at Waco's Richland Mall, saw Matt walk in with his daughters and a young blonde carrying a baby. Sigler knew Kari and Matt from attending one of his churches, and she'd seen the Bakers off and on in the store. In fact, Matt and Kari had stopped in at Kay Jewelers just weeks before her death.

This time, however, Vanessa was the one shopping, quickly sidling up to the counter that held the glittering diamond engagement rings. "How do you like this one?" Vanessa asked Matt, pointing at the case.

"It doesn't matter," Matt said. "You're the one who'll be wearing it."

Shocked, Sigler hung back and watched. She didn't yet know that Kari was dead or the ident.i.ty of the woman Matt Baker seemed so taken with.

As April ground on, Linda had the unmistakable impression that Matt was easing her and Jim from their granddaughters' lives. When she asked, he refused to let her pick them up from school, saying the girls were in an after-school program they enjoyed. Yet both the girls told Linda that the program was boring. Later, Grace said they were actually going to a friend's house after school.

Unbeknownst to Linda, her sisters and niece continued to debate how to tell her their suspicions. Then on the Sat.u.r.day of the week following Easter, they all talked again. While they understood that Linda was grieving, they weren't seeing any cooperation from Hewitt PD, and their conclusion was that there was no other way; Linda had to be told. That afternoon, Nancy called Linda, and once she had her on the phone, she said, "Linda, there are some things I need to tell you. We don't believe that Kari killed herself."

Linda thought for a moment. "What are you saying?"

"We believe Matt murdered her."

Silence, then Linda said, "No."

To explain, Nancy recounted Bristol's session with Kari.

At first, Linda couldn't process what she was hearing, but then she became angry. How could her sister say such a thing? "No!" Linda ordered. "This isn't true, and I want you to stop talking like this. Matt is my granddaughters' father."

The next morning, Matt was at the pulpit at Crossroads, and Kensi and Grace sat with Jim and Linda. She felt Kensi's forehead, and it was hot. Realizing Kensi wasn't well, Linda asked if she and Jim could take both the girls home with them, so Kensi could rest. Appearing reluctant, Matt agreed.

"You're being a real drama queen," Matt told Kensi, as they walked to the car.

"But my throat hurts," the child responded.

To Linda, Matt looked annoyed.

On the way home, Jim drove through a take-out window and picked up fried chicken for Sunday dinner. At the house, Grace played, but Kensi went straight to bed. Then about 1:00 P.M., Matt stopped over on his way to WCY for afternoon chapel with play clothes for the girls. In the kitchen, Linda offered him chicken, and while he filled a gla.s.s with ice and water out of the refrigerator dispenser, she asked him about what Nancy had told her the day before. "Matt, would you help me understand something Kari told Jo Ann Bristol?" she said. "Kari said she looked in your briefcase and found pills. She was worried enough about them to think you might be planning to cause her harm. Will you help me understand why they were in your briefcase?"

As Linda listened, Matt repeated the story Kari had relayed to Bristol, that the pills were from Waco Center for Youth residents who'd spit them into his briefcase. "It happens all the time," he said. "They hide them in their mouths, and then find a place to stash them. I reported it at work to security."

"Okay," Linda said. "That makes sense."

While the girls were with Linda and Jim, in the chapel at WCY that day, Matt's sermon was a very personal one. "I'm angry at my wife for dying," he told the residents. Some of those on staff wondered if he should have been breaking the rule that barred discussing personal matters with residents. None said anything about the transgression, but afterward one employee expressed her sympathies. This time, Matt's att.i.tude was markedly different than it had been during his sermon. "Oh, well," he said. "It doesn't matter. We didn't love each other anyway."

That afternoon, at the Dulin household, Linda and Jim nursed Kensi and played with Grace, but at five thirty, when Matt came to pick the girls up to take them to evening services at Crossroads, Kensi still had a fever. "Why don't you let them stay?" Linda asked. "They don't need to go to the service. They usually spend it in the playroom anyway."

Matt looked so reluctant that Linda thought, He doesn't want them around us.

"Can't we stay?" Grace pleaded. "I want to stay with Grammy." Finally, he said yes, but then Matt sat on the edge of the bed and whispered to Kensi.

After her son-in-law left, Linda asked, "Can you tell me what your dad said?"

"He said this is the last time we can stay here on a Sunday evening," Kensi answered.

A short time later, the doorbell rang, and Nancy, Kay, and Lindsey walked in. Linda had been expecting them. She'd asked them over to talk about what Nancy had said on the phone. While her granddaughters watched television in the bedroom, Linda invited her sisters and niece to the patio table, where they'd sat on the evening after Kari died.

"We don't believe Kari killed herself," Kay said as soon as they'd all taken their places.

"Kari is dead," Linda replied. "I know that this doesn't make any sense. There was absolutely nothing in Kari that made me think she would take her own life, but we have to accept this."

"Linda, you're not listening to us," Nancy protested.

As Linda sat stunned, Nancy, Lindsey, and Kay opened up about all they'd seen of Matt Baker over the years, for the first time telling Linda about the accusations women had made against him, including Lindsey's friend Erin, the girl Matt propositioned down the hall from Ka.s.sidy's hospital room.

Linda appeared stunned, but Nancy refused to back down. "We don't believe Kari killed herself. We don't."

"What's the alternative?" Linda asked, her mind resting uncomfortably on the only conclusion. "If Kari didn't kill herself, what are you saying? That she was murdered?"

"Kari thought Matt was trying to kill her," Kay said. "Think about that, Linda."

"No. That can't be true," Linda protested. "It's not."

"Linda, if we don't find out why Kari said those things to Bristol, this will haunt us forever," Kay said. The pause was uncomfortably long, as all the women looked at each other, wondering who should speak next.

"Linda, you have to understand," said Kay, her long blond hair held in a ponytail, and her hands fisted on her lap. "We all believe Matt may have murdered Kari."

Linda, however, wouldn't budge, either. "Matt's the father of my two granddaughters, all we have left of Kari," she said, sternly. "I won't hear this. I won't. And I want you to back off. Do you understand?"

The women looked at each other, and nodded. "Okay," Kay agreed. "It's dropped."

Afterward, they all hugged Linda good-bye at her front door, then the women walked out to their cars on the street. Linda shut the door and went back inside the house, and as soon as she was gone, Lindsey asked, "Are we going to drop it?"

"No," Kay said. "Absolutely not."

Chapter 30.

As the days pa.s.sed, it became increasingly apparent to Linda and Jim that Matt was putting up barriers between them and their granddaughters. After listening to Linda's fears, on April 26, Kay sent Matt an e-mail asking him to please remember that the Dulins loved their granddaughters and to try to include them in their lives. Matt replied that the Dulins had to come to terms with their daughter's death. He then unloaded on Kari, repeating much of what he'd said to others since her death, labeling her a bad wife and an uninvolved mother.

That evening, Kay forwarded both the e-mails, hers and Matt's, to Linda. She read them, disbelieving that Matt would say such things. Upset, she wrote Matt an e-mail she called, "A message from my heart." In it, she recounted how Kari loved Matt and the girls, what a wonderful mother Kari had been. She then reminded Matt that she and Jim loved not only Kari but also all of them.

At 11:11 that same evening, Matt responded, saying that he didn't doubt Linda's love. Then, despite having done so just hours earlier in the e-mail to Kay, he said, "But please don't question my love or devotion to Kari. I will never disparage the memory of Kari. In fact, I have in every way tried to protect you and Jim from any comments that could be construed as damaging to Kari's memory."

Acknowledging that the Dulins were in pain, Matt said that he and the girls, too, were suffering. Throughout, he talked of Kari's depression, claiming that the doctor who'd seen her the week before her death had called him to recommend a therapist, and that the physician remarked at having seen "in Kari's eyes what he called a 'tiredness' that worried him."

Throughout the e-mail, Matt focused on his feelings: "I am grieving-I am hurting-I am trying hard to stay strong for the girls-I am crying with them when they cry . . . I lost a wife and my little girls lost a mother-I am trying to keep everyone happy."

Much of it centered on how hard he was working for others, his missive filling two single-s.p.a.ced pages. In the end, he wrote: "Please know that I love you guys much. You are family." Yet, what followed read like a warning: "I will do anything I feel necessary for the health of my children. I am not as concerned with other's [sic] feelings at this time."

In early May, Linda's confusion multiplied when she heard that Matt was telling others that Kari's interview for the middle-school job hadn't gone well on that final day of her life. Linda wondered why he was saying that when she knew that it wasn't true. Then a Spring Valley elementary-school mom called Linda. Matt was working on Kensi's fourth-grade talent show. "He's acting like a teenager with a new girlfriend," the woman said. "He's on the phone all the time, giggling. It's like he's giddy."

The uncertainty welled within Linda, and she didn't know what to do. Could her sisters be right? "I didn't believe any of it was possible," she'd say later. "But at the same time, I couldn't understand why Matt was acting the way he was."

To work her way through the bewilderment, Linda called Bristol and asked her about Kari's final session. As she had to others, the therapist recounted what had happened that day. When she repeated what Kari had said about finding the pills, something struck Linda as odd: Why would the pills have been crushed if the residents were spitting them in Matt's briefcase? It didn't make sense. Afterward, Linda called Kay, who knew someone who worked at WCY. "Ask if the kids could have been hiding the pills in Matt's briefcase," Linda asked. "And ask her if Matt filed a report with security."

Kay agreed, then called later to relay the conversation: "She says that couldn't happen. They watch the kids to make sure they swallow the pills, and if Matt had notified security, everyone would have been told to be on alert. That didn't happen."

Still, Linda fought the idea that Matt could have done anything to Kari. "I just couldn't let my mind go there," she said. "It was horrible enough to lose Kari without thinking that Matt might have murdered her."

Field day, a day when the children at Spring Valley played outside running relays and having fun, an event parents and grandparents often attended, came and went, and Matt never told Jim or Linda. Mother's Day approached, and Linda e-mailed Matt: "I imagine that you have something special to do in Kari's memory with the girls. I would love it if you and the girls would have lunch/dinner with us as well."

In his response, Matt said Linda's plans sounded good and that he knew the girls would enjoy a short trip Jim and Linda had planned with them over the summer. Filling them in on the date for Grace's upcoming kindergarten graduation, Friday, May 26, he said that Kensi was "all into rabbits" and Grace was learning how to play cards. It was a congenial e-mail, one with no sign of strife.

The Sat.u.r.day before Mother's Day, Jill Hotz drove to Waco to help Matt. She spent the day cleaning the house, cooking dinners for Matt and the girls and freezing them for future use. It was hard not to see how much the house had changed. She noticed that all the photos of Kari were gone, and she saw the same photo Todd and Jenny had, the one of Vanessa with the girls. While Jill worked, Matt and the girls circulated through. "Matt complained about Linda a lot," says Jill. "So was Kensi, parroting what her dad said."

When Jill began ironing, Matt complained, "Kari never could iron."

Jill's husband, Stephen, was there as well, and he and Matt began talking about seafood, Matt complaining that Kari had never let them eat it, and prodding Kensi to complain as well. Yet what Jill remembered was that Matt ordered hamburgers when they went to seafood restaurants. "It was like, Kari was so domineering she had a no-fish rule," says Jill. "It was weird. Kari was dead, and Matt was blaming her for everything."

For Jill, the day was especially hard. She'd been feeling guilty about the suicide, convinced that as a good friend, she should have seen the signs. "I'd cry in my car. I felt like I must have been the worst friend in the world not to have known that Kari was so depressed," she says. "But Kari never sounded depressed to me."

The following morning, Mother's Day, a little more than one month after Kari's death, Kensi hung back from her grandparents at church. The ten-year-old didn't even appear excited to see her uncle Adam, whom she'd always adored. When he walked up to her, Kensi bristled, ordering: "Leave me alone."

Matt was busy at WCY that afternoon, and he'd agreed to allow the girls to go to the Dulins' family celebration. Yet Linda sensed something was very wrong. "Kensi, I love you," Linda said to her oldest granddaughter.

In response, the child glared at her.

At her house that afternoon, while extended family gathered around, Kay continued the tradition Kari had begun seven years earlier after Ka.s.sidy's death. She put out two candles, one in memory of Ka.s.sidy and the second in remembrance of Kari. "Would you like to light them?" Kay asked Kensi and Grace.

Shaking her head, Kensi's eyes filled with tears. Knowing her granddaughter was hurting, Linda took the ten-year-old to Kay's bedroom.

"What's wrong?" Linda asked.

"I am mad at you. You were mean to my daddy," Kensi said.

At first, Linda couldn't understand what Kensi meant. It took a while to wade through the confusion, but it soon emerged that Matt had shown his oldest an e-mail from Linda, one in which she asked why he was telling others that Kari was a bad mother and asked what his plans were with Vanessa. "Why do you have to be so mean to Daddy?" Kensi demanded. Holding up three fingers, she said, "You sent him three bad e-mails! He didn't like the questions you asked about Vanessa!"

Explaining that the e-mails were intended for adults, Linda said she'd simply inquired about Matt's plans. "I know you love your daddy, and I would never do anything to intentionally hurt him," Linda said. "I love you all too much."

"My daddy says you won't move on," Kensi said.

Shocked, Linda struggled for the right words. "I am trying to grieve. I won't forget, and I hope you won't forget your mother."

"We like Vanessa," Kensi said. "And Daddy says you don't like Vanessa."

"We just think it's too early," Linda said.

"We don't think so," Kensi said. "We like Vanessa!"